5 ms·

We have it over and over and over again that housing first is the approach that works. Yet it is very hard for society to stomach the idea of giving someone a h

We have it over and over and over again that housing first is the approach that works. Yet it is very hard for society to stomach the idea of giving someone a handout "no matter what they have done or will do". I don't know why but this seems to be the primary psychic barrier to doing this thing we know works and which can in some cases even be cheaper than services first aid.

turbinerneiter 6y ago
You can't give free housing to the unfortunate and at the same time increase rent on the workers. Workers need to see homeless people every day so they can feel better off and scared to end up like them. Everything else is bad for real estate investors.
- DubiousPusher 6y ago
  The motivations of moneyed interests are obvious. But the contempt the working and middle classes have for the poor is something I'll never understand. I've often been obliged to pay for something I've seen others acquire freely and I say good for them. I wouldn't exchange places with them for a moment. It seems the pettiest of all things to begrudge someone whose life is a disater, even in the rare cases when it is of their own making.
  - ShamelessC 6y ago
    "...socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." (paraphrasing Steinbeck)
  - syshum 6y ago
    >>But the contempt the working and middle classes have for the poor is something I'll never understand. Really? Should be fairly easy to understand, for a Middle Class Family that is living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to save for retirement, the kids collage fund, maybe help pay for a aging parent, save for home repair, and provide daily expenses seeing a good chunk of their earnings being stolen errr "taxed" away from them, money that they could use to provide for their own needs is a large part of it.
    - turbinerneiter 6y ago
      Taxation is only theft in the US, in the rest of the world you get something for it (health care, free education).
      - syshum 6y ago
        Taxation is always theft... If I steal your TV but clean your house, mow your yard, and perform other services "worth" same as your TV, I have still stolen your TV even though you got something for it.
  - Aunche 6y ago
    There wouldn't be so much contempt for the homeless in California if they weren't allowed throw used needles or defecate everywhere.
    - DanBC 6y ago
      What alternative do they have? If we don't provide adequate public loos, or addiction treatment, or injection rooms, or mental health care, we should expect to experience the problems that are caused.
      - Aunche 6y ago
        I don't understand why it's so frowned upon in cities like LA to arrest someone for disposing used needles on the ground, and sending them to jail. I'm not going to pretend that it's doing the homeless any favors. However, the alternative of letting them poison themselves with drugs, and I don't see how that's any more humane. I think the real reason America fails the homeless is not a lack of empathy, but a "it's your fault because you touched it last" mentality. Housing first requires people who work with social workers. These people already draw a lot of ire when they fail or deemed as too harsh.
        DubiousPusher 6y ago
        > I'm not going to pretend that it's doing the homeless any favors. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are simply ignorant of what jail or prison does to a person. Because I cannot see otherwise how you can possibly believe your right to a clean sidewalk should be enforced at the expense of another person's rights and freedom.
        DanBC 6y ago
        Why would you spend thousands of dollars putting people in prison rather than just spending that cash on providing them treatment? Addicts, by definition, take drugs. They continue to take drugs when they know it harms them. Why do you think the potential risk of going to prison for a few days will have a deterrent effect when the very real health consequences they're currently going through isn't a deterrent?
  - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
    Perhaps those who object have more to lose or have worked harder. Everyone has had different challenges that shape their perspective. We can never assume to understand another person’s motivation or understanding.
    - kelnos 6y ago
      We can't, but we can certainly judge that perspective to be counter-productive. I'm concerned about outcomes. Let's stop for a minute and assume that I'm an unfeeling, non-empathetic person who doesn't care about anyone but himself. Even then, I would advocate to allocate more money to homeless services, regardless of how that money is used, because doing so would benefit me: I don't want to see human feces on the sidewalk, or used syringes, or disease-carrying rats running around near tent encampments, or mentally-ill people screaming at me as I walk by. People who adopt the attitude that we shouldn't give people a generous safety net because they haven't done anything to "deserve" a handout are quite simply cutting off their noses to spite their faces. They're making their lives actively worse just to "teach a lesson" to those "undeserving" homeless people.
      - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
        ETA: when I say ‘you’, it’s not personal. Sometimes I type as stream of consciousness and it’s more a figure of speech. I am trying to fix this habit while commenting. This seemed to be a good time to clarify. Not sure I want to edit the entire comment and sentence structure. If you want clean streets, ban vagrancy and street living. You can’t save everyone. Savior complex is self serving. At some point, you have to cut damaging/damaged people lose. The sanctimonious savior complex is frankly nauseating ..especially when it achieves nothing but create noise that is pleasing only to the one practicing the virtue-signaling sounds. I attended al-anon meetings for three months to support a friend and continued going to them because I found it helpful to understand the effect addiction(of all kinds) has on the normal people around them. We have to be kind. Yes. But we are not our ‘brothers’ keepers’, as it were.. we need social boundaries when it comes to taking over the burden of those over whom/whose actions we have no control.
      - 6y ago
syshum 6y ago
The problem with Housing First, like with any Welfare program, it abuse. Housing First programs are ripe for abuse and are abused. While yes it is cheaper in some ways, the problem is people will be less likely to be creative or lean on personal support networks (i.e couch surfing, live with family, etc) if the government through the taxpayer will just hand you a key to an apartment no questions asked.... There were a couple of times we were technically homeless as a child, I slept many nights on the floor of my grandparents home, or an uncle, etc. so I am not unsympathetic to being in this condition. However I also do not believe government handouts are a solution to the problem I believe in Handups, but not handouts.
- Gunax 6y ago
  I hate to call it abuse, but I do wonder how one avoids rewarding bad behaviour. There are a lot of poor people who work very hard to provide for their family. I don't know what should we do for them.
  - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
    Teach them financial literacy. Upskill them. And encourage girls/women to practice safe sex. Large families without stable jobs/income end up living in the fringes of poverty and will eventually fall without a safety net. Time and again, low rates of literacy and teenage pregnancies and poor household income are correlated.
- shortandsweet 6y ago
  Abuse? How? And how do you know this? Where is the history of the entire world has this been attempted? I'm tired of hearing how people think it will go. Pre-critics and naysayers. I want action, drastic action that has never been done before to solve problems that have never been solved before. Offer a solution or go back to work.
  - DubiousPusher 6y ago
    It has been solved though. Most post industrial countries have solved or minimized it with generous safety nets.
mistermann 6y ago
I believe the primary psychic barrier is that when people propose a solution, they perceive that they are working from a perfectly accurate, comprehensive model of reality, when what they are really working from is a perspective upon a very simplified, personal model of reality. And what is overlooked/unrealized is not just the missing data (that which exists, but is not perceived by the individual), but also all the "forces" at play, like complex causation, individual preferences (many of which are highly illogical), behind the scenes string-pulling, randomness/chaos, and so forth and so on. If we could somehow find a way to get even a few people to realize (and honestly acknowledge) that we all live within a complex, interconnected and interactive system, full of uncertainty and illusion, could we perhaps start to come up with some solutions that take this complexity into consideration (and therefore are more resistant to being derailed by simple rhetoric and propaganda)?
jelliclesfarm 6y ago
Housing first doesn’t mean free housing for life.
vondur 6y ago
Here in California, we have huge budgets to tackle the homeless problems, which are paid for from taxes. Yet the homeless situation has not changed anywhere here that I can see. Where is that tax money going to?
- kelnos 6y ago
  Most of the money is going to places that aren't immediately visible: it's paying to keep people with marginal financial situations in their homes (and paying to keep newly re-housed people housed). Without that help, there would be many more people living on the streets than there are now. The stuff that you do notice, like hiring people to do street outreach and try to help homeless people directly, is a small part of the homelessness budget. That doesn't mean it's going super great. There are still a lot of people on the streets, obviously, and depending on where you look, either it's getting worse, or at best it's like they're treading water. But it turns out combating homeless is just expensive, even though arguably it can be cheaper than just doing nothing (taxpayers end up paying for those 911 calls and unpaid emergency room visits after all), but there are a lot of people who have an aversion to "just giving away money to people who don't deserve it". They'd rather pay to clean up after a homeless person, year after year, than pay to make that person not homeless, even if the latter would cost less. So funding is hard to fight for, and funding levels are never enough to fix things. San Francisco's allocation for this is a single-digit percentage of the city budget (your assertion that their budget is "huge" is incorrect; here it's a few hundred million on a $5B budget), and yet it is one of the biggest, most obviously visible problems the city is facing. Sure, simply throwing more money at a problem doesn't make it go away, but insufficient funding -- as is currently the case -- is going to ensure the problem remains.

turbinerneiter 6y ago

You can't give free housing to the unfortunate and at the same time increase rent on the workers. Workers need to see homeless people every day so they can feel better off and scared to end up like them. Everything else is bad for real estate investors.

DubiousPusher 6y ago
The motivations of moneyed interests are obvious. But the contempt the working and middle classes have for the poor is something I'll never understand. I've often been obliged to pay for something I've seen others acquire freely and I say good for them. I wouldn't exchange places with them for a moment. It seems the pettiest of all things to begrudge someone whose life is a disater, even in the rare cases when it is of their own making.
- ShamelessC 6y ago
  "...socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." (paraphrasing Steinbeck)
- syshum 6y ago
  >>But the contempt the working and middle classes have for the poor is something I'll never understand. Really? Should be fairly easy to understand, for a Middle Class Family that is living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to save for retirement, the kids collage fund, maybe help pay for a aging parent, save for home repair, and provide daily expenses seeing a good chunk of their earnings being stolen errr "taxed" away from them, money that they could use to provide for their own needs is a large part of it.
  - turbinerneiter 6y ago
    Taxation is only theft in the US, in the rest of the world you get something for it (health care, free education).
    - syshum 6y ago
      Taxation is always theft... If I steal your TV but clean your house, mow your yard, and perform other services "worth" same as your TV, I have still stolen your TV even though you got something for it.
- Aunche 6y ago
  There wouldn't be so much contempt for the homeless in California if they weren't allowed throw used needles or defecate everywhere.
  - DanBC 6y ago
    What alternative do they have? If we don't provide adequate public loos, or addiction treatment, or injection rooms, or mental health care, we should expect to experience the problems that are caused.
    - Aunche 6y ago
      I don't understand why it's so frowned upon in cities like LA to arrest someone for disposing used needles on the ground, and sending them to jail. I'm not going to pretend that it's doing the homeless any favors. However, the alternative of letting them poison themselves with drugs, and I don't see how that's any more humane. I think the real reason America fails the homeless is not a lack of empathy, but a "it's your fault because you touched it last" mentality. Housing first requires people who work with social workers. These people already draw a lot of ire when they fail or deemed as too harsh.
      - DubiousPusher 6y ago
        > I'm not going to pretend that it's doing the homeless any favors. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are simply ignorant of what jail or prison does to a person. Because I cannot see otherwise how you can possibly believe your right to a clean sidewalk should be enforced at the expense of another person's rights and freedom.
      - DanBC 6y ago
        Why would you spend thousands of dollars putting people in prison rather than just spending that cash on providing them treatment? Addicts, by definition, take drugs. They continue to take drugs when they know it harms them. Why do you think the potential risk of going to prison for a few days will have a deterrent effect when the very real health consequences they're currently going through isn't a deterrent?
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  Perhaps those who object have more to lose or have worked harder. Everyone has had different challenges that shape their perspective. We can never assume to understand another person’s motivation or understanding.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    We can't, but we can certainly judge that perspective to be counter-productive. I'm concerned about outcomes. Let's stop for a minute and assume that I'm an unfeeling, non-empathetic person who doesn't care about anyone but himself. Even then, I would advocate to allocate more money to homeless services, regardless of how that money is used, because doing so would benefit me: I don't want to see human feces on the sidewalk, or used syringes, or disease-carrying rats running around near tent encampments, or mentally-ill people screaming at me as I walk by. People who adopt the attitude that we shouldn't give people a generous safety net because they haven't done anything to "deserve" a handout are quite simply cutting off their noses to spite their faces. They're making their lives actively worse just to "teach a lesson" to those "undeserving" homeless people.
    - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
      ETA: when I say ‘you’, it’s not personal. Sometimes I type as stream of consciousness and it’s more a figure of speech. I am trying to fix this habit while commenting. This seemed to be a good time to clarify. Not sure I want to edit the entire comment and sentence structure. If you want clean streets, ban vagrancy and street living. You can’t save everyone. Savior complex is self serving. At some point, you have to cut damaging/damaged people lose. The sanctimonious savior complex is frankly nauseating ..especially when it achieves nothing but create noise that is pleasing only to the one practicing the virtue-signaling sounds. I attended al-anon meetings for three months to support a friend and continued going to them because I found it helpful to understand the effect addiction(of all kinds) has on the normal people around them. We have to be kind. Yes. But we are not our ‘brothers’ keepers’, as it were.. we need social boundaries when it comes to taking over the burden of those over whom/whose actions we have no control.
    - 6y ago

syshum 6y ago

The problem with Housing First, like with any Welfare program, it abuse. Housing First programs are ripe for abuse and are abused. While yes it is cheaper in some ways, the problem is people will be less likely to be creative or lean on personal support networks (i.e couch surfing, live with family, etc) if the government through the taxpayer will just hand you a key to an apartment no questions asked.... There were a couple of times we were technically homeless as a child, I slept many nights on the floor of my grandparents home, or an uncle, etc. so I am not unsympathetic to being in this condition. However I also do not believe government handouts are a solution to the problem I believe in Handups, but not handouts.

Gunax 6y ago
I hate to call it abuse, but I do wonder how one avoids rewarding bad behaviour. There are a lot of poor people who work very hard to provide for their family. I don't know what should we do for them.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  Teach them financial literacy. Upskill them. And encourage girls/women to practice safe sex. Large families without stable jobs/income end up living in the fringes of poverty and will eventually fall without a safety net. Time and again, low rates of literacy and teenage pregnancies and poor household income are correlated.
shortandsweet 6y ago
Abuse? How? And how do you know this? Where is the history of the entire world has this been attempted? I'm tired of hearing how people think it will go. Pre-critics and naysayers. I want action, drastic action that has never been done before to solve problems that have never been solved before. Offer a solution or go back to work.
- DubiousPusher 6y ago
  It has been solved though. Most post industrial countries have solved or minimized it with generous safety nets.

mistermann 6y ago

I believe the primary psychic barrier is that when people propose a solution, they perceive that they are working from a perfectly accurate, comprehensive model of reality, when what they are really working from is a perspective upon a very simplified, personal model of reality. And what is overlooked/unrealized is not just the missing data (that which exists, but is not perceived by the individual), but also all the "forces" at play, like complex causation, individual preferences (many of which are highly illogical), behind the scenes string-pulling, randomness/chaos, and so forth and so on. If we could somehow find a way to get even a few people to realize (and honestly acknowledge) that we all live within a complex, interconnected and interactive system, full of uncertainty and illusion, could we perhaps start to come up with some solutions that take this complexity into consideration (and therefore are more resistant to being derailed by simple rhetoric and propaganda)?

jelliclesfarm 6y ago

Housing first doesn’t mean free housing for life.

vondur 6y ago

Here in California, we have huge budgets to tackle the homeless problems, which are paid for from taxes. Yet the homeless situation has not changed anywhere here that I can see. Where is that tax money going to?

kelnos 6y ago
Most of the money is going to places that aren't immediately visible: it's paying to keep people with marginal financial situations in their homes (and paying to keep newly re-housed people housed). Without that help, there would be many more people living on the streets than there are now. The stuff that you do notice, like hiring people to do street outreach and try to help homeless people directly, is a small part of the homelessness budget. That doesn't mean it's going super great. There are still a lot of people on the streets, obviously, and depending on where you look, either it's getting worse, or at best it's like they're treading water. But it turns out combating homeless is just expensive, even though arguably it can be cheaper than just doing nothing (taxpayers end up paying for those 911 calls and unpaid emergency room visits after all), but there are a lot of people who have an aversion to "just giving away money to people who don't deserve it". They'd rather pay to clean up after a homeless person, year after year, than pay to make that person not homeless, even if the latter would cost less. So funding is hard to fight for, and funding levels are never enough to fix things. San Francisco's allocation for this is a single-digit percentage of the city budget (your assertion that their budget is "huge" is incorrect; here it's a few hundred million on a $5B budget), and yet it is one of the biggest, most obviously visible problems the city is facing. Sure, simply throwing more money at a problem doesn't make it go away, but insufficient funding -- as is currently the case -- is going to ensure the problem remains.