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I'd be interested to hear how homelessness can be meaningfully addressed in a humane way by the federal government (especially if it is constitutional).

by Alex63 8y ago

vikeri 8y ago
In 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 ago
  People 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.
  - all2 8y ago
    You work hard, your family works hard, and you help people out. Its sort of unspoken, but I've seen it in action a few times.
    - fjsolwmv 8y ago
      In no sense is that a "Scandinavian"-specific trait.
- tropo 8y ago
  Another 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 ago
  Your area also has the highest rates of compulsory mental health hospitalization in Europe. To do so in the US would likely not be constitutional.
lubujackson 8y ago
There aren't good solutions, only ugly ones that we've gotten rid of in the name of free will and self-reliance. To start, Reagan gutted the mental health system so that people who need life-long mental health support were more or less dumped on the streets. It also meant people who could get jobs and have a normal life with some support began to end up on the streets when things broke wrong for them. So bringing back mental health services would take a lot of stress off of police and hospitals and ultimately cost taxpayers much less and help many people. The negative is that there are no clear boundaries around who should be involuntarily admitted to a mental health facility. But having zero services clearly isn't a great solution. Secondly, drug users are either criminalized (very expensive) or minimally-aided to avoid immediate problems (with things like clean needles and safe spaces). Detox can be expensive and require considerable long-term support on top of personal will. There really isn't a good solution to tackle this, but there are some obvious solutions. Like a voluntary detox program where at the end you are enrolled in the military for 2-4 years. That starts to get some "indentured servitude" vibes but it is hard to find a decent way to deal with such a difficult issue.
- nradov 8y ago
  The military doesn't want such people anymore. Most recovering addicts can't pass current physical, mental, and educational standards for recruiting. But some kind of non-military jobs program would be helpful.
spookthesunset 8y ago
Maybe not addressed in a prescriptive policy way but a financing way. Let cities do what works best for that city, but all the funding should come from federal grants. It isn't fair to financially burden individual municipalities with what amounts to a systemic, country wide problem.
md224 8y ago
Noah Smith's perspective on the necessity of a federal approach to homelessness: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-05-21/ending-homelessness-is-a-job-for-the-federal-government https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-05-21/ending... Key graf: > About 3.5 million Americans will experience homelessness at some point in time, but only about a half-million are homeless at any given time, and roughly 87,000 of these are chronically homeless. By some estimates, housing a homeless person and providing them with a caseworker to see to their needs costs about $10,000 a year. That means for less than a billion dollars a year, chronic homelessness could be ended in the U.S. If temporarily homeless people were housed in temporary housing, and if each temporary residence were occupied half the time, homelessness of all kinds could be eliminated for about $10 billion a year. That’s less than a seventh of what the government spends on food stamps.
- docker_up 8y ago
  This is poppycock. $10,000 a person is a lie unless maybe if you moved all the homeless from the West Coast to the middle of nowhere in Midwest, but then you would have homeless activists and Midwest NIMBY activists saying that the government is shipping people out to solve the problem. The activists have politicized every direction of this issue to the point where it's easier to just forget about the homeless rather than try to solve the problem. Most homeless need mental health care and should be forced into mental wards but then you have mental health activists that will protest against this. Other activists would complain that they are gentrifying SF and kicking out all the poor people. Basically anyone who tries to solve this problem politically can't win because there will be some activist that protests against it to make a name for themselves and it turns into a hotbed issue by the media.
  - CuriouslyC 8y ago
    There are people living on a few dollars a day... You really think we can't provide a cot in the equivalent of a walk in closet with communal bathrooms, and simple meals like beans and rice with a few vegetables for $10k/year?
    - 8y ago
harlanji 8y ago
I’ve been in SF for about 7 years and became homeless in June. The #1 thing that helps me is cash in my pocket, from day labor (odd jobs) and boosters from family and friends who know I’m not a drug addict/alcoholic. Obviously the latter can’t be offered by a gov because it would be abused, but work for cash saved my life. IME cash in hand is the biggest help. #2 by far is bathroom access... followed by water and food. Anything beyond that feels too permanent for a healthy able bodied person. The way people treat me when showered is night and day. And then going to places with opportunity/wealthy people and away from homeless populations is essential.
- techsupporter 8y ago
  I have a truly genuine question and I swear on my prized and treasured EdgeRouter that I have no ulterior motive except for having a real answer to give to people whenever they also ask this question (often, in my opinion, in bad faith). So, with that, here goes: Why do you not leave San Francisco for some place cheaper or with more available housing? If it is simply due to lack of funds, would you relocate if money was offered to you for that purpose? (I won't reply and debate your answer; I'm simply curious and looking to educate myself.)
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    Why do you not leave San Francisco for some place cheaper or with more available housing? If it is simply due to lack of funds, would you relocate if money was offered to you for that purpose? Relocating to a place where you don't have a job makes you even more homeless. Remember that a significant percentage of the homeless are also employed. Many full time. Some as developers. It's easy to relocate to an unfamiliar place with no family or safety net if you have a job and savings. But if you're just going in the hopes that maybe there's a job, and maybe you'll find a place to live in that requires no deposit, and maybe there's a market for your skills in that place, you're just going to end up on the streets again.
    - techsupporter 8y ago
      I can appreciate that but, to be honest, that's why I'm asking someone who says he or she is currently homeless. I want to know if that position is theoretically true (that is, people who are housed think it is true) or if it really does have bearing on the day-to-day life of someone who is homeless. Put another way, I want to know what someone who's actually going through this would say because the question is sarcastically asked so often but I rarely read replies from people who are actually in this situation.
cutler 8y ago
Simple. Put a ceiling on rents. Allow no-one to own more than one home and insist they live in the one they own. In the UK we have a "bedroom tax" but it is aimed at the poor, not the rich as it should be. Make it illegal to discriminate against anyone based on their income source or the state of their health. Build housing exclusively for low-income occupants instead of throwing everything onto the insidious property market. Ban property markets altogether and replace them with government-regulated allocation. No. Thought not. No-one is really serious about solving the world housing crisis. So long as politicians rely on the comfortable middle-class for their survival nothing will change.
- spookthesunset 8y ago
  > Put a ceiling on rents Sorry, but this is the worst possible solution. Source: basic economics. Rent control is one of the most dangerous "solutions" to high housing costs people ever toss out. It would destroy the housing market and make it vastly more expensive than it is now.
  - cutler 8y ago
    Demonstrably untrue. Spend some time in Vienna or Berlin.
    - conanbatt 8y ago
      Eh, berlin is a city with the housing capacity in multiples of its population. You dont need to put any ceiling on rents to have them down.
    - deathanatos 8y ago
      > We find that landlords actively respond to the imposition of rent control by converting their properties to condos and TICs or by redeveloping the building in such as a way as to exempt it from the regulations. In sum, we find that impacted landlords reduced the supply the available rental housing by 15%. Consistent with this evidence, we find that there was a 20% decline in the number of renters living in impacted buildings, relative to 1990-1994 levels, and a 30% decline in the number of renters living in units protected by rent control. > These results highlight that forcing landlords to provided insurance against rent increases leads to large losses to tenants —The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality: Evidence from San Francisco[1] The study largely fins that, in addition to rent control causing the available supply to decrease, and tenant mobility/freedom to decrease, it largely harms new renters, and results in a wealth transfer to existing renters. It does not solve the problem, and it does not on the whole benefit society. [1]: https://www.nber.org/papers/w24181.pdf https://www.nber.org/papers/w24181.pdf
DoreenMichele 8y ago
I think we need to restructure tax incentives related to housing and diversify our policies and finance mechanisms related to housing. In a nutshell, the vast majority of our policies and programs related to housing are designed to support single family detached housing designed for a nuclear family or rentals that mirror that to a large degree. We created such systems practically overnight at the end of WW2. We have fleshed it out and tweaked it since then, but the underlying assumptions and mental models have remained largely the same. Meanwhile, reality has changed and what worked for the famines that became the parents of the Baby Boomers no longer really works, yet we aren't adapting. (Source: I was specifically studying housing and housing policy and history in hopes of becoming an urban planner when life got in the way.)

I'd be interested to hear how homelessness can be meaningfully addressed in a humane way by the federal government (especially if it is constitutional).

by Alex63 8y ago

I'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 ago

In 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 ago
People 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.
- all2 8y ago
  You work hard, your family works hard, and you help people out. Its sort of unspoken, but I've seen it in action a few times.
  - fjsolwmv 8y ago
    In no sense is that a "Scandinavian"-specific trait.
tropo 8y ago
Another 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 ago
Your area also has the highest rates of compulsory mental health hospitalization in Europe. To do so in the US would likely not be constitutional.

lubujackson 8y ago

There aren't good solutions, only ugly ones that we've gotten rid of in the name of free will and self-reliance. To start, Reagan gutted the mental health system so that people who need life-long mental health support were more or less dumped on the streets. It also meant people who could get jobs and have a normal life with some support began to end up on the streets when things broke wrong for them. So bringing back mental health services would take a lot of stress off of police and hospitals and ultimately cost taxpayers much less and help many people. The negative is that there are no clear boundaries around who should be involuntarily admitted to a mental health facility. But having zero services clearly isn't a great solution. Secondly, drug users are either criminalized (very expensive) or minimally-aided to avoid immediate problems (with things like clean needles and safe spaces). Detox can be expensive and require considerable long-term support on top of personal will. There really isn't a good solution to tackle this, but there are some obvious solutions. Like a voluntary detox program where at the end you are enrolled in the military for 2-4 years. That starts to get some "indentured servitude" vibes but it is hard to find a decent way to deal with such a difficult issue.

nradov 8y ago
The military doesn't want such people anymore. Most recovering addicts can't pass current physical, mental, and educational standards for recruiting. But some kind of non-military jobs program would be helpful.

spookthesunset 8y ago

Maybe not addressed in a prescriptive policy way but a financing way. Let cities do what works best for that city, but all the funding should come from federal grants. It isn't fair to financially burden individual municipalities with what amounts to a systemic, country wide problem.

md224 8y ago

Noah Smith's perspective on the necessity of a federal approach to homelessness: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-05-21/ending-homelessness-is-a-job-for-the-federal-government https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-05-21/ending... Key graf: > About 3.5 million Americans will experience homelessness at some point in time, but only about a half-million are homeless at any given time, and roughly 87,000 of these are chronically homeless. By some estimates, housing a homeless person and providing them with a caseworker to see to their needs costs about $10,000 a year. That means for less than a billion dollars a year, chronic homelessness could be ended in the U.S. If temporarily homeless people were housed in temporary housing, and if each temporary residence were occupied half the time, homelessness of all kinds could be eliminated for about $10 billion a year. That’s less than a seventh of what the government spends on food stamps.

docker_up 8y ago
This is poppycock. $10,000 a person is a lie unless maybe if you moved all the homeless from the West Coast to the middle of nowhere in Midwest, but then you would have homeless activists and Midwest NIMBY activists saying that the government is shipping people out to solve the problem. The activists have politicized every direction of this issue to the point where it's easier to just forget about the homeless rather than try to solve the problem. Most homeless need mental health care and should be forced into mental wards but then you have mental health activists that will protest against this. Other activists would complain that they are gentrifying SF and kicking out all the poor people. Basically anyone who tries to solve this problem politically can't win because there will be some activist that protests against it to make a name for themselves and it turns into a hotbed issue by the media.
- CuriouslyC 8y ago
  There are people living on a few dollars a day... You really think we can't provide a cot in the equivalent of a walk in closet with communal bathrooms, and simple meals like beans and rice with a few vegetables for $10k/year?
  - 8y ago

harlanji 8y ago

I’ve been in SF for about 7 years and became homeless in June. The #1 thing that helps me is cash in my pocket, from day labor (odd jobs) and boosters from family and friends who know I’m not a drug addict/alcoholic. Obviously the latter can’t be offered by a gov because it would be abused, but work for cash saved my life. IME cash in hand is the biggest help. #2 by far is bathroom access... followed by water and food. Anything beyond that feels too permanent for a healthy able bodied person. The way people treat me when showered is night and day. And then going to places with opportunity/wealthy people and away from homeless populations is essential.

techsupporter 8y ago
I have a truly genuine question and I swear on my prized and treasured EdgeRouter that I have no ulterior motive except for having a real answer to give to people whenever they also ask this question (often, in my opinion, in bad faith). So, with that, here goes: Why do you not leave San Francisco for some place cheaper or with more available housing? If it is simply due to lack of funds, would you relocate if money was offered to you for that purpose? (I won't reply and debate your answer; I'm simply curious and looking to educate myself.)
- reaperducer 8y ago
  Why do you not leave San Francisco for some place cheaper or with more available housing? If it is simply due to lack of funds, would you relocate if money was offered to you for that purpose? Relocating to a place where you don't have a job makes you even more homeless. Remember that a significant percentage of the homeless are also employed. Many full time. Some as developers. It's easy to relocate to an unfamiliar place with no family or safety net if you have a job and savings. But if you're just going in the hopes that maybe there's a job, and maybe you'll find a place to live in that requires no deposit, and maybe there's a market for your skills in that place, you're just going to end up on the streets again.
  - techsupporter 8y ago
    I can appreciate that but, to be honest, that's why I'm asking someone who says he or she is currently homeless. I want to know if that position is theoretically true (that is, people who are housed think it is true) or if it really does have bearing on the day-to-day life of someone who is homeless. Put another way, I want to know what someone who's actually going through this would say because the question is sarcastically asked so often but I rarely read replies from people who are actually in this situation.

cutler 8y ago

Simple. Put a ceiling on rents. Allow no-one to own more than one home and insist they live in the one they own. In the UK we have a "bedroom tax" but it is aimed at the poor, not the rich as it should be. Make it illegal to discriminate against anyone based on their income source or the state of their health. Build housing exclusively for low-income occupants instead of throwing everything onto the insidious property market. Ban property markets altogether and replace them with government-regulated allocation. No. Thought not. No-one is really serious about solving the world housing crisis. So long as politicians rely on the comfortable middle-class for their survival nothing will change.

spookthesunset 8y ago
> Put a ceiling on rents Sorry, but this is the worst possible solution. Source: basic economics. Rent control is one of the most dangerous "solutions" to high housing costs people ever toss out. It would destroy the housing market and make it vastly more expensive than it is now.
- cutler 8y ago
  Demonstrably untrue. Spend some time in Vienna or Berlin.
  - conanbatt 8y ago
    Eh, berlin is a city with the housing capacity in multiples of its population. You dont need to put any ceiling on rents to have them down.
  - deathanatos 8y ago
    > We find that landlords actively respond to the imposition of rent control by converting their properties to condos and TICs or by redeveloping the building in such as a way as to exempt it from the regulations. In sum, we find that impacted landlords reduced the supply the available rental housing by 15%. Consistent with this evidence, we find that there was a 20% decline in the number of renters living in impacted buildings, relative to 1990-1994 levels, and a 30% decline in the number of renters living in units protected by rent control. > These results highlight that forcing landlords to provided insurance against rent increases leads to large losses to tenants —The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality: Evidence from San Francisco[1] The study largely fins that, in addition to rent control causing the available supply to decrease, and tenant mobility/freedom to decrease, it largely harms new renters, and results in a wealth transfer to existing renters. It does not solve the problem, and it does not on the whole benefit society. [1]: https://www.nber.org/papers/w24181.pdf https://www.nber.org/papers/w24181.pdf

DoreenMichele 8y ago

I think we need to restructure tax incentives related to housing and diversify our policies and finance mechanisms related to housing. In a nutshell, the vast majority of our policies and programs related to housing are designed to support single family detached housing designed for a nuclear family or rentals that mirror that to a large degree. We created such systems practically overnight at the end of WW2. We have fleshed it out and tweaked it since then, but the underlying assumptions and mental models have remained largely the same. Meanwhile, reality has changed and what worked for the famines that became the parents of the Baby Boomers no longer really works, yet we aren't adapting. (Source: I was specifically studying housing and housing policy and history in hopes of becoming an urban planner when life got in the way.)