5 ms·

IMO this is exactly what we ought to do. A big problem for the homeless is that they become poor in a place with no jobs for them, and then they get stuck. Ther

by darawk 8y ago

IMO this is exactly what we ought to do. A big problem for the homeless is that they become poor in a place with no jobs for them, and then they get stuck. There are lots of places with shortages of the kind of labor they can offer, and making travel easier for them is a great thing to help fix that market failure.

prolikewh0a 8y ago
With unemployment this low there are plenty of entry level jobs people can get into in every city in the country. I live in Seattle and I see people out begging to give people entry level/beginner jobs by the light rail stations and all around the city, but homelessness is still on the rise. Bussing them elsewhere doesn't help when they still don't have a home, a bathroom/shower, clean clothes, food, etc. Bussing them out is just an idea done by the rich so they don't have to see the homeless any longer.
- spaceflunky 8y ago
  Yes, there are jobs in every city, but in major cities there is difficulty in finding housing and transportation. The cost of living is also high, so it's easy to get into debt. Whereas in smaller cities, it's typically easier to get on your feet because housing is more accessible, transportation is better, and the general CoL is a lot lower.
  - yayana 8y ago
    True, but this combined with brain drain creates a lot of perverse incentives and drives a further wealth divide. For example, many low tax base areas accumulate a population with more problems that have higher tax rates, insurance rates, etc (and a more strained social net) than a rich city. It is important to make sure rich areas are at least paying some of the costs they create in selectively pushing people out or creating bottlenecks to set a minimum CoL on who comes in.
    - darawk 8y ago
      You recognize that given this bus ticket opportunity, the homeless will actually converge on rich coastal cities, right? This problem is actually worse for the rich people that live in places like LA and SF.
      - yayana 8y ago
        The rule of having a place to stay in most of the programs causes the counter examples in the article.
        darawk 8y ago
        Yep, but that still doesn't support the grandparent's point.
        yayana 8y ago
        Then I'm not sure we are talking about the same things. Everything in the article and this thread seems consistent with these programs actively running for rich coastal cities to return people or send them to places where their friends have space to spare.. That doesn't sound like Manhattan. A convergence on rich cities getting more people is a possibility.. But the richer cities are setting precedents, have actual budgets for these things and regulations tend only to increase.
        darawk 8y ago
        > Everything in the article and this thread seems consistent with these programs actively running for rich coastal cities to return people or send them to places where their friends have space to spare.. That doesn't sound like Manhattan. It seems just as likely to be a rich coastal city as anywhere else, tbh. The article makes a point of saying that they only do the most cursory of checks anyway, so we can basically assume they're meaningless. > A convergence on rich cities getting more people is a possibility.. But the richer cities are setting precedents, have actual budgets for these things and regulations tend only to increase. It's certainly a possibility. But I don't know if you live in a rich coastal city, but I do, and the homeless problem here is out of control. The homeless population in rich coastal cities is empirically growing very quickly, and it is not growing in the same way in other places, consistent with net migration of homeless into rich coastal areas, not the other way around. These bussing policies have been in place for a while, and there is no epidemic of homeless leaving SF and setting up shop in Des Moines. So while it may theoretically be possible for this to increase flow in the way you describe, despite the policies being in place for a good while, that is empirically not what is happening.
- taurath 8y ago
  Having a home is frequently a prerequisite to be able to A: show up to work on time B: be groomed C: establish a pattern of living It’s hard to go to work not knowing if your car will be towed. Granted, where people COULD afford to live isn’t the city centers, where the services are and where people congregate. And the suburbs don’t want them either. Pretty sad state of affairs - we need to provide a real safety net so people aren’t stuck below the line of employability.
  - michaelchisari 8y ago
    D: Get a job in the first place. Putting a homeless shelter or no address at all on your work application is a great way to get it sent straight to the circular file. Even living in public housing can be a job killer if the addresses are well known enough. People at Cabrini Green had to hope they had a relative that would allow them to use their address to apply for jobs with, and hope on top of that the public housing officials wouldn't find out about it.
- darawk 8y ago
  > With unemployment this low there are plenty of entry level jobs people can get into in every city in the country. I live in Seattle and I see people out begging to give people entry level/beginner jobs by the light rail stations and all around the city, but homelessness is still on the rise. If that were actually true, then there wouldn't be a homeless problem. The unemployment rate doesn't count these people. The unemployment rate only counts people who are 'actively looking' for a new job. People who aren't looking at all don't show up in the statistics. > Bussing them elsewhere doesn't help when they still don't have a home, a bathroom/shower, clean clothes, food, etc. Let's be careful about the conjugation of that verb. The city is not bussing them anywhere. The city is offering them free bus tickets, if they believe they will be happier elsewhere. If they want to stay, they stay. If they want to leave, they leave. > Bussing them out is just an idea done by the rich so they don't have to see the homeless any longer. It's really not. They're not being forced out. They're just being given free tickets if they want them.
  - adventured 8y ago
    > The unemployment rate only counts people who are 'actively looking' for a new job. People who aren't looking at all don't show up in the statistics. That's entirely incorrect. We track all of these layers in fact. We have the labor force participation rate, which is available further separated out into groups, such as by age or race. We track the employment to population ratio. We have the U3, U5, U6 unemployment statistics, which track labor based on various conditions, whether full-time, part-time, discouraged, etc. We track how many people total are employed full-time or part-time. We know how many hours they're working. We track multiple job holders. We track how many people are not in the labor force. We track the flow of labor in and out of the labor force. And we track all of these statistics for different age groups, men & women, races, etc. For one big example, the prime working age 25-54 civilian labor force participation rate. Considered a critical measure of labor force health. It bottomed out at 80.6% in 2015 and has since climbed back to 82.3% as of October, slightly below where it was in 2004-05. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060
    - darawk 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Symbiote 8y ago
That's OK, but it seems reasonable to follow up on whether the bus ticket was useful or not. Otherwise it's just conveniently moving the problem elsewhere.
- darawk 8y ago
  Well, keep in mind the agency here. This isn't the city 'moving' anyone, these are people who are choosing to move themselves. I don't see why the city ought even have the responsibility to ensure they have somewhere to stay. Let them go where they want.
  - fzeroracer 8y ago
    I hope you realize the inverse of the problem you posit here: Why should other cities be forced to bear the burden of homeless people being shipped to them? The end result of your logic would essentially lead to caravans of homeless people because it would be cheaper to give them a bus pass and a pat on the back rather than take care of their own responsibilities. The idea that they have agency in this case is a facade because then the city could deny them care under the guise of 'well we gave them a chance for a better opportunity and they denied it'. It seems to be a uniquely American thing to ignore actually addressing the damn problem in favor of making it someone else's problem.
    - darawk 8y ago
      Nobody is denying them care. Their choices are being strictly expanded here, not restricted. You think they would be better off if they did not have the option of these tickets?
      - fzeroracer 8y ago
        To say that they're not being denied care is objectively wrong. Don't be disingenuous. The city that they reside in is effectively denying them care. The tickets are an excuse to push them out of the city so that they don't actually have to give them proper care. If they weren't being denied care for whatever reasons, then there wouldn't be a reason to bus them out to other cities, now would there? This is EXACTLY what happened when Nevada gave discharged patients from a mental health hospital one-way bus tickets out of town. They were given bus tickets and advised to seek health care elsewhere and were sued because of this program. So let's not ignore the fact that this actually occurs.

by darawk 8y ago

prolikewh0a 8y ago

With unemployment this low there are plenty of entry level jobs people can get into in every city in the country. I live in Seattle and I see people out begging to give people entry level/beginner jobs by the light rail stations and all around the city, but homelessness is still on the rise. Bussing them elsewhere doesn't help when they still don't have a home, a bathroom/shower, clean clothes, food, etc. Bussing them out is just an idea done by the rich so they don't have to see the homeless any longer.

spaceflunky 8y ago
Yes, there are jobs in every city, but in major cities there is difficulty in finding housing and transportation. The cost of living is also high, so it's easy to get into debt. Whereas in smaller cities, it's typically easier to get on your feet because housing is more accessible, transportation is better, and the general CoL is a lot lower.
- yayana 8y ago
  True, but this combined with brain drain creates a lot of perverse incentives and drives a further wealth divide. For example, many low tax base areas accumulate a population with more problems that have higher tax rates, insurance rates, etc (and a more strained social net) than a rich city. It is important to make sure rich areas are at least paying some of the costs they create in selectively pushing people out or creating bottlenecks to set a minimum CoL on who comes in.
  - darawk 8y ago
    You recognize that given this bus ticket opportunity, the homeless will actually converge on rich coastal cities, right? This problem is actually worse for the rich people that live in places like LA and SF.
    - yayana 8y ago
      The rule of having a place to stay in most of the programs causes the counter examples in the article.
      - darawk 8y ago
        Yep, but that still doesn't support the grandparent's point.
        yayana 8y ago
        Then I'm not sure we are talking about the same things. Everything in the article and this thread seems consistent with these programs actively running for rich coastal cities to return people or send them to places where their friends have space to spare.. That doesn't sound like Manhattan. A convergence on rich cities getting more people is a possibility.. But the richer cities are setting precedents, have actual budgets for these things and regulations tend only to increase.
        darawk 8y ago
        > Everything in the article and this thread seems consistent with these programs actively running for rich coastal cities to return people or send them to places where their friends have space to spare.. That doesn't sound like Manhattan. It seems just as likely to be a rich coastal city as anywhere else, tbh. The article makes a point of saying that they only do the most cursory of checks anyway, so we can basically assume they're meaningless. > A convergence on rich cities getting more people is a possibility.. But the richer cities are setting precedents, have actual budgets for these things and regulations tend only to increase. It's certainly a possibility. But I don't know if you live in a rich coastal city, but I do, and the homeless problem here is out of control. The homeless population in rich coastal cities is empirically growing very quickly, and it is not growing in the same way in other places, consistent with net migration of homeless into rich coastal areas, not the other way around. These bussing policies have been in place for a while, and there is no epidemic of homeless leaving SF and setting up shop in Des Moines. So while it may theoretically be possible for this to increase flow in the way you describe, despite the policies being in place for a good while, that is empirically not what is happening.
taurath 8y ago
Having a home is frequently a prerequisite to be able to A: show up to work on time B: be groomed C: establish a pattern of living It’s hard to go to work not knowing if your car will be towed. Granted, where people COULD afford to live isn’t the city centers, where the services are and where people congregate. And the suburbs don’t want them either. Pretty sad state of affairs - we need to provide a real safety net so people aren’t stuck below the line of employability.
- michaelchisari 8y ago
  D: Get a job in the first place. Putting a homeless shelter or no address at all on your work application is a great way to get it sent straight to the circular file. Even living in public housing can be a job killer if the addresses are well known enough. People at Cabrini Green had to hope they had a relative that would allow them to use their address to apply for jobs with, and hope on top of that the public housing officials wouldn't find out about it.
darawk 8y ago
> With unemployment this low there are plenty of entry level jobs people can get into in every city in the country. I live in Seattle and I see people out begging to give people entry level/beginner jobs by the light rail stations and all around the city, but homelessness is still on the rise. If that were actually true, then there wouldn't be a homeless problem. The unemployment rate doesn't count these people. The unemployment rate only counts people who are 'actively looking' for a new job. People who aren't looking at all don't show up in the statistics. > Bussing them elsewhere doesn't help when they still don't have a home, a bathroom/shower, clean clothes, food, etc. Let's be careful about the conjugation of that verb. The city is not bussing them anywhere. The city is offering them free bus tickets, if they believe they will be happier elsewhere. If they want to stay, they stay. If they want to leave, they leave. > Bussing them out is just an idea done by the rich so they don't have to see the homeless any longer. It's really not. They're not being forced out. They're just being given free tickets if they want them.
- adventured 8y ago
  > The unemployment rate only counts people who are 'actively looking' for a new job. People who aren't looking at all don't show up in the statistics. That's entirely incorrect. We track all of these layers in fact. We have the labor force participation rate, which is available further separated out into groups, such as by age or race. We track the employment to population ratio. We have the U3, U5, U6 unemployment statistics, which track labor based on various conditions, whether full-time, part-time, discouraged, etc. We track how many people total are employed full-time or part-time. We know how many hours they're working. We track multiple job holders. We track how many people are not in the labor force. We track the flow of labor in and out of the labor force. And we track all of these statistics for different age groups, men & women, races, etc. For one big example, the prime working age 25-54 civilian labor force participation rate. Considered a critical measure of labor force health. It bottomed out at 80.6% in 2015 and has since climbed back to 82.3% as of October, slightly below where it was in 2004-05. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060
  - darawk 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Symbiote 8y ago

That's OK, but it seems reasonable to follow up on whether the bus ticket was useful or not. Otherwise it's just conveniently moving the problem elsewhere.

darawk 8y ago
Well, keep in mind the agency here. This isn't the city 'moving' anyone, these are people who are choosing to move themselves. I don't see why the city ought even have the responsibility to ensure they have somewhere to stay. Let them go where they want.
- fzeroracer 8y ago
  I hope you realize the inverse of the problem you posit here: Why should other cities be forced to bear the burden of homeless people being shipped to them? The end result of your logic would essentially lead to caravans of homeless people because it would be cheaper to give them a bus pass and a pat on the back rather than take care of their own responsibilities. The idea that they have agency in this case is a facade because then the city could deny them care under the guise of 'well we gave them a chance for a better opportunity and they denied it'. It seems to be a uniquely American thing to ignore actually addressing the damn problem in favor of making it someone else's problem.
  - darawk 8y ago
    Nobody is denying them care. Their choices are being strictly expanded here, not restricted. You think they would be better off if they did not have the option of these tickets?
    - fzeroracer 8y ago
      To say that they're not being denied care is objectively wrong. Don't be disingenuous. The city that they reside in is effectively denying them care. The tickets are an excuse to push them out of the city so that they don't actually have to give them proper care. If they weren't being denied care for whatever reasons, then there wouldn't be a reason to bus them out to other cities, now would there? This is EXACTLY what happened when Nevada gave discharged patients from a mental health hospital one-way bus tickets out of town. They were given bus tickets and advised to seek health care elsewhere and were sued because of this program. So let's not ignore the fact that this actually occurs.