Maybe a shift of perspective is in order. What if the homeless "problem" is merely the most visible symptom of a modern depression that has been underway for many years?
You expect a homeless problem in a depression. You expect drug use to cripple large segments of society in a depression. You don't expect the problems that come with a depression to be fixable. And you expect those with means to jealously guard them from expropriation during a depression.
The thing that separates a modern depression from those that came before is that central banks have pulled out the stops to try to prevent the slide into depression. Their toolbox is limited, so many problems (such as housing) become worse as prices spiral higher out of range of working people, and as jobs continue to flood overseas on cargo ships. Wealth inequality blossoms as the haves keep it (thanks to QE and stock market machinations) and the have-nots lose it. Certain sectors (technology) continue to thrive while everything else (manufacturing, services) spiral downwards. It's easy to blame yourself if the depression is so unevenly distributed.
In following this path, central banks have obliterated cues (massive unemployment, bread lines, collective action) that would otherwise make it obvious that a depression was underway. Kind of like what might happen if you could not smell rot or feces, but could still smell food. Things might seem just fine, but only if you willfully ignored certain non-olfactory clues.
What is also not recognised is that there is a growing percentage of people who is unable to perform any job available in a modern society. Because of mental/IQ/education/soft skill problems. The result is a growing underclass of people that the rest of society try to ignore or (especially in the US) punish for “being lazy”.
>visible symptom of a modern depression that has been underway for many years?
There's never been more prosperity. The visibly homeless are mentally ill or on drugs. It's due to our lack of healthcare access and ability to exist on the fringes of society if one so chooses. More people in foster care end up homeless than graduate high school.
I don't have any experience with the housing issue in California, but got involved a while back trying to find pragmatic solutions in Seattle.
The situation is a mess and there is an entire "homeless industrial complex" complicating matters here, rife with fraud, misspending and cronyism.
Every year it seems like many millions of dollars more are spent on this issue but it keeps getting visibly worse.
At first I was in the "Housing First" crowd, but after my experiences I would say I more firmly believe in "Rehab First".
A local news station released a great documentary called "Seattle is Dying". It has 10 million views since released a couple of years ago.
https://youtu.be/bpAi70WWBlw
>Every year it seems like many millions of dollars more are spent on this issue but it keeps getting visibly worse.
Because home prices and rents keep going up. Homelessness is an inevitable side effect of that.
Funneling money on rehab rather than providing places to actually live cant fix that. It's attacking a symptom not the cause.
However, attacking the cause (property prices/rents) would make a lot of very rich, very powerful people very angry - all backed by an army of overleveraged homeowners terrified of negative equity.
Until property owners are apoplectic with fury about declining property values I doubt the problem will stop getting worse.
What continues to amaze me is that the US completely ignore successful programs run in other countries. The US spent more $ per person on education, healthcare, homelessness etc. and get consistently worse results than countries in Europe for example. I wonder if it is a weird “US #1” kinda thing that makes it impossible to admit that the US can learn from other countries? Or is there some other explanation? Perhaps an unwillingness to actually solve those problems because of a general individualistic/selfish/not my problems mentality?
> Rather than asking "Who can we blame?" maybe we could start asking "How do we fix it?"
Nobody talks about the hard truth: The homeownership rate in California is ~55% and therefore over half of Californians are heavily incentivized to keep the housing crisis going. For existing homeowners this isn't a crisis, it's a free paper money bonanza. Just by living in their houses home "owners" (most are heavily leveraged) "earn" 100k in paper money year in year out - magic! Truly solving the housing crisis would mean for housing costs to go down a lot, which means house values would go down and the 55% will keep fighting that. If you want to stay long term in California and disconnect yourself from the madness that is California housing costs, you have to buy at some point and accept it as the price of entry.
Worth noting that according to [0], this is one of the lowest rates in the country, which would suggest to me this has less of an effect than you are selling here.
55% is one of the lowest home ownership rates in the country. If high levels of home ownership drive policies that prohibit new construction and drive up prices, how is it that places like Minnesota, with a home ownership rate in the mid-70s, are so cheap to live in?
> For existing homeowners this isn't a crisis, it's a free paper money bonanza. Just by living in their houses home "owners" (most are heavily leveraged) "earn" 100k in paper money year in year out - magic!
Is this appreciation consistent with the rest of the country, or areas with comparable quality of life? If you only have one home, real estate appreciation only makes you money if it’s higher for your house relative to other houses you’d actually want to live in, since if you sell your house and buy another house of comparable quality that’s also appreciated to a similar degree, you wouldn’t come out ahead.
So yeah, that starter house you bought for $300k 25 years ago that’s worth over a million now? Unless you’re willing to move to a much lower cost of living part of the country, you could sell that house and buy…another million dollar starter house.
You are assuming that having low income housing somehow impacts the price of higher end housing, and I am not sure that this is true. Would a person with a million dollar house be hurt if we built 100,000 more million dollar houses? Yes. Would that same homeowner be hurt if we built 100,000 cheap rental apartments? It certainly doesn't seem like it. However much property values fall due to less people looking for low-end housing, you would think they would go up due to not being surrounded by homeless camps.
I would say the people who are incentivized to oppose cheap housing are the lower-end landlords.
> therefore over half of Californians are heavily incentivized to keep the housing crisis going
This is a too-frequent HN meme but it doesn't really work that way. There is no special club of homeowners that have more say in what politicians do. Just one vote per person, same as non-homeowners.
And turns out homeowners don't spend time thinking about this, let alone scheming to somehow "keep the housing crisis going". A house is a place to live, that's all.
You have described why the housing "crisis" will never be solved in CA. The homeowners will vote down every new apartment complex, every new developer plan, every rezone. It will never end, ever. Current home owners will never vote for less money, ever. The only way CA can fix this is by a state wide vote - demanding housing to be allowed. Home owners in CA love new Panera Breads and new Chipotles - tie any new commercial properties to new housing. New 1brdm condos will never be built ever. This cannot be fought at a county NIMBY level: this must be statewide. %46 of CA do not own homes - the vote count is almost there. I await my downvotes.
At this point the only economically rational thing for the other 45% to do is leave. Yes California is awesome in lots of ways, but it's someone else's house (literally) and you don't really live there.
If enough people do this, the NIMBYs will get what they deserve as home values crash.
I don't think housing prices are an issue. one part of the homeless are mentally ill. This is a very hard problem and I don't think anyone has the answers for yet, but its not home prices.
Another major group of the homeless is drug addicts. Again, home prices isn't going to change that.
I think its very rare someone goes homeless because their rent went up. if they can't afford it, they usually move.
I'll get down-voted before this but that's how I feel, and I think this 'more affordable homes will solve homelessness' is a waste of time.
Nobody talks about the harder truth: even with its exclusionary housing policies, California is increasingly not capable of supporting the population it has.
The 2021 fires and worsening drought conditions are just a taste of things to come.
It is true, California, namely SF, has the highest density of homeless people I have ever seen. Climate, as the author points out is a huge factor, but it is really a confluence of climate, housing costs, and lenient policies toward vagrancy.
A. It is possible to be homeless in much of California’s coastal cities and towns and not die of exposure. In DC and NY you could easily die of heat stroke in the summer, hypothermia in the winter, or a hurricane or tropical storm if living in a tent or on the sidewalk, so eventually everyone needs to find shelter.
B. Housing is so incredibly expensive on the west coast that you can effectively be working a full-time job and still not be able to afford basic housing. This is not really true of anywhere on the east coast. Sure, cities like DC and NY are expensive, but you don’t have to go too far from the city center to find moderately priced housing. In other east coast cities on the east coast homes and rent can be downright cheap and you could live with a roof over your head, albeit not well, working full time at minimum wage.
C. SF is very lenient and tolerant of homelessness. NY and almost every east coast city, is much less so. Police will clear streets and not allow encampments or people to loiter or sleep in certain areas. These street clearing policies certainly do not solve homelessness, but it does reduce visibility of homelessness. During my last visit to SF homeless people were pretty much everywhere, in every neighborhood and every park.
Does no one remember when other states were paying for bus fares to California to get the homeless out of their state?
Does no one remember states paying to fly the homeless to Hawaii?
The above might sound ridiculous, but what sounds cheaper? Solving California’s massive homeless problem or simply getting the homeless out of the state on the next plane or bus?
Every place does this. I was homeless in San Francisco & applied for assistance. They made sure to let everyone know they'd buy you a one way ticket to pretty much any place you wanted to go.
"Dumping ground" implies other places did this to CA, which isn't substantiated by the article. As it says, the vast majority of CA homeless are from within the state.
In the cities of CA, as in other rich cities, homelessness and high housing prices come from the same problem: prohibitive regulations on housing construction.
I'm really not convinced that high housing costs accurately depict the source of the homelessness problem in CA. If it does, it certainly isn't describing the homeless people I see.
Most of the homeless people I see, the ones who are literally pitching tents on the side walks, sleeping on boxes, defecating anywhere and everywhere, passed out on park benches at 3 in the afternoon, are almost certainly not going to be benefited by lower housing prices.
These people could not afford nor likely ever would afford, a house that cost literally anything. Most of these people suffer from a mental illness and/or a drug addiction which makes holding down a job unlikely to ever happen. What they need is publicly funded mental health hospitals, like the ones that were destroyed in the 80s.
Of course high housing costs are a huge problem, but I just don't think they tell the whole story when it comes to CA homelessness. There's an elephant in the room that far too many people don't want to address. It's the aforementioned population of people who either can't or won't work and the solution we have for them right now is the street.
I took a greyhound across the south west in the early 90s. The bus would stop at each prison along the way from Texas on, everyone that got on was going to LA where they could live rough.
Whenever they do these investigations of how many of the chronic homeless are local or imported problems, they ask questions like “where did you become homeless?” (Crashing on a friends couch doesn’t count) and always avoid the question “when did you move here?” (So someone moving in a year ago to make it big and became homeless 3 months in would count as a local also).
They did a study in Seattle that found that most of the homeless there were previously housed in Seattle, but also that most were housed in … pioneer square. That would be like someone in LA saying they were last housed in skid row.
Regulatory burden doesn’t help, but I don’t think you should overlook the superabundance of cheap credit as a causal factor. If goods can be purchased with money borrowed far below market rate (like a mortgage) because rates are not determined by a profit motive (ie political or social-engineering reasons), then the long term effect is inflation of said good’s cost. You see this same phenomenon in higher education (subsidized). You do not see it in automobiles (to my knowledge, there are no direct subsidies for auto loans).
“The bay” has a particularly close proximity to cheap money for reasons so numerous they deserve their own book.
California largely has weather that you can survive outdoor in year round and social programs that provide for and policies that show empathy for homelessness.
I've spent my life mostly in the East (in places where housing is expensive (e.g. Singapore, Sydney, Hong Kong, Shanghai), as well as places with low cost of living in Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia ). I have not been to CA so this may be a silly question:
What if there are joint initiatives/collaborations between US and its Eastnern allies to sponsor and help people who are struggling on the street due to homelessness to start afresh with a job and a house in say, Canggu, Bali (where things are quite chill & they'll enjoy a much higher quality of life), etc, work there a few years, save up and do some rehab, etc, and then they can decide to come back to the States or continue their life there?
I'm a school drop-out. In my early twenties there were times when I was really broke. So I would move to places with a low cost of living, charge up, and go back to the (relatively high-burn-rate) city life again when it makes sense.
The US has a history of sending waste to other countries[1].
Obviously, homeless people are not "trash", but there is a similarity in your thinking: take something that is seen as a scourge and send it to other countries so that it's out of sight and the largest costs of dealing with it are borne by others (usually poor people).
Why should countries like Indonesia, which has a per capita GDP of under $5,000 USD and no shortage of its own problems, take in homeless Americans, a good number of whom have severe mental illness and/or substance abuse issues? What's the benefit to the Indonesian people?
Have you ever been approached by someone in a city saying they need money to get back to their town? Moving even temporarily is a great barrier to entry for a lot.
Wow. So you think that moving people who can’t cope in their own country to a foreign country with a different language/culture will improve things? And you think that other countries would be interested in importing homeless Americans with mental/health issues? Really? Have you ever lived, worked and paid taxes in any foreign country? Then you would know how hard it is to even get a work permit.
Having lived in small towns and big cities, hot/cold Northeast/Midwest and sunny CA, I have thought for years that CA cities are the ideal destination for homeless. If you need to beg, you need a city with moneyed or generous people, preferably both. You don’t want to freeze or soak too much. It’s really simple. And drifting to CA has been done for a long time.
The only reason I don't laugh quite out loud is that I have a misfortune of living in Seattle and my wife refuses to move until something "actually happens" to us, as opposed to stuff going on 15 blocks away.
California is not suffering from others' "broken" policy, but only from its own.
It's an unpopular opinion, but I think it's great that there are people out there who concentrate the entire problem around themselves and spare the rest of us. They should suffer the consequences of their very willful and insistent stupidity. We should make fun of them, from safe distance.
This is a common myth and a misunderstanding I understand, I thought the same myself a decade ago. It looks like this thread is going nowhere good, so I'll just throw this over the fence quick and run away: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/us/homeless-population.ht...
The government website stats support the claim: ~29% of the entire US homeless population is in California, which is disproportional when compared to other state population densities.[1] That said, the piece doesn't offer much constructive advice on how to fix it. Californians have been witnessing the very real, large increase in tent cities, addicts, feces, ... for years now, but so far they still vote for the same people and policies that create the problem.
In the Bay Area, they at one time had "Sit/Lie" laws prohibiting loitering -- but the locals condemned them as cruel and inhumane. Instead, they advocate that it's ones right to camp in the public park.
Even when Gavin Newsom was mayor of San Fran, he tried to enact a "Care not Cash" program to get people into mental health services instead of cash handouts; the people turned on him, and even set fire to his front lawn in protest.
Californians are getting precisely the kind of world they've voted for. It's ugly, and it literally stinks. Yes, how to fix it is the question, but I'm not sure the people have had enough yet. The recall election of Newsom next month will be an indicator. If he's recalled, then a new day of hope begins. Hope, anyway....
How can it be housing when there are so many vacancies? I honestly don't understand this. Obviously they can't afford it, but that's how markets work. When there is high demand, prices go up.
It seems to me the solution is just for people to go elsewhere... again, the housing is there, plenty of rentals everywhere, except too expensive for someone who is living on the streets to, all of a sudden, start paying for, yet they can't live anywhere else?
Also politicians where talking about an exit tax for people who leave, or something like that. You can't have it both ways: be the most popular destination and also have affordable housing. It's either/or, and people who can't afford simply need to go elsewhere that they can afford. How can that not be an option for people?
It seems to me everyone just ignores individual incentives when talking about this problem. What are these people on the street motivated by? What do they want? And why can't they decide to go to a less popular, and cheaper place to live and work? I honestly would not stay in CA if I couldn't afford it, and would at least find a cheaper place to be homeless in, just to have a better chance to afford a place. When are we going to start factoring in these people's agency and incentives? They are people with desires, motivations, and plans.
I agree with the premise of the article, that a large proportion of California's homeless move there because it's easier to he homeless for all the reasons listed, but that's about the substance of the article. It blames the problem on detached housing and demands solutions without an inkling of a hint at any.
Our homeless problem is the result of 2 things: a mental health problem and to a much lesser extent the pervasiveness of the speculative real estate market driving up costs (a market largely driven by equity in the California housing market I might mention).
The solution to this problem is not less detached housing, it is more of any housing anywhere that it has been artificially suppressed, and raising interest rates to a market dictated level rather than artificially suppressing them to hold up the house of cards, and more importantly, helping people address their mental health problems.
Couldn’t the homeless relocate to less expensive places, perhaps get a job, and then be able to afford rent (even if it means having a roommate or two)? What is the reluctance? Roommates? A job? I am confused.
Every state believes they are America's dumping ground.
That doesn't change the fact that the overall rate of homelessness pre covid had been declining for years in america yet increasing only on the west coast.
Sure. Why not. They (government and citizens who elect the government) are all stupid patsies who willing allow themselves to be abused in this way. They get what they deserve! If they had spines, they prevent it and/or reverse it. But they "think with emotions" so they are incapable of doing the right thing for the state and its citizens.
BTW NYC did the same thing during the 1970s/1980s to clean up homelessness and criminality of NYC: folks were bused to upstate cities of Albany, Rochester and Buffalo to "get them out of the problem space" of NYC. That was key to how NYC recovered from the 1970s hell-hole it has become. Now it's returning to the same and current leadership is again spineless.
[+] [-] aazaa|4 years ago|reply
You expect a homeless problem in a depression. You expect drug use to cripple large segments of society in a depression. You don't expect the problems that come with a depression to be fixable. And you expect those with means to jealously guard them from expropriation during a depression.
The thing that separates a modern depression from those that came before is that central banks have pulled out the stops to try to prevent the slide into depression. Their toolbox is limited, so many problems (such as housing) become worse as prices spiral higher out of range of working people, and as jobs continue to flood overseas on cargo ships. Wealth inequality blossoms as the haves keep it (thanks to QE and stock market machinations) and the have-nots lose it. Certain sectors (technology) continue to thrive while everything else (manufacturing, services) spiral downwards. It's easy to blame yourself if the depression is so unevenly distributed.
In following this path, central banks have obliterated cues (massive unemployment, bread lines, collective action) that would otherwise make it obvious that a depression was underway. Kind of like what might happen if you could not smell rot or feces, but could still smell food. Things might seem just fine, but only if you willfully ignored certain non-olfactory clues.
[+] [-] mbrodersen|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diogenescynic|4 years ago|reply
There's never been more prosperity. The visibly homeless are mentally ill or on drugs. It's due to our lack of healthcare access and ability to exist on the fringes of society if one so chooses. More people in foster care end up homeless than graduate high school.
[+] [-] Comevius|4 years ago|reply
We live in frozen calm of the normalcy bias and it will be our collective downfall.
[+] [-] j8hn|4 years ago|reply
The situation is a mess and there is an entire "homeless industrial complex" complicating matters here, rife with fraud, misspending and cronyism.
Every year it seems like many millions of dollars more are spent on this issue but it keeps getting visibly worse.
At first I was in the "Housing First" crowd, but after my experiences I would say I more firmly believe in "Rehab First".
A local news station released a great documentary called "Seattle is Dying". It has 10 million views since released a couple of years ago. https://youtu.be/bpAi70WWBlw
The sequel is "The Fight For the Soul of Seattle". https://youtu.be/WijoL3Hy_Bw
[+] [-] pydry|4 years ago|reply
Because home prices and rents keep going up. Homelessness is an inevitable side effect of that.
Funneling money on rehab rather than providing places to actually live cant fix that. It's attacking a symptom not the cause.
However, attacking the cause (property prices/rents) would make a lot of very rich, very powerful people very angry - all backed by an army of overleveraged homeowners terrified of negative equity.
Until property owners are apoplectic with fury about declining property values I doubt the problem will stop getting worse.
[+] [-] mbrodersen|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AngryData|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Schnitz|4 years ago|reply
Nobody talks about the hard truth: The homeownership rate in California is ~55% and therefore over half of Californians are heavily incentivized to keep the housing crisis going. For existing homeowners this isn't a crisis, it's a free paper money bonanza. Just by living in their houses home "owners" (most are heavily leveraged) "earn" 100k in paper money year in year out - magic! Truly solving the housing crisis would mean for housing costs to go down a lot, which means house values would go down and the 55% will keep fighting that. If you want to stay long term in California and disconnect yourself from the madness that is California housing costs, you have to buy at some point and accept it as the price of entry.
[+] [-] ceh123|4 years ago|reply
[0] https://blog.stewart.com/stewart/2019/11/05/u-s-homeownershi...
* I didn’t vet this source much but it apparently pulls from UC Census data.
[+] [-] lbarrow|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MontyCarloHall|4 years ago|reply
Is this appreciation consistent with the rest of the country, or areas with comparable quality of life? If you only have one home, real estate appreciation only makes you money if it’s higher for your house relative to other houses you’d actually want to live in, since if you sell your house and buy another house of comparable quality that’s also appreciated to a similar degree, you wouldn’t come out ahead.
So yeah, that starter house you bought for $300k 25 years ago that’s worth over a million now? Unless you’re willing to move to a much lower cost of living part of the country, you could sell that house and buy…another million dollar starter house.
[+] [-] issa|4 years ago|reply
I would say the people who are incentivized to oppose cheap housing are the lower-end landlords.
[+] [-] jazzyjackson|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjav|4 years ago|reply
This is a too-frequent HN meme but it doesn't really work that way. There is no special club of homeowners that have more say in what politicians do. Just one vote per person, same as non-homeowners.
And turns out homeowners don't spend time thinking about this, let alone scheming to somehow "keep the housing crisis going". A house is a place to live, that's all.
[+] [-] ransom1538|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] api|4 years ago|reply
If enough people do this, the NIMBYs will get what they deserve as home values crash.
[+] [-] trophycase|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] autokad|4 years ago|reply
Another major group of the homeless is drug addicts. Again, home prices isn't going to change that.
I think its very rare someone goes homeless because their rent went up. if they can't afford it, they usually move.
I'll get down-voted before this but that's how I feel, and I think this 'more affordable homes will solve homelessness' is a waste of time.
[+] [-] LurkingPenguin|4 years ago|reply
The 2021 fires and worsening drought conditions are just a taste of things to come.
[+] [-] etempleton|4 years ago|reply
A. It is possible to be homeless in much of California’s coastal cities and towns and not die of exposure. In DC and NY you could easily die of heat stroke in the summer, hypothermia in the winter, or a hurricane or tropical storm if living in a tent or on the sidewalk, so eventually everyone needs to find shelter.
B. Housing is so incredibly expensive on the west coast that you can effectively be working a full-time job and still not be able to afford basic housing. This is not really true of anywhere on the east coast. Sure, cities like DC and NY are expensive, but you don’t have to go too far from the city center to find moderately priced housing. In other east coast cities on the east coast homes and rent can be downright cheap and you could live with a roof over your head, albeit not well, working full time at minimum wage.
C. SF is very lenient and tolerant of homelessness. NY and almost every east coast city, is much less so. Police will clear streets and not allow encampments or people to loiter or sleep in certain areas. These street clearing policies certainly do not solve homelessness, but it does reduce visibility of homelessness. During my last visit to SF homeless people were pretty much everywhere, in every neighborhood and every park.
[+] [-] iJohnDoe|4 years ago|reply
Does no one remember when other states were paying for bus fares to California to get the homeless out of their state?
Does no one remember states paying to fly the homeless to Hawaii?
The above might sound ridiculous, but what sounds cheaper? Solving California’s massive homeless problem or simply getting the homeless out of the state on the next plane or bus?
[+] [-] jdavis703|4 years ago|reply
Source: https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/ExecutiveSu...
[+] [-] devoutsalsa|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jefftk|4 years ago|reply
In the cities of CA, as in other rich cities, homelessness and high housing prices come from the same problem: prohibitive regulations on housing construction.
[+] [-] rubicon33|4 years ago|reply
Most of the homeless people I see, the ones who are literally pitching tents on the side walks, sleeping on boxes, defecating anywhere and everywhere, passed out on park benches at 3 in the afternoon, are almost certainly not going to be benefited by lower housing prices.
These people could not afford nor likely ever would afford, a house that cost literally anything. Most of these people suffer from a mental illness and/or a drug addiction which makes holding down a job unlikely to ever happen. What they need is publicly funded mental health hospitals, like the ones that were destroyed in the 80s.
Of course high housing costs are a huge problem, but I just don't think they tell the whole story when it comes to CA homelessness. There's an elephant in the room that far too many people don't want to address. It's the aforementioned population of people who either can't or won't work and the solution we have for them right now is the street.
[+] [-] seanmcdirmid|4 years ago|reply
Whenever they do these investigations of how many of the chronic homeless are local or imported problems, they ask questions like “where did you become homeless?” (Crashing on a friends couch doesn’t count) and always avoid the question “when did you move here?” (So someone moving in a year ago to make it big and became homeless 3 months in would count as a local also).
They did a study in Seattle that found that most of the homeless there were previously housed in Seattle, but also that most were housed in … pioneer square. That would be like someone in LA saying they were last housed in skid row.
[+] [-] sk2020|4 years ago|reply
“The bay” has a particularly close proximity to cheap money for reasons so numerous they deserve their own book.
[+] [-] rigata|4 years ago|reply
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/21/nevada...
South Park made an episode about it with the song “California loves the homeless”.
https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/California_Loves_the_Homel...
California largely has weather that you can survive outdoor in year round and social programs that provide for and policies that show empathy for homelessness.
[+] [-] archibaldJ|4 years ago|reply
What if there are joint initiatives/collaborations between US and its Eastnern allies to sponsor and help people who are struggling on the street due to homelessness to start afresh with a job and a house in say, Canggu, Bali (where things are quite chill & they'll enjoy a much higher quality of life), etc, work there a few years, save up and do some rehab, etc, and then they can decide to come back to the States or continue their life there?
I'm a school drop-out. In my early twenties there were times when I was really broke. So I would move to places with a low cost of living, charge up, and go back to the (relatively high-burn-rate) city life again when it makes sense.
[+] [-] LurkingPenguin|4 years ago|reply
Obviously, homeless people are not "trash", but there is a similarity in your thinking: take something that is seen as a scourge and send it to other countries so that it's out of sight and the largest costs of dealing with it are borne by others (usually poor people).
Why should countries like Indonesia, which has a per capita GDP of under $5,000 USD and no shortage of its own problems, take in homeless Americans, a good number of whom have severe mental illness and/or substance abuse issues? What's the benefit to the Indonesian people?
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/17/recycled-pla...
[+] [-] bitxbitxbitcoin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbrodersen|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quantified|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sershe|4 years ago|reply
California is not suffering from others' "broken" policy, but only from its own.
It's an unpopular opinion, but I think it's great that there are people out there who concentrate the entire problem around themselves and spare the rest of us. They should suffer the consequences of their very willful and insistent stupidity. We should make fun of them, from safe distance.
[+] [-] refulgentis|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wombatpm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mullingitover|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eplanit|4 years ago|reply
In the Bay Area, they at one time had "Sit/Lie" laws prohibiting loitering -- but the locals condemned them as cruel and inhumane. Instead, they advocate that it's ones right to camp in the public park.
Even when Gavin Newsom was mayor of San Fran, he tried to enact a "Care not Cash" program to get people into mental health services instead of cash handouts; the people turned on him, and even set fire to his front lawn in protest.
Californians are getting precisely the kind of world they've voted for. It's ugly, and it literally stinks. Yes, how to fix it is the question, but I'm not sure the people have had enough yet. The recall election of Newsom next month will be an indicator. If he's recalled, then a new day of hope begins. Hope, anyway....
[1] https://www.usich.gov/homelessness-statistics/ca
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] alisonkisk|4 years ago|reply
The blog post has more linked sources than most content marketing spam that appears on HN from page.
There are already several comments on the post by HN users that are repeating statements from the post. This suggests it is HN material.
[+] [-] NiceWayToDoIT|4 years ago|reply
= 161,548 homeless [1] (0.41% of total population)
72% = 116315 people
1. https://www.usich.gov/homelessness-statistics/ca/
Somehow, I thought that figure is significantly larger, when I visited SF, CA - walking around town I could see homeless people everywhere.
[+] [-] proc0|4 years ago|reply
It seems to me the solution is just for people to go elsewhere... again, the housing is there, plenty of rentals everywhere, except too expensive for someone who is living on the streets to, all of a sudden, start paying for, yet they can't live anywhere else?
Also politicians where talking about an exit tax for people who leave, or something like that. You can't have it both ways: be the most popular destination and also have affordable housing. It's either/or, and people who can't afford simply need to go elsewhere that they can afford. How can that not be an option for people?
It seems to me everyone just ignores individual incentives when talking about this problem. What are these people on the street motivated by? What do they want? And why can't they decide to go to a less popular, and cheaper place to live and work? I honestly would not stay in CA if I couldn't afford it, and would at least find a cheaper place to be homeless in, just to have a better chance to afford a place. When are we going to start factoring in these people's agency and incentives? They are people with desires, motivations, and plans.
[+] [-] cortesoft|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] irrational|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] betwixthewires|4 years ago|reply
Our homeless problem is the result of 2 things: a mental health problem and to a much lesser extent the pervasiveness of the speculative real estate market driving up costs (a market largely driven by equity in the California housing market I might mention).
The solution to this problem is not less detached housing, it is more of any housing anywhere that it has been artificially suppressed, and raising interest rates to a market dictated level rather than artificially suppressing them to hold up the house of cards, and more importantly, helping people address their mental health problems.
[+] [-] tamaharbor|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iammisc|4 years ago|reply
That doesn't change the fact that the overall rate of homelessness pre covid had been declining for years in america yet increasing only on the west coast.
That alone contradicts the premise.
[+] [-] xyzzy21|4 years ago|reply
BTW NYC did the same thing during the 1970s/1980s to clean up homelessness and criminality of NYC: folks were bused to upstate cities of Albany, Rochester and Buffalo to "get them out of the problem space" of NYC. That was key to how NYC recovered from the 1970s hell-hole it has become. Now it's returning to the same and current leadership is again spineless.
[+] [-] rodarmor|4 years ago|reply