11 ms·

Posting this because most people in HN have a warped view of what homelessness is, especially in california. First of all, when most people think homeless they

Posting this because most people in HN have a warped view of what homelessness is, especially in california. First of all, when most people think homeless they think "fentanyl addict out of his mind living in squalor" and while there are certainly a bunch of those people in the homeless population, they aren't even a majority of the homeless. In general, about 2/3 of the homeless are transiently homeless. They will be homeless for less than 12 months, they are likely employed while they are homeless at least in a part time capacity, or they are in college. These folks generally refuse to get services and spend their time sleeping in their car, crashing on friends couches, and in a pinch, sleeping in tents outside away from the wild areas. In general, these people are on hard times due to bad luck more or less, and are struggling to get out of it. Another 1/3 of the homeless are people who used to be in the prior group, but are now "chronically homeless". They may have gotten into drugs or developed a mental issue in the first 12 months that they became homeless. These people are the "out of their minds" camp dwellers we think about when we think about the homeless. The biggest risk factor for being in this group is becoming homeless in the first place, and the best way to prevent people from becoming transiently homeless is to prevent them from losing their stable housing or getting them into stable housing within the first 12 months of them becoming homeless. It is much harder to "rehabilitate" someone who has been homeless for 12+ months than it is to rehabilitate someone who has been homeless for <12 months. One issue we have now is that is very easy for people to move from "safely housed" to "transiently homeless" and one big way to prevent this downward trend in quality of life is to build more cheap housing so people in the precarious spot have alternatives to living in a tent. Its not going to be an immediate feedback loop but its the only sustainable way to prevent the growing numbers of homeless in US cities.

spoonjim 5y ago
Whenever I see someone who is quite clearly very recently homeless I give them as much money as I can afford to, like $50-100, because I feel like it can get them out of homelessness. When I see someone completely out of their mind I don’t feel like anything I can do will make a material difference, just get them different levels of stoned for the next 3 hours.
- 0xB31B1B 5y ago
  the crazy thing is that there are a ton of "recently homeless" folks you encounter in your daily life without even knowing it. Something like 10% of the cal state university students are homeless. My wife is a doc in the ER and deals with a bunch of folks who are going through these issues. Many retail workers, service workers etc are homeless, shower at the gym, and have been living in their car or friends couches for the past few months and will probably find a place to live in the next few months.
  - capeterson 5y ago
    If anyone was wondering about a source, as I was, here: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-cal-state-homelessness-20160620-snap-story.html https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-cal-state-homeless... https://presspage-production-content.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/1487/cohomelessstudy.pdf?10000 https://presspage-production-content.s3.amazonaws.com/upload...
- londons_explore 5y ago
  When you give $50-100, please employ them to do a task. Ie. "Here's $50. Go and buy me some ice cream. You can have another $50 when you bring it to me". It discourages begging and encourages an entrepreneur mentality.
  - thebigman433 5y ago
    This is the most stereotype hn comment I can imagine. Why does your goal have to include putting them in some weird spot where youre holding power over them to teach some "entrepreneur mentality". Most of the temporarily homeless population is embarrassed to ask for money, just treat them like an adult if youre going to offer help.
  - spoonjim 5y ago
    Sorry, I’m not a complete shitheel.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
systemvoltage 5y ago
Would you mind posting the sources? Even if its anedotal or not authoritative, it would be good to inform where you learned about the 1/3-2/3 breakdown.
- 0xB31B1B 5y ago
  one area is the "point in time homeless surveys" here: https://hsh.sfgov.org/about/research-and-reports/san-francisco-homeless-point-in-time-count-reports/ https://hsh.sfgov.org/about/research-and-reports/san-francis... the data can be a little hard to interpret for different categories/parts of the report. For instance, when 10% of the respondents say they have been homeless for 30 days or less, you can extrapolate this and assume that this same number of people is rotating in and out of homelessness frequently and over a year the number of homeless in this bit is 12x the number in the point in time survey. I picked up a lot of this through volunteering and participating in homeless social services and doing housing related activism.
fastball 5y ago
That is well and all, but seems like a bit of a distraction from the OP. While 2/3 of homeless may be transient homeless, it seems incredibly unlikely that most of the people living in tents fall into that category rather than into the chronically homeless camp.
- mmcwilliams 5y ago
  Wouldn’t the fact that the population is split 2/1 mean that it is very likely that unhoused people living in those tents do fall into that category? I believe that’s what the GP is referring to when they say that people have a warped view about homelessness; that the situation “seems” one way because of anecdotal experience and media representation.
  - fastball 5y ago
    No, as pointed out by the GP, there are a lot of "homeless" people who are living out of their car / crashing on a friend's sofa / etc. While these people are technically homeless, I wouldn't say the general public as a skewed view of homelessness – it's just when people say homeless they're not usually talking about people crashing on a friend's sofa. People in tents almost by definition are not the kind of homeless that will crash on a sofa / live out of a car. And are generally the type of homeless that are panhandling, which is of course the most visible group. It's similar to how there is a disconnect in how people talk about "mass shootings" and what the public think that means. The public thinks of a mass shooting as what the FBI calls an "active shooter" event, where someone is just opening fire on random people, while in stats and things it's just any shooting where 3+ people get shot, which can include gangland-style violence. People aren't "confused", we're just using two different definitions. My point is of course not that the transient homeless don't need help or anything like that. It's just strange to bring them into it when presumably they are not a large percentage of the "habitually living in tents" homeless, which should of course be handled differently.
dcolkitt 5y ago
> one big way to prevent this downward trend in quality of life is to build more cheap housing One pedantic quibble. It's not necessary to build cheap housing specifically. It's perfectly fine simply to build more housing of any type. Today's new expensive housing will indirectly create more cheap housing in the pre-existing housing stock, by pulling demand out of the market. Throughout all of American history, new housing has almost exclusively been relatively expensive housing. The rich prefer to live in new housing stock, and the poor prefer to get discounts on old housing stock. The same way that a robust new car market creates a secondary market for cheap used cars. A lot of people with good intentions will try to block any type of development that doesn't specifically include affordable housing. But this is the exact opposite of what's needed. The best way to lower the cost of housing is to increase the supply of housing. And the best way to do that is to unleash developers whatever is most profitable whenever and whoever they want without government regulation and NIMBY activists getting in their way.
- Tiktaalik 5y ago
  Yes but we have a crisis now which means that we need both regular market housing now and affordable housing now. We do not uh have the luxury of building luxury housing only then waiting 40 years for it to eventually become affordable.
  - BobbyJo 5y ago
    Market housing creates affordable housing by displacing demand. No matter what kind of housing you build, as long as it gets built now it will lower prices now.
    - TchoBeer 5y ago
      More luxery houses would lower prices for luxery housing, but not necessarily for affordable housing. I don't know how much those are competing markets
      - alisonkisk 5y ago
tryonenow 5y ago
I suspect that you're excluding a nontrivial proportion of homeless people who simply do not wish to live with the burden of employment and responsibilities of rent/mortgage when they can live outdoors in perpetually nice weather. I don't know how significant this number is but I don't think it's fair to ask society to subsidize their lifestyle.
baby 5y ago
Not just cheap housing, but housing aids (as a student I used to get a few hundred bucks every month for my rent in France) and free health insurance
throwaway98797 5y ago
Math does not add up. 1/3 would over time vastly out number the 2/3 group unless the two third group is growing exponentially.
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  You assume transiently homeless people become chronically homeless faster than chronically homeless people find homes or die.
  - missedthecue 5y ago
    That seems like a reasonable assumption does it not?
    - pseudalopex 5y ago
      Assuming most homeless people are chronically homeless seems reasonable too. But it's wrong. Let's have more data and fewer assumptions.
    - dodobirdlord 5y ago
      Percentage wise, few transiently homeless people become chronically homeless. Far more people each year cycle through a period of transient homelessness than the average number of transiently homeless people at any point in time.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  Unless the 1/3 group doesn’t have a terribly long life expectancy.
  - missedthecue 5y ago
    I mean they might die at 60 instead of 80, but that could still mean 30 or 40 years on the street. A homeless camp isn't necessarily conducive to lengthy lifespans but it's not Stalingrad.
wnevets 5y ago
> They may have gotten into drugs or developed a mental issue in the first 12 months that they became homeless. These people are the "out of their minds" camp dwellers we think about when we think about the homeless. The biggest risk factor for being in this group is becoming homeless in the first place, One of the things that took me along time to realize was simply not having a safe, quiet and stable place to sleep for an extended period time would drive virtually anyone into drugs, alcohol and mental illness.
- Griffinsauce 5y ago
  Yes. It is not their default state, these are just people like you and me that we have completely failed as a society.
vmception 5y ago
Its because HN is the silicon valley town crier whose readers are either transient, foreigners, or people coming from privilege already in the area. Groups so far removed from the problem that they have no idea what's going on. They'll latch on to any contrived empathic half-solution and then leave the area.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
homelesssjw 5y ago
> Posting this because most people in HN have a warped view of what homelessness is You, good intentions aside, are the one with the warped perspective. This is social justice warrior nonsense. Advocates love to cite the same self-collected/anecdotal data that just happens to support to their expensive, unhelpful, selfish ”mission”. What you’re doing isn’t working because you’re not even addressing the symptoms let alone the problem. Jesus Christ. But, as they say, it is difficult to get an advocate to understand their “solutions” suck when their salary depends upon not understanding it.
chmod600 5y ago
"[transient homeless] generally refuse to get services" Is this because the services don't really offer effective help for this group? I understand why mental illness or addiction might keep people from using services. But if someone is just down on their luck and won't accept any help (assuming they need it), something seems wrong with that picture.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  Homeless shelters are often not safe or pleasant places. I don't have a definitive article or source to link to, but there are myriad accounts of theft, violence, and sexual violence at homeless shelters. If I was homeless I would almost certainly prefer to sleep in my car (if I still owned one) or couch-surf with friends/family if possible. Is this because the services don't really offer effective help for this group? What the transiently homeless want/need is are jobs that pay a living wage so that they can begin paying for their own housing once again. That is what really breaks the "cycle" of homelessness. It's difficult for anybody, much less a homeless shelter, to place people into those sorts of jobs.
- Griffinsauce 5y ago
  Aside from the things already mentioned about safety, these things don't take pride into account. Just see how some comments here view homeless and the general attitude towards anyone accepting welfare. This is also an often missed point of UBI, it will help people that are unwilling to accept help otherwise. Either due pride or safety concerns (see the Dutch tax authorities mess right now that has ruined families that were dependent on child care support) Whatever you think of specific solutions (please don't start debating UBI... ) it's quite obvious to me that we need to change quality of life safetynets from a pull to a push system.
alsetmusic 5y ago
Apologies for reposting, but I think it matters and should be highly visible: "In 2013 the Utah Housing and Community Development Division reported that the cost of emergency room treatment and jail time averaged over $16,000 per year per homeless person, while the cost of providing a fully subsidized apartment was only $11,000."[0] Obviously, the numbers will change with the area. The cost of an apartment in the Bay Area or LA would be much greater, for example. But the book makes a good case that it'd cost society less overall to just take care of people than to ignore rampant homelessness. I'm inclined to believe it. Related, there's an eye-opening limited series podcast on homelessness called "According to Need" that I found very compelling.[1] The host lives in the Bay Area, so there was a lot focus [t]here. I strongly recommend checking it out to learn just how stacked the system can be against people trying to overcome homelessness. For example, did you crash on someone's couch in the last thirty days? Doesn't matter if you've got nowhere to crash tonight, you don't qualify for a bed. [0] The End of Policing, by Alex S. Vitale first edition pg 97 [1] https://99percentinvisible.org/need/ https://99percentinvisible.org/need/ Edited to format
redis_mlc 5y ago
> they think "fentanyl addict out of his mind living in squalor" Your info is out of date - that's exactly what's happening. One police officer dealing with homeless in Portland or Seattle recently said 100% of the people he dealt with were on drugs and living in tents. In SF, rents are so high that you won't be "transiently homeless" - you're priced out of the market without already having a pretty good job.
thealienthing 5y ago
I haven’t heard this side of the story. Would you mind sharing any sources you have on the proportions of people who are transiently homeless and those who are homeless permanently?

spoonjim 5y ago

Whenever I see someone who is quite clearly very recently homeless I give them as much money as I can afford to, like $50-100, because I feel like it can get them out of homelessness. When I see someone completely out of their mind I don’t feel like anything I can do will make a material difference, just get them different levels of stoned for the next 3 hours.

0xB31B1B 5y ago
the crazy thing is that there are a ton of "recently homeless" folks you encounter in your daily life without even knowing it. Something like 10% of the cal state university students are homeless. My wife is a doc in the ER and deals with a bunch of folks who are going through these issues. Many retail workers, service workers etc are homeless, shower at the gym, and have been living in their car or friends couches for the past few months and will probably find a place to live in the next few months.
- capeterson 5y ago
  If anyone was wondering about a source, as I was, here: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-cal-state-homelessness-20160620-snap-story.html https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-cal-state-homeless... https://presspage-production-content.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/1487/cohomelessstudy.pdf?10000 https://presspage-production-content.s3.amazonaws.com/upload...
londons_explore 5y ago
When you give $50-100, please employ them to do a task. Ie. "Here's $50. Go and buy me some ice cream. You can have another $50 when you bring it to me". It discourages begging and encourages an entrepreneur mentality.
- thebigman433 5y ago
  This is the most stereotype hn comment I can imagine. Why does your goal have to include putting them in some weird spot where youre holding power over them to teach some "entrepreneur mentality". Most of the temporarily homeless population is embarrassed to ask for money, just treat them like an adult if youre going to offer help.
- spoonjim 5y ago
  Sorry, I’m not a complete shitheel.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

systemvoltage 5y ago

Would you mind posting the sources? Even if its anedotal or not authoritative, it would be good to inform where you learned about the 1/3-2/3 breakdown.

0xB31B1B 5y ago
one area is the "point in time homeless surveys" here: https://hsh.sfgov.org/about/research-and-reports/san-francisco-homeless-point-in-time-count-reports/ https://hsh.sfgov.org/about/research-and-reports/san-francis... the data can be a little hard to interpret for different categories/parts of the report. For instance, when 10% of the respondents say they have been homeless for 30 days or less, you can extrapolate this and assume that this same number of people is rotating in and out of homelessness frequently and over a year the number of homeless in this bit is 12x the number in the point in time survey. I picked up a lot of this through volunteering and participating in homeless social services and doing housing related activism.

fastball 5y ago

That is well and all, but seems like a bit of a distraction from the OP. While 2/3 of homeless may be transient homeless, it seems incredibly unlikely that most of the people living in tents fall into that category rather than into the chronically homeless camp.

mmcwilliams 5y ago
Wouldn’t the fact that the population is split 2/1 mean that it is very likely that unhoused people living in those tents do fall into that category? I believe that’s what the GP is referring to when they say that people have a warped view about homelessness; that the situation “seems” one way because of anecdotal experience and media representation.
- fastball 5y ago
  No, as pointed out by the GP, there are a lot of "homeless" people who are living out of their car / crashing on a friend's sofa / etc. While these people are technically homeless, I wouldn't say the general public as a skewed view of homelessness – it's just when people say homeless they're not usually talking about people crashing on a friend's sofa. People in tents almost by definition are not the kind of homeless that will crash on a sofa / live out of a car. And are generally the type of homeless that are panhandling, which is of course the most visible group. It's similar to how there is a disconnect in how people talk about "mass shootings" and what the public think that means. The public thinks of a mass shooting as what the FBI calls an "active shooter" event, where someone is just opening fire on random people, while in stats and things it's just any shooting where 3+ people get shot, which can include gangland-style violence. People aren't "confused", we're just using two different definitions. My point is of course not that the transient homeless don't need help or anything like that. It's just strange to bring them into it when presumably they are not a large percentage of the "habitually living in tents" homeless, which should of course be handled differently.

dcolkitt 5y ago

> one big way to prevent this downward trend in quality of life is to build more cheap housing One pedantic quibble. It's not necessary to build cheap housing specifically. It's perfectly fine simply to build more housing of any type. Today's new expensive housing will indirectly create more cheap housing in the pre-existing housing stock, by pulling demand out of the market. Throughout all of American history, new housing has almost exclusively been relatively expensive housing. The rich prefer to live in new housing stock, and the poor prefer to get discounts on old housing stock. The same way that a robust new car market creates a secondary market for cheap used cars. A lot of people with good intentions will try to block any type of development that doesn't specifically include affordable housing. But this is the exact opposite of what's needed. The best way to lower the cost of housing is to increase the supply of housing. And the best way to do that is to unleash developers whatever is most profitable whenever and whoever they want without government regulation and NIMBY activists getting in their way.

Tiktaalik 5y ago
Yes but we have a crisis now which means that we need both regular market housing now and affordable housing now. We do not uh have the luxury of building luxury housing only then waiting 40 years for it to eventually become affordable.
- BobbyJo 5y ago
  Market housing creates affordable housing by displacing demand. No matter what kind of housing you build, as long as it gets built now it will lower prices now.
  - TchoBeer 5y ago
    More luxery houses would lower prices for luxery housing, but not necessarily for affordable housing. I don't know how much those are competing markets
    - alisonkisk 5y ago

tryonenow 5y ago

I suspect that you're excluding a nontrivial proportion of homeless people who simply do not wish to live with the burden of employment and responsibilities of rent/mortgage when they can live outdoors in perpetually nice weather. I don't know how significant this number is but I don't think it's fair to ask society to subsidize their lifestyle.

baby 5y ago

Not just cheap housing, but housing aids (as a student I used to get a few hundred bucks every month for my rent in France) and free health insurance

throwaway98797 5y ago

Math does not add up. 1/3 would over time vastly out number the 2/3 group unless the two third group is growing exponentially.

pseudalopex 5y ago
You assume transiently homeless people become chronically homeless faster than chronically homeless people find homes or die.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  That seems like a reasonable assumption does it not?
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    Assuming most homeless people are chronically homeless seems reasonable too. But it's wrong. Let's have more data and fewer assumptions.
  - dodobirdlord 5y ago
    Percentage wise, few transiently homeless people become chronically homeless. Far more people each year cycle through a period of transient homelessness than the average number of transiently homeless people at any point in time.
elliekelly 5y ago
Unless the 1/3 group doesn’t have a terribly long life expectancy.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  I mean they might die at 60 instead of 80, but that could still mean 30 or 40 years on the street. A homeless camp isn't necessarily conducive to lengthy lifespans but it's not Stalingrad.

wnevets 5y ago

> They may have gotten into drugs or developed a mental issue in the first 12 months that they became homeless. These people are the "out of their minds" camp dwellers we think about when we think about the homeless. The biggest risk factor for being in this group is becoming homeless in the first place, One of the things that took me along time to realize was simply not having a safe, quiet and stable place to sleep for an extended period time would drive virtually anyone into drugs, alcohol and mental illness.

Griffinsauce 5y ago
Yes. It is not their default state, these are just people like you and me that we have completely failed as a society.

vmception 5y ago

Its because HN is the silicon valley town crier whose readers are either transient, foreigners, or people coming from privilege already in the area. Groups so far removed from the problem that they have no idea what's going on. They'll latch on to any contrived empathic half-solution and then leave the area.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

homelesssjw 5y ago

> Posting this because most people in HN have a warped view of what homelessness is You, good intentions aside, are the one with the warped perspective. This is social justice warrior nonsense. Advocates love to cite the same self-collected/anecdotal data that just happens to support to their expensive, unhelpful, selfish ”mission”. What you’re doing isn’t working because you’re not even addressing the symptoms let alone the problem. Jesus Christ. But, as they say, it is difficult to get an advocate to understand their “solutions” suck when their salary depends upon not understanding it.

chmod600 5y ago

"[transient homeless] generally refuse to get services" Is this because the services don't really offer effective help for this group? I understand why mental illness or addiction might keep people from using services. But if someone is just down on their luck and won't accept any help (assuming they need it), something seems wrong with that picture.

JohnBooty 5y ago
Homeless shelters are often not safe or pleasant places. I don't have a definitive article or source to link to, but there are myriad accounts of theft, violence, and sexual violence at homeless shelters. If I was homeless I would almost certainly prefer to sleep in my car (if I still owned one) or couch-surf with friends/family if possible. Is this because the services don't really offer effective help for this group? What the transiently homeless want/need is are jobs that pay a living wage so that they can begin paying for their own housing once again. That is what really breaks the "cycle" of homelessness. It's difficult for anybody, much less a homeless shelter, to place people into those sorts of jobs.
Griffinsauce 5y ago
Aside from the things already mentioned about safety, these things don't take pride into account. Just see how some comments here view homeless and the general attitude towards anyone accepting welfare. This is also an often missed point of UBI, it will help people that are unwilling to accept help otherwise. Either due pride or safety concerns (see the Dutch tax authorities mess right now that has ruined families that were dependent on child care support) Whatever you think of specific solutions (please don't start debating UBI... ) it's quite obvious to me that we need to change quality of life safetynets from a pull to a push system.

alsetmusic 5y ago

Apologies for reposting, but I think it matters and should be highly visible: "In 2013 the Utah Housing and Community Development Division reported that the cost of emergency room treatment and jail time averaged over $16,000 per year per homeless person, while the cost of providing a fully subsidized apartment was only $11,000."[0] Obviously, the numbers will change with the area. The cost of an apartment in the Bay Area or LA would be much greater, for example. But the book makes a good case that it'd cost society less overall to just take care of people than to ignore rampant homelessness. I'm inclined to believe it. Related, there's an eye-opening limited series podcast on homelessness called "According to Need" that I found very compelling.[1] The host lives in the Bay Area, so there was a lot focus [t]here. I strongly recommend checking it out to learn just how stacked the system can be against people trying to overcome homelessness. For example, did you crash on someone's couch in the last thirty days? Doesn't matter if you've got nowhere to crash tonight, you don't qualify for a bed. [0] The End of Policing, by Alex S. Vitale first edition pg 97 [1] https://99percentinvisible.org/need/ https://99percentinvisible.org/need/ Edited to format

redis_mlc 5y ago

> they think "fentanyl addict out of his mind living in squalor" Your info is out of date - that's exactly what's happening. One police officer dealing with homeless in Portland or Seattle recently said 100% of the people he dealt with were on drugs and living in tents. In SF, rents are so high that you won't be "transiently homeless" - you're priced out of the market without already having a pretty good job.

thealienthing 5y ago

I haven’t heard this side of the story. Would you mind sharing any sources you have on the proportions of people who are transiently homeless and those who are homeless permanently?