California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working • Hacker News Board

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

#851

Post by nonethewiser » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 2:50 AM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #16

atdrummond wrote: post #8

That’s because Cali’s approach is insane. They give you hundreds a month in cash grants (some make $1k a month in SF) and require you to make NO alterations to your lifestyle. I was amazed when living in SF how many of the homeless are not locals. Not even Californians! I myself lived on the streets for a number of years and have dealt with addiction issues. It is absolutely insane how we’ve stopped treating homeless…

How is giving people money unconditionally not treating them as “humans with potential and aspirations”? I’m not entirely sure what your point is. Are you saying that adding more rules and conditions and whatnot is better? I don’t have a well-formed opinion here myself, just that most people arguing for treating benefit recipients humanely argue for fewer rules, not more. So I’d like to understand your point better.

Because it creates more homelessness.

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

#852

Post by yks » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 2:54 AM UTC

suzzer99 wrote: post #642

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…

I think the biggest thing these programs fail to take into account is that a significant portion of San Francisco's homeless population is not from San Francisco. I've met kids on Haight Street who said they'd rather be homeless in SF than in an apartment in Cleveland. Are you housing all the homeless people who migrated to SF, and then keep housing all the new people who show up? The other problems are the severely…

In all fairness, homeless on Haight (and GG Park to a lesser extent) is a pretty specific category of people and I’d not extrapolate any statistics just from them.

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

#853

Post by nonethewiser » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 2:54 AM UTC

thx-2718 wrote: post #135

akira2501 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is giving people money unconditionally not treating them as “humans with potential and aspirations”? If access to money is not their actual impediment then you may be making their situation worse. > I’m not entirely sure what your point is. Are you saying that adding more rules and conditions and whatnot is better? You are drowning. I throw $1000 at you. Are you saying I should have done more? > argue for fewer…

"Zoning and parking laws are ignored. Noise laws are ignored. Drug laws are ignored. There is zero effort to serve this population and get them out of the literal gutter. Pets are a massive problem. Children are living in the middle of this. " How do you pay to enforce all of this? Do jails have adequate space? Are there enough judges, courtrooms, and public defender's to handle this efficiently? Where should the chi…

> How do you pay to enforce all of this? Do jails have adequate space?

Well if you cant enforce it and jails don’t have adequate space shouldn’t you put more resources to those things? Or do you not actually think it should be enforced nor should people be put in jail?

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

#854

Post by slg » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 2:55 AM UTC

repsilat wrote: post #840

neilk wrote: post #826

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are the homeless you can see. You're right that people who have several physical or mental health issues would be hard to help, in any system. But the number one cause of homelessness isn't addiction; it's poverty. And for that matter, the overwhelming majority of people who are substance-addicted don't become homeless. Lots of the people you work with are addicted to something. There are so many steps before p…

> Those are the homeless you can see. Those are the homeless that attack the elderly. Those are the homeless that shit on the street. Those are the homeless that lie naked sprawled across the sidewalk or at the end of a BART escalator. Whatever the cause, these homeless do have mental health and substance abuse issues, often are voluntarily homeless (and will resist help.) They're not all of the homeless problem, but…

And this is the dividing line on this issue of homeless, how people identify the problem and the motivation for the fix.

Some people want to fix homeless because of empathy while others want to fix it because of selfishness. Your comment reveals that you are in the latter group. You don't actually want to get homeless people into homes because you empathize with how horrible their lives must be without one. You just want to the minority of homeless people who are a nuisance to stop bothering you and people you actually do empathize with. All those other homeless people who aren't attacking the elderly or shitting on the street can keep on living the same invisible life of suffering because their suffering is not actually a problem in your eyes.

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

#855

Post by neilk » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 2:55 AM UTC

repsilat wrote: post #840

neilk wrote: post #826

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are the homeless you can see. You're right that people who have several physical or mental health issues would be hard to help, in any system. But the number one cause of homelessness isn't addiction; it's poverty. And for that matter, the overwhelming majority of people who are substance-addicted don't become homeless. Lots of the people you work with are addicted to something. There are so many steps before p…

> Those are the homeless you can see. Those are the homeless that attack the elderly. Those are the homeless that shit on the street. Those are the homeless that lie naked sprawled across the sidewalk or at the end of a BART escalator. Whatever the cause, these homeless do have mental health and substance abuse issues, often are voluntarily homeless (and will resist help.) They're not all of the homeless problem, but…

These are real problems.

But I'm just going to say: I've lived in San Francisco. I currently live in Vancouver, not far from the epicentre of unhoused and addicted people.

Vancouver has many of the same problems and for the same reasons.

I have never, not once, feared for my safety around poor or addicted homeless people in Vancouver. Nor did I even feel like they hated me, specifically. I remember walking out of a doorway in Gastown where there was a woman smoking a crack pipe, and she was very apologetic and moved her stuff. It seemed oddly Canadian to me, even at the time.

In San Francisco I often felt sheer rage from unhoused people, or even just poor people. Acting out aggressively at the slightest provocation. Screaming for apparently no reason.

If you've lived your whole life in America it may be hard to imagine that these things aren't universal. But they aren't. If you think about it there really isn't any reason why being poor has to be the same as being dangerous.

I have no evidence as to exactly what the difference is. I think maybe Canadian policies are a little more generous and a little more available. Canadians were just as racist, but maybe American chattel slavery really went over the top in causing such social rifts. I don't really know.

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

#856

Post by nonethewiser » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 2:56 AM UTC

ribosometronome wrote: post #123

akira2501 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is giving people money unconditionally not treating them as “humans with potential and aspirations”? If access to money is not their actual impediment then you may be making their situation worse. > I’m not entirely sure what your point is. Are you saying that adding more rules and conditions and whatnot is better? You are drowning. I throw $1000 at you. Are you saying I should have done more? > argue for fewer…

>You are drowning. I throw $1000 at you. Are you saying I should have done more? What if we apply your logic to your own scenario? You are drowning. I will jump in and help you get to safety only after you have taken a blood and piss test. Are you saying I should have done more?

But a homeless person can easily take a drug test.

The real analogy would be that you have to consent to the would-be savior to verify you are actually drowning. Im not sure anyone drowing would think “no thanks ill take my chances”.

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

#857

Post by jeffreyames » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 2:58 AM UTC

hourago wrote: post #738

jandrese wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very hard to work around human nature and the whole "why am I paying rent like a sucker when the drug addicts on the street are getting free apartments?" I also think that people who point out that a huge percentage of the people on the street are on drugs, so the drugs are the problem are not entirely correct either. The drug use is a symptom that also exacerbates the problem. One of the big contributing factor…

> It's very hard to work around human nature and the whole "why am I paying rent like a sucker when the drug addicts on the street are getting free apartments?" A lot of people seems to accept tax cuts for billionaires much higher than anything spend on the poor. It is all about framing and repetition. Humans like to help other humans. The problem is that there is a push towards selfishness from the people that has t…

There are many unselfish people who don’t like to throw good money after bad, who think that the current solutions are so ineffective that even if the entire wealth of every billionaire went towards homelessness the needle would barely move.

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

#858

Post by rajeshp1986 » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 2:58 AM UTC

Surprisingly no one talks about how much of that money is corruption and siphoned off. There is little awareness in US about how non-profits organizations can be used for corruption and money laundering.

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

#859

Post by robomartin » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 2:59 AM UTC

AgentOrange1234 wrote: post #506

robomartin wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Homelessness is caused primarily by a lack of homes. That is absolutely not true. Not even close. Mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse are major factors. Dozens of studies show this. I've seen numbers as high as 76% having substance abuse and severe mental illness. One study from 2017 says 80% mental illness, 88% drug abuse and 59% alcohol addiction. There are studies with lower numbers. In most, if not all, of t…

“Saying the issue is lack of homes implies these people could actually pay for a place to stay.” Or we could just… choose to house people, regardless of their ability to pay?

> Or we could just… choose to house people, regardless of their ability to pay?

That solves absolutely nothing. I refer you to the $17B we spent in CA on this problem.

The fundamental issues are mental health and addiction.

All you achieve is making the problem invisible so everyone can feel like they did something. When, in reality, the root causes are not addressed at all.

It is critical to understand that our laws DO NOT ALLOW US to force anyone to do anything. Meaning, if a mentally ill or addicted person says "I am not going anywhere" and "I refuse treatment" we CANNOT force them.

The root causes, for the most part, are mental illness and addition. We cannot be effective helping these people because --by law-- we cannot effectively arrest and force them to accept help of any kind.

In a lot of cases you have addicts who are 100% out of their mind and you are trying to reason with them to accept help. Good luck.

A member of my family and a couple of good friends are professionals deeply involved with the treatment side of this issue. What they tell me is exactly what I have conveyed here.

If we could force people into a solid 12 to 24 month program we could eliminate most of the problem in 5 to 10 years. We can't. Because we have laws that protect citizens from being detained and incarcerated unless they commit a crime. Mental health and addiction are not crimes.

In other words, that path is impossible.

How, then, do they propose this be solved?

Conceptually simple. Politically...well, our politicians are fucking incompetent morons.

You have to clamp down hard on the illicit drugs that are destroying so many lives. Shit like cocaine and heroin should not exist on our streets. Fentanyl-laced pills should not be able to pour through our border like candy (quite literally, google it). Etc.

For some unexplained reason we are willing to burn $17B in just one state of this country to pretend we are helping people and virtue-signal and, at the same time, we refuse to put real money and effort into real actions that would almost make this problem disappear.

Simple math: If none of the drugs a huge portion of these people take were to be available for, say, six months, most of them would gladly get detox help and come out of it a year later with a very different perspective in life. You have to stop the drugs. Things like safe injection spaces are horrible ideas. What you want is free detox centers and a complete clamp-down on drug availability. Then you get results.

I was just in Singapore. Before I could fly there I had to sign a document that had a warning in big, bold, all upper-case letters that read: The penalty for bringing illicit drugs into Singapore is death.

And there you go.

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

#860

Post by 8f2ab37a-ed6c » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 2:59 AM UTC

narrator wrote: post #809

8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unfortunate that some of the smallest, most expensive, most mismanaged and ideological 7x7 mile real estate in the US is being used as the dumpster for humans in need of serious medical attention and societal support. SF can barely build a public toilet without it turning into a taxpayer trough feeding frenzy, so expecting it to be the Mecca of the homeless, the addicted and the downtrodden is comedic at best, a…

There are a lot of public employees and contractors who would have no way to live in the bay area if it wasn't for the $300 million a year homeless budget for a few thousand homeless. They need those homeless to provide justification for their good government jobs, which is why they cater to them so heavily by allowing them to sleep anywhere, ignoring most crimes they commit and providing them with a safe place to bu…

Even Scott Weiner mentioned in the interview with Ezra Klein in April that he would have not been able to live in SF if he hadn't gotten lucky and found a 500sqft place 15 years ago. You know something is off when your state senator can't even afford to live in his own district.