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That Venn diagram is pretty close to a circle, at least when talking about homeless people that don’t have a friend/relative they can stay with.

by Auracle 5mo ago

JoshTriplett 5mo ago
> That Venn diagram is pretty close to a circle False, and harmful. US HUD says it's ~16% of homeless people, other sources give different numbers, but it's certainly not a majority, let alone anywhere near 100%. The biggest problem, unsurprisingly, is housing cost. The US GAO states that a $100 increase in median rent correlates to a 9% rise in homelessness. Rents have gone up a lot more than that.
- cyberax 5mo ago
  > False, and harmful. Sorry. But you're either misinformed or actively malicious here. > US HUD says it's ~16% of homeless people It absolutely is close to 100% of _unsheltered_ people. Some social workers helping the unsheltered homeless are now saying that they have not seen anybody who's _not_ on drugs or who is not mentally ill. If you want authoritative source, here's UCLA study from the blessed pre-COVID era: https://capolicylab.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Health-Conditions-Among-Unsheltered-Adults-in-the-US.pdf https://capolicylab.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Health-Co... > The biggest problem, unsurprisingly, is housing cost. No, it's really really not. > The US GAO states that a $100 increase in median rent correlates to a 9% rise in homelessness. And the correlation disappears when you look at the states with cold climate.
  - JoshTriplett 5mo ago
    > If you want authoritative source, here's UCLA study from the blessed pre-COVID era: https://capolicylab.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Health-Co https://capolicylab.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Health-Co... Which specifically leads with a page saying: > Hundreds of studies - including our own - show economic pressures are the primary drivers of homelessness, that housing people ends homelessness, and that targeted financial assistance helps people at risk of homelessness stay stably housed Also, the cited study blatantly does not show the numbers ("close to 100%") you claim it has, even leaving that aside. You're also now equivocating between drugs and mental illness, as well as between drugs and alcohol. And you're not taking into account the direction of cause and effect (e.g. which came first, the homelessness or the addiction). I understand that you're also referencing anecdata from social workers. In those cases, there's an inherent bias: people with a drug problem are going to be harder and more memorable cases, which makes them feel like a larger proportion than they are. People homeless for economic reasons are likely to loom less large in people's minds than the times they dealt with someone who had a drug problem.
    - cyberax 5mo ago
      [flagged]
      - JoshTriplett 5mo ago
        > Care to read it past the preface? I already read the entire thing. You may stop accusing me of bad faith or insufficient research at any time. > Page 5, Figure 4. Thank you for confirming that you cited a chart listing 75% of unsheltered people and called it "close to 100%". I gave exact numbers from the studies I referenced; you exaggerated yours. A more relevant figure from the study is figure 2: 51% of unsheltered people (and 6% of sheltered) say that substance abuse is a cause of their homelessness. Also see figure 3 for other relevant causes. That's leaving aside, again, that you are still equivocating between drugs and alcohol. I would suggest looking at statistics for how many people in the general population drink to excess, if you're going to cite statistics on how many homeless people do. But, of course, "drug addict" is the more evocative and stigmatizing phrase, which makes it harder to get people help. And in any case: yes, of course there's a difference between sheltered and unsheltered, not least of which because we do a poor job of helping people who simultaneously experience drug addiction and homelessness. There's an obvious correlation there, but a major part of it is "drug addiction prevents getting help from shelters". (And I would venture a guess that homelessness makes it harder to get help with drug addiction, though I haven't specifically looked up numbers on that one.) There are many attempted claims in this thread that people "don't want help", and none of that is supported. How many people refuse help, versus how many people can't get the help they need based on the structure of what we provide? On top of that, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48057738 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48057738 for a more nuanced point about lagging indicators: the right interventions happen much earlier in that downward spiral. That is nowhere near the same as a claim that homelessness, in general, is a problem of drug addiction, or that the Venn diagram is a circle. That claim is actively harmful towards efforts to build systems that actually help people. > You failed to do a basic search to verify your claims. Instead, you clutched at the first number that popped out in Google Search. False. Stop assuming that people who come to different conclusions than you have have not done thorough research.
- ipsento606 5mo ago
  > US HUD says it's ~16% of homeless people, other sources give different numbers, but it's certainly not a majority "Homeless people" is a broad category that includes people temporarily living in vehicles, bouncing between family members, or sleeping on a friend's couch. It also includes people who are about to lose their home, young people living alone. But when everyday people use the term, they usually mean, specifically, visible homeless people - i.e. people who are homeless long-term, sleeping rough on the streets or in parks, etc. The two groups are pretty different to each other. I would be very surprised if the rate of drug addiction in the second group was the same as the rate of drug addiction in the first group
  - Dylan16807 5mo ago
    > I would be very surprised if the rate of drug addiction in the second group was the same as the rate of drug addiction in the first group But that's a far far weaker claim than the one above. If the rate is 90% or higher in the second group, then we get close to the claim being true. (Though still a subset rather than the circles being the same; lots of people with drug problems have homes.)
  - queenkjuul 5mo ago
    The people you think are "temporarily" living in vehicles are not doing so temporarily.
    - Taek 5mo ago
      I personally have close to a dozen friends who have spent between 2 and 6 weeks of their life (but not longer) living out of their car in a state of actual temporary homelessness. Almost always due to financial issues. Temporarily living in vehicles is absolutely a thing.
- fourseventy 5mo ago
  Walk down the makeshift tents on the sidewalks of downtown San Francisco and tell me with a straight face that only 16% of those people are addicted to drugs.
  - cwmoore 5mo ago
    This is a textbook example of a biased observation. The conversation on this topic is so basic.
queenkjuul 5mo ago
[flagged]

That Venn diagram is pretty close to a circle, at least when talking about homeless people that don’t have a friend/relative they can stay with.

by Auracle 5mo ago

That Venn diagram is pretty close to a circle, at least when talking about homeless people that don’t have a friend/relative they can stay with.

JoshTriplett 5mo ago

> That Venn diagram is pretty close to a circle False, and harmful. US HUD says it's ~16% of homeless people, other sources give different numbers, but it's certainly not a majority, let alone anywhere near 100%. The biggest problem, unsurprisingly, is housing cost. The US GAO states that a $100 increase in median rent correlates to a 9% rise in homelessness. Rents have gone up a lot more than that.

cyberax 5mo ago
> False, and harmful. Sorry. But you're either misinformed or actively malicious here. > US HUD says it's ~16% of homeless people It absolutely is close to 100% of _unsheltered_ people. Some social workers helping the unsheltered homeless are now saying that they have not seen anybody who's _not_ on drugs or who is not mentally ill. If you want authoritative source, here's UCLA study from the blessed pre-COVID era: https://capolicylab.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Health-Conditions-Among-Unsheltered-Adults-in-the-US.pdf https://capolicylab.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Health-Co... > The biggest problem, unsurprisingly, is housing cost. No, it's really really not. > The US GAO states that a $100 increase in median rent correlates to a 9% rise in homelessness. And the correlation disappears when you look at the states with cold climate.
- JoshTriplett 5mo ago
  > If you want authoritative source, here's UCLA study from the blessed pre-COVID era: https://capolicylab.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Health-Co https://capolicylab.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Health-Co... Which specifically leads with a page saying: > Hundreds of studies - including our own - show economic pressures are the primary drivers of homelessness, that housing people ends homelessness, and that targeted financial assistance helps people at risk of homelessness stay stably housed Also, the cited study blatantly does not show the numbers ("close to 100%") you claim it has, even leaving that aside. You're also now equivocating between drugs and mental illness, as well as between drugs and alcohol. And you're not taking into account the direction of cause and effect (e.g. which came first, the homelessness or the addiction). I understand that you're also referencing anecdata from social workers. In those cases, there's an inherent bias: people with a drug problem are going to be harder and more memorable cases, which makes them feel like a larger proportion than they are. People homeless for economic reasons are likely to loom less large in people's minds than the times they dealt with someone who had a drug problem.
  - cyberax 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    - JoshTriplett 5mo ago
      > Care to read it past the preface? I already read the entire thing. You may stop accusing me of bad faith or insufficient research at any time. > Page 5, Figure 4. Thank you for confirming that you cited a chart listing 75% of unsheltered people and called it "close to 100%". I gave exact numbers from the studies I referenced; you exaggerated yours. A more relevant figure from the study is figure 2: 51% of unsheltered people (and 6% of sheltered) say that substance abuse is a cause of their homelessness. Also see figure 3 for other relevant causes. That's leaving aside, again, that you are still equivocating between drugs and alcohol. I would suggest looking at statistics for how many people in the general population drink to excess, if you're going to cite statistics on how many homeless people do. But, of course, "drug addict" is the more evocative and stigmatizing phrase, which makes it harder to get people help. And in any case: yes, of course there's a difference between sheltered and unsheltered, not least of which because we do a poor job of helping people who simultaneously experience drug addiction and homelessness. There's an obvious correlation there, but a major part of it is "drug addiction prevents getting help from shelters". (And I would venture a guess that homelessness makes it harder to get help with drug addiction, though I haven't specifically looked up numbers on that one.) There are many attempted claims in this thread that people "don't want help", and none of that is supported. How many people refuse help, versus how many people can't get the help they need based on the structure of what we provide? On top of that, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48057738 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48057738 for a more nuanced point about lagging indicators: the right interventions happen much earlier in that downward spiral. That is nowhere near the same as a claim that homelessness, in general, is a problem of drug addiction, or that the Venn diagram is a circle. That claim is actively harmful towards efforts to build systems that actually help people. > You failed to do a basic search to verify your claims. Instead, you clutched at the first number that popped out in Google Search. False. Stop assuming that people who come to different conclusions than you have have not done thorough research.
ipsento606 5mo ago
> US HUD says it's ~16% of homeless people, other sources give different numbers, but it's certainly not a majority "Homeless people" is a broad category that includes people temporarily living in vehicles, bouncing between family members, or sleeping on a friend's couch. It also includes people who are about to lose their home, young people living alone. But when everyday people use the term, they usually mean, specifically, visible homeless people - i.e. people who are homeless long-term, sleeping rough on the streets or in parks, etc. The two groups are pretty different to each other. I would be very surprised if the rate of drug addiction in the second group was the same as the rate of drug addiction in the first group
- Dylan16807 5mo ago
  > I would be very surprised if the rate of drug addiction in the second group was the same as the rate of drug addiction in the first group But that's a far far weaker claim than the one above. If the rate is 90% or higher in the second group, then we get close to the claim being true. (Though still a subset rather than the circles being the same; lots of people with drug problems have homes.)
- queenkjuul 5mo ago
  The people you think are "temporarily" living in vehicles are not doing so temporarily.
  - Taek 5mo ago
    I personally have close to a dozen friends who have spent between 2 and 6 weeks of their life (but not longer) living out of their car in a state of actual temporary homelessness. Almost always due to financial issues. Temporarily living in vehicles is absolutely a thing.
fourseventy 5mo ago
Walk down the makeshift tents on the sidewalks of downtown San Francisco and tell me with a straight face that only 16% of those people are addicted to drugs.
- cwmoore 5mo ago
  This is a textbook example of a biased observation. The conversation on this topic is so basic.

queenkjuul 5mo ago

[flagged]