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California fails to track its homelessness spending or results, a new audit says
- b59831 2y ago[dead]
- aeternum 2y agoThen the voters say "It must be audited!" and another oversight committee is created (at the cost of taxpayers) and some numbers are published to a cryptic PDF that no one looks at and nothing changes.
- donsupreme 2y agoYou didn't mention that the administrative costs of the oversight committee were later found to be unauditable as well.
- xyst 2y ago“Who watches the watchers?”
- daft_pink 2y agoI’m not sure that they meant financial auditors when they created that quote. They were talking about people with either police powers or state security apparatus that does more than verifying financial metrics and can actually do something beyond changing a few numbers in a spreadsheet from a far.
- x2tyfi 2y agoYeah. It would be so much more effective to just establish key metrics (and tracking methods) up front, rather than try to unearth everything after the fact. This seems like a really common problem in government. How do you influence politicians to enforce more data driven policy making?
- morkalork 2y agoIf you were up front with KPIs before embarking on a project, you couldn't game them so that's going to be an uphill battle.
- doctorpangloss 2y agoHow do KPIs work at your job?
- x2tyfi 2y agoThis assumes nefarious intent in government. It’s much more likely that the problem is simply ineptitude and lack of expertise.
- lazide 2y agoPeople put money towards these projects as a type of guilt spending, not a practical problem solving one.
- x2tyfi 2y agoWhy would you think that? My take is that they’re spending the money the best they know - they just don’t have the expertise to do so effectively (i.e.: establishing and tracking metrics)
- lazide 2y agoWhen it’s been decades of high profile failures, with no apparent attempt to establish or track metrics - despite a clear need to, it’s hard to see it any other way. The relationship with taxpayers seems to be one of a roadside beggar (aka help me or feel bad), rather than a client/service (something for something), eh?
- aeternum 2y agoI think the issue is that government needs help from the non-profits to get things like this approved. A strong marketing effort. And the non-profits only agree to put their weight behind it if they get a significant benefit. Thus there's nothing inherently nefarious, and the people in government might even have a good idea of how to do it more efficiently, but their choices are: 1) get nothing passed or 2) get something inefficient with handouts(or incentives depending on your view) to those groups that help pass it. I'd like to see more ballot initiatives with a focus on efficiency. Run them alongside the similar initiative with all the handouts and see which voters choose when actually given the choice.
- bloodyplonker22 2y agoIf you look at two charts: 1) The amount spent on homelessness in California 2) The number of homeless in California you will realize that both charts could represent a fast growing SAAS business. One for revenue and the other for users. The people working in the government sector known as the homeless industrial complex have incentive to keep the charts going in that direction.
- reocha 2y agoThe only real effective solution to homelessness is to give homeless people houses and then extra support, other solutions (whilst having some beneficial effect) aren't sufficient. However the concept of a homeless industrial complex has essentially been pushed and overblown by right wing think tanks with significantly worse solutions.
- lazide 2y agoHahahaha, that won’t solve it either. That just incentivizes categorizing people as homeless so the industry can create substandard housing at inflated prices (to the taxpayer) and lock them into it (while charging the taxpayer to administer it forever). See the racket that is ‘affordable housing’ in the same areas. The thing to realize here is that these groups would rather have a large, unsolvable problem they can constantly try to ‘fix’ at great expense, than actually resolve a real problem.
- 4RealFreedom 2y ago24 billion dollars for 184,000 homeless people (United States Department of Housing and Urban Development estimate). That's 135k per person. Where is the money going if not the homeless industrial complex?
- fragmede 2y agoCruelty costs extra
- _heimdall 2y agoNothing like starting major governmental programs with zero metrics for success or accountability requirements to make the public feel confident in their tax dollars.
- xyst 2y agoThere’s been worse. It’s called the TSA.
- Arubis 2y agoThe TSA is a jobs program, and one that was easily sold to a part of the electorate that typically resists jobs programs. Granted, I’d rather just cut people a cheque and skip the theatre.
- toast0 2y agoIn the before times, the jobs programs were more useful, at least in theory. Can we get a new WPA that hires away the TSA agents... Even if the public works aren't great, it's better than a jobs program for people to annoy and delay the public.
- shitlord 2y agoThe TSA isn't just annoying. Air travel is safer than driving, so by disincentivizing flight, they have arguably produced many traffic fatalities.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- xyst 2y agoAbolish TSA in favor of UBI. let’s gooo
- _heimdall 2y agoLet's first define how the heck a UBI would actually help. Writing everyone a check just increases prices and racks up more federal debt. The real kicker is that we simply can't test it. There have been studies trying to do a real world test, but the data is useless because they can only test a small bubble of people getting free cash in the middle of our existing system where no one else gets that same money.
- jeffbee 2y ago[flagged]
- cyberax 2y agoOregon and Washington are similar. Zero accountability and zero metrics. That's on purpose. The vast majority of unsheltered homeless are now drug addicts and/or have serious mental health issues, and there's simply no way this can be fixed without harsh unpopular ("you want to hurt poors!") measures. But hey, drug overdoses provide a glut of kidneys and occasional hearts and lungs for transplantation: https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/16/health/drug-overdoses-organ-transplants-study/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/16/health/drug-overdoses-organ-t... It's a trainwreck.
- jrflowers 2y agoI like “zero metrics” followed up by “vast majority”. It is like “the problem is that there is no data to support the thing that I’m about to say, which I am sure of regardless”
- cyberax 2y agoThe "vast majority" comes from the studies done by third parties (UCLA, in this case). Link: https://www.capolicylab.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Health-Conditions-Among-Unsheltered-Adults-in-the-U.S..pdf https://www.capolicylab.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Healt...
- jrflowers 2y agoThis makes sense if you count 20% as a “vast majority” of a group. The singular use of “serious mental illness” in that pdf is this sentence. >In this study we use clinical service records from the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health to estimate 20% of individuals participating in Street Outreach services had a clinical diagnosis of serious mental illness within the previous twelve years. Alternatively if you simply imagine that any and every counted incident of any mental health issue as being serious to the point of calling for mysterious unpopular “hurt the poors” policy, you do not even need a pdf to back that up. You can simply believe it in your heart like a matter of faith
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- DonnyV 2y ago[flagged]
- SSJPython 2y agoThey don't want to end homelessness because then so many activists and organizations will be out of a job. It's a perverse incentive. The key to tackling the housing crisis is to build more housing, particularly high-density housing. And to do that, zoning laws must be deregulated and liberalized, if not outright abolished in some instances. But of course, the activists will never agree to that because it's a market-centered reform and because they are rich NIMBYs. More housing will mean the properties they own will decrease in value. The scarce housing supply and the continued existence of the homelessness problem is great for their own wallet.
- donw 2y agoHousing is only part of it. Most people on the streets aren't capable of maintaining a house, mostly thanks to drug use, with mental illness as a smaller-but-still-significant secondary cause. Fixing this would also put a bunch of activists out of a job, would remove a lot of cover for state-sponsored domestic terror activities, and would require harsh measures that are total non-starters. Ergo, nothing is going to change on this front until either powerful interests want it to change, or until there is some sort of mass event that kills off a substantial fraction of the population.
- resize2996 2y agoWhat do you mean by "state-sponsored domestic terror activities"? What kind of "harsh measures" would you propose to solve the homelessness crisis?
- resize2996 2y agoCan you be more specific with the claim "They don't want to end homelessness"? Who is "They"? Are there examples to support this claim? I think you are generalizing "activists" too much.
- siliconc0w 2y agoWhat would setup the proper incentive here? I'd think something like low-interest construction loans and rent subsidies for new construction high density affordable housing.