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> This is just sad. This is just stupid,” Brenner says. “Why do we let this go on?” Because this is practically textbook definition of a perverse incentive. W

by Gunax 7y ago

> This is just sad. This is just stupid,” Brenner says. “Why do we let this go on?” Because this is practically textbook definition of a perverse incentive. What about healthy homeless people? Do they get homes? We are encouraging people to be sick and to a abuse the ER. And what about all of the working poor who are doing the right thing, but still have to pay half of their income in rent? The reason we don't provide homes is you can never just provide homes to the ones who'would have abused the ER' but instead have to provide them to all homeless. Also, as sad as it is to admit, there is a portion of homeless who you could literally buy a house for, and they will still end up homeless. I hope I am wrong and this program works out.

pjc50 7y ago
> The reason we don't provide homes is you can never just provide homes to the ones who would have abused the ER' but instead have to provide them to all homeless. This is the exact reason more sensible systems do, in fact, try to provide homes to everyone. And various sorts of topup payments to those unable to afford their rent.
- jonfw 7y ago
  > more sensible systems Can you give me an example of one of these systems?
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_the_United_K...
  - claudeganon 7y ago
    Social housing in the rest of the developed world? It’s more or less the norm relative to the US’ punitive deprivation.
  - nradov 7y ago
    Salt Lake City had that policy for a while, but funding is running out. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-homelessness-housing/once-a-national-model-utah-struggles-with-homelessness-idUSKCN1P41EQ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-homelessness-housing/...
    - jonfw 7y ago
      > what about all of the working poor who are doing the right thing, but still have to pay half of their income in rent? I thought that the claim was that everybody got free housing to correct for perverse incentive structures. The SLC program required homelessness and disability- thus having a perverse incentive structure. I can see now that I misread the context- specifically referring to ER abusers- which makes this a very good example.
      - Gunax 7y ago
        I am the one who posted the comment you quoted. I'm not sure if you're agreeing or disagreeing with me. But I had heard of the Salt lake City program years ago, and expressed doubts about it online (unsurprisingly my opinions were not very popular). While I hope it works out, there are always externalities to doing the right thing (and housing homeless definitely is the right thing). Residents hate living in buildings with homeless neighbours. As sympathetic as we should be, once paying tenants start finding needles in bushes or drunkards stumbling around at night, they are not so enthused. There is a degree of hypocrisy in that the liberals who want to house-first are seldom the ones who want to house-next door. Second, municipalities that offer generous support for homeless may end up with a greater homeless population because of immigration. There isn't much of a solution for this so long as homelessness is tackled on a local basis.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    Theoretically in the UK local councils have an obligation to house anyone who has a "demonstrated connection with the area". There is also a "housing benefit" system which pays rent for those who cannot afford it. I say "theoretically" because it doesn't entirely work and there are still a gradually increasing number of rough sleepers, but it does at least keep children from living on the street. https://www.jrf.org.uk/mpse-2015/housing-benefit-claimants https://www.jrf.org.uk/mpse-2015/housing-benefit-claimants > In 2015 there were 4.8 million families in receipt of Housing Benefit. Most families –2.7 million – claiming Housing Benefit are workless and living in the social rented sector (this includes pensioner recipients). Some 1 million were workless and living in the private rented sector. The remaining 1.1 million were in working families, half in private rented and half in social rented housing.
    - daddylonglegs 7y ago
      The UK has been testing the reverse strategy to that described in the article. As well as the forty year war on public housing [1], the last decade has seen cuts to safety nets, social services, social care for the elderly and other 'soft' forms of care. The burden inevitably falls on the emergency services and the NHS and this is not only an ineffective way of caring for people but also, as the article notes, a very expensive way to fail. [1] https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n01/james-meek/where-will-we-live https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n01/james-meek/where-will-we-live
- Shivetya 7y ago
  it is not sensible to provide homes to everyone, the silent homeless, the ones you don't see, are the ones that are more easily helped. just identifying those with small children would go a long way it is the homeless with mental issues that you do see that we cannot just "give them a home" because it won't help them and you likely cannot even get them to stay in one anyway. States are stuck behind the issue of having to prove someone is a danger to themselves or others just to confine someone and it may be required to do so to treat, see O'Connor vs Donaldson for most of it . yet you will find organizations tripping over themselves to block this on case by case basis which makes the cost untenable to nearly everyone meaning in the end they don't get help. So it is up to Congress to define how it is determined that someone is a danger to themselves or other so it can withstand a court test and even then you are bound to have suit after suit using cherry picked cases. There is too much money to be made in the legal profession to let mental health cases be treated.
  - brudgers 7y ago
    Courts have made stripping a person of rights harder. Typically, I'm not inclined toward slippery slope arguments. But this is a case where erring on the side of caution seems warranted.
- papln 7y ago
  topup payments (in the absence of rent control) don't work because they are just past-throuhgs to landlords.
claudeganon 7y ago
>The reason we don't provide homes is you can never just provide homes to the ones who would have abused the ER' but instead have to provide them to all homeless. The reason we don’t provide homes to the homeless is they it’s a direct challenge to Capital’s control and capture of land rents and undermines the ideology used to pull the higher-earning segments of labor into alliance with them. Homelessness functions as both an implicit threat against the “middle class,” should they step out of line, and likewise as evidence of their moral superiority and judiciousness relative to their “lessers.”
moosey 7y ago
The reason that we can and should do housing first is for two reasons. First, it's cheaper than any of the alternatives. From the NEAH, a paragraph describing those savings: > Finally, permanent supportive housing has been found to be cost efficient. Providing access to housing generally results in cost savings for communities because housed people are less likely to use emergency services, including hospitals, jails, and emergency shelter, than those who are homeless. One study found an average cost savings on emergency services of $31,545 per person housed in a Housing First program over the course of two years.xii Another study showed that a Housing First program could cost up to $23,000 less per consumer per year than a shelter program. Next, it's just extremely effective. Being homeless over any period of time negatively affects mental well-being. The longer that you are homeless, the worse this gets, and the harder it is to get out. Housing first isn't just the cheapest solution, it actually solves the problem of homelessness directly and helps people to heal their mental state. You can find this information all over the place. Ultimately, we should have rapid housing-first policies for everyone who ends up homeless, but that will require the American public to give up our normally punitive cultural attitudes so that the data can win, but we haven't done the best job ending other punitive systems despite their total failure, like the war on drugs. Quote is from: http://endhomelessness.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/housing-first-fact-sheet.pdf http://endhomelessness.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/housin...
- Gunax 7y ago
  I really, genuinely hope I am wrong and that this program works out. I am 100% on board for expanding it if the trials works. First, you risk creating formerly-homeless slums. Any landlord that accepts homeless ends up upsetting paying tenants. As much as we love to help homeless--there is a NIMBYism here. Most of us are all for helping the homeless until we are finding needles in bushes and our kids are accosted by drunkards. I hate to be so harsh, but the bleeding hearts would be a lot more skeptical of housing the homeless if they started moving into their neighborhoods. Second, municipalities that offer generous support for homeless may end up with a greater homeless population because of immigration from other cities/towns. There isn't much of a solution for this so long as homelessness is tackled on a local basis.
jakelazaroff 7y ago
On the contrary, a lot of homeless people’s primary impediment is the fact that they don’t have their own living space. There‘s a lot of evidence that “housing first” is an effective way of combatting homelessness [1]. More broadly, unless a system is truly overwhelmed by bad actors, I’m inclined to not worry about them at all. Is it really that important that we only help anyone who “truly” need it — and burn the whole system down to that end? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_First https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_First
- dls2016 7y ago
  > Is it really that important that we only help anyone who “truly” need it — and burn the whole system down to that end? The welfare queen has been replaced by means testing.
- tantalor 7y ago
  This shouldn't be a new thing; it was understood in greater detail as "hierarchy of needs" in the 1940s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
- gerbilly 7y ago
  > More broadly, unless a system is truly overwhelmed by bad actors, I’m inclined to not worry about them at all. It's more expensive to means test many of these programmes than to just hand the money/benefits out. But it's a common human bias that cheating must be prevented, even when it doesn't make sense in the aggregate. It's a cognitive limitation we have to get beyond. This is why americans don't have universal healthcare, because they are obsessed with making sure that no one gets care who doesn't 'deserve' it as much as they do, even though it would actually benefit them in the aggregate if everyone in society was cared for.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
brudgers 7y ago
As terminology, "homeless" is technically useless. Whenever and wherever it's used, someone can strawman "homeless" onto people with a different set of circumstances than those being talked about. The population in the program is not homeless in the sense of "I call this town home." ER frequent flyers are frequent flyers because they live near a particular ER. Yes, there are people who provided an apartment will leave to sleep in the bushes. "Homeless" lumps them together with people who won't. It lumps them together with people living in their cars. Squatting in buildings. Couch surfing among relatives. "Homeless" tags people lacking shelter security with the mental illness, panhandling, substance abuse. The problem with "homeless" is it lumps people with intractable circumstances with people with very tractable problems. "Homeless" pretends there is a universal problem and therefore demands universal solutions. But the spectrum goes from passed out on the sidewalk to $200/night RV parks. So does the need for resources and services. This program is not for everyone. It won't meet everyone's needs. That doesn't make it a moral hazard.

by Gunax 7y ago

pjc50 7y ago

> The reason we don't provide homes is you can never just provide homes to the ones who would have abused the ER' but instead have to provide them to all homeless. This is the exact reason more sensible systems do, in fact, try to provide homes to everyone. And various sorts of topup payments to those unable to afford their rent.

jonfw 7y ago
> more sensible systems Can you give me an example of one of these systems?
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_the_United_K...
- claudeganon 7y ago
  Social housing in the rest of the developed world? It’s more or less the norm relative to the US’ punitive deprivation.
- nradov 7y ago
  Salt Lake City had that policy for a while, but funding is running out. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-homelessness-housing/once-a-national-model-utah-struggles-with-homelessness-idUSKCN1P41EQ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-homelessness-housing/...
  - jonfw 7y ago
    > what about all of the working poor who are doing the right thing, but still have to pay half of their income in rent? I thought that the claim was that everybody got free housing to correct for perverse incentive structures. The SLC program required homelessness and disability- thus having a perverse incentive structure. I can see now that I misread the context- specifically referring to ER abusers- which makes this a very good example.
    - Gunax 7y ago
      I am the one who posted the comment you quoted. I'm not sure if you're agreeing or disagreeing with me. But I had heard of the Salt lake City program years ago, and expressed doubts about it online (unsurprisingly my opinions were not very popular). While I hope it works out, there are always externalities to doing the right thing (and housing homeless definitely is the right thing). Residents hate living in buildings with homeless neighbours. As sympathetic as we should be, once paying tenants start finding needles in bushes or drunkards stumbling around at night, they are not so enthused. There is a degree of hypocrisy in that the liberals who want to house-first are seldom the ones who want to house-next door. Second, municipalities that offer generous support for homeless may end up with a greater homeless population because of immigration. There isn't much of a solution for this so long as homelessness is tackled on a local basis.
- pjc50 7y ago
  Theoretically in the UK local councils have an obligation to house anyone who has a "demonstrated connection with the area". There is also a "housing benefit" system which pays rent for those who cannot afford it. I say "theoretically" because it doesn't entirely work and there are still a gradually increasing number of rough sleepers, but it does at least keep children from living on the street. https://www.jrf.org.uk/mpse-2015/housing-benefit-claimants https://www.jrf.org.uk/mpse-2015/housing-benefit-claimants > In 2015 there were 4.8 million families in receipt of Housing Benefit. Most families –2.7 million – claiming Housing Benefit are workless and living in the social rented sector (this includes pensioner recipients). Some 1 million were workless and living in the private rented sector. The remaining 1.1 million were in working families, half in private rented and half in social rented housing.
  - daddylonglegs 7y ago
    The UK has been testing the reverse strategy to that described in the article. As well as the forty year war on public housing [1], the last decade has seen cuts to safety nets, social services, social care for the elderly and other 'soft' forms of care. The burden inevitably falls on the emergency services and the NHS and this is not only an ineffective way of caring for people but also, as the article notes, a very expensive way to fail. [1] https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n01/james-meek/where-will-we-live https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n01/james-meek/where-will-we-live
Shivetya 7y ago
it is not sensible to provide homes to everyone, the silent homeless, the ones you don't see, are the ones that are more easily helped. just identifying those with small children would go a long way it is the homeless with mental issues that you do see that we cannot just "give them a home" because it won't help them and you likely cannot even get them to stay in one anyway. States are stuck behind the issue of having to prove someone is a danger to themselves or others just to confine someone and it may be required to do so to treat, see O'Connor vs Donaldson for most of it . yet you will find organizations tripping over themselves to block this on case by case basis which makes the cost untenable to nearly everyone meaning in the end they don't get help. So it is up to Congress to define how it is determined that someone is a danger to themselves or other so it can withstand a court test and even then you are bound to have suit after suit using cherry picked cases. There is too much money to be made in the legal profession to let mental health cases be treated.
- brudgers 7y ago
  Courts have made stripping a person of rights harder. Typically, I'm not inclined toward slippery slope arguments. But this is a case where erring on the side of caution seems warranted.
papln 7y ago
topup payments (in the absence of rent control) don't work because they are just past-throuhgs to landlords.

claudeganon 7y ago

>The reason we don't provide homes is you can never just provide homes to the ones who would have abused the ER' but instead have to provide them to all homeless. The reason we don’t provide homes to the homeless is they it’s a direct challenge to Capital’s control and capture of land rents and undermines the ideology used to pull the higher-earning segments of labor into alliance with them. Homelessness functions as both an implicit threat against the “middle class,” should they step out of line, and likewise as evidence of their moral superiority and judiciousness relative to their “lessers.”

moosey 7y ago

The reason that we can and should do housing first is for two reasons. First, it's cheaper than any of the alternatives. From the NEAH, a paragraph describing those savings: > Finally, permanent supportive housing has been found to be cost efficient. Providing access to housing generally results in cost savings for communities because housed people are less likely to use emergency services, including hospitals, jails, and emergency shelter, than those who are homeless. One study found an average cost savings on emergency services of $31,545 per person housed in a Housing First program over the course of two years.xii Another study showed that a Housing First program could cost up to $23,000 less per consumer per year than a shelter program. Next, it's just extremely effective. Being homeless over any period of time negatively affects mental well-being. The longer that you are homeless, the worse this gets, and the harder it is to get out. Housing first isn't just the cheapest solution, it actually solves the problem of homelessness directly and helps people to heal their mental state. You can find this information all over the place. Ultimately, we should have rapid housing-first policies for everyone who ends up homeless, but that will require the American public to give up our normally punitive cultural attitudes so that the data can win, but we haven't done the best job ending other punitive systems despite their total failure, like the war on drugs. Quote is from: http://endhomelessness.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/housing-first-fact-sheet.pdf http://endhomelessness.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/housin...

Gunax 7y ago
I really, genuinely hope I am wrong and that this program works out. I am 100% on board for expanding it if the trials works. First, you risk creating formerly-homeless slums. Any landlord that accepts homeless ends up upsetting paying tenants. As much as we love to help homeless--there is a NIMBYism here. Most of us are all for helping the homeless until we are finding needles in bushes and our kids are accosted by drunkards. I hate to be so harsh, but the bleeding hearts would be a lot more skeptical of housing the homeless if they started moving into their neighborhoods. Second, municipalities that offer generous support for homeless may end up with a greater homeless population because of immigration from other cities/towns. There isn't much of a solution for this so long as homelessness is tackled on a local basis.

jakelazaroff 7y ago

On the contrary, a lot of homeless people’s primary impediment is the fact that they don’t have their own living space. There‘s a lot of evidence that “housing first” is an effective way of combatting homelessness [1]. More broadly, unless a system is truly overwhelmed by bad actors, I’m inclined to not worry about them at all. Is it really that important that we only help anyone who “truly” need it — and burn the whole system down to that end? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_First https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_First

dls2016 7y ago
> Is it really that important that we only help anyone who “truly” need it — and burn the whole system down to that end? The welfare queen has been replaced by means testing.
tantalor 7y ago
This shouldn't be a new thing; it was understood in greater detail as "hierarchy of needs" in the 1940s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
gerbilly 7y ago
> More broadly, unless a system is truly overwhelmed by bad actors, I’m inclined to not worry about them at all. It's more expensive to means test many of these programmes than to just hand the money/benefits out. But it's a common human bias that cheating must be prevented, even when it doesn't make sense in the aggregate. It's a cognitive limitation we have to get beyond. This is why americans don't have universal healthcare, because they are obsessed with making sure that no one gets care who doesn't 'deserve' it as much as they do, even though it would actually benefit them in the aggregate if everyone in society was cared for.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

brudgers 7y ago

As terminology, "homeless" is technically useless. Whenever and wherever it's used, someone can strawman "homeless" onto people with a different set of circumstances than those being talked about. The population in the program is not homeless in the sense of "I call this town home." ER frequent flyers are frequent flyers because they live near a particular ER. Yes, there are people who provided an apartment will leave to sleep in the bushes. "Homeless" lumps them together with people who won't. It lumps them together with people living in their cars. Squatting in buildings. Couch surfing among relatives. "Homeless" tags people lacking shelter security with the mental illness, panhandling, substance abuse. The problem with "homeless" is it lumps people with intractable circumstances with people with very tractable problems. "Homeless" pretends there is a universal problem and therefore demands universal solutions. But the spectrum goes from passed out on the sidewalk to $200/night RV parks. So does the need for resources and services. This program is not for everyone. It won't meet everyone's needs. That doesn't make it a moral hazard.