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> I think if they fixed the homeless problem and converted some of the now unused office buildings to apartments it would go a long way. There is no “homeless”

> I think if they fixed the homeless problem and converted some of the now unused office buildings to apartments it would go a long way. There is no “homeless” problem. There’s a drug epidemic problem. Giving homeless people free housing just moves the problem from the sidewalk to a building. A building that will quickly become a slum. The drug problem is what needs to be fixed.

majormajor 4y ago
A substantial portion of people think the "homeless problem" is visibility and having to interact with homeless people more than the existence of homelessness. (Setting aside for now the amount of heavy lifting "if they fixed the homeless problem" is doing there... gee, why did nobody try to fix it ever before, anywhere?)
- OkayPhysicist 4y ago
  In the US, the political will for "eliminate homelessness by giving them homes" is a political non-starter in a lot of places. In the left-liberal places, you've got entrenched interests fighting tooth and nail to prevent any housing at all from being built, and in right wing areas you've got a "being poor is God's punishment" attitude pushing back against any positive change at all. To make matters worse, any effort to solve the issue results in a large influx of homeless people, because when the standard across the country is one step above "hunt them for sport", you come across as a haven. In the places it has been tried, housing-first solutions have been wildly successful. It turns out getting your shit together is a lot easier when you don't have the constant stressors of living on the street.
Tiktaalik 4y ago
Having a stable, safe place to live is a crucial and necessary step (among many other basic steps) to being in a place to be able to tackle more complex life problems, such as solving a chronic drug use problem. It's not terribly likely at all that anyone will ever get any traction on solving a chemical addition problem when they have dramatically more important and basic near term problems such as finding food and shelter.
- ryanSrich 4y ago
  I agree, but you can’t just let a drug addicted person have tax-payer subsidized housing without also requiring that addicted person to attend drug addiction therapy. I live in Portland, where the overwhelming majority of homeless people deny housing because of this fact. Because they are required to get help. I absolutely do not think providing more “free” housing is the answer.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    If they don't follow these rules they are on their own? So you end up with homeless people who go to central high traffic areas to remain visible and ask for charity. That's what you have now. Putting them in housing solves a few problems. You know where they are and have a contact and can offer lifelines. Requiring people to get help and removing more control over their lives reduces trust, likely hood of success and they end up hiding the fact. You need to constantly watch them now or drug test them. Easier to live on the street than in your world
  - gowld 4y ago
    Why? What's wrong with a drug-addicted person making their little apartment gross?
    - fragmede 4y ago
      Watch an episode or two of Hoarders and tell me it seems delightful to just let people live that way. If we're giving people housing because it's not okay for them to live that way, then I can't accept that also it's okay for people to live in such squalor simply because they have a roof over their head. That's just a personal opinion though. eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WYO8fL_iMs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WYO8fL_iMs https://www.aetv.com/shows/hoarders https://www.aetv.com/shows/hoarders
      - comte7092 4y ago
        What does that have to do with people having a drug addiction? Are there people who goad and have addictions? Sure. It’s not like that show is 100% drug addicts though. In fact that show is literally 0% homeless people. So it’s a complete red herring.
nradov 4y ago
It's hard to disentangle cause and effect. It's true that many homeless people are addicts. Some lost their housing because their addiction caused them to get fired from their job or alienate their family. Others became homeless first and turned to drugs later as a way to temporarily escape a bleak reality. Many homeless people use illegal drugs as a way of self medicating psychiatric disorders because they lack access to mental health care. Giving them stable housing first is often an effective initial step in treating their addiction (and other medical conditions). In any case, the War on (Some) Drugs has clearly been lost and the drugs aren't going away. What is your solution?
kjellsbells 4y ago
Any one of these makes the other two impossible to fix: - homelessness - drugs - mental illness In the US, we've done a spectacular job of pricong working people out of housing, creating a ridiculously incompetent drug policy (simultaneously too lax and too punitive), and closing down all reasonable avenues to mental health care. This dates back to Reagan or before but both left and right-wing parties have considerable blame to carry. You dont have to believe that they were malicious, but the results have been disastrous. You either fix all three coherently, or none.
- dools 4y ago
  Also employment. If you implement a federal job guarantee[0], it means that people can move more readily to regions that currently suffer low employment opportunities which places downwards pressure on housing, but it also raises the question: if the government is obliged to employ everyone, can people go to work without a house? If not, then it's probably a good idea for the government to supply a basic level of housing as well. [0] http://www.jobguarantee.org/ http://www.jobguarantee.org/
slg 4y ago
I don't have the numbers for SF specifically, but I doubt they differ that much from LA. The numbers in LA are that 27% of homeless people have a substance abuse issue and 25% have a severe mental illness[1]. Those are not mutually exclusive, so there is some overlap in those groups. It means that roughly 50% of homeless people are mentally well when they become homeless and potentially much more than 50% as these numbers don't represent any causal information. Many people might become homeless for other reasons and the difficulty of homelessness triggers a mental health crisis or pushes them towards drugs as a coping mechanism. This idea that drugs cause most homeless is largely just confirmation bias. You likely cross paths with many homeless people that you don't realize are homeless. It is the drug addicts and the mentally ill that stand out as obviously homeless. The person who is out on the street because they couldn't make rent, probably isn't noticeably homeless if they spend their nights in a shelter or sleep in a car before showering at a local gym. [1] - https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/homelessness-california-causes-and-policy-considerations https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/homeles...
- googlryas 4y ago
  I think an important distinction is that not all homeless are problematic, but the homeless you see are almost always problematic - in the sense of having an untreated severe mental health issues including drug addiction. You never notice the single mom living in a shelter, who takes her kids to work at a laundromat, or the guy who sleeps in his car and does landscaping jobs during the day.
  - slg 4y ago
    The obvious follow-up then is do you care about homelessness or do you just care about problematic homelessness? Because most people here using "homeless" as a shorthand for "problematic homelessness". This just goes to support majormajor's comment that people are not upset by homelessness in general. They are upset they have to see and interact with problematic homeless people. [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34826714 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34826714
toshredsyousay 4y ago
The data doesn't really back this claim up. There are parts of the country where drug use is very high, and yet they don't have as many homeless people per capita as SF. There is a very clear correlation between homelessness and house prices, and not a clear correlation between drug use and house prices. Additionally, the mere fact of being homeless often results in increases in mental illness symptoms and drug use, so trying to get people to not be drug addicts while not giving them a home means you aren't taking away what is often one of the biggest causes of their drug use. https://www.sightline.org/2022/03/16/homelessness-is-a-housing-problem/ https://www.sightline.org/2022/03/16/homelessness-is-a-housi... 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...
- ryanSrich 4y ago
  > There are parts of the country where drug use is very high, and yet they don't have as many homeless people per capita as SF. That’s because drugs are still illegal in those areas. California and Oregon have essentially legalized every drug. If you’re caught on the street smoking meth or fentanyl, it’s more than likely that a police officer walks right past you.
  - swearwolf 4y ago
    People are downvoting this, but it’s true. There’s a little more nuance here as well. In addition to fully tolerated public drug possession and consumption, there is also the tolerance of street camping, and the extremely low prices of meth and fentanyl on the West Coast at play here. However a person enters the drug addiction spiral, once they’re in it, it’s easier by far to stay in active addiction here. In Oregon, where I live, people can either scrounge enough cans to take to the recycling center - about 20 will do - or use their EBT card to buy bottles of water, empty them and then recycle the bottles to get the cash deposit. Either way, less than $10 will buy enough meth to stay high for days here. I assume it’s similar for fentanyl. No one will stop you from setting up your tent or RV on street, and at least in Portland you can steal bikes or cars to earn extra money. There’s a chop shop within sight of my house doing exactly that, all day every day out in the open. You can get enough food from the many homeless services organizations and tents are given out by the city. Essentially everything a person needs to completely destroy themselves with drugs is available for free or nearly free, and law enforcement stopped bothering to try to keep things under control. These conditions are fairly unique to Oregon, Washington and California, so I think the high housing price correlation is true, but also incomplete.

majormajor 4y ago

A substantial portion of people think the "homeless problem" is visibility and having to interact with homeless people more than the existence of homelessness. (Setting aside for now the amount of heavy lifting "if they fixed the homeless problem" is doing there... gee, why did nobody try to fix it ever before, anywhere?)

OkayPhysicist 4y ago
In the US, the political will for "eliminate homelessness by giving them homes" is a political non-starter in a lot of places. In the left-liberal places, you've got entrenched interests fighting tooth and nail to prevent any housing at all from being built, and in right wing areas you've got a "being poor is God's punishment" attitude pushing back against any positive change at all. To make matters worse, any effort to solve the issue results in a large influx of homeless people, because when the standard across the country is one step above "hunt them for sport", you come across as a haven. In the places it has been tried, housing-first solutions have been wildly successful. It turns out getting your shit together is a lot easier when you don't have the constant stressors of living on the street.

Tiktaalik 4y ago

Having a stable, safe place to live is a crucial and necessary step (among many other basic steps) to being in a place to be able to tackle more complex life problems, such as solving a chronic drug use problem. It's not terribly likely at all that anyone will ever get any traction on solving a chemical addition problem when they have dramatically more important and basic near term problems such as finding food and shelter.

ryanSrich 4y ago
I agree, but you can’t just let a drug addicted person have tax-payer subsidized housing without also requiring that addicted person to attend drug addiction therapy. I live in Portland, where the overwhelming majority of homeless people deny housing because of this fact. Because they are required to get help. I absolutely do not think providing more “free” housing is the answer.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  If they don't follow these rules they are on their own? So you end up with homeless people who go to central high traffic areas to remain visible and ask for charity. That's what you have now. Putting them in housing solves a few problems. You know where they are and have a contact and can offer lifelines. Requiring people to get help and removing more control over their lives reduces trust, likely hood of success and they end up hiding the fact. You need to constantly watch them now or drug test them. Easier to live on the street than in your world
- gowld 4y ago
  Why? What's wrong with a drug-addicted person making their little apartment gross?
  - fragmede 4y ago
    Watch an episode or two of Hoarders and tell me it seems delightful to just let people live that way. If we're giving people housing because it's not okay for them to live that way, then I can't accept that also it's okay for people to live in such squalor simply because they have a roof over their head. That's just a personal opinion though. eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WYO8fL_iMs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WYO8fL_iMs https://www.aetv.com/shows/hoarders https://www.aetv.com/shows/hoarders
    - comte7092 4y ago
      What does that have to do with people having a drug addiction? Are there people who goad and have addictions? Sure. It’s not like that show is 100% drug addicts though. In fact that show is literally 0% homeless people. So it’s a complete red herring.

nradov 4y ago

It's hard to disentangle cause and effect. It's true that many homeless people are addicts. Some lost their housing because their addiction caused them to get fired from their job or alienate their family. Others became homeless first and turned to drugs later as a way to temporarily escape a bleak reality. Many homeless people use illegal drugs as a way of self medicating psychiatric disorders because they lack access to mental health care. Giving them stable housing first is often an effective initial step in treating their addiction (and other medical conditions). In any case, the War on (Some) Drugs has clearly been lost and the drugs aren't going away. What is your solution?

kjellsbells 4y ago

Any one of these makes the other two impossible to fix: - homelessness - drugs - mental illness In the US, we've done a spectacular job of pricong working people out of housing, creating a ridiculously incompetent drug policy (simultaneously too lax and too punitive), and closing down all reasonable avenues to mental health care. This dates back to Reagan or before but both left and right-wing parties have considerable blame to carry. You dont have to believe that they were malicious, but the results have been disastrous. You either fix all three coherently, or none.

dools 4y ago
Also employment. If you implement a federal job guarantee[0], it means that people can move more readily to regions that currently suffer low employment opportunities which places downwards pressure on housing, but it also raises the question: if the government is obliged to employ everyone, can people go to work without a house? If not, then it's probably a good idea for the government to supply a basic level of housing as well. [0] http://www.jobguarantee.org/ http://www.jobguarantee.org/

slg 4y ago

I don't have the numbers for SF specifically, but I doubt they differ that much from LA. The numbers in LA are that 27% of homeless people have a substance abuse issue and 25% have a severe mental illness[1]. Those are not mutually exclusive, so there is some overlap in those groups. It means that roughly 50% of homeless people are mentally well when they become homeless and potentially much more than 50% as these numbers don't represent any causal information. Many people might become homeless for other reasons and the difficulty of homelessness triggers a mental health crisis or pushes them towards drugs as a coping mechanism. This idea that drugs cause most homeless is largely just confirmation bias. You likely cross paths with many homeless people that you don't realize are homeless. It is the drug addicts and the mentally ill that stand out as obviously homeless. The person who is out on the street because they couldn't make rent, probably isn't noticeably homeless if they spend their nights in a shelter or sleep in a car before showering at a local gym. [1] - https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/homelessness-california-causes-and-policy-considerations https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/homeles...

googlryas 4y ago
I think an important distinction is that not all homeless are problematic, but the homeless you see are almost always problematic - in the sense of having an untreated severe mental health issues including drug addiction. You never notice the single mom living in a shelter, who takes her kids to work at a laundromat, or the guy who sleeps in his car and does landscaping jobs during the day.
- slg 4y ago
  The obvious follow-up then is do you care about homelessness or do you just care about problematic homelessness? Because most people here using "homeless" as a shorthand for "problematic homelessness". This just goes to support majormajor's comment that people are not upset by homelessness in general. They are upset they have to see and interact with problematic homeless people. [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34826714 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34826714

toshredsyousay 4y ago

The data doesn't really back this claim up. There are parts of the country where drug use is very high, and yet they don't have as many homeless people per capita as SF. There is a very clear correlation between homelessness and house prices, and not a clear correlation between drug use and house prices. Additionally, the mere fact of being homeless often results in increases in mental illness symptoms and drug use, so trying to get people to not be drug addicts while not giving them a home means you aren't taking away what is often one of the biggest causes of their drug use. https://www.sightline.org/2022/03/16/homelessness-is-a-housing-problem/ https://www.sightline.org/2022/03/16/homelessness-is-a-housi... 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...

ryanSrich 4y ago
> There are parts of the country where drug use is very high, and yet they don't have as many homeless people per capita as SF. That’s because drugs are still illegal in those areas. California and Oregon have essentially legalized every drug. If you’re caught on the street smoking meth or fentanyl, it’s more than likely that a police officer walks right past you.
- swearwolf 4y ago
  People are downvoting this, but it’s true. There’s a little more nuance here as well. In addition to fully tolerated public drug possession and consumption, there is also the tolerance of street camping, and the extremely low prices of meth and fentanyl on the West Coast at play here. However a person enters the drug addiction spiral, once they’re in it, it’s easier by far to stay in active addiction here. In Oregon, where I live, people can either scrounge enough cans to take to the recycling center - about 20 will do - or use their EBT card to buy bottles of water, empty them and then recycle the bottles to get the cash deposit. Either way, less than $10 will buy enough meth to stay high for days here. I assume it’s similar for fentanyl. No one will stop you from setting up your tent or RV on street, and at least in Portland you can steal bikes or cars to earn extra money. There’s a chop shop within sight of my house doing exactly that, all day every day out in the open. You can get enough food from the many homeless services organizations and tents are given out by the city. Essentially everything a person needs to completely destroy themselves with drugs is available for free or nearly free, and law enforcement stopped bothering to try to keep things under control. These conditions are fairly unique to Oregon, Washington and California, so I think the high housing price correlation is true, but also incomplete.