8 ms·

How California Homelessness Became a Crisis

50 points by ike77 5y ago

throw737858 5y ago
In nice weather homelessness is bearable. But californian cities must provide basic sanitation facilities. And maybe some UBI for food, $1000/month should do.
- km3r 5y ago
  No, California needs to treat it like the medical health crisis it is. If a 8 year old kid is on the streets, we don't focus on how to make it nicer to live on the street for them, we put them in long term care (foster care). It's immoral what California is doing for many of these people who either have debilitating mental illness or have fallen deep into drug use. It's time to reopen the asylums, run them properly, maybe rename them to something more politically correct. That being said there are also people who are just down on their luck, but the solutions to their problems are very different then the long term homeless. Job programs, transition housing, actually building enough housing to meet demand, and UBI will help them.
  - throw737858 5y ago
    So homeless guy should go to job interviews, and visit shrinks, but without taking showers. This is just fascism. It is medical health crisis because there are no basic facilities. It is not "making it nicer", but stoping deadly diseases. Look how Bangladesh builds refugee camps! California has 1000x more resources!
- evancox100 5y ago
  About 3x the number of homeless individuals in New York (state) vs Florida despite roughly similar overall populations, and I don’t think it’s because of how nice or not the weather is in NY!
comodore_ 5y ago
When was "experiencing homelessness" term established as the norm? what's wrong with just "homeless"?
- slg 5y ago
  Nothing is really “wrong” with it. However the change reframes homelessness as a temporary state a person experiences rather than a persistent identity of the individual.
  - comodore_ 5y ago
    I disagree with these kinds of reframing attempts for a couple of reasons but most of all i dislike this trend of constantly convoluting everything with "identity". Being homeless describes the state a person is in, not who they are, even though some people chose to be homeless.
  - username90 5y ago
    Nobody thinks that homeless is something that can't be changed. The only reason to update language like this is to divide people and induce us and them behaviour. "Making language clearer doesn't hurt" Well, it does in this case, since it gives people the false belief that those who didn't update their language actually believes that homeless people can't be helped. That phenomena can then be studied by social scientists, creating articles about how some group views homelessness as a permanent state and that is the reason for all the problems...
- tmp_anon_22 5y ago
  My guess is the phrasing is meant to de-emphasize the permanency of homelessness - a lot of working class people drift in and out of homelessness. In order to better the situation you need to have it properly understood and analyzed. I think the term "unhoused" had a similar goal but avoided the immediacy of "homeless" and was thus ineffective.
  - evancox100 5y ago
    I don’t think this phrasing is the worst progressive “improvement” in language (that award goes to “Latinx”, seriously please stop using this), but it is kind of awkward and the standard is not applied evenly. We don’t say someone is “experiencing hunger”, we say they’re hungry, despite hunger typically being a temporary condition. Edit: your point about the need to understand the background level of housing instability in less well off population is completely valid. I don’t think people understand the extent to which large portions of the working poor continually cycle through housing crises. Edit 2: My broader point is that if you do consider educating people about the true facts/nature of homelessness in US cities, you should seriously question how much using the preferred progressive phrasing actually accomplishes that goal vs just making you sound elitist. Even under the most generous interpretation, there is nothing in the plain language of the phrase “experiencing X” as compared to the adjective form of X that even attempts confer any information as to whether X is a temporary or permanent condition. This is an an attempt to use language as a form of persuasion that does not even try to engage with the basic reality of how people are going to respond to that language. There are already predefined ways in English to denote temporary vs permanent, “chronic “ and “acute” would be appropriate in a scholarly context, “short-term”/“temporary” and “long-term”/“permanent” work perfectly fine in casual conversation.
okareaman 5y ago
I was once homeless in California, strung out on drugs and alcohol, unable to quit or even think about getting treatment for that and my bipolar disorder. It is my opinion that we need to go back to locking people up and forcing them into treatment for their own good. It is inhumane to leave helpless people out on the street because of some abstract concept of personal rights. I understand the motivation of mental health advocates who argue that the government has no right to force people into treatment, but it really is counter-productive. I wish I had been locked up for my own good. I was rescued by the good people at the veterans administration.
- bombcar 5y ago
  And what we have now is a perverse setup where you get locked up after you commit some crime, but get locked up in a prison where little help is provided.
- throw737858 5y ago
  "California homeless are crazy" narrative is tiring and excuse. They are still people and need basic life necessities: toilet, shower and food. Periodic showers improve mental health, there are studies to prove it! After that is solved, we can focus on other issues. And frankly California invented drug culture, it glorifies drugs, why shame homeless? If Jordan can accept 3 million people, so can California.
  - okareaman 5y ago
    The functional people who become homeless usually don't stay homeless because they are able to take advantage of services. There are some new methods being tried by providing temporary tent cities for these people with showers and such. A strict no drugs or alcohol policy in the tent city. When people speak of "The homeless problem" it's usually in regards to the chronically homeless who are addicted and/or mentally ill who won't stay in these regulated tent cities.
    - throw737858 5y ago
      "functional people"? What sort of language is this? Far right BS! People are people. It is illegal to scan people for drugs on job interview. Taking dump and shower should not require drug scan.
jseliger 5y ago
Short answer: CA has been underbuilding housing for close to 50 years (https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/) and now has a severe housing shortage, to the point where a parodic response, like "California will try absolutely anything to reduce homelessness, except build more housing" (https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-will-do-anything-to-end-homelessness-except-build-more-homes https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-will-do-anything-to-en...) is the only reasonable one. I've worked on Prop HHH and other proposals designed to reduce homelessness in California: https://seliger.com/2017/08/30/l-digs-hole-slowly-economics-fills-back-proposition-hhh-facilities-program/ https://seliger.com/2017/08/30/l-digs-hole-slowly-economics-..., but none of them work, or can work, without making housing easier to build. Edit to add: before someone mentions "mental illness" and "drugs" and other contributors to homelessness, yes those are real factors: that said, the lower the cost of housing, the easier it is for someone on the margin of being housed or being homeless to stay housed. The lower the cost, the easier it is for family, SSDI, Section 8, and other income supports to keep a person housed. As the cost of housing goes up, the number of people who fall from the margins of "housed" to "homeless" goes up with it. So yes, mental illness and drug abuse are factors, but they're factors exacerbated by housing costs. They're really red herrings relative to overall housing costs.
- angst_ridden 5y ago
  And yet we also have a massive under-occupancy in some areas of LA cough Venice Beach cough Mar Vista cough where a lot of homes are owned by corporations for occasional use by traveling employees, people in other countries parking finances here, or people who AirBnB them for 180 days/year. In one block where I was working in Mar Vista, four older homes have been knocked down to build McMansions in the past year. All four are owned by LLCs, and all four are vacant. As for homelessness, we could solve a significant chunk of the problem by having decent healthcare/insurance available to people. I know two people - who had insurance - who ended up losing their houses due to healthcare expenses. Of course, the above personal experience should be tagged as "anecdotal" not "evidential."
  - jeffbee 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kaliali 5y ago
Skid Row, Explained - Johnny Harris https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKo8Sv99MkM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKo8Sv99MkM Evicted: Most Liberal Neighborhood Gives 300 Homeless COVID-19 Refugees the Bum's Rush https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=As17ZckrPVs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=As17ZckrPVs This Seattle homeless shelter is promoting rectal injections and free "heroin pipes," all paid for with tax dollars | Not the Bee https://notthebee.com/article/seattle-homeless-shelter-promotes-heroine-booty-bumping-kits-heroin-pipes-with-tax-dollars https://notthebee.com/article/seattle-homeless-shelter-promo... Project Veritas: Central OAC exec admits orgs register thousands of homeless to vote at same address in Fulton Co. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tArtYkILiHc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tArtYkILiHc This LA Musician Built $1200 Tiny Houses for the Homeless. Then the City Seized Them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6h7fL22WCE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6h7fL22WCE 585,000 homeless U.S. CITIZENS are ignored while ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS in New York will collect $15,000 food stamps, free housing, and a job. Tom Cotton: New York’s Homeless Veterans Ineligible for $15.6K Payments to Illegal Aliens https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/11/tom-cotton-new-yorks-homeless-veterans-ineligible-15-6k-payments-illegal-aliens/ https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/11/tom-cotton-new...
saas_sam 5y ago
There are three kinds of people experiencing homelessness in SF: Drug addicts, who settle in the Bay Area because it is Paradise On Earth for drug addiction. Drugs are cheap and plentiful. Dealers transact unmolested in broad daylight in front of apathetic cops. Needles are provided by the government free of charge. Tents can be pitched on just about any sidewalk. Drug use does not even need to be discreet -- anyone who walks in SF for more than a few hours will run across someone injecting or freebasing. It's not just the Tenderloin either. The mentally ill, who cannot take advantage of services that exist to help them. There are individuals who are so out of it, so schizophrenic etc., that the only way they will ever be helped is if someone physically forces them into an institution. And can you imagine the response of SF constituents if such a policy was enacted? Totally impossible. One cell phone video of a capture gone wrong and it's over. And lastly, there are tons of people who are 100% content with living on the streets by choice. There have always been transients in society who adopt this lifestyle, in every era of history. It's basically urban camping! No job, no responsibilities. It's a beautiful place with amazing weather. If all of Earth could easily navigate to the Bay Area, you could fill this city to the brim with people who'd "hobo" it by choice. There MUST be a fourth type. The person who is on the street due to financial misfortune, who had horrible luck and found themselves in a spot they couldn't get out of. Statistically this has to exist. And we need to make sure those people get a ladder somehow to climb themselves out. Absolutely. But to pretend that this fourth type is all that exists? Or that it's the majority? Not even close.
- angst_ridden 5y ago
  I assume you can provide some data to back up the assertion that "it's not even close?"
  - spoonjim 5y ago
    What data would you look for to confirm the claim, and what data would you loom for to reject the claim?
    - angst_ridden 5y ago
ajhurliman 5y ago
Whether rent is $1500/ month or $500/ month, I just can't imagine the guy screaming at nobody in particular and swinging a drain pipe at tourists is going to pay for either one of them. This whole attempt to blame raising housing prices for homelessness is absurd. Housing prices _are_ raising, and homelessness is getting worse, but I think the assertion that it's the primary cause (instead of mental health and substance abuse) is disingenuous.
Empact 5y ago
"a Frankenstein's monster created by mating civil libertarianism with austerity." — UC San Diego sociologist Neil Gong They manage to name the two contingents that are out of power and have nothing to do with the crisis, libertarians and advocates of austerity, while leaving aside those who created the situation: progressives.
kaiju0 5y ago
The issue with any paid approach is that surrounding area will begin dumping the local homeless there. Thats where they can "get the help they need" without the locality they are from paying for it. This is a hard problem that looks like it needs a federal solution.
Kapura 5y ago
It's crazy to me how expensive it is to live in LA compared with how little i see new construction. The magnitude of the issue really crystalized in my mind when i was talking to a friend who lived in Tokyo, and he mentioned he was paying $900 a month for his flat. It's 40% of what I pay. Housing can't cost this much in cities that people are expected to occupy.
- evancox100 5y ago
  I visited SF ~5 years ago and, coming from Dallas at the time, was shocked at how little construction there was. I think through that whole week I probably saw one sub-skyscraper sized building under construction. Someone from there was like "what are you talking about, haven't you seen downtown?", and I realized how warped their expectations were.
Flatcircle 5y ago
I once toured a homeless shelter in downtown Los Angeles, the guy that ran it said, "see all those people that are sleeping under the awning outside, we're trying to get them to come in and get help, but most of them don't want to come in. Because most of them are addicts and you have to be clean inside here." He said, "I'm on the front lines and I'm telling you right now, 90 percent of the homeless problem is because of drugs and alcohol"
- angst_ridden 5y ago
  I volunteered at one of the homeless organizations in downtown LA for a while. It's a safety consideration that most shelters require residents to be clean (although some of the shelters are more militant about that than others). However, just saying "gotta be clean to be in this shelter" doesn't solve the problem. There need to be adequate treatment programs available for drug and alcohol rehab. Those programs have been cut, and private centers cost far more than most unhoused people can afford. Furthermore, there's a positive feedback loop that needs breaking. The experience of being unhoused can lead to people escaping into drug use, just as excessive drug use can lead to homelessness.
jlmorton 5y ago
There is a basic accounting truth at the heart of this: If land and housing are good investments -- that is, they return any amount greater than wage growth -- then at some point in the future, wage income workers will not be able to afford housing. There is no getting around this truth. If housing and real estate are a good investment, eventually all wage income workers will be homeless, or will be forced to leave a region. So we need to make sure as a society that housing and real estate are _not_ good investments. Prior to the 1980s, real estate was not a very good investment. There might be areas that were great investments, but there was no generalized appreciation in land and housing. In particular, it's an obvious sign of a broken market when structure prices are appreciating. In a functioning market, structure prices should largely decrease in value over time, with the only exceptions being actual improvements to the property. All of this is the same point as the article, that the basic issue is supply and demand of housing, and that supply problems are exacerbated by homeowners that have a large financial interest in restricting supply, and lots of tools at their disposal to prevent new housing. Another important point is that while individuals might be responsible for improvements to structures which increase their utility, aesthetics, or value, in almost every case _land_ value increases are the result of large-scale societal factors, and nothing at all to do with any individual actions. The question becomes, why as a society should we allow land value increases to be captured by individuals? The land has gained value because of societal changes. If a new light rail line is developed by local government, land values soar within 4 blocks of the new rail line. Why do we allow that value to be captured by individuals? If a region has great public universities, and high-paying companies flock to the area to hire those workers, land values soar. Why should individuals capture that value? Rather than taxing property, we should tax land. Taxing structures creates a perverse incentive against improving structures. And land is the thing that is actually scarce. Taxing land would naturally encourage landowners to build higher densities where land values and demand are high. And when land is sold, we should tax a very large amount of the appreciation in that land value, perhaps 90%. Society is what earned those gains, and society should reap the reward. Individuals can capture the value of increases on improvements to structures, but there's no reason they should earn a windfall from the societal actions that increased the value of the land.
- mtrovo 5y ago
jahewson 5y ago
It’s interesting to see numerous comments here advocating for mental asylums. Detaining anyone non-dangerous in the US is unconstitutional - the Supreme Court’s ruling in O'Connor v. Donaldson dates back to 1975. That’s why all those places shut down.

50 points by ike77 5y ago

In nice weather homelessness is bearable. But californian cities must provide basic sanitation facilities. And maybe some UBI for food, $1000/month should do.

km3r 5y ago
No, California needs to treat it like the medical health crisis it is. If a 8 year old kid is on the streets, we don't focus on how to make it nicer to live on the street for them, we put them in long term care (foster care). It's immoral what California is doing for many of these people who either have debilitating mental illness or have fallen deep into drug use. It's time to reopen the asylums, run them properly, maybe rename them to something more politically correct. That being said there are also people who are just down on their luck, but the solutions to their problems are very different then the long term homeless. Job programs, transition housing, actually building enough housing to meet demand, and UBI will help them.
- throw737858 5y ago
  So homeless guy should go to job interviews, and visit shrinks, but without taking showers. This is just fascism. It is medical health crisis because there are no basic facilities. It is not "making it nicer", but stoping deadly diseases. Look how Bangladesh builds refugee camps! California has 1000x more resources!
evancox100 5y ago
About 3x the number of homeless individuals in New York (state) vs Florida despite roughly similar overall populations, and I don’t think it’s because of how nice or not the weather is in NY!

comodore_ 5y ago

When was "experiencing homelessness" term established as the norm? what's wrong with just "homeless"?

slg 5y ago
Nothing is really “wrong” with it. However the change reframes homelessness as a temporary state a person experiences rather than a persistent identity of the individual.
- comodore_ 5y ago
  I disagree with these kinds of reframing attempts for a couple of reasons but most of all i dislike this trend of constantly convoluting everything with "identity". Being homeless describes the state a person is in, not who they are, even though some people chose to be homeless.
- username90 5y ago
  Nobody thinks that homeless is something that can't be changed. The only reason to update language like this is to divide people and induce us and them behaviour. "Making language clearer doesn't hurt" Well, it does in this case, since it gives people the false belief that those who didn't update their language actually believes that homeless people can't be helped. That phenomena can then be studied by social scientists, creating articles about how some group views homelessness as a permanent state and that is the reason for all the problems...
tmp_anon_22 5y ago
My guess is the phrasing is meant to de-emphasize the permanency of homelessness - a lot of working class people drift in and out of homelessness. In order to better the situation you need to have it properly understood and analyzed. I think the term "unhoused" had a similar goal but avoided the immediacy of "homeless" and was thus ineffective.
- evancox100 5y ago
  I don’t think this phrasing is the worst progressive “improvement” in language (that award goes to “Latinx”, seriously please stop using this), but it is kind of awkward and the standard is not applied evenly. We don’t say someone is “experiencing hunger”, we say they’re hungry, despite hunger typically being a temporary condition. Edit: your point about the need to understand the background level of housing instability in less well off population is completely valid. I don’t think people understand the extent to which large portions of the working poor continually cycle through housing crises. Edit 2: My broader point is that if you do consider educating people about the true facts/nature of homelessness in US cities, you should seriously question how much using the preferred progressive phrasing actually accomplishes that goal vs just making you sound elitist. Even under the most generous interpretation, there is nothing in the plain language of the phrase “experiencing X” as compared to the adjective form of X that even attempts confer any information as to whether X is a temporary or permanent condition. This is an an attempt to use language as a form of persuasion that does not even try to engage with the basic reality of how people are going to respond to that language. There are already predefined ways in English to denote temporary vs permanent, “chronic “ and “acute” would be appropriate in a scholarly context, “short-term”/“temporary” and “long-term”/“permanent” work perfectly fine in casual conversation.

okareaman 5y ago

I was once homeless in California, strung out on drugs and alcohol, unable to quit or even think about getting treatment for that and my bipolar disorder. It is my opinion that we need to go back to locking people up and forcing them into treatment for their own good. It is inhumane to leave helpless people out on the street because of some abstract concept of personal rights. I understand the motivation of mental health advocates who argue that the government has no right to force people into treatment, but it really is counter-productive. I wish I had been locked up for my own good. I was rescued by the good people at the veterans administration.

bombcar 5y ago
And what we have now is a perverse setup where you get locked up after you commit some crime, but get locked up in a prison where little help is provided.
throw737858 5y ago
"California homeless are crazy" narrative is tiring and excuse. They are still people and need basic life necessities: toilet, shower and food. Periodic showers improve mental health, there are studies to prove it! After that is solved, we can focus on other issues. And frankly California invented drug culture, it glorifies drugs, why shame homeless? If Jordan can accept 3 million people, so can California.
- okareaman 5y ago
  The functional people who become homeless usually don't stay homeless because they are able to take advantage of services. There are some new methods being tried by providing temporary tent cities for these people with showers and such. A strict no drugs or alcohol policy in the tent city. When people speak of "The homeless problem" it's usually in regards to the chronically homeless who are addicted and/or mentally ill who won't stay in these regulated tent cities.
  - throw737858 5y ago
    "functional people"? What sort of language is this? Far right BS! People are people. It is illegal to scan people for drugs on job interview. Taking dump and shower should not require drug scan.

jseliger 5y ago

Short answer: CA has been underbuilding housing for close to 50 years (https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/) and now has a severe housing shortage, to the point where a parodic response, like "California will try absolutely anything to reduce homelessness, except build more housing" (https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-will-do-anything-to-end-homelessness-except-build-more-homes https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-will-do-anything-to-en...) is the only reasonable one. I've worked on Prop HHH and other proposals designed to reduce homelessness in California: https://seliger.com/2017/08/30/l-digs-hole-slowly-economics-fills-back-proposition-hhh-facilities-program/ https://seliger.com/2017/08/30/l-digs-hole-slowly-economics-..., but none of them work, or can work, without making housing easier to build. Edit to add: before someone mentions "mental illness" and "drugs" and other contributors to homelessness, yes those are real factors: that said, the lower the cost of housing, the easier it is for someone on the margin of being housed or being homeless to stay housed. The lower the cost, the easier it is for family, SSDI, Section 8, and other income supports to keep a person housed. As the cost of housing goes up, the number of people who fall from the margins of "housed" to "homeless" goes up with it. So yes, mental illness and drug abuse are factors, but they're factors exacerbated by housing costs. They're really red herrings relative to overall housing costs.

angst_ridden 5y ago
And yet we also have a massive under-occupancy in some areas of LA cough Venice Beach cough Mar Vista cough where a lot of homes are owned by corporations for occasional use by traveling employees, people in other countries parking finances here, or people who AirBnB them for 180 days/year. In one block where I was working in Mar Vista, four older homes have been knocked down to build McMansions in the past year. All four are owned by LLCs, and all four are vacant. As for homelessness, we could solve a significant chunk of the problem by having decent healthcare/insurance available to people. I know two people - who had insurance - who ended up losing their houses due to healthcare expenses. Of course, the above personal experience should be tagged as "anecdotal" not "evidential."
- jeffbee 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

kaliali 5y ago

Skid Row, Explained - Johnny Harris https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKo8Sv99MkM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKo8Sv99MkM Evicted: Most Liberal Neighborhood Gives 300 Homeless COVID-19 Refugees the Bum's Rush https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=As17ZckrPVs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=As17ZckrPVs This Seattle homeless shelter is promoting rectal injections and free "heroin pipes," all paid for with tax dollars | Not the Bee https://notthebee.com/article/seattle-homeless-shelter-promotes-heroine-booty-bumping-kits-heroin-pipes-with-tax-dollars https://notthebee.com/article/seattle-homeless-shelter-promo... Project Veritas: Central OAC exec admits orgs register thousands of homeless to vote at same address in Fulton Co. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tArtYkILiHc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tArtYkILiHc This LA Musician Built $1200 Tiny Houses for the Homeless. Then the City Seized Them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6h7fL22WCE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6h7fL22WCE 585,000 homeless U.S. CITIZENS are ignored while ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS in New York will collect $15,000 food stamps, free housing, and a job. Tom Cotton: New York’s Homeless Veterans Ineligible for $15.6K Payments to Illegal Aliens https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/11/tom-cotton-new-yorks-homeless-veterans-ineligible-15-6k-payments-illegal-aliens/ https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/11/tom-cotton-new...

saas_sam 5y ago

There are three kinds of people experiencing homelessness in SF: Drug addicts, who settle in the Bay Area because it is Paradise On Earth for drug addiction. Drugs are cheap and plentiful. Dealers transact unmolested in broad daylight in front of apathetic cops. Needles are provided by the government free of charge. Tents can be pitched on just about any sidewalk. Drug use does not even need to be discreet -- anyone who walks in SF for more than a few hours will run across someone injecting or freebasing. It's not just the Tenderloin either. The mentally ill, who cannot take advantage of services that exist to help them. There are individuals who are so out of it, so schizophrenic etc., that the only way they will ever be helped is if someone physically forces them into an institution. And can you imagine the response of SF constituents if such a policy was enacted? Totally impossible. One cell phone video of a capture gone wrong and it's over. And lastly, there are tons of people who are 100% content with living on the streets by choice. There have always been transients in society who adopt this lifestyle, in every era of history. It's basically urban camping! No job, no responsibilities. It's a beautiful place with amazing weather. If all of Earth could easily navigate to the Bay Area, you could fill this city to the brim with people who'd "hobo" it by choice. There MUST be a fourth type. The person who is on the street due to financial misfortune, who had horrible luck and found themselves in a spot they couldn't get out of. Statistically this has to exist. And we need to make sure those people get a ladder somehow to climb themselves out. Absolutely. But to pretend that this fourth type is all that exists? Or that it's the majority? Not even close.

angst_ridden 5y ago
I assume you can provide some data to back up the assertion that "it's not even close?"
- spoonjim 5y ago
  What data would you look for to confirm the claim, and what data would you loom for to reject the claim?
  - angst_ridden 5y ago

ajhurliman 5y ago

Whether rent is $1500/ month or $500/ month, I just can't imagine the guy screaming at nobody in particular and swinging a drain pipe at tourists is going to pay for either one of them. This whole attempt to blame raising housing prices for homelessness is absurd. Housing prices _are_ raising, and homelessness is getting worse, but I think the assertion that it's the primary cause (instead of mental health and substance abuse) is disingenuous.

Empact 5y ago

"a Frankenstein's monster created by mating civil libertarianism with austerity." — UC San Diego sociologist Neil Gong They manage to name the two contingents that are out of power and have nothing to do with the crisis, libertarians and advocates of austerity, while leaving aside those who created the situation: progressives.

kaiju0 5y ago

The issue with any paid approach is that surrounding area will begin dumping the local homeless there. Thats where they can "get the help they need" without the locality they are from paying for it. This is a hard problem that looks like it needs a federal solution.

Kapura 5y ago

It's crazy to me how expensive it is to live in LA compared with how little i see new construction. The magnitude of the issue really crystalized in my mind when i was talking to a friend who lived in Tokyo, and he mentioned he was paying $900 a month for his flat. It's 40% of what I pay. Housing can't cost this much in cities that people are expected to occupy.

evancox100 5y ago
I visited SF ~5 years ago and, coming from Dallas at the time, was shocked at how little construction there was. I think through that whole week I probably saw one sub-skyscraper sized building under construction. Someone from there was like "what are you talking about, haven't you seen downtown?", and I realized how warped their expectations were.

Flatcircle 5y ago

I once toured a homeless shelter in downtown Los Angeles, the guy that ran it said, "see all those people that are sleeping under the awning outside, we're trying to get them to come in and get help, but most of them don't want to come in. Because most of them are addicts and you have to be clean inside here." He said, "I'm on the front lines and I'm telling you right now, 90 percent of the homeless problem is because of drugs and alcohol"

angst_ridden 5y ago
I volunteered at one of the homeless organizations in downtown LA for a while. It's a safety consideration that most shelters require residents to be clean (although some of the shelters are more militant about that than others). However, just saying "gotta be clean to be in this shelter" doesn't solve the problem. There need to be adequate treatment programs available for drug and alcohol rehab. Those programs have been cut, and private centers cost far more than most unhoused people can afford. Furthermore, there's a positive feedback loop that needs breaking. The experience of being unhoused can lead to people escaping into drug use, just as excessive drug use can lead to homelessness.

jlmorton 5y ago

There is a basic accounting truth at the heart of this: If land and housing are good investments -- that is, they return any amount greater than wage growth -- then at some point in the future, wage income workers will not be able to afford housing. There is no getting around this truth. If housing and real estate are a good investment, eventually all wage income workers will be homeless, or will be forced to leave a region. So we need to make sure as a society that housing and real estate are _not_ good investments. Prior to the 1980s, real estate was not a very good investment. There might be areas that were great investments, but there was no generalized appreciation in land and housing. In particular, it's an obvious sign of a broken market when structure prices are appreciating. In a functioning market, structure prices should largely decrease in value over time, with the only exceptions being actual improvements to the property. All of this is the same point as the article, that the basic issue is supply and demand of housing, and that supply problems are exacerbated by homeowners that have a large financial interest in restricting supply, and lots of tools at their disposal to prevent new housing. Another important point is that while individuals might be responsible for improvements to structures which increase their utility, aesthetics, or value, in almost every case _land_ value increases are the result of large-scale societal factors, and nothing at all to do with any individual actions. The question becomes, why as a society should we allow land value increases to be captured by individuals? The land has gained value because of societal changes. If a new light rail line is developed by local government, land values soar within 4 blocks of the new rail line. Why do we allow that value to be captured by individuals? If a region has great public universities, and high-paying companies flock to the area to hire those workers, land values soar. Why should individuals capture that value? Rather than taxing property, we should tax land. Taxing structures creates a perverse incentive against improving structures. And land is the thing that is actually scarce. Taxing land would naturally encourage landowners to build higher densities where land values and demand are high. And when land is sold, we should tax a very large amount of the appreciation in that land value, perhaps 90%. Society is what earned those gains, and society should reap the reward. Individuals can capture the value of increases on improvements to structures, but there's no reason they should earn a windfall from the societal actions that increased the value of the land.

mtrovo 5y ago

jahewson 5y ago

It’s interesting to see numerous comments here advocating for mental asylums. Detaining anyone non-dangerous in the US is unconstitutional - the Supreme Court’s ruling in O'Connor v. Donaldson dates back to 1975. That’s why all those places shut down.