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the dry, temperate weather that has historically made homelessness in San Diego County relatively tolerable may be a thing of the past. Recent weather in Califo

the dry, temperate weather that has historically made homelessness in San Diego County relatively tolerable may be a thing of the past. Recent weather in California has been generally both hotter and wetter. Some studies suggest that hotter, much wetter weather may be the new norm for California thanks to global warming. From an old blog post of mine, written November 2017. California has about one quarter of America's homeless population, likely due in part to the history of dry, temperate weather in large parts of California. If Cali is going to generally trend hotter and wetter, we need to more urgently than ever find solutions for getting people into permanent housing and keeping them there.

encoderer 4y ago
If the tolerability of being homeless here contributes to more homeless, wouldn’t we see less homelessness here if it’s less tolerable?
aidenn0 4y ago
California has 1/8th the US population, so it's double on a per-capita adjusted basis. IIRC if you also adjust for housing prices (which, perhaps unsurprisingly is correlated with homeless population) the adjusted rate is even closer. To the degree that weather affects housing costs (maybe not in the bay area, but SoCal and parts of the central coast this has an effect), the worsening weather might improve the homeless situation.
- rnk 4y ago
  It's interesting to think about whether California had a higher homeless population than their proportional population of the US. Because it seems like every state says they have too many homeless people, with various ideas of the expected number. I'm in Washington State and we definitely think we have "too many" homeless people and I've heard the same thing about Portland. As the weather extremes increase, I think that fewer and fewer people will be able to survive in poverty stricken areas and they'll be pushed into homelessness. I just don't see the US ever really dealing with the situation, plus we're going to keep automating jobs out of existence, so universal basic income is actually needed. My parents generation does not understand the challenges today and they've managed to effectively block changes in government.
  - amateuring 4y ago
    what jobs have been "automated out of existence" recently in the US or elsewhere?
    - rnk 4y ago
      Travel agents is a nice, easy example. Everyone buys their own airplane flights now. Of course, it's complicated because there's a lot more accountants today than there were before electronic spreadsheets were invented. We needed more of them. I think first level customer service agents have already been replaced by not very good chat agents, they should get better with AI.
  - tomcar288 4y ago
    UBI in itself won't help anything without many other changes. I've run the numbers many times: there simply isn't anywhere near the amount of wealth needed. In order to help people we need to find ways to drastically cut costs on housing. First start with the land: there's more acres of land in CA than people. the problem is just we're not allowed to build anything, anywhere. Secondly, we need to remove all the regulatory roadblocks that prevent markets from solving the housing crisis. if 3rd world countries can afford to build housing, we should be at least be able to do so as well.

encoderer 4y ago

If the tolerability of being homeless here contributes to more homeless, wouldn’t we see less homelessness here if it’s less tolerable?

aidenn0 4y ago

California has 1/8th the US population, so it's double on a per-capita adjusted basis. IIRC if you also adjust for housing prices (which, perhaps unsurprisingly is correlated with homeless population) the adjusted rate is even closer. To the degree that weather affects housing costs (maybe not in the bay area, but SoCal and parts of the central coast this has an effect), the worsening weather might improve the homeless situation.

rnk 4y ago
It's interesting to think about whether California had a higher homeless population than their proportional population of the US. Because it seems like every state says they have too many homeless people, with various ideas of the expected number. I'm in Washington State and we definitely think we have "too many" homeless people and I've heard the same thing about Portland. As the weather extremes increase, I think that fewer and fewer people will be able to survive in poverty stricken areas and they'll be pushed into homelessness. I just don't see the US ever really dealing with the situation, plus we're going to keep automating jobs out of existence, so universal basic income is actually needed. My parents generation does not understand the challenges today and they've managed to effectively block changes in government.
- amateuring 4y ago
  what jobs have been "automated out of existence" recently in the US or elsewhere?
  - rnk 4y ago
    Travel agents is a nice, easy example. Everyone buys their own airplane flights now. Of course, it's complicated because there's a lot more accountants today than there were before electronic spreadsheets were invented. We needed more of them. I think first level customer service agents have already been replaced by not very good chat agents, they should get better with AI.
- tomcar288 4y ago
  UBI in itself won't help anything without many other changes. I've run the numbers many times: there simply isn't anywhere near the amount of wealth needed. In order to help people we need to find ways to drastically cut costs on housing. First start with the land: there's more acres of land in CA than people. the problem is just we're not allowed to build anything, anywhere. Secondly, we need to remove all the regulatory roadblocks that prevent markets from solving the housing crisis. if 3rd world countries can afford to build housing, we should be at least be able to do so as well.