[poppobit]

I think this piece makes a strong point — when there’s already a working model, just copy it instead of endlessly debating. The homelessness crisis is real, and doing nothing while watching it grow worse is the worst option. Of course there’s a chance it fails, but the bigger issue is that no one wants to take responsibility if it does. That lack of strong leadership is, in itself, part of the problem.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

> The homelessness crisis is real, and doing nothing while watching it grow worse is the worst option.

California isn't doing nothing.

They keep spending even more money and wondering why it's not working.

If it was a problem that could be solved by giving people money, they'd have solved it already.

[mothballed]

Then there's also the Williston / North Dakota oil boom model. I met tons of homeless people out there (I was one of them), many of which whom solved it through "one neat trick" of doing something like hitchiking to the oil fields, or to Seattle where literally anyone can get hired to work on a fish processing boat or facility and they give you "free" room and board and then ~$10k to go home with.

[appreciatorBus]

Everything except ending the ban on homeowners & landowners building market housing. (ofc they are taking bites out of this apple, especially very recently, but every step is fought tooth & nail by homeowners who prefer the status quo just fine)

[Spivak]

I'm fully in the camp of just give people dollars and let them decide how to spend it rather than navigate a bureaucratic nanny state system like SNAP. But if you're only doing that well no shit it doesn't help. You have to actually put them in a stable house/apartment and get them set up with work. Or if they're homeless due to mental illness get them admitted.

[stonogo]

That point would be strong, but this article doesn't make that point, or any other points I can tell. It does really weird things like comparing the annual cost of housing one Texan person to building an entire Californian housing unit, changes which definition of "homelessness" it uses (sometimes mid-sentence), ignores Houston's extremely police-oriented approach to the topic (police can cite you for trespassing if you're at a bus stop and don't produce ID), pretends the Texas cities aren't sweeping encampments (they are, right now, on Nance Street), and just generally plays fast-and-loose with the facts in Texas.

[Yizahi]

The problem is not that lack of examples. Technically, all two hundred something countries could take example of the best one in every metric and just copy most of the stuff to make life better.

The problem is that politicians are afraid to do anything (outside of direct and indirect enrichment). No one can blame some John Doe, chief Busybody of the Busyarea, if he won't do something. Because that didn't happen, nothing to point finger at directly, except for "you don't do enough", which is generic enough to be used at anyone and so ineffective at everyone. But if he will do something and it is immediately painful to at at least some group, then he will be blamed and his opponent will do that with pleasure too.

[nis0s]

I am not saying it’s okay that anyone should be homeless, but it’s baseless to call homelessness a crises for the U.S.

The homeless population accounts for 0.23% of the total U.S. population, or about ~771K people.

https://endhomelessness.org/state-of-homelessness/

For comparison, more people are getting DUI citations per year,

https://www.safehome.org/resources/dui-statistics/

[sethammons]

> it’s baseless to call homelessness a crises for the U.S

Sure, a quarter of a percent is not a big percent, but that sure is a lot of people. It is _more_ than the entire population of Alaska, Wyoming, or Vermont. It is near the population size of several other states.

An entire US state's worth of people are unable to find adequate housing and not just because they are off their meds. According to the 2024 Point-in-Time count, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated 22% of homeless are facing a severe mental illness. So nearly 4 out of 5 homeless are regular people who simply cannot secure permanent housing.

That sure as hell sounds like a crisis to me.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

There's 8300+ homeless people in San Francisco.

That's 1% of the population. Maybe not a big deal to you.

There's only 13,000 city blocks in SF.

That's a homeless person every 2 blocks.

Kind of dangerous to be walking past people in all different states of desperation multiple times every trip everywhere you go, is another way to look at it.

[0_____0]

771K people isn't a small number. 0.23% isn't a small number when it comes to homelessness. This also doesn't consider people who are housed but are overcrowded or living in otherwise very poor environments.

You also ignore that it's a rapidly growing problem.

Comparing it to DUI numbers doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

[captainclam]

I've always been surprised by the official homeless population count, but it turns out there's a lot more to it.

The department of HUD generates this ~771K figure from a "point-in-time" estimate, a single count from a single night performed in January. They literally have volunteers go out, count the number of homeless people they observe, and report their findings.

It's not hard to imagine why this is probably a significant undercount. There is likely a long tail of people that happened to be in a situation that night where they were not able to be counted (i.e. somewhere secluded, sleeping in a friend's private residence that night, etc).

Even if these numbers are correct, to my mind a "crisis" is still more characterized by the trend than the numbers in absolute. From the first link you provided, we saw a 39% increase in "people in families" experiencing homelessness, and 9% in individuals. A resource from the HUD itself suggests a 33% increase in homelessness from 2020-2024, 18% increase from 2023-2024. That is far apace of the population increase in general.

https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2024-...

And even then, I would say many people would suggest that the change in visible homelessness they've experienced in the last 10 years would amount to "crisis" levels, at least relative to the past.

It's completely fair to argue that it is not in fact a crisis, but claiming that it is certainly not "baseless."

[HankStallone]

A quarter of a percent still seems like a lot to me, even if it's not a "crisis."

But we can't do anything about it until we face up to the problem. Spending more money won't help. I'm somewhat familiar with the activity at our local jail, and a good part of it is homeless people rotating in and out. They get brought in because they were trespassing or shoplifting or something, the jail cleans them up and dries them out (they're usually on drugs, which they somehow manage to buy) and tries to get them back on their medications, they get released, and the cycle begins again. Most of them are mentally unstable, and perhaps they'd be somewhat functional if they could stay on their medication, but they don't, so they can't function in society for long.

We don't want to put them back in asylums, because some asylums really were hellholes, and I guess we don't trust ourselves not to let them be hellholes again. That seems awfully pessimistic; factories used to be pretty awful too, but we require them to be safe and clean now. Seems like we could do the same with asylums, but we won't even consider it. So we're left with letting them wander the streets, maybe bedding down at homeless shelters when they feel like it, using the jails as temporary asylums when they get in trouble, and throwing more money at the problem once in a while to soothe our guilt. It's sad.

[watwut]

Why are you comparing amount of homeless people to DUI?

[bdcravens]

Whether it's homelessness, DUIs, or fentanyl deaths (only 75k per year!), measuring the impact of something by ignoring the blast radius is disingenuous. All who are touched are part of it. In the case of homelessness, it's a burden on emergency services, creates unsafe environments, impacts businesses, etc.

[pessimizer]

What is supposed to be the relationship between those two things? Will you be comparing it to the number of ham sandwiches next?

[jsbisviewtiful]

How does Houston deal with those that can't be housed? Sure, 90% retention sounds nice for these people but California has limited housing/higher housing costs, in general, last I had read. The write-up even mentions rising housing costs or the Trump admin taking away their funding can crash the system, so unclear how easily this system could transfer to other cities. Sure, better communicating systems and a better hierarchy will lead to better outcomes for most orgs, but that's a pretty general statement about basically every org out there.

I also feel like this write-up sugar coats some of the actions Houston/Texas has been taking against non-compliance. Ticketing homeless people $200 for existing on the streets seems a bit counter intuitive - and Texas has been systematically shipping homeless and immigrants around the country (human trafficking) for political theater, so are they excluding that data? Probably.

I'm not an expert, but this write-up really comes off as one-sided since it's only talking about what's not working in California and ignoring some of the background stuff Texas is up to. Overall, do agree that better management and accountability would do other cities favors, but again, that's such an easy statement to make about any plan or org.

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/city-of-hou...

[nradov]

Higher housing costs in California are in some sense an artificial manufactured problem. California should mimic Texas by making it easier and cheaper to build more housing. Take approval power away from local governments, and give property owners and developers the right to build pretty much whatever they want wherever they want.