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This is not a result of prohibitive housing prices or anything like that. Through my work in the homeless community I've seen and heard first hand that chronic

This is not a result of prohibitive housing prices or anything like that. Through my work in the homeless community I've seen and heard first hand that chronic homelessness is almost always a result of mental illness and/or drug use. Those two problems have always existed, but opiate abuse is much worse now than it has ever been. Of course there are sad cases of people unable to find jobs who are otherwise 'normal', but these cases are in the minority. Many people unable to find jobs or hold down jobs beyond the most menial sort have mental illness that prevents them from doing so.

ufo 9y ago
The article has a quote that says exactly the opposite, btw. > “Most homeless people I know aren’t homeless because they’re addicts,” said Tammy Stephen, 54, who lives at a homeless encampment in Seattle. “Most people are homeless because they can’t afford a place to live.”
- SilasX 9y ago
  That is extremely implausible. What fraction of them would be able to put together the $1000/month (in the scenario of extreme home buildout)? It's only true in the trivial, unhelpful sense of "if we got housing costs down to $10/month or free, then all the people there could afford a place." But when we talk about housing costs in general and policy around it, we mean something like getting rents down from $3000/month to $1000/month (from vast expansion of building), not some artificial number that no amount of expansion would (scalably) get. And I don't think you can really take one homeless person living at an encampment, making a self-serving statement, as a source.
  - cucuuc 9y ago
    Did you read the article? Do you have grad school experience? An $1800 grad stipend will help you understand the difference a few hundred bucks make.
    - SilasX 9y ago
      I read the part of it that was cited as the definitive refutation of all evidence of mental illness driving homelessness and explained why a single self serving source isn’t good enough. I understand the difference that a few hundred bucks makes to a grad student. I don’t think those are the same people that become homeless in significant numbers and that’s why I’m objecting to the narrative: the person that just needs housing prices a few hundred bucks less is not the person going homeless. Those are different problems.
- dionidium 9y ago
  Does that jibe with your intuition? Do you think if you made minimum wage (or some other very low wage) that you'd be homeless? Or do you think you'd find a way to live in a cheaper city? And if you don't think it would happen to you, then why do you think it's happening to other mentally normal, physically capable people?
  - iamcasen 9y ago
    If you have zero savings, and you lose your job, and you run out of money to pay rent, eventually get evicted, you will be homeless. It's really not a hard equation to understand. Once you're out on the streets, getting off them is very difficult. You need an address, and a phone number and a shower in order to apply for jobs. If you've been evicted before, landlords will be wary of you. You need support to get back on your feet, and this article is talking exactly about that: there is not enough support for the masses of homeless folks these days.
    - dionidium 9y ago
      It's really not a hard equation to understand. It's harder than it looks, apparently, because millions of low earners -- i.e. almost all of them -- manage to avoid this outcome. I feel like poor people are discussed in the abstract by people who have never actually been poor. Homelessness is still not a normal outcome. Mentally and physically able people are not routinely homeless. You can try to reason through this from first principles, I guess. That's a fun thing to do on a nerd message board. But I'm telling you that this is not what happens in actual practice.
      - jly 9y ago
        Keep in mind there are thousands of low income earners throughout the country that only afford their housing because of low-income subsidized housing programs. These programs are income-based to set monthly cost at an affordable level - sometimes only a couple hundred dollars per month. These people would not be able to afford housing even in low-cost cities without assistance. In areas where these programs are not available or not in sufficient numbers, homeless situations can easily arise.
bunderbunder 9y ago
That may be the case where you've done your work, but it's directly at odds with some of the information that's being presented in this article. For example: > “I’ve got economically zero unemployment in my city, and I’ve got thousands of homeless people that actually are working and just can’t afford housing,” said Seattle City Councilman Mike O’Brien. “There’s nowhere for these folks to move to. Every time we open up a new place, it fills up.”
- RingwormOne 9y ago
  What jobs are they working? How many jobs have they had in the past year? I can only speak to my own experience with the homeless I've come in contact with. Most are mentally ill or are struggling with drug addiction. Sure some of them have jobs, but jobs of the street sweeping, sign holding sort that can't afford them even the most meager housing.
  - bunderbunder 9y ago
    Well, going back to the article, one of the examples they give is a university lecturer. Her income is over twice the current Federal Poverty Level, and she lives out of her car. I realize I'm going for the ad hominem here, but I get the impression that you were so eager to start victim blaming that you haven't even taken the time to read the article before commenting on it.
    - RingwormOne 9y ago
      I actually did read the article. The article mentions one or two examples of mentally typical people who are homeless. Ok. I've dealt with many many more than that who are most certainly not University lecturers.
      - bunderbunder 9y ago
        But you could perhaps at least see the problem in a university lecturer not being able to afford to maintain a basic standard of living in the community where she teaches, right? And if you can get that far, then perhaps you can see that the homelessness problem being described in this article goes well beyond the two causes you're trying to reduce the whole thing to?
rhombocombus 9y ago
I agree that mental health plays a huge role, but housing prices impact the healthy and sick, and if you're living on SSDI it can be hard to find a place to live in any city on the west coast. Section 8 waiting lists are miles long and the majority of new housing development is in the "luxury" segment. My dad had to leave Portland because he was living on social security and could no longer afford to live here and also eat.
davidf18 9y ago
The cause of high housing prices is because of "rent-seeking" zoning density restrictions, overuse of historic landmark status, and overregulation which together cause a market inefficiency or market failure. This rent-seeking causes renters to pay additional income to landowners. These issues are part of introductory economics courses, yet writers seem to not understand them. The fix is not spending billions of taxpayer money, rather to simply remove the laws that create the scarcity of land and market inefficiencies. The Japanese federal government has laws that override local government to stop any land use restrictions. The result: in 2014, Tokyo has built 140,000 housing units compared with less than 90,000 in all of California and 20,000 in NYC (where I live). It would be helpful if people who wrote these articles (eg, WaPo), would understand basic economics and the solutions to the problems that they mention.
cwmma 9y ago
Are you in the north east, if so then you're probably right because in the north east winter is so cold that being homeless is rarely a 'rational' choice, but on the west coast where things are a little milder the the calculus is different.
nostrademons 9y ago
It would be interesting to get stats on homeless churn - the proportion of the homeless people who were homeless 3 months ago, or who will be homeless in 3 months - and then qualitative data on who those people are and why they're homeless. The aphorism I've heard is that "People become homeless for all sorts of reasons. People stay homeless for just one: mental illness." Note that it's not contradictory for a majority of the homeless (by the numbers) to have jobs and be homeless for reasons beyond their control, and yet for you (as someone who works with the homeless community) to see a majority of them as suffering from mental illness or drug use. This would happen if there's a large margin of people living on the edge: they're making it work one month, then they lose their job or their rent goes up and they're homeless, then they get another job or find a cheaper place and they're no longer homeless. From your perspective as a provider of services, these are transient folks who come in once and then you never see them again, and you wouldn't remember them. From the statistics on homelessness, they could very well make up a much larger fraction of the homeless than the chronic mental illness & drug abuse cases, particularly in times of great economic change like now.
supercanuck 9y ago
>This is not a result of prohibitive housing prices or anything like that The counter example is in the article is one of a couple who receive $1500 a month and can't find a residence? You're argument is this is an anomaly? I don't understand the mental gymnastics some people have to go through in order to convince themselves the problem in articles is not the problem. It happened in the Susan Fowler thread too. There is also increasingly more evidence that drug use is more attributed to escapism or a learned behavior of happier times and should be treated as a societal issue and mental illness seems to be a catch all for all the societal ills we don't want to deal with. I'd probably be addicted to drugs and have mental illness too if I had to shit in a bucket everyday in my shit filled RV.
- DigitalJack 9y ago
  Why should anyone value your opinion on this? The person you responded to cited personal experience in working with the homeless. I have a reason to give weight to their opinion.
  - bobwaycott 9y ago
    They weren’t exactly sharing an opinion. They called to the claims of the article that contradict the other’s experience. They mentioned—admittedly un-cited—recent evidence that also contradicts the other’s claims of anecdotal experience.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- jmspring 9y ago
  "receive $1500 a month and can't find a residence" If they are receiving government assistance and not working, then the tie to the particular city isn't strong from a "needing to be there". There are communities in California where one can find two bedroom houses/apartments for $900/mo or less. Rooms, studios, etc. may be even cheaper. It may not be desirable to move to some of those communities, but there are options along the west coast that are affordable to the above situation. Every day people make decisions of whether or not they can afford to live in a location and if not, move to where they can. A community I am quite familiar with have able bodied homeless people that prefer to live in said community and remain homeless. People working in the homeless services insist we need affordable housing for these people, it's never about whether or not affordable housing is available in other areas. The area of drug use, mental illness and others is way more complicated. As adults, there is no way to involuntary commit someone to get them help, they will have to want to get help in order to change. It is a huge issue and outside my knowledge-base of how to best handle it.

ufo 9y ago

The article has a quote that says exactly the opposite, btw. > “Most homeless people I know aren’t homeless because they’re addicts,” said Tammy Stephen, 54, who lives at a homeless encampment in Seattle. “Most people are homeless because they can’t afford a place to live.”

SilasX 9y ago
That is extremely implausible. What fraction of them would be able to put together the $1000/month (in the scenario of extreme home buildout)? It's only true in the trivial, unhelpful sense of "if we got housing costs down to $10/month or free, then all the people there could afford a place." But when we talk about housing costs in general and policy around it, we mean something like getting rents down from $3000/month to $1000/month (from vast expansion of building), not some artificial number that no amount of expansion would (scalably) get. And I don't think you can really take one homeless person living at an encampment, making a self-serving statement, as a source.
- cucuuc 9y ago
  Did you read the article? Do you have grad school experience? An $1800 grad stipend will help you understand the difference a few hundred bucks make.
  - SilasX 9y ago
    I read the part of it that was cited as the definitive refutation of all evidence of mental illness driving homelessness and explained why a single self serving source isn’t good enough. I understand the difference that a few hundred bucks makes to a grad student. I don’t think those are the same people that become homeless in significant numbers and that’s why I’m objecting to the narrative: the person that just needs housing prices a few hundred bucks less is not the person going homeless. Those are different problems.
dionidium 9y ago
Does that jibe with your intuition? Do you think if you made minimum wage (or some other very low wage) that you'd be homeless? Or do you think you'd find a way to live in a cheaper city? And if you don't think it would happen to you, then why do you think it's happening to other mentally normal, physically capable people?
- iamcasen 9y ago
  If you have zero savings, and you lose your job, and you run out of money to pay rent, eventually get evicted, you will be homeless. It's really not a hard equation to understand. Once you're out on the streets, getting off them is very difficult. You need an address, and a phone number and a shower in order to apply for jobs. If you've been evicted before, landlords will be wary of you. You need support to get back on your feet, and this article is talking exactly about that: there is not enough support for the masses of homeless folks these days.
  - dionidium 9y ago
    It's really not a hard equation to understand. It's harder than it looks, apparently, because millions of low earners -- i.e. almost all of them -- manage to avoid this outcome. I feel like poor people are discussed in the abstract by people who have never actually been poor. Homelessness is still not a normal outcome. Mentally and physically able people are not routinely homeless. You can try to reason through this from first principles, I guess. That's a fun thing to do on a nerd message board. But I'm telling you that this is not what happens in actual practice.
    - jly 9y ago
      Keep in mind there are thousands of low income earners throughout the country that only afford their housing because of low-income subsidized housing programs. These programs are income-based to set monthly cost at an affordable level - sometimes only a couple hundred dollars per month. These people would not be able to afford housing even in low-cost cities without assistance. In areas where these programs are not available or not in sufficient numbers, homeless situations can easily arise.

bunderbunder 9y ago

That may be the case where you've done your work, but it's directly at odds with some of the information that's being presented in this article. For example: > “I’ve got economically zero unemployment in my city, and I’ve got thousands of homeless people that actually are working and just can’t afford housing,” said Seattle City Councilman Mike O’Brien. “There’s nowhere for these folks to move to. Every time we open up a new place, it fills up.”

RingwormOne 9y ago
What jobs are they working? How many jobs have they had in the past year? I can only speak to my own experience with the homeless I've come in contact with. Most are mentally ill or are struggling with drug addiction. Sure some of them have jobs, but jobs of the street sweeping, sign holding sort that can't afford them even the most meager housing.
- bunderbunder 9y ago
  Well, going back to the article, one of the examples they give is a university lecturer. Her income is over twice the current Federal Poverty Level, and she lives out of her car. I realize I'm going for the ad hominem here, but I get the impression that you were so eager to start victim blaming that you haven't even taken the time to read the article before commenting on it.
  - RingwormOne 9y ago
    I actually did read the article. The article mentions one or two examples of mentally typical people who are homeless. Ok. I've dealt with many many more than that who are most certainly not University lecturers.
    - bunderbunder 9y ago
      But you could perhaps at least see the problem in a university lecturer not being able to afford to maintain a basic standard of living in the community where she teaches, right? And if you can get that far, then perhaps you can see that the homelessness problem being described in this article goes well beyond the two causes you're trying to reduce the whole thing to?

rhombocombus 9y ago

I agree that mental health plays a huge role, but housing prices impact the healthy and sick, and if you're living on SSDI it can be hard to find a place to live in any city on the west coast. Section 8 waiting lists are miles long and the majority of new housing development is in the "luxury" segment. My dad had to leave Portland because he was living on social security and could no longer afford to live here and also eat.

davidf18 9y ago

The cause of high housing prices is because of "rent-seeking" zoning density restrictions, overuse of historic landmark status, and overregulation which together cause a market inefficiency or market failure. This rent-seeking causes renters to pay additional income to landowners. These issues are part of introductory economics courses, yet writers seem to not understand them. The fix is not spending billions of taxpayer money, rather to simply remove the laws that create the scarcity of land and market inefficiencies. The Japanese federal government has laws that override local government to stop any land use restrictions. The result: in 2014, Tokyo has built 140,000 housing units compared with less than 90,000 in all of California and 20,000 in NYC (where I live). It would be helpful if people who wrote these articles (eg, WaPo), would understand basic economics and the solutions to the problems that they mention.

cwmma 9y ago

Are you in the north east, if so then you're probably right because in the north east winter is so cold that being homeless is rarely a 'rational' choice, but on the west coast where things are a little milder the the calculus is different.

nostrademons 9y ago

It would be interesting to get stats on homeless churn - the proportion of the homeless people who were homeless 3 months ago, or who will be homeless in 3 months - and then qualitative data on who those people are and why they're homeless. The aphorism I've heard is that "People become homeless for all sorts of reasons. People stay homeless for just one: mental illness." Note that it's not contradictory for a majority of the homeless (by the numbers) to have jobs and be homeless for reasons beyond their control, and yet for you (as someone who works with the homeless community) to see a majority of them as suffering from mental illness or drug use. This would happen if there's a large margin of people living on the edge: they're making it work one month, then they lose their job or their rent goes up and they're homeless, then they get another job or find a cheaper place and they're no longer homeless. From your perspective as a provider of services, these are transient folks who come in once and then you never see them again, and you wouldn't remember them. From the statistics on homelessness, they could very well make up a much larger fraction of the homeless than the chronic mental illness & drug abuse cases, particularly in times of great economic change like now.

supercanuck 9y ago

>This is not a result of prohibitive housing prices or anything like that The counter example is in the article is one of a couple who receive $1500 a month and can't find a residence? You're argument is this is an anomaly? I don't understand the mental gymnastics some people have to go through in order to convince themselves the problem in articles is not the problem. It happened in the Susan Fowler thread too. There is also increasingly more evidence that drug use is more attributed to escapism or a learned behavior of happier times and should be treated as a societal issue and mental illness seems to be a catch all for all the societal ills we don't want to deal with. I'd probably be addicted to drugs and have mental illness too if I had to shit in a bucket everyday in my shit filled RV.

DigitalJack 9y ago
Why should anyone value your opinion on this? The person you responded to cited personal experience in working with the homeless. I have a reason to give weight to their opinion.
- bobwaycott 9y ago
  They weren’t exactly sharing an opinion. They called to the claims of the article that contradict the other’s experience. They mentioned—admittedly un-cited—recent evidence that also contradicts the other’s claims of anecdotal experience.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
jmspring 9y ago
"receive $1500 a month and can't find a residence" If they are receiving government assistance and not working, then the tie to the particular city isn't strong from a "needing to be there". There are communities in California where one can find two bedroom houses/apartments for $900/mo or less. Rooms, studios, etc. may be even cheaper. It may not be desirable to move to some of those communities, but there are options along the west coast that are affordable to the above situation. Every day people make decisions of whether or not they can afford to live in a location and if not, move to where they can. A community I am quite familiar with have able bodied homeless people that prefer to live in said community and remain homeless. People working in the homeless services insist we need affordable housing for these people, it's never about whether or not affordable housing is available in other areas. The area of drug use, mental illness and others is way more complicated. As adults, there is no way to involuntary commit someone to get them help, they will have to want to get help in order to change. It is a huge issue and outside my knowledge-base of how to best handle it.