4 ms·

The $1 billion/year number cited by this ex-candidate has been so widely and so completely discredited that anyone using it has an agenda. Here’s a short summar

The $1 billion/year number cited by this ex-candidate has been so widely and so completely discredited that anyone using it has an agenda. Here’s a short summary of one massive flaw: https://old.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/7dijkx/homelessness_the_seattle_area_spends_more_than_1/dpypw87/ https://old.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/7dijkx/homelessn... Yes, it actually counted the assessed value of land and buildings as a per-year operational expense, as if the land was re-purchased, and the buildings re-erected, every year. The real number is somewhere between it and $90 million (https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/seattle-homelessness-spending-tops-90-million/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/seattle-h...), depending heavily on how one amortizes capital assets (land, buildings) and allocates shared services. It’s nowhere near $1 billion/year though. UPDATE: To learn more about homelessness in Seattle, here's some starting points: 1. McKinsey's "The Economics of Homelessness in Seattle and King County": https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-cities/the-economics-of-homelessness-in-seattle-and-king-county https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-cities/... ("In total, we estimate a budget of $360 million to $410 million would be needed. This is about twice what the system invests today.") 2. Barbara Poppe's 2016 recommendations (https://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/pathwayshome/BPA.pdf https://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/pathwayshome/B...) and 2018 Q&A (https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/qa-two-years-after-her-report-on-seattles-homelessness-how-does-barbara-poppe-grade-the-city/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/qa-two-ye...). 3. Survey of 1,056 homeless people: http://allhomekc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/FINALDRAFT-COUNTUSIN2018REPORT-5.25.18.pdf http://allhomekc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/FINALDRAFT-C.... Skip to page 23. I think pages 28, 30-31, 33-34, 43, 45, and 66 have the most information for the least time. 4. Seattle Times homelessness coverage (https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/), which has an RSS feed (https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/feed/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/feed/).

hn_throwaway_54 8y ago
> ex-candidate Oh, so it's just sour grapes after he lost an election. I guess we can skip over this due to his agenda. But wait... > [...] I put my hat in the ring early and I got tremendous support from across the city, from a lot of people in neighborhoods who are fed up with some of the policy of failures that they're seeing every day. But I got a very quick education in how activists pressure groups work. And in a very short time period as my campaign was gaining some momentum, I started getting barraged by harassment, by threats. > One individual from an activist group had posted hundreds of messages, threatening messages over the period of a few weeks. They had gone after my wife attempting to get her fired from her employer. She works at Microsoft. They had been posting white supremacists content to my family. And I'm a biracial family, interracial marriage. And [we] have mixed race kids. And then the final straw is they actually went after my kids, they started posting hateful messages to my eight year old son school, facebook page. And not only that, they let people know that they knew where I lived, and really just kind of engaged in a reign of terror. And I very regretfully withdrew from the race because it was a decision that I had to make for the best interest of my family. > And I felt conflicted because I deeply want policy change. But the political environment, as you've seen with in Seattle, as you've seen with Andy knows, reporting for city journal down in Portland, is saturated with the threat of violence. Yikes. Now I'm not sure. Should we discount the side that quotes a bad number from the media, having missed the Reddit post disproving it? Or should we discount the side that harasses and threatens a candidate, his wife and his children until he retires from an election? Maybe they cancel out. Anyway, I'd suggest reading the whole transcript after all, $1 billion or not. There's some interesting stuff in there.
- troydavis 8y ago
  > I guess we can skip over this due to his agenda. No, you should skip over this because the number is obviously factually flawed. I can't link to the Puget Sound Business Journal infographic it's from because PSBJ uses a paywall. Regarding "having missed the Reddit post disproving it," as I wrote, it was widely discredited (including in Reddit comments). It's unlikely that anyone following the issue as closely as a city council candidate would have "missed" that. I'm all for learning more about the problem. However, all 4 sources that I linked to are closer to primary sources for the information they provide, and 3 or 4 of the 4 are less biased.

hn_throwaway_54 8y ago

> ex-candidate Oh, so it's just sour grapes after he lost an election. I guess we can skip over this due to his agenda. But wait... > [...] I put my hat in the ring early and I got tremendous support from across the city, from a lot of people in neighborhoods who are fed up with some of the policy of failures that they're seeing every day. But I got a very quick education in how activists pressure groups work. And in a very short time period as my campaign was gaining some momentum, I started getting barraged by harassment, by threats. > One individual from an activist group had posted hundreds of messages, threatening messages over the period of a few weeks. They had gone after my wife attempting to get her fired from her employer. She works at Microsoft. They had been posting white supremacists content to my family. And I'm a biracial family, interracial marriage. And [we] have mixed race kids. And then the final straw is they actually went after my kids, they started posting hateful messages to my eight year old son school, facebook page. And not only that, they let people know that they knew where I lived, and really just kind of engaged in a reign of terror. And I very regretfully withdrew from the race because it was a decision that I had to make for the best interest of my family. > And I felt conflicted because I deeply want policy change. But the political environment, as you've seen with in Seattle, as you've seen with Andy knows, reporting for city journal down in Portland, is saturated with the threat of violence. Yikes. Now I'm not sure. Should we discount the side that quotes a bad number from the media, having missed the Reddit post disproving it? Or should we discount the side that harasses and threatens a candidate, his wife and his children until he retires from an election? Maybe they cancel out. Anyway, I'd suggest reading the whole transcript after all, $1 billion or not. There's some interesting stuff in there.

troydavis 8y ago
> I guess we can skip over this due to his agenda. No, you should skip over this because the number is obviously factually flawed. I can't link to the Puget Sound Business Journal infographic it's from because PSBJ uses a paywall. Regarding "having missed the Reddit post disproving it," as I wrote, it was widely discredited (including in Reddit comments). It's unlikely that anyone following the issue as closely as a city council candidate would have "missed" that. I'm all for learning more about the problem. However, all 4 sources that I linked to are closer to primary sources for the information they provide, and 3 or 4 of the 4 are less biased.