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I see this take a lot but it's a very static take on homelessness. Yes, homeless people are often in a mental state where they are difficult to take care of. H

• 18172828286177 1y ago
  > Often, the reason they are unstable is because they are homeless I think a more common situation is that they are on the street because they are unstable, but being on the street makes it much worse.
  • aqme28 1y ago
    Yeah I buy that to some extent. But according to the studies I've read, the primary driver of homelessness is rising rent, not mental health issues. See e.g. https://www.statista.com/chart/32585/change-in-median-rent-and-homelessness-in-us-cities/ https://www.statista.com/chart/32585/change-in-median-rent-a...
    • ty6853 1y ago
      Having actually built, planned, and done all the paperwork for a house myself most the extra costs that can't be worked around (you can DIY everything if you want) is permitting, inspection, and codes. I just didn't get my house inspected nor did I submit engineered plans, so saved tons of money, but most people don't have the option to bypass 'safety' inspections and they get gutted like a pig following all those rules. The actual materials cost of a house, you can build one for $60k no problem and absolute shit-tons of cheap land near jobs (ex: unemployment extremely low in the Dakotas, cheap land, high demand for homeless-tier labor in the fields in bumfucklandia as ICE deports illegals making farmers desperate for anybody).
      • smegger001 1y ago
        They may be desperate to hire anybody, but not everyone is willing, with good reason, to work 16 hour days with no overtime pay and sub-minimum wage no benefits and work for only part of the year and get paid under the table. only reason it make since for migrants is the low cost/standard of living back home and currency arbitrage where us dollar are worth so much more than their own currency.
        • ty6853 1y ago
          You can enter Mexico, and they have only checked I had paperwork/passport about one times of ten. No reason why you can't do the same thing if you want to do currency arbitrage. Paraguay will give you a residence permit pretty much just for showing up if you can get ahold of a USA passport, or you can avail yourself of the compact of free association and live in Micronesia without a visa. The arbitrage game is for everybody.
          • deleted 1y ago
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        • RankingMember 1y ago
          Yep, there's plenty of awful jobs with no requirements but a pulse. The problem is that they'll grind your spirit and take all of your dignity and time, if not outright scam you themselves (see: MLM).
      • schmookeeg 1y ago
        I have trouble with a worldview that does not include "the Dakotas" in "bumfucklandia"
    • 18172828286177 1y ago
      I mean, I hate to be cliched, but correlation does not imply causation. There are many possible confounding factors that could be at play here.
      • astine 1y ago
        Correlation may not imply causation, but where there is causation there usually is correlation. So, if there is a rise in homelessness there is likely some factor contributing to that and if a factor is correlated there is a good chance that it's causal. Homelessness may caused by multiple factors but if it's increasing and those factors are mostly remaining static then looking for the one that is also increasing seems like a good bet.
      • UncleMeat 1y ago
        Sure. But that's surely better than your "I think" above that is just based in a hunch.
    • anon291 1y ago
      Keep in mind these are the same economists who said that Milei's reforms would not alleviate Argentina's inflation
    • RajT88 1y ago
      Yes, a big chunk of the homeless are referred to as "invisible" because they seem normal and may even have jobs.
• ty6853 1y ago
  That works as long as they don't strip out all the copper wiring, appliances, doors, windows, and anything else of value either because of drugs or some other unmet real need or other issues that come up when inevitably they can't be monitored 24/7. Which probably will only happen sometimes, but it only takes a few to destroy the whole program due to the sky high cost of construction in the US. You probably need some buy in, like have the homeless people go into a wood with an axe and build their own cabin. Then it's all their own labor if they lose it.
• bko 1y ago
  Maybe for some, but how do you see it playing out? Suppose you're living in LA or NYC, and you lose your job, get evicted (takes a few months and you can't land on your feet by then) and then move all your stuff to a shopping cart and start sleeping under a bridge? I'm sure this has happened, but if I were in that situation I would begin by moving out of one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the world. Go to the library, find cheap cost of living and high job availability place, and get a one way bus ticket there. Literally anything is better than living on the street. This is all to say I'm skeptical of the explanation that people living on the street are just like me except with bad luck. Temporarily, sure. A few nights crashing on someones couch or sleeping in a park or bus station. But chronically homeless people. I think the overwhelming majority of them are not rational actors (could be induced by drug abuse, mental illness, some combination of the two). So giving them keys to a home won't really solve their problems.
  • deleted 1y ago
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  • goosedragons 1y ago
    Where are these cheap cost of living and high job availability places? How do you rent a place in a city you've likely never been, without a job already lined up, presumedly no money for a deposit? What do you do when you realize this cheap cost of living place pretty much demands a car to be livable?
    • bko 1y ago
      Pretty much anything is better than sleeping on the street. Why would you choose to let your last money run out and then you're stuck somewhere where if you have no reasonable way to afford rent on a low paying job. For instance, move to Cleveland Ohio. Median home price is $173k. Rent is also cheap. I don't know, make it work. Whats the alternative? Stay in a city and sleep on the street because you don't want to figure out a bus schedule?
      • goosedragons 1y ago
• edude03 1y ago
  bko in the sibling comment said nearly exactly what I was going to say. While I do agree that you can "fall into" this start and it's very difficult to get out of - I'm very skeptical that with no other contributing preexisting factors you wouldn't be able to figure something out. You'd have to be extremely unlikely to - not have any family - not have any friends - not have any savings - not have anything they could sell - not have any ability to do even temp work (IE, had some traumatic debilitating accident) - Not being able to move somewhere that's cheaper - Not being able to take advantage of any social programs (I'm canadian, it's pretty easy for example to get a large portion of your school paid by the government) And if _all_ of this was true, other than potentially avoiding the impacts of being homeless - how would being given a place to live (especially in a High cost of living area) fix any of your other pretty serious issues?
  • camgunz 1y ago
    > - not have any family / friends This is largely true [0]. > - not have any savings Americans basically don't have savings; median is $8k [1]. People of color save less, as do people in urban areas, as do poorer people [2], all of which is in line with who is more likely to be homeless. > - not have anything they could sell If you think about what one might go through on the path to foreclosure or eviction, you probably sell/lose a lot of things trying to keep your home. Maybe selling your car bought you a few months, maybe you needed it for your job(s) and it got repossessed. There are a lot of circumstances where this can happen: a partner dying, moving out to avoid intimate partner violence, health care costs, etc. This is a "slowly and then all at once" type of thing. > - not have any ability to do even temp work (IE, had some traumatic debilitating accident) Most of the time they're already working; 53% of homeless and 40% of unsheltered homeless are employed [3]. > - Not being able to move somewhere that's cheaper Moving is very expensive in both a time and money sense: - find time to pack - find a new place - maybe find a new job(s) - put down deposits on everything - purchase packing supplies - either hire movers or do it yourself (if you're able) - find time to move - find time to unpack This might seem like a ridiculous and petty list, but when you have very little time and money you think like this. It's also super stressful to think like this. > - Not being able to take advantage of any social programs (I'm canadian, it's pretty easy for example to get a large portion of your school paid by the government) US/US State social programs have huge paperwork burdens, onerous anti-fraud requirements, and don't even give you enough money to make rent after all that (the frenzied shouts of "housing subsidies?! do you want housing prices to get even higher?!" are responsible here, also--as always--a healthy amount of racism). [0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK218239/#:~:text=Most%20striking%20was%20the%20fact%20that%20many%20families%20could%20not%20call%20on%20their%20own%20parents%2C%20brothers%2C%20or%20sisters%20as%20resources. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK218239/#:~:text=Most%2... [1]: https://archive.ph/pOOk1 https://archive.ph/pOOk1 (MarketWatch) [2]: https://www.morningstar.com/personal-finance/how-where-you-live-impacts-savings-rates https://www.morningstar.com/personal-finance/how-where-you-l... [3]: https://endhomelessness.org/blog/employed-and-experiencing-homelessness-what-the-numbers-show/ https://endhomelessness.org/blog/employed-and-experiencing-h...
• albrewer 1y ago
  I've housed two sibling that were labeled as "mentally unstable"(raised by mentally abusive narcissists) and "lazy"(has narcolepsy), respectively. Both situations were pretty bad before they landed in our home, but everyone in their lives called us "angels" for taking them in. Each of them lived with my family for two years. All my wife and I did was let them exist in their own space with no pressure to do anything (other than coexist in our house, but that's purely logistics). Both of them have gone on to go to college and pursue their respective dreams. The elder of the two lives independently, and the younger just shipped off to college. The broader point being that most people just need a support network and a stable place to live to start to thrive. Granted, that's just anecdata on my part, but it seems to line up with moth metal health studies I've read when it comes to homelessness.
  • matt-attack 1y ago
    And this is the problem with homelessness. There are two drastically different “classes” of homeless people. There’s the working single mother waitress or nurse who fell behind on bills due to medical debt, maybe rent went up and is just bad at managing spending, saving, etc. Now she’s living in a car. Then there’s the batshit crazy dude who’s living under the bridge who’s staring off into the trees and can’t hold a coherent conversation. This poor soul is not homeless because his landlord raised his rent from $2000 to $2200 and he just can’t eke by. However the mother in case 1, could absolutely benefit from: 1. Better health insurance 2. Better financial education 3. A credit on housing or whatever. This is why no one can agree on homelessness because half the population imagines the “noble” woman scenario and the other half imagines the bat shit dude with his pants around his ankle. The solutions to each are drastically different. So you sound like an idiot when you say “we just need more homes” when you’re picturing scenario 2. But equally people sound like idiots when you say “we just need more mental institutions” but the listener is picturing scenario 1. We’re talking in circles and English needs more words to describe these two drastically different types of people.
    • thegrim33 1y ago
      There's also scenario 3, which you can see pushed throughout this thread - that scenario 2 doesn't really exist, because "that bat shit crazy person smoking fent and screaming at passerbys" was once just a regular, down-on-their luck mother (scenario 1), who was driven insane / driven to drugs by being homeless". We don't really need more words to describe the scenarios. It's all politics, we know what the game is. Whether you see homeless as primarily category 1(/3) or primarily category 2, seems to align overwhelmingly with your preferred brand of politics. And as such, in the current social milieu, there's effectively no constructive conversation that can happen. It's just political extremists being handed their moral justification for their position, refusing to accept any other version of reality that conflicts with it.
• gamblor956 1y ago
  There are two groups of homeless: the financially homeless, which can be helped by providing housing, and the unstable homeless (addicts or mentally ill) for whom housing will do nothing. The majority of homeless are the former; temporarily homeless due to inability to afford housing due to loss of income or increase in rent. But they're not the ones that make the evening news. The unstable homeless are the loud/visible part of the problem. Giving an unstable homeless person housing is just a waste of money because homelessness is just a symptom of their real issues, and it's only a matter of time before they deliberately or accidentally destroy their housing. (This has caused the bankruptcies of two separate major housing providers in L.A.'s Skid Row. LAT has a series of articles on this, subscription required. In a nutshell: for the cost of maintaining and repairing one housing unit for a single unstable homeless person in a year, you could build and maintain 4-5 housing units for the financially homeless, and the metrics get even more skewed over longer time frames.)
  • aqme28 1y ago
    My whole point is that there are not just these two groups. There is instead a pipeline of your group 1 into 2. Give people homes, cut off that pipeline.