4 ms·

i'm not sure i agree. $100 of gas gets you about 24 gallons at california average prices, even at 20mpg that's 2x what you need to get to reno (218mi), on the

i'm not sure i agree. $100 of gas gets you about 24 gallons at california average prices, even at 20mpg that's 2x what you need to get to reno (218mi), on the way to reno you travel through sacramento. there are alternately many other central valley options at less distance from SF (from which many uber/lyft drivers commute to SF for their day -- for example stockton, modesto). redding is also 217mi from SF if you want to go north instead. eureka is only 271mi. grants pass OR, and los angeles are both in the 380mi ballpark, still within the $100 budget. i'm not sure why you think vegas has a wider diversity of options -- it could be i don't understand your criteria for options. vegas is central in a vast amount of desert. it's 271mi to LA, 286mi to bakersfield, 302mi to phoenix and 421mi to salt lake city. a massive amount of NV north/northwest of vegas is off-limits military test range -- population density is extremely thin in most directions from vegas. sources: gmaps for distances, and AAA for gas price (https://gasprices.aaa.com/?state=CA https://gasprices.aaa.com/?state=CA) i rounded up to $4.20/gal. 20mpg i picked semi-arbitrarily because i didn't find a good hit in the first search i did.

dredmorbius 7y ago
The eastern US has numerous major metro regions within an hour or two's travel from one another, where "major" is 1-2 million or more in population. The west coast largely doesn't, and the intermountain and west plains region is far less populated still. See: http://modernsurvivalblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/population-density-map-united-states.jpg http://modernsurvivalblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/pop... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistical_areas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistic... Dense population centres as vertical relief: https://i.imgur.com/a8tsVUP_d.jpg?maxwidth=1024&shape=thumb&fidelity=high https://i.imgur.com/a8tsVUP_d.jpg?maxwidth=1024&shape=thumb&... The "whys" of this are interesting, though I suspect much of this revolves around water and transport. How much it affects homeless populations is an interesting question as well. The climactic factors Doreen mentions are undoubtedly a factor, though I suspect the ease/difficulty in finding nontraditional means of support (odd jobs, busking, panhandling, gig work) likely matter. The options for other than traditional single-family and long-term apartment dwelling, and the relative costs of mortgages and rent also undoubtedly matter, as does the ability to get too and from residence, work, and/or services. My experiences travelling through the US are: 1. The changes in density are hugely apparent, with the almost wholly unpopulated region between California's central valley and the eastern front of the Rockies being most pronounced. There are marked transitions at, say, SF, the 9 bay counties region, Sacramento, Reno, excepting Salt Lake / Wasastch next Denver / Front Range, Omaha, Chicago, and then points east. The density of development along the East Coast, from Boston well into Virginia is hard to appreciate for those who are only familiar with California. And even more rural regions east of the Mississippi and well through the South are far more developed than most of California is. The stretch of CA-99 from Roseville to Bakersfield being only slighly comparable -- it's a linear belt whereas through the Eastern US you'll find comparable or higher densities in all directions. From San Francisco, for two hours' travel, you have ... more or less two destinations: Sacramento or Stockton. Going north or south, there's nothing until Portland, OR, or Los Angeles. And once you pass Sacramento, there's very slim pickings until you cross the Rockies, or better, the Missouri or Mississippi rivers, which is at best days travel by car or bus. And once you arrive, options may be few and attitudes not particularly welcoming. 2. Density alone isn't vitality. There are relatively habited regions which offer little economic opportunity. That's pointedly obvious as you travel through the Mississippi Delta region, much of Arkansas, and old rust-belt regions of Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Even with density and clement weather, and despite low costs, support is scarce. The feel of regions that do have some level of wealth or at least money flows is palpable. Aspen, CO, Seattle, WA, and Menlo Park, CA have tremendously different feels than Clinton, IA, St. Louis, MO, or Gallup, NM. Even attractive tourist-based regions often seem to have an edge of concern based on a mix of past indigenous sources of wealth (often mining and timber) now gone and a fear for what happens when the travel fad fades. What passes for generally vibrant in most of the US would be considered strongly depressed in much of California, where the distinctions between even thriving core and outlying regions of the SF Bay Area are severe. 3. Local attitudes matter. Homeless, housing-challenged, car- or van-dwellers, and the like, are more evident where support and services exist, all else being equal. Over the past few decades, I'd say they're more evident generally, and aren't strictly limited to the west or even coastal regions generally. 4. Much of coastal California, as well as the central valley, has and has long had its homeless or transient populations. I strongly recommend Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath as a backgrounder. The question of why homelessness suddenly emerged in the late 1970s / early 1980s is one that's interested me. I've had an occasional correspondence with Doreen since replying to a comment of hers on HN about a year ago based on some research I'd done on the question at the time. How much of the phenomenon is simply nomenclature and semantics, and how much is an increase in the number / visibility of the unhoused, is something I still don't have a good handle on myself, though I do strongly suspect the problem is getting worse. Failing to offer options other than detached single-family dwellings or rabbit-hutch apartments or housing tower blocks seems another. There really ought be a sensible middle range. There isn't. Doreen has been advocating for SROs as at least a partial solution. She may be right on this, though I see it as at best only a partial element. Co-housing, intentional communities, boarding, and other options may also be useful. As well as a widely implemented land value tax. Treating housing and real estate as financial assets rather than essential societal services seems to me a very strong component. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18499697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18499697 That last element turns up in another item I've found fascinating, a 1937 analysis of resistances to technological innovations which includes among other sectors housing, by Berhnard J. Stern: https://archive.org/details/technologicaltre1937unitrich/page/39 https://archive.org/details/technologicaltre1937unitrich/pag... (Markdown copy: https://pastebin.com/raw/Bapu75is https://pastebin.com/raw/Bapu75is) My attention had been first brought to that by Stern's research assistant for the project, a young Columbia University graduate student named Isaac Asimov. There are a whole slew of valuable lessons from that piece. I've submitted it a few times to HN though discussion's been light to date. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20532443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20532443 All told, though, this is a problem that's proved stubbornly resistant to technological (or any other) solutions attempted to date, and for which awareness and understanding are at best limited. Doreen has direct experience (I really don't), and her criticism of what I'd seen as a generally sensible and surprisingly sympathetic White House white paper is cogent.
- majos 7y ago
  > The question of why homelessness suddenly emerged in the late 1970s / early 1980s is one that's interested me. My understanding is that deinstitutionalization plays a large role here. The US institutionalized about 500k people nationwide until 1965, when that number cratered to about 100k by 1980 [1]. Not everyone who is released this way ends up homeless, but a recent study in Massachusetts in Ohio found that about a third of people released from mental institutions have no known address within six months [2]. You seem to have thought a lot about this topic, what is your take on the role of deinstitutionalization? Institutionalization seems cruel, but our current system pushes many people with severe mental illnesses onto the streets or into prisons, which seems worse. [1] http://bpr.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Mental-Hospital-Numbers-300x290.gif http://bpr.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Mental-Ho... [2] https://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/fixing-the-system/features-and-news/2596-how-many-people-with-serious-mental-illness-are-homeless https://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/fixing-the-system/fe...
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    I've seriously suggested that the oil crisis may well play a factor. The connection is complicated, but plausible. As the US increased its share of oil imports, starting in 1950, its balance of trade shifted from net exporter to importer (debtor). Before the OPEC crisis of 1973-4, Nixon took the US dollar off the gold standard. I see this not so much as a problem as a response to one: it's not possible to maintain a stable currency against a consistent spending outflow. The '73 crisis itself not only cut off oil supplies but created a huge spike in cost, again exacerbating the BoT problem. One of the critical events in resolving the crisis appears to have been a meeting in December 1973 between Henry Kissenger and the Saudi finance minister, on which I've as yet found little as to substance. A consequence of this was the "dollarisation" of the US-Saudi oil trade, later extended to the entire international oil market. From a currency perspective, this solved two problems. The US saw a huge new demand for dollars (absorbing much of the inflationary consequence of increasing the money supply, and both government and private spending), and the Saudis weren't saddled with an ever-appreciating (deflating) riyal. But the US and the Federal Reserve still had the problem of how to manage the money supply, and fixed on fractional reserve banking and open market operations to do so. This meant that banks and bank assets played a huge role in managing the money supply, where bank assets are loans, largely business and real estate. (Stocks and other equities play a relatively minor role.) Appreciating real estate valuations, already attractive to banks, became even more so. A second whammy came with the Iran embargo in 1979, by some measures more severe than the 1973-74 crisis. Meantime, increased energy costs and political shifts were undermining both manufacturing and union jobs, with them, pensions. Appreciating housing also became the household asset and retirement plan for homeowners. Toss in environmental regulations (not a bad thing of themselves) and tax revolts such as California's Proposition 13 in 1978 (a bad thing of itself), and you'd pretty much put all the ingredients together for a fatal brew. Stew over a sputtering GDP for 50 years, and voila! The first major reporting on homelessness came in 1980, during the US presidential election campaign, from CBS. The Doonesbury comic strip began an item at about that time, and many homeless organisations date from 1980 or shortly afterward. There's the question of why this hadn't happened earlier. I'd largely chalk this up to the post-WWII urban exodus and suburban housing boom, throughout the US, but in particular in California, which until 1970 had never seen a subdivision or freeway it didn't love at first glance. OK, slight exaggeration -- the San Francisco freeway revolts began in about 1956, and numerous planned routes in SF were cancelled in 1959, but the movement continued to pick up steam statewide through the 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_revolts_in_the_United_States#San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_revolts_in_the_United_... By the mid-1970s, the idea of simply rolling out massive new tract home and automobile-centred transport projects within California had largely ended. Projects could move, but took far longer and cost much more. Urban centres were already unpopular (the reverse migration into SF began in the 1980s), and there were considerable resistances to densification. What effect events such as the Loma Prieta Earthquake (1989) and Oakland Hills Fire (1991) I'm not sure. By the mid 1990s, housing prices were taking off again, new dense construction was at best difficult, and at the same time, employment was fairly ill-defined -- California was in the process of shrugging off much defence-related activity (base closings, shifts from defence-related industry), but hadn't yet discovered high-tech. "Multimedia Gulch" (South Park, SF) was A Thing briefly in the mid-1990s, biotech was generating far more hype. There were military base closings across the state (San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara/San Luis Obispo, Sacramento, Stockton, Vallejo, Alameda, Mountain View, Concord, Fairfield/Vacaville, and more). Then Netscape appeared and Dot Com 1.0 took off, August, 1995.
brudgers 7y ago
I agree that all those places are options. I need some convincing that they are better options than San Francisco. Your gas cost and mileage are about what I used I used $4 for California. But nobody in Orlando is saying "3.89 what a deal".[1] California's high gas prices exacerbate the problem of distance. In the east $100 provides more range in addition to go along with more options. Even $2.00/gallon wouldn't get you across the all deserts and mountains between SF and Denver. It wouldn't even get you to El Paso where there's nearly 1000 miles of Texas still left. [1]: https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=gas+price+orlando&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=gas...

dredmorbius 7y ago

The eastern US has numerous major metro regions within an hour or two's travel from one another, where "major" is 1-2 million or more in population. The west coast largely doesn't, and the intermountain and west plains region is far less populated still. See: http://modernsurvivalblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/population-density-map-united-states.jpg http://modernsurvivalblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/pop... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistical_areas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistic... Dense population centres as vertical relief: https://i.imgur.com/a8tsVUP_d.jpg?maxwidth=1024&shape=thumb&fidelity=high https://i.imgur.com/a8tsVUP_d.jpg?maxwidth=1024&shape=thumb&... The "whys" of this are interesting, though I suspect much of this revolves around water and transport. How much it affects homeless populations is an interesting question as well. The climactic factors Doreen mentions are undoubtedly a factor, though I suspect the ease/difficulty in finding nontraditional means of support (odd jobs, busking, panhandling, gig work) likely matter. The options for other than traditional single-family and long-term apartment dwelling, and the relative costs of mortgages and rent also undoubtedly matter, as does the ability to get too and from residence, work, and/or services. My experiences travelling through the US are: 1. The changes in density are hugely apparent, with the almost wholly unpopulated region between California's central valley and the eastern front of the Rockies being most pronounced. There are marked transitions at, say, SF, the 9 bay counties region, Sacramento, Reno, excepting Salt Lake / Wasastch next Denver / Front Range, Omaha, Chicago, and then points east. The density of development along the East Coast, from Boston well into Virginia is hard to appreciate for those who are only familiar with California. And even more rural regions east of the Mississippi and well through the South are far more developed than most of California is. The stretch of CA-99 from Roseville to Bakersfield being only slighly comparable -- it's a linear belt whereas through the Eastern US you'll find comparable or higher densities in all directions. From San Francisco, for two hours' travel, you have ... more or less two destinations: Sacramento or Stockton. Going north or south, there's nothing until Portland, OR, or Los Angeles. And once you pass Sacramento, there's very slim pickings until you cross the Rockies, or better, the Missouri or Mississippi rivers, which is at best days travel by car or bus. And once you arrive, options may be few and attitudes not particularly welcoming. 2. Density alone isn't vitality. There are relatively habited regions which offer little economic opportunity. That's pointedly obvious as you travel through the Mississippi Delta region, much of Arkansas, and old rust-belt regions of Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Even with density and clement weather, and despite low costs, support is scarce. The feel of regions that do have some level of wealth or at least money flows is palpable. Aspen, CO, Seattle, WA, and Menlo Park, CA have tremendously different feels than Clinton, IA, St. Louis, MO, or Gallup, NM. Even attractive tourist-based regions often seem to have an edge of concern based on a mix of past indigenous sources of wealth (often mining and timber) now gone and a fear for what happens when the travel fad fades. What passes for generally vibrant in most of the US would be considered strongly depressed in much of California, where the distinctions between even thriving core and outlying regions of the SF Bay Area are severe. 3. Local attitudes matter. Homeless, housing-challenged, car- or van-dwellers, and the like, are more evident where support and services exist, all else being equal. Over the past few decades, I'd say they're more evident generally, and aren't strictly limited to the west or even coastal regions generally. 4. Much of coastal California, as well as the central valley, has and has long had its homeless or transient populations. I strongly recommend Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath as a backgrounder. The question of why homelessness suddenly emerged in the late 1970s / early 1980s is one that's interested me. I've had an occasional correspondence with Doreen since replying to a comment of hers on HN about a year ago based on some research I'd done on the question at the time. How much of the phenomenon is simply nomenclature and semantics, and how much is an increase in the number / visibility of the unhoused, is something I still don't have a good handle on myself, though I do strongly suspect the problem is getting worse. Failing to offer options other than detached single-family dwellings or rabbit-hutch apartments or housing tower blocks seems another. There really ought be a sensible middle range. There isn't. Doreen has been advocating for SROs as at least a partial solution. She may be right on this, though I see it as at best only a partial element. Co-housing, intentional communities, boarding, and other options may also be useful. As well as a widely implemented land value tax. Treating housing and real estate as financial assets rather than essential societal services seems to me a very strong component. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18499697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18499697 That last element turns up in another item I've found fascinating, a 1937 analysis of resistances to technological innovations which includes among other sectors housing, by Berhnard J. Stern: https://archive.org/details/technologicaltre1937unitrich/page/39 https://archive.org/details/technologicaltre1937unitrich/pag... (Markdown copy: https://pastebin.com/raw/Bapu75is https://pastebin.com/raw/Bapu75is) My attention had been first brought to that by Stern's research assistant for the project, a young Columbia University graduate student named Isaac Asimov. There are a whole slew of valuable lessons from that piece. I've submitted it a few times to HN though discussion's been light to date. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20532443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20532443 All told, though, this is a problem that's proved stubbornly resistant to technological (or any other) solutions attempted to date, and for which awareness and understanding are at best limited. Doreen has direct experience (I really don't), and her criticism of what I'd seen as a generally sensible and surprisingly sympathetic White House white paper is cogent.

majos 7y ago
> The question of why homelessness suddenly emerged in the late 1970s / early 1980s is one that's interested me. My understanding is that deinstitutionalization plays a large role here. The US institutionalized about 500k people nationwide until 1965, when that number cratered to about 100k by 1980 [1]. Not everyone who is released this way ends up homeless, but a recent study in Massachusetts in Ohio found that about a third of people released from mental institutions have no known address within six months [2]. You seem to have thought a lot about this topic, what is your take on the role of deinstitutionalization? Institutionalization seems cruel, but our current system pushes many people with severe mental illnesses onto the streets or into prisons, which seems worse. [1] http://bpr.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Mental-Hospital-Numbers-300x290.gif http://bpr.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Mental-Ho... [2] https://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/fixing-the-system/features-and-news/2596-how-many-people-with-serious-mental-illness-are-homeless https://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/fixing-the-system/fe...
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  I've seriously suggested that the oil crisis may well play a factor. The connection is complicated, but plausible. As the US increased its share of oil imports, starting in 1950, its balance of trade shifted from net exporter to importer (debtor). Before the OPEC crisis of 1973-4, Nixon took the US dollar off the gold standard. I see this not so much as a problem as a response to one: it's not possible to maintain a stable currency against a consistent spending outflow. The '73 crisis itself not only cut off oil supplies but created a huge spike in cost, again exacerbating the BoT problem. One of the critical events in resolving the crisis appears to have been a meeting in December 1973 between Henry Kissenger and the Saudi finance minister, on which I've as yet found little as to substance. A consequence of this was the "dollarisation" of the US-Saudi oil trade, later extended to the entire international oil market. From a currency perspective, this solved two problems. The US saw a huge new demand for dollars (absorbing much of the inflationary consequence of increasing the money supply, and both government and private spending), and the Saudis weren't saddled with an ever-appreciating (deflating) riyal. But the US and the Federal Reserve still had the problem of how to manage the money supply, and fixed on fractional reserve banking and open market operations to do so. This meant that banks and bank assets played a huge role in managing the money supply, where bank assets are loans, largely business and real estate. (Stocks and other equities play a relatively minor role.) Appreciating real estate valuations, already attractive to banks, became even more so. A second whammy came with the Iran embargo in 1979, by some measures more severe than the 1973-74 crisis. Meantime, increased energy costs and political shifts were undermining both manufacturing and union jobs, with them, pensions. Appreciating housing also became the household asset and retirement plan for homeowners. Toss in environmental regulations (not a bad thing of themselves) and tax revolts such as California's Proposition 13 in 1978 (a bad thing of itself), and you'd pretty much put all the ingredients together for a fatal brew. Stew over a sputtering GDP for 50 years, and voila! The first major reporting on homelessness came in 1980, during the US presidential election campaign, from CBS. The Doonesbury comic strip began an item at about that time, and many homeless organisations date from 1980 or shortly afterward. There's the question of why this hadn't happened earlier. I'd largely chalk this up to the post-WWII urban exodus and suburban housing boom, throughout the US, but in particular in California, which until 1970 had never seen a subdivision or freeway it didn't love at first glance. OK, slight exaggeration -- the San Francisco freeway revolts began in about 1956, and numerous planned routes in SF were cancelled in 1959, but the movement continued to pick up steam statewide through the 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_revolts_in_the_United_States#San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_revolts_in_the_United_... By the mid-1970s, the idea of simply rolling out massive new tract home and automobile-centred transport projects within California had largely ended. Projects could move, but took far longer and cost much more. Urban centres were already unpopular (the reverse migration into SF began in the 1980s), and there were considerable resistances to densification. What effect events such as the Loma Prieta Earthquake (1989) and Oakland Hills Fire (1991) I'm not sure. By the mid 1990s, housing prices were taking off again, new dense construction was at best difficult, and at the same time, employment was fairly ill-defined -- California was in the process of shrugging off much defence-related activity (base closings, shifts from defence-related industry), but hadn't yet discovered high-tech. "Multimedia Gulch" (South Park, SF) was A Thing briefly in the mid-1990s, biotech was generating far more hype. There were military base closings across the state (San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara/San Luis Obispo, Sacramento, Stockton, Vallejo, Alameda, Mountain View, Concord, Fairfield/Vacaville, and more). Then Netscape appeared and Dot Com 1.0 took off, August, 1995.

brudgers 7y ago

I agree that all those places are options. I need some convincing that they are better options than San Francisco. Your gas cost and mileage are about what I used I used $4 for California. But nobody in Orlando is saying "3.89 what a deal".[1] California's high gas prices exacerbate the problem of distance. In the east $100 provides more range in addition to go along with more options. Even $2.00/gallon wouldn't get you across the all deserts and mountains between SF and Denver. It wouldn't even get you to El Paso where there's nearly 1000 miles of Texas still left. [1]: https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=gas+price+orlando&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=gas...