4 ms·

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/

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.
- paulsutter 7y ago
  Personally I’d like to understand how other developed economies solve the many problems underlying the US’s homeless situation. Money alone will not solve mental health issues, addiction, etc. EDIT: Yes healthcare, but especially for mental health and addiction. Solving these is pretty far beyond simply implementing medicare for all
  - kaitai 7y ago
    One significant factor is free or low-cost healthcare. Medical bankruptcy is the single largest type of bankruptcy in America, even among people with insurance, and bankruptcy can lead to homelessness. Untreated mental illness is also huge, and that's related to availability of care as well. Losing a job and then losing employer-sponsored health insurance is another version: COBRA coverage is very expensive and temporary, so people with chronic or expensive conditions may fall behind on rent etc between the one-two punch of loss of income and loss of insurance.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      Why would you use COBRA as long as the ACA is sputtering along? Also, when people frame untreated mental illness as a financial matter, it seems silly to me. Drugs are generally cheap, and the expensive ones aren't proven to work significantly better. Expensive treatments for mental illness are just a matter of exploiting desperate people because the first-line approaches don't work or are otherwise intolerable. Sure, you can pay more to social workers and therapists, but I don't take seriously the idea you can talk someone out of mania, psychosis, or addiction. You can fund basic research, but that's not something that can solve any societal problems tomorrow.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    Housing supply is a factor. I haven't managed to read it, but I think the title says plenty about one of the ways America is different from other countries: Why Are American Houses So Big? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990409 Another significant factor is health care. Most developed countries have better coverage for their people than we do. We are also the only developed country in the world without a good national maternity leave policy. We are also very car dependent. In the US, housing is the single biggest expense for most people and their car is their second biggest expense. It's hard to live without a car in the US. I've done it for more than a decade, but I do freelance work. Trying to hold down a normal job without a car is tough in most places in the US because we don't have walkable neighborhoods and we don't have good public transit. It's much easier to live without a car in many other countries. This helps make life affordable for people with jobs that don't pay that well. They can support themselves because they can get to work without a car, whereas carless Americans have trouble getting a job at all.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  > Giving everybody a home is not enough. This is actually surprisingly untrue. That approach both works and is substantially cheaper than the status quo. https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic-homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chroni...
  - paulsutter 7y ago
    You’ve obviously never met a San Francisco homeless advocate, which is a heartbreaking job on many levels
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    The article makes clear that it isn't about a solution for everybody and it sounds like this is a form of assisted living, like I was describing. I didn't see where the costs are stated, so are you implying that it is vastly less expensive than my estimate? "When we comb through and we're picking out three people from this list of 86," Austin says, "it does kind of suck to know that we left 83 people on that list that don't have an option" Just as it has always been, there are people who are privileged to be helped and those who are not: "Austin notes they need a candidate who is male and "plays semi-nice with others.""
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      > I didn't see where the costs are stated, so are you implying that it is vastly less expensive than my estimate? The article briefly mentions the enormous costs of having people on the streets, in ER visits and jail, and indicates that housing is cheaper. More specific numbers here from a different test: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/02/housing-first-solution-to-homelessness-utah/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/02/housing-first-s... "Denver found that emergency-service costs alone went down 73 percent for people put in Housing First, for a savings of $31,545 per person; detox visits went down 82 percent, for an additional savings of $8,732." > Just as it has always been, there are people who are privileged to be helped and those who are not. You're really misreading that portion of the article. It's discussing a particular opening, and how they slot people into them. Overall numbers for the program are available elsewhere in the article: "By implementing a model known as Housing First, Utah has reduced that number from nearly 2,000 people in 2005, to fewer than 200 now."

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.
paulsutter 7y ago
Personally I’d like to understand how other developed economies solve the many problems underlying the US’s homeless situation. Money alone will not solve mental health issues, addiction, etc. EDIT: Yes healthcare, but especially for mental health and addiction. Solving these is pretty far beyond simply implementing medicare for all
- kaitai 7y ago
  One significant factor is free or low-cost healthcare. Medical bankruptcy is the single largest type of bankruptcy in America, even among people with insurance, and bankruptcy can lead to homelessness. Untreated mental illness is also huge, and that's related to availability of care as well. Losing a job and then losing employer-sponsored health insurance is another version: COBRA coverage is very expensive and temporary, so people with chronic or expensive conditions may fall behind on rent etc between the one-two punch of loss of income and loss of insurance.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    Why would you use COBRA as long as the ACA is sputtering along? Also, when people frame untreated mental illness as a financial matter, it seems silly to me. Drugs are generally cheap, and the expensive ones aren't proven to work significantly better. Expensive treatments for mental illness are just a matter of exploiting desperate people because the first-line approaches don't work or are otherwise intolerable. Sure, you can pay more to social workers and therapists, but I don't take seriously the idea you can talk someone out of mania, psychosis, or addiction. You can fund basic research, but that's not something that can solve any societal problems tomorrow.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  Housing supply is a factor. I haven't managed to read it, but I think the title says plenty about one of the ways America is different from other countries: Why Are American Houses So Big? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990409 Another significant factor is health care. Most developed countries have better coverage for their people than we do. We are also the only developed country in the world without a good national maternity leave policy. We are also very car dependent. In the US, housing is the single biggest expense for most people and their car is their second biggest expense. It's hard to live without a car in the US. I've done it for more than a decade, but I do freelance work. Trying to hold down a normal job without a car is tough in most places in the US because we don't have walkable neighborhoods and we don't have good public transit. It's much easier to live without a car in many other countries. This helps make life affordable for people with jobs that don't pay that well. They can support themselves because they can get to work without a car, whereas carless Americans have trouble getting a job at all.
ceejayoz 7y ago
> Giving everybody a home is not enough. This is actually surprisingly untrue. That approach both works and is substantially cheaper than the status quo. https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic-homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chroni...
- paulsutter 7y ago
  You’ve obviously never met a San Francisco homeless advocate, which is a heartbreaking job on many levels
- perl4ever 7y ago
  The article makes clear that it isn't about a solution for everybody and it sounds like this is a form of assisted living, like I was describing. I didn't see where the costs are stated, so are you implying that it is vastly less expensive than my estimate? "When we comb through and we're picking out three people from this list of 86," Austin says, "it does kind of suck to know that we left 83 people on that list that don't have an option" Just as it has always been, there are people who are privileged to be helped and those who are not: "Austin notes they need a candidate who is male and "plays semi-nice with others.""
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    > I didn't see where the costs are stated, so are you implying that it is vastly less expensive than my estimate? The article briefly mentions the enormous costs of having people on the streets, in ER visits and jail, and indicates that housing is cheaper. More specific numbers here from a different test: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/02/housing-first-solution-to-homelessness-utah/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/02/housing-first-s... "Denver found that emergency-service costs alone went down 73 percent for people put in Housing First, for a savings of $31,545 per person; detox visits went down 82 percent, for an additional savings of $8,732." > Just as it has always been, there are people who are privileged to be helped and those who are not. You're really misreading that portion of the article. It's discussing a particular opening, and how they slot people into them. Overall numbers for the program are available elsewhere in the article: "By implementing a model known as Housing First, Utah has reduced that number from nearly 2,000 people in 2005, to fewer than 200 now."