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If you are naïve enough to think that we will simply build our way out of the homelessness crisis, I encourage you to book a flight to Los Angeles and strike up
by jsjohns2 5y ago
If you are naïve enough to think that we will simply build our way out of the homelessness crisis, I encourage you to book a flight to Los Angeles and strike up a conversation with any first responder. They will all tell you the same story -- the homeless are nearly all on Methamphetamine and/or Fentanyl.
Yes, rent prices have increased over the last decade. But the affordability, purity, availability, and use of those very destructive drugs have also increased over the same time period.
The chart that I would be interested in seeing is are those elements plotted against homelessness rate. I suspect that the correlation coefficient between per-capita meth use and homelessness rate would be ~1.
- loeg 5y agoWest Virginia has very high rates of drug addiction, and yet much lower homelessness than LA. It’s because housing is much, much cheaper. That only happens by building more.
- jsjohns2 5y agoComparing LA and WV is like comparing apples and oranges. At least those are both fruits. Those locales differ on much more than just housing costs.
- loeg 5y agoYou're asking readers to imagine that LA is representative of other areas, but reject the idea that LA is comparable to WV? I think you need to pick one to make a coherent argument.
- jsjohns2 5y agoI suspect that there is a strong non-linear effect, i.e., introducing novel drugs into a state with very cheap housing does not move the needle that much on homelessness (WV) but is catastrophic when done in a city with expensive housing (LA). We should address the housing problem. We should also address the drug problem.
- chizhik-pyzhik 5y agoSure, but I think you're making a correlation=causation connection... I'd argue that those forced into homelessness are more likely to turn to drugs, which then leads to a cycle of poverty that's difficult to break out of. If LA had more affordable rent, a lot of those people currently living in tents would have more privacy, more stability, less temptation to turn to cheap drugs to cope.
- jseliger 5y agoCorrect: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29193206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29193206
- jsjohns2 5y agoJake, I get the argument. Fifty years of bad housing policy have yielded high housing prices today, high housing prices leads to homelessness, and homelessness leads to drug abuse. Fixing housing policy now will lead to lower housing prices, homelessness, and drug abuse in the future. So we should fix housing policy. Ok. That seems very reasonable and logical, except that no one seems to know how to actually make housing policy changes happen. You write a (interesting and informative) blog post about Proposition HHH, Matt Yglesias writes a blog post about 1950s boarding houses, PhDs at Zillow churn out peer-reviewed papers, and LA voters even throw $1,200,000,000 at Proposition HHH -- and yet the problem gets worse and worse. You write that the "homelessness problem is intractable without zoning reform". Well, what if zoning reform is also intractable? Focusing exclusively on fixing housing policy, which appears to be intractable for the foreseeable future, is a mistake. We should be focusing on drug abuse as well, which is a very serious problem in LA.
- the_cat_kittles 5y agoits amazing that you think your opinion is worth sharing on this. read the stuff people who study this wrote. then you dont have to base your opinion on a chart you “would be interested in seeing”. the cost of housing vs median income / amount of people on the poverty line is mostly what determines homelessness. cities that have successfully addressed their problem has all basically done the same thing, which is build / subsidize housing.