5 ms·

Albuquerque program hires panhandlers to work in maintenance jobs

59 points by andersthue 10y ago

tomjen3 10y ago
Since the headline doesn't tell you: the city has started to hire penhandlers for simple day jobs.
- placeybordeaux 10y ago
  Currently limited to 10 jobs a day.
- loukrazy 10y ago
  Thank you. Hopefully Facebook's changes will put a dent in these click bait headlines
tootie 10y ago
This doesn't seem like a very scalable plan nor will it help with the chronically homeless. NYC does something similar with giving park clean-up jobs to recently released convicts or other homeless people. It's better than a simple handout, but doesn't address underlying problems. http://www.doe.org/rwa.cfm http://www.doe.org/rwa.cfm
- Avshalom 10y ago
  http://www.abqheadinghome.org/ http://www.abqheadinghome.org/ is the anti-chronic homelessness initiative. http://www.abqheadinghome.org/albuquerque-heading-home-initiative-celebrates-five-years-more-than-500-people-housed/ http://www.abqheadinghome.org/albuquerque-heading-home-initi...
- helthanatos 10y ago
  There are multiple underlying problems: overpopulation, people not being right for jobs, jobs not being right for people, education requirements, failed federal programs, etc. It's very sad.
  - ende 10y ago
    Mental illness and substance-abuse as well. So much of homelessness in America is a result of deinstitutionalization decades ago with no credible alternative put in place.
    - tootie 10y ago
      Exactly this. This program will probably help a lot of people down on their luck. Those kind of people utilize shelters and will generally do whatever they have to to get off the streets. The classic panhandling hobo however, is mostly incorrigible and nigh impossible to get on the right path. It takes a huge amount of intervention to get a chronic subtance abuser or schizophrenic to live independently.
      - peteretep 10y ago
        > The classic panhandling hobo > however, is mostly > incorrigible and nigh > impossible to get on the > right path Citation? * * That doesn't fall prey to the No True Scotsman fallacy
        tootie 10y ago
        I don't see how that fallacy can apply. We have pretty good definitions for chronically homeless. Here's a good summary, and there's a linked PDF with more data. Exhibit 2.7 in the PDF says that among the single homeless population (not families) 68% are substance abusers and 48% are mentally ill. http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/526/homeless-facts.html http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/526/homeless-facts.html
notadoc 10y ago
Really can't stand these type of headlines, really looking forward to when the trend dies off.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  A B testing will keep showing them better, so I suspect it will continue. Unless you give up all privacy, then the producer can see YOU don't respond well to click bait and fix your titles...
  - peteretep 10y ago
    A/B testing will show them getting good results until people get tired of them, and stop clicking them.
yazaddaruvala 10y ago
I wish every city gave money to people to returned bottles to a bottle depot. For those not familiar: Buyers of recyclables pay a recycling deposit up front and any one who returns the recyclables will get the deposit back. It would also be fascinating to provide transportation for the homeless to the nearest garbage dumps. Pay them for sorting out any recyclables. Allow them to take anything which might be of use to them.
- coredog64 10y ago
  My grandfather used to manage a solid waste disposal station in Palo Alto. He got to be friends with a number of homeless men who made their living doing just that. The one guy I remember best (Bert) lived out of his 56 Chevy station wagon. He would dumpster dive for electronics and disassemble them to get at what had recycling value. Really you don't want to do that at the dump though, as by that time useful items have been commingled with actual trash. Another memorable story is that there was one worker who couldn't deal with glass bottles if they had any liquid in them and would just freak out and put them in with the trash.
- ende 10y ago
  The problem with programs like these is that they tend to incentivize nefarious "scavenging" of lower hanging fruit such as bikes and other private property. The type of supervised work described in this article seems like a much better approach.
- andrewljohnson 10y ago
  You must not live in Berkeley. Thanks to a recycling center placed in town, "independent recyclers" roam the streets, collect all the recycling from people's bins on trash days, and it's a terrible situation for both the collectors and other residents. While collecting the recycling, the collectors steal (from my family multiple times), root through unlocked cars, knife open garbage bags, trespass, wake up sleeping people, and act aggressively towards anyone who interferes. The collectors themselves live outside of the system of taxes and services, have no safety equipment to to protect them from broken glass etc, and end up in a constant cycle of unemployment, drug dependence, and other ills. I feel like Berkeley manufactured this "picker" existence - it's an externality of trying to be the most progressive recycling town, and it's no good for anyone involved.
MichaelBurge 10y ago
I wouldn't mind seeing a $500-2000 per-employee annual tax credit for businesses that employ the homeless. The types of jobs that are around minimum wage seem like they'd mostly be low-margin businesses, so this would be a pretty big incentive. And it seems cheaper than expanding shelters and similar programs(though you'll still need some shelters). Maybe it would be better to assess the tax on non-homeless needed for this credit at the county level, since cost-of-living and homelessness are both local issues. Maybe it would work better as a property tax than an income tax, for similar reasons.
- refurb 10y ago
  How would you ensure that the company is actually hiring homeless employees? What exactly is homelessness? Where is the line? Who does background checks? What are the penalties for lying about being homeless to get the tax credit?
  - MichaelBurge 10y ago
    There's already precedent in federal law, so I assume the states can just copy that. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/11302 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/11302 There's also precedent in prioritizing auditing resources on offenders with large payoff, having the computer watch for suspicious tax forms, pricing penalties to include the people who get away with it, and whatever else they do to enforce the existing 2600 pages of federal tax law plus whatever state tax law.
- ams6110 10y ago
  The problem is most chronically homeless people don't have any work or social skills, and aren't very smart or have addiction problems or mental illness. Even if they were "working" for free it wouldn't be worth it. Even for minimum wage jobs most employers expect decent personal hygiene, punctuality, respectful behavior, at least some amount of self-discipline, and actual work.
cheriot 10y ago
It's an old concept sometimes called workfare. It can work until a government gets short sighted and cuts their budget by replacing employees/contractors with unemployed labor (let's use the homeless to mow the lawn at city hall!). At that point it's using an unemployed person to create another unemployed person.
- BenoitEssiambre 10y ago
  That is not how economics work. The money saved from employing low cost labor is spent elsewhere which creates other jobs.
  - KC8ZKF 10y ago
    Wouldn't it be sweet if markets were actually that flexible?
  - cheriot 10y ago
    So all we need to do to create more jobs is abolish the minimum wage? The savings will be used to create more jobs! Econ 101 doesn't actually explain the world that well.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    That's in theory but in practice this doesn't how it always works. Especially when you are replacing already cheap "unskilled" or manual labor with even cheaper labor. In the long run markets will adjust but the long run in this case can be longer than the life of a single worker. Depending on how much labor you introduce you get get into a pretty never ending cycle of rotating your employment force. And one can make an argument that displacing day labor with homeless people can have a bigger negative affect since employed day labor is more likely to have financial obligations and dependants than a homeless person. This is why it's very important to carefully manage these programs and ensure they are at best self sufficient with some public funding but never profitable. You want them to maw the lawns where lawns would not have been mawend before not to take over existing works.
Mz 10y ago
Oy. "The homeless" are not a separate race, religion, creed, etc. If you get housing, you stop being homeless. Programs aimed at "helping the homeless" tend to be inherently deeply fucked up. We need more affordable housing generally and other solutions aimed at helping human beings with personal challenges. Those are the folks who end up homeless. Designing programs to help the homeless actually incentivizes being homeless and becomes another barrier to getting off the street because you need to remain homeless to qualify, and that is all kinds of fucked up. Source: Had a class on homelessness, been homeless for 4.5 years, and I run the San Diego Homeless Survival Guide (a blog).

59 points by andersthue 10y ago

tomjen3 10y ago

Since the headline doesn't tell you: the city has started to hire penhandlers for simple day jobs.

placeybordeaux 10y ago
Currently limited to 10 jobs a day.
loukrazy 10y ago
Thank you. Hopefully Facebook's changes will put a dent in these click bait headlines

tootie 10y ago

This doesn't seem like a very scalable plan nor will it help with the chronically homeless. NYC does something similar with giving park clean-up jobs to recently released convicts or other homeless people. It's better than a simple handout, but doesn't address underlying problems. http://www.doe.org/rwa.cfm http://www.doe.org/rwa.cfm

Avshalom 10y ago
http://www.abqheadinghome.org/ http://www.abqheadinghome.org/ is the anti-chronic homelessness initiative. http://www.abqheadinghome.org/albuquerque-heading-home-initiative-celebrates-five-years-more-than-500-people-housed/ http://www.abqheadinghome.org/albuquerque-heading-home-initi...
helthanatos 10y ago
There are multiple underlying problems: overpopulation, people not being right for jobs, jobs not being right for people, education requirements, failed federal programs, etc. It's very sad.
- ende 10y ago
  Mental illness and substance-abuse as well. So much of homelessness in America is a result of deinstitutionalization decades ago with no credible alternative put in place.
  - tootie 10y ago
    Exactly this. This program will probably help a lot of people down on their luck. Those kind of people utilize shelters and will generally do whatever they have to to get off the streets. The classic panhandling hobo however, is mostly incorrigible and nigh impossible to get on the right path. It takes a huge amount of intervention to get a chronic subtance abuser or schizophrenic to live independently.
    - peteretep 10y ago
      > The classic panhandling hobo > however, is mostly > incorrigible and nigh > impossible to get on the > right path Citation? * * That doesn't fall prey to the No True Scotsman fallacy
      - tootie 10y ago
        I don't see how that fallacy can apply. We have pretty good definitions for chronically homeless. Here's a good summary, and there's a linked PDF with more data. Exhibit 2.7 in the PDF says that among the single homeless population (not families) 68% are substance abusers and 48% are mentally ill. http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/526/homeless-facts.html http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/526/homeless-facts.html

notadoc 10y ago

Really can't stand these type of headlines, really looking forward to when the trend dies off.

brianwawok 10y ago
A B testing will keep showing them better, so I suspect it will continue. Unless you give up all privacy, then the producer can see YOU don't respond well to click bait and fix your titles...
- peteretep 10y ago
  A/B testing will show them getting good results until people get tired of them, and stop clicking them.

yazaddaruvala 10y ago

I wish every city gave money to people to returned bottles to a bottle depot. For those not familiar: Buyers of recyclables pay a recycling deposit up front and any one who returns the recyclables will get the deposit back. It would also be fascinating to provide transportation for the homeless to the nearest garbage dumps. Pay them for sorting out any recyclables. Allow them to take anything which might be of use to them.

coredog64 10y ago
My grandfather used to manage a solid waste disposal station in Palo Alto. He got to be friends with a number of homeless men who made their living doing just that. The one guy I remember best (Bert) lived out of his 56 Chevy station wagon. He would dumpster dive for electronics and disassemble them to get at what had recycling value. Really you don't want to do that at the dump though, as by that time useful items have been commingled with actual trash. Another memorable story is that there was one worker who couldn't deal with glass bottles if they had any liquid in them and would just freak out and put them in with the trash.
ende 10y ago
The problem with programs like these is that they tend to incentivize nefarious "scavenging" of lower hanging fruit such as bikes and other private property. The type of supervised work described in this article seems like a much better approach.
andrewljohnson 10y ago
You must not live in Berkeley. Thanks to a recycling center placed in town, "independent recyclers" roam the streets, collect all the recycling from people's bins on trash days, and it's a terrible situation for both the collectors and other residents. While collecting the recycling, the collectors steal (from my family multiple times), root through unlocked cars, knife open garbage bags, trespass, wake up sleeping people, and act aggressively towards anyone who interferes. The collectors themselves live outside of the system of taxes and services, have no safety equipment to to protect them from broken glass etc, and end up in a constant cycle of unemployment, drug dependence, and other ills. I feel like Berkeley manufactured this "picker" existence - it's an externality of trying to be the most progressive recycling town, and it's no good for anyone involved.

MichaelBurge 10y ago

I wouldn't mind seeing a $500-2000 per-employee annual tax credit for businesses that employ the homeless. The types of jobs that are around minimum wage seem like they'd mostly be low-margin businesses, so this would be a pretty big incentive. And it seems cheaper than expanding shelters and similar programs(though you'll still need some shelters). Maybe it would be better to assess the tax on non-homeless needed for this credit at the county level, since cost-of-living and homelessness are both local issues. Maybe it would work better as a property tax than an income tax, for similar reasons.

refurb 10y ago
How would you ensure that the company is actually hiring homeless employees? What exactly is homelessness? Where is the line? Who does background checks? What are the penalties for lying about being homeless to get the tax credit?
- MichaelBurge 10y ago
  There's already precedent in federal law, so I assume the states can just copy that. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/11302 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/11302 There's also precedent in prioritizing auditing resources on offenders with large payoff, having the computer watch for suspicious tax forms, pricing penalties to include the people who get away with it, and whatever else they do to enforce the existing 2600 pages of federal tax law plus whatever state tax law.
ams6110 10y ago
The problem is most chronically homeless people don't have any work or social skills, and aren't very smart or have addiction problems or mental illness. Even if they were "working" for free it wouldn't be worth it. Even for minimum wage jobs most employers expect decent personal hygiene, punctuality, respectful behavior, at least some amount of self-discipline, and actual work.

cheriot 10y ago

It's an old concept sometimes called workfare. It can work until a government gets short sighted and cuts their budget by replacing employees/contractors with unemployed labor (let's use the homeless to mow the lawn at city hall!). At that point it's using an unemployed person to create another unemployed person.

BenoitEssiambre 10y ago
That is not how economics work. The money saved from employing low cost labor is spent elsewhere which creates other jobs.
- KC8ZKF 10y ago
  Wouldn't it be sweet if markets were actually that flexible?
- cheriot 10y ago
  So all we need to do to create more jobs is abolish the minimum wage? The savings will be used to create more jobs! Econ 101 doesn't actually explain the world that well.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  That's in theory but in practice this doesn't how it always works. Especially when you are replacing already cheap "unskilled" or manual labor with even cheaper labor. In the long run markets will adjust but the long run in this case can be longer than the life of a single worker. Depending on how much labor you introduce you get get into a pretty never ending cycle of rotating your employment force. And one can make an argument that displacing day labor with homeless people can have a bigger negative affect since employed day labor is more likely to have financial obligations and dependants than a homeless person. This is why it's very important to carefully manage these programs and ensure they are at best self sufficient with some public funding but never profitable. You want them to maw the lawns where lawns would not have been mawend before not to take over existing works.

Mz 10y ago

Oy. "The homeless" are not a separate race, religion, creed, etc. If you get housing, you stop being homeless. Programs aimed at "helping the homeless" tend to be inherently deeply fucked up. We need more affordable housing generally and other solutions aimed at helping human beings with personal challenges. Those are the folks who end up homeless. Designing programs to help the homeless actually incentivizes being homeless and becomes another barrier to getting off the street because you need to remain homeless to qualify, and that is all kinds of fucked up. Source: Had a class on homelessness, been homeless for 4.5 years, and I run the San Diego Homeless Survival Guide (a blog).