14 ms·

We can reduce homelessness if we follow the science on what works

64 points by roseway4 4y ago

sys32768 4y ago
I tried to help a homeless friend who was an alcoholic, but landlords really don't tolerate urinating on the floor, breaking keys off in locks, and not paying bills.
- chizhik-pyzhik 4y ago
  One of the linked studies shows that it's ultimately cost-effective, though: "participants had... median costs of $4066 per person per month... Median monthly costs decreased to $1492 and $958 after 6 and 12 months in housing, respectively" [1] This was looking at 1811 Eastlake in Seattle- which exists specifically to help alcoholic homeless. NPR has a good article about it. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/01/19/145477493/a-permanent-home-that-allows-drinking-helps-homeless-drink-less https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/01/19/1454774... [1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/183666 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/183666
- pessimizer 4y ago
  I tried to help a sick cat, but it died. I don't take that as evidence that all sick cats will die, regardless of what we do.
  - Supermancho 4y ago
    The implication is that there are risks (eventual damages) incurred by being a first-mover. Re: Anaheim's attempt to curb the homeless by the river. What's more, is that it is not a panacea nor does it eliminate drug use. The risk is an ongoing cost and current housing is not tooled to tolerate it. How is this best addressed? I expect that housing will be bifurcated, much like it is in England. The Blocks (made of cinderblock and stone to minimize the inevitable fires) and what we currently think of as traditional wood-and-stucco housing.
  - rib3ye 4y ago
    Well, it's a good point of discussion. "Curing" people with a problem like that is not as simple as putting a roof over their heads. The cat can take a pill, but the alcoholic needs a life redirection, and that takes social infrastructure. If you put yourself on the hook by providing said roof, their problems become yours. At that point, you need to ask yourself if you have the time, energy, patience, and most importantly, compassion.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Huh, almost as if the solution is collective rather than hyper-individualist action, and it requires the resources of a community to pay the upfront costs in order to see the long term payoff.
chizhik-pyzhik 4y ago
This article is a good overview of the research about treatment-first vs housing-first approaches. The last paragraph is pretty clear on the real difficulty: >The major obstacles to resolving homelessness remain ideological. It is politically hard to sell the idea that people who take drugs or are disruptive should get free housing – even when the evidence shows that is actually what works.
- epicureanideal 4y ago
  I guarantee I could produce a program that would be acceptable to conservatives and provide free housing. Note also that Utah, a very conservative state, solves homelessness in exactly this way. It just might be that the housing would not be provided by funneling huge amounts of tax dollars to the rentier class, and might involve constructing more houses, and therefore would be opposed by the left.
  - Overtonwindow 4y ago
    Utah has done wonders for its homeless population with the housing first initiative and I think it's a model for the rest of the country.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    Socialism becomes a lot more palatable to majority populations as long as minority populations are kept to a minimum. With a reasonable expectation that the recipients of help look like you, helping starts to seem more like an obligation than an imposition.
    - epicureanideal 4y ago
      The loss of the distinction between the deserving poor and the undeserving poor also caused many people who would’ve supported help to one of those to just throw their hands in the air and forget the whole thing.
      - 4y ago
hprotagonist 4y ago
By all means, use data to make your case for effective solutions. Do not for a second forget that it’ll happen person by messy person and that this is not only inevitable, but good. Convincing NIMBYs of this is, well, a shitton of work. So three men from the recovery house next door help him to his feet, walk him to the halfway house and put him in the shower. They wash his clothes and shoes and give him their things to wear while he waits. They give him coffee and dinner, and they give him respect. I talked to these other men later, and even though they had very little sobriety, they did not cast this other guy off for not being well enough to be there. Somehow this broken guy was treated like one of them, because they could see that he was one of them. No one was pretending he wasn't covered with shit, but there was a real sense of kinship. […] I was just totally amazed by what I had seen. And I had a little shred of hope. I couldn't have put it into words, but until that meeting, I had thought that I would recover with men and women like myself; which is to say, overeducated, fun to be with and housebroken. And that this would happen quickly and efficiently. But I was wrong. https://www.salon.com/1998/12/10/10lamo/ https://www.salon.com/1998/12/10/10lamo/
not_the_fda 4y ago
Progressive cities have tried housing first solutions, yet they have a bigger homelessness problem and it keeps getting worse. Cities that have done treatment first policies have seen a reduction homelessness. A great book on this topic is San Fran-sicko. https://www.amazon.com/San-Fransicko-Progressives-Ruin-Cities/dp/0063093626 https://www.amazon.com/San-Fransicko-Progressives-Ruin-Citie...
- frosted-flakes 4y ago
  Probably because people are free to migrate anywhere within a country's borders, so cities with lots of social services get overrun with a disproportionate amount of people wanting to use them. These sorts of policies need to be implemented at a nation-wide level for them to be truly effective.
  - tst01234 4y ago
    If you implement them nation-wide the only result would be people coming from abroad to enjoy housing-first social services. Unless you are saying the first step towards solving homelessness is the prevention of illegal entry and the mass expulsion of illegal immigrants.
    - gsk22 4y ago
      It is orders of magnitude harder to cross the US national border than between states or counties. Either way, I don't understand this idea that we shouldn't care for Americans because what if some non-Americans got in?
      - wizofaus 4y ago
        I get the impression there's a fair chunk of America that feels that way about any sort of government-provided assistance (though more accurately I guess it's "assistance is fine as long as it's to people I approve of).
  - LarryMullins 4y ago
trynewideas 4y ago
Portland, cited in the article, announced it's beginning yet another sweep of homeless encampments yesterday. At the press conference announcing it, the mayor - who's been ordering sweeps his entire tenure - admits they don't and haven't ever helped the people being swept. He's also still pushing his plan to establish city-run outdoor camps for homeless people, and to criminalize rejecting those city-run camps when swept - but the city-run camps' locations haven't even been announced, much less started. https://www.portlandmercury.com/news/2023/01/27/46321180/city-unveils-plan-to-reset-central-eastside-by-picking-up-trash-increasing-police-presence-and-removing-homeless-portlanders https://www.portlandmercury.com/news/2023/01/27/46321180/cit...
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  From a NIMBY perspective, a city-run homeless camp sounds even worse than a normal homeless camp. At least in the latter case you can hope that the city will get rid of the camp soon, but if the camp is made by the city itself then what hope can you have? So I think this plan of his will never be implemented. Politically, talking about it makes more sense than actually implementing it.
  - standardUser 4y ago
    The difference is that in practice, impromptu camps are often set up in city centers and dense residential neighborhoods. Officially sanctioned sites can be farther removed from those areas.
  - Ancalagon 4y ago
    Don't these permanent "homeless camps" already exist though? When I was in Portland last January I saw a large grouping of what I can only describe as very-tiny homes - essentially glorified shacks on rollers and stilts - which were obviously city-sanctioned homeless encampments next to a bypass.
    - LarryMullins 4y ago
      The camps that last the longest seem to be the ones furthest from neighborhoods where rich people might complain about it. Near or under highways is a "good" place for the camps since highways are noisy/stinky and properties next to highways generally aren't very desirable. Homeless camps in nicer neighborhoods might last for a few weeks/months but seem a lot less permanent than those under highways.
patientplatypus 4y ago
Or you could make the government responsible for cleaning the sidewalks. https://sfgov.org/mod/sites/default/files/FileCenter/Documents/2176-Sidewalk%20Landscape%20with%20SIRP.pdf https://sfgov.org/mod/sites/default/files/FileCenter/Documen... https://libranet.de/display/0b6b25a8-1663-bdc2-8fa6-277372873969 https://libranet.de/display/0b6b25a8-1663-bdc2-8fa6-27737287... Personally I'm holding out until 2024 so the Bell Riots can give us the utopia we've all been promised. Sigh. I'm not too worried. You'll all be standing out in the breadline with me soon enough. Keep building robots that automate your jobs out of existence. I find it amusing.
SebaSeba 4y ago
Some support for the idea: "Finland is the only EU country where homelessness is falling. Its secret? Giving people homes as soon as they need them – unconditionally" https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle-helsinkis-radical-solution-to-homelessness https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle...
- bryan_w 4y ago
  So we ship all the homeless to Finland and that solves the issue. I'm sure we could do that for the same amount we spend on homeless programs today.
  - rs999gti 4y ago
    Finland is nice to the homeless Finland-land-land Super cool to the homeless In the city City of Helsinki Lots of rich people giving change to the homeless
bradlys 4y ago
Homelessness increasing while the cost of housing has skyrocketed. Solution is more affordable housing? No, you don’t say. It’ll never happen though. We look at housing as an investment from a cultural perspective in the USA. This has been a brilliant plan by the capitalist landlords to further concentrate their holdings and become more fiendishly rich. But hey - your house goes up in value even though your kids will never get to own their own home. Maybe when you die - but oh wait you probably did a reverse mortgage because you didn’t save enough for retirement. Whoops. Too bad junior - no house for you!
- orangecat 4y ago
  This has been a brilliant plan by the capitalist landlords to further concentrate their holdings and become more fiendishly rich. It's not the capitalist landlords pointing guns at people who are trying to build more housing. But your point is basically right. Both parties and a large majority of the public believe that housing should be "a good investment", which is equivalent to the position that it should become increasingly unaffordable for the average person.
ErikVandeWater 4y ago
I wish this article were more specific on what "housing first" means. My understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) is that homeless shelters across the country have empty beds, and that these are not considered housing. When the article describes an alternative of providing the homeless "housing," what does this housing look like? What aspects of housing are provided that are not generally provided at homeless shelters? Is it privacy, security of belongings, a place to stay during the day, quietness during the night, or other factors that are most substantially different from what is currently available?
- jasmer 4y ago
  Basically something that resembles a home aka apartment. 'Shelters' are not close to that. They are places to 'kind of sleep' and that's usually it. It's not a 'home' if you have to share a room with 40 other smelly people and you have to be out by morning. There is a lot of theft, violence, many homeless find it much more peacable to sleep rough than in a shelter. Many people are so messed up and many incorrigably irresponsible so this program won't work (the flats will immediately turn into repulsively dirty crack houses), but for many it's foundational to be able to sleep and 'be' somewhere that's warm, protected from the elements, where you're not going to be accosted, stolen from. Just imagine trying to 'get a job' when you live in a tent. Our society is not very capable of handling that. Forget the physical duress of it - it's the psychological aspect. If you are in bum like conditions, surrounded by other bums, crackheads, thieves, it's really hard to fathom yourself as a 'good coffee server'. Give people a flat with decent neighbours, a community etc and that's the bedrock from which everything else is founded, including their own identity. All of that said, Finland is not California, and they are light years apart. I can 100% see it working in Helsinki and not in Cali at all. For one thing, there would be 20 million people lined up for 'free housing' in Cali. They don't have the same kinds of communities to integrate people into, weaker family and cultural structures. Much, much worse violence etc.. But 'housing first' is an important insight to consider because when you think about it it makes sense.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    > But 'housing first' is an important insight to consider because when you think about it it makes sense. And it's a good goal, too. I mean, to achieve that, you'd have to aggressively build apartments, because it's not like we have 50% of flats being empty and people ending up on the street because nobody will take the government's money and rent out apartments. Once you do that appropriately, some of the pressure will be lowered. You'll still end up with some people landing on the streets, but you'll have fewer, because rents are more affordable and especially smaller apartments are being built. Fewer people, smaller problem. Unfortunately, that might also be why we're not doing it everywhere. For all I can tell, most local governments don't want new housing.
yellow_lead 4y ago
People tend to forget you can't be homeless if you have a home. it seems obvious in hindsight
tommiegannert 4y ago
This doesn't seem to address that if you are the nicest place to move to as homeless, more will move there, perpetuating the need for the chosen solution. I'm all for helping people, but if it's not sustainable, it will eventually screw everyone, not just the previously homeless.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > This doesn’t seem to address that if you are the nicest place to move to as homeless, more will move there, perpetuating the need for the chosen solution. That mitigates its effectiveness as a local solution, but that problem is in turn mitigated when you move it up to wider regions (and particularly when you move it up to jurisdictions with some form of border control.)
DantesKite 4y ago
Serious question: Why didn't this approach work in San Francisco? https://www.city-journal.org/san-franciscos-housing-first-nightmare https://www.city-journal.org/san-franciscos-housing-first-ni...
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  Local politicians are in bed with developers. The scheme is politicians giving public money to developers (their family/friends) for housing, which the tenants promptly destroy, justifying the acquisition of new properties. The politicians are incentivized to provide inadequate services/screening to ensure that the housing is destroyed. The whole thing is designed to fail because it's a grift.
- lostdog 4y ago
  I wouldn't take that article as the absolute truth. It's true that homeless people are not generally the best caretakers of themselves, but SROs are also gross because of landlord neglect. The article seems to suggest that some people are too obnoxious to be housed, but it wants to hide that conclusion from its readers. A real comprehensive solution to homelessness also needs to deal with the "difficult" people in a useful and humane way. It also needs to be realistic, so we cannot just make peoples' lives worse and hope that punishment causes them to behave more usefully. If I were solving the problem, I would do it something like this: - A place to sleep needs to be provided for everyone, regardless of mental health or drug usage or general intolerableness. - Housing for the homeless should be grouped into small places with a few units each that are well spread out. - Housing should be guaranteed for at least the month, so you are not waiting in line every single day. - There should be a quota per city and per census tract of required homeless housing, including the richest parts of the city. If your neighborhood meets the budget, then they can sweep for tents and there are consistent cleaning services. Otherwise it is open camping. - Some of the housing should be allocated as drug free, with regular drug testing for residents who choose these sites. Ditto for alcohol free. Ditto for more restrictive quiet hours. In non-drug-free housing, your still forbidden from open drug usage in common spaces, but no testing. We should balance each restriction according to demand. - We need solutions for handling mental health problems. That can include levels of conservatorship, such as having your door locked for the night but being allowed to leave during the day. We need lawyer or social worker representation, so that people are not restricted unnecessarily. - We should aim for individual rooms and bathrooms. If that's not economically feasible, then application criteria should exist for better sleeping locations, including how long you've been a resident in the city and disability status.
debacle 4y ago
A friend of mine runs homeless shelters for those that society finds truly deplorable. Sex offenders, ex convicts, and people who for some reason I can't understand are excluded from our emergency mental health system. His facilities have a cost of care that is 25% of what the state has paid in the past. They have intensive rehabilitation programs, and serve the communities in multiple cities remarkably well. His work is under fire from all sides. The Democrats don't like him because of the color of his skin, because he is a Christian (though his facilities aren't), and because he has privatized to some degree a system that was previously union work. The Republicans don't like him because they see these people as deserving life in jail (or a worse fate), and his work as "socialism" (because he's housing the homeless). He exists in a really precarious position - by properly balancing his political detractors, he is "allowed" to service the community.
Flatcircle 4y ago
easier said than done
- diogenescynic 4y ago
  A lot of them don't even want homes. They just want to be able to use drugs and hang out wherever they feel like. There are plenty of interviews on YouTube/Instagram/TikTok with homeless people saying exactly this.
m3kw9 4y ago
How do you deal with an apartment complex and it’s surrounding neighborhoods full of (previously)homeless people? The Realistate market isn’t gonna allow it to devalue their property, hence you get these NIMBY campaigns
- gorbypark 4y ago
  I always thought the best idea would be to randomly sprinkle in these housing units throughout the community instead and of having them all together in one complex. For example, each new development should have a percentage of units allocated to homeless programs, and which actual specific units should be chosen at random to prevent developers building small/horrible/clustered together units for the program.
m3kw9 4y ago
Since homeless people are homeless because they can’t afford a place, a solution is to prevent more homelessness by allowing people that are about to be homeless seek govt subsidies for rent. It’s another way to lower homelessness.
- Ancalagon 4y ago
  Subsidies will just cause further rent-seeking unfortunately
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    At the risk of sounding like a broken record: land value taxation would fix that.
1024core 4y ago
The problem is: the "science" is used only as a tool to buttress one's pre-defined notions. Here in San Francisco, near the beginning of COVID, we put our homeless in hotel rooms. One resident per room, no shared bathrooms, etc. Plus, we gave them free food, free alcohol and free drugs (weed, IIRC). The idea was to satisfy all of their needs and not have them going outside. This lasted close to 2 years. This was a fairly big sample: close to 3700 people. That is a statistically significant sample, given that SF's total homeless population is around 20K - 30K (including those in shelters). So what happened with these people? How many of them cleaned up their acts and became productive members of society? This would be a fairly straightforward question to answer, right? BUT! The Homeless Industry in SF has refused to do so! There were no studies done on this population and their outcomes. Whatever happened to these scientists? Why did they ignore this golden opportunity to study this situation? What we _do_ know is that the residents trashed the hotels and the City of SF is being sued by these hotels to the tune of 10s of millions of dollars. I remember when all flights were grounded after 9/11, and scientists took the opportunity to study the impact of contrails on the night sky, visibility of celestial bodies, etc. Weirdly, no scientist considered it worthwhile to study these homeless people in their new housing.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  > How many of them cleaned up their acts and became productive members of society? It doesn’t sound like this was the purpose, it sounds like the purpose was to temporarily keep them off the street. So I’m not exactly shocked that it didn’t give a result it wasn’t designed to give.
  - 1024core 4y ago
    Way to dodge the question. Sure, it wasn't the purpose, but it was the same situation! If you're going to tell me that providing housing alone is enough for these people, then this is exactly that situation: they were provided free room and board (and *NOT* shared rooms, either). So where are the positive outcomes that "housing first" is supposed to bring?
    - 4y ago
diogenescynic 4y ago
I'd be for this but if after giving them a place THEN the laws were actually applied and they were not allowed to do drugs in public spaces and other anti-social behavior. However, a lot of the folks in San Francisco who appear homeless actually have some hotel or unit the city has provided and they just hang out in public all day and cause problems.
A6gYPfxNas 4y ago
is that like the science that was supposed to stop the spread?
temp_ljx 4y ago
When hundreds of millions of Chinese move to cities looking for jobs, how do they solve the housing problem. Turns out those low-paying jobs mostly offering dormitory to attract workers. There are several article talking about Foxconn worker life conditions, but providing dormitories is better than not.

64 points by roseway4 4y ago

I tried to help a homeless friend who was an alcoholic, but landlords really don't tolerate urinating on the floor, breaking keys off in locks, and not paying bills.

chizhik-pyzhik 4y ago
One of the linked studies shows that it's ultimately cost-effective, though: "participants had... median costs of $4066 per person per month... Median monthly costs decreased to $1492 and $958 after 6 and 12 months in housing, respectively" [1] This was looking at 1811 Eastlake in Seattle- which exists specifically to help alcoholic homeless. NPR has a good article about it. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/01/19/145477493/a-permanent-home-that-allows-drinking-helps-homeless-drink-less https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/01/19/1454774... [1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/183666 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/183666
pessimizer 4y ago
I tried to help a sick cat, but it died. I don't take that as evidence that all sick cats will die, regardless of what we do.
- Supermancho 4y ago
  The implication is that there are risks (eventual damages) incurred by being a first-mover. Re: Anaheim's attempt to curb the homeless by the river. What's more, is that it is not a panacea nor does it eliminate drug use. The risk is an ongoing cost and current housing is not tooled to tolerate it. How is this best addressed? I expect that housing will be bifurcated, much like it is in England. The Blocks (made of cinderblock and stone to minimize the inevitable fires) and what we currently think of as traditional wood-and-stucco housing.
- rib3ye 4y ago
  Well, it's a good point of discussion. "Curing" people with a problem like that is not as simple as putting a roof over their heads. The cat can take a pill, but the alcoholic needs a life redirection, and that takes social infrastructure. If you put yourself on the hook by providing said roof, their problems become yours. At that point, you need to ask yourself if you have the time, energy, patience, and most importantly, compassion.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
Huh, almost as if the solution is collective rather than hyper-individualist action, and it requires the resources of a community to pay the upfront costs in order to see the long term payoff.

chizhik-pyzhik 4y ago

This article is a good overview of the research about treatment-first vs housing-first approaches. The last paragraph is pretty clear on the real difficulty: >The major obstacles to resolving homelessness remain ideological. It is politically hard to sell the idea that people who take drugs or are disruptive should get free housing – even when the evidence shows that is actually what works.

epicureanideal 4y ago
I guarantee I could produce a program that would be acceptable to conservatives and provide free housing. Note also that Utah, a very conservative state, solves homelessness in exactly this way. It just might be that the housing would not be provided by funneling huge amounts of tax dollars to the rentier class, and might involve constructing more houses, and therefore would be opposed by the left.
- Overtonwindow 4y ago
  Utah has done wonders for its homeless population with the housing first initiative and I think it's a model for the rest of the country.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Socialism becomes a lot more palatable to majority populations as long as minority populations are kept to a minimum. With a reasonable expectation that the recipients of help look like you, helping starts to seem more like an obligation than an imposition.
  - epicureanideal 4y ago
    The loss of the distinction between the deserving poor and the undeserving poor also caused many people who would’ve supported help to one of those to just throw their hands in the air and forget the whole thing.
    - 4y ago

hprotagonist 4y ago

By all means, use data to make your case for effective solutions. Do not for a second forget that it’ll happen person by messy person and that this is not only inevitable, but good. Convincing NIMBYs of this is, well, a shitton of work. So three men from the recovery house next door help him to his feet, walk him to the halfway house and put him in the shower. They wash his clothes and shoes and give him their things to wear while he waits. They give him coffee and dinner, and they give him respect. I talked to these other men later, and even though they had very little sobriety, they did not cast this other guy off for not being well enough to be there. Somehow this broken guy was treated like one of them, because they could see that he was one of them. No one was pretending he wasn't covered with shit, but there was a real sense of kinship. […] I was just totally amazed by what I had seen. And I had a little shred of hope. I couldn't have put it into words, but until that meeting, I had thought that I would recover with men and women like myself; which is to say, overeducated, fun to be with and housebroken. And that this would happen quickly and efficiently. But I was wrong. https://www.salon.com/1998/12/10/10lamo/ https://www.salon.com/1998/12/10/10lamo/

not_the_fda 4y ago

Progressive cities have tried housing first solutions, yet they have a bigger homelessness problem and it keeps getting worse. Cities that have done treatment first policies have seen a reduction homelessness. A great book on this topic is San Fran-sicko. https://www.amazon.com/San-Fransicko-Progressives-Ruin-Cities/dp/0063093626 https://www.amazon.com/San-Fransicko-Progressives-Ruin-Citie...

frosted-flakes 4y ago
Probably because people are free to migrate anywhere within a country's borders, so cities with lots of social services get overrun with a disproportionate amount of people wanting to use them. These sorts of policies need to be implemented at a nation-wide level for them to be truly effective.
- tst01234 4y ago
  If you implement them nation-wide the only result would be people coming from abroad to enjoy housing-first social services. Unless you are saying the first step towards solving homelessness is the prevention of illegal entry and the mass expulsion of illegal immigrants.
  - gsk22 4y ago
    It is orders of magnitude harder to cross the US national border than between states or counties. Either way, I don't understand this idea that we shouldn't care for Americans because what if some non-Americans got in?
    - wizofaus 4y ago
      I get the impression there's a fair chunk of America that feels that way about any sort of government-provided assistance (though more accurately I guess it's "assistance is fine as long as it's to people I approve of).
- LarryMullins 4y ago

trynewideas 4y ago

Portland, cited in the article, announced it's beginning yet another sweep of homeless encampments yesterday. At the press conference announcing it, the mayor - who's been ordering sweeps his entire tenure - admits they don't and haven't ever helped the people being swept. He's also still pushing his plan to establish city-run outdoor camps for homeless people, and to criminalize rejecting those city-run camps when swept - but the city-run camps' locations haven't even been announced, much less started. https://www.portlandmercury.com/news/2023/01/27/46321180/city-unveils-plan-to-reset-central-eastside-by-picking-up-trash-increasing-police-presence-and-removing-homeless-portlanders https://www.portlandmercury.com/news/2023/01/27/46321180/cit...

LarryMullins 4y ago
From a NIMBY perspective, a city-run homeless camp sounds even worse than a normal homeless camp. At least in the latter case you can hope that the city will get rid of the camp soon, but if the camp is made by the city itself then what hope can you have? So I think this plan of his will never be implemented. Politically, talking about it makes more sense than actually implementing it.
- standardUser 4y ago
  The difference is that in practice, impromptu camps are often set up in city centers and dense residential neighborhoods. Officially sanctioned sites can be farther removed from those areas.
- Ancalagon 4y ago
  Don't these permanent "homeless camps" already exist though? When I was in Portland last January I saw a large grouping of what I can only describe as very-tiny homes - essentially glorified shacks on rollers and stilts - which were obviously city-sanctioned homeless encampments next to a bypass.
  - LarryMullins 4y ago
    The camps that last the longest seem to be the ones furthest from neighborhoods where rich people might complain about it. Near or under highways is a "good" place for the camps since highways are noisy/stinky and properties next to highways generally aren't very desirable. Homeless camps in nicer neighborhoods might last for a few weeks/months but seem a lot less permanent than those under highways.

patientplatypus 4y ago

Or you could make the government responsible for cleaning the sidewalks. https://sfgov.org/mod/sites/default/files/FileCenter/Documents/2176-Sidewalk%20Landscape%20with%20SIRP.pdf https://sfgov.org/mod/sites/default/files/FileCenter/Documen... https://libranet.de/display/0b6b25a8-1663-bdc2-8fa6-277372873969 https://libranet.de/display/0b6b25a8-1663-bdc2-8fa6-27737287... Personally I'm holding out until 2024 so the Bell Riots can give us the utopia we've all been promised. Sigh. I'm not too worried. You'll all be standing out in the breadline with me soon enough. Keep building robots that automate your jobs out of existence. I find it amusing.

SebaSeba 4y ago

Some support for the idea: "Finland is the only EU country where homelessness is falling. Its secret? Giving people homes as soon as they need them – unconditionally" https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle-helsinkis-radical-solution-to-homelessness https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle...

bryan_w 4y ago
So we ship all the homeless to Finland and that solves the issue. I'm sure we could do that for the same amount we spend on homeless programs today.
- rs999gti 4y ago
  Finland is nice to the homeless Finland-land-land Super cool to the homeless In the city City of Helsinki Lots of rich people giving change to the homeless

bradlys 4y ago

Homelessness increasing while the cost of housing has skyrocketed. Solution is more affordable housing? No, you don’t say. It’ll never happen though. We look at housing as an investment from a cultural perspective in the USA. This has been a brilliant plan by the capitalist landlords to further concentrate their holdings and become more fiendishly rich. But hey - your house goes up in value even though your kids will never get to own their own home. Maybe when you die - but oh wait you probably did a reverse mortgage because you didn’t save enough for retirement. Whoops. Too bad junior - no house for you!

orangecat 4y ago
This has been a brilliant plan by the capitalist landlords to further concentrate their holdings and become more fiendishly rich. It's not the capitalist landlords pointing guns at people who are trying to build more housing. But your point is basically right. Both parties and a large majority of the public believe that housing should be "a good investment", which is equivalent to the position that it should become increasingly unaffordable for the average person.

ErikVandeWater 4y ago

I wish this article were more specific on what "housing first" means. My understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) is that homeless shelters across the country have empty beds, and that these are not considered housing. When the article describes an alternative of providing the homeless "housing," what does this housing look like? What aspects of housing are provided that are not generally provided at homeless shelters? Is it privacy, security of belongings, a place to stay during the day, quietness during the night, or other factors that are most substantially different from what is currently available?

jasmer 4y ago
Basically something that resembles a home aka apartment. 'Shelters' are not close to that. They are places to 'kind of sleep' and that's usually it. It's not a 'home' if you have to share a room with 40 other smelly people and you have to be out by morning. There is a lot of theft, violence, many homeless find it much more peacable to sleep rough than in a shelter. Many people are so messed up and many incorrigably irresponsible so this program won't work (the flats will immediately turn into repulsively dirty crack houses), but for many it's foundational to be able to sleep and 'be' somewhere that's warm, protected from the elements, where you're not going to be accosted, stolen from. Just imagine trying to 'get a job' when you live in a tent. Our society is not very capable of handling that. Forget the physical duress of it - it's the psychological aspect. If you are in bum like conditions, surrounded by other bums, crackheads, thieves, it's really hard to fathom yourself as a 'good coffee server'. Give people a flat with decent neighbours, a community etc and that's the bedrock from which everything else is founded, including their own identity. All of that said, Finland is not California, and they are light years apart. I can 100% see it working in Helsinki and not in Cali at all. For one thing, there would be 20 million people lined up for 'free housing' in Cali. They don't have the same kinds of communities to integrate people into, weaker family and cultural structures. Much, much worse violence etc.. But 'housing first' is an important insight to consider because when you think about it it makes sense.
- luckylion 4y ago
  > But 'housing first' is an important insight to consider because when you think about it it makes sense. And it's a good goal, too. I mean, to achieve that, you'd have to aggressively build apartments, because it's not like we have 50% of flats being empty and people ending up on the street because nobody will take the government's money and rent out apartments. Once you do that appropriately, some of the pressure will be lowered. You'll still end up with some people landing on the streets, but you'll have fewer, because rents are more affordable and especially smaller apartments are being built. Fewer people, smaller problem. Unfortunately, that might also be why we're not doing it everywhere. For all I can tell, most local governments don't want new housing.

yellow_lead 4y ago

People tend to forget you can't be homeless if you have a home. it seems obvious in hindsight

tommiegannert 4y ago

This doesn't seem to address that if you are the nicest place to move to as homeless, more will move there, perpetuating the need for the chosen solution. I'm all for helping people, but if it's not sustainable, it will eventually screw everyone, not just the previously homeless.

dragonwriter 4y ago
> This doesn’t seem to address that if you are the nicest place to move to as homeless, more will move there, perpetuating the need for the chosen solution. That mitigates its effectiveness as a local solution, but that problem is in turn mitigated when you move it up to wider regions (and particularly when you move it up to jurisdictions with some form of border control.)

DantesKite 4y ago

Serious question: Why didn't this approach work in San Francisco? https://www.city-journal.org/san-franciscos-housing-first-nightmare https://www.city-journal.org/san-franciscos-housing-first-ni...

LarryMullins 4y ago
Local politicians are in bed with developers. The scheme is politicians giving public money to developers (their family/friends) for housing, which the tenants promptly destroy, justifying the acquisition of new properties. The politicians are incentivized to provide inadequate services/screening to ensure that the housing is destroyed. The whole thing is designed to fail because it's a grift.
lostdog 4y ago
I wouldn't take that article as the absolute truth. It's true that homeless people are not generally the best caretakers of themselves, but SROs are also gross because of landlord neglect. The article seems to suggest that some people are too obnoxious to be housed, but it wants to hide that conclusion from its readers. A real comprehensive solution to homelessness also needs to deal with the "difficult" people in a useful and humane way. It also needs to be realistic, so we cannot just make peoples' lives worse and hope that punishment causes them to behave more usefully. If I were solving the problem, I would do it something like this: - A place to sleep needs to be provided for everyone, regardless of mental health or drug usage or general intolerableness. - Housing for the homeless should be grouped into small places with a few units each that are well spread out. - Housing should be guaranteed for at least the month, so you are not waiting in line every single day. - There should be a quota per city and per census tract of required homeless housing, including the richest parts of the city. If your neighborhood meets the budget, then they can sweep for tents and there are consistent cleaning services. Otherwise it is open camping. - Some of the housing should be allocated as drug free, with regular drug testing for residents who choose these sites. Ditto for alcohol free. Ditto for more restrictive quiet hours. In non-drug-free housing, your still forbidden from open drug usage in common spaces, but no testing. We should balance each restriction according to demand. - We need solutions for handling mental health problems. That can include levels of conservatorship, such as having your door locked for the night but being allowed to leave during the day. We need lawyer or social worker representation, so that people are not restricted unnecessarily. - We should aim for individual rooms and bathrooms. If that's not economically feasible, then application criteria should exist for better sleeping locations, including how long you've been a resident in the city and disability status.

debacle 4y ago

A friend of mine runs homeless shelters for those that society finds truly deplorable. Sex offenders, ex convicts, and people who for some reason I can't understand are excluded from our emergency mental health system. His facilities have a cost of care that is 25% of what the state has paid in the past. They have intensive rehabilitation programs, and serve the communities in multiple cities remarkably well. His work is under fire from all sides. The Democrats don't like him because of the color of his skin, because he is a Christian (though his facilities aren't), and because he has privatized to some degree a system that was previously union work. The Republicans don't like him because they see these people as deserving life in jail (or a worse fate), and his work as "socialism" (because he's housing the homeless). He exists in a really precarious position - by properly balancing his political detractors, he is "allowed" to service the community.

Flatcircle 4y ago

easier said than done

diogenescynic 4y ago
A lot of them don't even want homes. They just want to be able to use drugs and hang out wherever they feel like. There are plenty of interviews on YouTube/Instagram/TikTok with homeless people saying exactly this.

m3kw9 4y ago

How do you deal with an apartment complex and it’s surrounding neighborhoods full of (previously)homeless people? The Realistate market isn’t gonna allow it to devalue their property, hence you get these NIMBY campaigns

gorbypark 4y ago
I always thought the best idea would be to randomly sprinkle in these housing units throughout the community instead and of having them all together in one complex. For example, each new development should have a percentage of units allocated to homeless programs, and which actual specific units should be chosen at random to prevent developers building small/horrible/clustered together units for the program.

m3kw9 4y ago

Since homeless people are homeless because they can’t afford a place, a solution is to prevent more homelessness by allowing people that are about to be homeless seek govt subsidies for rent. It’s another way to lower homelessness.

Ancalagon 4y ago
Subsidies will just cause further rent-seeking unfortunately
- yellowapple 4y ago
  At the risk of sounding like a broken record: land value taxation would fix that.

1024core 4y ago

The problem is: the "science" is used only as a tool to buttress one's pre-defined notions. Here in San Francisco, near the beginning of COVID, we put our homeless in hotel rooms. One resident per room, no shared bathrooms, etc. Plus, we gave them free food, free alcohol and free drugs (weed, IIRC). The idea was to satisfy all of their needs and not have them going outside. This lasted close to 2 years. This was a fairly big sample: close to 3700 people. That is a statistically significant sample, given that SF's total homeless population is around 20K - 30K (including those in shelters). So what happened with these people? How many of them cleaned up their acts and became productive members of society? This would be a fairly straightforward question to answer, right? BUT! The Homeless Industry in SF has refused to do so! There were no studies done on this population and their outcomes. Whatever happened to these scientists? Why did they ignore this golden opportunity to study this situation? What we _do_ know is that the residents trashed the hotels and the City of SF is being sued by these hotels to the tune of 10s of millions of dollars. I remember when all flights were grounded after 9/11, and scientists took the opportunity to study the impact of contrails on the night sky, visibility of celestial bodies, etc. Weirdly, no scientist considered it worthwhile to study these homeless people in their new housing.

the_only_law 4y ago
> How many of them cleaned up their acts and became productive members of society? It doesn’t sound like this was the purpose, it sounds like the purpose was to temporarily keep them off the street. So I’m not exactly shocked that it didn’t give a result it wasn’t designed to give.
- 1024core 4y ago
  Way to dodge the question. Sure, it wasn't the purpose, but it was the same situation! If you're going to tell me that providing housing alone is enough for these people, then this is exactly that situation: they were provided free room and board (and *NOT* shared rooms, either). So where are the positive outcomes that "housing first" is supposed to bring?
  - 4y ago

diogenescynic 4y ago

I'd be for this but if after giving them a place THEN the laws were actually applied and they were not allowed to do drugs in public spaces and other anti-social behavior. However, a lot of the folks in San Francisco who appear homeless actually have some hotel or unit the city has provided and they just hang out in public all day and cause problems.

A6gYPfxNas 4y ago

is that like the science that was supposed to stop the spread?

temp_ljx 4y ago

When hundreds of millions of Chinese move to cities looking for jobs, how do they solve the housing problem. Turns out those low-paying jobs mostly offering dormitory to attract workers. There are several article talking about Foxconn worker life conditions, but providing dormitories is better than not.