4 ms·

I'm really not convinced that high housing costs accurately depict the source of the homelessness problem in CA. If it does, it certainly isn't describing the

I'm really not convinced that high housing costs accurately depict the source of the homelessness problem in CA. If it does, it certainly isn't describing the homeless people I see. Most of the homeless people I see, the ones who are literally pitching tents on the side walks, sleeping on boxes, defecating anywhere and everywhere, passed out on park benches at 3 in the afternoon, are almost certainly not going to be benefited by lower housing prices. These people could not afford nor likely ever would afford, a house that cost literally anything. Most of these people suffer from a mental illness and/or a drug addiction which makes holding down a job unlikely to ever happen. What they need is publicly funded mental health hospitals, like the ones that were destroyed in the 80s. Of course high housing costs are a huge problem, but I just don't think they tell the whole story when it comes to CA homelessness. There's an elephant in the room that far too many people don't want to address. It's the aforementioned population of people who either can't or won't work and the solution we have for them right now is the street.

settrans 5y ago
California already has a 1% income tax allocated just to mental health, and has collected $7.4 billion so far just from this tax[0]. How is that working? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Mental_Health_Services_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Mental_Health_Servi...
- rubicon33 5y ago
  Our government, either through corruption or incompetence, can somehow manage to spend billions in tax payer dollars with very little to show for it. When I advocate for something like a mental health program, it assumes a government which is functional enough to actually implement it. What we currently have here in CA couldn't be further from that.
  - jason0597 5y ago
    Well, California is literally a single party state
  - chii 5y ago
    which is why further taxation or money collection in the hope of solving the problem is not going to work.
- imtringued 5y ago
  They should get rid of that income tax and tax land more.
- settrans 5y ago
  Correcting myself: California has corrected $7.4 billion _as of 2011_, after only six years of operation. Note that the tax is not indexed to inflation: already, the million-dollar threshold is worth only $715k in 2005 dollars. After another ~17 years at 2% inflation, the same tax will be charged on earners of $500k+ in 2005 dollars.
jpindar 5y ago
No offense, but equating housing with owning a house is part of the problem.
- xondono 5y ago
  You do need to own a house to suffer the consequences of bad zoning policies, if owning prices go up, rent goes up as well. Not to mention that when owning prices are high, there’s a bigger incentive for local governments to use every opportunity to help other people who might not need as much help but have more consistent voting habits
jefftk 5y ago
The piece mentions Single-Room Occupancies (SROs), which used to be where a lot of people in similar situations would live. I agree that this doesn't solve the problem for everyone, and there's also a place for publicly funded mental health hospitals. But I also don't think everyone who is currently homeless in CA is in as bad shape as the ones you most notice.
- ummonk 5y ago
  "But I also don't think everyone who is currently homeless in CA is in as bad shape as the ones you most notice." There is a difference between the technically "homeless" and the visibly homeless who camp out on sidewalks etc. which is what most people are talking about when the "homeless problem" is mentioned.
  - austinheap 5y ago
    Handful of interesting/data-driven organizations in the Bay Area dispel exactly this. It was eye opening to me to attend some of their public events where they run through their data.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  > But I also don't think everyone who is currently homeless in CA is in as bad shape as the ones you most notice. The low hanging fruit is usually picked first. So let’s focus on picking the low hanging fruit if we aren’t already (they might already do a good job here), while the chronic homeless problems will be tough to solve.
- scruple 5y ago
  > But I also don't think everyone who is currently homeless in CA is in as bad shape as the ones you most notice. I beg to differ. I've spent significant time around what could be broadly categorized as "the homeless" in California, specifically in LA and OC, over the last 13 years. As recently as 3 days ago, I was searching for a mentally ill and homeless family member in LA. Last I heard he was on the coast, but I wasn't able to find anyone who knew or had seen him. This is an annual or bi-annual occurrence for me. Sure I'm not out there every day, but I feel as though I am competent on the subject. I certainly have more time in rank than most people that speak up on this one. If you offered an SRO to most of the people that I've come across in the last 10 years, they'd tell you to go fuck yourself.
slg 5y ago
The investigations and surveys I have seen on the subject suggest that the homeless population you are describing makes up a minority of the overall homeless population. It is something in the range of 30%-50% depending on the source (it is notoriously difficult to get accurate numbers on homeless populations). Your anecdote is a classic form of bias if you just take a step back and reexamine it. You identify most homeless people as being like that because those are the people you immediately recognize as being homeless. Someone who is homeless purely due to the high cost of housing probably isn't immediately identifiable as homeless on sight.
aksss 5y ago
High housing costs aren't the totality of what OP is talking about. Zoning laws prohibiting construction of lower cost housing options make alternatives in a given locale unobtainable, regardless of cost. This is done to protect the valuation of SFHs, often enough. Designating districts as 'historic' or zoning shenanigans can do this. It's fundamentally a NIMBY problem, which is very different than the issue of regulatory burden for construction (environmental assessments, permitting, etc.). Both of these factors contribute to the problem though.
epistasis 5y ago
> it certainly isn't describing the homeless people I see. What you see is highly unrepresentative of homelessness. You never see the people trying to scrape by in their cars. You never see the people couch surfing. You never see the people struggling but also struggling to not be known as homeless. Because once you hit that position of being clearly homeless in appearance, all sorts of doors slam shut and getting out of homelessness is an order of magnitude harder. And being in the precarious state of being homeless, but still fully functional, makes it all the harder to get to jobs on time, harder to protect any assets, harder to keep clean and not look homeless. And all that takes a huge toll on a person's psyche, and that extended stress can bring up mental issues that would have been completely manageable without the additional stress of not having a home base to run all the essential parts of life. For every clearly homeless person you see, with severe mental issues, there are easily 5-20 that you would never know are homeless without following them around and seeing that they don't go back to an apartment at night. And this all comes down to housing costs. For all the people we kick off the economic ladder, that run out of money for housing and don't have enough to move to a cheaper area, they are left in a very difficult spot, with little way to get back into housing. I've known people in my town that have been willing to put down 6 months of rent, or even 12, ahead of time, and been unable to land an apartment lease. Even market rate housing has lines that go out the door, and more applicants than the landlord knows what to do with.
- mbrodersen 5y ago
  Honest question: why do people who can put down 6 months of rent stay instead of moving to a cheaper city? That’s what I would do in that situation.
legerdemain 5y ago
If one of your top complaints about the homeless is that they poop (an unavoidable bodily function you might be familiar with), then I'm not sure I trust your judgment about policy matters.
- ummonk 5y ago
  There are public toilets and restrooms all across the city. It's valid to complain about the homeless who choose not to poop in them.
hack-news 5y ago
Reread your comment a few times until you understand how dumb it is.

settrans 5y ago

California already has a 1% income tax allocated just to mental health, and has collected $7.4 billion so far just from this tax[0]. How is that working? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Mental_Health_Services_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Mental_Health_Servi...

rubicon33 5y ago
Our government, either through corruption or incompetence, can somehow manage to spend billions in tax payer dollars with very little to show for it. When I advocate for something like a mental health program, it assumes a government which is functional enough to actually implement it. What we currently have here in CA couldn't be further from that.
- jason0597 5y ago
  Well, California is literally a single party state
- chii 5y ago
  which is why further taxation or money collection in the hope of solving the problem is not going to work.
imtringued 5y ago
They should get rid of that income tax and tax land more.
settrans 5y ago
Correcting myself: California has corrected $7.4 billion _as of 2011_, after only six years of operation. Note that the tax is not indexed to inflation: already, the million-dollar threshold is worth only $715k in 2005 dollars. After another ~17 years at 2% inflation, the same tax will be charged on earners of $500k+ in 2005 dollars.

jpindar 5y ago

No offense, but equating housing with owning a house is part of the problem.

xondono 5y ago
You do need to own a house to suffer the consequences of bad zoning policies, if owning prices go up, rent goes up as well. Not to mention that when owning prices are high, there’s a bigger incentive for local governments to use every opportunity to help other people who might not need as much help but have more consistent voting habits

jefftk 5y ago

The piece mentions Single-Room Occupancies (SROs), which used to be where a lot of people in similar situations would live. I agree that this doesn't solve the problem for everyone, and there's also a place for publicly funded mental health hospitals. But I also don't think everyone who is currently homeless in CA is in as bad shape as the ones you most notice.

ummonk 5y ago
"But I also don't think everyone who is currently homeless in CA is in as bad shape as the ones you most notice." There is a difference between the technically "homeless" and the visibly homeless who camp out on sidewalks etc. which is what most people are talking about when the "homeless problem" is mentioned.
- austinheap 5y ago
  Handful of interesting/data-driven organizations in the Bay Area dispel exactly this. It was eye opening to me to attend some of their public events where they run through their data.
seanmcdirmid 5y ago
> But I also don't think everyone who is currently homeless in CA is in as bad shape as the ones you most notice. The low hanging fruit is usually picked first. So let’s focus on picking the low hanging fruit if we aren’t already (they might already do a good job here), while the chronic homeless problems will be tough to solve.
scruple 5y ago
> But I also don't think everyone who is currently homeless in CA is in as bad shape as the ones you most notice. I beg to differ. I've spent significant time around what could be broadly categorized as "the homeless" in California, specifically in LA and OC, over the last 13 years. As recently as 3 days ago, I was searching for a mentally ill and homeless family member in LA. Last I heard he was on the coast, but I wasn't able to find anyone who knew or had seen him. This is an annual or bi-annual occurrence for me. Sure I'm not out there every day, but I feel as though I am competent on the subject. I certainly have more time in rank than most people that speak up on this one. If you offered an SRO to most of the people that I've come across in the last 10 years, they'd tell you to go fuck yourself.

slg 5y ago

The investigations and surveys I have seen on the subject suggest that the homeless population you are describing makes up a minority of the overall homeless population. It is something in the range of 30%-50% depending on the source (it is notoriously difficult to get accurate numbers on homeless populations). Your anecdote is a classic form of bias if you just take a step back and reexamine it. You identify most homeless people as being like that because those are the people you immediately recognize as being homeless. Someone who is homeless purely due to the high cost of housing probably isn't immediately identifiable as homeless on sight.

aksss 5y ago

High housing costs aren't the totality of what OP is talking about. Zoning laws prohibiting construction of lower cost housing options make alternatives in a given locale unobtainable, regardless of cost. This is done to protect the valuation of SFHs, often enough. Designating districts as 'historic' or zoning shenanigans can do this. It's fundamentally a NIMBY problem, which is very different than the issue of regulatory burden for construction (environmental assessments, permitting, etc.). Both of these factors contribute to the problem though.

epistasis 5y ago

> it certainly isn't describing the homeless people I see. What you see is highly unrepresentative of homelessness. You never see the people trying to scrape by in their cars. You never see the people couch surfing. You never see the people struggling but also struggling to not be known as homeless. Because once you hit that position of being clearly homeless in appearance, all sorts of doors slam shut and getting out of homelessness is an order of magnitude harder. And being in the precarious state of being homeless, but still fully functional, makes it all the harder to get to jobs on time, harder to protect any assets, harder to keep clean and not look homeless. And all that takes a huge toll on a person's psyche, and that extended stress can bring up mental issues that would have been completely manageable without the additional stress of not having a home base to run all the essential parts of life. For every clearly homeless person you see, with severe mental issues, there are easily 5-20 that you would never know are homeless without following them around and seeing that they don't go back to an apartment at night. And this all comes down to housing costs. For all the people we kick off the economic ladder, that run out of money for housing and don't have enough to move to a cheaper area, they are left in a very difficult spot, with little way to get back into housing. I've known people in my town that have been willing to put down 6 months of rent, or even 12, ahead of time, and been unable to land an apartment lease. Even market rate housing has lines that go out the door, and more applicants than the landlord knows what to do with.

mbrodersen 5y ago
Honest question: why do people who can put down 6 months of rent stay instead of moving to a cheaper city? That’s what I would do in that situation.

legerdemain 5y ago

If one of your top complaints about the homeless is that they poop (an unavoidable bodily function you might be familiar with), then I'm not sure I trust your judgment about policy matters.

ummonk 5y ago
There are public toilets and restrooms all across the city. It's valid to complain about the homeless who choose not to poop in them.

hack-news 5y ago

Reread your comment a few times until you understand how dumb it is.