> Simply making homelessness less visible has come to be what constitutes “success.” New York City consistently has the nation’s highest homelessness rate, but

> Simply making homelessness less visible has come to be what constitutes “success.” New York City consistently has the nation’s highest homelessness rate, but it’s not as much of an Election Day issue as it is on the West Coast. That’s because its displaced population is largely hidden in shelters. Yet since 2012, the number of households in shelters has grown by more than 30 percent—despite the city spending roughly $3 billion a year (as of 2021) trying to combat the problem. This is what policy failure looks like. At some point, someone’s going to have to own it. The article calls NYC a failure for spending $3B/year to (mostly) shelter the homeless. Meanwhile, smaller cities like Seattle and SF spend in the realm of $1B/year to (mostly) not shelter the homeless. But the article has harsher words for NYC than for the west. Something has gone very wrong when having the homeless in tents on the sidewalk is seen as the more virtuous and enlightened model. I understand the argument for upzoning, and I'll be watching how it goes in Minneapolis. But I have little faith that it will do much to address visible homelessness. The chronically homeless are not generally the people who would be making rent if the cost went down by 30%.