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Homelessness is mostly a factor of housing costs, as this deep dive into the data shows: https://homelessnesshousingproblem.com/ https://homelessnesshousingpro
by davidw 4y ago
Homelessness is mostly a factor of housing costs, as this deep dive into the data shows:
https://homelessnesshousingproblem.com/ https://homelessnesshousingproblem.com/
- holografix 4y agoThanks David I’ll have a a look. I hate to categorize people in such a conveniently black and white way but there seems to be a group that desperately need social assistance: housing, health, some upskilling etc and they would rejoin society and live happy productive lives drug free. But also a group that just needs ongoing mental health treatment. I expect the second group to be way smaller of course.
- diogenescynic 4y agoThis is propaganda. Nearly all the homeless you see on the streets are addicted to heroin, fentanyl, or meth, or some combination. You cannot afford housing at any level when you’re doing those kind of drugs. And most of the homeless in San Francisco aren’t locals.. the vast majority come here for the permissive drug laws, social benefits like SF’s homeless assistance program that pays them $500, and the weather.
- Pxtl 4y agoYes but every city has heroin and fentanyl problems and yet the addicts don't flood the streets. These drugs weren't invented in SF and Vancouver, and yet those cities are blighted by them. Across the board, on a city-but-city basis, homelessness correlates with housing costs more than any other factor
- shuckles 4y agoAtherton is way more expensive than San Francisco yet no sidewalk fentanyl dens. What gives?
- davidw 4y agoIt's odd how people pretty intuitively understand that not many people have, say, Ferraris because they're expensive, but housing? It's like some kind of 10th dimension twilight zone where the laws of supply and demand have ceased to exist. No... someone who's homeless in a city where the average house costs 1.5 million dollars must perforce have moral failings! I mean, not to say there aren't homeless people with problems, but there are also filthy rich people with raging drug addictions in that area...
- ralusek 4y agoA person's options aren't limited to: A.) Live in most expensive city in world or B.) Be homeless in most expensive city in world If housing prices have become unaffordable for many people in SF, there are other places on the planet. I moved out of SF 2 years ago, after living there for 7, partly due to outrageous cost. Nobody is making the claim that supply and demand doesn't exist for housing, they're claiming that supply isn't limited to the highly sought after, geographically contained peninsula of the bay. They're also claiming that "housing first" is an absurd oversimplification of the problem, and disregards all manner of highly important factors.
- hackerlight 4y agoThis market efficiency/rational agent argument often doesn't hold up. For you, it does, because you're probably highly intelligent, highly educated, and have some baseline wealth. But at the margins, if someone has 80 IQ, perhaps has some mental health issues, doesn't know anyone anywhere outside of SF, and isn't even aware of the fact that SF is comparatively much more expensive because they've never travelled and aren't online like we are, and doesn't have the money that it takes to pick up and move, let alone the cognitive planning ability to take the required sequence of actions, they can easily fall through the cracks and become homeless.
- diogenescynic 4y agoThat’s a very stupid analogy honestly. No one is forced to buy a Ferrari the way no one is forced to live in an expensive area. It’s almost like you didn’t read my entire comment. The overwhelming majority of the visibly homeless on the streets of SF aren’t even from here, I give them money and ask their story sometimes out of curiosity. Most of them came here for the drugs and social services. And with the disability and other entitlements they receive, they could afford an apartment in another city—-but most don’t really care about housing as a priority. They like being able to live without rules and consequences and we’ve enabled that.
- diebeforei485 4y agoCorrelation is not causation, as you learned in high school statistics. This is the equivalent of saying murders are correlated with ice cream sales.
- davidw 4y agoWhy don't you try actually reading what they write? The book goes into some detail.
- shuckles 4y agoCheap housing certainly allows social services to house severely drug addicted or mentally ill people more cost effectively, but that doesn’t solve the open air drug dealing and psychosis you see in parts of San Francisco. Many of the people in those states publicly in SF have or had offers for shelter or housing available to them, which is part of why the scenes are concentrated near SRO districts. In other words, housing isn’t the only issue with San Francisco’s poor stewardship of the public realm.
- davidw 4y agoNo one said it's a simple problem. What the book looks at, high level, is that high housing costs are what correlate most strongly with homelessness. West Virginia, for instance, has a huge opioid problem. And far lower rates of homelessness, because housing is cheap.
- shuckles 4y agoYou’re missing the point. For many people, the endless petty crime, assaults by mentally ill people, open air drug abuse, and more are the issues to fix, and there isn’t much evidence giving impoverished people a shelter fixes that. WV and other poor regions have plenty of antisocial behavior, even if the antisocial are housed. Santa Clara County did a randomized assignment apartments for homeless study 2 years ago, and those housed used emergency services and died of drug overdose at the same, if not higher, rates than those who were not housed. Separately, all the antisocial people make living in subsidized housing awful. SROs are the most prolific evictors in San Francisco because their residents commonly have behavioral health issues or are outright criminals. So what problem does giving a homeless person a house actually solve?