12 ms·

>If everyone who cared about homelessness donated $100 to the problem, homelessness would be solved. Nobody does this, because they know that nobody else is goi

by koboll 7y ago

>If everyone who cared about homelessness donated $100 to the problem, homelessness would be solved. Nobody does this, because they know that nobody else is going to do it, and their $100 is just going to feel like a tiny drop in the ocean that doesn’t change anything. People know that a single person can’t make a difference, so they don’t want to spend any money, so no money gets spent. I wonder if something like the National Popular Vote compact could work here. It works like this: state legislatures pass a law that says if enough states sign onto the compact to pass 270 electoral votes, their electors are automatically assigned to the winner of the popular vote. In this way, nothing changes and no one has to sacrifice anything until enough states agree to actually effect a change, and then they act together to effectively obviate the Electoral College. Sure, if I donate $100 to a homelessness charity, it'll feel like a drop in the bucket. But if some charity starts an initiative to take my credit card information and only charge it once enough people donate to end homelessness, I might be more inclined to do it. Either the threshold is reached and homelessness ends, or I get a feeling of altruistic pride for doing nothing. Everyone wins!

snegu 7y ago
That's how kickstarter works, isn't it?
newnewpdro 7y ago
I don't get the impression that everyone who says they want to end homelessness means they want to give the homeless homes for nothing to do so. Many people just don't want to see it on the streets. It's ruining their view and social standing having such riff-raff on the streets of their expensive world-class cities. But give them homes? Sure, if they include bars and a keyless lock. That's the impression I get from many Americans. The whole empathic nuanced understanding of homelessness, substance addiction, and mental illness, is a fairly niche perspective and something I only encountered substantially in the SF bay area. And even then, it was mostly just paying lip service to the popular attitude from what I could tell, few actually did anything about the problem.
- opportune 7y ago
  How is anyone supposed to do anything? We need the federal and state governments to do something, funding mental health services and facilities. That takes huge amounts of money and politicians don’t gaf because liberal cities are going to vote for Democrats anyway. The only solutions other than that are status quo or imprisoning the homeless, where the second is much more expensive than the first. I guess in your mind unless I start trying to provide free addiction treatment on the streets I’m just paying lip service?
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    > We need the federal and state governments to do something Mostly you just need your city government to legalize housing. > politicians don’t gaf because liberal cities are going to vote for Democrats anyway Well, the awkward truth is that non liberal cities mostly don't have this problem. It's mostly created by liberal cities.
  - koboll 7y ago
    >That takes huge amounts of money and politicians don’t gaf because liberal cities are going to vote for Democrats anyway. Politicians gaf about primaries. California did away with theirs, so politicians are forced to gaf about the general. "My opponent is doing nothing about homelessness" is a great message for a primary challenger. There are other reasons, like gerrymandering, that give incumbents an advantage, but party doesn't guarantee safety. And there are plenty of issues where an alternative isn't possible because of partisan politics, but homelessness certainly isn't one. No one is in favor of it.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
cdirkx 7y ago
This is the model some crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter work with: they call it "all-or-nothing funding" [1]. They mention the same benefits, reduced risk for backers if the target amount has not been reached. [1] https://help.kickstarter.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005047893-Why-is-funding-all-or-nothing- https://help.kickstarter.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005047893-...
- skosch 7y ago
  Even better – economists have already worked out how to create this kind of investment incentive in a mathematically optimal way: https://medium.com/coinmonks/breaking-down-buterin-hitzig-and-weyls-liberal-radicalism-paper-ba5192248b2 https://medium.com/coinmonks/breaking-down-buterin-hitzig-an... https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=496096085110074019115095081120088101099083089080001063109072009065124020093117081111098062036040112046109096073096098017093097054090040049087077113024113105089119087021082085016115010126091010068024093080087019000109083031024070005027011112082116102069&EXT=pdf https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=4960960851100740...
paulsutter 7y ago
I’m very skeptical that $20B could end homelessness. Huge if true. Source he references: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_2276536 https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_2276536
- perl4ever 7y ago
  $20B or $20B/year? It's easy to estimate what it would cost to end homelessness, if the number of people nationally is around 600,000. The thing that makes it more expensive than you think or people want to admit, is that a cot is not enough. Giving everybody a home is not enough. People who cannot cope with living in someone else's house or having their own apartment are even less likely to cope with owning property. To solve the problem, you have to provide every one of them with a spot in something comparable to an assisted living facility. That costs in the ballpark of $4K per month. So, $30B per year. How much capital is needed for that income? Median assumed rate of return for public pension funds is 7.25%, let's use that. The bill, if we're being honest, to solve homelessness, as a lump sum, is therefore about $410 billion. Sounds like a lot. Well, it's about $3200 per American household. But that's assuming everyone paid equally. Total net worth of the US is said to be about $123 trillion, so $410 billion would be around three tenths of a percent of all the country's wealth. Not much when you look at it that way.
  - luckydata 7y ago
    Your assumption that every single homeless person will need assistance is wrong. Most homeless people are fine, they just need help getting back into society in a normal way. There's a metric ton of research on this, but people of privilege seem to think that it takes some kind of enormous negligence to become homeless in the is when it's absolutely not the case, an illness or a divorce will do for most folks.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      Of course I am not assuming every single homeless person needs the same amount of assistance. I'm saying, as someone who is privileged to know what severe and persistent mental illness is like, that the average would be around I stated.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
rb808 7y ago
US already spends more than $100 per person, the HUD's budget is >$40B.
- delecti 7y ago
  HUD does more than just address homelessness, and that's only just over $100/person/year.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    $40B is about $72,000/person/year[1]. Yes, I know what you meant, but... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Sta...
    - wahern 7y ago
      HUD spends most of that $40B on keeping people housed. Most people receiving HUD benefits, directly or indirectly, aren't considered homeless. If they were then your denominator (# of people) would be much larger and therefore expenditures per person significantly lower. EDIT: 10 million people receive federal rental assistance, which AFAIU is basically what the $40B reflects. https://www.cbpp.org/research/housing/federal-rental-assistance-fact-sheets#US https://www.cbpp.org/research/housing/federal-rental-assista...
      - perl4ever 7y ago
        That's a good point, and my comment was intended more to point out ambiguity than to imply something specific. Still, it doesn't really prove or disprove that the spending is going to where it does the most good.
DoreenMichele 7y ago
Throwing money at social problems doesn't typically fix them. If you want to make a dent in homelessness, you can start by advocating for more Missing Middle housing in your neck of the woods (anywhere in the US). Our housing supply issues are a huge part of the problem. https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-missing-middle.html https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-missing...
- adolph 7y ago
  This might be more convincing if the link was relevant to your claim, maybe some studies of places that increased housing availability and saw decreased homelessness or something. Instead it seems mostly about transit.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    The link isn't really intended to support an argument. It's more intended to explain what Missing Middle housing is about (and walkable neighborhoods is a big part of that). I have had a class on Homelessness and Public Policy, spent years homeless and got myself off the street. I've studied the problem space a fair bit. Below are links that support the assertion, if you are interested: For every 100 families living in poverty on the West Coast, there are no more than 30 affordable homes https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-poverty-west-coast-no-30-affordable-homes/ https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-pove... Research by Zillow Group Inc. last year found that a 5 percent increase in rents in L.A. translates into about 2,000 more homeless people, among the highest correlations in the U.S. The median rent for a one-bedroom in the city was $2,371 in September, up 43 percent from 2010. Similarly, consultant McKinsey & Co. recently concluded that the runup in housing costs was 96 percent correlated with Seattle’s soaring homeless population. Even skeptics have come around to accepting the relationship. “I argued for a long time that the homelessness issue wasn’t due to rents,” says Joel Singer, chief executive officer of the California Association of Realtors. “I can’t argue that anymore.” The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-11-20/the-homeless-crisis-is-getting-worse-in-america-s-richest-cities https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-11-20/the-homel...
Fej 7y ago
I believe this is called taxes. Not trying to be snarky, just... there you go.
- s1artibartfast 7y ago
  I think taxes are more like investing in a shady gofundme with a credit card you found. With a compact, people are putting their own money at stake, have skin in the game, and a concrete goal With taxes, people are usually putting someone else's money at stake, hope some of it goes where they want, and move on. *edited for grammar and clarity
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  But taxes is someone else deciding that I should donate to something they decide is worthy. Sure, it does solve the "collective action" problem, but by removing my consent.
- jaredklewis 7y ago
  Except taxes are spent on building bombs, not homeless shelters and I have no way of changing that.
guerrilla 7y ago
I think this is what Esperanto did in the beginning but I can't find a reference for that at the moment. Ironically, I found this, http://www.pledgebank.com/ http://www.pledgebank.com/, which is pretty much what you're asking for.
Sniffnoy 7y ago
The term you are looking for is "assurance contract": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_contract https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_contract

by koboll 7y ago

snegu 7y ago

That's how kickstarter works, isn't it?

newnewpdro 7y ago

I don't get the impression that everyone who says they want to end homelessness means they want to give the homeless homes for nothing to do so. Many people just don't want to see it on the streets. It's ruining their view and social standing having such riff-raff on the streets of their expensive world-class cities. But give them homes? Sure, if they include bars and a keyless lock. That's the impression I get from many Americans. The whole empathic nuanced understanding of homelessness, substance addiction, and mental illness, is a fairly niche perspective and something I only encountered substantially in the SF bay area. And even then, it was mostly just paying lip service to the popular attitude from what I could tell, few actually did anything about the problem.

opportune 7y ago
How is anyone supposed to do anything? We need the federal and state governments to do something, funding mental health services and facilities. That takes huge amounts of money and politicians don’t gaf because liberal cities are going to vote for Democrats anyway. The only solutions other than that are status quo or imprisoning the homeless, where the second is much more expensive than the first. I guess in your mind unless I start trying to provide free addiction treatment on the streets I’m just paying lip service?
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  > We need the federal and state governments to do something Mostly you just need your city government to legalize housing. > politicians don’t gaf because liberal cities are going to vote for Democrats anyway Well, the awkward truth is that non liberal cities mostly don't have this problem. It's mostly created by liberal cities.
- koboll 7y ago
  >That takes huge amounts of money and politicians don’t gaf because liberal cities are going to vote for Democrats anyway. Politicians gaf about primaries. California did away with theirs, so politicians are forced to gaf about the general. "My opponent is doing nothing about homelessness" is a great message for a primary challenger. There are other reasons, like gerrymandering, that give incumbents an advantage, but party doesn't guarantee safety. And there are plenty of issues where an alternative isn't possible because of partisan politics, but homelessness certainly isn't one. No one is in favor of it.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

cdirkx 7y ago

This is the model some crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter work with: they call it "all-or-nothing funding" [1]. They mention the same benefits, reduced risk for backers if the target amount has not been reached. [1] https://help.kickstarter.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005047893-Why-is-funding-all-or-nothing- https://help.kickstarter.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005047893-...

skosch 7y ago
Even better – economists have already worked out how to create this kind of investment incentive in a mathematically optimal way: https://medium.com/coinmonks/breaking-down-buterin-hitzig-and-weyls-liberal-radicalism-paper-ba5192248b2 https://medium.com/coinmonks/breaking-down-buterin-hitzig-an... https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=496096085110074019115095081120088101099083089080001063109072009065124020093117081111098062036040112046109096073096098017093097054090040049087077113024113105089119087021082085016115010126091010068024093080087019000109083031024070005027011112082116102069&EXT=pdf https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=4960960851100740...

paulsutter 7y ago

I’m very skeptical that $20B could end homelessness. Huge if true. Source he references: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_2276536 https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_2276536

perl4ever 7y ago
$20B or $20B/year? It's easy to estimate what it would cost to end homelessness, if the number of people nationally is around 600,000. The thing that makes it more expensive than you think or people want to admit, is that a cot is not enough. Giving everybody a home is not enough. People who cannot cope with living in someone else's house or having their own apartment are even less likely to cope with owning property. To solve the problem, you have to provide every one of them with a spot in something comparable to an assisted living facility. That costs in the ballpark of $4K per month. So, $30B per year. How much capital is needed for that income? Median assumed rate of return for public pension funds is 7.25%, let's use that. The bill, if we're being honest, to solve homelessness, as a lump sum, is therefore about $410 billion. Sounds like a lot. Well, it's about $3200 per American household. But that's assuming everyone paid equally. Total net worth of the US is said to be about $123 trillion, so $410 billion would be around three tenths of a percent of all the country's wealth. Not much when you look at it that way.
- luckydata 7y ago
  Your assumption that every single homeless person will need assistance is wrong. Most homeless people are fine, they just need help getting back into society in a normal way. There's a metric ton of research on this, but people of privilege seem to think that it takes some kind of enormous negligence to become homeless in the is when it's absolutely not the case, an illness or a divorce will do for most folks.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    Of course I am not assuming every single homeless person needs the same amount of assistance. I'm saying, as someone who is privileged to know what severe and persistent mental illness is like, that the average would be around I stated.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

rb808 7y ago

US already spends more than $100 per person, the HUD's budget is >$40B.

delecti 7y ago
HUD does more than just address homelessness, and that's only just over $100/person/year.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  $40B is about $72,000/person/year[1]. Yes, I know what you meant, but... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Sta...
  - wahern 7y ago
    HUD spends most of that $40B on keeping people housed. Most people receiving HUD benefits, directly or indirectly, aren't considered homeless. If they were then your denominator (# of people) would be much larger and therefore expenditures per person significantly lower. EDIT: 10 million people receive federal rental assistance, which AFAIU is basically what the $40B reflects. https://www.cbpp.org/research/housing/federal-rental-assistance-fact-sheets#US https://www.cbpp.org/research/housing/federal-rental-assista...
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      That's a good point, and my comment was intended more to point out ambiguity than to imply something specific. Still, it doesn't really prove or disprove that the spending is going to where it does the most good.

DoreenMichele 7y ago

Throwing money at social problems doesn't typically fix them. If you want to make a dent in homelessness, you can start by advocating for more Missing Middle housing in your neck of the woods (anywhere in the US). Our housing supply issues are a huge part of the problem. https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-missing-middle.html https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-missing...

adolph 7y ago
This might be more convincing if the link was relevant to your claim, maybe some studies of places that increased housing availability and saw decreased homelessness or something. Instead it seems mostly about transit.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  The link isn't really intended to support an argument. It's more intended to explain what Missing Middle housing is about (and walkable neighborhoods is a big part of that). I have had a class on Homelessness and Public Policy, spent years homeless and got myself off the street. I've studied the problem space a fair bit. Below are links that support the assertion, if you are interested: For every 100 families living in poverty on the West Coast, there are no more than 30 affordable homes https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-poverty-west-coast-no-30-affordable-homes/ https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-pove... Research by Zillow Group Inc. last year found that a 5 percent increase in rents in L.A. translates into about 2,000 more homeless people, among the highest correlations in the U.S. The median rent for a one-bedroom in the city was $2,371 in September, up 43 percent from 2010. Similarly, consultant McKinsey & Co. recently concluded that the runup in housing costs was 96 percent correlated with Seattle’s soaring homeless population. Even skeptics have come around to accepting the relationship. “I argued for a long time that the homelessness issue wasn’t due to rents,” says Joel Singer, chief executive officer of the California Association of Realtors. “I can’t argue that anymore.” The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-11-20/the-homeless-crisis-is-getting-worse-in-america-s-richest-cities https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-11-20/the-homel...

Fej 7y ago

I believe this is called taxes. Not trying to be snarky, just... there you go.

s1artibartfast 7y ago
I think taxes are more like investing in a shady gofundme with a credit card you found. With a compact, people are putting their own money at stake, have skin in the game, and a concrete goal With taxes, people are usually putting someone else's money at stake, hope some of it goes where they want, and move on. *edited for grammar and clarity
BurningFrog 7y ago
But taxes is someone else deciding that I should donate to something they decide is worthy. Sure, it does solve the "collective action" problem, but by removing my consent.
jaredklewis 7y ago
Except taxes are spent on building bombs, not homeless shelters and I have no way of changing that.

guerrilla 7y ago

I think this is what Esperanto did in the beginning but I can't find a reference for that at the moment. Ironically, I found this, http://www.pledgebank.com/ http://www.pledgebank.com/, which is pretty much what you're asking for.

Sniffnoy 7y ago

The term you are looking for is "assurance contract": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_contract https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_contract