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Comment by caseysoftware | Hacker News Reader

> They met on the roof of Soma Grand while Parker explained the web of nonprofits and city departments that spends $241 million a year on the city’s more than 6,000 homeless residents, a population count that has stayed nearly unchanged for 25 years.

That line stuns me. How can you spend $40k+ per homeless person each year and have the absolute number unchanged? How much is actually going to help the people versus going into line items that don't?

Are they helping people move up and out of homelessness and more people keep coming?

Or are the efforts relatively fruitless and they just keep throwing money at it?

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I can think of three reasons other than outright waste and poor organization:

* It's not the same 6000 every year. The number of people who are homeless in SF for any part of any given year could easily be several times that.

* There are a few individuals who cost way, way more than that. The ones that SFFD refers to as their "regulars". The drug addicts and mentally ill who go on ambulance rides every week or more. I'm not saying they're the majority, but they certainly exist, and like any industry it only takes a few whales to add up.

* Land to put shelters on is really, really expensive.

> The drug addicts and mentally ill who go on ambulance rides every week or more.

These people are abusing their freedom and abusing free services. At what point do we either restrict their freedom or retract their free services? 'You get to do whatever you like, with no consequences' isn't a long-term plan for social success.

Bottom line is, you don't. A modern society can bear the small burden this tiny slice of humanity represents; it's just immoral ones that decide they don't want to.

If you're determined that there must be consequences for individuals abusing their - then prioritize the weak after you've dealt with the corruption of rich, powerful individuals, whose cost to society is far greater.

Of course, the weakest are utterly powerless to prevent YOU from trying to ensure they suffer whatever meets your desire for "consequences", while there's little YOU can do about the truly powerful. This is why so many prefer to turn a blind eye to abuse of power, and focus instead on letting the powerless suffer. It doesn't make anybody's life better in the slightest. But some people seem to take comfort in it.

Im not the author of above post. Whether I agree with that post is irrelevant. Ive been reding HN since at least 2010. This is what ive got to say: Wow, the fucking downvotes are out of hand lately Ive seen so many inoffensive posts grayed out lately Don't downvote just because you disagree

Please, make downvoting cost at least 10 karma (The downvoter pays, obviously)

Please

Easy: as people get out of homelessness, new ones become homeless. $40k for the transition is not crazy given that it includes police and medical.

The rest of the united states dumps their homeless problem on CA.

viz nevada busing homeless people to sf and dumping them here

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-Nevada-reach-tenta...

edit: here's a better link

http://www.sfexaminer.com/sf-reaches-400k-settlement-proposa...

   “Over the past five years, the state of Nevada has transferred to other 
   states approximately 1,500 patients discharged from its state-run 
   Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital, including 500 patients that Nevada sent by 
   Greyhound bus to cities and counties in California,” said the lawsuit filed 
   September 2013 by Herrera in San Francisco Superior Court. The revelations 
   led to the loss of the hospital’s accreditation. It has since been 
   reaccredited.
   
   The patients, many of whom were mentally ill indigent and not California 
   residents, were sent to various destinations with no arrangements for when 
   they arrived, according to the lawsuit.

Even when homeless aren't bused to CA, it beats most of the country: generous public services plus weather rarely below freezing. So people migrate here from all over, yet we alone pay for the services people need.

My SO had someone chase her around a car attempting to stab her with a screwdriver. SF police, typically useless, didn't arrive until he was long gone. People aren't exaggerating when they say big pieces of the city are unsafe.

"The rest of the united states dumps their homeless problem on CA."

Hahaha, so because someone else gave us the problem we don't have to solve it anymore.

SORRY GUYS NOTHING WE CAN DO. EVEN WITH INFINITY TAX DOLLARS NOTHING WILL HELP BECAUSE NEVADA BUSSED IN SOME CRAZY PEOPLE. GUESS WE ALL HAVE TO LIVE WITH FILTH AND SHIT EVERYWHERE.

hahahahahahah

Intervention services (police, emergency rooms, temporary housing) tend to be very expensive. $40K per person per year is likely not dedicated to getting people out of homelessness but instead to keeping them safe and alive.

The money gets spent on rough sleepers. It doesn't get spent of services that would prevent people falling into the category of rough sleeper.

Spending money on the psycho-social stuff - drug addiction, alcohol addiction, debt advice, housing support, MH treatment, employment support - would prevent a bunch of people losing their homes, and would turn the huge numbers of people who are vulnerably homed into people who are less vulnerable.

Sadly society pretty much says "Fuck You" to people are rough sleeping where the needs are easiest to see. It's going to be harder to get society to stump up the cash for prevention, even though the "spend to save" figures are remarkable.

It doesn't work because homelessness is a structural feature of our economy. Until we decide to return to the level and type of wealth redistribution we had before the 1980s, it's going to remain about the same.

Anybody downvoting this comment should spend some time looking at how street homelessness emerged as a major problem in the 1980s, following massive reduction in federal public housing funding. This is well understood among people who have spent any amount of time working with homeless people, not so much by the general public.

Please post the relevant links, so the rest of us can be enlightened. I want to see a government program that had a massive reduction in funding.

From Googling "federal public housing funding 1980s", the very first link states:

"In his first year in office Reagan halved the budget for public housing and Section 8 to about $17.5 billion. And for the next few years he sought to eliminate federal housing assistance to the poor altogether."

From the Wikipedia article entitled "Public housing in the United States", which has a section specifically about the period of time in question:

"Under the Reagan administration, household contribution towards Section 8 rents was increased to 30% of household income and fair market rents were lowered. Public assistance for housing efforts was reduced as part of a package of across the board cuts."

I am not an American and don't know the history of American federal program funding, but I do have access to things that let me search for things. You should try it.

This was enlightening, I copy-pasted that person's comment about funding in the 1980s and got three decent hits on the matter, one of which included actual stats (32B-6.9B):

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa127.html

#Edit. Reading the article further, it seems the Cato institute dismisses/rebukes most of the points regarding federal housing being the cause of homelessness in the 1980's.

Imagine that.

From the link:

Like the shift from 40-year mortgage subsidies to 15- year housing certificates, the shift from the certificates to 5-year vouchers enabled Congress to reduce HUD's budget authorizations. Such reductions have created the mistaken impression that federal housing assistance has been cut. In fact, annual outlays increased from $5.7 billion in 1980 to $13.8 billion in 1988. The number of families being served by HUD housing programs rose from 3.1 million in 1980 to 4.2 million in 1988. Moreover, a housing voucher costs the government only about $4,500 a year, whereas a new unit of public housing costs it $9,000 a year.

I guess mistaken impressions are still common on the internet.

Have you ever met anybody who's tried to actually use a Section 8 voucher? I'm going to bet you haven't and neither has the author of the linked paper.

I rather think it wasn't a result of decreased public housing but rather of the closing of the asylums.

You're operating under a couple of misunderstandings.

1) most homeless people do not have a mental illness. MI is over-represented in the homeless population, but only one fifth of rough sleepers have a mental illness.

If you look at the chronically homeless (people homeless for over a year) you see that a third of them have a severe mental illness

If four fifths of the homeless population or two thirds of the chronic homeless population are not mentally ill it's hard to see how mental health hospitals would have made much difference.

2) that people with a mental illness must have a hospital bed and nothing else will do. The UK also closed many large hospitals - currently only about 8% of the people accessing specialist mental health services need a bed. Most people need treatment in the community. It's safer, more effective, and cheaper.

>How can you spend $40k+ per homeless person each year

They don't. Figure in all the staff in the system earning $35K+, operational costs and what's left over goes towards helping people.

I find the nonprofits here print brochures, answer phones and refer you to other nonprofits who print brochures, answer phones and refer you to other nonprofits... in an endless loop.

I have a sinking suspicion that for every homeless person helped, more people are getting evicted and becoming newly homeless.

That's it.

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