4 ms·

" America operates on the principal that it is better to fail quickly and rebuild than it is to defend what’s not working to preserve the status quo for as long

" America operates on the principal that it is better to fail quickly and rebuild than it is to defend what’s not working to preserve the status quo for as long as possible." The US is also willing to neglect and disenfranchise significant portions of the population and let them live in poverty, homelessness and ghettos. When you walk around SF, LA or New York it's astounding that you have super rich people live next to destitute people but the rich are perfectly fine with this as long as they can have their nice houses and neighborhoods. Or that there are significant part of the population who can't get meaningful healthcare.

deleted 4y ago
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boc 4y ago
When you say “significant portions of the population” and then reference a segment of society that could collectively all fit inside one college football stadium, it feels like hyperbole. Despite what you read online, the amount of Americans who see unsheltered homeless on a daily basis is very low.
- erodommoc 4y ago
  Off by over 5x: - The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) today released its 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) Part 1 to Congress. The report found 582,462 people were experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2022 (https://www.hud.gov/press/press_releases_media_advisories/HUD_No_22_253 https://www.hud.gov/press/press_releases_media_advisories/HU...) - Largest college football stadium: Michigan Stadium (Ann Arbor, Mich.) 107,601 (https://www.ncaa.com/news/football/article/2018-07-30/25-biggest-college-football-stadiums-country https://www.ncaa.com/news/football/article/2018-07-30/25-big...) - The population of Baltimore, MD is 576,498 as of the last census, so would be a closer point of comparison.
  - boc 4y ago
    Experiencing homelessness for one night is very different than the chronic homelessness which people are picturing. That second population is much smaller and way more visible.
- bugglebeetle 4y ago
  What’s your source for this claim? Something like 80% of Americans live in an urban setting. In no large city that I’ve ever been in can you go a day without seeing homeless people, unless you work from home and order all your food from an app.
  - JohnBooty 4y ago
    Forgive the nitpick, but absolutely nowhere near 80% of Americans are encountering homeless on a regular basis. Homelessness in particular and inequality in general are major problems! I don't mean to sweep that under the rug! However, I don't think it's true that anywhere near a majority of Americans encounter homeless people on a daily basis. Something like 80% of Americans live in an urban setting Yes, for the Census Bureau's particular and extremely loose definition of "urban" which includes what anybody in America would call "suburbs" and even a lot of places people would call "rural": https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/acs/acsgeo-1.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio... The key TL;DR determination factor (there are others, read for yourself) is this: In order for a block to qualify as urban, it must have a den- sity of 1,000 people per square mile (ppsm). That is not a lot. I live in a very stereotypical suburb (everybody has a driveway, and a small yard) and population density here is like 8,000 people per square mile... nobody would call this place urban besides the Census Bureau. (For reference, NYC's population density is 26,403 per square mile) I don't think I've ever seen a homeless person outside a major city... you just don't see it in suburbs or rural areas. Again, major problem, it's just that most Americans don't see it on a regular basis... which perhaps is part of the root of the problem. Makes it easy to ignore.
    - bugglebeetle 4y ago
      I just looked up the math and this is probably right. It looks like 1 in 3 Americans live in a city of >100K people, which, again, just in my experience, is where you’d be hard pressed to not encounter a homeless person. This however probably skews higher when we factor in things like working age adults vs the total population.
pb7 4y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_homeless_population https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_... The US is below most of Europe per capita in homelessness.
- dv_dt 4y ago
  I don't think the definitions quite line up. When you look at the linked definition for https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_France https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_France for example, it says: "Homelessness in France is a significant social issue that is estimated to affect around 300,000 people - a figure that has doubled since 2012 (141,500) and tripled since 2001 (93,000). Around 185,000 people are currently staying in shelters, some 100,000 are in temporary housing for people seeking asylum and 16,000 live in slums." This is very different than the homeless living out on the streets of so many major American cities. Reading the , the stat on https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_homeless_population https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_... for the US is ~500k, while the page linked in the table, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_S..., starts with "In the United States, the number of homeless people varies from different federal government accounts. In 2014, approximately 1.5 million sheltered homeless people were counted." so the higher ~1.5M would seem to correspond to the definition for number reported in the table from France.

deleted 4y ago

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boc 4y ago

When you say “significant portions of the population” and then reference a segment of society that could collectively all fit inside one college football stadium, it feels like hyperbole. Despite what you read online, the amount of Americans who see unsheltered homeless on a daily basis is very low.

erodommoc 4y ago
Off by over 5x: - The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) today released its 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) Part 1 to Congress. The report found 582,462 people were experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2022 (https://www.hud.gov/press/press_releases_media_advisories/HUD_No_22_253 https://www.hud.gov/press/press_releases_media_advisories/HU...) - Largest college football stadium: Michigan Stadium (Ann Arbor, Mich.) 107,601 (https://www.ncaa.com/news/football/article/2018-07-30/25-biggest-college-football-stadiums-country https://www.ncaa.com/news/football/article/2018-07-30/25-big...) - The population of Baltimore, MD is 576,498 as of the last census, so would be a closer point of comparison.
- boc 4y ago
  Experiencing homelessness for one night is very different than the chronic homelessness which people are picturing. That second population is much smaller and way more visible.
bugglebeetle 4y ago
What’s your source for this claim? Something like 80% of Americans live in an urban setting. In no large city that I’ve ever been in can you go a day without seeing homeless people, unless you work from home and order all your food from an app.
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  Forgive the nitpick, but absolutely nowhere near 80% of Americans are encountering homeless on a regular basis. Homelessness in particular and inequality in general are major problems! I don't mean to sweep that under the rug! However, I don't think it's true that anywhere near a majority of Americans encounter homeless people on a daily basis. Something like 80% of Americans live in an urban setting Yes, for the Census Bureau's particular and extremely loose definition of "urban" which includes what anybody in America would call "suburbs" and even a lot of places people would call "rural": https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/acs/acsgeo-1.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio... The key TL;DR determination factor (there are others, read for yourself) is this: In order for a block to qualify as urban, it must have a den- sity of 1,000 people per square mile (ppsm). That is not a lot. I live in a very stereotypical suburb (everybody has a driveway, and a small yard) and population density here is like 8,000 people per square mile... nobody would call this place urban besides the Census Bureau. (For reference, NYC's population density is 26,403 per square mile) I don't think I've ever seen a homeless person outside a major city... you just don't see it in suburbs or rural areas. Again, major problem, it's just that most Americans don't see it on a regular basis... which perhaps is part of the root of the problem. Makes it easy to ignore.
  - bugglebeetle 4y ago
    I just looked up the math and this is probably right. It looks like 1 in 3 Americans live in a city of >100K people, which, again, just in my experience, is where you’d be hard pressed to not encounter a homeless person. This however probably skews higher when we factor in things like working age adults vs the total population.

pb7 4y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_homeless_population https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_... The US is below most of Europe per capita in homelessness.

dv_dt 4y ago
I don't think the definitions quite line up. When you look at the linked definition for https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_France https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_France for example, it says: "Homelessness in France is a significant social issue that is estimated to affect around 300,000 people - a figure that has doubled since 2012 (141,500) and tripled since 2001 (93,000). Around 185,000 people are currently staying in shelters, some 100,000 are in temporary housing for people seeking asylum and 16,000 live in slums." This is very different than the homeless living out on the streets of so many major American cities. Reading the , the stat on https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_homeless_population https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_... for the US is ~500k, while the page linked in the table, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_S..., starts with "In the United States, the number of homeless people varies from different federal government accounts. In 2014, approximately 1.5 million sheltered homeless people were counted." so the higher ~1.5M would seem to correspond to the definition for number reported in the table from France.