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How California Homelessness Became a Crisis

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Re: How California Homelessness Became a Crisis

#61

Post by anoncake »

mycologos wrote: post #51
metalforever wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the Bay Area and I have multiple friends that are homeless so let me comment here. A lot of the homeless are on disability due to some physical issue that prevents working , or are seniors. The social security checks do not pay the bills and you need an under the table side hustle in the bay to afford a room and be on social security checks. The section 8 waitlist is years long and you have to “scam” yourse…

> A lot of the homeless are on disability due to some physical issue that prevents working , or are seniors. The social security checks do not pay the bills and you need an under the table side hustle in the bay to afford a room and be on social security checks. Naive follow-up question: why does such a person need to live in the bay area? If you're living off disability, why would you try to do it in the most expens…

If you're homeless, what else do you have?

Re: How California Homelessness Became a Crisis

#62

Post by aaron-santos »

jaywalk wrote: post #27
athenot wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the lack of housing should not be an identity that we assign to the women, men and children who happen to be going through a rough time in life. They are—first and foremost—human beings. Losing sight of that can lead to dehumanization which can then exacerbate the issue.

To say someone is homeless is not assigning an identity, it's just describing the state they're in. I'm overweight. To describe me as overweight is accurate, and I wouldn't think you were saying that it's my identity. To describe me as "experiencing obesity" just sounds silly and changes absolutely nothing.

The English copula is frankly a mess that does among other things, assign identity and class membership. It's completely ok to use a verb which specifically indicates class membership in an unambiguous way.

Re: How California Homelessness Became a Crisis

#63

Post by jfoutz »

saas_sam wrote: post #18

There are three kinds of people experiencing homelessness in SF: Drug addicts, who settle in the Bay Area because it is Paradise On Earth for drug addiction. Drugs are cheap and plentiful. Dealers transact unmolested in broad daylight in front of apathetic cops. Needles are provided by the government free of charge. Tents can be pitched on just about any sidewalk. Drug use does not even need to be discreet -- anyone…

I wouldn't claim that the 4 type is the only type to exist. But I would claim 2 things. (completely unsubstantiated)

First, You can shift classification over time. An example might be drug use inducing mental illness, moving from 1 to 2.

Second, I'd claim a lot (most? almost all?) of homeless spent time in group 4. I think if I exhausted my options, or willpower, I'd probably go all in on group 1, probably develop some group 2 characteristics and resign myself to group 3.

I think there's a desire to focus on group 4, because that's the cheapest and easiest to fix. The other groups are far, far more effort. It may not be an optimal strategy, but identifying and resolving group 4 quickly seems like a big win. Slows the rate of growth of groups 1-3.

Re: How California Homelessness Became a Crisis

#64

Post by kelnos »

metalforever wrote: post #28
saas_sam wrote: post #18

There are three kinds of people experiencing homelessness in SF: Drug addicts, who settle in the Bay Area because it is Paradise On Earth for drug addiction. Drugs are cheap and plentiful. Dealers transact unmolested in broad daylight in front of apathetic cops. Needles are provided by the government free of charge. Tents can be pitched on just about any sidewalk. Drug use does not even need to be discreet -- anyone…

I live in the Bay Area and I have multiple friends that are homeless so let me comment here. A lot of the homeless are on disability due to some physical issue that prevents working , or are seniors. The social security checks do not pay the bills and you need an under the table side hustle in the bay to afford a room and be on social security checks. The section 8 waitlist is years long and you have to “scam” yourse…

> The social security checks do not pay the bills and you need an under the table side hustle in the bay to afford a room and be on social security checks.

I find this confusing because you seem to imply that having an income makes you ineligible for social security retirement benefits. But as long as you are 65, you're eligible without income caps. There's no requirement that you're not working.

Social security disability checks do require that you're not working. Is that what you're talking about?

Re: How California Homelessness Became a Crisis

#65

Post by angst_ridden »

spoonjim wrote: post #25
angst_ridden wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you can provide some data to back up the assertion that "it's not even close?"

What data would you look for to confirm the claim, and what data would you loom for to reject the claim?

Well, something stronger than "everyone knows this."

It's a notoriously difficult thing to study, but you can get some answers by looking at tangential studies to see correlation between housing prices and homelessness, e.g., https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ucla-anderson-forecas... or studies showing a majority of the unhoused in California worked here before becoming homeless https://www.capolicylab.org/employment-among-la-county-resid...

Re: How California Homelessness Became a Crisis

#66

Post by evancox100 »

Kapura wrote: post #39

It's crazy to me how expensive it is to live in LA compared with how little i see new construction. The magnitude of the issue really crystalized in my mind when i was talking to a friend who lived in Tokyo, and he mentioned he was paying $900 a month for his flat. It's 40% of what I pay. Housing can't cost this much in cities that people are expected to occupy.

I visited SF ~5 years ago and, coming from Dallas at the time, was shocked at how little construction there was. I think through that whole week I probably saw one sub-skyscraper sized building under construction. Someone from there was like "what are you talking about, haven't you seen downtown?", and I realized how warped their expectations were.

Re: How California Homelessness Became a Crisis

#67

Post by zwieback »

mason55 wrote: post #43
handmodel wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it offensive when people bring up mental illness and drugs as the cause of homelessness in areas where housing is so expensive. Like - are we expecting people who have been on the streets for a year to be able to get off drugs and instantly walk into a job making 45k a year? Trailer parks get made fun of but they often cost only a few hundred dollars a month so a person can be in and out of work there to eithe…

The real issue is conversations that talk about a single cause or single solution. There are lots of causes that need to be addressed and solved separately. But what happens is one person says “build more housing” and another person says “the park near me is full of people who intentionally live on the street!” And you just end up with these intractable conversations where everyone talks past each other. Humans are b…

Exactly. To be fair, though, people working on homelessness are fully aware of the complexity, it's just everyday conversations that are not nuanced at all.

Re: How California Homelessness Became a Crisis

#68

Post by throw737858 »

okareaman wrote: post #54
throw737858 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"California homeless are crazy" narrative is tiring and excuse. They are still people and need basic life necessities: toilet, shower and food. Periodic showers improve mental health, there are studies to prove it! After that is solved, we can focus on other issues. And frankly California invented drug culture, it glorifies drugs, why shame homeless? If Jordan can accept 3 million people, so can California.

The functional people who become homeless usually don't stay homeless because they are able to take advantage of services. There are some new methods being tried by providing temporary tent cities for these people with showers and such. A strict no drugs or alcohol policy in the tent city. When people speak of "The homeless problem" it's usually in regards to the chronically homeless who are addicted and/or mentally…

"functional people"? What sort of language is this? Far right BS!

People are people. It is illegal to scan people for drugs on job interview. Taking dump and shower should not require drug scan.

Re: How California Homelessness Became a Crisis

#69

Post by angst_ridden »

Flatcircle wrote: post #46

I once toured a homeless shelter in downtown Los Angeles, the guy that ran it said, "see all those people that are sleeping under the awning outside, we're trying to get them to come in and get help, but most of them don't want to come in. Because most of them are addicts and you have to be clean inside here." He said, "I'm on the front lines and I'm telling you right now, 90 percent of the homeless problem is becaus…

I volunteered at one of the homeless organizations in downtown LA for a while. It's a safety consideration that most shelters require residents to be clean (although some of the shelters are more militant about that than others).

However, just saying "gotta be clean to be in this shelter" doesn't solve the problem. There need to be adequate treatment programs available for drug and alcohol rehab. Those programs have been cut, and private centers cost far more than most unhoused people can afford.

Furthermore, there's a positive feedback loop that needs breaking. The experience of being unhoused can lead to people escaping into drug use, just as excessive drug use can lead to homelessness.

Re: How California Homelessness Became a Crisis

#70

Post by jlmorton »

There is a basic accounting truth at the heart of this: If land and housing are good investments -- that is, they return any amount greater than wage growth -- then at some point in the future, wage income workers will not be able to afford housing.

There is no getting around this truth. If housing and real estate are a good investment, eventually all wage income workers will be homeless, or will be forced to leave a region. So we need to make sure as a society that housing and real estate are _not_ good investments.

Prior to the 1980s, real estate was not a very good investment. There might be areas that were great investments, but there was no generalized appreciation in land and housing.

In particular, it's an obvious sign of a broken market when structure prices are appreciating. In a functioning market, structure prices should largely decrease in value over time, with the only exceptions being actual improvements to the property.

All of this is the same point as the article, that the basic issue is supply and demand of housing, and that supply problems are exacerbated by homeowners that have a large financial interest in restricting supply, and lots of tools at their disposal to prevent new housing.

Another important point is that while individuals might be responsible for improvements to structures which increase their utility, aesthetics, or value, in almost every case _land_ value increases are the result of large-scale societal factors, and nothing at all to do with any individual actions.

The question becomes, why as a society should we allow land value increases to be captured by individuals? The land has gained value because of societal changes.

If a new light rail line is developed by local government, land values soar within 4 blocks of the new rail line. Why do we allow that value to be captured by individuals?

If a region has great public universities, and high-paying companies flock to the area to hire those workers, land values soar. Why should individuals capture that value?

Rather than taxing property, we should tax land. Taxing structures creates a perverse incentive against improving structures. And land is the thing that is actually scarce. Taxing land would naturally encourage landowners to build higher densities where land values and demand are high.

And when land is sold, we should tax a very large amount of the appreciation in that land value, perhaps 90%. Society is what earned those gains, and society should reap the reward. Individuals can capture the value of increases on improvements to structures, but there's no reason they should earn a windfall from the societal actions that increased the value of the land.

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