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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

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.
      - Supermancho 3y ago
        > Homelessness doesn’t cause drug abuse, Being homeless sucks. There's a number of reinforcing conditions that convert non-users into users. https://americanaddictioncenters.org/rehab-guide/homeless https://americanaddictioncenters.org/rehab-guide/homeless
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    Only the visible homeless problem. There are plenty of homeless you don’t notice because they aren’t raving like a lunatic without a shirt on. We have two separate problems, but they are sadly often conflated.
- apstls 3y ago
  How many homes could $17B make?
  - jupp0r 3y ago
    ~17000 in CA
    - chrisbrandow 3y ago
      apartments would be cheaper than 400K per.
  - jonny_eh 3y ago
    We don't even need to have the government build the homes, just allowing the construction of homes would be a huge positive change.
  - x0x0 3y ago
    Not very many. Even if you could build a home for $400k and it only cost $100k in maintenance / utilities / upkeep for the next 10 years, that's still only 34k homes.
    - Firmwarrior 3y ago
      You could build a lot of them for $3.7B/year though.. split among 150,000 homeless, that's $24,000 per year each 'course, it's not hard to imagine those homes ending up like the free zone in The Wire or the housing projects in Judge Dredd...
  - ajmurmann 3y ago
    Where are you gonna build? It's illegal to build pretty much anything in CA cities with high homelessness
- hnuser847 3y ago
  Nah, it’s caused by mental illness and drug addiction. Short of rounding them up and forcing them to get help, there’s actually nothing we can do to get these people off the street.
  - jonny_eh 3y ago
    It's certainly an element, but that's largely washing your hands and victim blaming. There's a direct correlation between housing costs and homelessness rates. Update, here's a reference: https://endhomelessness.org/blog/new-research-quantifies-link-housing-affordability-homelessness/ https://endhomelessness.org/blog/new-research-quantifies-lin...
    - khazhoux 3y ago
      Where’s the “victim-blaming”? From the reporting I’ve seen, the vast majority of folks on Skid Row or on the street in SF are heavy addicts. And they refuse shelters because then they couldn’t use. How does more housing help them?
      - fullspectrumdev 3y ago
        Dry shelters are arguably a massive part of the problem. You fix the housing issue first, make their lives less fucking miserable, then it’s easier to get someone to accept help for their drug addiction. You can’t “cure” an addict who isn’t ready to be “helped”.
        paisawalla 3y ago
        > Dry shelters are arguably a massive part of the problem. As someone who has housed and lived close to addicts, to put it plainly: this is a naive, academic view. Dry shelter are "a massive part of the problem"? Absolutely incorrect, and harmfully ignorant if implemented at societal scale. As someone who provided food and shelter to an addict in my own home, guaranteeing these things does nothing to increase the willingness to quit heroin. Material deprivation may cause you to seek drugs, but remedying deprivation does not lead to recovery. In fact, I honestly believe offering it unconditionally hampers it.
- robomartin 3y ago
  > Homelessness is caused primarily by a lack of homes. That is absolutely not true. Not even close. Mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse are major factors. Dozens of studies show this. I've seen numbers as high as 76% having substance abuse and severe mental illness. One study from 2017 says 80% mental illness, 88% drug abuse and 59% alcohol addiction. There are studies with lower numbers. In most, if not all, of these, the government entities who publish them will typically change the definition of "homeless" to artificially reduce the numbers and make themselves look good. There are two ways to fix homelessness: You make them disappear (put them in a building, creative counting, etc.), or actually address the real root causes --which nobody is doing or even talking about. Saying the issue is lack of homes implies these people could actually pay for a place to stay. They cannot. They are sick and/or addicted to something. They likely cannot work or earn even the legally minimum wage without a massive intervention to get them back to functional status. In a free society we do not have the legal means to round-up sick people, get them cleaned-up, help them, rebuild them as necessary and then put them back in circulation. We just don't have that legal power. People do as they wish and there's very little society can really do to help them. Throwing them into a buildings merely (and conveniently) hides the real problems: Mental illness and addiction.
  - AgentOrange1234 3y ago
    “Saying the issue is lack of homes implies these people could actually pay for a place to stay.” Or we could just… choose to house people, regardless of their ability to pay?
    - worik 3y ago
      > Or we could just… choose to house people, regardless of their ability to pay? Yes Priorities?
    - robomartin 3y ago
      > Or we could just… choose to house people, regardless of their ability to pay? That solves absolutely nothing. I refer you to the $17B we spent in CA on this problem. The fundamental issues are mental health and addiction. All you achieve is making the problem invisible so everyone can feel like they did something. When, in reality, the root causes are not addressed at all. It is critical to understand that our laws DO NOT ALLOW US to force anyone to do anything. Meaning, if a mentally ill or addicted person says "I am not going anywhere" and "I refuse treatment" we CANNOT force them. The root causes, for the most part, are mental illness and addition. We cannot be effective helping these people because --by law-- we cannot effectively arrest and force them to accept help of any kind. In a lot of cases you have addicts who are 100% out of their mind and you are trying to reason with them to accept help. Good luck. A member of my family and a couple of good friends are professionals deeply involved with the treatment side of this issue. What they tell me is exactly what I have conveyed here. If we could force people into a solid 12 to 24 month program we could eliminate most of the problem in 5 to 10 years. We can't. Because we have laws that protect citizens from being detained and incarcerated unless they commit a crime. Mental health and addiction are not crimes. In other words, that path is impossible. How, then, do they propose this be solved? Conceptually simple. Politically...well, our politicians are fucking incompetent morons. You have to clamp down hard on the illicit drugs that are destroying so many lives. Shit like cocaine and heroin should not exist on our streets. Fentanyl-laced pills should not be able to pour through our border like candy (quite literally, google it). Etc. For some unexplained reason we are willing to burn $17B in just one state of this country to pretend we are helping people and virtue-signal and, at the same time, we refuse to put real money and effort into real actions that would almost make this problem disappear. Simple math: If none of the drugs a huge portion of these people take were to be available for, say, six months, most of them would gladly get detox help and come out of it a year later with a very different perspective in life. You have to stop the drugs. Things like safe injection spaces are horrible ideas. What you want is free detox centers and a complete clamp-down on drug availability. Then you get results. I was just in Singapore. Before I could fly there I had to sign a document that had a warning in big, bold, all upper-case letters that read: The penalty for bringing illicit drugs into Singapore is death. And there you go.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  It's not even a lack of homes--its a lack of access to existing homes. There are already ~16 million vacant homes in the USA, a tiny fraction of which could house the homeless if there were political will. We all can say homelessness is a problem, but if you ask these people hoarding vacant homes if they'd be willing to house a homeless person on their property, or if you ask a politician whether they are willing to nationalize those properties to provide homes, suddenly their response will be "Uhh... Ohh... Hrrmm... I guess it's not that big a problem." The rubber is not hitting the road.
  - ZoomerCretin 3y ago
    The vast majority of those "vacant" homes are either very temporarily up for sale or rent, dilapidated, or in need of a lot of repairs. There are not 16 million habitable units sitting empty year after year.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    The vast majority of those homes are either being actively fixed/waiting for a tenant to move in or are in bumfuck where no one wants to live. If you can convince the homeless on the west coast to move to the vacant places in kansas congratulations, you just won California's governor election. The reality is that there are not nearly enough homes where people want to be. Until you can force the homeless to go to less desirable areas the homes there arent helpful.
    - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
      When I was homeless, I was placed on a waiting list and sent to "my" freight elevator/park bench to count the days. My number came up and I was called into an office. I was verbally introduced to a program that would take control of my finances and then send me wherever they had something available. Some of the cities mentioned might as well have been Kansas. I said no thanks, I'll stay on the streets. I waited for a longer time and another program opened up. They didn't take control of my finances and they allowed me to choose exactly where I wanted to apply for a lease. That was 20 years ago, and I have lived happily ever after.
  - 3y ago
- Tiktaalik 3y ago
  yep. Absolutely there's plenty of addiction problems, toxic drug problems and mental illness problems in my city, but the numbers don't lie and we have lost thousands on thousands of the most affordable rental housing stock over the last few decades even as population grew. If we had actually gained affordable housing stock as population increased, or at least kept pace, we would be in a different situation. No doubt we would still have issues of a small amount of people having issues with mental illness, but we would be dramatically more capable of helping them than we are now with the incredibly scarce level of apartments we have now.
umvi 3y ago
> If the problems growing, and you are just sinking billions into it without making any measurable impact, where the fuck is the money going? A lot of these programs are hard to stop paying into once you start. Say you are a political leader and you try to solve homelessness by pouring $X per year into some new program. 5 years later it's clear the program is not effective. However, if you axe the program, good luck getting re-elected since you've now made it very easy for your opponent to lambaste you ("Hundreds of society's most vulnerable brace themselves as Governor X seeks to axe homeless program").
- sroussey 3y ago
  And places like SF with a budget of about $100k/yr/person for homeless, make it effectively illegal to get an accounting of where the money goes.
  - losteric 3y ago
    Can you elaborate? I don't follow how the amount of money spent "makes it effectively illegal" to audit.
    - sroussey 3y ago
      The amount doesn’t, it’s the culture of the city government and protection of the service providers that actually receive the money.
- cute_boi 3y ago
  This is the fundamental reason why democracies often face challenges. For instance, let's consider a country like India, where a significant portion of the population isn't financially well-off. As a result, there is an expectation for government assistance and benefits during each election cycle. Consequently, politicians who promise freebies or welfare programs tend to have a higher likelihood of being elected. This pattern is not unique to India; it can be observed in various other places as well. Even in the United States, which prides itself on its democratic system, the influence of this phenomenon is evident
ajmurmann 3y ago
"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)." This seems to not reflect reality in the US. There is strong local resistance to construction especially if it's for poor people or worse homeless, leading to tight zoning and rejection of projects during the byzantine approval process. If the government tries to build something, the EPA (environmental protection act) also allows anyone to request that a environmental impact study needs to take place. The study can take about a year and there are no teeth, other than causing delay and cost through the study. Nothing needs to change based on the findings, it's just another way to drag things out and increase cost on projects someone doesn't like.
- emodendroket 3y ago
  Yeah, probably was not intended when that was passed that all the world’s endangered species would happen to be found near wealthy people’s homes.
- Animats 3y ago
  > There is strong local resistance to construction especially if it's for poor people, or worse, homeless, The US used to do that. It led to high-rise ghettos.[1] And that was before drugs were big. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_Homes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_Homes
  - ajmurmann 3y ago
    Honestly, social housing isn't my preferred solution. My solution is radical upzoning; removal of minimum unit-sizes; drastically simplify the approval/permit process and remove all local hearings etc. from the process, if it fits the regulations, you can build it; forced rehab for addicts; institutionalize mentally ill who cannot take care of themselves (this is the hardest part, I am least certain about).
    - mjevans 3y ago
      Disagree on 'minimum unit sizes', at least where I live 0-bedroom loft-only units are already small enough! I do agree with other ideas that promote more flexible application of possibly small units. Ideas such as 'fire proof' (no flammable materials in building construction) buildings with relaxed regulations about access to egress, so that stupid middle hallway can be removed. Very agree with an easier and known approval if checking the boxes process. Local hearings banned, environmental impacts should be part of the zoning for a given plot; fit 'within the lines' and no re-assessment.
up2isomorphism 3y ago
In a way, the US "handles" it very efficiently, but only in terms of spending the money and funnel them to the related interest group, but not in terms of solving the homeless problem. Because for them, problem is their opportunity.
philwelch 3y ago
> 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? Well, that’s simple. Most of the money goes to politically well connected non-profits with missions around alleviating homelessness. The problem is that if you alleviate homelessness, the money goes away and everybody at that non-profit loses their jobs. I’m not specifically accusing anyone of corruption, but the incentives aren’t good.
- RhodesianHunter 3y ago
  >The problem is that if you alleviate homelessness, the money goes away That actually isn't what happens at all though. When we handle this at the state level, spending on homelessness just makes that state more attractive to the homeless in other states and exacerbates the problem.
- smsm42 3y ago
  The funny thing is, you don't even need corruption. Every single one person in those GONGOs could be genuinely willing to help the homeless. The problem is, if their financing is detached from whether their strategies are successful - and even smart and honest people have great capacity for self-delusion, which is only enhanced when the mission is morally laudable - then the money could be wasted as thoroughly as if they were corrupt.
RhodesianHunter 3y ago
It's a very simple cycle. The state spends money to help the homeless. The broad availability of help for the homeless increases the likelihood that homeless will migrate to and stay in the state. Repeat.
- cscurmudgeon 3y ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/us/homeless-population.ht 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. Edit: Reply to paisawalla May I point out the post I replied to had no data. If you have data that addresses the two points you made, please post them. It is always easy to nitpick data when you have none.
  - paisawalla 3y ago
    Data which is 1) based on self-reported status 2) fails to distinguish between temporary hardship homelessness and that resulting of addiction/illness Should not be relied upon. For the first, there is an obvious incentive towards exaggerating one's stay in state, and no counter-incentive whatsoever. For the latter, these are two separate problems which need drastically different solutions.
    - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
      May I point out the post I replied to had no data. If you have data that addresses the two points you made, please post them. > For the first, there is an obvious incentive towards exaggerating one's stay in state, and no counter-incentive whatsoever. Nothing obvious or even true about it. Using the word obvious just hides the fact it isn’t.
TexanFeller 3y ago
> The only real solution is large scale construction of mixed use housing - some social, some affordable, some private. It's a LOT more than making affordable housing available. Most homeless where I am have severe mental health problems, drug addictions, or both. Some are also homeless in large part because of criminal records. Many many difficult social problems to fix before it's just a matter of affordability.
- jganetsk 3y ago
  This is a common misconception. Actually the primary fix is indeed to make affordable housing available. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-about https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-...
  - TexanFeller 3y ago
    My best friend from high school is homeless right now despite my efforts to help him. My best friend from grade school was homeless in my town for a few years(I wasn't aware at first to help). My wife was a social worker. I've had many interactions, albeit brief, with homeless in my city. I'm not exactly ignorant and I'm not sure the fellow from your article isn't an activist with an agenda. I'm also skeptical of the data gathered on the problem. It's probably not very good because in most cities they can't even get an accurate census/count of homeless.
    - jganetsk 3y ago
      Noah Smith is no activist. He was a professor of finance and a journalist for the Associated Press, Bloomberg, and other reputable outlets. He now writes a very successful Substack.
      - TexanFeller 3y ago
        The linked article says it is "A guest post by Aaron Carr."
    - 3y ago
poorbutdebtfree 3y ago
The Greater Boston Food Bank CEO cleared a $500K salary this year, for a job that's largely remote because the area is too dangerous for the non-profit white collar workers. Do you think she wants "food insecurity" to be solved? https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/42717782 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/427...
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  this seems fine to me, managing the greater boston food bank sounds like it needs a good manager to better spend the other 99.8%
  - jonhohle 3y ago
    That’s feeding 81k people a day. A huge job, for sure, but that’s the equivalent of a reasonably large town. Something has already gone wrong upstream if that many people cannot acquire food via their own means.
    - whimsicalism 3y ago
      > Something has already gone wrong upstream if that many people cannot acquire food via their own means. Out of a metro area of millions? I don't understand your logic at all.
- muglug 3y ago
  That CEO runs an organisation that delivered food for 90 million meals to residents of the greater Boston area last year (according to them). That salary is on par with a senior engineer at a big tech company who, one might reasonably argue, does not contribute a similar good to the world.
  - nonethewiser 3y ago
    Its not even close. She deserves every penny.
  - 3y ago
nancyhn 3y ago
It's going to the administrators of the homeless industrial complex. It's the same problem we're seeing with colleges where the number of administrators has dramatically grown year over year. Managerial bloat. The more money we give, the more they grow.
moomoo11 3y ago
I mean if you really want to be blunt and honest about it, the reason we have a worse problem is because ...... Drugs, mental illness, and sometimes just bad decision making skills. The US has a LOT of drugs, and you can look at our education system at large and make up your own conclusion about our decision making ability as a whole. I volunteered with homeless and the facts are out there. Honestly the experience left me jaded. On the bright side, almost all people who become homeless only remain so for like 2 weeks. These are the majority of people who are just down on hard times and they seek out and utilize charity and social services to get back on their feet. Then... you have the "homeless" that everyone means, like the stories you hear from SF. Half of these folks are mentally ill. The other half are basically just incapable or uninterested in making good decisions due to past circumstances. Because we live in a civilized society, it would be unconstitutional to force mentally ill people into mandatory mental health treatment. Also, people don't want to jail the guy who has been arrested dozens of times and beat a couple grandmas. The solution seems to be to allow open air drug markets and removal of police presence all around the Civic Center and downtown areas.
- janalsncm 3y ago
  > Drugs, mental illness, and sometimes just bad decision making skills. Any explanation which comes down to personal decisions has to account for the fact that many other developed countries have avoided the same dystopian hell of inequality as the Bay Area and likely have similar distributions of behavior. Are people in California just more prone to using drugs, being mentally ill and making bad decisions? No. In civilized places, if you mess up a little (or even a lot) the consequence should not be to sleep on the street. It’s a moral failing at a societal level.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    Most people in SF aren’t from California, let alone counting the unhoused population. America has freedom of movement, you just need a bus ticket, no hukou or residency permit needed.
  - moomoo11 3y ago
    so you skipped over the part where I said that almost everyone who becomes homeless is off the street within two weeks? The people who continue sleeping on the street are the other group I mentioned. and yes they come to CA from other states because the laws here are loose and weather is nice every single day. Refusing to stay in a shelter because drugs aren’t allowed. Instead of helping people wean off hard drugs, SF allows open air drug markets run by gangs. The “homeless” issue will always exist this way.
Clubber 3y ago
It's ultimately a government jobs program, just like almost all government programs. If it employs people, it's good, regardless of whether it accomplishes the stated outcome.
nonethewiser 3y ago
> 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? Towards more homelessness. They are subsidizing it. Literally paying people money to be homeless.
makingstuffs 3y ago
My partner and I recently returned from a road trip through Cali and were absolutely shocked by the societal issues in San Francisco. You’d be walking down a built up high street which would, all of a sudden, turn into a tented area full of people with terrible mental health and drug problems. It seemed to us that the big issue is a lack of any medical care which exasperates the underlying issues brought about by homelessness. We were terribly saddened by what we saw. I couldn’t even begin to fathom how you would fix such a complex problem without the involvement and empathy of the whole country. Even if you figured out a solution to the local issue it would only last so long as people would (rightly so) travel in from other states/cities due to a lack of working solution where they are from originally. And then you would end up back at square 1 when your local solution’s resources have been depleted. One homeless man I spoke to told me that he ventured to San Francisco in order to get HIV medication as he was unable to get it in his home state, for whatever reason. That alone highlighted the need for a nationwide plan which would align all state governments. Without a federally mandated baseline of care for these people I feel as though this type of issue will persist. And I think that the keyword in all of this is _people_. We often forget that that is what they are. They had hopes, they had dreams, they have just been forgotten and are now labelled as a ‘problem’ opposed to a ‘person’.

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.
    - Supermancho 3y ago
      > Homelessness doesn’t cause drug abuse, Being homeless sucks. There's a number of reinforcing conditions that convert non-users into users. https://americanaddictioncenters.org/rehab-guide/homeless https://americanaddictioncenters.org/rehab-guide/homeless
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Only the visible homeless problem. There are plenty of homeless you don’t notice because they aren’t raving like a lunatic without a shirt on. We have two separate problems, but they are sadly often conflated.
apstls 3y ago
How many homes could $17B make?
- jupp0r 3y ago
  ~17000 in CA
  - chrisbrandow 3y ago
    apartments would be cheaper than 400K per.
- jonny_eh 3y ago
  We don't even need to have the government build the homes, just allowing the construction of homes would be a huge positive change.
- x0x0 3y ago
  Not very many. Even if you could build a home for $400k and it only cost $100k in maintenance / utilities / upkeep for the next 10 years, that's still only 34k homes.
  - Firmwarrior 3y ago
    You could build a lot of them for $3.7B/year though.. split among 150,000 homeless, that's $24,000 per year each 'course, it's not hard to imagine those homes ending up like the free zone in The Wire or the housing projects in Judge Dredd...
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  Where are you gonna build? It's illegal to build pretty much anything in CA cities with high homelessness
hnuser847 3y ago
Nah, it’s caused by mental illness and drug addiction. Short of rounding them up and forcing them to get help, there’s actually nothing we can do to get these people off the street.
- jonny_eh 3y ago
  It's certainly an element, but that's largely washing your hands and victim blaming. There's a direct correlation between housing costs and homelessness rates. Update, here's a reference: https://endhomelessness.org/blog/new-research-quantifies-link-housing-affordability-homelessness/ https://endhomelessness.org/blog/new-research-quantifies-lin...
  - khazhoux 3y ago
    Where’s the “victim-blaming”? From the reporting I’ve seen, the vast majority of folks on Skid Row or on the street in SF are heavy addicts. And they refuse shelters because then they couldn’t use. How does more housing help them?
    - fullspectrumdev 3y ago
      Dry shelters are arguably a massive part of the problem. You fix the housing issue first, make their lives less fucking miserable, then it’s easier to get someone to accept help for their drug addiction. You can’t “cure” an addict who isn’t ready to be “helped”.
      - paisawalla 3y ago
        > Dry shelters are arguably a massive part of the problem. As someone who has housed and lived close to addicts, to put it plainly: this is a naive, academic view. Dry shelter are "a massive part of the problem"? Absolutely incorrect, and harmfully ignorant if implemented at societal scale. As someone who provided food and shelter to an addict in my own home, guaranteeing these things does nothing to increase the willingness to quit heroin. Material deprivation may cause you to seek drugs, but remedying deprivation does not lead to recovery. In fact, I honestly believe offering it unconditionally hampers it.
robomartin 3y ago
> Homelessness is caused primarily by a lack of homes. That is absolutely not true. Not even close. Mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse are major factors. Dozens of studies show this. I've seen numbers as high as 76% having substance abuse and severe mental illness. One study from 2017 says 80% mental illness, 88% drug abuse and 59% alcohol addiction. There are studies with lower numbers. In most, if not all, of these, the government entities who publish them will typically change the definition of "homeless" to artificially reduce the numbers and make themselves look good. There are two ways to fix homelessness: You make them disappear (put them in a building, creative counting, etc.), or actually address the real root causes --which nobody is doing or even talking about. Saying the issue is lack of homes implies these people could actually pay for a place to stay. They cannot. They are sick and/or addicted to something. They likely cannot work or earn even the legally minimum wage without a massive intervention to get them back to functional status. In a free society we do not have the legal means to round-up sick people, get them cleaned-up, help them, rebuild them as necessary and then put them back in circulation. We just don't have that legal power. People do as they wish and there's very little society can really do to help them. Throwing them into a buildings merely (and conveniently) hides the real problems: Mental illness and addiction.
- AgentOrange1234 3y ago
  “Saying the issue is lack of homes implies these people could actually pay for a place to stay.” Or we could just… choose to house people, regardless of their ability to pay?
  - worik 3y ago
    > Or we could just… choose to house people, regardless of their ability to pay? Yes Priorities?
  - robomartin 3y ago
    > Or we could just… choose to house people, regardless of their ability to pay? That solves absolutely nothing. I refer you to the $17B we spent in CA on this problem. The fundamental issues are mental health and addiction. All you achieve is making the problem invisible so everyone can feel like they did something. When, in reality, the root causes are not addressed at all. It is critical to understand that our laws DO NOT ALLOW US to force anyone to do anything. Meaning, if a mentally ill or addicted person says "I am not going anywhere" and "I refuse treatment" we CANNOT force them. The root causes, for the most part, are mental illness and addition. We cannot be effective helping these people because --by law-- we cannot effectively arrest and force them to accept help of any kind. In a lot of cases you have addicts who are 100% out of their mind and you are trying to reason with them to accept help. Good luck. A member of my family and a couple of good friends are professionals deeply involved with the treatment side of this issue. What they tell me is exactly what I have conveyed here. If we could force people into a solid 12 to 24 month program we could eliminate most of the problem in 5 to 10 years. We can't. Because we have laws that protect citizens from being detained and incarcerated unless they commit a crime. Mental health and addiction are not crimes. In other words, that path is impossible. How, then, do they propose this be solved? Conceptually simple. Politically...well, our politicians are fucking incompetent morons. You have to clamp down hard on the illicit drugs that are destroying so many lives. Shit like cocaine and heroin should not exist on our streets. Fentanyl-laced pills should not be able to pour through our border like candy (quite literally, google it). Etc. For some unexplained reason we are willing to burn $17B in just one state of this country to pretend we are helping people and virtue-signal and, at the same time, we refuse to put real money and effort into real actions that would almost make this problem disappear. Simple math: If none of the drugs a huge portion of these people take were to be available for, say, six months, most of them would gladly get detox help and come out of it a year later with a very different perspective in life. You have to stop the drugs. Things like safe injection spaces are horrible ideas. What you want is free detox centers and a complete clamp-down on drug availability. Then you get results. I was just in Singapore. Before I could fly there I had to sign a document that had a warning in big, bold, all upper-case letters that read: The penalty for bringing illicit drugs into Singapore is death. And there you go.
ryandrake 3y ago
It's not even a lack of homes--its a lack of access to existing homes. There are already ~16 million vacant homes in the USA, a tiny fraction of which could house the homeless if there were political will. We all can say homelessness is a problem, but if you ask these people hoarding vacant homes if they'd be willing to house a homeless person on their property, or if you ask a politician whether they are willing to nationalize those properties to provide homes, suddenly their response will be "Uhh... Ohh... Hrrmm... I guess it's not that big a problem." The rubber is not hitting the road.
- ZoomerCretin 3y ago
  The vast majority of those "vacant" homes are either very temporarily up for sale or rent, dilapidated, or in need of a lot of repairs. There are not 16 million habitable units sitting empty year after year.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  The vast majority of those homes are either being actively fixed/waiting for a tenant to move in or are in bumfuck where no one wants to live. If you can convince the homeless on the west coast to move to the vacant places in kansas congratulations, you just won California's governor election. The reality is that there are not nearly enough homes where people want to be. Until you can force the homeless to go to less desirable areas the homes there arent helpful.
  - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
    When I was homeless, I was placed on a waiting list and sent to "my" freight elevator/park bench to count the days. My number came up and I was called into an office. I was verbally introduced to a program that would take control of my finances and then send me wherever they had something available. Some of the cities mentioned might as well have been Kansas. I said no thanks, I'll stay on the streets. I waited for a longer time and another program opened up. They didn't take control of my finances and they allowed me to choose exactly where I wanted to apply for a lease. That was 20 years ago, and I have lived happily ever after.
- 3y ago
Tiktaalik 3y ago
yep. Absolutely there's plenty of addiction problems, toxic drug problems and mental illness problems in my city, but the numbers don't lie and we have lost thousands on thousands of the most affordable rental housing stock over the last few decades even as population grew. If we had actually gained affordable housing stock as population increased, or at least kept pace, we would be in a different situation. No doubt we would still have issues of a small amount of people having issues with mental illness, but we would be dramatically more capable of helping them than we are now with the incredibly scarce level of apartments we have now.

umvi 3y ago

> If the problems growing, and you are just sinking billions into it without making any measurable impact, where the fuck is the money going? A lot of these programs are hard to stop paying into once you start. Say you are a political leader and you try to solve homelessness by pouring $X per year into some new program. 5 years later it's clear the program is not effective. However, if you axe the program, good luck getting re-elected since you've now made it very easy for your opponent to lambaste you ("Hundreds of society's most vulnerable brace themselves as Governor X seeks to axe homeless program").

sroussey 3y ago
And places like SF with a budget of about $100k/yr/person for homeless, make it effectively illegal to get an accounting of where the money goes.
- losteric 3y ago
  Can you elaborate? I don't follow how the amount of money spent "makes it effectively illegal" to audit.
  - sroussey 3y ago
    The amount doesn’t, it’s the culture of the city government and protection of the service providers that actually receive the money.
cute_boi 3y ago
This is the fundamental reason why democracies often face challenges. For instance, let's consider a country like India, where a significant portion of the population isn't financially well-off. As a result, there is an expectation for government assistance and benefits during each election cycle. Consequently, politicians who promise freebies or welfare programs tend to have a higher likelihood of being elected. This pattern is not unique to India; it can be observed in various other places as well. Even in the United States, which prides itself on its democratic system, the influence of this phenomenon is evident

ajmurmann 3y ago

"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)." This seems to not reflect reality in the US. There is strong local resistance to construction especially if it's for poor people or worse homeless, leading to tight zoning and rejection of projects during the byzantine approval process. If the government tries to build something, the EPA (environmental protection act) also allows anyone to request that a environmental impact study needs to take place. The study can take about a year and there are no teeth, other than causing delay and cost through the study. Nothing needs to change based on the findings, it's just another way to drag things out and increase cost on projects someone doesn't like.

emodendroket 3y ago
Yeah, probably was not intended when that was passed that all the world’s endangered species would happen to be found near wealthy people’s homes.
Animats 3y ago
> There is strong local resistance to construction especially if it's for poor people, or worse, homeless, The US used to do that. It led to high-rise ghettos.[1] And that was before drugs were big. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_Homes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_Homes
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  Honestly, social housing isn't my preferred solution. My solution is radical upzoning; removal of minimum unit-sizes; drastically simplify the approval/permit process and remove all local hearings etc. from the process, if it fits the regulations, you can build it; forced rehab for addicts; institutionalize mentally ill who cannot take care of themselves (this is the hardest part, I am least certain about).
  - mjevans 3y ago
    Disagree on 'minimum unit sizes', at least where I live 0-bedroom loft-only units are already small enough! I do agree with other ideas that promote more flexible application of possibly small units. Ideas such as 'fire proof' (no flammable materials in building construction) buildings with relaxed regulations about access to egress, so that stupid middle hallway can be removed. Very agree with an easier and known approval if checking the boxes process. Local hearings banned, environmental impacts should be part of the zoning for a given plot; fit 'within the lines' and no re-assessment.

up2isomorphism 3y ago

In a way, the US "handles" it very efficiently, but only in terms of spending the money and funnel them to the related interest group, but not in terms of solving the homeless problem. Because for them, problem is their opportunity.

philwelch 3y ago

> 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? Well, that’s simple. Most of the money goes to politically well connected non-profits with missions around alleviating homelessness. The problem is that if you alleviate homelessness, the money goes away and everybody at that non-profit loses their jobs. I’m not specifically accusing anyone of corruption, but the incentives aren’t good.

RhodesianHunter 3y ago
>The problem is that if you alleviate homelessness, the money goes away That actually isn't what happens at all though. When we handle this at the state level, spending on homelessness just makes that state more attractive to the homeless in other states and exacerbates the problem.
smsm42 3y ago
The funny thing is, you don't even need corruption. Every single one person in those GONGOs could be genuinely willing to help the homeless. The problem is, if their financing is detached from whether their strategies are successful - and even smart and honest people have great capacity for self-delusion, which is only enhanced when the mission is morally laudable - then the money could be wasted as thoroughly as if they were corrupt.

RhodesianHunter 3y ago

It's a very simple cycle. The state spends money to help the homeless. The broad availability of help for the homeless increases the likelihood that homeless will migrate to and stay in the state. Repeat.

cscurmudgeon 3y ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/us/homeless-population.ht 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. Edit: Reply to paisawalla May I point out the post I replied to had no data. If you have data that addresses the two points you made, please post them. It is always easy to nitpick data when you have none.
- paisawalla 3y ago
  Data which is 1) based on self-reported status 2) fails to distinguish between temporary hardship homelessness and that resulting of addiction/illness Should not be relied upon. For the first, there is an obvious incentive towards exaggerating one's stay in state, and no counter-incentive whatsoever. For the latter, these are two separate problems which need drastically different solutions.
  - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
    May I point out the post I replied to had no data. If you have data that addresses the two points you made, please post them. > For the first, there is an obvious incentive towards exaggerating one's stay in state, and no counter-incentive whatsoever. Nothing obvious or even true about it. Using the word obvious just hides the fact it isn’t.

TexanFeller 3y ago

> The only real solution is large scale construction of mixed use housing - some social, some affordable, some private. It's a LOT more than making affordable housing available. Most homeless where I am have severe mental health problems, drug addictions, or both. Some are also homeless in large part because of criminal records. Many many difficult social problems to fix before it's just a matter of affordability.

jganetsk 3y ago
This is a common misconception. Actually the primary fix is indeed to make affordable housing available. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-about https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-...
- TexanFeller 3y ago
  My best friend from high school is homeless right now despite my efforts to help him. My best friend from grade school was homeless in my town for a few years(I wasn't aware at first to help). My wife was a social worker. I've had many interactions, albeit brief, with homeless in my city. I'm not exactly ignorant and I'm not sure the fellow from your article isn't an activist with an agenda. I'm also skeptical of the data gathered on the problem. It's probably not very good because in most cities they can't even get an accurate census/count of homeless.
  - jganetsk 3y ago
    Noah Smith is no activist. He was a professor of finance and a journalist for the Associated Press, Bloomberg, and other reputable outlets. He now writes a very successful Substack.
    - TexanFeller 3y ago
      The linked article says it is "A guest post by Aaron Carr."
  - 3y ago

poorbutdebtfree 3y ago

The Greater Boston Food Bank CEO cleared a $500K salary this year, for a job that's largely remote because the area is too dangerous for the non-profit white collar workers. Do you think she wants "food insecurity" to be solved? https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/42717782 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/427...

whimsicalism 3y ago
this seems fine to me, managing the greater boston food bank sounds like it needs a good manager to better spend the other 99.8%
- jonhohle 3y ago
  That’s feeding 81k people a day. A huge job, for sure, but that’s the equivalent of a reasonably large town. Something has already gone wrong upstream if that many people cannot acquire food via their own means.
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    > Something has already gone wrong upstream if that many people cannot acquire food via their own means. Out of a metro area of millions? I don't understand your logic at all.
muglug 3y ago
That CEO runs an organisation that delivered food for 90 million meals to residents of the greater Boston area last year (according to them). That salary is on par with a senior engineer at a big tech company who, one might reasonably argue, does not contribute a similar good to the world.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  Its not even close. She deserves every penny.
- 3y ago

nancyhn 3y ago

It's going to the administrators of the homeless industrial complex. It's the same problem we're seeing with colleges where the number of administrators has dramatically grown year over year. Managerial bloat. The more money we give, the more they grow.

moomoo11 3y ago

I mean if you really want to be blunt and honest about it, the reason we have a worse problem is because ...... Drugs, mental illness, and sometimes just bad decision making skills. The US has a LOT of drugs, and you can look at our education system at large and make up your own conclusion about our decision making ability as a whole. I volunteered with homeless and the facts are out there. Honestly the experience left me jaded. On the bright side, almost all people who become homeless only remain so for like 2 weeks. These are the majority of people who are just down on hard times and they seek out and utilize charity and social services to get back on their feet. Then... you have the "homeless" that everyone means, like the stories you hear from SF. Half of these folks are mentally ill. The other half are basically just incapable or uninterested in making good decisions due to past circumstances. Because we live in a civilized society, it would be unconstitutional to force mentally ill people into mandatory mental health treatment. Also, people don't want to jail the guy who has been arrested dozens of times and beat a couple grandmas. The solution seems to be to allow open air drug markets and removal of police presence all around the Civic Center and downtown areas.

janalsncm 3y ago
> Drugs, mental illness, and sometimes just bad decision making skills. Any explanation which comes down to personal decisions has to account for the fact that many other developed countries have avoided the same dystopian hell of inequality as the Bay Area and likely have similar distributions of behavior. Are people in California just more prone to using drugs, being mentally ill and making bad decisions? No. In civilized places, if you mess up a little (or even a lot) the consequence should not be to sleep on the street. It’s a moral failing at a societal level.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Most people in SF aren’t from California, let alone counting the unhoused population. America has freedom of movement, you just need a bus ticket, no hukou or residency permit needed.
- moomoo11 3y ago
  so you skipped over the part where I said that almost everyone who becomes homeless is off the street within two weeks? The people who continue sleeping on the street are the other group I mentioned. and yes they come to CA from other states because the laws here are loose and weather is nice every single day. Refusing to stay in a shelter because drugs aren’t allowed. Instead of helping people wean off hard drugs, SF allows open air drug markets run by gangs. The “homeless” issue will always exist this way.

Clubber 3y ago

It's ultimately a government jobs program, just like almost all government programs. If it employs people, it's good, regardless of whether it accomplishes the stated outcome.

nonethewiser 3y ago

> 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? Towards more homelessness. They are subsidizing it. Literally paying people money to be homeless.

makingstuffs 3y ago

My partner and I recently returned from a road trip through Cali and were absolutely shocked by the societal issues in San Francisco. You’d be walking down a built up high street which would, all of a sudden, turn into a tented area full of people with terrible mental health and drug problems. It seemed to us that the big issue is a lack of any medical care which exasperates the underlying issues brought about by homelessness. We were terribly saddened by what we saw. I couldn’t even begin to fathom how you would fix such a complex problem without the involvement and empathy of the whole country. Even if you figured out a solution to the local issue it would only last so long as people would (rightly so) travel in from other states/cities due to a lack of working solution where they are from originally. And then you would end up back at square 1 when your local solution’s resources have been depleted. One homeless man I spoke to told me that he ventured to San Francisco in order to get HIV medication as he was unable to get it in his home state, for whatever reason. That alone highlighted the need for a nationwide plan which would align all state governments. Without a federally mandated baseline of care for these people I feel as though this type of issue will persist. And I think that the keyword in all of this is _people_. We often forget that that is what they are. They had hopes, they had dreams, they have just been forgotten and are now labelled as a ‘problem’ opposed to a ‘person’.