4 ms·
Sure, 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
by chizhik-pyzhik 5y ago
Sure, 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.