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> the per-tent cost covers services, meals, sanitation and staffing OK, so $2600 gets a fair bit. Also looking at the report [1] this rate is calculated by di
by advisedwang 5y ago
> the per-tent cost covers services, meals, sanitation and staffing
OK, so $2600 gets a fair bit.
Also looking at the report [1] this rate is calculated by dividing the total cost of the pilot by the duration and number of clients. So that is including one-time set up, planning and evaluation in the cost, which is probably a decent fraction of the cost as it's only an 8 month pilot. The recurring cost for extending may be lower.
I think it's misleading to compare that dollar amount to the monthly cost of an apartment.
[1] https://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2020/20-0841_rpt_cao_03-18-2021.pdf https://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2020/20-0841_rpt_cao_03...
- fortran77 5y agoThis is NPR reporting. Why would they mislead on an issue like this? I think they're a very credible source, given their progressive bent, to be asking these questions.
- anonporridge 5y agoBecause they're under the same competitive pressure in the attention economy as every other media outlet?
- fortran77 5y agoNot really. They're funded a bit differently.
- anonporridge 5y agoTrue. But they will still fail if they lose too many eyeballs. And the world is increasingly overflowing with distractions.
- edoceo 5y agoA large portion of the funding comes from folks who give them attention.
- stretchwithme 5y agoOnly 8% from government.
- chrisseaton 5y ago> Why would they mislead on an issue like this? I think they're a very credible source Do you not agree the number is misleading?
- fortran77 5y agoNo. Numbers are numbers.
- chrisseaton 5y agoBut it’s not per-tent is it? It per-tent-and-services-and-meals-and-sanitation-and-project-overheads. That’s misleading. > Numbers are numbers. But the number isn’t what they say it is. The phrase per-tent either intentionally or unintentionally misleads you to think that’s the cost literally for the tent and should be compared against rent.
- sjg007 5y agoAgreed. It's room and board plus. It's also public safety.
- megablast 5y agoThat seems obvious, doesn't it??
- chrisseaton 5y agoClearly not to someone in the chain of reporters and editors - since they compare it to rent, which doesn’t include these things. Either describing the number as per-tent is misleading, or the comparison to rent is misleading. Either way, part of it is misleading. They even basically acknowledge it’s a misleading comparison in the article!
- ahelwer 5y agoI have no idea why people believe NPR to be progressive. The joke name "Nice Polite Republicans" exists for a reason. Liberal news coverage of homeless issues rarely takes a progressive framing, anyway.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- brianwawok 5y ago> The Pew survey found that the NPR audience tends Democratic (17% Republican, 37% independent, 43% Democratic) and centrist (21% conservative, 39% moderate, 36% liberal). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR_controversies
- belenos46 5y agoYes. And "democrat" != "actually liberal". The guy in the white house, sending Israel billions of dollars in aid while the Israeli government massacres civilians is a democrat, for fuckssake.
- Google234 5y agoImagine supporting a terorist state in Hamas. Fortunately most democrats aren’t regressive leftist - yet.
- belenos46 5y agoBig yawn. Imagine suggesting that the hundreds -that we know about- of folks killed while just trying to live their damn lives constitute "a terrorist state" If I was that bad at basic logic, I'm not sure I'd tell on myself like that.
- fortran77 5y agoI like NPR. But they're certainly progressive/left leaning. On the subject of homelessness, they've written many thoughtful stories: https://www.npr.org/search?query=Homelesss&page=1 https://www.npr.org/search?query=Homelesss&page=1
- advisedwang 5y agoMy guess is framing it as a $ per person per month came from whoever pointed the report out to the journalist, possibly one of the interviewees (Comptroller, Legal Aid, Councilmember etc). From there the comparison to rent is pretty natural. I don't think this is bad reporting or anything, I was commenting to help people avoid getting into the trap of thinking in the most obvious framing after skimming a headline.
- narrator 5y agoAs long as the local government has tons of money doing nothing in their budget, they are going to find a way to spend it, and they're not going to care if they overpay because what else are they going to spend it on? In coastal California, the rule is never ever give that money back by lowering taxes. Taxes only go up. If there's too much money being generated by the taxes to spend, start spending it on homelessness or whatever utopian goal sounds good. Some problems though, like healthcare and homelessness don't get better if you spend more money on them. The prices of healthcare just go up, because there is limited supply of doctors and drug companies charge whatever they want, and more homeless people show up to take advantage of the great services.
- sjg007 5y agoWhat's the solution then? Utah built apartments for everyone. That seems to have worked.
- hedora 5y agoBuilding more houses would help a lot in coastal California. Labor costs follow housing costs, so anything involving a local human being doing work is insanely overpriced. If housing prices dropped, the labor market would stabilize, lowering the cost of more construction. Instead, the planning commissions and zoning boards intentionally restrict the supply of housing, causing all sorts of market distortions. Similarly, the transit system is repeatedly sabotaged. We spend a lot of money narrowing roads or intentionally lowering their rush hour throughput. Public transit is also systematically mismanaged. My theory is that they intentionally reduce practical commute distances to prop up housing values near the work. (Sometimes they claim they make commuting worse to protect the environment. My car gets 50-66% as many miles per gallon in the bay area as it does in other cities. Even driving up a mountain is more fuel efficient than rush hour around here. It’s pretty clear the traffic engineering here is not concerned with CO2 emissions.)
- Swizec 5y ago> My car gets 50-66% as many miles per gallon in the bay area as it does in other cities I think the idea is that if commuting sucks enough you’ll stop doing it and those emissions go to zero. Or you’ll switch to public or shuttle transit and emissions per person per mile drop by some ridiculously high factor. A bus can pack some 80 people into the space of 4 cars and I bet emissions aren’t 80x those of a car either.
- wyager 5y ago$31,000/yr is already pretty shit, and it’s even worse when you consider the opportunity cost of not using that space on a person who’s actually going to gain a productivity benefit from living in SF.
- alisonkisk 5y agoYou missed some critical details in the story.
- imtringued 5y agoPutting a dozen homeless people on a plot may be more space efficient than another single family home.