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> The cure for homelessness is a home. "The cure for a cough is cough drops" I feel it is important to idenify the root cause, not merely treat symptoms. _Why

by umvi 7y ago

> The cure for homelessness is a home. "The cure for a cough is cough drops" I feel it is important to idenify the root cause, not merely treat symptoms. _Why_ is the person homeless? How could it have been prevented in the first place? _Why_ is the person coughing? Do they have allergies? lung cancer...?

8bitsrule 7y ago
I would assert that -not having a home- is the root cause of a whole lot of stuff. No address, no phone, no toilet, poor rest, poor diet, poor hygiene, poor clothes, constant threats, theft, despair, etc. etc. etc. Where it has been tried, it works. (Yeah, a few fall off the wagon. So then ... it's either 100% success or a failure? Limp excuse-making) 95% of those who talk about the 'real' problems have no idea. They've never even been close. I've seen all of the condemnations and hang-wringing about costs. 95% of them are simply shitty attempts to create FUD so people will do nothing ... from people who really don't give a damn. Where it has been tried, it works. Prime examples: Helsinki, HousingFirst. But that would mean actually analyzing the problem. Emoting is so much easier.
- umvi 7y ago
  > I would assert that -not having a home- is the root cause of a whole lot of stuff Agreed, but what's the root cause of not having a home? Drugs? Rent? Family? Local government? Solve that one, and the effects cascade to prevent the "whole lot of stuff" you mentioned. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, etc.
DoreenMichele 7y ago
For homelessness, not having a home is the very definition of the issue. We don't want to build "affordable housing" in the US. We literally feel it's better to let people be homeless than provide crappy housing. Then we run around claiming the nationwide, well-known not remotely a secret shortage of affordable housing is totes irrelevant and the homeless are all junkies and crazies. Studies show that increases in rent correlate 96 percent to increases in homelessness. Build enough housing. Make it cheap enough and possible to live life without owning a car. If that reduces homelessness by 96 percent and the remaining four percent are hardcore, seriously screwed up junkies and crazies, we can throw extra resources at them because we spend more on average on trying to help the homeless than annual rent would cost. Sometimes hospitals provide free housing to seriously ill homeless because it's a fraction of the cost of leaving them homeless and seeing them in the ER constantly and hospitalizing them regularly. You want to see fewer homeless? The single best thing you can do is advocate for more housing in your city.
- umvi 7y ago
  > For homelessness, not having a home is the very definition of the issue I'm more interested in why they don't have a home. Is it really because rent is too high as you mentioned? Why can't they move to cheaper housing or take on a roommate? How come they don't have a family to fall back on (parents, siblings, etc)? These are the types of questions I want studied, not "how can we most effectively slap a bandaid on this symptom we are observing?" > You want to see fewer homeless? The single best thing you can do is advocate for more housing in your city. What I really want to see is fewer people getting into a position where they need to rely on the government to survive. How can we identify and address those root causes?
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    I literally just answered exactly that and the answer is "Increase the supply of affordable (in the most literal sense of the word) housing in the US because there is a nationwide shortage." I don't mean "affordable housing" as some euphemism for government owned housing. I mean stuff you can get for under $600 that doesn't require you to own a car to get to it. There is a dearth of such housing across the entire freaking nation. 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... The Clear Connection Between Housing Costs and Homelessness https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-clear-connection-between-housing.html https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-clear-c... The Missing Middle https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-missing-middle.html https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-missing... I actually "majored" in this in college, so to speak. Before I spent nearly six years homeless, I wanted to be an urban planner. I was pursuing a bachelor's in Environmental Resource Management with a concentration in Housing intended to eventually also get a Masters in Urban Planning. As part of that program, I took a college class on Homelessness and Public Policy. I feel like I repeat these exact same points ad nauseum on Hacker News. Our housing policies have increasingly encouraged a very upper class version of single family detached homes designed for nuclear families and our demographics have diverged from that population. We literally don't build housing designed explicitly for the needs of single people, childless couples, etc and we have more such households than we used to have. We now have this insane expectation that single people should rent housing designed for a nuclear family and fill the extra bedrooms with strangers to split the rent. Then we make movies, like Single White Female, about what a nightmare it is to have to live with total strangers to make your life work. We've torn down more than a million SROs. We've largely zoned out of existence new Missing Middle Housing. People can't rent what doesn't actually exist and affordable housing in a walkable neighborhood mostly doesn't exist in the US. We simply don't build it. Then we run around acting like homeless people are all crazies and junkies, irresponsible, don't have self discipline, etc etc. and when you say "Just build more housing that works for people" you get crazy-making replies saying "But WHY?????" Because it would fix the vast majority of this problem. That's why. And then I feel like spitting nails because I don't know what I need to do to more effectively communicate about this thing that I've literally studied.

by umvi 7y ago

8bitsrule 7y ago

I would assert that -not having a home- is the root cause of a whole lot of stuff. No address, no phone, no toilet, poor rest, poor diet, poor hygiene, poor clothes, constant threats, theft, despair, etc. etc. etc. Where it has been tried, it works. (Yeah, a few fall off the wagon. So then ... it's either 100% success or a failure? Limp excuse-making) 95% of those who talk about the 'real' problems have no idea. They've never even been close. I've seen all of the condemnations and hang-wringing about costs. 95% of them are simply shitty attempts to create FUD so people will do nothing ... from people who really don't give a damn. Where it has been tried, it works. Prime examples: Helsinki, HousingFirst. But that would mean actually analyzing the problem. Emoting is so much easier.

umvi 7y ago
> I would assert that -not having a home- is the root cause of a whole lot of stuff Agreed, but what's the root cause of not having a home? Drugs? Rent? Family? Local government? Solve that one, and the effects cascade to prevent the "whole lot of stuff" you mentioned. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, etc.

DoreenMichele 7y ago

For homelessness, not having a home is the very definition of the issue. We don't want to build "affordable housing" in the US. We literally feel it's better to let people be homeless than provide crappy housing. Then we run around claiming the nationwide, well-known not remotely a secret shortage of affordable housing is totes irrelevant and the homeless are all junkies and crazies. Studies show that increases in rent correlate 96 percent to increases in homelessness. Build enough housing. Make it cheap enough and possible to live life without owning a car. If that reduces homelessness by 96 percent and the remaining four percent are hardcore, seriously screwed up junkies and crazies, we can throw extra resources at them because we spend more on average on trying to help the homeless than annual rent would cost. Sometimes hospitals provide free housing to seriously ill homeless because it's a fraction of the cost of leaving them homeless and seeing them in the ER constantly and hospitalizing them regularly. You want to see fewer homeless? The single best thing you can do is advocate for more housing in your city.

umvi 7y ago
> For homelessness, not having a home is the very definition of the issue I'm more interested in why they don't have a home. Is it really because rent is too high as you mentioned? Why can't they move to cheaper housing or take on a roommate? How come they don't have a family to fall back on (parents, siblings, etc)? These are the types of questions I want studied, not "how can we most effectively slap a bandaid on this symptom we are observing?" > You want to see fewer homeless? The single best thing you can do is advocate for more housing in your city. What I really want to see is fewer people getting into a position where they need to rely on the government to survive. How can we identify and address those root causes?
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  I literally just answered exactly that and the answer is "Increase the supply of affordable (in the most literal sense of the word) housing in the US because there is a nationwide shortage." I don't mean "affordable housing" as some euphemism for government owned housing. I mean stuff you can get for under $600 that doesn't require you to own a car to get to it. There is a dearth of such housing across the entire freaking nation. 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... The Clear Connection Between Housing Costs and Homelessness https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-clear-connection-between-housing.html https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-clear-c... The Missing Middle https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-missing-middle.html https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-missing... I actually "majored" in this in college, so to speak. Before I spent nearly six years homeless, I wanted to be an urban planner. I was pursuing a bachelor's in Environmental Resource Management with a concentration in Housing intended to eventually also get a Masters in Urban Planning. As part of that program, I took a college class on Homelessness and Public Policy. I feel like I repeat these exact same points ad nauseum on Hacker News. Our housing policies have increasingly encouraged a very upper class version of single family detached homes designed for nuclear families and our demographics have diverged from that population. We literally don't build housing designed explicitly for the needs of single people, childless couples, etc and we have more such households than we used to have. We now have this insane expectation that single people should rent housing designed for a nuclear family and fill the extra bedrooms with strangers to split the rent. Then we make movies, like Single White Female, about what a nightmare it is to have to live with total strangers to make your life work. We've torn down more than a million SROs. We've largely zoned out of existence new Missing Middle Housing. People can't rent what doesn't actually exist and affordable housing in a walkable neighborhood mostly doesn't exist in the US. We simply don't build it. Then we run around acting like homeless people are all crazies and junkies, irresponsible, don't have self discipline, etc etc. and when you say "Just build more housing that works for people" you get crazy-making replies saying "But WHY?????" Because it would fix the vast majority of this problem. That's why. And then I feel like spitting nails because I don't know what I need to do to more effectively communicate about this thing that I've literally studied.