8 ms·

As a non-American person living in the US, I fail to understand one thing about its society. When I walk around town I see tons and tons of places advertising j

• leetrout 5y ago
  You're seeing second and third order effects of our poor healthcare system. Especially the complete lack of appropriate mental health.
• belval 5y ago
  The base issue is usually mental illness worsened by substance abuse, without a strong social net and with readily available street drugs these people are pretty much unfit for any kind of work.
  • goshx 5y ago
    This has been what I've seen personally volunteering at a homeless outreach. Mental illness seems to be the major factor.
    • api 5y ago
      AFAIK the homeless problem exploded when the US shut down its institutional mental health system in the 1980s. The shutdown wasn't just to cut costs. Many institutions had terrible records that included abusive treatment of patients. But we pulled the plug on that system with no replacement, so major cities became open air psychiatric wards.
      • AngryData 5y ago
        Yeah the system was terrible at the time, what they did however is sort of like seeing a bad performing school and closing it down permanently and then just leaving people completely uneducated. And then people complaining about how many illiterate people we got running around.
  • jhgb 5y ago
    "Without readily available street drugs"? I suspect that wasn't about medication?
    • edoceo 5y ago
      Without net. And easy access to drugs.
  • dragontamer 5y ago
    There's a difference between chronic homelessness (which is probably caused by mental illness or drug abuse), and "typical" homelessness. "Typical" people are homeless for only a few days before someone in their social circle rescues them (and its not a happy story either: it could be that they tried living on the streets but ultimately decided that living with their alcoholic and abusive husband is superior to living on the streets). A lot of effort should probably be made at helping these individuals and providing support here. We shouldn't give up on Chronic homelessness either. Not everyone is mentally sick or a druggie. But a substantial number of them are clearly sick. And even if they are mentally sick, a pathway should be figured out to try to find a way to make them productive members of society.
    • pengaru 5y ago
      > a pathway should be figured out to try to find a way to make them productive members of society. I think this attitude is a major component of the fundamental problem. Why not just accept that some proportion of society is unproductive for whatever reason, and spend tax dollars to keep them minimally housed, bathed, and clothed. Period. It's not extravagant, it's not spacious, it's just a cramped SRO any citizen can get a room in. So much of "productive" employed society is just inefficient borderline pointless busy work anyways, and automation will be increasingly decimating these jobs, it's not something we can continue ignoring and treating as a "homeless problem". Admit it, most of modern society already isn't productive, get over it. I can't honestly say all my colleagues in the tech industry were net productive. There was a whole lot of pissing money down the drain on insignificant contributions, aka warm chairs, aka plants. If tech companies can afford to pay tech salaries for nothing in return, they can pay more taxes to keep the streets, parks, sidewalks, and beaches clean and those down on their luck bathed and groomed enough to interview for a fake job.
      • parineum 5y ago
        I think your view of "productive" is too narrow. It doesn't just have to mean "produced tax revenue".
  • foobarian 5y ago
    The mental illness factor is a part of it, but what's different about the US is that there seems to be less will to "put away" the homeless. You don't see them in more authoritarian societies where the powers that be are less cavalier about grabbing them off the street and depositing who knows where (even if it does end up being some nice universal-healthcare provided institution).
• jjoonathan 5y ago
  Do those jobs pay enough for housing + commute?
  • goshx 5y ago
    Do those jobs pay so little that it is better to not have a job at all?
    • sudosysgen 5y ago
      What's the incentive to get a job if you're still going to be homeless? If you stay homeless you're eventually going to get fired too.
      • goshx 5y ago
        I don't know, maybe being able to buy food is an incentive?
        • shadowgovt 5y ago
          Generally, no. Buying whatever one wants to eat may be an incentive, but in most US cities soup kitchens and/or access to the SNAP program are available. Malnutrition can be a real problem. and 10% of the US experiences food insecurity each year, but starvation is extremely rare. In the US at least, hunger / food insecurity is a cross-cutting issue; people who own homes also run into it.
        • AngryData 5y ago
          But food is so abundant and cheap here that even pocket change can get you enough calories to live on. Yeah eventually you might develop deficiencies, but that is likely years down the road, cheap food is fortified to prevent common deficiencies. That discounted day old box of donuts costs almost nothing and that cheap cereal lasts near forever if it is kept dry.
        • Kaytaro 5y ago
          Homeless in the US are not really struggling for food.
• tigertigerbb 5y ago
  >Anybody would please be able to point me at what I'm missing? I strongly suspect that this is absolutely the wrong place to ask. I do remember a time without homeless people however.
  • Sebguer 5y ago
    There were millions of unhoused during the great depression, and homelessness didn't magically disappear after that (and obviously existed before it, too), so I have no idea how you could possibly remember a 'time without homeless people'. What you probably mean is a time when they were brutally beaten and forced to live in even worse conditions than now, which based on your other comment about "having to be mean to some of them" is probably the system working as you'd like.
    • JadeNB 5y ago
      tigertigerbb's other comments on this post, including the one referenced by Sebguer, for anyone who thinks, as I did at first, that they were coming from a position that was merely uninformed, rather than actively hostile to the homeless: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28066347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28066347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28066377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28066377
  • JadeNB 5y ago
    > I do remember a time without homeless people however. It seems more likely that you remember a time in which you weren't aware of, or weren't exposed to the presence of, homeless people. Homelessness is a serious problem that gets worse as its handling is abysmally bungled, but it is not a new problem.
  • paulddraper 5y ago
    > I do remember a time without homeless people however. Oh, you are a bold one.
• pineconewarrior 5y ago
  In the US, that job may not offer the person any net quality-of-life improvements. Flipping that burger for 30 hours a week does not give them enough money to find housing. Now they're still broke but they're also tired, smelly, and angry.
  • gruez 5y ago
    >Flipping that burger for 30 hours a week does not give them enough money to find housing. Now they're still broke but they're also tired, smelly, and angry. But now they still have $420 (based on CA's minimum wage of $14) more in their pocket?
    • daenz 5y ago
      Panhandling can earn more than minimum wage, and you have no boss or responsibilities.
      • gruez 5y ago
        see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28066652 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28066652
    • sudosysgen 5y ago
      Yeah, but they're still homeless, and unless you can find a place eventually you'll get fired. It may also be that you can get more than 400$/week panhandling. That's only 57$/day.
      • gruez 5y ago
        >It may also be that you can get more than 400$/week panhandling. That's only 57$/day. Are we comparing the upper end of what you can earn via pan-handling with the lower end of what you can earn via a minimum wage job here? That might be responsible for the apparent disparity. Apparently LA has around 65k homeless people. I'm skeptical that even half of that (32.5k) can all earn an average income of $400/week panhandling.
• chrisseaton 5y ago
  Likely the homeless people, for obvious reasons beyond their control, do not have the hygiene standards to work in basic service jobs.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• kazinator 5y ago
  One factor is that employers don't want some scruffy, stinking homeless person anywhere near their business. Basically, it's a problem of hygiene and grooming. To apply for just about any job, a given homeless person would have to take several baths, get a haircut, shave, and get into clean clothes. Somehow, that is an insoluble problem. Secondly, some of these jobs pay so shitty that if you've figured out how to live homeless, they are not worth your time. Your life won't be any better. Can you imagine the hassle? Okay, now you have a job and have to come clean there everyday, and stay there for hours. Where do you clean up if you don't have a home? Who will guard your unsecured belongings while you are away from them? Suppose you get a home: oops, there goes all the pay. So now you live in some shitty home that sucks up most of your pay just so you have a place to take a shower to go to your shitty job. Man things were so much better with no boss, no landlord, under the fresh, open sky! The streets are calling your name, ...
  • jdavis703 5y ago
    I would urge you to do some volunteer work with homeless people. Most aren’t scruffy and stinky. I think what’s happening is the scruffy and stinky people are the ones that get your attention while the homeless security guard or homeless Uber driver escapes your attention.
    • AngryData 5y ago
      Even if they aren't scruffy and stinky, if someone finds out you are homeless many of them will judge you like you are scruffy and stinky regardless. Which unless you are very charismatic is going to be a hard social situation to overcome at work and could easily get you fired. They could come in one day with a bit greasy hair and get fired on the spot because co-workers or boss will assume 'unshowered bum" rather than "woke up a little late this morning"
• Spivak 5y ago
  Just because you’re homeless doesn’t mean you don’t also have a job. There’s a long way from first paycheck to actually getting an apartment. Employers will never post it publicly but basically everywhere screens for the homeless. Landlords also screen for the homeless so even if you have money you’ll have trouble finding a place.
• Forge36 5y ago
  Many jobs require an address. Without a mailing address getting the job becomes MUCH harder.
  • csa 5y ago
    People keep saying this. It’s trivially easy to get a mailing address for a relatively small amount of money (less than an hour of panhandling). If someone is committed to getting a job, “mailing address” is not getting in the way.
• jeffbee 5y ago
  The proximate cause of homelessness in California is lack of housing. The majority of homeless, when surveyed, say they were employed at the time they most recently became homeless. The main cause of homelessness is cost of housing.
• vondur 5y ago
  Most of these people are mentally ill, in addition to most likely being addicted to drugs. They can probably never hold down a steady job.
  • emodendroket 5y ago
    Just not true.
    • bsder 5y ago
      I suspect what's happening here is that you two are conflating different groups. If you include the invisible homeless in the group, you can probably say that the majority of the homeless don't have mental health issues. It takes functional mental skill to not be a visible homeless person. The highly visible homeless probably have significant mental health issues. Mental health issues have a nasty way of completely destroying your social network. If someone doesn't get medical help before they hit bottom, they're in real trouble. The biggest problem is that the "homeless" aren't a monolithic bloc. So, Amdahl's Law is at work--even if you completely eliminate one class of homelessness--you still have 80% of the problem left, it looks like you didn't do anything and everybody gets angry at the waste of money.
      • nanidin 5y ago
        I like the reach for Amdahl's Law, but it's about how fast you can speed something up by doing it in parallel, isn't it? What's to say someone else can't be eliminating the other classes of homelessness in parallel, making the problem effectively embarrassingly parallelizable?
        • bsder 5y ago
          > What's to say someone else can't be eliminating the other classes of homelessness in parallel You both can and must address everything in parallel to actually dent the "homeless problem". That's the point. Let's say there are 5 primary classes of homeless. Even if you take one of them and reduce it to zero (and you will never accomplish this)--you're still left with 80% of the problem. Only now the people approving the checks are angry because the "homeless problem" doesn't really look any better.
• daenz 5y ago
  You're going to get a lot of replies indicating that the problem belongs squarely on society's shoulders (healthcare, capitalism, drugs). One cause that you will probably not see highlighted is the devaluation of autonomy and personal responsibility, and it's absolutely devastating effect on the human spirit to progress.
  • TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
    I think that is the reason for very few homeless cases. Drugs and mental illness are the big two. And that says nothing about society.
  • AngryData 5y ago
    I would argue that the US pushes autonomy and personal responsibility much much farther than most developed countries.
    • throwhome2 5y ago
      Yes it does, yet at the same time many people here do not follow that advice relative to many other countries. It seems to me lack of personal responsibility is almost a side effect instead of a root cause in of itself.
  • xnyan 5y ago
    > One cause that you will probably not see highlighted is the devaluation of autonomy and personal responsibility Besides the fact that not everyone agrees with this argument, it's not highlighted because it's not useful. Let's say your right, the reason people sleep under a highway underpass is because they have not taken so called "personal responsibility" for their situation. Done. What's the plan now? Extending various forms of assistance is the both the moral as well as personal and social best option. Leaving these problems unchecked always exerts a cost on both society and individuals, and the use of solutions like violence and imprisonment have unwanted knock-on effects that are best avoided if possible. First, when you can stop homelessness before it happens via widely available emergency rent assistance. It's a cheap no-brainer that would save tax dollars from the expensive work of helping (or jailing, if feel lack of personal responsibility warrants incarceration) people who have lost housing. Then, provide the already homeless who are willing and able to work with housing, life coaching and training to get back on track. Then, safe communities and residence programs for those who are physically or mentally incapable of supporting/taking care of themselves. I'm sure there will also be people who are a danger to others and may need to be imprisoned.
• thereisnospork 5y ago
  They can survive without having a job (food, water, shelter) and either cannot hold down a job[0] or prefer not to. [0]Either illness/addiction, or accumulation of factors e.g. car broke down, fired, then evicted, then no address, etc.
• throw149102 5y ago
  That's a good question, and I'm born and raised in the US! Perhaps it's due to the difference between CoL and working wages in a given city. Even if someone who is homeless does start working, that doesn't mean they can afford rent in the city. That also doesn't mean they'll get healthcare or other necessary benefits for their continued survival. You also have close to no protections in the US, so you don't really have stable employment in the same way other countries do. So at the end of the day, they may think "whats the point?". I've also seen a fair number of homeless people who are disabled, mentally or physically. Perhaps that bars them from some jobs. (The ADA disallows barring people from jobs if their disability does not impair them from doing essential work, but I'm unsure about what is considered essential and what isn't.) These are just my 2 cents. I imagine there's at least some research on the topic.
  • TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
    You should look into this more because although you have some info, you're misinformed too. For example when you are severely mentally ill you often have 2 choices: 1. Take daily medication that makes you so lethargic or nauseated (or both) that you certainly can't work. 2. Don't take medication and deal with delusions or hallucinations, or both, which again prevents you from working. When you're talking out loud to voices only you can hear, no one wants to work with you.
• Alex3917 5y ago
  In the U.S. there is a law that says if you want to hire government-subsidized indentured servants from overseas, you need to the advertise the job to U.S. citizens first. Just because there is a sign advertising the job doesn't mean they're actually going to hire an American.
  • emodendroket 5y ago
    I don't think people are sponsoring visas for dishwashers.
    • nradov 5y ago
      Actually they do. Seasonal resorts typically hire a lot of their kitchen staff on H-2B visas.
      • emodendroket 5y ago
        That's true, but if he's talking about walking around LA it's not really seasonal resorts that are in question.
• TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  A lot of homeless are mentally ill or, as you mentioned, drug-addicted. There's a very small percentage who can keep a job once hired.
• simonsarris 5y ago
  First please note that America has fewer homeless people than many European nations or Canada. Per 10K: Germany......79 UK...........46 Sweden.......36 Canada.......36 Netherlands..23 France.......21 USA..........17 (via Wikipedia, stats for differing years unfortunately but gives a sense of magnitude) It's mostly that the US homeless population concentrates in very few areas. > How do you reconcile that with the fact that there are so many simple jobs with open positions everywhere? I have friends who have tried to hire homeless for help with moving because her movers did not show up. The experience did not go well. She basically had to babysit them to the effect of "Ok, pack up that box. Now take it and come with me. [he follows without box] No, lets go back and get the box..." But for everything. Even among the set of homeless who want to do jobs, many need extraordinary supervision, and most places are not staffed well enough to handle that.
  • chrisseaton 5y ago
    > First please note that America has fewer homeless people than many European nations or Canada Wow that's a real reality check right there. I would have never guessed that Sweden had 2x the homeless of the US. Thank you.
    • baby 5y ago
      Same with France. Lived there for most of my life and the US is a culture shock when it comes to homelessness. I’m confused by these numbers.
      • mfer 5y ago
        In some cities there are large concentrations of homeless people while in other parts of the country they are rare to encounter. Those large concentrations are regularly talked about by activists and the news media.
        • axaxs 5y ago
          I think this is probably correct. The last time I've even seen an obviously homeless person was in SF, and I haven't been there in 2 years.
• scoofy 5y ago
  If you take the problem in good-faith. That is, that even if these people wanted to engage in pro-social behavior, it's essentially nihilist at this point to assume anyone in this position can achieve this without years of support. I think a lot of it comes from policies that have in America that have effectively destroyed the housing supply. This goes triple for California. For folks living on the street, you absolutely cannot earn enough from a minimum wage to house yourself. At best, you could barely get by sharing housing with a few folks. Assuming you have addiction issues that lead to anti-social behavior, you will have difficulty maintaining relationships in share living spaces and maintaining your employment. I think we would have a dramatically different situation with our homeless, if someone could reasonably afford a small one-bedroom or studio apartment at 25%-40% of the prevailing minimum wage. As it stands, in Los Angeles, median one-bedroom seems to be about $2,362/month, and a minimum wage job there, before taxes only pays $2,462 per month. Thus, a minimum wage job, even if the person magically paid nothing in taxes cannot even come close to covering the median unit, by a factor of 2-4. In addition, that median unit likely requires further assets like a vehicle in order for a person to be able to access employment. Because of this American development pattern, it is nearly impossible for people to even begin to earn enough money to maintain any sense of private living space.
  • randompwd 5y ago
    > As it stands, in Los Angeles, median one-bedroom seems to be about $2,362/month, and a minimum wage job there, before taxes only pays $2,462 per month. Never been to Los Angeles so correct me if I'm wrong but is Los Angeles a small town or is a massive, sought-after city with a ~4 million population and ~18 million greater-area population?
• Spooky23 5y ago
  There isn’t a social safety net for men, by design. If you’re not a custodial parent, you get food benefits and Medicaid potentially, but are effectively locked out of housing and long term benefits. If you have a child, you’ll get a subsistence level of living. If not, you hang in for awhile until you get hurt, and eventually fall off the path.
• shadowoflight 5y ago
  > Anybody would please be able to point me at what I'm missing? Wages well below a living wage, untreated mental illness and substance addiction, and general villainization of the homeless. There's a good chance that homeless people couldn't even get many (or most) of those jobs if they tried because the owners/managers wouldn't give them the time of day.
• AngryData 5y ago
  Because those jobs don't pay enough for the people to afford housing and all the other necessities. And if the ONLY thing it affords you is housing, then you just sleep, wakeup, work, eat plain rice, sleep, repeat, without progressing anywhere. Whoops got sick for 3 days with some terrible shit, fired, lost apartment, car repoed, back to being homeless. Why spend the effort in moving nowhere? And the hiring processes themselves are usually absolute shit. "Give us your resume, then type your entire resume into these boxes, then randomly 6 months later after you have done that to 100 different places you get a call to interview the next day on short notice, come in with a paper copy and looking clean and fresh, pass a drug test since you certainly wouldn't have dared smoke some weed while being poor or homeless, "Okay thanks we might call you but probably not because we are interviewing 60 people for this position", ect.
• jerrac 5y ago
  As others have said, I'm not sure this is a good forum to get a good answer on this subject. I have some ideas, but nothing I'd share without learning a lot more about the subject. So, my suggestion would be to look up your local rescue mission, or homeless shelter, and ask there. While you're at it, take some time or money to support them. I know my local rescue mission has some very effective programs that get people off the streets permanently. So I'm sure they'd know what they're talking about if you ask them.
• asciimov 5y ago
  You are missing all the things you need to have to get that job. First that guy offering the job is choosy, so he wants someone showered, with clean clothes, who doesn't look like they have major health problems or drug habits, they need to have an address, and transportation to get to work. So for the homeless, they need: a place to stay, an address, access to a shower and laundry, they need clothes in good condition, they need some money to buy their first uniform, they need someplace safe to store their belongings, and access to enough food to get through their shifts.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• hackeraccount 5y ago
  I'm not of the Left. So you know where I'm come from. That said people who are living on the street are frequently deeply alone in way that can be hard to understand. Substance abuse problems. Mental problems. Sure all of that. No place to live too. All of that's a huge burden. On top of that the jobs that get listed are frequently not going to be offering 30 hours or less a week. So the way to think of people in that place is that they've got a job. - getting alcohol or drugs. They might have another job - having an incomplete view of reality. On top of that and I would say this most of all, they are frequently alienated from any friend or family. It's hard in that place to say find 20 or 30 hours (if you're lucky) a week to bring in extra cash. It's doubly hard when your expenses are basically everything you have and everything you can get your hands on. As I said earlier I'm not on the Left. I think there's an established view that says the problem here is mental problems of one sort or another leading to homelessness and unemployment. It's not that I think that's untrue but that the description is incomplete. It looks at a profound loss and describes a physical situation - even when talking about substance abuse and mental problems there's a clinical view that will help no one. In my opinion at least. Certainly I'm out of step.
  • emodendroket 5y ago
    It's only like a third of homeless people with mental illness, so while it's a major contributor it cannot totally explain the problem.
    • paulddraper 5y ago
      45% have mental illness. 25% have "serious" mental illness. https://www.bbrfoundation.org/blog/homelessness-and-mental-illness-challenge-our-society https://www.bbrfoundation.org/blog/homelessness-and-mental-i... 38% are alcoholic. 26% abuse drugs. https://www.banyantreatmentcenter.com/2020/07/01/a-look-at-homeless-addicts-philadelphia/ https://www.banyantreatmentcenter.com/2020/07/01/a-look-at-h... I suspect they tend to be the more visible ones, as opposed to the ones in shelters or assistance programs.
      • emodendroket 5y ago
• gumby 5y ago
  There are many different reasons, some articulated already by other replies. There are also some practical/pragmatic barriers. One is that if you are living on the street, any possessions are likely with you at all times. What do you do with them while working? Another is that if you are living on the street you may have involuntary hygiene issues relating to lack of access to water, clothes washing etc which may make you unhireable. There are real phase changes between "couch surfing", "living in your car" and "utterly homeless" and hysteretic effects that often mean that if you cross a threshold "downstream" it becomes almost impossible in many cases to move back. There are other issues in the US as well, e.g.: unlike countries like Japan or most EU countries, a lot of people with psychiatric issues are homeless (converse isn't true -- most homeless people do not have psychiatric issues, but the ones that do exacerbate the problem). Also because of weather and services, the homeless population is concentrated in a few discrete areas. Ironically that makes it harder to get support for them as most people don't actually encounter truely homeless people except in the movies.
  • emodendroket 5y ago
    > Ironically that makes it harder to get support for them as most people don't actually encounter truely homeless people except in the movies. I can't think of any major city I've been to that doesn't have homeless panhandlers all over, though the large camps you see in LA are extreme.
  • paulddraper 5y ago
    > What do you do with them while working? Well, someone did try building better-than-tents shelters, but LA shut him down for violating code. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6h7fL22WCE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6h7fL22WCE
• mc32 5y ago
  I don’t know, honestly. When I travel overseas and see people who don’t look down upon menial jobs but see them as a source of sustenance I have to admire them. I’ll see people doing lots of things like picking up recyclables, selling drinks, handyman type jobs, knife sharpener, shoe repair, mobile tailor, etc. Very seldom see homeless in Asia or Mexico (I don’t stay in tourist areas). People there hustle one way or another (I mean the positive hustle, not the negative hustler type hustle). But we seem lazy in contrast. Sadly, I saw this attitude in a relative. Out of a job, this one would refuse to take a job at the Home Depot or the like. No, that was not their kind of work. They would rather mooch off friends till one of the friends gave them an easy job they could drag their feet at all day. This relative is perfectly healthy and has no physical problems. But would actually rather sleep on the street on occasion rather than get up and show up to work on time on a schedule. Amazing!
  • emodendroket 5y ago
    > Very seldom see homeless in Asia or Mexico (I don’t stay in tourist areas). What on earth are you talking about? Even in Japan, famous in the Western imagination for societal cohesion and lack of crime, you can easily spot homeless people sleeping rough in Tokyo. I suppose they do a better job than American cities of keeping the problem out of sight but the idea that there are no homeless people at all in Asia is simply risible.
    • mc32 5y ago
      Seldom doesn’t mean never. Yes, on occasion you come across a homeless person sleeping on the subway steps. But it’s not all urinated over and smelly. And, importantly many will engage in menial jobs, keep up appearances and try to be presentable.
      • emodendroket 5y ago
        But "seldom" isn't really true either. The subway being cleaner probably has more to do with much higher levels of investment in keeping it clean than with the superior character of their homeless people.
• spfzero 5y ago
  Some do, but I'd expect the majority are in the "don't want to work" category. A lot of people are under the impression that these are people that, if only given a chance, would want to get back on their feet and re-integrate with the rest of society. I'd say that the evidence, such as what you've observed, argues against that.
• neom 5y ago
  This is a good book: https://www.amazon.ca/2-00-Day-Living-Nothing-America/dp/054481195X https://www.amazon.ca/2-00-Day-Living-Nothing-America/dp/054... From my spending time with homeless people in the US (I lived on the streets for a while) it's a combination of mental health/checked out/drugs, or more often, a feeling that being on the bottom of the social totem pole is no better/actually worse than taking part in "the system" (per the book I recommended).
• mlinsey 5y ago
  Mental health is a large part of the issue, but sometimes cause and effect can be murky. It's important to note that even the very large visible encampments in cities like SF and LA are the tip of the homelessness iceberg, there's a much larger group of people who are living on friends/relatives couches, in their cars, or in shelters. A lot of these people have some level of employment, but housing affordability (a result of ~50 years of very restrictive land-use policies making it hard to build new housing) means that this level of employment can't afford them their own permanent home. For example, prior to 1970 it was much more common to see "boarding houses" where you'd share a room or share a bathroom, and especially unmarried low-wage workers would live there, but these are illegal to build in most cities these days. Most of this homeless-but-not-on-the-street population is transient - it is common eg to be temporarily living in your car after a job disruption or sudden emergency expense, then to find another job and find a place to live after some time. In other words, they will do exactly what you are suggesting and lock down a new job quickly. And this group is a majority of the group of people who spend any time homeless in a given year. But a portion of of this transiently-homeless population doesn't solve their job situation quickly, will wear out their welcome with friends, or will lose their car for a variety of reasons -- and end up falling into street homelessness. Once you are homeless and living on the street, you are at extremely high risk for developing a mental health and/or substance abuse problem even if you didn't start out with one. It also becomes much harder for you to get one of those available jobs, for a number of reasons, some as basic as not having transportation to work or not being able to present yourself well for an interview. In short: land-use policies cause homelessness, the majority of the people who experience any amount of homelessness do get a job quickly, the street-homeless you see are the small fraction (of the frighteningly-large homeless population) that got stuck for some reason, and their situation is a feedback loop making them even more stuck. (also: the 'we will hire you on the spot!' thing is a weird 2021 artifact of the pandemic, it taking time to ramp back up, and the super-generous unemployment benefits program that will be expiring very soon. the hiring market won't be like that next year)
  • jimmygrapes 5y ago
    Having been in this hidden group of homeless myself, I will let you in one one little secret. The land-use restriction argument might apply if you consider all homeless people needing housing, but on an individual level there are vacancies in every region... but they are unavailable for other reasons. Once you strip out the (very visible) addicts and mentally ill, the real reasons for homelessness are: credit score/report, 2-3x income to rent cost requirement, and to a much lesser extent, criminal background checks. I understand the reasoning for all of these. It's valid. It's also the cause of most non-addict, non-mentally-ill homelessness. tl:dr; The vacancies often exist, but the credit system prejudges and denies. (yes, I know private landlords exist who can "work with you" - they aren't the ones with hundreds of units.)
• emodendroket 5y ago
  Do you think if a visibly homeless person walks in and asks for a job the average business owner is going to hire them?
• mensetmanusman 5y ago
  Here is one take by the Economist: https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2018/12/10/why-american-unemployment-is-so-low https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2018/12/10/...
• oneplane 5y ago
  As far as I know this is mainly because most 'jobs' aren't really jobs in the sense that you can support yourself with it. In the US there isn't much of a requirement to pay people enough to survive.
• paulddraper 5y ago
  > How do you reconcile that with the fact that there are so many simple jobs with open positions everywhere? A lot of people simply don't want to work. Would rather spend the day on the sidewalk than have obligations. A lot of homeless have mental illness (bipolar, depression, drug addiction, etc.). This isn't necessarily more common in the US than any other country; the US in general provides fewer public services. So you'll see more of them on the street. (And of course SoCal has excellent weather; there's more homeless there than in Maine. LA is kinda extreme.)
• throwhome2 5y ago
  Nobody wants to admit this, but probably more so here on HN and specially those who will downvote this reply to oblivion and have 10k+ karma points. They will find any excuse to sidestep this as a legitimate issue, here are some to watch out for: a. other countries have a worse homeless problem b. it's because we closed mental health institutions in the 80s c. I was homeless you don't know what you're talking about d. war on drugs is the cause e. you shouldn't judge others maybe they chose this... the list goes on and on and I'm not going to respond to any of them here, just something to be on the look out for when this topic comes up. In the US people don't find the same solidarity with their fellow citizens unless you belong to the same club or same sociopolitical spectrum you basically think you're better than everyone else and there is a deep rooted superiority complex among people here. This is in stark contrast to countries even in Europe including Italy and others where there is a strong sense of community and for example Italianess that supersedes petty political and idealogical beliefs that many in the US cling to almost religiously. I don't think Americans want to admit this specially the closer to the coastal cities you get the less sense of solidarity with fellow citizens and belongingness prevails rather than more community driven even religious South.
• joshmaker 5y ago
  These jobs almost certainly also want someone who is clean and reliable. If you are homeless, you might not have access to a shower or laundry facilities. You might have to rely on public transit (which is unreliable in many American cities), or you might not be able to afford public transit, so it might be hard to arrive on time. All of which will put you at a strong disadvantage compared to any other applicant. If you do go to a job interview you might have to leave all your positions in the street where without you watching over them, they could be stolen. If you have a pet or a child, there might not be anyone trustworthy willing to take care of them while you are away. If you pass the first round of interviews, you might need a phone number where they can call you for a follow up. But what happens if you can't afford a phone plan? Or if you have a phone, but don't have easy access to a location where you can charge it? Finally day after day of living on the street, having very poor nutrition, not getting enough quality sleep, dealing with extreme stress, can all cause mental health issues. There are lots of obstacles to getting a job when you are homeless. And the longer you go without a job, the harder it is to get a new job.
• handrous 5y ago
  If you talk to people hiring for very bottom-of-the-market workers, you'll find their #1 problem is finding people who actually show up, and also aren't (bluntly) crazy, dangerous, or frequently drunk/high. There's no shortage of candidates for $12/hr jobs who are not worth $12/hr of labor, since they don't show up half the time and are space-cases when they do. The "actually show up" part is a combination of the fact that people who, as a personality trait, have trouble showing up to work, tend to cluster at the bottom of the employment market, and people without steady, fairly high income have a lot more challenges securing reliable transportation and otherwise arranging their lives so they can get to work on time and consistently (childcare, for example, or unexpected, sudden needs to care for or assist other relatives, or illness of their own) even if they have the best intentions and are reasonably responsible. Part of this is probably that minimum wage needs to go up quite a bit and/or these employers just need to pay more, but I don't think that would entirely solve the problem. [EDIT] source: I once worked on an app in this space, and had some visibility into the feedback & concerns of employers of this sort (not with the app, but generally with hiring in that market) and that was consistently something they talked about, at length, usually with tons of sad or amusing/surprising anecdotes—hire someone, then they just never, ever show up, or they come for their first shift then ghost after that, or you call them 30 minutes after their shift is supposed to start and they're like "oh yeah, that, I'm not coming in today, I might be in tomorrow, I dunno yet", or their car's always broken, obviously-high candidates in interviews, all that sort of thing.
  • TMWNN 5y ago
    >[EDIT] source: I once worked on an app in this space, and had some visibility into the feedback & concerns of employers of this sort (not with the app, but generally with hiring in that market) and that was consistently something they talked about, at length, usually with tons of sad or amusing/surprising anecdotes—hire someone, then they just never, ever show up, or they come for their first shift then ghost after that, or you call them 30 minutes after their shift is supposed to start and they're like "oh yeah, that, I'm not coming in today, I might be in tomorrow, I dunno yet", or their car's always broken, obviously-high candidates in interviews, all that sort of thing. This was a big problem in Newfoundland during WW2. The term "Newfies" began as a slur, created by Canadians who found that workers they hired to build military bases would show up to work long enough to collect the money they needed to live in their home coastal villages, then immediately leave.
• rvn1045 5y ago
  Another thing you have to understand about the us are weak family ties. If you are unemployed in another country you could easily stay with some family member - cousin, uncle etc This is not the case in the U.S
• yarky 5y ago
  > Where I come from, jobs are simply unavailable and at the moment you advertise it, even if it's just flipping burgers, there are lines and lines of people competing for it. I can think of two reasons: 1. I doubt those people lining up to flip burgers fall under the same definition of homelessness. I don't doubt they need a job and might not have enough/any income, but that's not a "choice" as evidenced by the line up. 2. Homelessness in developed countries is not necessarily due to a lack of job opportunities but a lot more about a lack of basic job/communication skills sometimes associated with mental health issues. At least that's what I've realized when comparing the poor/rich countries where I've lived.
• michaelt 5y ago
  As I understand it, there are multiple factors: 1. Places like San Francisco have temperate climates, and cops not under orders to actively chase homeless people out. A good place to move if you're homeless, right? But San Francisco also has ruinously expensive housing, so the money one can make in an entry-level job won't go very far. (American cities have a long tradition of "solving" homelessness by putting homeless people on buses to other cities. Officially, this is to "help them reunite with their families" but we all know what's really going on) 2. A bunch of things when you're poor are self-compounding. Lost your access to a stove and a fridge? You're going to be spending more on food. When you lost your home, probably you fucked up your credit rating too. Now the landlord wants a bigger deposit, and the electricity company wants you on their prepaid tariff which happens to be the most expensive one - and so on. 3. I've heard it said you don't become a rough sleeper when you spend your last dollar; you become a rough sleeper when you exhaust your last social connection. If you've lost your home but you still have sympathetic friends and family members you can become part of the 'hidden homeless' sleeping on a couch. If factors like drug addiction or untreated mental illness, have exhausted the hospitality of friends and family, those same factors will also make employers reluctant to hire you.
• throwhome2 5y ago
  Nobody wants to admit this, but probably more so here on HN and specially those who will downvote this reply to oblivion and have 10k+ karma points. They will find any excuse to sidestep this as a legitimate issue, here are some to watch out for: a. other countries have a worse homeless problem b. it's because we closed mental health institutions in the 80s c. I was homeless you don't know what you're talking about d. war on drugs is the cause e. you shouldn't judge others maybe they chose this... the list goes on and on and I'm not going to respond to any of them here, just something to be on the look out for when this topic comes up. In the US people don't find the same solidarity with their fellow citizens unless you belong to the same club or same sociopolitical spectrum you basically think you're better than everyone else and there is a deep rooted superiority complex among people here. This is in stark contrast to countries even in Europe including Italy and others where there is a strong sense of community and for example Italianess that supersedes petty political and idealogical beliefs that many in the US cling to almost religiously. I don't think Americans want to admit this specially the closer to the coastal cities you get the less sense of solidarity with fellow citizens and belongingness prevails rather than more community driven even religious South.
• padastra 5y ago
  What you're seeing in this thread about how is a person by themselves supposed to be clean for an interview, have an address for a check, get housing on minimum wage in San Francisco, etc. is missing the point. 70%+ of people who are homeless climb out it, proving that it is possible (despite the aforementioned resource challenges -- that's almost tautological to what being poor is). Those who don't and remain chronically homeless have some combination of reduced functional ability, reduced physical or mental health (including stress from poverty contributing to drug use and vice versa), or other more fundamental issues. These people also exist in other countries. What's more unique to the U.S. is that for large swathes of people, their family has totally washed their hands of their responsibility. Compared to poor authoritarian countries that's probably because in those countries, families know their loved ones will die if they are left out on their own with no help. Compared to Europe, it's because large segments of the population have broken family units (e.g. 72% of black babies are born to unmarried mothers, who by nature have much more difficulty providing resources / shelter to an adult child who moved away to another city and is homeless there. And this is definitely impacted by historic racism, and even modern-day racism, but is independently now a self-perpetuating cycle of poverty and broken families and crime). I'm going to be downvoted but I've worked in homeless shelters, for public outreach, for jobs programs, and the problem is incredibly challenging. The idea that society can replace family is inane. What you see on HN is some white liberal dude who grew up in an upper-middle-class family, makes $300K a year waving their fingers over a keyboard but thinks they're financially oppressed so votes for Bernie Sanders, and just repeats some stuff they read on reddit or some shitty NPR story, but who has never bothered to truly spend time doing public health outreach, has never truly interacted with the homeless for an entry-level job, has never really assessed their ability to complete even basic tasks. They think it should be an easy problem to solve with just a few more resources, which they vote for (obviously without getting themselves dirty in the process), and then see it as evidence of an unjust society while wondering why SF is getting shittier every year.
  • bsder 5y ago
    > What's more unique to the U.S. is that for large swathes of people, their family has totally washed their hands of their responsibility. Compared to poor authoritarian countries that's probably because in those countries, families know their loved ones will die if they are left out on their own with no help. Or, if I take your comments to their invalid conclusion, other countries let their homeless die--thus solving their homeless problem. And why should somebody's drug addled parent be the responsibility of the child? The child didn't make those choices--and probably has their own damage from the parent to boot. Finally, if someone has dementia, God help you if you don't have money because no one else will. People with dementia often require 24/7 care--how are you supposed to go to your job if you are doing that? How about instead of just shuffling the problem onto "family" that is horribly ill-equipped for dealing with most of these situations, we start as a society helping people to deal with these things.
• throwhomeee 5y ago
  Nobody wants to admit this, but probably more so here on HN and specially those who will downvote this reply to oblivion and have 10k+ karma points. They will find any excuse to sidestep this as a legitimate issue, here are some to watch out for: a. other countries have a worse homeless problem b. it's because we closed mental health institutions in the 80s c. I was homeless you don't know what you're talking about d. war on drugs is the cause e. you shouldn't judge others maybe they chose this... the list goes on and on and I'm not going to respond to any of them here, just something to be on the look out for when this topic comes up. In the US people don't find the same solidarity with their fellow citizens unless you belong to the same club or same sociopolitical spectrum you basically think you're better than everyone else and there is a deep rooted superiority complex among people here. This is in stark contrast to countries even in Europe including Italy and others where there is a strong sense of community and for example Italianess that supersedes petty political and idealogical beliefs that many in the US cling to almost religiously. I don't think Americans want to admit this specially the closer to the coastal cities you get the less sense of solidarity with fellow citizens and belongingness prevails rather than more community driven even religious South.
• pauldickwin 5y ago
  In America, welfare is designed in such a way in which it actually prevents the jobless from wanting to enter the workforce. They actually make more by panhandling and collecting welfare than simply getting an entry level job. The jobless understand this basic economic tactic well, so they end up permanently living off welfare and not trying to get a job. The government does not want to fix welfare to actually work (for example, with a negative income tax instead) because it would result in the firing and unemployment of many government welfare office workers.
  • spiderice 5y ago
    The idea that the government not wanting to fix welfare in order to protect the jobs of the welfare workers seems like a tad bit of a stretch
• swearwolf 5y ago
  There’s no single answer, but: 1.) A lot of the visibly homeless population suffers from either mental illness, drug addiction or both. The statistics I’ve seen for cities on the west coast put it at approximately 40% for mental illness and a similar percentage for addiction. These are self reported numbers, so they are probably under reported. 2.) Related to #1, good mental healthcare is very hard to come by in the United States, especially if you are poor. In the 80s the federal government cut funding drastically, leaving it up to individual states to cover the gap. Most didn’t and have continued to cut budgets even further in the ensuing years. 3.) Related to #2, the Deinstitutionalization movement successfully fought for the rights of the mentally ill, but there were unintended consequences. Right now it is extraordinarily difficult to convince a judge to commit someone to long term, in-patient psychiatric care unless they present an immediate threat to themselves or others. In practice, this turns out to be very difficult to prove. In most cases, if the person can’t be proven to about to commit murder or suicide in the next few hours, they won’t be committed against their will. 4.) Most states have closed all but a one or two state psychiatric hospitals, which is where people with severe mental illness used to be housed. The theory was that states would build community integrated outpatient care facilities, but many of them didn’t. As a result, many long term psychiatric patients were turned loose with nowhere to go, and became homeless. Also, now that those facilities are closed, when a judge does decide to commit someone, there’s often nowhere for them to go. In the state I live in, the only remaining state psychiatric hospital hasn’t had an available bed in years. 5.) Related to #3 and 4, jails have become our defacto mental health treatment facilities because there’s nowhere else available. As a result, a lot of people who should have been take into care end up with a rap sheet, which shows up on background checks, and makes it difficult to obtain housing or jobs. The same is true for people who are not mentally ill, but have drug addictions. 6.) There’s a lot more supporting infrastructure necessary to allow you to go to work than you’d think. At bare minimum, you need an alarm clock to wake you up in time, you need some basic hygiene and grooming capabilities, and you need to feel reasonably confident that when you walk away from your home to go to work, your things won’t be stolen. A person living in a tent has none of those things. A person living in a shelter might have some of them, but if they leave their stuff unattended it’s almost certain to get stolen. They may be able to take a shower or wash their clothes, but probably not on the same day, and not more than once a week. Regardless of when their shift starts, most shelters have strict curfews, which means that a person staying there can’t work non-traditional hours. Space in the shelters is often first come first served, so if you miss the bus and don’t make it back to the shelter on time, they’re likely to be full and you’re back on the street. It’s very difficult to establish stability using the shelter system. Finally, you asked why people who don’t have jobs don’t live with their families. A lot of the time it’s because they have untreated or poorly treated mental illness that makes living with them incredibly difficult. Nobody likes to talk about it, but families who have severely mentally ill members in the United States are often forced to make the heartbreaking choice between their own sanity and the wellbeing of their family member. The same is true for people suffering from drug addiction. Sometimes you have to choose your own sanity, or you’ll be on the streets too. Hopefully that helps you understand what you’re seeing better.
• throwwhm2 5y ago
  Nobody wants to admit this, but probably more so here on HN and specially those who will downvote this reply to oblivion and have 10k+ karma points. They will find any excuse to sidestep this as a legitimate issue, here are some to watch out for: a. other countries have a worse homeless problem b. it's because we closed mental health institutions in the 80s c. I was homeless you don't know what you're talking about d. war on drugs is the cause e. you shouldn't judge others maybe they chose this... the list goes on and on and I'm not going to respond to any of them here, just something to be on the look out for when this topic comes up. In the US people don't find the same solidarity with their fellow citizens unless you belong to the same club or same sociopolitical spectrum you basically think you're better than everyone else and there is a deep rooted superiority complex among people here. This is in stark contrast to countries even in Europe including Italy and others where there is a strong sense of community and for example Italianess that supersedes petty political and idealogical beliefs that many in the US cling to almost religiously. I don't think Americans want to admit this specially the closer to the coastal cities you get the less sense of solidarity with fellow citizens and belongingness prevails rather than more community driven even religious South.
• pandaman 5y ago
  It's a campaign of gaslighting that makes you think so. First, the name "homeless" or even "people experiencing homelessness" implies that the lack of housing is the only problem with these individuals, who are, otherwise, perfectly normal and functional human beings. Then, there is a motte-and-bailey game with "Look at Pedro, he has a wife and children but lives with his in-laws because he lost his job and is looking for a new one, Pedro is homeless, do you want to put him in a mental institution just for losing his job, you heartless bigot?" and "Yeeep, people doing drugs in the open and harassing the passersby are homeless, just like Pedro, you have any problem with Pedro, bigot?". Then, there is a "solution", always involving real-estate ("abolish zoning!", "build affordable housing" etc.), which is as sane to me as if they'd called the meth-using vagrants "toothless" or "people experiencing toothlessness" and proposed to build more dental clinics to fix the issue. In my opinion, nobody has problem with people who don't own property as long as they do not impose on the society. For all I care Elon Musk is homeless at the moment as he sold all his properties in CA and lives in a company house. I have absolutely no issues with this. On the other hand, I have a problem with people who shit on the street, scream, and go through my garbage every night regardless of their property ownership. For all I care they are all retired Hollywood producers who own 100s of millions worth of RE in Malibu, still they should be taken to jail for vagrancy.