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This is the wrong focus. This type of approach tends to make things worse. The more resources you pour into "helping the homeless," the worse the problem tends

This is the wrong focus. This type of approach tends to make things worse. The more resources you pour into "helping the homeless," the worse the problem tends to get. You tend to magnify it. California has seriously bad housing policies that actively push up the cost of housing. They have also underbuilt housing for decades, which is known to push up the cost of housing. They need to be remedying that issue. You also need to identify factors that put people at risk of homelessness and help people who have those characteristics rather than helping people based on their current lack of housing. You need to help them regardless of their housing status. If you help people with serious problems conditional upon being homeless, you tend to entrench the problem of homelessness. It actively makes it harder to get off the street because you can't get help without first being homeless and then you may lose access to help if you get back into housing. So good programs help people with certain problems or characteristics which put them at risk of homelessness and do so regardless of their current housing status. "Helping the homeless" is an approach that tends to be subject to the Shirky Principle: It tends to preserve the problem it is supposedly aiming to solve. This data base is potentially of no real value in solving the problem, though it sure has terrific PR value for pretending to solve the problem. If you really want to solve the problem, start fixing issues that push up market-rate housing to crazy high prices. And, you know, people in California don't really, seriously want that and you will be very hard pressed to get credit for "playing hero" and "helping the homeless." I used to joke that "Someday, I will be a landlord providing affordable housing. No, I will not be celebrated as someone solving homelessness. I will be vilified in the press as a Slum Lord." People making headlines for trying to help the homeless are people who want pats on the back for Playing Hero. And they are very much Playing. I talked to a guy one day who was all "I have dreams of turning this entire block (of the small town where I currently live) into homeless services!" and I was like "Oh, look at the time! I have a meeting to attend! Buh-bye!" If you really care about the people, you don't dream of growing homeless services. You dream of making society work so that few people end up homeless. No one will call you a hero for that.

kodah 6y ago
If you drive down home costs in hyper inflated cities in California, where people got legitimate loans on that hyper inflation, who is left holding the bag? Someone has to pay that debt that is now worthless due to decreased inflation, right? This problem perplexes me, because it seems like it's a runaway train once it gets started.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  A place to start is simply put a stop to the hyper-inflation. Housing costs do not have to come down as your first step. Just stop having them double every other day, so to speak, and you will start easing some of these issues.
  - kodah 6y ago
    Agreed, I'm just puzzled at what the end state is. Would we expect that everyone who moves in and out of this area takes a gradual loss on home prices until they normalize, do we have financial tools for mitigating it, will the tax payers pay the cost? These are some of the options I've had run through my head.
    - DoreenMichele 6y ago
      Look, no one needs to take a loss on anything, per se. First, we tend to build really huge homes. Make it possible to build small homes and that makes it possible to increase housing supply without tanking the price of the large houses. Second, remove some of the tax protections that make housing super cheap for people who have owned it a long time already. This is a major issue in California and it's one people aren't going to want fixed. It is a subsidy for The Haves who got in before prices went up and intentionally locked in their low costs and pulled the ladder up behind them. Their prices are low. It's everyone else who is paying for that. You don't have to tank the prices on real estate in California to begin remedying this. Believing you do is part of the problem. Start bringing down administrative costs and administrative barriers to building more housing. Ease up the choke hold on the supply. You can have both "more butter and more guns" if you help people make their lives work. It's amazingly hard to be a productive member of society while sleeping in a tend and dodging the police. Getting back into housing tends to bring costs down while improving ability to earn, etc. Stop flushing the lives of The Have Nots down the toilet in the name of preserving wealth for the privileged few. It does not have to be a tragedy for the already privileged to dump less on the less privileged.
      - 6y ago
challengly 6y ago
Great summation of the problem. Unfortunately no one in power seems to actually want to solve it, and voters don't vote them out. We seem to be stuck.

kodah 6y ago

If you drive down home costs in hyper inflated cities in California, where people got legitimate loans on that hyper inflation, who is left holding the bag? Someone has to pay that debt that is now worthless due to decreased inflation, right? This problem perplexes me, because it seems like it's a runaway train once it gets started.

DoreenMichele 6y ago
A place to start is simply put a stop to the hyper-inflation. Housing costs do not have to come down as your first step. Just stop having them double every other day, so to speak, and you will start easing some of these issues.
- kodah 6y ago
  Agreed, I'm just puzzled at what the end state is. Would we expect that everyone who moves in and out of this area takes a gradual loss on home prices until they normalize, do we have financial tools for mitigating it, will the tax payers pay the cost? These are some of the options I've had run through my head.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    Look, no one needs to take a loss on anything, per se. First, we tend to build really huge homes. Make it possible to build small homes and that makes it possible to increase housing supply without tanking the price of the large houses. Second, remove some of the tax protections that make housing super cheap for people who have owned it a long time already. This is a major issue in California and it's one people aren't going to want fixed. It is a subsidy for The Haves who got in before prices went up and intentionally locked in their low costs and pulled the ladder up behind them. Their prices are low. It's everyone else who is paying for that. You don't have to tank the prices on real estate in California to begin remedying this. Believing you do is part of the problem. Start bringing down administrative costs and administrative barriers to building more housing. Ease up the choke hold on the supply. You can have both "more butter and more guns" if you help people make their lives work. It's amazingly hard to be a productive member of society while sleeping in a tend and dodging the police. Getting back into housing tends to bring costs down while improving ability to earn, etc. Stop flushing the lives of The Have Nots down the toilet in the name of preserving wealth for the privileged few. It does not have to be a tragedy for the already privileged to dump less on the less privileged.
    - 6y ago

challengly 6y ago

Great summation of the problem. Unfortunately no one in power seems to actually want to solve it, and voters don't vote them out. We seem to be stuck.