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Comment by 11thEarlOfMar | Hacker News Reader

I'll weigh in from a basic income perspective...

I've held for a while that a homeless person getting into housing solves one of the biggest time sinks they have. Once the time is freed up, they are more comfortable, safer and can therefore sleep better, and they can think and make a plan to get re-integrated into mainstream society.

Commenters note that 'housing first' does not work in larger cities like San Francisco and New York because of the cost of housing. Were a basic income in place, homeless persons would be more mobile and could afford basic accommodations in many more places. Therefore, they'd not be so attracted to more hospitable climates or cities with more homeless services. That would increase the options they'd have to move to less expensive housing.

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The system proposed here is almost the exact opposite of a basic income:

What Powered Utah's Success...And finally, most of the advocates and agencies in Utah know each other and work well with each other. They also know most of the homeless people by name...One person recommends a name from the list...Ed Snoddy, who does medical outreach for Volunteers of America, a faith-based nonprofit, speaks up...."He is notoriously dealing (drugs) right now,"...The group agrees that this individual does not play nice with others, and isn't right for this particular apartment. For now, his name stays on the list.

They assess need/sociability and provide specific rooms to specific people they think will be well suited to them. Each person has a caseworker who helps them manage their life, since evidently these people can't do it themselves.

And these are mostly "supportive housing". I.e. paternalistic organized homes, rather than just handing out money and expecting the homeless to successfully manage their own lives. This housing isn't just regular flats, it's patrolled by off-duty cops, has lots of rules, and you get kicked out if you don't obey them.

This program is run by the guy who organizes paternalistic social programs for LDS - the state literally asked the church if they could borrow him. This is story about how awesome Mormon social technology is, and is completely the opposite of BI.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/02/housing-first-so...

It strikes me that the militant egalitarianism of the present age has reached its peak. The intolerant maximalism of its vulgar shamans has made such a grim backdrop that even modest efforts to hold people responsible for their actions create a bright contrast to the sad state of urban America.

Please don't post ideological rants to HN.

It's not the sort of discussion we're looking for; and people respond in kind, which produces flamewars.

> Were a basic income in place, homeless persons would be more mobile and could afford basic accommodations in many more places.

Do you have any evidence that this would be the outcome? What makes you say that much of the money would go towards housing in the first place?

Why not take the financing for this basic income and build things like housing instead?

You can't eat housing. Yes instead of basic income or our current social services we could just build a lot of homes.

But why would you even build homes in the first place. Do you think Salt Lake City in 2005 with 2000+ chronically homeless people didn't have at least 2000 homes on the market?

But that doesn't really matter, because in terms of politcal capital, UBI is never, ever going to happen.

Imagine our technology got so good that housing, clothing and feeding most of the population is affordable without raising taxes, as in Star Trek.

It will. My theory is that it comes from solar energy. As soon as electricity generation comes to a near-zero cost, and a huge part of manufacturing cost is energy, (and the other largest cost, humans, is also displaced) we start to rapidly move to a place where traditional economies as we know them start to crumble, and we are forced (perhaps kicking and screaming) to accept that we simply can't have Full Employment (maybe not even half). After that providing people with basic rights that include housing, healthcare, etc., becomes low-cost enough that not doing so is much more detrimental.

> Imagine our technology got so good that housing, clothing and feeding most of the population is affordable without raising taxes

Why do we have to do it without raising taxes? What's wrong with paying taxes? (A shocking thing to say these days, I know!)

The U.S. could now house, feed, cloth, educate, and provide healthcare to its entire population. Is that a worthy goal? U.S. citizens pooled their money to put a person on the moon; they do it for medical research, aircraft carriers, rural telecommunication, and plenty of education and healthcare already. Why not this?

(In fairness, I say the U.S. could do it. I have no data or research, but the U.S. is pretty close to doing it, it's the wealthiest country in the history of the world, other countries do it - I'm confident it's doable.)

Or you know, real life. It's just a matter of priorities (and game theory).

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