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California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working

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Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working

#631

Post by p_j_w »

meowtimemania wrote: post #511
abeppu wrote: post #171

What's crazy is that we decide to spend on homelessness in such inefficient ways. A "housing first" strategy would be more humane, and pretty affordable compared to what we're currently doing. This article says $3.7B for an estimated 115k homeless population which yields around $32k per person per year, or $2700 per person per month, and that's only state money. In SF it may be more like $57k/yr, or $4750/mo. At thos…

We've tested housing first programs in SF. https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1659972231328583680?s=20 25% died (overdose on drugs), and 21% returned to the streets. We need to recognize that drug addicts don't make rational decisions for themselves. We shouldn't leave them on the streets to do drugs, we shouldn't give them free housing to do drugs, we should put them in rehab. If they don't want to go to rehab, cha…

>25% died (overdose on drugs), and 21% returned to the streets.

How many of those 25% would've died on the street? Do you have any numbers to put that into context?

A 54% reduction in homeless on the streets sounds like a great start to me, though, as do people dying in a room instead of on a sidewalk.

Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working

#632

Post by nancyhn »

fullspectrumdev wrote: post #413

Having lived/spent time in a few places with varying homeless problems and approaches to homelessness, I find it fucking depressing every time I read about how badly - and inefficiently - the US handles it. Probably because I see alarming parallels with my own country. Billions going where, exactly? If the problems growing, and you are just sinking billions into it without making any measurable impact, where the fuck…

It's going to the administrators of the homeless industrial complex. It's the same problem we're seeing with colleges where the number of administrators has dramatically grown year over year.

Managerial bloat. The more money we give, the more they grow.

Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working

#633

Post by Tiktaalik »

jonny_eh wrote: post #419
fullspectrumdev wrote: post #413

Having lived/spent time in a few places with varying homeless problems and approaches to homelessness, I find it fucking depressing every time I read about how badly - and inefficiently - the US handles it. Probably because I see alarming parallels with my own country. Billions going where, exactly? If the problems growing, and you are just sinking billions into it without making any measurable impact, where the fuck…

> There’s no easy fix for homelessness True, but that's only because there's no easy way to add housing in modern society. Homelessness is caused primarily by a lack of homes.

yep.

Absolutely there's plenty of addiction problems, toxic drug problems and mental illness problems in my city, but the numbers don't lie and we have lost thousands on thousands of the most affordable rental housing stock over the last few decades even as population grew.

If we had actually gained affordable housing stock as population increased, or at least kept pace, we would be in a different situation. No doubt we would still have issues of a small amount of people having issues with mental illness, but we would be dramatically more capable of helping them than we are now with the incredibly scarce level of apartments we have now.

Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working

#634

Post by sroussey »

losteric wrote: post #521
sroussey wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And places like SF with a budget of about $100k/yr/person for homeless, make it effectively illegal to get an accounting of where the money goes.

Can you elaborate? I don't follow how the amount of money spent "makes it effectively illegal" to audit.

The amount doesn’t, it’s the culture of the city government and protection of the service providers that actually receive the money.

Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working

#635

Post by poorbutdebtfree »

fullspectrumdev wrote: post #413

Having lived/spent time in a few places with varying homeless problems and approaches to homelessness, I find it fucking depressing every time I read about how badly - and inefficiently - the US handles it. Probably because I see alarming parallels with my own country. Billions going where, exactly? If the problems growing, and you are just sinking billions into it without making any measurable impact, where the fuck…

The Greater Boston Food Bank CEO cleared a $500K salary this year, for a job that's largely remote because the area is too dangerous for the non-profit white collar workers. Do you think she wants "food insecurity" to be solved?

https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/427...

Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working

#636

Post by zem »

meowtimemania wrote: post #555
dv_dt wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This idea of worrying about who gets what for free before actually solving the problem, is a major blocker in solving the homelessness problem. And not only do the homeless suffer for it, the people who have work or homes in the area suffer for the lack of pragmatism about it.

I agree with you, I just feel like if I were working a minimum wage job busting my ass to pay rent to my landlord, I’d be deeply offended that you can be rewarded free housing essentially for being addicted to drugs.

you would be working the same minimum wage job and busting the same ass to pay the same rent to the same landlord, regardless of whether someone else got housed for free. this is indeed a very real problem, but the problem is that people are forced into long hours at (insufficient) minimum wage jobs in order to get unaffordably priced housing. you should be resenting the people higher up the chain who have created these conditions, not the people lower down who might be getting something for free.

Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working

#637

Post by smsm42 »

kristofferR wrote: post #586
meowtimemania wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm quoting a tweet from the president of Y Combinator. I'm not against giving people housing, but I think there needs to be a sobriety requirement. Why would putting someone in a house cure them of their addiction? Put them through rehab, then give them a house when they leave rehab.

They use drugs because they live on the streets. Treating a symptom instead of the cause is stupid, especially if the symptom (drug use) will likely return as soon as they return to the streets after rehab/prison.

A lot of them uses drugs because they are mentally ill, and this is their way to cope with it. People that aren't dangerous to anybody but themselves would not get treated involuntarily, and they would not follow voluntary treatments because drugs are easier. Living on the streets is a consequence too - it's hard to hold a job while being mentally ill addict, it's hard to pay rent while having no job, and it's hard to follow any rules framework which would be in place for a housing solution while being all the above.

Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working

#638

Post by HEmanZ »

chinchilla2020 wrote: post #581
hnarn wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The strategy is called “housing first” and has been proven to work in Finland: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle... The idea that homeless people need homes to be able to advance further seems to trigger some people — after all, most of us pay for our housing, so why should they get it for free? What people don’t consider is that when “we”, the people with houses, don’t spend our dollars ho…

> Proven to work in Finland Finland, a tiny baltic nation that has almost nothing in common with the USA.

The Bay Area is about the same population as Finland. And it has a higher gdp per capita than Finland.

I agree that we are working with more “technical debt” than Finland is, and copy-pasting exact policy won’t work. But strategically I don’t see a major difference.

Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working

#639

Post by reillyse »

seizethecheese wrote: post #576
Brainfood wrote: post #515

LA resident since 2015. I have a proposed solution that no one ever seems to bring up on here but I would love to know the HN response to this: If a big essential part of the American Dream is home ownership, and we are short on homes, why do we allow corporations to own them all? How about we have a middle ground or cap on size of corporate entity and # of units or something? Some of the argument seems to be stuck o…

Corporations buy homes to rent them out. This is neutral for housing supply. The real issue is a growth in households but a lack of growth in housing stock. We need to build more housing.

Well one problem is once corporations get involved is money starts flowing to influence Politicians to do the Corps bidding. So, I wouldn't say it's neutral.

Re: California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working

#640

Post by russdill »

labcomputer wrote: post #314
russdill wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone wants that solution. No one wants that solution in their neighborhood. Even unsubsidized low cost housing.

> Everyone wants that solution. [Just building more houses] I'm not sure I completely agree with that. Suppose you wanted to build the maximum amount of free housing as quickly as possible. What would you do? You'd pick someplace rural (where land is cheap, and there are fewer people to raise objections), buy a bunch of land and just build the homes (and services needed by the people who would live in them). You woul…

Yes, well spotted. The US on average likely has enough housing. It's certain specific areas do not have sufficient housing. If you live somewhere with high land prices, property values, etc, the low wage jobs in the area still need to be filled and those people still need somewhere to live.
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