5 ms·

I agree with the premise of the article, that a large proportion of California's homeless move there because it's easier to he homeless for all the reasons list

I agree with the premise of the article, that a large proportion of California's homeless move there because it's easier to he homeless for all the reasons listed, but that's about the substance of the article. It blames the problem on detached housing and demands solutions without an inkling of a hint at any. Our homeless problem is the result of 2 things: a mental health problem and to a much lesser extent the pervasiveness of the speculative real estate market driving up costs (a market largely driven by equity in the California housing market I might mention). The solution to this problem is not less detached housing, it is more of any housing anywhere that it has been artificially suppressed, and raising interest rates to a market dictated level rather than artificially suppressing them to hold up the house of cards, and more importantly, helping people address their mental health problems.

DoreenMichele 5y ago
I'm the author. It's really not mostly mental health problems. I've studied this issue for years. I write about homelessness on Street Life Solutions. I try to write about housing and community development stuff elsewhere, like Eclogiselle.com and https://projectsro.blogspot.com/ https://projectsro.blogspot.com/. This post wasn't intended to be some opus solving everything. I wanted to make one point: California's extreme homeless problem is not somehow entirely the fault of California government, though that is a factor. There are other factors, like weather and a national shortage of housing that has been ongoing for a lot of years and isn't remotely peculiar to California. California has 12 percent of the nation's entire population and 27 percent (or more -- different sources vary) of the nation's homeless population. That's not just a "California problem." That's a national problem disproportionately impacting California. There's a lore more to the issue than can be contained in a single post. I tried to make one point and only one point. Addressing how to resolve the nation's housing problems will take more than a single blog post. But thank you for commenting.
- AdrianB1 5y ago
  California is a honey pot for homeless people, that is not a national problem but a local reality.
- austinheap 5y ago
  Donate now: https://www.patreon.com/m/DoreenMichele https://www.patreon.com/m/DoreenMichele
  - DoreenMichele 5y ago
    Thank you. There's also PayPal and Venmo for one time tips.
- agiacalone 5y ago
  I lived in San Francisco from ~1999 to about 2003, and the homeless problem then was pretty bad. I can only imagine what the city must be like these days.
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  So what do you think is the root problem? A national housing shortage? What do you think drives that shortage if so? What do you think are good solutions? I understand it takes more than a blog post but every big problem takes more than a blog post, we can still have a conversation about it here. Could you shed a little light on the issue for us?
  - DoreenMichele 5y ago
    We need to bring back smaller homes in walkable neighborhoods. We aren't providing the right kinds of housing. Our American ideal is a home designed for a nuclear family with a breadwinner father, homemaker mother and 2.5 kids because that's who had the money to finance the birth of the modern suburb. That was never the majority of our demographics but we've further diversified away from that in the decades since. Meanwhile, our housing stock has increasingly converged on their ideal home and that ideal home has grown larger and more sprawling over time because the only people who could afford it were people with good money. Our 1950s suburban home has more than doubled in size, from about 1200 sqft to over 2400 sqft in recent years. If we had just kept building 1950s style little suburban homes, we wouldn't have such a mess. But we didn't. Our homes today are that single family detached house dream on steroids. We need to reverse course. We have vastly more small households of just one to three people, meanwhile our housing stock tends to skew to three bedrooms or larger.
    - betwixthewires 5y ago
      I personally live in a very very small home and live minimally and it cost me almost nothing. I'm sure I lucked out compared to the average person. So what is the reason that these smaller homes aren't more common? I would think that if there were a market for these homes someone would cash in on it, so is it zoning? Is it people's aversion to building their own homes themselves and the service-ification of everything? How do we reverse course and what are the pressures preventing that, in your view?
      - DoreenMichele 5y ago
- sershe 5y ago
  How do you reconcile "national shortage of housing" being the cause with California being the most expensive state with the most homeless? Shouldn't a national problem cause people to migrate AWAY from the expensive housing? Housing in the US (median, not SF) is one of the cheapest relative to income among the developed countries, AFAIK. Also, I can tell you from my own example that it's a chicken and egg problem. If you asked me 10 years ago, I would have told you I'd like to have Singapore-style vehicle taxes, introduced gradually, so that developmental patterns would change, basically forcing people into transit and walkable neighborhoods. However, based mainly on living in Seattle, I am now 100% pro-driving, anti-transit and dream of moving to suburbs, specifically because I want to be far away from blight (and I grew up in Moscow in the 90ies economic collapse, so my standards for lack of urban blight are pretty low). Now, I am only willing to accept Singapore-style (or Moscow-style) urban environment with Singapore-style/Moscow-style ruthless enforcement of law and order.
  - DoreenMichele 5y ago
    Homeless people often go where the weather is tolerable. Many homeless people prefer to camp outside rather than stay in the shelter system. California is the overall best state to camp outside long-term and year-round. It then becomes a recipe for remaining homeless because the housing is so expensive. It's easy to camp out, not easy to afford rent. If you can't afford housing anywhere in the US, going someplace you can camp reasonably comfortably makes sense. Remaining someplace with worse weather doesn't automatically cure whatever other issues are contributing to your intractable poverty.
    - tony0x02 5y ago
      > Many homeless people prefer to camp outside rather than stay in the shelter system Why?
      - DoreenMichele 5y ago
        Most shelters have serious problems, like mold. They aren't actually safe because you can be harassed, assaulted or have your stuff stolen by other homeless people. A high percentage of homeless people have health issues. This means putting a bunch of them together exposes already sick people to cross contamination with other diseases, making their health worse. They have curfews and other rules making it one step removed from a prison. If you have any funds of any kind, some will charge you for being there, making you essentially their prisoner with no means to escape.
seesaw 5y ago
I wonder how much the moving of jobs outside has contributed to this. The few documentaries I saw had interviews with homeless, and the general theme was that they couldn’t land a job.
imtringued 5y ago
Land speculators want lower property taxes because it makes expensive land more affordable. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28335986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28335986 + my response

DoreenMichele 5y ago

I'm the author. It's really not mostly mental health problems. I've studied this issue for years. I write about homelessness on Street Life Solutions. I try to write about housing and community development stuff elsewhere, like Eclogiselle.com and https://projectsro.blogspot.com/ https://projectsro.blogspot.com/. This post wasn't intended to be some opus solving everything. I wanted to make one point: California's extreme homeless problem is not somehow entirely the fault of California government, though that is a factor. There are other factors, like weather and a national shortage of housing that has been ongoing for a lot of years and isn't remotely peculiar to California. California has 12 percent of the nation's entire population and 27 percent (or more -- different sources vary) of the nation's homeless population. That's not just a "California problem." That's a national problem disproportionately impacting California. There's a lore more to the issue than can be contained in a single post. I tried to make one point and only one point. Addressing how to resolve the nation's housing problems will take more than a single blog post. But thank you for commenting.

AdrianB1 5y ago
California is a honey pot for homeless people, that is not a national problem but a local reality.
austinheap 5y ago
Donate now: https://www.patreon.com/m/DoreenMichele https://www.patreon.com/m/DoreenMichele
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  Thank you. There's also PayPal and Venmo for one time tips.
agiacalone 5y ago
I lived in San Francisco from ~1999 to about 2003, and the homeless problem then was pretty bad. I can only imagine what the city must be like these days.
betwixthewires 5y ago
So what do you think is the root problem? A national housing shortage? What do you think drives that shortage if so? What do you think are good solutions? I understand it takes more than a blog post but every big problem takes more than a blog post, we can still have a conversation about it here. Could you shed a little light on the issue for us?
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  We need to bring back smaller homes in walkable neighborhoods. We aren't providing the right kinds of housing. Our American ideal is a home designed for a nuclear family with a breadwinner father, homemaker mother and 2.5 kids because that's who had the money to finance the birth of the modern suburb. That was never the majority of our demographics but we've further diversified away from that in the decades since. Meanwhile, our housing stock has increasingly converged on their ideal home and that ideal home has grown larger and more sprawling over time because the only people who could afford it were people with good money. Our 1950s suburban home has more than doubled in size, from about 1200 sqft to over 2400 sqft in recent years. If we had just kept building 1950s style little suburban homes, we wouldn't have such a mess. But we didn't. Our homes today are that single family detached house dream on steroids. We need to reverse course. We have vastly more small households of just one to three people, meanwhile our housing stock tends to skew to three bedrooms or larger.
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    I personally live in a very very small home and live minimally and it cost me almost nothing. I'm sure I lucked out compared to the average person. So what is the reason that these smaller homes aren't more common? I would think that if there were a market for these homes someone would cash in on it, so is it zoning? Is it people's aversion to building their own homes themselves and the service-ification of everything? How do we reverse course and what are the pressures preventing that, in your view?
    - DoreenMichele 5y ago
sershe 5y ago
How do you reconcile "national shortage of housing" being the cause with California being the most expensive state with the most homeless? Shouldn't a national problem cause people to migrate AWAY from the expensive housing? Housing in the US (median, not SF) is one of the cheapest relative to income among the developed countries, AFAIK. Also, I can tell you from my own example that it's a chicken and egg problem. If you asked me 10 years ago, I would have told you I'd like to have Singapore-style vehicle taxes, introduced gradually, so that developmental patterns would change, basically forcing people into transit and walkable neighborhoods. However, based mainly on living in Seattle, I am now 100% pro-driving, anti-transit and dream of moving to suburbs, specifically because I want to be far away from blight (and I grew up in Moscow in the 90ies economic collapse, so my standards for lack of urban blight are pretty low). Now, I am only willing to accept Singapore-style (or Moscow-style) urban environment with Singapore-style/Moscow-style ruthless enforcement of law and order.
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  Homeless people often go where the weather is tolerable. Many homeless people prefer to camp outside rather than stay in the shelter system. California is the overall best state to camp outside long-term and year-round. It then becomes a recipe for remaining homeless because the housing is so expensive. It's easy to camp out, not easy to afford rent. If you can't afford housing anywhere in the US, going someplace you can camp reasonably comfortably makes sense. Remaining someplace with worse weather doesn't automatically cure whatever other issues are contributing to your intractable poverty.
  - tony0x02 5y ago
    > Many homeless people prefer to camp outside rather than stay in the shelter system Why?
    - DoreenMichele 5y ago
      Most shelters have serious problems, like mold. They aren't actually safe because you can be harassed, assaulted or have your stuff stolen by other homeless people. A high percentage of homeless people have health issues. This means putting a bunch of them together exposes already sick people to cross contamination with other diseases, making their health worse. They have curfews and other rules making it one step removed from a prison. If you have any funds of any kind, some will charge you for being there, making you essentially their prisoner with no means to escape.

seesaw 5y ago

I wonder how much the moving of jobs outside has contributed to this. The few documentaries I saw had interviews with homeless, and the general theme was that they couldn’t land a job.

imtringued 5y ago

Land speculators want lower property taxes because it makes expensive land more affordable. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28335986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28335986 + my response