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Yes? No? I don't know; I'm not an expert in these matters. It is entirely possible that spending $100k/year per homeless person and still having an increase

Yes? No? I don't know; I'm not an expert in these matters. It is entirely possible that spending $100k/year per homeless person and still having an increase in the homeless population is reasonable if the costs are staggeringly high and the underlying problems still exist--perhaps even at an increasing rate--that drive people into homeless. I didn't say that Mr. Rufo was incorrect in his numbers; I said I vehemently disagreed with the proposals he made in his brief campaign. I agree with Mayor Durkan that we need a comprehensive understanding of what the money is being spent towards and the results it is having, something her office is supposed to be working on. But we can't just say "spending is paused until we figure that out." We also can't continue with Seattle being the only government entity spending appreciable money on the problem while surrounding cities and counties cluck their tongues in disdain. This is also the State of Washington's and King County's problem, if nothing else. They should act like it. One last bit, I did not engage in any ad hominems against Rufo; I called him no names (unless you mean "very conservative," which is a label he adopted for himself in his campaign). I denigrated his policy proposals and related an observer's view of what happened to his campaign.

abernard1 8y ago
I think your "Just for context" provided no context at all to the statistic provided or anything to do with my observation that tech workers' treatment of themselves is different than that they advocate for the homeless. You brought the character of the person making a claim about a statistic into a tangent that had nothing to do with my comment. That's an ad hominem. With respect to the $100K a homeless person, I quite frankly find that absurd. If it was a spending problem, you could pay them the money directly and they'd be richer than most Americans.
- akiselev 8y ago
  Have you really thought about that $100k number? I live in Seattle and I can tell you from a close friend's experience that an uninsured ambulance ride and emergency visit for a serious condition is ridiculously expensive, even after negotiating the cost down with the healthcare providers. We're talking tens of thousands for a concussion and I don't even want to know what the costs are for drug over doses, psychiatric holds, and the multitude of medical problems that result from roughing it in Washington winters. Throw in the cost of police responding to reports of vagrants, social workers, and all the other infrastructure and 100k a year seems very reasonable. We're talking about less than 1% of the population in the most extreme living circumstance that usually find themselves in that spot because all other systems have failed. Of course it's going to be crazy expensive helping that last (quite literally) marginalized group. Thats why Utah just started paying for housing. They figured out that the follow on costs to homelessness were huge and for many subgroups of the homeless population it's much cheaper to just pay for their shelter than to pay for all the other things that are certain to go wrong that will require state intervention anyway.

abernard1 8y ago

I think your "Just for context" provided no context at all to the statistic provided or anything to do with my observation that tech workers' treatment of themselves is different than that they advocate for the homeless. You brought the character of the person making a claim about a statistic into a tangent that had nothing to do with my comment. That's an ad hominem. With respect to the $100K a homeless person, I quite frankly find that absurd. If it was a spending problem, you could pay them the money directly and they'd be richer than most Americans.

akiselev 8y ago
Have you really thought about that $100k number? I live in Seattle and I can tell you from a close friend's experience that an uninsured ambulance ride and emergency visit for a serious condition is ridiculously expensive, even after negotiating the cost down with the healthcare providers. We're talking tens of thousands for a concussion and I don't even want to know what the costs are for drug over doses, psychiatric holds, and the multitude of medical problems that result from roughing it in Washington winters. Throw in the cost of police responding to reports of vagrants, social workers, and all the other infrastructure and 100k a year seems very reasonable. We're talking about less than 1% of the population in the most extreme living circumstance that usually find themselves in that spot because all other systems have failed. Of course it's going to be crazy expensive helping that last (quite literally) marginalized group. Thats why Utah just started paying for housing. They figured out that the follow on costs to homelessness were huge and for many subgroups of the homeless population it's much cheaper to just pay for their shelter than to pay for all the other things that are certain to go wrong that will require state intervention anyway.