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I think this is an excellent solution, but it is one that won't be replicable by cities like NY, Seattle, or San Francisco until they fix their housing cost pro
by saosebastiao 10y ago
I think this is an excellent solution, but it is one that won't be replicable by cities like NY, Seattle, or San Francisco until they fix their housing cost problems. If you think about it from a systems perspective, with inflows and outflows, you will begin to see the problem.
1) Inflows: higher housing costs increase the inflow into homelessness. Whether it is job loss, drug addiction, mental illness, or whatever...if you have higher housing costs, you are more likely to end up homeless.
2) Outflows: higher housing costs become a higher bar to leaving homelessness. Let's say someone can address, over time, their underlying cause to homelessness. That person will take longer to overcome the bar of housing costs in a high cost area than an equivalent person with lower housing cost bars to overcome.
Both of these arguments seem obvious, almost tautological, but combined what you have is a higher rate of inflows, and a lower rate of outflows. This means two things: ceteris paribus, you have more homeless people, and the homeless people that you do have take longer to leave homelessness.
Now take into account the fact that in high housing cost areas, housing costs more to build because land prices and construction prices are higher (even taking into account Eminent Domain), and you have:
1) More demand (in terms of quantity of people) for relief housing
2) Higher expected time of use of housing.
3) Higher cost of building housing.
These factors are multiplicative, not additive. Combined, I wouldn't be surprised if the cost of attaining the same success rate is two orders of magnitude higher in San Francisco than it is in Salt Lake City. Construction costs alone take care of your first order of magnitude...now multiply those by the higher inflow rates and outflow rates.
This solution is obvious, but you can't put the cart before the horse. Salt Lake City never had to worry about it...San Francisco does.
- eyelidlessness 10y agoWorth noting, since you mention Seattle: Seattle actually ran a Housing First program, but it was limited in scope. It saw similar successes (again within its limited scope).
- saosebastiao 10y agoI'm familiar with it, but I'm not saying an equivalent program can't achieve equivalent success rate, I'm saying that an equivalent program will have an extremely disproportionate cost of implementation if housing costs are higher.
- eyelidlessness 10y agoWell, yes. FWIW, I wasn't disputing anything you said, just providing additional context.
- feklar 10y agoThose cities are also destinations for migrant homeless. How would this SLC system cope if new homeless were showing everyday from out of city like they are in Seattle or SF, or where I live as the eastern street youth population migrates out here every winter to avoid the cold. Seems like every city would have to try the SLC model instead of putting their homeless on a bus with a one way ticket.
- nostrebored 10y agoYou're ignoring homeless migration, the nature of mental illness, and the fact that people can move. The majority of homeless people you see on the street in cities like Seattle are not people who want help or will utilize it effectively -- they're people who have burned bridges that keep most people who are down on their luck in secondary homelessness.
- surfmike 10y agoYou sound like an expert on the homeless in Seattle. Do you actually know this for a fact or are you just speculating? Have you talked to the homeless there and seen data? Do you realize mental health issues can cause people to burn bridges even if that's not what they want to do?
- saosebastiao 10y agoI'm not ignoring any of that. Chronic and migrant homelessness exist, but they aren't anywhere near a majority of the population. The best data we have available shows chronic homelessness to be between 10-20% of the homeless population. And just because they are chronically homeless doesn't mean they don't want or can't benefit from help. Disability, mental as well as physical, is the largest known contributor to chronic homelessness and most forms of disability are treatable, but treatments are less effective when basic needs like housing are not met.