There is an episode of the "you're wrong about" podcast, that discusses homelessness. In that episode there are several discussion about several projects in California around homelessness. Those projects provided housing. The studies based on those projects showed that overall the cost was less that not having some housing and services. The podcast goes into more details, but as I remember this was because
* It removes much of the medical and police cost
* If people who are struggling don't have a roof over their head, it makes it incredibly hard for them to get a job. Having some stability meant that many could pick them selves up and get a job and so forth.
The end of the episode points out even though the programs were a success by most metrics - including being cheaper overall to tax payers - they were shut down.
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 housing homeless people, we pay sooner or later in other ways whether we want to or not when society around us partly disintegrates and additional effects start stacking up: substance abuse, violent crime, healthcare costs etc.
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 people as humans with potential and aspirations and assume that all they can be is a vacuum for drugs and cash. There’s no other conclusion to reach about how policy makers truly think about this class of people with the way the incentives of these “support” programs are structured.
>It is absolutely insane how we’ve stopped treating homeless people as humans with potential and aspirations and assume that all they can be is a vacuum for drugs and cash.
Vancouver has the same approach- warmest place in Canada.
When I suggested active intervention (eg. force detox), the activists would accuse me of treating homeless people as sub-humans, that I am being cruel and inhumane and a monster, and that we should give them (the users and the NGOs) money and safe-supply drug and leave them alone on the street.
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.
Demographics of homeless populations is one of those things that is pretty hard to determine conclusively without some serious invasion of privacy and/or violation of rights.
Take in consideration that homeless folks are under no obligation to tell the truth when surveyed or questioned and are generally aware that "migration of homeless into certain areas" is a hot-button issue (these folks are homeless, not stupid)... and we have a recipe for the demographics of homeless populations in these 'desirable' areas being misreported and the percent of out-of-region homeless being under-reported as a rule.
Homeless folks definitely migrate to places that are more tolerant of homelessness and are all around "better" places to be homeless. SF, LA, Seattle, etc. are good places to be homeless. Boulder, CO is a good place to be homeless; they even put folks up in hotels in the winter for free when it is too cold outside.
Some people moved to these regions before being homeless, but they moved here for easy access to drugs and the overall drug climate (often not arrested or prosecuted for possession of hard drugs and pot is legal). This is sort of 'pre-homelessness'... their drug addiction was practically guaranteeing they would become homeless eventually.
BTW: Governments paying to bus their homeless people somewhere else so "it's not their problem" should be illegal unless tacitly agreement upon by the two regional/municipal governments. This practice is disgusting.
This is not surprising at all. Currently it’s all about affirmation and validation and being your true authentic self. Suggesting alterations to lifestyles implies that some lifestyles might be inferior to others. Would this implication end at drug use or could it be extended to other areas of life as well? When you extrapolate this a bit further you could quickly get yourself labeled closed-minded and a bigot. Therefore just throwing cash non-judgmentally at these problems and hoping the issues go away is the only path forward for many.. alternatives would be too uncomfortable to stomach.
There's also simply no good solution for people with mental health issues. People who need help aren't scooped up & put somewhere for treatment. They're left on the street.
There are a lot of people making money in the current system. It's pretty obvious that just giving money to people trapped in a cycle of addiction is not going to break that cycle.
They need treatment and in many cases it might need to be compelled to break the cycle. This then needs to be followed with integration programs (and jobs, schooling) that do not happen in the same area where they spent their time addicted.
On the other hand, $1K a month in SF won't even get you a bed in a shared room. I mean that literally - I just checked apartments.com and there's exactly one listing out of 5,400 right now that's under $1000 and open to non-students.
> 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.
If you look up the amount spent per homeless person by SF on homelessness, you'll wonder how it is possible that they're giving away ONLY $1000 per month.
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 is the money going?
Like looking at the supposed cost of building housing, it seems glaringly obvious that the taxpayers being fucked by someone. We also have this issue in Ireland, what with one hospital being billions over budget, years behind schedule, etc. never mind housing.
Zoning and planning issues can be dealt with trivially by the state almost anywhere, they just aren’t fucked doing so (we have this issue in Ireland).
There’s no easy fix for homelessness, shelters are at best putting a band aid on a severed limb. The only real solution is large scale construction of mixed use housing - some social, some affordable, some private. And that’s a whole clusterfuck that seems unachievable for political reasons globally, with the exception of some of the Nordic social democracies.
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 those rates, we could be renting people market rate 1BD apartments for less than we're spending on inefficient/ineffective services or safe sleeping sites. Cities could be buying up the over-built condos and actually putting people in them.
Yes, drug addiction and mental health issues are important factors, but these are easier for people to get under control if they have the safety and stability of a home. Getting and holding down a job is also easier when you have a safe place to live.
Why don't we do this? I think it comes down to (a) corruption, where organizations that provide 'services' have good relationships with people in government and (b) "fairness" concerns, where a working person paying out the nose for half of an apartment doesn't want their tax dollars to give anyone an apartment for free. On that second point, I understand the frustration, but if the alternative is spending _more_ tax dollars for someone to camp on the sidewalk and make my neighborhood feel unsafe and unclean, then I would rather put them into homes.
We are doing exactly what you propose. Many communities have "housing first" homeless strategies. Some people do in fact get off the street.
But we also have some "service resistant" homeless populations that do not want to live in your rule-based housing, they want to live without those rules even if it means living on the street.
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, charge them with possession of illegal substances and put them in a prison rehab system. This type of life crippling drug addiction shouldn't be tolerated.
I recognize that not all homeless are drug addicts, they should be supported in a much different way than we support drug addicts.
Look up the Skid Row Housing Trust's collapse for a detailed look at why housing first is doomed to failure.
In a nutshell: homelessness is a symptom, not a cause, and housing doesn't address the reasons that individuals are homeless. The SRHT focused on housing first, but now has hundreds of unoccupiable units that were damaged by drug-addicted and mentally-ill individuals and rendered inhospitable (and this ultimately led to the SRHT's financial collapse).
For the 90+% of homeless that are homeless due to mental illness or drug abuse, treatment first is the only viable solution, but we're not legally allowed to force someone into treatment until and unless they're an immediate physical danger to themselves or others.
Simply giving the homeless, a lot of them addicted and with mental health original, a $4700/month home or the money directly does not help them.
Without being presumptive, it irks me to see internet experts barge it with their own theories and expertise, rather than the people who have studied and dedicated themselves for decades.
IMO The issue is that anytime more money becomes available, CA government/bureaucracy sucks it up. Lots of state jobs created to run these programs that ultimately do little good. Seems more like middle class jobs program than actually attempting to solve the problem.
"... or $4750/mo. At those rates, we could be renting people market rate 1BD apartments"
A common misconception - but money is not housing. There are no extra 1BD units available. We could use this money to outbid other people to put the current homeless in those places, displacing others and somewhat increasing overall rent prices (and/or waiting lists). But I don't think that's what you intend.
In the end, if we want more people to have housing, then we have to allow more housing to be built. It's not (just) a money problem.
Utah has been doing a housing first program for about 20 years. It has definitely helped a lot of people, but it hasn't really solved the problem either.
(I'm not saying the strategy is flawed - maybe it is, maybe Utah is doing it wrong, maybe you need housing first plus a bunch of other things - who knows).
I think on this issues it’s conservatives that make a solution untenable.
Conservatives are going to be against giving out living space. So that kills any housing first policies.
The alternative has to be something that a politician can sponsor and be confident that in a few years when they are up for re-election that there won’t be any obvious fraud or abuse. Eg. If their policy is found to have housed a crack den then their political ambitions likely get killed.
This has the consequence that checks and balances and overhead has to be put in place. So we get a solution that is less cost effective with worse outcomes.
My wish is for government to come out and say we accept 10% fraud out of this program if we can house Y number of people. But yeh that won’t happen either because their political opponents will distort that 10% and say the government purposely threw that money away.
It is mentioned in the article about a woman working full time, yet still unable to afford rent.
I think a big steps towards resolving homelessness should go in addressing the housing market; which in California is really really bad. This isn't just "build more homes" (which is already an extremely difficult task in the state given the zoning laws) but comprehensive housing policies. Take a look at the way Austria has controlled rent prices (though californians might not like the fact that around 70% of housing in austria is limited or non profit).
Also, this is a US-wide problem. California just has the best weather and open doors. But I doubt it's going to get better, wealth inequality does nothing but increase in the US. We'll see, but this looks to me more of a symptom than a sickness in itself.
I don't care anymore. Bus them out to the desert. Set up camp there. Provide food and busses into town for those with interviews and jobs. I really don't care, just get them out of the damn cities. I've seen too many people shit in the bushes or just peeing up against a building. Building tent cities on the beach and enjoyable areas, etc. I. Don't. Care. Get rid of them. I left California for this reason and housing costs.
The number of homeless people in California grew about 50% between 2014 and 2022. The state, which accounts for 12% of the U.S. population, has about half of the nation’s unsheltered homeless, an estimated 115,000 people
More stats: It has a quarter of all homeless and a high percentage of the chronically homeless who likely skew those stats pretty badly.
My opinion: This is a national issue and California is just the presenting problem. I think California is essentially our dumping ground for homeless people from across the nation and California can't solve it alone.
Edit: In case it needs to be said again, the primary root cause is a nationwide shortage of appropriate housing options.
That’s about what happens in Canada, Vancouver gets the homeless fromt he entire country, sometimes bussed, but mostly because the climate is hospitable all year round
There's probably some truth to the idea that other places have exported their homelessness problems to San Francisco, but I think you're overblowing it here. Homelessness is a really complicated problem that I doubt has simple causes and solutions.
I do however agree that this is a national issue. I think places like New York and Boston are likely to see significantly worse homelessness themselves over the next decade.
> My opinion: This is a national issue and California is just the presenting problem. I think California is essentially our dumping ground for homeless people from across the nation and California can't solve it alone.
The ad is good at pulling heart strings and getting people riled up (see comments here) but does not do any actual reporting. How did California spend the money? Were there leaky buckets? How does California have 50% of the homeless and 12% of the population? Are people being bussed in, making this a federal problem? Who's responsible? Don't just tell me the governor, there's people Newsom appointed. Don't just get me riled up, tell me what's actually going on so that I can inform myself of how to fix this. Don't just say this is a problem and point a singular finger talking about large sums of money, break it down. Tell me why homeless decreased in SF and Orange but increased in LA, San Jose, Oakland, and San Diego[0]. Tell me why it skyrocketed since 2016, starting with Brown and then accelerated under Newsom[1]. Tell me what FL is doing to solve their issues that NY and CA aren't.
Do some investigation. Distill expert information to me. Be a news article, not a political ad.
My priors are that if the WSJ is making obviously BS headlines in the format "California spent <big number> on something. It failed" then California is likely half-heartedly doing the right thing and should do more of it.
And is likely saving money compared with whatever the WSJ is pushing as an alternative.
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 on free housing for everyone, and everyone else seems fine allowing faceless corporations to own everything and turn us all into renters.
I know I’m leaving out plenty of specifics of how this would work. But the basic concept is same - people (not companies) should own housing. Let me know your thoughts.
My first ever HN comment so hopefully this is seen.
I've decided most homeless social programs are a trap. By locating these programs in the centers of the highest cost of living cities, we can't reasonably expect them to succeed, assuming success is actually getting people housed and back on their feet. We need to encourage people to move some place they have a chance in hell of getting out of poverty.
Centering these programs in rich city centers is a failed policy and needs to be scrapped.
In some cases, these are indirect corporate subsidies. After all, who will work in low-paying jobs in SF, if they have to live far far away?
Where could people move that would give them more opportunities? Rural areas often lack the social resources to support people in more precarious situations, and big cities is where the opportunities are.
Luckily a San Franciscan figured it all out over one hundred years ago:
> THE GREAT PROBLEM IS SOLVED. We are able to explain social phenomena that have appalled philanthropists and perplexed statesmen all over the civilized world. We have found the reason why wages constantly tend to a minimum, giving but a bare living, despite increase in productive power:
> As productive power increases, rent tends to increase even more — constantly forcing down wages.
> Advancing civilization tends to increase the power of human labor to satisfy human desires. We should be able to eliminate poverty. But workers cannot reap these benefits because they are intercepted. Land is necessary to labor. When it has been reduced to private ownership, the increased productivity of labor only increases rent. Thus, all the advantages of progress go to those who own land. Wages do not increase — wages cannot increase. The more labor produces, the more it must pay for the opportunity to make anything at all.
> has about half of the nation’s unsheltered homeless
How many are from California and how many were given a bus pass to California by a government content to move the homeless around or on their own accord made their way to California as it has some of the best services?
How many are the same homeless people and how many are new homeless people who have replaced the old homeless people, making it appear that no progress has been made, but in reality there may just be greater need?
From the many hundreds of homeless people I’ve met in SF, there’s been a massive increase of out-of-state movement. That said, they seem to mostly come of their own volition - they realize the combination of the nice weather and massive resources available means they have a pretty maintainable lifestyle.
There are a lot of things you can take from it, but one overarching opinion is that "housing first" gets in the way of helping those who are down on their luck and find themselves hopefully-temporarily without a home (as opposed to those who cannot or will not work to change their situation).
It makes the case you need multiple approaches to deal with the vastly different homeless situations.
California state officials have managed to spend $17B on it, I'd say the homelessness problem is working just fine for them. It sounds cynical, but this is what "managing," a problem in government means - extracting value from it. If you want less homelessness, you need fewer people benefiting from it. It's that simple. Government isn't about solving problems, it's about managing them to the benefit of the constituents who vote them back in.
Homelessness is encouraged by California policies that are essentially accelerationist, where they create the problem and exacerbate it to get the money and power to solve it, and then they've got something to manage indefinitely to keep getting those things. This is why you have a border crisis, and why your neighbourhoods have tent cities. Outside the cadre of people who think they will make up the central committee, few actually want unlimted centralized governments and policies when life is good and peaceful, so agitaing to make things much, much worse is how you get popular support to seize control and entrench your people. It's not a conspiracy, it's just strategy, and most people can't face that because they don't know what power is like, or understand what it means when they say it is the highest good. Homelessness is the symptom of a much deeper and more malignant social cancer, imo.
[+] [-] Pinegulf|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freddybobs|2 years ago|reply
* It removes much of the medical and police cost
* If people who are struggling don't have a roof over their head, it makes it incredibly hard for them to get a job. Having some stability meant that many could pick them selves up and get a job and so forth.
The end of the episode points out even though the programs were a success by most metrics - including being cheaper overall to tax payers - they were shut down.
https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/youre-wrong-about/id13...
Here's the one on homelessness
https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/homelessness/id1380008...
Theres a good one about the "wellfare queen" that is related and rather eye opening
https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/ronald-reagan-and-the-...
[+] [-] hnarn|2 years ago|reply
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 housing homeless people, we pay sooner or later in other ways whether we want to or not when society around us partly disintegrates and additional effects start stacking up: substance abuse, violent crime, healthcare costs etc.
[+] [-] atdrummond|2 years ago|reply
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 people as humans with potential and aspirations and assume that all they can be is a vacuum for drugs and cash. There’s no other conclusion to reach about how policy makers truly think about this class of people with the way the incentives of these “support” programs are structured.
[+] [-] guardiangod|2 years ago|reply
Vancouver has the same approach- warmest place in Canada.
When I suggested active intervention (eg. force detox), the activists would accuse me of treating homeless people as sub-humans, that I am being cruel and inhumane and a monster, and that we should give them (the users and the NGOs) money and safe-supply drug and leave them alone on the street.
[+] [-] skrebbel|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] cashsterling|2 years ago|reply
Take in consideration that homeless folks are under no obligation to tell the truth when surveyed or questioned and are generally aware that "migration of homeless into certain areas" is a hot-button issue (these folks are homeless, not stupid)... and we have a recipe for the demographics of homeless populations in these 'desirable' areas being misreported and the percent of out-of-region homeless being under-reported as a rule.
Homeless folks definitely migrate to places that are more tolerant of homelessness and are all around "better" places to be homeless. SF, LA, Seattle, etc. are good places to be homeless. Boulder, CO is a good place to be homeless; they even put folks up in hotels in the winter for free when it is too cold outside.
Some people moved to these regions before being homeless, but they moved here for easy access to drugs and the overall drug climate (often not arrested or prosecuted for possession of hard drugs and pot is legal). This is sort of 'pre-homelessness'... their drug addiction was practically guaranteeing they would become homeless eventually.
BTW: Governments paying to bus their homeless people somewhere else so "it's not their problem" should be illegal unless tacitly agreement upon by the two regional/municipal governments. This practice is disgusting.
[+] [-] zhte415|2 years ago|reply
Source?
Because this seems to be banded around in comments without anyone sourcing.
I dropped this actual source [1] in another comment, that measures 13% of unsheltered homeless as coming from out of state for LA.
[1] https://www.politifact.com/article/2018/jun/28/dispelling-my...
[+] [-] youreincorrect|2 years ago|reply
My least favorite part of this was the local media pretended this wasn't true. They pretended it vociferously despite this being such an obvious lie.
[+] [-] laurels-marts|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devoutsalsa|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] christkv|2 years ago|reply
They need treatment and in many cases it might need to be compelled to break the cycle. This then needs to be followed with integration programs (and jobs, schooling) that do not happen in the same area where they spent their time addicted.
[+] [-] WeylandYutani|2 years ago|reply
Let's not pretend society really wants to hug these people or employers want to hire them.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] crooked-v|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Convolutional|2 years ago|reply
I visited the Bay Area a number of times and only met one person who was born locally. "Not even Americans!" in many cases.
[+] [-] givemeethekeys|2 years ago|reply
If you look up the amount spent per homeless person by SF on homelessness, you'll wonder how it is possible that they're giving away ONLY $1000 per month.
[+] [-] nonethewiser|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fullspectrumdev|2 years ago|reply
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 is the money going?
Like looking at the supposed cost of building housing, it seems glaringly obvious that the taxpayers being fucked by someone. We also have this issue in Ireland, what with one hospital being billions over budget, years behind schedule, etc. never mind housing.
Zoning and planning issues can be dealt with trivially by the state almost anywhere, they just aren’t fucked doing so (we have this issue in Ireland).
There’s no easy fix for homelessness, shelters are at best putting a band aid on a severed limb. The only real solution is large scale construction of mixed use housing - some social, some affordable, some private. And that’s a whole clusterfuck that seems unachievable for political reasons globally, with the exception of some of the Nordic social democracies.
[+] [-] abeppu|2 years ago|reply
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 those rates, we could be renting people market rate 1BD apartments for less than we're spending on inefficient/ineffective services or safe sleeping sites. Cities could be buying up the over-built condos and actually putting people in them.
Yes, drug addiction and mental health issues are important factors, but these are easier for people to get under control if they have the safety and stability of a home. Getting and holding down a job is also easier when you have a safe place to live.
Why don't we do this? I think it comes down to (a) corruption, where organizations that provide 'services' have good relationships with people in government and (b) "fairness" concerns, where a working person paying out the nose for half of an apartment doesn't want their tax dollars to give anyone an apartment for free. On that second point, I understand the frustration, but if the alternative is spending _more_ tax dollars for someone to camp on the sidewalk and make my neighborhood feel unsafe and unclean, then I would rather put them into homes.
https://www.hoover.org/research/despite-spending-11-billion-...
[+] [-] aorloff|2 years ago|reply
But we also have some "service resistant" homeless populations that do not want to live in your rule-based housing, they want to live without those rules even if it means living on the street.
[+] [-] meowtimemania|2 years ago|reply
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, charge them with possession of illegal substances and put them in a prison rehab system. This type of life crippling drug addiction shouldn't be tolerated.
I recognize that not all homeless are drug addicts, they should be supported in a much different way than we support drug addicts.
[+] [-] gamblor956|2 years ago|reply
In a nutshell: homelessness is a symptom, not a cause, and housing doesn't address the reasons that individuals are homeless. The SRHT focused on housing first, but now has hundreds of unoccupiable units that were damaged by drug-addicted and mentally-ill individuals and rendered inhospitable (and this ultimately led to the SRHT's financial collapse).
For the 90+% of homeless that are homeless due to mental illness or drug abuse, treatment first is the only viable solution, but we're not legally allowed to force someone into treatment until and unless they're an immediate physical danger to themselves or others.
[+] [-] spurgu|2 years ago|reply
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/11/oakland-home...
Allocate some land for this, let people create their own community/ies. Isn't America supposed to be about freedom?
[+] [-] hackernewds|2 years ago|reply
Without being presumptive, it irks me to see internet experts barge it with their own theories and expertise, rather than the people who have studied and dedicated themselves for decades.
[+] [-] seiferteric|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nifty3929|2 years ago|reply
A common misconception - but money is not housing. There are no extra 1BD units available. We could use this money to outbid other people to put the current homeless in those places, displacing others and somewhat increasing overall rent prices (and/or waiting lists). But I don't think that's what you intend.
In the end, if we want more people to have housing, then we have to allow more housing to be built. It's not (just) a money problem.
[+] [-] dbrueck|2 years ago|reply
(I'm not saying the strategy is flawed - maybe it is, maybe Utah is doing it wrong, maybe you need housing first plus a bunch of other things - who knows).
https://www.cato.org/blog/evidence-calls-housing-first-homel...
[+] [-] josho|2 years ago|reply
Conservatives are going to be against giving out living space. So that kills any housing first policies.
The alternative has to be something that a politician can sponsor and be confident that in a few years when they are up for re-election that there won’t be any obvious fraud or abuse. Eg. If their policy is found to have housed a crack den then their political ambitions likely get killed.
This has the consequence that checks and balances and overhead has to be put in place. So we get a solution that is less cost effective with worse outcomes.
My wish is for government to come out and say we accept 10% fraud out of this program if we can house Y number of people. But yeh that won’t happen either because their political opponents will distort that 10% and say the government purposely threw that money away.
[+] [-] jerojero|2 years ago|reply
I think a big steps towards resolving homelessness should go in addressing the housing market; which in California is really really bad. This isn't just "build more homes" (which is already an extremely difficult task in the state given the zoning laws) but comprehensive housing policies. Take a look at the way Austria has controlled rent prices (though californians might not like the fact that around 70% of housing in austria is limited or non profit).
Also, this is a US-wide problem. California just has the best weather and open doors. But I doubt it's going to get better, wealth inequality does nothing but increase in the US. We'll see, but this looks to me more of a symptom than a sickness in itself.
[+] [-] MentallyRetired|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DoreenMichele|2 years ago|reply
More stats: It has a quarter of all homeless and a high percentage of the chronically homeless who likely skew those stats pretty badly.
My opinion: This is a national issue and California is just the presenting problem. I think California is essentially our dumping ground for homeless people from across the nation and California can't solve it alone.
Edit: In case it needs to be said again, the primary root cause is a nationwide shortage of appropriate housing options.
[+] [-] katbyte|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _jab|2 years ago|reply
I do however agree that this is a national issue. I think places like New York and Boston are likely to see significantly worse homelessness themselves over the next decade.
[+] [-] jimt1234|2 years ago|reply
THIS ^^^
[+] [-] godelski|2 years ago|reply
The ad is good at pulling heart strings and getting people riled up (see comments here) but does not do any actual reporting. How did California spend the money? Were there leaky buckets? How does California have 50% of the homeless and 12% of the population? Are people being bussed in, making this a federal problem? Who's responsible? Don't just tell me the governor, there's people Newsom appointed. Don't just get me riled up, tell me what's actually going on so that I can inform myself of how to fix this. Don't just say this is a problem and point a singular finger talking about large sums of money, break it down. Tell me why homeless decreased in SF and Orange but increased in LA, San Jose, Oakland, and San Diego[0]. Tell me why it skyrocketed since 2016, starting with Brown and then accelerated under Newsom[1]. Tell me what FL is doing to solve their issues that NY and CA aren't.
Do some investigation. Distill expert information to me. Be a news article, not a political ad.
[0] https://www.ppic.org/blog/homeless-populations-are-rising-ar...
[1] https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/homeles...
[+] [-] apsec112|2 years ago|reply
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Qz9GvoPbnFwGrHHQB/visible-ho...
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|2 years ago|reply
And is likely saving money compared with whatever the WSJ is pushing as an alternative.
[+] [-] Brainfood|2 years ago|reply
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 on free housing for everyone, and everyone else seems fine allowing faceless corporations to own everything and turn us all into renters.
I know I’m leaving out plenty of specifics of how this would work. But the basic concept is same - people (not companies) should own housing. Let me know your thoughts.
My first ever HN comment so hopefully this is seen.
[+] [-] zumu|2 years ago|reply
Centering these programs in rich city centers is a failed policy and needs to be scrapped.
[+] [-] mgbmtl|2 years ago|reply
Where could people move that would give them more opportunities? Rural areas often lack the social resources to support people in more precarious situations, and big cities is where the opportunities are.
[+] [-] rcpt|2 years ago|reply
> THE GREAT PROBLEM IS SOLVED. We are able to explain social phenomena that have appalled philanthropists and perplexed statesmen all over the civilized world. We have found the reason why wages constantly tend to a minimum, giving but a bare living, despite increase in productive power:
> As productive power increases, rent tends to increase even more — constantly forcing down wages.
> Advancing civilization tends to increase the power of human labor to satisfy human desires. We should be able to eliminate poverty. But workers cannot reap these benefits because they are intercepted. Land is necessary to labor. When it has been reduced to private ownership, the increased productivity of labor only increases rent. Thus, all the advantages of progress go to those who own land. Wages do not increase — wages cannot increase. The more labor produces, the more it must pay for the opportunity to make anything at all.
http://www.henrygeorge.org/pchp23.htm
A Land Value Tax fixes our problems but in California we voted in Prop 13 which is about as far from that as you can get. And now here we are.
[+] [-] rottencupcakes|2 years ago|reply
This can't be solved at a local or state level in a country with unrestricted freedom of movement.
[+] [-] callmeal|2 years ago|reply
NY -> Hawaii
https://nypost.com/2019/10/26/nyc-homeless-initiative-sends-...
WY -> UT
https://www.deseret.com/utah/2022/11/4/23440578/jackson-wyom...
NV -> CA
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/10/nevada-settles-...
SF -> ??
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/sf-expanding-program-that-ha...
And more recently:
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/09/15/greg-abbott-texas-ka...
[+] [-] MattGaiser|2 years ago|reply
How many are from California and how many were given a bus pass to California by a government content to move the homeless around or on their own accord made their way to California as it has some of the best services?
How many are the same homeless people and how many are new homeless people who have replaced the old homeless people, making it appear that no progress has been made, but in reality there may just be greater need?
[+] [-] atdrummond|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mstratman|2 years ago|reply
There are a lot of things you can take from it, but one overarching opinion is that "housing first" gets in the way of helping those who are down on their luck and find themselves hopefully-temporarily without a home (as opposed to those who cannot or will not work to change their situation).
It makes the case you need multiple approaches to deal with the vastly different homeless situations.
Check it out.
[+] [-] chrisbrandow|2 years ago|reply
17 billion over 4 years (per the article)
17 billion dollars => 113 million square feet @ $150/sqft 113 million square feet => 113,000 housing units @ 1000 square feet
This is not a realistic comparison, but thinking about it as an upper bounds could be a useful yardstick by which to compare actual outcomes.
[+] [-] motohagiography|2 years ago|reply
Homelessness is encouraged by California policies that are essentially accelerationist, where they create the problem and exacerbate it to get the money and power to solve it, and then they've got something to manage indefinitely to keep getting those things. This is why you have a border crisis, and why your neighbourhoods have tent cities. Outside the cadre of people who think they will make up the central committee, few actually want unlimted centralized governments and policies when life is good and peaceful, so agitaing to make things much, much worse is how you get popular support to seize control and entrench your people. It's not a conspiracy, it's just strategy, and most people can't face that because they don't know what power is like, or understand what it means when they say it is the highest good. Homelessness is the symptom of a much deeper and more malignant social cancer, imo.