79 ms·

California spent $17B on homelessness – it’s not working

• christkv 3y ago
  So they spent 17 billion over the last 4 year on about 115k+ people or about 140-150k usd per person per year. Yeah there is some serious grifting going on.
• option 3y ago
  This is about $147,000 per homeless person (assuming recent number of 115,000 of them in the state). Who is going to lose their job/ go to jail for wasting $17B of CA taxpayers money?
• senttoschool 3y ago
  Everyone already knows that the more money California spends on homeless, the more of them will come to California. It's a service. The state/city that provides the best service for homeless people - that's where I will try to go if I don't have a home. Politicians don't seem to understand this. Or maybe they do, but they do the wrong thing in order to drum up politically correct votes. Take San Francisco. It spends $400m on homeless each year. With $400m, you can probably just buy a small apartment in Idaho for every single one of them. Problem solved. Are you homeless? Make your way to San Francisco. The tax payers in the city will buy you a home in Idaho - no questions asked.
  • f6v 3y ago
    > With $400m, you can probably just buy a small apartment in Idaho for every single one of them. Problem solved. The problem is that people become homeless due to a number of reasons that include addiction, mental illness, trauma, loss of work, etc. It’s not going to be solved by JUST providing them an apartment. At least not for everyone.
    • atdrummond 3y ago
      As someone who ended up homeless despite not fitting the typical profile - and has volunteered hundreds (possibly thousands) of hours in the space - you dramatically overstate the case for involuntary homelessness. There couldn’t be a more significant difference between the homeless populations in places like SF and in other cities in the US with more sensible policies. There’s massively more people in California who are there because they’re voluntarily opting into a lifestyle where all of their capital expenditures are provided by taxpayers and they don’t have to do anything to maintain them other than to remain homeless. Many of these people may seem insane due to their drug use but their mental issues are a result, not a cause; they’re still rational actors responding to a perverse set of incentives.
  • pharmakom 3y ago
    Very frustrating to see the right blame the left for the homeless problem when the left are the only ones attempting to do anything about it.
    • russdill 3y ago
      Apparently if someone is hungry and you feed them, or if they are naked and you clothe then it's your own damn fault that people keep showing up.
      • realjhol 3y ago
        More like... - "when I was drug addicted you gave me cash" - "when I was stealing to fund my addictions, you made shop lifting legal for stolen items amounting to $1000 or less" - "when I was making violent threats, and assaulting members of the public you let me walk free" - "when the police tried to intervene you said they were systematically racist against people of color and should be defunded" - "when I had mental health issues, you closed down all the mental hospitals because you said they were oppressive institutions" The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
        • senttoschool 3y ago
          That's right. That's the hell hole San Francisco created. The city officials thought the tech tax money would never run out. Let's do extremely expensive feel-good, politically correct stuff to make people think we have a good heart.
          • russdill 3y ago
            What percentage is the budget do you imagine is being spent on homelessness?
        • Kbelicius 3y ago
          > "when I had mental health issues, you closed down all the mental hospitals because you said they were oppressive institutions" Wasn't that Reagan? Don't think that he was on the left.
  • zhte415 3y ago
    > Martin cited a study from May 2018 by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which found 75 percent of the people on the street in Los Angeles County had a home in that same county before they lost it. It also showed that 65 percent of the unsheltered homeless had lived in that county for at least 20 years. Only 13 percent were from out of state. Source: https://www.politifact.com/article/2018/jun/28/dispelling-myths-about-californias-homeless/ https://www.politifact.com/article/2018/jun/28/dispelling-my... Everyone knows, in the lyrics of Leonard Cohen - Everybody knows the good guys lost Everybody knows the fight was fixed The poor stay poor, the rich get rich That's how it goes Everybody knows
    • zumu 3y ago
      Those stats are outdated and generally somewhat dubious—what was the methodology here? Nonetheless, it is clear CA generates a lot of homeless. The linked study from 2018 claimed 52,765 homeless in LA county, while the count by the same group performed in 2022 tallied 69,144. Either there's a been a massive influx of people on the streets or their methodology is improving. Perhaps both. Pretty wild to think about.
      • QuercusMax 3y ago
        Population keeps growing and prices keep going up. Native californians are being displaced onto the streets.
  • dgoldstein0 3y ago
    This ignores the fact that many of the homeless have other problems than just a lack of a roof over their heads. Drug addiction and untreated mental health issues are common (and overlap); domestic violence is another (related) cause for some of the homeless. Many of these issues don't go away by throwing houses at the problem. Anyhow the main problem with the Idaho idea, beyond the politics/optics: what about getting the homeless into jobs? I don't think Idaho is overflowing with those, and I expect some of the homeless will be better off of employed.
  • crooked-v 3y ago
    Does that free apartment in Idaho also come with food, drug treatment, social services, and at least the remote possibility of actually getting a job, all in Idaho?
    • senttoschool 3y ago
      Probably. You can even hire people to guard them, feed them, try to bring them back to society slowly.
  • dalbasal 3y ago
    Well... The logical (and operative) end of this thought process is "make them miserable and they'll leave." Some/many politicians do implement these kinds of policies, but you'll rarely hear the quite part out loud. Nasty problems breed dishonesty. Humane homeless policies increases homelessness, and the visibility of homelessness... especially if homeless migration is prevalent. The inhumane homelessness reduction policy is "abuse homeless people, then some will go away" No one wants to admit the other side of whatever coin they like. C'est la politique.
• rottencupcakes 3y ago
  Homelessness is a failure of the Federal government that nobody there is even willing to talk about. This can't be solved at a local or state level in a country with unrestricted freedom of movement.
  • atdrummond 3y ago
    I don’t think the feds are to blame. SF and similar CA cities have set up a program that encourages people to move there because it makes being “homeless” an actual possible lifestyle choice. Even an enjoyable one.
    • thrwawy74 3y ago
      Hmm. I wonder if you could say "if someone becomes homeless in your locality, your locality has failed them". And then rate localities/states by their net loss of citizens that have fallen "outside society". Then begin incentivizing communities to fix these problems. There's only so much a local community can do with limited funds, but while I'm sure the majority of homeless in California are Californian... I would love other states to take ownership of citizens they export/extrude. :s
      • atdrummond 3y ago
        I agree. From my research, Portugal’s drug assistance programmes for the homeless are quite effective. For those in more of a poverty trap situation, Finland has done quite a good job finding the right set of policies for their country to bring levels down so far that most Americans would consider them to have “solved” homelessness.[1] https://oecdecoscope.blog/2021/12/13/finlands-zero-homeless-strategy-lessons-from-a-success-story/amp/ https://oecdecoscope.blog/2021/12/13/finlands-zero-homeless-...
    • devoutsalsa 3y ago
      Are you aware of this? Reagan’s Legacy: Homelessness in America https://shelterforce.org/2004/05/01/reagans-legacy-homelessness-in-america/ https://shelterforce.org/2004/05/01/reagans-legacy-homelessn...
• MattGaiser 3y ago
  > has about half of the nation’s unsheltered homeless How many are from California and how many were given a bus pass to California by a government content to move the homeless around or on their own accord made their way to California as it has some of the best services? How many are the same homeless people and how many are new homeless people who have replaced the old homeless people, making it appear that no progress has been made, but in reality there may just be greater need?
  • atdrummond 3y ago
    From the many hundreds of homeless people I’ve met in SF, there’s been a massive increase of out-of-state movement. That said, they seem to mostly come of their own volition - they realize the combination of the nice weather and massive resources available means they have a pretty maintainable lifestyle.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• Pinegulf 3y ago
  https://archive.is/SX1Jq https://archive.is/SX1Jq
• jerojero 3y ago
  It is mentioned in the article about a woman working full time, yet still unable to afford rent. I think a big steps towards resolving homelessness should go in addressing the housing market; which in California is really really bad. This isn't just "build more homes" (which is already an extremely difficult task in the state given the zoning laws) but comprehensive housing policies. Take a look at the way Austria has controlled rent prices (though californians might not like the fact that around 70% of housing in austria is limited or non profit). Also, this is a US-wide problem. California just has the best weather and open doors. But I doubt it's going to get better, wealth inequality does nothing but increase in the US. We'll see, but this looks to me more of a symptom than a sickness in itself.
  • creshal 3y ago
    Austria doesn't have a coordinated federal housing policy either, it's mostly just Vienna that aggressively builds city- or NPO-owned housing (and even there it's "only" about 40-45%¹). And one important aspect of Vienna's housing policy is that these housing units are generally fairly nice, and offered to everyone at cheap prices, to avoid ghettoisation and have upper middle class families with doctorates live next door to long-term unemployed. I'm not sure how well that'd go with American sensibilities. ¹: https://www.iba-wien.at/iba-wien/iba-wien/soziale-wohnungspolitik https://www.iba-wien.at/iba-wien/iba-wien/soziale-wohnungspo...
  • crooked-v 3y ago
    The most frustrating part of that is the absurd number of people who see the obvious problem of wildly expensive and tightly constrained housing supply, complain about it being impossible to buy a home, and then actively refuse to even allow for the possibility that cities may have been under-building for some time.
    • nradov 3y ago
      If those people bothered to actually vote instead of just complaining online then the problem would be less severe.
• atdrummond 3y ago
  That’s because Cali’s approach is insane. They give you hundreds a month in cash grants (some make $1k a month in SF) and require you to make NO alterations to your lifestyle. I was amazed when living in SF how many of the homeless are not locals. Not even Californians! I myself lived on the streets for a number of years and have dealt with addiction issues. It is absolutely insane how we’ve stopped treating homeless people as humans with potential and aspirations and assume that all they can be is a vacuum for drugs and cash. There’s no other conclusion to reach about how policy makers truly think about this class of people with the way the incentives of these “support” programs are structured.
  • skrebbel 3y ago
    How is giving people money unconditionally not treating them as “humans with potential and aspirations”? I’m not entirely sure what your point is. Are you saying that adding more rules and conditions and whatnot is better? I don’t have a well-formed opinion here myself, just that most people arguing for treating benefit recipients humanely argue for fewer rules, not more. So I’d like to understand your point better.
    • realjhol 3y ago
      Giving addicts drug money instead of providing for their needs is the peak of inhumanity.
      • madsbuch 3y ago
        Drug-addicts is something you interpret. It is specified that they are homeless. Doing this conflation is the worst kind of anti-ethical you can be. Just like assuming other things about whole groups of people. For this debate, I can really recommend Rutger Bregman and his books. One of his important points about poverty is that people are that: Poor. And that is their problem.
        • atdrummond 3y ago
          My problem when I was homeless wasn’t that I was poor. My problem was that I would never be able to manage assets properly until I get my mental house in order and started prioritizing things properly. There are plenty of homeless people who are in a poverty trap, as you describe, but I think it oversimplifies the situation to argue the arrow of causality only goes one direction for all homeless people.
• alpineidyll3 3y ago
  Half the dysfunction with political efforts to ameliorate homelessness is the toxicity of touching a difficult issue. Homelessness is beyond any one term or individual to solve. Certainly you cannot cure the addictions, disabilities or madness of these unfortunate people overnight. The only solution people would actually like is if the homeless were to disappear.
  • pc_edwin 3y ago
    I can solve it in under a year. These are either mentally I'll people or people who refuse to maintain the minimum amount of civility required by modern humanity. They should either be forcefully institutionalised or forcefully removed with imprisonment for repeat offence. Public streets are public property, this is no law that allows this sort of lunacy. Everywhere else these ... are atleast thrown away to some dark corner under a bridge or street.
    • alpineidyll3 3y ago
      In a way we don't disagree. I think citizens would be quite happy with a solution which makes the homeless invisible by sequestering them. Its probably also the best for the health of these people. But remember how we got here. Reagan shut down the asylums because they were expensive, messy and "inhumane". 20 years after reinstitutionalizing we will lament the cost of sedation and imprisonment.
      • pc_edwin 3y ago
        California spent $4 billion a year on homelessness. Thats roughly $35,000 per homeless person (115,000). IMO it shouldn't even that much to institutionalise/imprison/forcefully remove these people but even if it did cost as much or more, it would still be worth it. Imagine what would clean safe streets do for these cities, it would create such a huge rebound!
    • drewcoo 3y ago
      I hope there's also room in those institutions to try to reform sociopaths with draconian ideas about social problems. If not, I want to play Judge Dredd this time!
• secondcoming 3y ago
  It worked for everyone who got a cut of that $17B
  • eloisant 3y ago
    not if they're still homeless
• ugjka 3y ago
  I heard it is so bad that foreigners regret their vacation trips to California, particularly San Francisco
  • jxramos 3y ago
    I've seen street interviews on Youtube or maybe Twitter where they come up to tourists and ask them how they're enjoying their trip and catch any feedback. Sad replies.
  • herbst 3y ago
    That's not new tho. The 'romantic' idea of travelling to the us always comes with the ugly taste of open poorness, public drug consumptions and general inhumane behaviour to their homeless and sick. It's not only SF or Cali that has this image at this point. It's kinda hard to overlook when this simply does not exist where you are from.
    • drewcoo 3y ago
      Hey, there's more to the US than that for visitors. Don't forget that we're also globally known for our racism and gun crimes!
• vmfunction 3y ago
  with $17B, we can literally 3D print a bunch of micro housing. Seems like money is still wasted in Bureaucrat, red tap and some kind financial fraud.
  • jxramos 3y ago
    I've heard it called the homelessness industrial complex, that was from some City Journal article someone posted to HN some years back that introduced me to that publication. It was a shocking thing to contemplate but yah with that sum of money what exactly do we have to show for it?
    • polski-g 3y ago
      If you're being paid by the government to manage homeless people, your incentive is to keep them homeless. Else your contact would end.
      • jxramos 3y ago
        yah, and I can see this being true of any effort to remove something negative from society. What do you do next when satisfactorily eliminate it and how do you test when that negative thing has not sufficiently retreated for a given effort. How do you differentiate spinning wheels when someone doesn't want to advance and is intentionally idling burning the hours and when the problem is just downright difficult.
      • Tiktaalik 3y ago
        This same nonsense logic would apply to the police, firemen and nurses too. Are the firemen out there discouraging sprinkler systems because they want to keep their jobs? Even if we were looking at this from an utterly cynical, purely financial viewpoint, the people paid to help the homeless are effectively property managers and they benefit from housing the homeless, not letting them sleep on the street.
        • lr4444lr 3y ago
• pc_edwin 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • rhaway84773 3y ago
    So where is that 5% on your bell curve in Rio De Janeiro? Or most of Europe? Or most parts of Asia? Why is the 5% of people in the world who according to you are uncivilized concentrated in the U.S.? Because homelessness of the sort that you see in the US simply doesn’t exist in most countries in the world. Both countries that are as rich or significantly poorer than the US.
    • pc_edwin 3y ago
      Ready my OP again, thats my exact point! This is not caused by some unprecedented economic crash or poverty crises. As I've said in the OP, "this is an epidemic of uninformed tolerance and apathy ravaging an entire nation." These are either addicts, mentally ill or uncivilised people. Every society from the most liberal ones to the most tyrannical ones have set up laws and institutions to deal with them. You forcefully institutionalise the mentally ill. You provide an option of voluntary treatment to addict or forced. You forcefully remove the uncivilised people. I personally have stronger beliefs when it comes to what to do with these peoples but that will get me banned (its a little biblical). What I'm talking about here is the humane/liberal option. The alternative is to let them rot and devolve further whilst ravaging our cities, nobody wins.
  • Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    > These are uncivilised people (by definition), a lot of it is mental illness and the rest is refusal be a civilised human. Spoken from a position of priviledge and perceived moral superiority. Where do you live, and how much do you earn? Have you ever considered what it would be like if you couldn't afford where you live, no matter how much you earn? Cost of living has gone up but wages haven't. Minimum wage hasn't been adjusted in years, while rent & housing multiplied thanks to unfettered capitalism. I was lucky in that I managed to buy a house in 2017, but since then the prices have gone up and I would no longer be able to afford the house I live in were it to go on the market, despite my wage having gone up 50% or thereabouts. It's a trite comment, but seriously, check your priviledge. A nontrivial percentage of the visitors of this website are homeless, couch surfing, live in a car, or pay more for a roof over their heads than they can actually afford.
• moffkalast 3y ago
  If only they'd spend it on trying to end homelessness instead.
• LatteLazy 3y ago
  Individual states cannot address most social issues, this is a known issue. This is why 101 issues like education and healthcare REQUIRE federal action.
• zumu 3y ago
  I've decided most homeless social programs are a trap. By locating these programs in the centers of the highest cost of living cities, we can't reasonably expect them to succeed, assuming success is actually getting people housed and back on their feet. We need to encourage people to move some place they have a chance in hell of getting out of poverty. Centering these programs in rich city centers is a failed policy and needs to be scrapped.
  • mgbmtl 3y ago
    In some cases, these are indirect corporate subsidies. After all, who will work in low-paying jobs in SF, if they have to live far far away? Where could people move that would give them more opportunities? Rural areas often lack the social resources to support people in more precarious situations, and big cities is where the opportunities are.
    • hobo_in_library 3y ago
      Interesting idea, but do homeless folks actually end up working for corporations? They have a hard enough time getting any job in the first place (and remaining presentable enough for their job if they do get one)
      • mgbmtl 3y ago
        Homelessness affects a ton of people, but I'm also including who live in subsidized housing (and otherwise might be homeless). It could be a family with kids, who need a subsidy to live in a big-enough place, or an old person living off a tiny pension. etc
• tgsovlerkhgsel 3y ago
  It seems to be working quite well, they have a lot of homelessness!
• crtified 3y ago
  The people that society creates, society pays for. All measures will fail except those which recognise and address that absolute and ongoing certainty.
• ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  My priors are that if the WSJ is making obviously BS headlines in the format "California spent <big number> on something. It failed" then California is likely half-heartedly doing the right thing and should do more of it. And is likely saving money compared with whatever the WSJ is pushing as an alternative.
• kyleblarson 3y ago
  The homeless industrial grift marches on.
• droptablemain 3y ago
  I know a lot of this discussion focuses on the Bay Area, but I live in central LA and the situation is totally out of control here as well. Needles, human feces, trash everywhere, people sleeping in front of storefronts. Walking around parts of LA at night feels like you're in a neo-noir dystopian film. It's literally ghastly.
  • idontpost 3y ago
    [dead]
  • option 3y ago
    make sure you vote against incumbents in local and state elections. There are no other peaceful and humane ways out of this.
• tptacek 3y ago
  Related: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/harm-reduction-decriminalization-fentanyl-meth/674214/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/harm-reduc... (I don't have an opinion about the advocacy in this piece other than to say that I broadly agree with the diagnosis it has of the problem).
• Tiktaalik 3y ago
  If you spend [big scary number] on a thing and it "doesn't work", absent some real analysis that just as much means you under spent as that you may have over spent. It's like pointing at construction cranes in a rapidly growing city and saying, "look none of this new housing is working because rents keep going up!" California and so many other regions have real unaddressed homelessness issues that have long, long been utterly ignored. It's more likely that we're insufficiently addressing the real scope of the issue.
  • thegrim33 3y ago
    Ironically, in my opinion, this comment here is the meta-level crux of it all. No matter how much money they throw at it, no matter how badly it fails, the proponents will always just double down and say that if only they spend more money next year, this time it would fix it. A year later when now there's even more homelessness, it's not because their policies failed, of course it's because they didn't tax you hard enough, and if only they had X amount of money this time they'd fix it. It's a never ending cycle.
    • Tiktaalik 3y ago
      But on the other side, the same accusation, people will reflexively and cynically throw up their hands and say "see it's not working" and give up, offering no real better solutions themselves other than they don't want to spend money. If people point to clear, concrete, distinct problems that's one thing. But gesturing vaguely at "boy lots of money being spent here" that's another. Living near the heart of an ongoing unresolved homelessness crisis my entire life the driving force I've seen, despite all the money being spent is 1) largely an insufficient status quo approach and 2) no actual better ideas from those opposed. So in fact both sides are doing badly. Regarding point 1 in my jurisdiction, despite all the money being spent, all the ribbons being cut on performative new social housing projects, you can add up the numbers of units and find that over the decades there's actually constantly net loss of housing, as whatever occasionally new is created is dominated by the old affordable units being destroyed. Despite this clear and provable net loss in affordable housing and an ensuing obvious expected rise in homelessness, critics point out that we spent too much money on homelessness, offering no better solutions themselves but simply to spend less money. Of course if less money was spent, if less homes were created, the net loss of units would be even more extreme, and the amount of visible street homelessness would only increase further. These [scary big number] amounts of spending sound like waste but more likely that they're just barely enough to band aid the wounds and prevent utter disaster.
• godelski 3y ago
  This reads as a political ad, not a news story. The ad is good at pulling heart strings and getting people riled up (see comments here) but does not do any actual reporting. How did California spend the money? Were there leaky buckets? How does California have 50% of the homeless and 12% of the population? Are people being bussed in, making this a federal problem? Who's responsible? Don't just tell me the governor, there's people Newsom appointed. Don't just get me riled up, tell me what's actually going on so that I can inform myself of how to fix this. Don't just say this is a problem and point a singular finger talking about large sums of money, break it down. Tell me why homeless decreased in SF and Orange but increased in LA, San Jose, Oakland, and San Diego[0]. Tell me why it skyrocketed since 2016, starting with Brown and then accelerated under Newsom[1]. Tell me what FL is doing to solve their issues that NY and CA aren't. Do some investigation. Distill expert information to me. Be a news article, not a political ad. [0] https://www.ppic.org/blog/homeless-populations-are-rising-around-california/ https://www.ppic.org/blog/homeless-populations-are-rising-ar... [1] https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/homelessness-california-causes-and-policy-considerations https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/homeles...
  • tptacek 3y ago
    California's homelessness problem is not caused by other states offloading their homeless to California.
    • bonestamp2 3y ago
      That's a useful answer to one of the questions the article did not answer. Now, do you have a reliable source?
    • quest88 3y ago
      Ok..then what is it caused by? Provide your sources.
      • cscurmudgeon 3y ago
        Even if it is caused by other states, is it valid to complain about that? What is the solution to that? Borders between states (while having no borders between countries)? Edit: I dug up some data: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/us/homeless-population.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/us/homeless-population.ht... > As the data shows us, most of the homeless people you pass on the streets every day are in fact Californians. > “This is a local crisis and a homegrown problem,” said Peter Lynn, the executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the agency that conducts the largest homeless census count in the country. > L.A.H.S.A.’s 2019 homeless count found that 64 percent of the 58,936 Los Angeles County residents experiencing homelessness had lived in the city for more than 10 years. CA considers you a resident for tax purposes if you live in the state for a year but in homeless studies they consider you a resident if you live here for more than 10 years. Really shows the bias.
• lastangryman 3y ago
  All these detailed, complicated arguments. Why is homelessness not the same level of problem in the UK? Maybe think about that then consider why it's such an issue in the US.
  • buzzert 3y ago
    Okay, so why is it?
• ellisd 3y ago
  You can get high on fentanyl ~$1 USD ... there is no stopping a sedative crisis at these prices. It's effectively a reverse Opium War consuming lives and our communities. These two accounts have provided a gripping POV of this utter humanitarian crisis in SF: https://twitter.com/bettersoma https://twitter.com/bettersoma https://twitter.com/war24182236 https://twitter.com/war24182236
• DoreenMichele 3y ago
  The number of homeless people in California grew about 50% between 2014 and 2022. The state, which accounts for 12% of the U.S. population, has about half of the nation’s unsheltered homeless, an estimated 115,000 people More stats: It has a quarter of all homeless and a high percentage of the chronically homeless who likely skew those stats pretty badly. My opinion: This is a national issue and California is just the presenting problem. I think California is essentially our dumping ground for homeless people from across the nation and California can't solve it alone. Edit: In case it needs to be said again, the primary root cause is a nationwide shortage of appropriate housing options.
  • katbyte 3y ago
    That’s about what happens in Canada, Vancouver gets the homeless fromt he entire country, sometimes bussed, but mostly because the climate is hospitable all year round
  • jimt1234 3y ago
    > My opinion: This is a national issue and California is just the presenting problem. I think California is essentially our dumping ground for homeless people from across the nation and California can't solve it alone. THIS ^^^
  • _jab 3y ago
    There's probably some truth to the idea that other places have exported their homelessness problems to San Francisco, but I think you're overblowing it here. Homelessness is a really complicated problem that I doubt has simple causes and solutions. I do however agree that this is a national issue. I think places like New York and Boston are likely to see significantly worse homelessness themselves over the next decade.
• apsec112 3y ago
  There is a very very strong correlation between homelessness in a state and housing prices, far more than any other factor: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Qz9GvoPbnFwGrHHQB/visible-homelessness-in-sf-a-quick-breakdown-of-causes https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Qz9GvoPbnFwGrHHQB/visible-ho...
  • MentallyRetired 3y ago
    But not causation. There's also a strong correlation between homeless people and parking garage density. Housing prices are high where there are people. People are homeless where there are people. It comes with the territory. Throw in amazing weather and states bussing their homeless to CA and it becomes a very attractive proposition for someone without a home. If there was a correlation then sending the homeless to Arkansas would solve the problem, but it wouldn't. They'd just be homeless in the woods.
    • bombcar 3y ago
      taps the sign https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/ There are always more homeless people in the city than in tiny rural towns, because the homeless people in the tiny rural towns move toward the city or get chased out. It's also true that there are numbers of people in those far rural communities that would end up quite homeless if you forced them into the city. Imagine someone on social security living in a dilapidated trailer on some worthless piece of land. And also homeless people, even the mentally ill and drug addicted are not stupid. They will go where they get the least hassle and the most benefit. And it's widely known that California is the place to be.
      • bluGill 3y ago
        The the tiny rural towns take care of their own. There are no homeless because everyone knows "joe" is messed up, and so they ignore him living in an otherwise abandoned house (they are around) thus making "Joe" not homeless, and plant a larger garden so he can harvest something. They won't allow someone new move in, but Joe grew up there and so they let him continue to live there. In the city you can't know everyone and so it is much easier to ignore the homeless in a way that doesn't help the homeless.
• callmeal 3y ago
  It's a big merry-go-round and someone is clearly making bank. NY -> Hawaii https://nypost.com/2019/10/26/nyc-homeless-initiative-sends-people-across-us-without-telling-receiving-cities/ https://nypost.com/2019/10/26/nyc-homeless-initiative-sends-... WY -> UT https://www.deseret.com/utah/2022/11/4/23440578/jackson-wyoming-sending-homeless-to-salt-lake-city https://www.deseret.com/utah/2022/11/4/23440578/jackson-wyom... NV -> CA https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/10/nevada-settles-busing-homeless-lawsuit-san-francisco/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/10/nevada-settles-... SF -> ?? https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/sf-expanding-program-that-has-bused-10k-homeless-residents-out-of-town-in-past-decade/article_3451e954-df1a-5813-8987-0b47dcc697bb.html https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/sf-expanding-program-that-ha... And more recently: https://www.texastribune.org/2022/09/15/greg-abbott-texas-kamala-harris-migrant-bus/ https://www.texastribune.org/2022/09/15/greg-abbott-texas-ka...
  • eks391 3y ago
    Obviously there's going to be some abuse of this system (by the homeless), but overall I think this is really cool, and I fail to see how this makes bank for any of the orchestraters involved. Cities that deal with high levels of homelessness are usually places that are deemed unaffordable anyways by the common American. Also if the place is warm, has easy access to drugs, and generous help with minimal requirements of the beneficiary to receive that aid. I awknowledge there will always be individuals who would rather have awful living standards than assume any responsibilities, but for those people who actually want to forge a better life for themselves, who fell through the cracks and are homeless perhaps to poor decisions but otherwise want to stand back up, this is awesome. The article you labelled "SF -> ??" Specifically said it was tranporting them to family or friends who know that person, ie. someone who would have individual concern for them to get them back on their feet. > “We consider a person being removed from the street and reunited with a stable, loving family as the best possible outcome,” Hussey said. “This is not shifting the homeless problem to other cities. This is a person being removed from the street and being helped by the people who love them the most — their families.” "NV -> CA" ironically goes against your statement, because the article is saying that Nevada stopped sending people to SF. Also they were trying to replicate what SF was doing, sending them to families, but in the worst possible way that was guaranteed to fail, because they sent them to a location without contacting any family or even seeing if any lived where they were putting them. > Homeless patients are no longer bused to other areas and state officials want to move forward "NY -> Hawaii" is similar to the "SF -> ??" one because despite the title, they were sending them nationwide, not just Hawaii. Their approach was the most easily abused, because they paid for a year's worth of livelihood. However, for people who have real intentions to improve their lives, this provides great hope in that dream because they get a fresh start, and in a place that is not impossibly expensive to live in and guaranteeing future impoverishment. Regarding "WY -> UT", SLC, where they are being taken to in UT, is one of the few places where they focus on rehab rather than perpetual homelessness, and basically all homelessness programs are focused on addiction recovery, and acquisition of a job. It is illegal to beg there, or to give money to homeless, because the only possible way to be homeless there is by refusing rehabilitation. I have no proof of these comments of SLC, as this perspective is based on what I've heard from others, so it could be wrong, but I've heard nothing to the contrary. So I am again optimistic for this approach from Wyoming, although I think it'd be better if they just adopted the same system instead of overloading another states rehabs. The last article you posted has no relevancy to the topic, as it discusses migrants and the border issue, not homelessness, so I will skip it.
• abdellah123 3y ago
  you can build cities with that money ... with businesses and schools and what not ! governance
• abeppu 3y ago
  What's crazy is that we decide to spend on homelessness in such inefficient ways. A "housing first" strategy would be more humane, and pretty affordable compared to what we're currently doing. This article says $3.7B for an estimated 115k homeless population which yields around $32k per person per year, or $2700 per person per month, and that's only state money. In SF it may be more like $57k/yr, or $4750/mo. At those rates, we could be renting people market rate 1BD apartments for less than we're spending on inefficient/ineffective services or safe sleeping sites. Cities could be buying up the over-built condos and actually putting people in them. Yes, drug addiction and mental health issues are important factors, but these are easier for people to get under control if they have the safety and stability of a home. Getting and holding down a job is also easier when you have a safe place to live. Why don't we do this? I think it comes down to (a) corruption, where organizations that provide 'services' have good relationships with people in government and (b) "fairness" concerns, where a working person paying out the nose for half of an apartment doesn't want their tax dollars to give anyone an apartment for free. On that second point, I understand the frustration, but if the alternative is spending _more_ tax dollars for someone to camp on the sidewalk and make my neighborhood feel unsafe and unclean, then I would rather put them into homes. https://www.hoover.org/research/despite-spending-11-billion-san-francisco-sees-its-homelessness-problems-spiral-out https://www.hoover.org/research/despite-spending-11-billion-...
  • aorloff 3y ago
    We are doing exactly what you propose. Many communities have "housing first" homeless strategies. Some people do in fact get off the street. But we also have some "service resistant" homeless populations that do not want to live in your rule-based housing, they want to live without those rules even if it means living on the street.
    • ncallaway 3y ago
      What is the fraction of people that could have housing and are choosing not to receive it, and the fraction that would accept housing but has not been offered it?
    • bombcar 3y ago
• NotYourLawyer 3y ago
  If you build it, they will come. Turn your city into a homeless paradise, act surprised when homeless people show up.
• datadeft 3y ago
  "Government spent X on Y and it does not work" I guess this is a theme.
• mupuff1234 3y ago
  Just build more housing ffs.
  • last_responder 3y ago
    Building housing for someone who has addiction issues or other mental issues is not going to do much of anything.
    • mupuff1234 3y ago
      No, but having housing being affordable would stop a lot of people from going down darker paths from the start.
• MentallyRetired 3y ago
  I don't care anymore. Bus them out to the desert. Set up camp there. Provide food and busses into town for those with interviews and jobs. I really don't care, just get them out of the damn cities. I've seen too many people shit in the bushes or just peeing up against a building. Building tent cities on the beach and enjoyable areas, etc. I. Don't. Care. Get rid of them. I left California for this reason and housing costs.
  • newZWhoDis 3y ago
    This. I have small children, and all the local parks are completely unsafe and unusable because of the homeless population. The parks should belong to families/the broader public, instead they’re dumping grounds for violent drug abusers and the mentally unwell. I despise paying taxes to the corrupt government that allows this. I hate that so many people are seemingly just “oh well, what can we do?” About all this. There is a LOT we can do, we don’t have to live this way. We don’t have to put up with any of this.
    • ModernMech 3y ago
      > The parks should belong to families/the broader public, instead they’re dumping grounds for violent drug abusers and the mentally unwell. It turns out that when you construct a society in which a "cost of living" is a normal concept, people without money are largely excluded from said society. You've excluded them from malls, shopping centers, museums, restaurants, streets, government buildings, and anywhere else you can. They can't get educated, they can't train themselves, they can't get access to healthcare, because we've all decided that those services are only available to those with money. Now they find themselves in the parks, because it's the only place they're allowed to legally exist. But I guess that's not enough, because you and the parent poster would prefer to "concentrate" them in desert "camps" as your "final solution" to homelessness. Really amazing to see the masks off here.
    • vore 3y ago
      There is a pretty big range of solutions between shanty towns and concentration camps in the desert. When you become homeless you are effectively excluded from polite society and it is pretty hard to climb out of. You have states and municipalities trying to tinker at the edges but as many other people have pointed out, with freedom of movement the localities that are completely disinterested at solving the any of the causes will just move their problems onto those that do. How would you like it if you were forcibly bussed out into a desert concentration camp, away from your support networks and people you know? How much would you care about polite society if you fell into the hole and now everyone just comes and spits on your face like this a little more each day?
• jimt1234 3y ago
  Not an expert, but I like this as one potential solution: https://palletshelter.com/homelessness/ https://palletshelter.com/homelessness/ In my area, the city council is talking about spending up to *$400K per unit* to help provide shelter for the homeless, which is insane: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/homelessness/story/2023-05-28/city-pursues-hotels-for-homeless-housing-but-cheaper-options-available https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/homelessness/story...
• golemiprague 3y ago
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• Reptur 3y ago
  Logical fallacies: Hasty generalization: The title of the article, "California Spent $17 Billion on Homelessness. It’s Not Working," makes a general conclusion about the effectiveness of the spending based solely on the fact that the problem of homelessness still persists. False cause: The article implies a false cause fallacy by suggesting that the fire at the Wood Street encampment was the primary cause that forced a decision to clear the camp, oversimplifying the issue by ignoring other factors. False dilemma: The article presents a false dilemma by portraying the situation as a binary choice between offering limited shelter beds or allowing individuals to continue living in unsafe circumstances, neglecting potential alternative solutions. Appeal to emotion: The article utilizes emotional language and personal stories to evoke sympathy and support for the individuals living in the Wood Street camp, appealing to the reader's emotions rather than presenting logical arguments.
• avrionov 3y ago
  Scott Alexander reviewed the book "San Fransicko" by Michael Shellenberger and as part of the review analyzed the top reasons for people to become homeless. [1] Some takeaways from the review: - Number one predictor for homelessness are the housing prices. - 30% of the homeless in SF are from outside the city [1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-san-fransicko https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-san-fransi...
  • shuckles 3y ago
    That's a widely misunderstood statistic. The Point in Time survey asks homeless people about the location of their shelter when they last became homeless. For example, a homeless person from outside SF who spent a night in county jail or on a friend's couch in a Tenderloin SRO unit would count as "became homeless in San Francisco" for the purpose of the survey.
• reillyse 3y ago
  To my mind this is an example of a failing in the federation system in the USA. First off, I hope we can agree that the homelessness problem in the US is not normal and not something a developed wealthy country should have (just so we are all on the same page). The problem I see is that no state can unilaterally fix the housing problem because if they do, the unhoused from the other states are incentivized to move to the "fixed" state, overwhelming their resources and efforts. And yet, homelessness seems to be left to the states to solve.
  • rank0 3y ago
    Homelessness is absolutely normal sadly. You cannot eliminate all homelessness. It’s currently <0.2% of the population. Never before in the history of humanity have we enjoyed such high living standards.
• tomcar288 3y ago
  the key to solving homelessness is not affordable housing, regulation or vast amounts of spending or even UBI. The answer is UBL ==> Universal basic Land. It's the idea that every person should have some means of having some land and being allowed to build on it. maybe not in downtown, maybe not any specific area, but at least somewhere. you can't just tell people to whole up in a homeless shelter. I found out that the life expectency of the average homeless person is in their 40s, Yikes! there should be someplace for everyone on this planet. give people some land, or let them buy it for a relatively reasonable amount and don't charge them rent (property taxes), at least for up to a certain value (say the first 50K or 100k). Once you have land, and freedom to build on it, you can build your home or have a construction company do it for you, in a way that's cost effective. Even the native american indians and countless others in the global south with far less income per capita had/have homes. It shouldn't be so hard: the problem is land use policy and regulations.
  • klysm 3y ago
    And how do you suppose that land is chosen? Can I sell it?
    • tomcar288 3y ago
      the land can be almost anywhere. the point is that people shouldn't forced onto tiny reservations. Land should be abundant enough to allow the cost to be low enough for everyone to easily afford, as well as it's rent (property taxes).
• tormeh 3y ago
  Mandatory Wendover Productions video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ngms6iRa14 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ngms6iRa14
• unity1001 3y ago
  And it wont work until California can stop what is called 'The Greyhound Express'. That's what some people in other states call the practice that some states have - offering their homeless a one way ticket to California or jail. They export their problem to California, and they criticize California for it.
  • amadeuspagel 3y ago
    If there's any "Greyhound Express" it's going in the other direction: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/20/bussed-out-america-moves-homeless-people-country-study https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/...
• freddybobs 3y ago
  There is an episode of the "you're wrong about" podcast, that discusses homelessness. In that episode there are several discussion about several projects in California around homelessness. Those projects provided housing. The studies based on those projects showed that overall the cost was less that not having some housing and services. The podcast goes into more details, but as I remember this was because * It removes much of the medical and police cost * If people who are struggling don't have a roof over their head, it makes it incredibly hard for them to get a job. Having some stability meant that many could pick them selves up and get a job and so forth. The end of the episode points out even though the programs were a success by most metrics - including being cheaper overall to tax payers - they were shut down. https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/youre-wrong-about/id1380008439 https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/youre-wrong-about/id13... Here's the one on homelessness https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/homelessness/id1380008439?i=1000465289894 https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/homelessness/id1380008... Theres a good one about the "wellfare queen" that is related and rather eye opening https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/ronald-reagan-and-the-welfare-queen-with-laci-mosley/id1380008439?i=1000553918231 https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/ronald-reagan-and-the-...
  • hnarn 3y ago
    The strategy is called “housing first” and has been proven to work in Finland: 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... The idea that homeless people need homes to be able to advance further seems to trigger some people — after all, most of us pay for our housing, so why should they get it for free? What people don’t consider is that when “we”, the people with houses, don’t spend our dollars housing homeless people, we pay sooner or later in other ways whether we want to or not when society around us partly disintegrates and additional effects start stacking up: substance abuse, violent crime, healthcare costs etc.
    • x0x0 3y ago
      What people do consider is that it's extraordinarily unfair for many people who struggle with housing costs -- imagine what eg SF-area rents do to a cook or cleaner earning even $50k annually -- if we're going to provide that for free to junkies. Until there aren't large segments of SF who work very hard and are housing insecure anyway, it's just going to be politically impossible to provide homeless free housing.
• mstratman 3y ago
  Reason TV did an interesting video recently looking at several angles of homelessness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcZhmUfDePE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcZhmUfDePE There are a lot of things you can take from it, but one overarching opinion is that "housing first" gets in the way of helping those who are down on their luck and find themselves hopefully-temporarily without a home (as opposed to those who cannot or will not work to change their situation). It makes the case you need multiple approaches to deal with the vastly different homeless situations. Check it out.
• kerkeslager 3y ago
  As far as I can tell, California has spent exactly $0 on homes for the homeless, and therefore has spent exactly $0 trying to solve homelessness. California has spent $17b on theater to make people feel better about doing nothing for the homeless. Shelters are not homes. If you don't have privacy, a right to who is allowed into the space, the ability to store your possessions, to have pets, etc., you're homeless, and having an indoor bed to sleep on doesn't solve that. HN people who have never experienced housing insecurity in their lives will wax poetic about how many homeless turn down help because they turn down shelters, but this is a totally wrong, ignorant, and compassionless take. Homeless people turn down shelters because for many homeless, shelters aren't help--they're worse than sleeping on the street. Shelters are at best a mild alleviation of suffering for those homeless for whom the tradeoffs of living in a shelter are worth it. The solution to homelessness is not mental health services: mental health services are totally ineffective when one is suffering the ongoing trauma of homelessness. Mental health services are a much needed measure to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place, but they're utterly ineffective in getting people who are homeless into homes. The solution to homelessness is homes. Period. The fact is, if we gave homes to the homeless, it would drive down the prices of housing, and that would hurt the pocketbooks of people with power and money. That's why no money is being invested into solving homelessness. Until we as a society stop blindingly trusting rich people to be benevolent, this problem (and any other problem which rich people benefit from) will not be solved.
  • rcme 3y ago
    > The fact is, if we gave homes to the homeless, it would drive down the prices of housing Giving homes to the homeless would increased demand for housing, which would increase the price of houses, no?
    • jrowen 3y ago
      I think they mean building mass affordable/free new housing rather than using existing stock.
      • rcme 3y ago
• scrum-treats 3y ago
  We need universal basic income. We just introduced AI that will take millions of people's jobs. We must reframe how we view humans now. We're no longer work mules. AI can do it. So now, if we want humanity to remain a species on Earth, we have to take proactive measures to ensure humans can live. It's time.
  • buzzert 3y ago
    So, spend more money then?
    • scrum-treats 3y ago
      You actually end up spending less money, actually. When basic physiological needs are covered (e.g., food, water, housing, clothing, healthcare)[1], turns out both petty and violent crime decreases. This means physical and psychological safety increases. As safety increases, ability to develop interpersonal relationships increases, self-esteem increases, and as a whole society thrives. People, less focused on survival only, are able to function in the world with stability. This is the same with supporting preventative medicine. When you advocate and support infrastructure for handling medical care in proactive ways (e.g., preventative care), turns out people's health concerns are mitigated much earlier. In many cases health issues don't manifest into cost-heavy medical solutions, requirement for pharmaceuticals decreases, and happiness, well-being, and morality rate increases. So yea. Universal Basic Income and Universal Healthcare are now considered crucial to human survival. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs
• dontbeabill 3y ago
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• erickf1 3y ago
  An expense chart showing how that $17B was spent would be interesting to everyone reading the article. It would also keep the government accountable to the people on how their taxes are spent.
• nightshadetrie 3y ago
  NIMBY's: Why are there so many homeless? NIMBY's: No, don't build housing. It'll decrease my home value! Can't have it both ways .
• no_wizard 3y ago
  what if we gathered up the unhorsed population and actually moved them into consolidated areas where they can get the help they need? Triage them, medical and dental care, and tougher cases can get isolated from less tough ones. Not all I housed situations are created equal but by not acknowledging that we need some kind of strong intervention is part of the disservice. Of course, overhauling zoning laws and the permitting process will help with supply. If we could take away some ability for local communities to reduce their ability to have vanity zoning laws it would go a long way. You have to solve this problem from both sides.
• amadeuspagel 3y ago
  Have they tried building homes?
• web3-is-a-scam 3y ago
  Government spend X on problem, it doesn’t work and actually gets worse. In other news, water is wet. More at all. Disclaimer: this doesn’t apply to when government is trying to kill people outright. Government is extremely efficient at killing people on purpose, and not much else.
• fullspectrumdev 3y ago
  Having lived/spent time in a few places with varying homeless problems and approaches to homelessness, I find it fucking depressing every time I read about how badly - and inefficiently - the US handles it. Probably because I see alarming parallels with my own country. Billions going where, exactly? If the problems growing, and you are just sinking billions into it without making any measurable impact, where the fuck is the money going? Like looking at the supposed cost of building housing, it seems glaringly obvious that the taxpayers being fucked by someone. We also have this issue in Ireland, what with one hospital being billions over budget, years behind schedule, etc. never mind housing. Zoning and planning issues can be dealt with trivially by the state almost anywhere, they just aren’t fucked doing so (we have this issue in Ireland). There’s no easy fix for homelessness, shelters are at best putting a band aid on a severed limb. The only real solution is large scale construction of mixed use housing - some social, some affordable, some private. And that’s a whole clusterfuck that seems unachievable for political reasons globally, with the exception of some of the Nordic social democracies.
  • jonny_eh 3y ago
    > There’s no easy fix for homelessness True, but that's only because there's no easy way to add housing in modern society. Homelessness is caused primarily by a lack of homes.
    • spydr 3y ago
      In Seattle where I live, homeless is definitely the result of drug use
      • chagen 3y ago
        "Definitely the result"? I think you might be confusing correlation with causation.
        • seanmcdirmid 3y ago
          That really isn’t true either. Homelessness doesn’t cause drug abuse, there is plenty of drug abuse among the housed, it isn’t weird that some of them eventually lose their support network. There are definitely economic homeless in Seattle, they just aren’t as visible as the fent addicts.
• typeofhuman 3y ago
  The people don't want to be not homeless.
• bullen 3y ago
  Good to see that the archive link is now posted on top but why not replace the original URL? I understand that you need to avoid multiples but still should be possible to do both at the same time. I don't know which posts need a paywall workaround before I click the comments. So like it works now, I will always click comments first. ---- And to the subject, journalists (and humanists in general) don't understand that homelessness is sometimes a self inflicted predicament. It's a moral fight for respect and responsibility and money can buy neither. Basically governments need money to have value, even if it is proven to be useless. They can't solve the real problem which is that moneys value is backed violence. And energy backs that violence today more than ever previously in history and in the future. The society we have has to change now because we don't have the coal, oil and gas to feed the violence that backs the value of money. Ultimately war is money and money is war. Eventually as energy peaks, kings will be beggars and beggars will be kings.
• up2isomorphism 3y ago
  Of course it is not working, because people who decide where these money should be spent never really want to solve this problem.
• mythrwy 3y ago
  Homelessness, in the volume it exists, is largely a result of social/cultural decay in my estimation. It's the result of degradation of family and community and other important social structures. On one hand we have made housing something like a Ponzi scheme so that some may realize profit without effort. Nothing is free. When someone gets without producing someone else loses. Housing isn't the only example of this either. Much of our economic reality is one make-money-at-the expense-of-the-other-guy-while-giving-as-little-as-possible scheme after another. But also we have embraced "liberation ideology" largely starting in the 1960's. Yes, our former culture was oppressive, stiff and judgmental. Women stayed home and cooked. Get divorced, and everyone will give you the stink eye around town, so I hope he doesn't beat you too badly when drunk. Gays stayed in the closet. The mentally ill were forcibly confined and abused. "Bums" got beat up by the local sheriff and dropped outside the town limits instead of being given free needles and a pass to shoplift. Church ladies gossiped and judged and it was a very hard time being "different". Hope you belong to the right secret men's organization because that's how you get in with local banker and judge and get a start on the good job ladder. But also people helped one another. Encouraged one another (even if it was through judgement and social pressure and occasionally violence). There was a greater sense of community. People at that time were culturally closer to the era when they had to band to together to travel to and settle a new land and build towns. Now it's I have a credit card so I'll do what I want and move where I want and this place I live isn't a community and I don't talk to my neighbors anyway and one city is another really and everything is anonymous and transactional and no one goes to church anymore. Sexual freedom without regard to consequences (especially the resulting children and lack of long term relationships). Drug use is fine, it's a personal choice, and besides I'm dealing with so much inner pain and trauma and no pain should ever be. In fact the doctor may just give you something to numb you and shut you up altogether so you can keep being a good cog and not a squeaky wheel. So, we are seeing the results of all this. What we had before wasn't good, but this isn't either. I don't know what the answer is. I believe people should do what they want. I do what I want personally. Just observing and noting what I think the root cause might be. Maybe our real culture in America hasn't developed yet but I can't believe it's ultimately sterile communities where people don't look out for their neighbors and people shooting up drugs on streets with a few rich hiding behind gated communities and controlling law makers. But maybe it is, maybe that is what we are about as a society. I like to think not. Sorry for the rant, but this I believe is the root cause and until we solve it (somehow) the problem remains.
• chrisbrandow 3y ago
  Forgive me for the vast oversimplification, but… 17 billion over 4 years (per the article) 17 billion dollars => 113 million square feet @ $150/sqft 113 million square feet => 113,000 housing units @ 1000 square feet This is not a realistic comparison, but thinking about it as an upper bounds could be a useful yardstick by which to compare actual outcomes.
• legitster 3y ago
  1. We need more public housing. 2. The housing has to be slightly worse than the lowest quality housing available on the market. (Think SROs or dormitory style). 3. You have to make access to some of the housing unconditional. This was the solution in most cities until large bipartisan pushes in the late 90s sought to end "projects" and "slums". I totally understand trying to make efforts to also solve drug and crime related problems. Or even get people into nice houses or jobs. But it seems like all for all of the money we are refusing to spend on actual homes, we may as well move the drugs and crime indoors and off the streets.
• bryantraywick 3y ago
  $17B could have built a lot of affordable subsidized, or free, housing.
• Brainfood 3y ago
  LA resident since 2015. I have a proposed solution that no one ever seems to bring up on here but I would love to know the HN response to this: If a big essential part of the American Dream is home ownership, and we are short on homes, why do we allow corporations to own them all? How about we have a middle ground or cap on size of corporate entity and # of units or something? Some of the argument seems to be stuck on free housing for everyone, and everyone else seems fine allowing faceless corporations to own everything and turn us all into renters. I know I’m leaving out plenty of specifics of how this would work. But the basic concept is same - people (not companies) should own housing. Let me know your thoughts. My first ever HN comment so hopefully this is seen.
  • HDThoreaun 3y ago
    Large corporations don't actually own many homes. It is true that they started buying them during covid, but that is mostly because they realized they are extremely good investments due zoning making it hard to build them. In order for housing to be affordable it can't be an investment. It needs to maintain its real value over time, meaning the wage to price ratio remains constant. If housing wasn't a good investment it wouldn't be owned by corporations. So I'd say your idea is on the right track, but just misses the last step which is just make housing affordable by allowing it to be built.
    • Brainfood 3y ago
      Wow thanks everyone for the replies! I hear you on homes but housing overall - apartments included should not be owned by corporations for investment purposes imho. Rough stats I’ve seen are 25% of homes are now owned by institutional investors. And 44% of CA residents are renters. Having a quarter of the inventory taken off the market means the prices are going to go up. Land is expensive. We can build more. We can also stop allowing those who have more than enough already continue to apply downward pressure.
      • _jab 3y ago
        I'd been of the impression that corporate home ownership is mostly surging in places like the South and Sun Belt, where housing prices themselves are surging. Housing prices in California have been pretty stagnant since Covid, at least compared to much of the rest of the country. California real estate isn't actually a great investment for these companies right now.
• mensetmanusman 3y ago
  CA budget is around $250B annual.
• chrsw 3y ago
  How many of these homeless people are actually from California?
• p0pcult 3y ago
  [dead]
• rcpt 3y ago
  Luckily a San Franciscan figured it all out over one hundred years ago: > THE GREAT PROBLEM IS SOLVED. We are able to explain social phenomena that have appalled philanthropists and perplexed statesmen all over the civilized world. We have found the reason why wages constantly tend to a minimum, giving but a bare living, despite increase in productive power: > As productive power increases, rent tends to increase even more — constantly forcing down wages. > Advancing civilization tends to increase the power of human labor to satisfy human desires. We should be able to eliminate poverty. But workers cannot reap these benefits because they are intercepted. Land is necessary to labor. When it has been reduced to private ownership, the increased productivity of labor only increases rent. Thus, all the advantages of progress go to those who own land. Wages do not increase — wages cannot increase. The more labor produces, the more it must pay for the opportunity to make anything at all. http://www.henrygeorge.org/pchp23.htm http://www.henrygeorge.org/pchp23.htm A Land Value Tax fixes our problems but in California we voted in Prop 13 which is about as far from that as you can get. And now here we are.
  • Dig1t 3y ago
    There is already an incentive to build densely and provide more housing, developers already want to do this because they make more money by doing so. They are literally not allowed to build anything other than single family homes though, the local homeowners actually control what is allowed to be built. That is to say: the people who have an incentive to keep housing supply low are the ones deciding what is allowed to be constructed in their town. If I go buy a piece of land in Cupertino and I want to build an apartment complex, I have to go apply for permits and get approval from the city of Cupertino zoning board. The people on that board are all people who live in Cupertino that own single family homes, they have a strong incentive to deny my application if I am building my apartment complex anywhere near their neighborhood. Basically every single city in California has zoning laws that prohibit you from building anything other than suburban single family homes in most of the town. You can fix the housing crisis by passing a law that limits the power of the zoning board to deny permits for these types of housing. Take a look at the Cupertino zoning map: https://map.gridics.com/us/ca/cupertino#11.93/37.31591/-122.033/0/45 https://map.gridics.com/us/ca/cupertino#11.93/37.31591/-122.... if you click layers -> planning -> zoning you can see an overlay of the zoning for the whole city. The light beige color is "single family" zoned, meaning that nobody is allowed to build anything other than low-density homes. Notice how _most_ of the city is designated "single family". This is the cause of the entire problem. Nobody is allowed to build anything more dense than the single family homes that are already there. Not-so-coincidentally, Cupertino is one of the most expensive places to live in the US. Look at Houston, TX. They have no zoning laws (it's not perfect they still have deed restrictions which sometimes act similarly to zoning laws), and it is a massive city. The median house price is ~340k, something that most normal people can afford. There is a clear correlation between reduced zoning restrictions and lower housing costs.
• diogenescynic 3y ago
  It's spent on scam charities that waste their resources handing out $75 boxes of syringes to junkies. You might as well set the money on fire--it would be less destructive than how the money is being spent now.
• turtlesdown11 3y ago
  Society refusing to draw a link between the homelessness/addition crisis in the States and the pharmaceutical companies becoming drug dealers/pushers of opioids that flooded the country is honestly shocking. Hundreds of thousands or millions of Americans became opioid addicts because they were prescribed unnecessary pills by their own doctors, and became hooked (the risks of opioids have been known for what, thousands of years?). We have barely given the pharma industry a slap on the wrist for the harm they've caused and the direct link between the two crises is never drawn in the public sphere.
• max182 3y ago
  Moved from Ventura/Santa Barbara to Palm Beach FL, due to the alot of shortcomings that California has faced. Witnessing several overdoses outside my condo near the beach was the final straw for me. Too heavy to be around. I still miss the contrast of the beach and mountains, but since after the Pandemic, things just didn't feel the same in California. I hope things can turn around in but it seems like there are issues that stem from the highest offices of government and go beyond the issue of homelessness. Palm Beach is pretty cool, West Palm Beach/Jupiter area reminds me a lot of Santa Barbara. West Palm Beach to Miami is about the same distance from Ventura to LA. You get a lot of the benefits of Miami without being directly in the madness. A lot of young professionals working in Finance and Tech in Miami are moving to West Palm because of the new BrightLine train that goes from downtown WPB to downtown Miami. I haven't really got out much and explored due to crazy workload, but want to start attending meet ups here and meet some people my age. A lot of the problems that I had with California, don't really exist, at least to the same degree, out here. It's pretty comfy.
• alex_lav 3y ago
  Because homelessness is a symptom of a whole bunch of different root causes, and treating symptoms without treating root causes can be a massive waste of time and money
• motohagiography 3y ago
  California state officials have managed to spend $17B on it, I'd say the homelessness problem is working just fine for them. It sounds cynical, but this is what "managing," a problem in government means - extracting value from it. If you want less homelessness, you need fewer people benefiting from it. It's that simple. Government isn't about solving problems, it's about managing them to the benefit of the constituents who vote them back in. Homelessness is encouraged by California policies that are essentially accelerationist, where they create the problem and exacerbate it to get the money and power to solve it, and then they've got something to manage indefinitely to keep getting those things. This is why you have a border crisis, and why your neighbourhoods have tent cities. Outside the cadre of people who think they will make up the central committee, few actually want unlimted centralized governments and policies when life is good and peaceful, so agitaing to make things much, much worse is how you get popular support to seize control and entrench your people. It's not a conspiracy, it's just strategy, and most people can't face that because they don't know what power is like, or understand what it means when they say it is the highest good. Homelessness is the symptom of a much deeper and more malignant social cancer, imo.
• SMAAART 3y ago
  And that boils down to how much $ per person per year?
• RecycledEle 3y ago
  The problem with giving homeless people free housing is that you remove the incentive to work your tail off to pay your rent and not get evicted. Then more people fall onto the cushy safety net, and the costs of maintaining that net go up.
• kfrzcode 3y ago
  Idk seems like the homeless in California are enjoying a higher standard of welfare for that sum...
• jtode 3y ago
  When I want to know about effective ways to fight homelessness, the WSJ is my first stop.
• Nifty3929 3y ago
  It's working just fine. The point of spending the $17B is not to help homeless people. The point is to pay well-connected groups of people to say they are doing something to address homelessness. This sounds good when printed in the media, and is as good a reason as any to give those interests large sums of money. These interests are some combination of government departments, NGOs, and private companies. It comes full-circle, because these interests often are able to coordinate large voting blocks to keep the wheel turning. Working perfectly and as designed.
• lefrenchy 3y ago
  I find it hard to drive through the Tenderloin without thinking “there is no fix for this”. Once someone has been homeless and into drugs for long enough, it’s going to be incredibly difficult to get them to fix their lives (if possible at all) for a good portion of them. Beyond some massive investment in housing and recovery, it’s just going to continue not working. Prevention is the solution, we have to prevent it at all costs and do our best to ease the suffering of those who are stuck there now. Unfortunately I think we’ll continue with half measures and the problem will remain unsolved.
• jijji 3y ago
  u can give every homeless person one billion dollars each, and 99% of them will squander it on drugs. Homelessness is a not a problem, its a symptom of a bigger problem. It's usually the result of years of bad choices and drug abuse turning into permanent mental disability. Giving them all the money in the world is not going to fix the bad choices that result in their situation.
• _8j50 3y ago
  My disagreement with "housing first" is that the state should provide housing indirectly by building regular housing and bringing home prices down along with price regulation and redeveloping urban areas with apartments and condos. I.e.: the housing market is thr problem in cali, not people being homeless (that is just one symptom).
  • seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    > I.e.: the housing market is thr problem in cali, not people being homeless (that is just one symptom). A bold assertion, and if your premise is wrong, your solution won’t work.
    • _8j50 3y ago
      Not bold at all since everyone but the super rich struggles with housing there, worse than any other state.
      • seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        They do. But the people on the street would have trouble affording rent anywhere in the nation. SF has a very mild climate, and lots of social services, so it’s relatively better than other places to live outside. Like, why be homeless in low rent Houston when you can easily hop a bus to LA, SF, or Seattle?
        • _8j50 3y ago
          Yes, but for the vast majority that don't want to remain homeless, even if you give them free housing and they find jobs, they still can't afford an apartment in california. Are they supposed to move back to "houston" and find another job? No way! So how can they escape homelessness? Some might hustle their way into actually affording a place in cali but that takes a lot of will power and overcoming a lot of things that can have them back on the streets. Meanwhile, there are many people in cali that get free housing but are stuck as meth addicts or something because why not? And a lot of people born in cali also lose their housing status. If it was realistic to get housing by simply finding a job and working hard, free housing can be made to work, but that isn't reality unless you make six figures. Look at rental ads in LA, I was shocked to see what is the price of an expensive apartment in most other cities, in LA that gets you a bed, not even a room, just a bed.
• nahnahg 3y ago
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• coding123 3y ago
  I'd like a way to get rid of my RV without going through a dealer or a private sale. Perhaps CA can pay blue book value and hand these things out
• iguana_lawyer 3y ago
  It’s time for a Universal Basic Income. On the West Coast we’ll actually save money if we give poor people cash instead of wasting it on elaborate schemes.
• Kapura 3y ago
  >spent $17b on homelessness >oakland has 40 shelter beds Where is the money going, I wonder? The article alludes to it, but I wish they would have gone farther in following the money; I suspect a lot of the spending goes to overtime for police on enforcement actions, as opposed to any long term solutions.
• fnord77 3y ago
  in San Francisco, we call it the "homeless industrial complex". If homelessness gets solved, these giant organizations cease to be
• anjel 3y ago
  The case for a land value tax is overwhelming Natural resources are quite different from the capital stock created out of human effort https://archive.is/hQVSH https://archive.is/hQVSH
• nemo44x 3y ago
  It has long been time to bring back the asylum system. Many of these people need to be removed from society and committed so they can be helped. Pharmaceuticals alone are not enough and doesn’t work. Bring back mental institutions to house and help these people and others.
• rajeshp1986 3y ago
  Surprisingly no one talks about how much of that money is corruption and siphoned off. There is little awareness in US about how non-profits organizations can be used for corruption and money laundering.
• thomasjudge 3y ago
  Can you imagine how much worse it would have been without that money?
• conductr 3y ago
  The top result I found said this equates to about $100k a person which is just the cost of care likely, even private prisons cost similar if not more and that’s probably more efficient as it’s somewhat controlled
• sunjester 3y ago
  As someone who lived in Southern California for a long time I can assure you they never spent $17B on homelessness. The last time I was in San Diego they were actually shutting down homeless shelters because of the lack of funding. I would love to see someone track down the $17B.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• nektro 3y ago
  they should be ashamed of this title
• tomohawk 3y ago
  The california version of house hunters https://youtu.be/mrMunV4y39I https://youtu.be/mrMunV4y39I
• levifig 3y ago
  Same thing with the argument "instead of spending $44B on a cesspool, that money could've ended world hunger". The reality of poverty, homelessness, hunger, etc, is so much more complex than how much money is put into solving it, that promoting "monetary investment" as a solution for any of these problems is disingenous at best, and downright corrupt at worst.
• Salgat 3y ago
  Provide housing for those who are willing to take it, and for anyone who refuses help, classify them as having a mental illness so they can be taken to a facility to get the help they need.
• mrangle 3y ago
  Of course it doesn't work. Homelessness is caused almost entirely by cultural factors that are getting worse. Therefore, homelessness has been and will continue to get worse. Stop comparing the United States to small European States. The dynamics of low population largely homogeneous States and a completely multicultural State with over three hundred million people are not comparable. The problem and its solutions can not be and will not be the same.
• georgeplusplus 3y ago
  Let's try 34B and see how that's works /s
• acyou 3y ago
  One aspect of real estate investing is the utility of being able to control local property values. Investors looking to build generational wealth, with deep pockets, are able to drive down property values of seemingly entire cities, buy up land at a low cost, then change policies and turn low value land back into high value land. There are many ways to do this sort of real estate market manipulation, most of which rely on controlling levers of power in various levels of government. Do you think that behavior is, or should be, considered by us as plausible, probable, real, illegal, irrational, or immoral? Do you think that it's conspiracy theory? Personally, I look at real estate market manipulation as standard fare. Of course it happens everywhere. Politicians love to direct public funding towards public works and infrastructure in areas owned by them and their friends (and voter bases). They do this legally. When too obvious and well documented, politicians using public institutions for self enrichment might be unpopular among voters (unless these same voters also benefit). I'm not angry about this, I think the system works extremely well. But, I protest against vulnerable people being weaponized for real estate investors' needs. It has happened to a greater or lesser extent. The extent to which that has occurred is extremely difficult to pin down or prove. This is what conspiracy theory does. Without too much worry about proof, take irrational behavior and patterns and construct a framework to try to explain. Does it make sense?