How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness (2015)

#81

Post by grey-area » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 8:19 AM UTC

Iv wrote: post #72

humanrebar wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And of course forcing treatment on her is unethical and probably counter-productive. Counter-productive is an empirical question, but why is forcing treatment always unethical? > ...She lit the apartment on fire and ended up in the hospital. ...for example. Do we need to wait for manslaughter charges before the government is responsible? Often people on the street are at least committing fraud (lying for food, bus…

> Counter-productive is an empirical question, but why is forcing treatment always unethical? Ask most people who were diagnosed as mentally ill by east-german authorities before 1990. Trust me, however nice they are today, you don't want an authority, a committee, or even "community standards" enforce any medical treatment on someone. > ...for example. Do we need to wait for manslaughter charges before the governmen…

Most jurisdictions allow involuntary commitment if you are a danger to yourself or others.

Re: How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness (2015)

#82

Post by ptaipale » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 8:30 AM UTC

jonlucc wrote: post #58

ptaipale wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great, but then you'll notice that many other people also like to have a high quality apartment and a stipend. Eventually, you have to give it to a lot of people, and those who work on low salary and pay their rent for a not-so-high-quality apartment will not be happy and many of them will also acquire a status where they deserve a high quality apartment and a stipend.

If high quality is defined as having a private bathroom, I doubt you'll see a lot of people opting for it.

Then it's probably not "high quality" but more like "decent". However, I don't know about American cities specifically, but even over here in North European socialist utopias, free housing and a "stipend" does attract people in a way that makes low-wage workers unhappy (and even give up / reluctant to take up jobs).

Re: How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness (2015)

#83

Post by xyzzy4 » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 9:27 AM UTC

eyelidlessness wrote: post #62

xyzzy4 wrote: post #11

The reason there are so many homeless is because they can't build slums for themselves like in developing countries such as India. Living in a slum would be better than being homeless. But in America, the police would tear them down.

This has come up on a number of HN posts about homelessness I've seen recently. I'm interested in the topic, and actively worked with an encampment in Seattle (Nickelsville) that intended to build permanent dwellings. They were inspired by Dignity Village in Portland. But like you say, their efforts were demolished. But surprisingly to me, the cops involved were openly apologetic and gave everyone involved an opportu…

I barely have any direct experience. I visited Occupy Boston when it was still around and saw their small tent city. I've been to India multiple times and have seen how the very poor live, but I haven't spoken to them. I'm mostly just interested in the topic a lot and have researched it on my own. When I was younger I used to have some homeless friends, but they didn't construct dwellings.

Re: How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness (2015)

#84

Post by justinator » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 5:22 PM UTC

icantdrive55 wrote: post #13

leonroy wrote: post #6

Years ago I read about an excellent effort in Italy to reduce the homeless problems there. They examined what made folk homeless and what kept them there. A big focus was on re-employment and having a fixed postal address. Those who lost their jobs and then their homes with no fixed address were unable to obtain another job and hence fell into a spiral of chronic homelessness. One of the big takeaways from Italian po…

I always felt P.O. boxes should be free for those that are homeless. If said box goes unused it is put back into general use. Verification could be supplied by the county.

What's really rude is you can't get a USPS PO BOX without a permanent address. I got the run around with a USPS employee about why I couldn't provide that information. I told them I was essentially transient (coming back from a long trip, no family), and they told me, "tough".

There are private PO boxes you can rent out, instead.

Re: How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness (2015)

#85

Post by undersuit » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 6:26 PM UTC

peterwoo wrote: post #38

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #20

I'll weigh in from a basic income perspective... I've held for a while that a homeless person getting into housing solves one of the biggest time sinks they have. Once the time is freed up, they are more comfortable, safer and can therefore sleep better, and they can think and make a plan to get re-integrated into mainstream society. Commenters note that 'housing first' does not work in larger cities like San Francis…

Why not take the financing for this basic income and build things like housing instead?

You can't eat housing. Yes instead of basic income or our current social services we could just build a lot of homes.

But why would you even build homes in the first place. Do you think Salt Lake City in 2005 with 2000+ chronically homeless people didn't have at least 2000 homes on the market?

Re: How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness (2015)

#86

Post by equity » Tue, Sep 20, 2016, 6:55 AM UTC

The following blog argues that there is sloppy accounting in the claimed 90+% reduction of homelessness.

"Although overall homelessness has actually increased slightly over the past decade in Utah, such a large reduction in chronic homelessness is still an impressive achievement. But is it real?

Unfortunately, no. I spent some time studying Utah’s data and found that the miraculous 91 percent reduction in chronic homelessness appears to be driven by changes in how people were counted, rather than by how many there were."

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/9380860

Re: How Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness (2015)

#87

Post by leonroy » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 10:07 AM UTC

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #39

leonroy wrote: post #6

Years ago I read about an excellent effort in Italy to reduce the homeless problems there. They examined what made folk homeless and what kept them there. A big focus was on re-employment and having a fixed postal address. Those who lost their jobs and then their homes with no fixed address were unable to obtain another job and hence fell into a spiral of chronic homelessness. One of the big takeaways from Italian po…

I'm originally from Italy, and I now live and work in SF. I am curious about what you are mentioning: any way for you to retrieve more info so I can look it up?

I read about it in a UK magazine called 'The Big Issue' probably about a decade ago. A quick Google turns up nothing unfortunately but IIRC the policy was practised in just a single region, not nationwide so perhaps they discontinued the practise (or I could have misrememebered the country the policy was implemented in!).