5 ms·

The article mentioned that San Jose has 6,000 homeless people and capacity for 1,000 homeless people (I assume this allows for food, beds etc but I'm not sure).

The article mentioned that San Jose has 6,000 homeless people and capacity for 1,000 homeless people (I assume this allows for food, beds etc but I'm not sure). Perhaps I don't quite appreciate the complexity of this problem, but creating housing for 6,000 people seems pretty feasible and achievable. And really the city only needs to create space for 5,000 people since they already have 1,000 beds. While a 1,000 to 6,000 capacity is a significant percentage growth, this just doesn't feel like an insurmountable problem. It seems like it should be pretty easy to resolve (building housing for these people) by a city government especially with a public private partnership and support from a major tech company. Even if scaling 1,000 to 6,000 is hard, surely some incremental improvement (1,000 to 1,500 for example) should be possible

j_walter 5y ago
You make room for the 5,000...and word spreads and soon you have 10,000 more. Unfortunately with the homeless crisis we have the ones that try to support them more just end up with more of them. It's really a never ending battle...
- khrbrt 5y ago
  Then make room for 5000 in every city, and do it with a federal program so individual cities don't have the incentive to cut back on it. Homelessness is a national problem and demands a national solution. The federal government has no problem creating trillions of dollars to prop up the financial system and fight endless wars. It can spare a few billion to get people off the streets and under roofs.
  - j_walter 5y ago
    The cost will vary widely. SF currently spends $60K per tent in their encampment program...expand that to house 5K people and you run into problems. Portland spent $58M on a jail built in the 90s that never opened and was then sold a few years back for just a few million (maybe 5 or 6 years ago). The owner said they would donate the site as a homeless shelter if the city ran it since they had a ballooning homeless problem (over 4K as of last count). City leaders felt that because it was formerly a jail and not near services that it would be inhumane to house homeless there. So instead they continue to sleep on the streets, get hit crossing the freeway and shitting on the sidewalks. It finally opened just before winter last year, but mostly because of NGO helping to get it running...the government is completely useless here. Total people currently off the street is only 45 since it still needs a lot of work. https://www.wweek.com/news/2021/06/09/a-homeless-shelter-in-a-never-used-jail-gets-a-government-subsidy-from-well-placed-friends/ https://www.wweek.com/news/2021/06/09/a-homeless-shelter-in-...
- zaidf 5y ago
  Data doesn't back this actually happening, though. If this were true, homeless people would be rushing to NYC. See https://medium.com/@josefow/new-york-decided-to-end-street-homelessness-and-it-basically-succeeded-ab27f3ec5a65#:~:text=New%20York%20has%20far%20fewer,from%20the%20East%20Coast%20city&text=This%20extensive%20network%20means%20New,almost%2011%20times%20as%20high https://medium.com/@josefow/new-york-decided-to-end-street-h... and https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xzwb5/california-is-desperately-trying-to-hide-homeless-people-critics-say https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xzwb5/california-is-despera...
  - j_walter 5y ago
    NYC doesn't have the good weather that LA does. NYC also puts pretty strong limits on the people living in the shelters. There are a large portion of homeless that don't want to give up drugs, pets or other freedoms...so they prefer to just live in tents in nice weather.
    - zaidf 5y ago
      How did we go from comparing NYC with SF to LA? None of your arguments around "good weather" applies to SF. I am struggling to see any insight in your comment that cannot be filed under "common myths people spread about homeless people."
OzyM 5y ago
The most obvious issue would be that the 6,000 figure in the article was pre-pandemic, so it might be much higher now. Also, I don't know the economics of homelessness, but I feel like as supply of homeless shelters increased, demand for the beds would increase as well, right? How elastic is local demand, with people in RVs moving in/out of an area? Not that it shouldn't be done, but it seems like if all it took to "solve" homelessness was building enough beds, we would already be doing that.
grillvogel 5y ago
are you familiar wiith the expression "Don't feed the bears"?
- MarieUsra 5y ago
  Let them eat cake!
  - asimjalis 5y ago
    User name checks out.
DoreenMichele 5y ago
Perhaps I don't quite appreciate the complexity of this problem, but creating housing for 6,000 people seems pretty feasible and achievable. No, you likely don't appreciate the complexity. Homeless people are people. "Canned" solutions for 6000 people who have only one thing in common -- they are poor and living in X area -- tend to not work. Across the entire nation, we do desperately need to figure out how to let the market provide housing that makes sense for people and is affordable. A large piece of that is removing barriers to market-based housing development and we tend to not focus on that.
- bern4444 5y ago
  That's fair, I only say 6,000 seems feasible since I'm in NYC which absolutely has a homeless issue as well, but there's capacity for 10s of thousands. Of course, the current NYC capacity isn't enough for the number of homeless in NYC, but it's proof that housing and support for thousands of homeless people is possible by a city.
  - DoreenMichele 5y ago
    Providing shelter for homeless people without making them not homeless doesn't resolve the problem. Homelessness is a symptom of deep issues in the US. We have broken housing policy. We have bad healthcare policy. We have saddled a lot of people with student loans under conditions where the loans are a huge burden and the education they got wasn't the slam dunk solution to making life work that we convinced them it would be. Homelessness means "The lives of these people simply don't work for some reason." Lack of housing is one element of that, but it's not the entire issue. We need to design an America where the lives of most ordinary people work again. Where you don't need a college degree or can get one without it being an undo burden. One where if you are willing to work and aren't a criminal etc, then it's possible to make your life work. There's no single thing that will get us there, though fixing our broken housing policy such that affordable housing can exist again would be an important step forward.
    - bern4444 5y ago
908B64B197 5y ago
If all it took was 6,000 extra housing units it would be great. But the level of intervention required per homeless person is going to vary significantly. Some of them are just in a really precarious financial situation and that's "easy" to fix. Some others are suffering from mental illness, addiction and chronic diseases. Having a roof over their heads will sure help fixing these issues, but it can't to it all.
skybrian 5y ago
San Francisco apparently was spending $60,000 per tent, not because the tents are expensive, but because they also have to provide services like showers, meals, and 24-hour security. [1] I’m no expert, but this doesn’t sound much like normal housing or camping? It seems to be its own thing. [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/amp/S-F-officials-want-15-million-for-tent-sites-16269998.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/amp/S-F-officials-want-...
hulitu 5y ago
And what is the ROI ? We need profit man.

j_walter 5y ago

You make room for the 5,000...and word spreads and soon you have 10,000 more. Unfortunately with the homeless crisis we have the ones that try to support them more just end up with more of them. It's really a never ending battle...

khrbrt 5y ago
Then make room for 5000 in every city, and do it with a federal program so individual cities don't have the incentive to cut back on it. Homelessness is a national problem and demands a national solution. The federal government has no problem creating trillions of dollars to prop up the financial system and fight endless wars. It can spare a few billion to get people off the streets and under roofs.
- j_walter 5y ago
  The cost will vary widely. SF currently spends $60K per tent in their encampment program...expand that to house 5K people and you run into problems. Portland spent $58M on a jail built in the 90s that never opened and was then sold a few years back for just a few million (maybe 5 or 6 years ago). The owner said they would donate the site as a homeless shelter if the city ran it since they had a ballooning homeless problem (over 4K as of last count). City leaders felt that because it was formerly a jail and not near services that it would be inhumane to house homeless there. So instead they continue to sleep on the streets, get hit crossing the freeway and shitting on the sidewalks. It finally opened just before winter last year, but mostly because of NGO helping to get it running...the government is completely useless here. Total people currently off the street is only 45 since it still needs a lot of work. https://www.wweek.com/news/2021/06/09/a-homeless-shelter-in-a-never-used-jail-gets-a-government-subsidy-from-well-placed-friends/ https://www.wweek.com/news/2021/06/09/a-homeless-shelter-in-...
zaidf 5y ago
Data doesn't back this actually happening, though. If this were true, homeless people would be rushing to NYC. See https://medium.com/@josefow/new-york-decided-to-end-street-homelessness-and-it-basically-succeeded-ab27f3ec5a65#:~:text=New%20York%20has%20far%20fewer,from%20the%20East%20Coast%20city&text=This%20extensive%20network%20means%20New,almost%2011%20times%20as%20high https://medium.com/@josefow/new-york-decided-to-end-street-h... and https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xzwb5/california-is-desperately-trying-to-hide-homeless-people-critics-say https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xzwb5/california-is-despera...
- j_walter 5y ago
  NYC doesn't have the good weather that LA does. NYC also puts pretty strong limits on the people living in the shelters. There are a large portion of homeless that don't want to give up drugs, pets or other freedoms...so they prefer to just live in tents in nice weather.
  - zaidf 5y ago
    How did we go from comparing NYC with SF to LA? None of your arguments around "good weather" applies to SF. I am struggling to see any insight in your comment that cannot be filed under "common myths people spread about homeless people."

OzyM 5y ago

The most obvious issue would be that the 6,000 figure in the article was pre-pandemic, so it might be much higher now. Also, I don't know the economics of homelessness, but I feel like as supply of homeless shelters increased, demand for the beds would increase as well, right? How elastic is local demand, with people in RVs moving in/out of an area? Not that it shouldn't be done, but it seems like if all it took to "solve" homelessness was building enough beds, we would already be doing that.

grillvogel 5y ago

are you familiar wiith the expression "Don't feed the bears"?

MarieUsra 5y ago
Let them eat cake!
- asimjalis 5y ago
  User name checks out.

DoreenMichele 5y ago

Perhaps I don't quite appreciate the complexity of this problem, but creating housing for 6,000 people seems pretty feasible and achievable. No, you likely don't appreciate the complexity. Homeless people are people. "Canned" solutions for 6000 people who have only one thing in common -- they are poor and living in X area -- tend to not work. Across the entire nation, we do desperately need to figure out how to let the market provide housing that makes sense for people and is affordable. A large piece of that is removing barriers to market-based housing development and we tend to not focus on that.

bern4444 5y ago
That's fair, I only say 6,000 seems feasible since I'm in NYC which absolutely has a homeless issue as well, but there's capacity for 10s of thousands. Of course, the current NYC capacity isn't enough for the number of homeless in NYC, but it's proof that housing and support for thousands of homeless people is possible by a city.
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  Providing shelter for homeless people without making them not homeless doesn't resolve the problem. Homelessness is a symptom of deep issues in the US. We have broken housing policy. We have bad healthcare policy. We have saddled a lot of people with student loans under conditions where the loans are a huge burden and the education they got wasn't the slam dunk solution to making life work that we convinced them it would be. Homelessness means "The lives of these people simply don't work for some reason." Lack of housing is one element of that, but it's not the entire issue. We need to design an America where the lives of most ordinary people work again. Where you don't need a college degree or can get one without it being an undo burden. One where if you are willing to work and aren't a criminal etc, then it's possible to make your life work. There's no single thing that will get us there, though fixing our broken housing policy such that affordable housing can exist again would be an important step forward.
  - bern4444 5y ago

908B64B197 5y ago

If all it took was 6,000 extra housing units it would be great. But the level of intervention required per homeless person is going to vary significantly. Some of them are just in a really precarious financial situation and that's "easy" to fix. Some others are suffering from mental illness, addiction and chronic diseases. Having a roof over their heads will sure help fixing these issues, but it can't to it all.

skybrian 5y ago

San Francisco apparently was spending $60,000 per tent, not because the tents are expensive, but because they also have to provide services like showers, meals, and 24-hour security. [1] I’m no expert, but this doesn’t sound much like normal housing or camping? It seems to be its own thing. [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/amp/S-F-officials-want-15-million-for-tent-sites-16269998.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/amp/S-F-officials-want-...

hulitu 5y ago

And what is the ROI ? We need profit man.