21 ms·
> endless money pits The reason they are money pits is because they aren't something that will be solved by a city or even a state. Any attempt to solve the pr
by spookthesunset 8y ago
> endless money pits
The reason they are money pits is because they aren't something that will be solved by a city or even a state. Any attempt to solve the problem locally in a "humane" way has a high risk of just attracting more folks in the same circumstance to the area.
The most effective way for a city or state to "solve" the local homeless problem is to simply pay for one-way bus tickets to somewhere else. But that doesn't solve the actual problem.
Homelessness is a systemic problem that can only be meaningly addressed in a humane way by the federal government.
- CryptoPunk 8y agoIt's an endless money pit because if you subsidize something, you get more of it. The massive increase in subsidies for low-income single parents has resulted in a massive increase in children born into single parent families over the last 50 years.
- tuesdayrain 8y agoSo that means if we want to solve homelessness, we need to start taxing homeless people.
- CryptoPunk 8y agoOr just stop subsidizing them. In the short term, it's more suffering for the poor, but in the long run, it's fewer people born into multi-generational poverty traps and into communities where they learn to become dependent and game government programs, because the dominant source of income is unconditional social assistance programs provided at the taxpayer's expense.
- fjsolwmv 8y agoYou think homeless people were predominantly born on the street to homeless parents?
- CryptoPunk 8y agoNo but they come from predominantly poor families, and are disproportionately represented by those raised in single parent households. So you can provide early childhood nutrition to kids, welfare to their mom, free education for the mom, free childcare, etc, to try to improve the outcomes for children raised in these households, but one of the adverse effects of that is that the economic disincentive for having a child as a single mother is massively reduced, resulting in more children being born into single-parent families. The conservatives were absolutely right about the long term effects of welfarism, as shown by 50 years of rapidly rising rates of single parenthood.
- tropo 8y agoThe argument you made against the city or state solution applies equally well to the federal solution. People cross borders for housing. It takes a very strong deterrent to stop this. You can choose to help people and enforce borders, or you can choose to let people suffer and be lax about borders.
- Alex63 8y agoI'd be interested to hear how homelessness can be meaningfully addressed in a humane way by the federal government (especially if it is constitutional).
- vikeri 8y agoIn comparison to SF/LA/NY etc. we have very few homeless people in Scandinavia. If I were to speculate then I think our extensive social security systems (free healthcare & education etc.) is the reason why. But then we all pay 30-55 % tax on our income to fund that social security.
- CryptoPunk 8y agoPeople of Scandinavian descent in the US have much lower levels of homelessness as well, so I think it's far more likely a socio-cultural cause, rather than political.
- tropo 8y agoAnother reason is the very strong motivation provided by your winter. Being homeless results in death, which explains why you have very few homeless people in Scandinavia.
- dahdum 8y agoYour area also has the highest rates of compulsory mental health hospitalization in Europe. To do so in the US would likely not be constitutional.
- flaque 8y ago> Any attempt to solve the problem locally in a "humane" way has a high risk of just attracting more folks in the same circumstance to the area. This is just provably false. Utah solved it's homelessness problem by just giving people homes. And it was pretty effective.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ArchTypical 8y ago> This is just provably false Utah is not an example that proves anything. It's a fairly unusual area when talking about this problem. Utah's entire population is less than Los Angeles. The claim that 91% of Utah's homeless population was abated is somewhat suspicious, given the remaining 14k would mean they had a previous 155k+ - which outstrips the homeless count of most major cities (including Los Angeles). This is not as cut an dry as "make more housing" because that isn't demonstrated. Certainly not with numbers that are all over the place.
- RoboTeddy 8y ago> Any attempt to solve the problem locally in a "humane" way has a high risk of just attracting more folks in the same circumstance to the area. I thought this too, but it turns out that despite San Francisco's relatively high expenditures on homeless, only 10% of the homeless population was living out of state at the time they became homeless. (http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017-SF-Point-in-Time-Count-General-FINAL-6.21.17.pdf http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017-SF-Poin...)
- masonic 8y agoonly 10% of the homeless population was living out of state at the time they became homeles That's purely from uncorroborated survey data with neither details nor verification. A greater percentage of present-day homeless claim to have been housed in SF 10 years ago than the general non-homeless population!
- fjsolwmv 8y agoWhy does that surprise you? Non homeless include immigrants and exclude emigrants. People tend to immigrate to the city in their 20s and leave in their 30s.
- conanbatt 8y ago> solve the problem locally in a "humane" way has a high risk of just attracting more folks in the same circumstance to the area I agree with this idea, but i was shocked to see that San Francisco is a net-exporter of homeless people. That really points to some other root cause.