L.A. to declare 'state of emergency' on homelessness
latimes.com
latimes.com
$100m isn't really a lot, but if that money can be offered to help people that need more than money and a roof over their head, it could do some genuine good.
I totally agree that the solution is not "just build more homes", but needs to include better access to debt management; better access to drug and alcohol rehab; better access to work; and better access to MH treatment.
http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/Mental_Illness.pd...
> According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 20 to 25% of the homeless population in the United States suffers from some form of severe mental illness. In comparison, only 6% of Americans are severely mentally ill (National Institute of Mental Health, 2009). In a 2008 survey performed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, 25 cities were asked for the three largest causes of homelessness in their communities. Mental illness was the third largest cause of homelessness for single adults (mentioned by 48% of cities). For homeless families, mental illness was mentioned by 12% of cities as one of the top 3 causes of homelessness
This can't be right. A previous HN discussed how "almost half of homeless men had traumatic brain injury in their lifetime"
(It might lead to intellectual disability but there's nothing in your linked document that talks about the severity of the TBI.)
There is a tax in SF to provide healthcare to service industry workers -- waitstaff, cooks, bartenders, etc.
SF pays ~25K/year on EACH homeless person (according to a study that was published recently -- ill go look for it in a sec.)
That 25K goes to pay CITY workers who ostensibly are providing the "services" that hte homeless get...
I argue that we, instead, pay the homeless a min income... AND provide several KEY services: Free clothing, hygenic facilities (showers and restrooms), micro housing and access to mental health care.
Imagine providing a 'tiny-house', basic scrubs-like clothing and hygenic resources to the homeless population how different the situation would be.
SF pays 25K per year per homeless person... thats $68 per DAY.
What person could not survive on $68 per day?
Assume that you take ~60% of that cost toward paying for the clothing and housing and showers....
That means that you have $40 per day to pay for the housing and showers...
28 for food. 28/3 is about $8 per meal... 3 meals a day.
So - thats $1200/month in housing costs and 840/month in food.
This is completely doable...
Rather than WASTING 25K on "services" which is really a bunch of bureaucratic bullshit and inefficient failure...
Finally, if you were to take the $840 that could be allotted to food stuffs, and come up with a "standard pantry" of items that is fully stocked for each -- then you could also train the homeless into feeding themselves healthily.
This would be a great use of a "city tax" where every bill could have some small % charged against it.
Keep the whole thing open and transparent...
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/S-F-spendi...
And clearly the current efforts in spending are failing:
https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/3dle26/number...
These days I live in Ann Arbor and we have a fairly serious homeless problem (I get harassed on the street nearly every time I walk downtown). The city itself offers excellent resources for the homeless to both survive and "get back on their feet", a situation that has not gone unnoticed by surrounding districts which have literally loaded up vans with homeless people and driven them 40 miles to dump them in Ann Arbor.
http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2014/11/ann_ar...
The homeless are absolutely a problem, but you're naive if you think anything done to address the problem on a per city basis is going to fix anything. This is a national issue that calls for expanded mental services, more rehabilitation, and strict policing. Anything done on a smaller level will just encourage migration of homeless to take advantage.
EDIT: I'm fine with downvoting, but I do ask that you give me solid factual and evidence based arguments for why my point is wrong. Implying I lack compassion is neither accurate or a useful discussion of how to address this problem, and that's where my interest lies when I make a comment like this.
You didn't look hard enough.
Here's an article about homeless people in Ulan Bator, where temperatures reach -40.
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/underground-and-off...
If they choose to stay in that position and I never see them that's still a massive net positive. If people want to get obliterated by their addictions and ignore any help available to them then it's silly to interfere with or enable that lifestyle. At that point they've made a choice and I expect the local police to deal with the problem of homeless aggression and harassment. Make help available, and if they choose not to take advantage then continue to remind them help is available while at the same time keeping them from being a public nuisance.
To give you a personal experience: I was followed for a full block and cussed out by a homeless guy just the other day, a choice quote was "it's fuckin Ann Arbor man I know you got money!". My crime? "Sorry, I don't have anything for you, there's a shelter nearby that could really help you out".
These people are a problem, and it's not just because they're "suffering". No individual city is going to fix this problem, and frankly no country is going to fully fix it either. Denmark for example still has a sizable homeless problem despite a massive amount of help available simply because some people choose to be chronically homeless.
Why do you think homelessness is a choice?
Why do you think addiction is a choice?
To give you a personal experience: The other day, I ran into five or six panhandlers on the walk between my apartment and the local Target. Without exception, each asked for change and each -without exception- either wordlessly accepted my refusal, or offered some variant of "Okay. Have a nice day.".
Panhandlers and homeless are people like any other. Some of them are obnoxious as shit, just like any other random slice of humanity. Some of them are gaming the system. Some of them are in temporary, but dire need. Some of them will always be in need due to some sort of serious, lasting damage.
I heartily agree that our country has failed a huge chunk of the poor who are in need of psychiatric services. Reinstating funding for effective, humane, state-run mental hospitals is probably about as important as setting up a self-sustaining colony on Mars. [0]
> My entire childhood growing up I never saw a single homeless person...
My parents also shielded me from all sorts of ugly and unfortunate things while I was growing up. I'm not sure that this decision was wise, but it's far too late to change it now. It wasn't until much, much later in life that I learned a little about how to look for the homeless, beggars, and squatters, and the measures that The State employs to try to keep them out of the public eye.
> If [the homeless] choose to [continue to live in homeless outreach programs]...
You missed an important sentence in the bit that you quoted:
>> But there are few opportunities for work once they get out, so the path often leads back to the streets and drink.
If you don't have a way to make enough money to get a place, it's very, very hard to get a place. If you get a dollar a day, and you spend a dollar a day, you're pretty much never going to be able to materially improve your situation on your own.
[0] That is to say, very, very important.
"the homeless are shameless opportunists who go wherever they can most leech off society"
I'm in a privileged position, and in all honesty, I don't know enough about homelessness to make particularly informed comments on the subject. You need to start with compassion and an attempt at understanding otherwise you won't get anywhere.
Look at the situation in Europe right now, there are literally millions of refugees that will become part of the homeless class. "shameless opportunists"? I think not.
What about the kids born into it?
But you know enough to say omniusaspirer is wrong?
> What about the kids born into it?
What about the children? Should we debate about their place in society instead of fixing the system that created homeless kids? That same question can be used to accuse the hug-away-homelessness types of perpetuating perverse incentives.
I'm pretty sure I don't know how to help the homeless as a group, but you can't eat melodrama. Give a grumpy person half the leeway you'd give a panhandler, please.
I don't need to know anything at all about homelessness to know that looking down on any group in society as a whole unit is wrong (and unproductive).
I'm not using a flawed "what about the children" argument here, in case you misunderstood. It's pretty straightforward; there are people literally born into a situation that they have no control over, so you can't make any judgements about their character due to the life they've "chosen".
Of course that's a single extreme example to prove a point. You don't need to do much research to see that this isn't a class of people who have chosen to take an easy path to leach of society.
http://england.shelter.org.uk/campaigns/why_we_campaign/tack...
-aidos
> ... looking down on any group in society as a whole unit is wrong (and unproductive).
Unless they think enabling homelessness causes homelessness? You don't know omniusaspirer. He or she could have been homeless at some point. He or she called for a national comprehensive solution and increased spending, but that's not good enough? Do we need to be feelings police and check privilege this aggressively? Why would you alienate potential allies in the fight against homelessness?
And, for what it's worth, I have lost family members to homelessness. And not due to a lack of compassion or resources. There was more than understanding, there was love, and it wasn't enough.
There may be some misinterpretation going on but I certainly didn't mean to imply that I was judging anything about omniusaspirer based on privilege or otherwise.
My point was that a comment like "homeless are shameless opportunists who go wherever they can most leech off society" is incredibly hateful talk to apply to a broad group of people. It's an ugly narrative, and if you attach those labels to a group of people you don't even know it's hard to imagine how you're going to help them.
I wasn't suggesting compassion and understanding as any form of solution.
Partially, this sort of narrative is one I'm particularly aware of at the moment. Over the last few months the British press have been using similar sorts of narratives to create an "us and them" gulf between humans and refugees.
I do stand by my comment. If you treat people as a lower class of being (as I would argue "homeless are shameless opportunists who go wherever they can most leech off society" suggests) then you'll struggle to solve these issues at a social level.
Aside from all that – I'd like to hope that we all want to help solve this issue. I've been doing a little googling around but haven't managed to find very good information on homeless causes. There must be bucketloads of research into it. I'd love to understand a little more about it.
If people wonder why Donald Trump is a thing, it's the backlash against this kind of thought policing. And Donald Trump is a terrible person, so please don't make me agree with him. I will not accept that the answer to an "us and them" narrative is to pick a new "them".
Yeah, the "shameless" comment was cold and dumb, but he's not apologizing... what are you going to do about it? Making sure people feel the right way is a terrible battle to fight on many levels.
And similarly, Omniusaspirer (along with every other person) was literally born into a situation that he had no control over. So you can't make any judgements about his character, right?
But in response to your question – I fail to see where I'm making a judgements based on a stereotype. All I was saying is that it's dangerous to form a narrative based on stereotypes.
I'm sure you're right in so much as, people are going to make their situation as workable as possible. If you can easily choose an environment that makes life easier, you probably will.
If the city has 'excellent resources for the homeless to both survive and "get back on their feet"' you have to ask the question, why isn't it working? Maybe it is? Maybe it's just not working fast enough?
Maybe the most productive thing to do is to look at this population of humans and say - what do each of them have to offer to make society better. How do we harness that in a positive way for everyone. Like I said in my other comment – I don't know anything about homelessness so I can't really discuss the solutions in any detail.
Vicious cold? Check. Impoverished? Check. Rural? Check. And yet there is homelessness.
http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stat... is titled "States Struggle With 'Hidden' Rural Homelessness"
> But in Fredericksburg, as in other small towns, suburbs and rural corners of the country, the homeless are often hidden, out of sight and mind, hard to reach and hard to help, say people who work with the homeless. ...
> But rural areas are more likely to be poor, with limited transportation, making it that much harder for the homeless to get to a center that can provide counseling, a housing voucher or medical care.
http://www.endhomelessness.org/pages/rural says :
> Many people think of homelessness as strictly an urban phenomenon because homeless people are greater in number and more visible in urban areas, but homelessness is also pervasive in rural areas.
> Rates of homelessness among rural areas vary widely. According to the Alliance’s Geography of Homelessness report, there are approximately 14 homeless people on average for every 10,000 people in rural areas, compared with 29 homeless people out of every 10,000 in urban areas.
All this suggests that you simply didn't see the homelessness that was there when you were a child.
First, I have to be clear: the homeless are a broad population, and calling them all parasites, essentially, is offensive to me. I've spent more time than most talking to homeless, helping them, and I consider many homeless people to be friends. A lot of them are mentally ill, and they are ill in ways that are easily identifiable from a brief encounter. However a lot of them are ill in ways that are just as damaging, but not easily identified. One rather common example: depression. From the outside they look normal, but if you spend any time at all talking with them, it's clear that something is very wrong. Some of them have trouble regulating their emotions, and it's not that they just don't try. It's not a problem that they can think their way out of, and medication often isn't that effective. Some of them are physically ill, but again, it's not clear just looking at them that somethings wrong. One friend of mine had a heart attack, got MRSA in the hospital which became a 9 month ICU visit that cleared him out of all his money. The end result was six or seven years of homelessness, until he could get into subsidized housing.
Please note that I'm not saying that all homeless people are just in need of some love and understanding and then everything will be just ducky. The fact is that some homeless people are dangerous and should be locked up. I don't have any trouble with that (although they should get psychological help while locked up).
If I had to guess, based on my (very) limited experience I'd say that about 1/3 of the homeless population is there because of addiction issues, and the remaining 2/3 has serious mental issues.
I agree that there needs to be "expanded mental services, more rehabilitation", however I think the policing needs to be dome very carefully. From the tone of your post, I suspect your idea of "strict policing" is going to cause more harm than good. First, there are some civil rights issues -- it's illegal (in the US) to discriminate against a class of people. That's why cities can't just kick out the homeless, just like they can't ust kick out addicts, or black people. Second, strict policing of homelessness will end up throwing a vulnerable population into jails or prisons, both of which are expensive, overcrowded, and have many other serious problems.
The thing with homelessness is that there isn't any easy, one-size-fits-all answer. It is a difficult problem, and one that will take time and money to address. I don't have any easy answers, either. But there are a lot of people suffering. Also, don't think that you are that far from homelessness. It's not an "us vs. them" issue. Sooner or later all of us get old, or sick, and need someone to take care of us. That's just how life is.
I mean, for some one who is unable to work because he has, for instance, schizophrenia, clinical depression or alcoholism, is there any option apart from indigence?
http://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=31513
In England we'd tend to use prison or jail for prisons and "on remand" for people awaiting trial or sentencing, and "police cells" for other stuff.
In the US a lot of prisons have high populations of people with mental illness. See, for example, the use of prisoners to care for other prisoners who have dementia.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/health/dealing-with-dement...
Prisons are where people actually serve meaningful time. Everyone is in for at least a year and everyone is an actually convicted criminal, not just someone awaiting trial.
In California, specifically, since the recent prison realignment adopted to address Federal court orders with regard to California's overcrowded state prisons, that is substantially less true than it used to be; many non-serious, non-violent, non-sex offenders sentenced to more than one year are now sent to county jails, and population pressure resulting from that has reduced pre-trial detention in many county jails, as well.
This isn't always a bad thing. Some convicts would rather not be moved to a new facility. Jails are normally closer to the place of arrest (usually near home) and by the point sentencing happens families have already developed some sort of routine for visitation. Sending them out of town, even if to a better facility, is not always in the inmate's best interest.
Jails are operated by counties, prisons by the State or Federal government.
Jails are for pre-trial detention and serving sentences for less-serious crimes, prisons for sentences for more serious crimes.
Anecdote of one: I went through a period of un/underemployment a few years ago. So I had no health insurance. My state, Colorado, has an indigent medical care program. I went to their office, filled out the forms, and I qualified.
But in the six months that I tried, I was never seen (and I had an issue, not mental health, but it could have been anything). You cannot get any issue seen to until you've first seen an intake GP. There are not enough GPs available in the system. And there's no wait list, you have to call every day to see if there's an opening. After some months I gave up.
Fast forward, another anecdote of one: I'm in a great job with great benefits. I got depressed. I found a doctor immediately, made an appointment for the next day, and I'm now being treated. Easy peasy.
After money, the most important reason to have a job is health insurance. The ACA makes this a little easier, but you still need money to pay for your affordable policy.
Money.
That's what HandUp (https://handup.org/) is doing.
[0] http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/01/da...
[1] https://www.palantir.com/2015/01/housing-homeless-veterans-w...
I'd love pay an extra tax to fund solutions to this massive problem.
In a democracy taxes would be considered ethical, by most. Even for redistribution.
> Aren't there better ways?
There could be. Do you know any? Use your vote.
People are better off spending their own money in the sense that they get to choose how their money is spent – but their lack of competence/expertise can for instance make them make bad choices (as in choices that don't lead to the desired goal), and resources will thus not be better spent.
Don't get me wrong, though – it's not like politicians are experts either.
Things are seldom as simple as ideological hardliners claim that they are.
The charities people give to? For the most part, it's acute and visible charities. Very few people give to the same charity again and again, over the course of decades. People also give to attractive charities - kids with terminal diseases is a much easier charity to raise money for than mental health in young adults. Same with animals - people care about cruelty to dogs, but they don't care about cruelty to voles. And while you haven't said it, another libertarian refrain is that people would donate more than they get taxed, which is obvious nonsense, because nothing is stopping them from disposing of that extra money.
Anyway, if you don't want "violent" (stupid bloody redefining, that) taxes, then move to Vanuatu. It has good weather, happy people, a small government, and the army is so small it's also the police force (fewer than a thousand people). There's no income tax. Of course, there's little comparable in the way of infrastructure or services, but you'll get to live the libertarian dream of hiring your own garbage collector instead of having one violently forced on you by the incompetant apparatus of the overbearing state.
This. Libertarians live in some sort of idealistic fantasy, where most humans are intrinsically good, and inclined to do good, like help the poor and needy around them. That is emphatically not the nature of the average human. We absolutely need to force and coerce people to do good, under the threat of violence (for non-payment of taxes).
(By the way, I don't think most people would give more if not taxed, at least all else being equal, but not because they're "not good". There are many incentives at play.)
If democracy is the rule of majority and the majority of people are "not good", then you're ruled by people who are "not good".
If government enforced people to do "good" (not smoke marijuana, preventing gay people from reproducing, allowed building with asbestos), and then the changed their mind (allowed to smoke marijuana, allowed gay people are to reproduce, banned asbestos), did they enforce the "good"?
Moral objection to spending is what what the defunding of Planned Parenthood and the boycotts of Chik-Fil-A are about. I don't think there will be controversy around treating suffering people, though.
Which is both sad and hilarious, since only 3 percent of the services provided by Planned Parenthood are abortions, yet they provide an overwhelming amount of non-abortion services to women across the country.
And there's moral objection. To paying for health services for women who can't afford it.
http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/08/05/429641...
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/S-F-spendi...
"The annual $167 million price tag is $20 million more than the operations budget for the Children, Youth and Family Services department, $6.3 million more than for Public Works and $3.8 million more than for Recreation and Park."
My guess is that in such a politically charged issue, people play games with the numbers, which you can always do with budgets (how do you allocate the fixed cost of maintaining a fleet of ambulances, does an ambulance trip to the ER count as a "homelessness" cost in the first place simply because the person is homeless, should it only show up as a cost if it is related to the condition of being homeless, how would you measure this…).
But however you measure it, SF does spend a tremendous amount of money on homelessness.
My personal feeling is that this problem is unsolvable at a local level, because homeless people come from all over the US (and beyond). SF has a large budget for such a small city, but SF just can't solve this problem for the nation at large. People who are frustrated with these efforts argue that our services will never make things better because we simply attract more homeless people by offering them. I've read that overwhelming majority of the homeless population in SF did not grow up in SF, but then again, you could say the same for the non-homeless residents.
I do see this as a national scale problem. Maybe a state of emergency, qualifying for federal funds, will be a good strategy...
Technology to expedite housing construction would be helpful.
There's a lot of misinformation and stigma around people who are vulnerably housed (often along the lines of "they did it themselves") so by by creating a culture that helps homeless people you're helping a potential future-you.
What homeless people actually do so that you don't want them to be what they are?
That's a problem because it means they, and their family, suffer unnecessarily. It's a problem because early intervention is cheaper and more likely to be effective.
> What homeless people actually do so that you don't want them to be what they are?
Homeless people suffer. I don't like to see people suffer. I want to help people who are suffering so that their suffering stops.
And why is that your business?
> Homeless people suffer. I don't like to see people suffer. I want to help people who are suffering so that their suffering stops.
Homelessness is a lifestyle for majority of homeless people. What if you don't like other lifestyles? Would you as well go trying to "help", because you don't like it?
Can you please elaborate on that? Can you back that assertion that the majority of homeless people sees/chooses homelessness as a lifestyle?
It's interesting (and appaling) how a lot of people think along the lines of "if it was me I'd be hustling to get out of it, so homeless people are either lazy or like it", not being able to empathize or understand the severe emotional hit you suffer when you're out of food and shelter, two very basic needs. Even more so because a lot of accounts describe formerly successful people getting sucked down a vortex of hunger, poverty and exclusion...
You ask about the problems of homelessness. As https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Sta... points out, one of the problems is with homeless children.
> homeless students are 1) 1.5 times more likely to perform below grade level in reading; 2) 1.5 times more likely to perform below grade level in spelling; and 3) 2.5 times more likely to perform below grade level in math.
The demographics at that Wikipedia page say that '1.37 million (or 39%) of the total homeless population are children under the age of 18.'. The report at http://www.huduser.gov/Publications/pdf/ahar.pdf goes on to say:
> Children under age 6 are disproportionately represented within both the sheltered homeless population and the poverty population. About 11 percent of all sheltered homeless people are under age 6, as are 12.7 percent of poor people, while only 8 percent of the total U.S. population is in this age group
So, tell me again about all these 5 year olds you know with houses in another city?
The Wikipedia page says:
> Teenagers who flee or are thrown out by parents who disapprove of their child's sexual orientation or gender identity. A 2010 study by the Center for American Progress shows that a disproportionately high number of homeless youth (between 20–40%) identify as LGBTQ
Tell me how many of these thrown-out LGBTQ teens have a house in another city, in any meaningful sense?
It's clear from many, many new reports on the topic that a lot of people who are homeless both want a home and can't get it. http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/a... reports :
> But with shelters clogged with waiting lists, a large number of families end up living in cheap hotels and motels while they await an opening in a shelter. The January count showed 1,400 homeless adults and children housed in hotels and motels.
You haven't done any research, you are ill-informed on the topic, and you ask insistent question - all signs of someone JAQing off.
To be happy you need both kinds of wealth. If you live in a big, expensive house and you drive a Ferrari, but there are parts of the city you live in where you don't want to go, then you aren't living a rich, full life. There'll be a constant reminder of how there are people worse off than you, and that will make you feel awful.
People who are homeless effectively make everyone worse off. Helping to fix their problems makes your own life better.
There is plenty of places on earth I wouldn't go to, for example Northern Canada it doesn't mean I am not living a full life. Should I be on the quest of speeding up global warming to be able to see palm trees growing there and finally make it suitable for me to go? Nonsense.
And what about the people who can't afford to move in the first place?