7 ms·

It's very hard to work around human nature and the whole "why am I paying rent like a sucker when the drug addicts on the street are getting free apartments?"

It's very hard to work around human nature and the whole "why am I paying rent like a sucker when the drug addicts on the street are getting free apartments?" I also think that people who point out that a huge percentage of the people on the street are on drugs, so the drugs are the problem are not entirely correct either. The drug use is a symptom that also exacerbates the problem. One of the big contributing factors to California's homelessness problem is that wages have not kept up with rents, and it is not even close. If you're working two full time minimum wage jobs in SF you won't be able to afford an apartment, and that's a fundamental problem. Either bring rents down or wages up, neither of which are popular with the people who have political power.

zizee 3y ago
Are there any good studies into the most prevalent causes of homelessness? I'd be especially interested that are trying to tease apart cause and effect, without the study author trying to prove out their own preconceptions.
- DoreenMichele 3y ago
  Years ago, I took a class on Homelessness and Public Policy. I've spent time homeless and read a lot, etc. There is a lack of affordable housing in all US states. It's extremely hard to live without a car in the US and cars are a huge expense, plus our car-centric culture means lack of a car is a barrier to employment, both practically and because people are reluctant to hire you. Medical expenses can be a factor in the US. Universal health coverage could help. There's no one cause and the oft cited "addiction and mental health" is largely prejudice. In a nutshell, you wind up homeless when you have too many problems and not enough resources to handle them and the US doesn't provide a robust social safety net.
  - kodah 3y ago
    > There is a lack of affordable housing in all US states. Is it a lack of affordable housing or is it a lack of wage growth compared to cost of living? Personally, I've started to think it's the latter, because it explains why upper middle class non-millionaires are also getting pinched. They too often rely on income rather than capital gains.
    - DoreenMichele 3y ago
      You can have both things going on.
      - kodah 3y ago
        Does one not solve the other though? If it does, that seems to make them mutually exclusive. My personal conspiracy theory, and I admit it's a conspiracy theory, is that corporate land owners are the ones centering popular conversation and data around affordable housing rather than wage growth. It opens doors for rental assistance, a multitude of rental-based density expansions, and other programs that put more money in their pockets rather than expanding the money income-based people make and keep via ownership.
        DoreenMichele 3y ago
        I'm not a land owner. I'm someone with an incomplete BS with a concentration in Housing who also spent years homeless. In the 1950s, the average new home was 1200 sq.ft. Post 2000, it was over 2400 sq.ft. and held on average one less household member. We've also torn down a million single room occupancy units in recent decades.
        kodah 3y ago
        Apologies, I wasn't implicating you. Landowner could've been better expressed as corporate landowners. They're the ones that own the most residential real estate in large cities, which are generally the only places having this problem. My house was built in the 1950s at around 1200sq ft. It's since expanded to over 2000, mainly from finishing a basement and expanding the top level. I'd be curious to see the data you base that on, because the people I bought it from passed this down generation to generation and had their entire family living in it. The house I grew up in has a similar story. Another anecdote is that about half of the 1950s homes on my block were bulldozed and replaced with single units that have largely gone vacant. My cities issue is that we have plenty of housing, but even the bottom line single units are too expensive compared to wages because permitting and building costs are through the metaphorical roof.
  - rank0 3y ago
    There is observably an abundance of cheap shelter. It’s just not where people want to live. Something like ~97% of people live on ~3% of the land.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - mrtweetyhack 3y ago
    [dead]
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  Very difficult to tease out the definition of various terms in studies and they are mostly trying to play to their anticipated audience. This is evident, for example, if you look closely into the studies saying stuff like "most homeless people in the Bay became homeless in the Bay area", etc.
- tiahura 3y ago
  Lax law enforcement. When we used to have vagrancy laws homelessness had a way of working itself out.
  - habinero 3y ago
    Gross. Chasing away homeless people doesn't remove them from existence.
    - tiahura 3y ago
      It removes the addicts and poop from the sidewalk.
      - fragmede 3y ago
        And stops them from yelling obscenities into people's faces.
hellojesus 3y ago
What I haven't understood is: why don't people move away if they're doing min wage jobs in a place where they are clearly incapable of delivering any quality of life? Bring labor supply down and suddenly the market has to pay more. This seems to be simple oversupply in a saturated market.
- kelnos 3y ago
  Moving itself is expensive. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, you don't have the time or money to even travel to another location to look for better housing and a better job, let alone the time or money required to actually effect a move. Consider that for many people in this situation, missing a few days of work to look for a new place to live might mean getting fired. Even if they don't get fired, the lost wages for missing those days of work could put them behind on their bills or make it difficult to buy food. And even if they are able to spend time to find a new place to live without putting their finances in jeopardy, remember that they also have to find a new job in the new location, and doing that without further financial hardship could be difficult. There are also other considerations: someone barely able to afford living in SF or NYC might not have a car, and walk or take transit to work and to do errands. Living in a lower-cost area might mean needing a car to do things like buy groceries or get to work. If you already can't save money, how are you going to afford a car before you move to the new area? Many of us here can afford to take weeks or months off to take a break between jobs. Sometimes it's hard to understand that many people can barely take sick days without risking financial ruin.
  - dbcurtis 3y ago
    Not to mention that it might also involve moving away from what little support system that you do have, the cousin that provides child care while you work your second shift janitor job, for instance.
    - macintux 3y ago
      This is huge. No matter how desperate you are, it’s highly likely you’ve established some relationships. You know which of the homeless around you you can trust to watch your things. You know what business owners are more tolerant of a nap.
trailbits 3y ago
When wages go up, rents go up. For rents to go down you either have to have more housing or less people in a given area.
- nrclark 3y ago
  Or rent control.
  - icelancer 3y ago
    Rent control externalities are well-documented; long-term serious problems occur due to them, not the least of which is lower affordability. Short review of the research can be found here: https://www.brookings.edu/research/what-does-economic-evidence-tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/what-does-economic-eviden...
- crooked-v 3y ago
  And put "California" and "more housing" together and you mostly get memes of YIMBYs laughing maniacally and crying while NIMBYs sit on piles of money.
rank0 3y ago
Why isn’t moving out of the most expensive city in the world an option? I believe the biggest factor is mental illness. The addiction and homelessness are the symptoms/results. (Obviously not in every case) We’re at record low unemployment. If you’re able and willing to work you can 100% make enough money to pay rent somewhere…it just might not be in SF. Idk why people feel that everyone should be entitled to live in any specific location. Also, FWIW the US homelessness rate is below 0.2% among the lowest in the world.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- kelnos 3y ago
  See my response to this upthread[0]. Moving requires time and money, which many people in this situation don't have to spare. In a way they are locked into their current location, because even though it's already financially precarious, the simple act of trying to find a new location and a new job could easily tip them into deep financial trouble. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36171583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36171583
- Detrytus 3y ago
  0.2% is not "among the lowest in the world", or at least among OECD countries. Many countries have the rates way below 0.1% And not just rich countries, Brazil for example has 0.05% https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC3-1-Homeless-population.pdf https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC3-1-Homeless-population.pd...
  - rank0 3y ago
    That table you linked only measures rates of 34 countries. You realize there are ~200 countries on the planet right? It’s just objectively true that the US enjoys much higher living standards than the rest of the world…even if Brazil’s homelessness rate in 2015 is 0.1% smaller than the US 2020 figure…
    - Detrytus 3y ago
franciscop 3y ago
While I agree with housing first and you, I think at the same time your quote is mischaracterizing the opposite point of view, which I've seen from close. The more appropriate quote would be: "Why am I paying rent for myself and rent for the drug addict on the corner (through taxes) while I cannot afford to pay for my son's college/medicine/whatever?" Living in a country with virtually no drug use (besides heavily abuse of alcohol ofc) it feels that while drugs are not the main problem for many, they are for some, and definitely make other problems worse.
nulbyte 3y ago
> It's very hard to work around human nature and the whole "why am I paying rent like a sucker when the drug addicts on the street are getting free apartments?" Easy fix: Give them a free apartment, too. Let them see what it's like. If they do better there than paying rent or mortgage, great. But I bet they won't last more than a day or two before turning that key back in. They think a free apartment is some great thing to have, as if their neighbors won't be all the people they didn't want to be around in the first place.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  I like the idea, but I don't know if a place like SF has the capacity to test that experiment with, even if they did some lottery system for it. I'm sure established families wouldn't actually go through with that plan, but they are also older and more likely to vote against those programs. the youth would take the most advantage of it and may even put up with it due to alternatives for housing being 2K/month into their college loans and the idea that it's a temporary discomfort. And we all know that the 18-29 demographic doesn't turnover nearly as much as that 50+ bracket.
- indecisive_user 3y ago
  Have you seen the living conditions that people in SF are willing to put up with for cheap rent? Living out of their car, renting a closet, an attic, a couch in a living room. And that's not just baristas, it's well paid tech employees as well. An endless amount of people would live in a 400sqft apartment with ex-homeless neighbours if it meant saving 2k on rent every month.
morugam 3y ago
Nah. I'm more pissed off that my tens of thousands of dollars per year in property taxes don't help a damn bit. I'm more than happy to have people have "free" housing when they need it. Unfortunately SF does not spend or govern responsibly or in the interest of its citizens.
hourago 3y ago
> It's very hard to work around human nature and the whole "why am I paying rent like a sucker when the drug addicts on the street are getting free apartments?" A lot of people seems to accept tax cuts for billionaires much higher than anything spend on the poor. It is all about framing and repetition. Humans like to help other humans. The problem is that there is a push towards selfishness from the people that has the most and profits more out of it.
- d0gsg0w00f 3y ago
  It's less about "why won't you help these people" and more about "what have you done with the $100k I paid you last year, when will you be satisfied?" The only defense is electing people that stop the bleed and force the government to prioritize what they spend on. Talk amongst yourselves and decide if building a new park or helping homeless people is more important.
- jeffreyames 3y ago
  There are many unselfish people who don’t like to throw good money after bad, who think that the current solutions are so ineffective that even if the entire wealth of every billionaire went towards homelessness the needle would barely move.
- bombcar 3y ago
  The US federal government spends a trillion dollars a year on social programs (likely more when you include the states) - and some work exceptionally well, and others not so much. And much of it is effectively subsidizing Walmart and friends anyway.
  - HWR_14 3y ago
    That was true in 2020-2022 due to COVID. That was not true in 2019.
miked85 3y ago
> The drug use is a symptom that also exacerbates the problem. Drug use may be a symptom in some cases, but very often is the cause. Either way, it isn't good.
ibeckermayer 3y ago
This idea that the "homeless problem in SF" is primarily a problem of "people being unable to afford homes in SF" is just laughable. All you need to do is walk down almost any street in San Francisco and take a secondary glance at the homeless people you see, and its obvious that "can't afford a home" is just one of their many problems. Most of these people couldn't hold a job because they're addicted to really hardcore drugs (you might even get an opportunity to watch them smoke or inject some during this secondary glance), and often severely mentally ill. "Homeless" is to a great extent besides the point, this is a mental illness / drug addiction problem. Even if you could find a solid place for $800/mo in SF, these people wouldn't be in it because the vast majority of them are unfit for employment. If that was really the issue then we could solve all this by just sending them to Omaha.
- borski 3y ago
  Both things can be true at the same time. Drugs are a significant issue in the homeless community, but providing housing and hope can do wonders for many of the homeless out there. When they feel like garbage, because society doesn’t care about them and treats them like they are, it’s impossible to consider a life with hope. If you’ve never been in that place, it’s very hard to understand. But this “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality most people have is ludicrous; it simply isn’t that easy, when you have either mental health problems, or, quite simply, no hope.
- neilk 3y ago
  Those are the homeless you can see. You're right that people who have several physical or mental health issues would be hard to help, in any system. But the number one cause of homelessness isn't addiction; it's poverty. And for that matter, the overwhelming majority of people who are substance-addicted don't become homeless. Lots of the people you work with are addicted to something. There are so many steps before people literally have to sleep on the streets. They stay out of sight. You surely have noticed all the camper vans on some streets in SF. I'd bet that for every person actually on the street there are 10 who are effectively homeless but managing it in a way you can't see. Living at their place of work or study, living in a vehicle, couch-surfing, illegal sublets, and things I'm happy to never have to imagine. The article the OP posted details many stories of people who are competent to hold down a job, even multiple jobs, but cannot find anywhere to live.

zizee 3y ago

Are there any good studies into the most prevalent causes of homelessness? I'd be especially interested that are trying to tease apart cause and effect, without the study author trying to prove out their own preconceptions.

DoreenMichele 3y ago
Years ago, I took a class on Homelessness and Public Policy. I've spent time homeless and read a lot, etc. There is a lack of affordable housing in all US states. It's extremely hard to live without a car in the US and cars are a huge expense, plus our car-centric culture means lack of a car is a barrier to employment, both practically and because people are reluctant to hire you. Medical expenses can be a factor in the US. Universal health coverage could help. There's no one cause and the oft cited "addiction and mental health" is largely prejudice. In a nutshell, you wind up homeless when you have too many problems and not enough resources to handle them and the US doesn't provide a robust social safety net.
- kodah 3y ago
  > There is a lack of affordable housing in all US states. Is it a lack of affordable housing or is it a lack of wage growth compared to cost of living? Personally, I've started to think it's the latter, because it explains why upper middle class non-millionaires are also getting pinched. They too often rely on income rather than capital gains.
  - DoreenMichele 3y ago
    You can have both things going on.
    - kodah 3y ago
      Does one not solve the other though? If it does, that seems to make them mutually exclusive. My personal conspiracy theory, and I admit it's a conspiracy theory, is that corporate land owners are the ones centering popular conversation and data around affordable housing rather than wage growth. It opens doors for rental assistance, a multitude of rental-based density expansions, and other programs that put more money in their pockets rather than expanding the money income-based people make and keep via ownership.
      - DoreenMichele 3y ago
        I'm not a land owner. I'm someone with an incomplete BS with a concentration in Housing who also spent years homeless. In the 1950s, the average new home was 1200 sq.ft. Post 2000, it was over 2400 sq.ft. and held on average one less household member. We've also torn down a million single room occupancy units in recent decades.
        kodah 3y ago
        Apologies, I wasn't implicating you. Landowner could've been better expressed as corporate landowners. They're the ones that own the most residential real estate in large cities, which are generally the only places having this problem. My house was built in the 1950s at around 1200sq ft. It's since expanded to over 2000, mainly from finishing a basement and expanding the top level. I'd be curious to see the data you base that on, because the people I bought it from passed this down generation to generation and had their entire family living in it. The house I grew up in has a similar story. Another anecdote is that about half of the 1950s homes on my block were bulldozed and replaced with single units that have largely gone vacant. My cities issue is that we have plenty of housing, but even the bottom line single units are too expensive compared to wages because permitting and building costs are through the metaphorical roof.
- rank0 3y ago
  There is observably an abundance of cheap shelter. It’s just not where people want to live. Something like ~97% of people live on ~3% of the land.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- mrtweetyhack 3y ago
  [dead]
whimsicalism 3y ago
Very difficult to tease out the definition of various terms in studies and they are mostly trying to play to their anticipated audience. This is evident, for example, if you look closely into the studies saying stuff like "most homeless people in the Bay became homeless in the Bay area", etc.
tiahura 3y ago
Lax law enforcement. When we used to have vagrancy laws homelessness had a way of working itself out.
- habinero 3y ago
  Gross. Chasing away homeless people doesn't remove them from existence.
  - tiahura 3y ago
    It removes the addicts and poop from the sidewalk.
    - fragmede 3y ago
      And stops them from yelling obscenities into people's faces.

hellojesus 3y ago

What I haven't understood is: why don't people move away if they're doing min wage jobs in a place where they are clearly incapable of delivering any quality of life? Bring labor supply down and suddenly the market has to pay more. This seems to be simple oversupply in a saturated market.

kelnos 3y ago
Moving itself is expensive. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, you don't have the time or money to even travel to another location to look for better housing and a better job, let alone the time or money required to actually effect a move. Consider that for many people in this situation, missing a few days of work to look for a new place to live might mean getting fired. Even if they don't get fired, the lost wages for missing those days of work could put them behind on their bills or make it difficult to buy food. And even if they are able to spend time to find a new place to live without putting their finances in jeopardy, remember that they also have to find a new job in the new location, and doing that without further financial hardship could be difficult. There are also other considerations: someone barely able to afford living in SF or NYC might not have a car, and walk or take transit to work and to do errands. Living in a lower-cost area might mean needing a car to do things like buy groceries or get to work. If you already can't save money, how are you going to afford a car before you move to the new area? Many of us here can afford to take weeks or months off to take a break between jobs. Sometimes it's hard to understand that many people can barely take sick days without risking financial ruin.
- dbcurtis 3y ago
  Not to mention that it might also involve moving away from what little support system that you do have, the cousin that provides child care while you work your second shift janitor job, for instance.
  - macintux 3y ago
    This is huge. No matter how desperate you are, it’s highly likely you’ve established some relationships. You know which of the homeless around you you can trust to watch your things. You know what business owners are more tolerant of a nap.

trailbits 3y ago

When wages go up, rents go up. For rents to go down you either have to have more housing or less people in a given area.

nrclark 3y ago
Or rent control.
- icelancer 3y ago
  Rent control externalities are well-documented; long-term serious problems occur due to them, not the least of which is lower affordability. Short review of the research can be found here: https://www.brookings.edu/research/what-does-economic-evidence-tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/what-does-economic-eviden...
crooked-v 3y ago
And put "California" and "more housing" together and you mostly get memes of YIMBYs laughing maniacally and crying while NIMBYs sit on piles of money.

rank0 3y ago

Why isn’t moving out of the most expensive city in the world an option? I believe the biggest factor is mental illness. The addiction and homelessness are the symptoms/results. (Obviously not in every case) We’re at record low unemployment. If you’re able and willing to work you can 100% make enough money to pay rent somewhere…it just might not be in SF. Idk why people feel that everyone should be entitled to live in any specific location. Also, FWIW the US homelessness rate is below 0.2% among the lowest in the world.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
kelnos 3y ago
See my response to this upthread[0]. Moving requires time and money, which many people in this situation don't have to spare. In a way they are locked into their current location, because even though it's already financially precarious, the simple act of trying to find a new location and a new job could easily tip them into deep financial trouble. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36171583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36171583
Detrytus 3y ago
0.2% is not "among the lowest in the world", or at least among OECD countries. Many countries have the rates way below 0.1% And not just rich countries, Brazil for example has 0.05% https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC3-1-Homeless-population.pdf https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC3-1-Homeless-population.pd...
- rank0 3y ago
  That table you linked only measures rates of 34 countries. You realize there are ~200 countries on the planet right? It’s just objectively true that the US enjoys much higher living standards than the rest of the world…even if Brazil’s homelessness rate in 2015 is 0.1% smaller than the US 2020 figure…
  - Detrytus 3y ago

franciscop 3y ago

While I agree with housing first and you, I think at the same time your quote is mischaracterizing the opposite point of view, which I've seen from close. The more appropriate quote would be: "Why am I paying rent for myself and rent for the drug addict on the corner (through taxes) while I cannot afford to pay for my son's college/medicine/whatever?" Living in a country with virtually no drug use (besides heavily abuse of alcohol ofc) it feels that while drugs are not the main problem for many, they are for some, and definitely make other problems worse.

nulbyte 3y ago

> It's very hard to work around human nature and the whole "why am I paying rent like a sucker when the drug addicts on the street are getting free apartments?" Easy fix: Give them a free apartment, too. Let them see what it's like. If they do better there than paying rent or mortgage, great. But I bet they won't last more than a day or two before turning that key back in. They think a free apartment is some great thing to have, as if their neighbors won't be all the people they didn't want to be around in the first place.

johnnyanmac 3y ago
I like the idea, but I don't know if a place like SF has the capacity to test that experiment with, even if they did some lottery system for it. I'm sure established families wouldn't actually go through with that plan, but they are also older and more likely to vote against those programs. the youth would take the most advantage of it and may even put up with it due to alternatives for housing being 2K/month into their college loans and the idea that it's a temporary discomfort. And we all know that the 18-29 demographic doesn't turnover nearly as much as that 50+ bracket.
indecisive_user 3y ago
Have you seen the living conditions that people in SF are willing to put up with for cheap rent? Living out of their car, renting a closet, an attic, a couch in a living room. And that's not just baristas, it's well paid tech employees as well. An endless amount of people would live in a 400sqft apartment with ex-homeless neighbours if it meant saving 2k on rent every month.

morugam 3y ago

Nah. I'm more pissed off that my tens of thousands of dollars per year in property taxes don't help a damn bit. I'm more than happy to have people have "free" housing when they need it. Unfortunately SF does not spend or govern responsibly or in the interest of its citizens.

hourago 3y ago

> It's very hard to work around human nature and the whole "why am I paying rent like a sucker when the drug addicts on the street are getting free apartments?" A lot of people seems to accept tax cuts for billionaires much higher than anything spend on the poor. It is all about framing and repetition. Humans like to help other humans. The problem is that there is a push towards selfishness from the people that has the most and profits more out of it.

d0gsg0w00f 3y ago
It's less about "why won't you help these people" and more about "what have you done with the $100k I paid you last year, when will you be satisfied?" The only defense is electing people that stop the bleed and force the government to prioritize what they spend on. Talk amongst yourselves and decide if building a new park or helping homeless people is more important.
jeffreyames 3y ago
There are many unselfish people who don’t like to throw good money after bad, who think that the current solutions are so ineffective that even if the entire wealth of every billionaire went towards homelessness the needle would barely move.
bombcar 3y ago
The US federal government spends a trillion dollars a year on social programs (likely more when you include the states) - and some work exceptionally well, and others not so much. And much of it is effectively subsidizing Walmart and friends anyway.
- HWR_14 3y ago
  That was true in 2020-2022 due to COVID. That was not true in 2019.

miked85 3y ago

> The drug use is a symptom that also exacerbates the problem. Drug use may be a symptom in some cases, but very often is the cause. Either way, it isn't good.

ibeckermayer 3y ago

This idea that the "homeless problem in SF" is primarily a problem of "people being unable to afford homes in SF" is just laughable. All you need to do is walk down almost any street in San Francisco and take a secondary glance at the homeless people you see, and its obvious that "can't afford a home" is just one of their many problems. Most of these people couldn't hold a job because they're addicted to really hardcore drugs (you might even get an opportunity to watch them smoke or inject some during this secondary glance), and often severely mentally ill. "Homeless" is to a great extent besides the point, this is a mental illness / drug addiction problem. Even if you could find a solid place for $800/mo in SF, these people wouldn't be in it because the vast majority of them are unfit for employment. If that was really the issue then we could solve all this by just sending them to Omaha.

borski 3y ago
Both things can be true at the same time. Drugs are a significant issue in the homeless community, but providing housing and hope can do wonders for many of the homeless out there. When they feel like garbage, because society doesn’t care about them and treats them like they are, it’s impossible to consider a life with hope. If you’ve never been in that place, it’s very hard to understand. But this “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality most people have is ludicrous; it simply isn’t that easy, when you have either mental health problems, or, quite simply, no hope.
neilk 3y ago
Those are the homeless you can see. You're right that people who have several physical or mental health issues would be hard to help, in any system. But the number one cause of homelessness isn't addiction; it's poverty. And for that matter, the overwhelming majority of people who are substance-addicted don't become homeless. Lots of the people you work with are addicted to something. There are so many steps before people literally have to sleep on the streets. They stay out of sight. You surely have noticed all the camper vans on some streets in SF. I'd bet that for every person actually on the street there are 10 who are effectively homeless but managing it in a way you can't see. Living at their place of work or study, living in a vehicle, couch-surfing, illegal sublets, and things I'm happy to never have to imagine. The article the OP posted details many stories of people who are competent to hold down a job, even multiple jobs, but cannot find anywhere to live.