3 ms·

Is There a Homeless Crisis?

11 points by surprisetalk 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
davidw 2y ago
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-about https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-... has some great data about homelessness. It's mostly correlated with high housing costs. West Virginia has a huge opioid problem for instance, but lower rates of homelessness because it has low housing costs. The author is also a good speaker. He visited our city recently and I went to check it out and thought he did a good job presenting the data https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4rBe1fGPZU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4rBe1fGPZU
jmclnx 2y ago
The answer is Yes Without anything done about rents, it will get nothing but worse. Look at the slums surrounding various third world countries. The US is heading straight for that on a bullet train.
- senkora 2y ago
  I would bet against the US ending up with third-world-style slums. My understanding is that those tend to develop when the rural population moves en masse to the cities for better opportunity. The people in those slums are mostly "normal" and have familial support networks; they're just really poor and there aren't enough houses for them. Also, third-world countries have much less state capacity to clear the slums and enforce order. The problem in the US is quite different. The US has already urbanized, so there isn't a flood of internal migration to the cities. Instead, homeless people are either mentally ill or are "normal" but can't afford the cost of housing. The "normal" people are usually able to access assistance like shelters and eventually get back on their feet, maybe moving to a lower cost-of-living area, or maybe moving in with family. The chronically homeless are usually mentally ill. Also, the US has very high state capacity to clear encampments and slums when it chooses to do so. You can generally bet on the US government to enforce the property rights of landowners and evict encampments on private land. There are "a lot" of chronically homeless in the US, but there are orders of magnitude more slum dwellers in the third-world. The types of people are very different in each situation, and the relationship between these people and the government are very different as well. There's simply no way for large-scale slums to develop in the US.
  - onemoresoop 2y ago
    You have some points, we're not at the third-world-style slums level and yet there are people with jobs (sometimes two) who live in their car. That should give you some pondering to do. The situation is worse than it seems, there are more and more people living from paycheck to paycheck mainly due to very high cost of housing, some of them very close to becoming homeless at any time without having any drug problems or serious mental health problems. Some are depressed, yes, but you would to if you were in a similar situation with no hope of things getting better, because things are actually getting worse...
  - bb88 2y ago
    > There's simply no way for large-scale slums to develop in the US. In one sense, that's correct. If there were a slum in the US, the cities could buy back the land through eminent domain and resell it to a developer to build economy apartments. And who would fight it? On the other hand you have Portland, OR, where a lot of people are living on the streets in tents. No matter where you go, you'll see the tents downtown. I was last there this summer, and downtown Portland is just not a city that I'd enjoy. If the cops move them, they'll just move someplace else. Also, it's worth noting, that Portland, OR has a map for the homeless encampments reported to the city. https://pdx.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/c68d1d2e29e444a7b70f20aaafcbfbeb https://pdx.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/c68d1d2e29e444a7...
- kwere 2y ago
  the future of US is most likely some sort of Brazil with lots of gun violence
Spivak 2y ago
Great article that doesn't follow the iron law of question titles. Undoing the smoothing of aggregate statistics so you can see what's really happening where is fantastic. It makes it very obvious why there's many people on the yes and no side. It's interesting that homelessness is clearly loosely concentrated around states with large metro areas but skips over some with no clear reason why. Weather would be the obvious one but NY, Vermont and Maine are cold as hell.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
tracker1 2y ago
That makes a lot of assumptions, starting with the data collection methods for the number of homeless is even accurate. California's own estimates are nearly 3x the 0.2% amount for the US. In a concentrated area, even a small percentage can be massive in terms of practical numbers. It really depends on where you are.
emchammer 2y ago
I just read that Governor Newsom has ordered the clearing of homeless encampments. Where will those people go?
- reverius42 2y ago
  Somewhere “humane” I’m sure.
- treebeard901 2y ago
  There are very few shelters and long term housing available in California compared to the number of homeless. Many lose all their stuff during the sweeps. Which causes them to move to another area and set up a new area to live. So many encampments now have zombiefied people who can't even stand up straight, much less fight against a system determined that they are a lost cause, have no value economically or even as a fundamental human being. After seeing this in CA but also all across the country as I have travelled the best I can compare it to is that we have state and federal run public execution mazes that hide in plain sight nearly everywhere. Many are provided with the money, drugs and equipment to injest the drugs, and being homeless is a maze of misery designed to keep you trapped inside. Outside of this the amount of either not caring and pretending this isn't happening or the more common outright hatred for someone in this position. It's almost like everyone wishes this system of execution would move faster to clear the problem up. The whole system is a scam from the Government, courts, police and homeless services... Not every shelter or food source, but very many are not getting services to those who need it. It's surprising to seeing this economic hatred of this specific underclass in California most of all. Maybe with all the tech money, California lost sense of what matters and the inherent value in every human life, whether homeless or not. It is a crisis on the level to call in FEMA and National Guards to sort of get these people clean so they can begin recovering.

11 points by surprisetalk 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-about https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-... has some great data about homelessness. It's mostly correlated with high housing costs. West Virginia has a huge opioid problem for instance, but lower rates of homelessness because it has low housing costs. The author is also a good speaker. He visited our city recently and I went to check it out and thought he did a good job presenting the data https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4rBe1fGPZU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4rBe1fGPZU

jmclnx 2y ago

The answer is Yes Without anything done about rents, it will get nothing but worse. Look at the slums surrounding various third world countries. The US is heading straight for that on a bullet train.

senkora 2y ago
I would bet against the US ending up with third-world-style slums. My understanding is that those tend to develop when the rural population moves en masse to the cities for better opportunity. The people in those slums are mostly "normal" and have familial support networks; they're just really poor and there aren't enough houses for them. Also, third-world countries have much less state capacity to clear the slums and enforce order. The problem in the US is quite different. The US has already urbanized, so there isn't a flood of internal migration to the cities. Instead, homeless people are either mentally ill or are "normal" but can't afford the cost of housing. The "normal" people are usually able to access assistance like shelters and eventually get back on their feet, maybe moving to a lower cost-of-living area, or maybe moving in with family. The chronically homeless are usually mentally ill. Also, the US has very high state capacity to clear encampments and slums when it chooses to do so. You can generally bet on the US government to enforce the property rights of landowners and evict encampments on private land. There are "a lot" of chronically homeless in the US, but there are orders of magnitude more slum dwellers in the third-world. The types of people are very different in each situation, and the relationship between these people and the government are very different as well. There's simply no way for large-scale slums to develop in the US.
- onemoresoop 2y ago
  You have some points, we're not at the third-world-style slums level and yet there are people with jobs (sometimes two) who live in their car. That should give you some pondering to do. The situation is worse than it seems, there are more and more people living from paycheck to paycheck mainly due to very high cost of housing, some of them very close to becoming homeless at any time without having any drug problems or serious mental health problems. Some are depressed, yes, but you would to if you were in a similar situation with no hope of things getting better, because things are actually getting worse...
- bb88 2y ago
  > There's simply no way for large-scale slums to develop in the US. In one sense, that's correct. If there were a slum in the US, the cities could buy back the land through eminent domain and resell it to a developer to build economy apartments. And who would fight it? On the other hand you have Portland, OR, where a lot of people are living on the streets in tents. No matter where you go, you'll see the tents downtown. I was last there this summer, and downtown Portland is just not a city that I'd enjoy. If the cops move them, they'll just move someplace else. Also, it's worth noting, that Portland, OR has a map for the homeless encampments reported to the city. https://pdx.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/c68d1d2e29e444a7b70f20aaafcbfbeb https://pdx.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/c68d1d2e29e444a7...
kwere 2y ago
the future of US is most likely some sort of Brazil with lots of gun violence

Spivak 2y ago

Great article that doesn't follow the iron law of question titles. Undoing the smoothing of aggregate statistics so you can see what's really happening where is fantastic. It makes it very obvious why there's many people on the yes and no side. It's interesting that homelessness is clearly loosely concentrated around states with large metro areas but skips over some with no clear reason why. Weather would be the obvious one but NY, Vermont and Maine are cold as hell.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

tracker1 2y ago

That makes a lot of assumptions, starting with the data collection methods for the number of homeless is even accurate. California's own estimates are nearly 3x the 0.2% amount for the US. In a concentrated area, even a small percentage can be massive in terms of practical numbers. It really depends on where you are.

emchammer 2y ago

I just read that Governor Newsom has ordered the clearing of homeless encampments. Where will those people go?

reverius42 2y ago
Somewhere “humane” I’m sure.
treebeard901 2y ago
There are very few shelters and long term housing available in California compared to the number of homeless. Many lose all their stuff during the sweeps. Which causes them to move to another area and set up a new area to live. So many encampments now have zombiefied people who can't even stand up straight, much less fight against a system determined that they are a lost cause, have no value economically or even as a fundamental human being. After seeing this in CA but also all across the country as I have travelled the best I can compare it to is that we have state and federal run public execution mazes that hide in plain sight nearly everywhere. Many are provided with the money, drugs and equipment to injest the drugs, and being homeless is a maze of misery designed to keep you trapped inside. Outside of this the amount of either not caring and pretending this isn't happening or the more common outright hatred for someone in this position. It's almost like everyone wishes this system of execution would move faster to clear the problem up. The whole system is a scam from the Government, courts, police and homeless services... Not every shelter or food source, but very many are not getting services to those who need it. It's surprising to seeing this economic hatred of this specific underclass in California most of all. Maybe with all the tech money, California lost sense of what matters and the inherent value in every human life, whether homeless or not. It is a crisis on the level to call in FEMA and National Guards to sort of get these people clean so they can begin recovering.