4 ms·

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

by 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?
  - docker_up 8y ago
    Only if you ship them to a very low cost area, and then you immediately run into political issues as I mentioned, like shipping away your poor and gentrifying the area for rich people. Beans and rice? That's a terrible, unhealthy meal! You need to give them a balanced diet! How could you kill these poor people? Communal bathrooms? That's for criminals and it spreads disease! A walk in closet? These are human beings we're talking about! They're not prisoners, don't treat them like that! They need space! And that's how it becomes an unsolvable problem. Activists with agendas.
    - eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
      There will always be people like that, but your explanation just comes off to me as excuses to do nothing and continue the status quo.
- idontpost 8y ago
  > 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. Because conservatives destroyed mental health care in this country. Not that it was ever good, but it used to exist, until it was systematically dismantled in the 1980s and all the patients were sent out to become … take a guess … that's right … our current chronic homeless population! Start by (re)building an actual mental health care system if you want to go that route.
jimbobimbo 8y ago
How federal involvement will help? Article doesn't detail what powers exactly federal govt possesses that would help, aside from moving spending from local to fed level. I'd also argue, that having feds in this business would even worsen the situation: now locals could be taken completely out of the loop for decisions like where to place shelters. Like, "oh you don't like shelter in this neighborhood? take a walk - it's a federal decision, live with it."
- jchanimal 8y ago
  Funding for mental health / universal health care would take the riskiest cases off the street. This would allow the existing safety nets to function better. Also, basic income.

by md224 8y ago

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?
- docker_up 8y ago
  Only if you ship them to a very low cost area, and then you immediately run into political issues as I mentioned, like shipping away your poor and gentrifying the area for rich people. Beans and rice? That's a terrible, unhealthy meal! You need to give them a balanced diet! How could you kill these poor people? Communal bathrooms? That's for criminals and it spreads disease! A walk in closet? These are human beings we're talking about! They're not prisoners, don't treat them like that! They need space! And that's how it becomes an unsolvable problem. Activists with agendas.
  - eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
    There will always be people like that, but your explanation just comes off to me as excuses to do nothing and continue the status quo.
idontpost 8y ago
> 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. Because conservatives destroyed mental health care in this country. Not that it was ever good, but it used to exist, until it was systematically dismantled in the 1980s and all the patients were sent out to become … take a guess … that's right … our current chronic homeless population! Start by (re)building an actual mental health care system if you want to go that route.

jimbobimbo 8y ago

How federal involvement will help? Article doesn't detail what powers exactly federal govt possesses that would help, aside from moving spending from local to fed level. I'd also argue, that having feds in this business would even worsen the situation: now locals could be taken completely out of the loop for decisions like where to place shelters. Like, "oh you don't like shelter in this neighborhood? take a walk - it's a federal decision, live with it."

jchanimal 8y ago
Funding for mental health / universal health care would take the riskiest cases off the street. This would allow the existing safety nets to function better. Also, basic income.