Fire at a homeless encampment sparked Bel-Air blaze that destroyed homes | Hacker News Reader

Fire at a homeless encampment sparked Bel-Air blaze that destroyed homes

latimes.com

47 pointskyleblarson98 comments

Maybe we could do something crazy, like bring back SROs, instead of de facto as a society acting like we think it is better for people to sleep in a tent than have "sub standard" housing. Because tolerating rampant homelessness while turning our noses up at modest rentals basically amounts to the nation saying that is exactly what it thinks.

Miner said she was skeptical of the proposed campaign to educate homeless people about fire risks.

Yeah. A homeless person making a cooking fire is probably hungry and probably has no other viable option. Trying to "educate" the homeless about fire risks sounds like "Honey, we don't care if you starve. Just make sure you don't burn down any mansions. Kaythxbai."

I don't disagree, but I will point out that many homeless people want to be homeless, if being housed means submitting to questions and forms. Autonomy is a powerfully strong motivator.

The vast majority of homeless do not want to be homeless. If we provide enough affordable housing -- at market conditions, with no more forms and the like than other rentals -- you will be left with a much smaller number of quirky hobo-by-choice types. Shrinking the problem is very worthwhile.

Don't rentals require a credit score, a stable source of income, and usually a guarantor?

Yes. But I am trying to make the distinction that most poverty relief programs are much more invasive and bureaucratic than most market based solutions.

I am thinking of low cost rentals where they require you to live there and won't rent it to well off people looking for a weekend getaway that is cheaper than a motel. But other than that, I don't want a lot of extra requirements tacked on.

I think you're very misguided about "market based solutions". The homeless don't have money, therefore they have limited/no exposure in the "market". I don't know if you've been present before about why companies don't form around low income or homeless segment - there's no market in them. No money = no RoI.

You cater to people who have money. You're describing something that price discriminates and doesnt at the same time.

> I am thinking of low cost rentals where they require you to live there

Forced to be there X amount of time. This is a reduction of freedom, which sounds like reinstating the bureaucratic nightmare you talk of.

> and won't rent it to well off people looking for a weekend getaway that is cheaper than a motel.

Means-testing. The homeless aren't going to have the paperwork to show lack of means. Remember, these people probably have no ID or anything. The census allows them to highlight landmarks where they "frequent", along with voting homeless allowed similar.

> But other than that, I don't want a lot of extra requirements tacked on.

And what you stated is already too much.

What needs done: if you're homeless, you get a small room. It's yours. It won't be much. We can at least afford that as a population.

The homeless are not some other population. They are people who currently lack housing. With enough affordable housing, some people would never land on the street to start with. They would move to an SRO temporarily, get their act together and return eventually to more conventional housing.

I am not talking about a homeless service. I am talking about policies that shrink the problem in part by preventing homelessness to begin with.

I will add not all homeless are completely penniless, and I have formally studied the subject.

> The homeless are not some other population. They are people who currently lack housing.

True, however not having housing then brings on a host of other problems. Basic sanitation and food are just 2 of those big issues - and the food issue is why the fire happened in this place.

> With enough affordable housing, some people would never land on the street to start with. They would move to an SRO temporarily, get their act together and return eventually to more conventional housing.

Or, they would do like what we see happen in China and Japan - where the prices keep going up and up and up, and those people never leave the SROs. That's also a market eventuality, and a noted fact in those areas. This idea that SRO's are some "gift" to homeless and that they'll clean right up is a farce.

> I am not talking about a homeless service. I am talking about policies that shrink the problem in part by preventing homelessness to begin with.

I have a completely curveball outfield suggestion: We the government/people build SROs. If you're homeless, you can have 1. End of discussion. Because shoving this on "The Market" is how in part why they became homeless. So yeah, splatter more "market". It's about as true as trickle-down theory (aka: getting pissed on by above).

> I will add not all homeless are completely penniless, and I have formally studied the subject.

Yeah, so did I. I was homeless. You researched it for a single sociology class. When I was homeless, we met lots of students from the local university. The homeless epidemic has gotten nowhere but worse. But hey, there's some papers published reaffirming time and again the same things.

Not all of them. In smaller towns you can rent an apartment or even business space on a handshake.

Normal apartments usually do.

But there are also businesses that rent rooms or studios by the week, without a lease. Much like a hotel (and some of them also function as hotels), they can simply refuse to rent to a problem tenant next week so they don't need any of that.

If 20-25% of homeless suffer extreme mental illness (as claimed by the National Coalition for the Homeless) , then I'm not sure that the vast majority simply lack for affordable housing. That's true for families, the elderly, and those living out of vehicles... but many of those living in encampments (e.g. >> 25%) are doing so because they do not want to be in any shelter or no shelter would have them (drug use, prostitution, violence, etc). I agree shrinking the problem is useful, but many of the homeless wouldn't want to live near other homeless, when they have the choice.

http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/Mental_Illness.pd...

Let's go with your theory and assume the worst. That still leaves 75% of them who would like a "normal" life and just can't manage to arrange it.

Well, actually worst would be that as many as 25% of those living in encampments are extremely mentally ill and unable to even find or stay in low cost housing. Another 25% might be involved in illegal behavior that wouldn't be allowed in and SRO (prostitution, drugs, violence, bike theft). Another 25% might be opposed the the idea of living with constraints of an SRO (when you can go in/out, how much room you have, who you have to live with). Then it's only the 25% (families, elderly, kids, disabled, sick, poor) living in an encampment because they don't have a vehicle that would move into low cost housing. That's an improvement, but it's nothing like a solution.

I have had a college class on Homelessness and Public Policy. I did an internship in a homeless shelter. Later, I spent time on the street myself, including six months in downtown San Diego attending homeless services. I consider myself to be more knowledgeable than average on the subject.

You would need to provide a lot of data to substantiate this claim to have me take it seriously. I don't believe that is remotely realistic.

I lived on the streets for a time. I still talk to some of my friends, who are homeless still. There's too many "reasons" to even try to count.

I know a mother and her 17 year old child who was kicked out of the high barrier shelter because of a fight/disagreement. The high barrier shelter ejects quite a lot of people.

I knew some homeless who did have jobs, but they were 2nd and 3rd shift. High barrier shelter closes doors at 6pm. So shelter is only for homeless who work 9-5, I guess?

After our low barrier shelter was dismantled, quite a few alcoholics and drug users were summarily thrown in the street. Alcohol and drugs at least makes you forget the horribleness of it all, for a time. Is it a solution? You damn straight it is, for right now. Not like you have strong prospects.

I knew others who had significant mental health problems. What were they? No clue. I'm no doc. But some seemed to be from too much drugs, others from existing conditions. Some seemed to be from PTSD cause they were soldiers. It's a cornucopia of why's for mental health.

Some fell through the cracks. They fell on hard times and had one too many shit events happen. Car repo'd or evicted, and no personal social net (friends). They'd hop out if they knew how. We recently housed a friend who had this issue, so he wouldnt come crashing down.

Some do like it homeless. They've lived it long enough that its now what they want. Nobody tells them to do this, or that, or when. They just live a meager existence. Not many of these, but I ran across a 3-4 of them.

But overall, I'd say that most I ran across would highly love to have a place of their own, even if it was small. The only exceptions to that would have been the ones severely mentally ill and the ones who want to be homeless. And I'd argue about the severely mentally ill - they just seemed to be, and not be. They were surreal. Ideally, they should be housed by the state in wards. (Yeah, when you wander in a grocery store and pick up something cause its food and they were hungry, logic and stealing just goes out the window.)

Thanks for your perspective... I set up a straw man in my response... worst case.

Your description is not that different from what I observed when a friend of mine tried to stay in shelters (in SCRUZ). Because he was over 65 and capable managing his affairs (checking with housing/shelter services every day) he had a real advantage in finding help. It still took more than a year to find stable subsidized housing at a price he could afford and he went through a lot of uuncomfortable/insane situations on the way, but he would never leave his city.

His friends tried to help (stay in doors for periods, keep a cell phone, store his stuff), but he had independence and pride so he wasn't looking for us to support him. I visited him every week or so when he when moved up from the shelter to temp housing for a little over a year.

He lived with moderately crazy people, apologetic (but incurable) petty hoarder/thieves, along with prostitutes and small time drug dealer/users who could hide it and get along with their neighbors... some were kicked out of temp housing (shared trailer) or went into the hospital. Curfew was very strict!

Those were the lucky folks. They either had it together enough or had family/friends to take care of them, and they also had some condition (kids, medical,age) that gave them a step ahead... if he had been 2-3 years younger, I don't know what would have happened (no chance to get a regular temp or permanent bed).

Still, the shared conditions he lived in were nuts. You could barely sleep for the noises (overweight diabetics in a bunk bed that have to pee every couple of hours, vets screaming in the night...), nothing was safe from theft, and there was constant drama and argument with occasional mild scuffles. This was the NICE place, the shelters were much worse and you didn't know where/if you would sleep any night.

Eventually, after 18mo on the waiting list, he got a tiny subsidized efficiency for $600+/mo. If he ever loses it, he cant get back in line so paying for it is his highest priority (even food). I'd guess market rate for the room is at least 2x. He's lucky!

I think your firsthand experience is coloring your interpretation of my remarks here such that we are simply not on the same page.

I am currently in an SRO. It is not part of the shelter system. It is just low cost market based housing.

There is no curfew. The rooms are adequately soundproofed that I am not kept awake by other people going to the bathroom in the night. When I am in my room, I mostly don't hear what other people are doing. When I walk to the bathroom, I can hear TVs and other things all night long. But it does not keep me up at night because I can't hear this stuff when I am in my room. I only hear it when I am out in the hallway.

It has to be quiet from 10pm to 8am. Of course, there are other rules as well, but it is nothing at all like what you describe.

I never spent time in the shelter system. It absolutely has serious problems, which is why I am advocating for other approaches to the issue.

Sharing living space with strangers is always challenging. People in college dorms or who have roommates routinely complain about the problems involved or seek help on discussion boards for how to more effectively cope. But in most cases it is not the nightmarish scenario you describe.

Yes, my friend is now in an SRO. Heavily subsidized it is over $600/mo (market would be over $1000 or $300/week). There is no way my friend could afford market rate. Without moving far out of town there isn't going to be anything like that.

He had to wait 18mo for that subsidized rate. There is a long waiting list and and he was able to push constantly to stay on it (checkins, paperwork, etc). If he wasn't over 65 (or otherwise disadvataged), there would be NO availability.

Note that SJ is looking at tiny homes (dispensation from state to violate building codes), but for 80sqft (or 120 double) they are looking at $75k (100k double) build cost. That does not include land cost or utilities. Cost is likely to be $7-10k per year realistically so subsidy is fundamentally necessary.

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/12/12/tiny-homes-for-san-jos...

The fact that I would like to see market based solutions does not mean I want "cheap" housing that starts at $1000/mo.

I would like to see enough housing at $400/mo or less to house 2 percent of the population. In any given year, between 10 and 15 percent of the population falls below the federal poverty line, but most do not stay there. Only 2 percent are chronically poor, which is typically defined as falling below the federal poverty line 5 years out of 10.

The chronically poor have intractable problems that are not readily solved. To keep them off the street, we need very cheap housing. But I would prefer to see that housing made available with minimal restrictions.

Achieving this would require policy changes and probably other things. I am aware this is not feasible in the current climate. But climates can change.

The challenge is that $400/mo is not much more than a few uncovered parking spaces in a lot of these locations. That means that we have to subsidize each one to price them that way.

In a city like SJ (SF is even harder) 2% would be 20k rooms. Subsidies of $400/mo are not unreasonable to reach your targets. That means we need to raise $100M/yr in local taxes to make this happen... which basically is an impossible political ask before you even start choosing locations and NIMBYism.

I have reason to believe that homelessness is such a crisis in California in part because homeless people actively travel there for the weather. I did. I am not the only one.

I suspect that relief in other parts of the country would provide some relief for California.

I am aware that California in specific has serious challenges in this area. But I see the problem of homelessness in the US as a national problem that disproportionately impacts California. So I see improvements in other parts of the nation as benefitting California.

My college dorm was basically a SRO. So the "constraints" bit seems a little far fetched to me. Maybe that is because the individual rooms were still isolated by cinder block walls, but outside of what I would call "Family strife" it was a pretty good living arrangement. A few people sharing a common living room, kitchen and a couple bathrooms. Everyone had their own (~150SQ if I were guessing) bedroom. Which is enough space for a bed, closet, desk, etc. Get tired of the apartment mates fighting over who left something in the fridge, just go in your room close the door and put on some headphones. Instant privacy/peace/safety. Probably more than most people enjoy in normal housing given the thin walls, shared bedrooms, etc. Plus, being a fairly large set of apartment buildings meant that a couple maids to clean the bathrooms, provide TP, and vacuum the common areas significantly reduces domestic strife over most shared living conditions.

That is something I just don't get about homeless shelters and all the restrictions they put in place. Frankly if I were homeless I would have a tendency to live under a bridge, in a tent, whatever long before I put up with the stress of not knowing if I was going to have a bed the next night, or being woken at 6AM and kicked out.

What do you mean by SRO?

The ones we have here in NH are merely rooms for rent - just like apartments except they don't have a private kitchen or bath, and I believe the rent is collected weekly and without a long term lease.

You can rent an apartment in Urbana, IL for $350/month where the minimum wage is $8.25. The HUD rule of thumb is that a person on that income would not be "cost-burdened" by a rent of up to $458/month.

So although housing affordability is a real problem on the west coast, it doesn't really explain homelessness. The homeless on the west coast are people who either have deeper problems than affordability (such as profound disability/drug addiction), or who simply prefer to be homeless in LA than housed in a less fashionable part of the country.

Also, it costs money to move across the country. It would be interesting to know if there are charities that help with relocation and getting people back on their feet with minimum wage jobs and housing in lower cost of living areas.

Sometimes cities will fund it themselves. A one way bus ticket out of town is way cheaper than providing housing.

There is some truth to this, but it is much, much more common to stick you in the back seat of a police car or sheriff's vehicle and drive you to the edge of their jurisdiction and drop you by the side of the road.

In some cases, it is done nicely and helpfully because you are traveling on foot, it saves you a bunch of walking and you don't die in their jurisdiction. Other times, it is asshole behavior for pan handling (I never panhandled, I just know it happens).

When I was in downtown San Diego, word on the street was that there was an organization that would help with travel to get back home. But when I have searched online, I haven't located such info.

I have idly wondered if we could create an organization for donating travel points of various sorts to help homeless people get train tickets or other travel expenses covered.

I recently left California and moved to a less fashionable part of the country to get off the street.

It cost me hundreds of dollars to travel to another state by train and I needed to pay deposit and first month's rent in a lump sum, essentially. I was able to do it because I developed portable (online) income while homeless. If you have to pay for the trip first and then job hunt while homeless and then save up the money to make the deposit while working while homeless...etc...this is a substantial obstacle to getting back into housing.

Furthermore, most places do not have the dry weather of SoCal. A lot of homeless people go there specifically because camping in dry, temperate weather is less of a burden. Moving elsewhere while homeless means being out in rain and cold and snow. Then, once you are there in SoCal, it becomes a trap that is hard to escape because housing in California is not affordable.

> who simply prefer to be homeless in LA than housed in a less fashionable part of the country.

I don't believe this is true. Many homeless people may make their way to the west coast because they'd be homeless either way and services (and weather) are better in LA (often with "help" from their local government, since a bus ticket is much cheaper than actual support). But ideological freegans who actually choose to leave decent homes and jobs are a microscopic fraction.

Can you back up this outlandish claim?

It’s not outlandish.

The government shifted from institutional commitment to voluntary community based care for the mentally ill and chronically addicted in the early 1980s.

For a variety of reasons, just providing apartments doesn’t work. Most homeless people require substantial and ongoing assistance to get and remain independent.

Our social welfare system is a patchwork that varies from state to state and counties within a state. Until that changes, you’ll see no progress, as people will migrate to get better benefits and services, which makes delivery of those services impossible.

> people will migrate to get better benefits and services, which makes delivery of those services impossible

A couple of decades ago, a large town in New Hampshire obtained federal funds to build low-cost housing. But the housing brought in people who used more local services. Services whose cost was only partially defrayed by the state and federal governments. So the town then bought up low-cost housing, and tore it down.

About 10-15% of the US population is below the Federal poverty line in any given year, but only 2% are chronically poor. This is typically defined as below the Federal poverty line at least 5 years out of 10.

My thinking is we need enough low cost housing for 2% of the population. This would help keep the chronically poor -- those with intractable personal problems -- off the street.

I am currently thinking a lot about how to address the issue effectively. I am not for growing homeless services or similar programs.

My latest project is aimed at making flexible earned income a viable option, for both homeless people and people with the kinds of barriers to employment that can lead to homelessness: http://independentdigitalworkers.blogspot.com

It isn't charity. It is part of how I got myself off the street.

What about assisted living type arrangements for the chronically poor or mentally ill?

I have family members who work in social welfare and housing. The most frustrating and emotionally draining cases for them are when folks don’t have the support network that they need. This was especially true for veterans (including dishonorably discharged), battered women, the mentally ill and substance abusers.

Perhaps having someone there to help who is trusted makes a difference.

Personally, I find it bizarre when in a thread or other discussion on this topic, compassion is viewed as being permissive to folks living on the streets or in public parks. The US doesn’t need to bring back tenements or have the city park be a camp for the indigent. We’re in a golden age of plenty — with a good plan and a few less aircraft carriers this problem could be a lot better.

We are in a golden age of plenty where 99 percent of people are losing ground and 1 percent are getting richer.

There is certainly a place for supportive services in resolving this, but my personal goal is to restore agency, autonomy and self sufficiency to low income people as much as possible.

Given some of your other remarks here, I think it is not unjustified in assuming that you simply see poor people as folks who need to be stripped of rights and bossed around by someone else. This is not my idea if supportive services. I am very leery of people proposing so called supportive services that will actually just be some new means to deny people agency.

Charity does not give anyone a middle class life. You get that by working for it. I have special needs and so do my sons. We aren't stupid, lazy or incompetent. We do need maneuvering room to do things as we see fit. That is the very first thing most programs strip you of. Then we wonder why people cannot get out if their mess.

I don't expect everyone to be able to solve their problems if given the opportunity. But I do think we currently actively deny poor people opportunities to solve their own problems and then blame them for failing. I would like to see a reduction in the amount that society does to actively undermine poor people.

I can totally see part of your perspective. Part of what I do as a thought experiment or learning exercise in forums like this is explore and look for meaning in complex issues.

I tend to take a hard line on overall risk to the public. I don't live in a place where dropping a cigarette can immolate square miles of land. The thought is terrifying to me. Perhaps that comes off too strong.

Yes, California has a season I never had anyplace else I lived: Fire Season. I am completely happy to have left that behind.

But the reality is that edge cases of this sort usually are not a good place to start basing policy off of. There is a saying along the lines of "Hard cases make bad laws."

I am all for finding solutions to help get people off the street and help people in precarious situations to get the support they need so that they are less likely to wind up on the street to begin with. Reducing homelessness is a better goal for trying to reduce the odds of extremely bad things happening to begin with. That goal is mostly not furthered by policies that boil down to "The beatings shall continue until morale improves."

Well, you could google it and find out. Searching for "homeless people want to be homeless" gave me a bunch of good articles. NPR had people who were or had been homeless call in and say why they preferred the streets over shelters [1]. The summary is:

- many shelters are crowded, noisy, and unsafe

- some shelters make you stand in line at 4:30pm, which makes getting a job difficult, since many require you to stay past that time.

- you have an undiagnosed mental illness

- you are a military veteran with PTSD and enclosed spaces make you fearful

- you need a dog for protection and many shelters don't take animals

- some people feel judged at religious shelters

- many shelters require you to not be drunk or high, but many homeless are addicts.

I helped out a place that housed people just out of prison (private room plus meals for $50/month) plus food pantry and clothes, and the woman who ran it said that a lot of the homeless men that they interacted with were homeless because they were running away from their responsibilities. So those people would not want to go to a shelter because people would tell them what to do, and the whole point of being homeless was to get out of people/life telling you what to do.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2012/12/06/166666265/why-some-homeless-c...

Preferring the streets to the shelter system is not the same as desiring homelessness. Most homeless shelters are pretty awful. They do not constitute humane treatment.

I never stayed in one. I started the intake process at least once when a big snow storm was incoming. I never completed it. I asked for a shower and change of clothes, they gave it to me and then I my sons took the advice of a Native American man who had given us a ride and had talked about where to camp to stay warm in terms of local terrain. He was right. We were toasty warm all night and had to open the windows to not overheat. It was a shock anytime we got out the tent to pee in the snow. It was hard to believe the temperature difference.

It's a valid point but housing is more and more out of reach of folks. As a nation we need to open up housing opportunities. We've really regressed.

Perhaps, (go with me here) perhaps we don't strictly need questions, forms, drug tests, credit checks, background checks, arrest warrant checks, and belonging searches to give someone the simple dignity of a little room to spend a night in.

I agree. There have to be options for really cheap places to live. For a lot of old people without much money it's the same. They have nowhere to go.

Even more, of course a lot of worries about unsafe conditions are simply a fig leaf over worries that simple, minimal living spaces would cut into rents and mortgage payments for existing places.

Of course one could have homeless encampments with strict and specific safety standards, either with tents or shacks ("tiny houses") or RVs or whatever. Existing homeless encampments are miserable, unhealthy and dangerous based on the standard that making homelessness a livable condition is bad.

Exactly what kind of "sub-standard" are we talking about, here? Sleeping in a tent definitely is better than in a house that might fall on you or electrocute you.

Ed: I like the idea of dialing back some building standards, but I'm worried about defining the conditions where it would be allowed (in particular, making sure it doesn't become a de facto default), and whether it would in fact be logically equivalent to just living in tents.

I specified as clearly as I could. SROs are typically one room. They typically have a sink, refrigerator and closet and shared bathroom facilities and shared cooking facilities down the hall. Some are more like a hotel room, with their own private bathroom, but no kitchen. They typically allow hot plates and the like.

We tore down up to 80% of them over the course of a couple decades. If it isn't designed to house a family of four, the US seems to think it should not exist. So, many of our youth end up living with roommates because they can't afford a family home on their own and there aren't more modest options available.

Edit in response to your edit: You might find this article a good read elucidating the issue: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2013/07/it-time-bring-back-bo...

Many millions of Japanese people live in these conditions (ワンルーム) and consider it to be normal. It’s all a matter of perspective, setting reasonable expectations, and adhering to standards. If everyone acts like these conditions are tantamount to failure, it is failure. If everyone shrugs it off as a fact of modern life, there’s no shame in it.

This is one of those times you should have used romaji

ワンルーム = wanruumu = one room

Thank you, all three of you. This little snippet has been such a delight, for so many reasons.

If you’re googling, it’s better to use katakana, since ‘one room’ will pull lots of false hits and no one writes ‘wanrumu’. It’s easy enough to translate if you can’t read it.

We also destroyed public housing by failing to fund it (and make it desirable to people who could afford to live elsewhere). Now we just rent the space from private companies that proceed to skim off large chunks of cash, all while selling the now really valuable land under old housing projects to fund such short term logic.

Why the government would ever 'rent' something like housing is beyond me.

Not only that, but we have millions of churches sitting around getting tax breaks for their "community contributions" while locking their doors 5 days a week so that taxpayers are building homeless shelters to keep the bums from stinking up the pews.

Ok, "sub standard" is entirely the wrong term for this. When you replace it with "unconventionally small", I'm unreservedly in favor.

Also, "SRO" is ambiguous without the expansion. Even when I googled "sro housing", the result seemed to be an organization, not a type of housing unit. I still don't know exactly what you're referring to.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy

I put the term sub standard in quotes for a reason. It is only sub standard by crazy American cultural standards. Most parts of the world would have no problem with such housing, as attested to by comments here about how common this is in Japan.

But in the US, SROs have largely died out as a market based solution. Many of them today in the US are part of the shelter system, which creates substantial differences in reputation, quality, application and intake process etc.

Or let the police eject people from encampments that are a danger. It’s pretty obvious that these sorts of places are threats to public safety.

These people are the public as well. Kicking them out of what little home they have seems like a threat to their safety.

How many first responders are put at risk to life & limb when you have big wildfires break out?

How many sick people suffer from the polluted air? (ie. Asthma and COPD sufferers)

How about we get really "crazy" and do some wealth redistribution.

"Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness". It's a catchy motto and its on the tin. It seems a minimum requirement is having a safe and secure place to live in.

Biulding codes and standards are not what is making california housing expensive. Construction costs are nothing compared to the cost of land.

The protectionist tax policies in California are not helping the situation.

> bring back SROs

Not my field, but perhaps more than just SROs?[1] Flops (no bed), dorms (no walls), cages (partial walls), and assorted forms of SROs? And perhaps in a competitive market, so there could be a price/quality spread within each type? A continuum of housing options was apparently eliminated.

One of the effects of concentrating wealth and power, is governance priorities reflect that: "those parts of the economy on which you people depend... well, we disliked or didn't care about them, so they're gone now. shrug." Verizon might be 100k personnel, but opposition to network neutrality is perhaps 1k managers or 100 execs? "Sorry about your Internet, but, Wall Street and year-end bonuses, you understand." Or perhaps our own "sorry about your driving career, but aren't self-driving trucks neat?" :)

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120620080305/http://www.city-j... (via Wikipedia)

Your article is dated Summer 1992. That's over 25 years ago, so the cost comparison figures are significantly out of date. Here is an article from 2013:

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2013/07/it-time-bring-back-bo...

> 1992 [...] so the cost comparison figures are significantly out of date

Nod. Perhaps now 2x?

EDIT: https://www.google.com/search?q=1992+dollars+today

It talks about renting a place in New York for $300/mo. When I google "cheapest New York apartment," the first hit is for 16 apartments under $1000. The cheapest seems to be $838. So, it might be more like x3 the "today" figures.

/quick and dirty

Sorry about your carriage-driving career, but aren’t cars neat?

My mentally ill, currently homeless in Orange County, brother-in-law would rather be homeless than live somewhere that isn't of his choosing (which is why he's homeless to begin with -- he's more than welcome to stay with us in our home, again, provided he follows some very simple rules, but he refuses to play ball with any solution that isn't his own).

The fact of the matter is that he and folks like him are adults who are responsible for themselves. Many of them are actively choosing this lifestyle. They are choosing not to acknowledge and address their illnesses. And there's not much that anyone can honestly or earnestly do about that in our society, as long as they don't break the right laws (I'm referring to the fact that, for him, a 5150 is, sadly, _always_ the start of a better period in his life for some time).

> mentally ill

> responsible

Broadly speaking: choose one, but not both.

Pardon me? I have no choice to make here. This is the way our society is currently structured. He is a ~30 year old man with an illness. I can't force him to take his medication and, under normal circumstances, neither can the state. Hence, he is responsible for himself.

Mental illness does not sound like a normal state.

I don't think he was talking to you personally. I agree in terms of individuals, we should not be expected to hold the burden themselves of others.

The same doesn't apply to society and the governance of it however.

> Mental illness does not sound like a normal state.

No, it doesn't sound like a normal state, but that doesn't mean it isn't a normal state for some people.

> I don't think he was talking to you personally.

I'm not sure who they were talking to. Myself, others in positions like mine, HNers, society at large, or the ether. Regardless, believing that the mentally ill can't be, or aren't in some fashion currently, responsible for themselves is ridiculous. They absolutely are in the eyes of both our society and the state.

> I agree in terms of individuals, we should not be expected to hold the burden themselves of others.

I agree.

> The same doesn't apply to society and the governance of it however.

I'd love to hear politically viable solutions that can cross-cut through the myriad issues faced by this specific community of people (the subset of homeless who are diagnosed and known to be mentally ill). I don't think SORs are going even get in the ballpark for them. If I tried to tell a delusional, manic, paranoid person that they need to go live in a room that the state says they are to now live in they'd balk and disappear within minutes. But, I really don't have anything to offer, either, and I think about it more than I probably ought to.

Define SRO, please. By looking at the Wikipedia disambiguation page, I'm guessing that you mean "single-room occupancy", with "self-regulatory organizations" being a far-off second guess.

Yes, single-room occupancy.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15911743

What's not really mentioned here is that these sorts of encampments are usually build along CA freeways because those are policed only by the state (Caltrans / CHiPs) rather than the locality (city/county). Even when there is an obvious hazard (garbage buildup and drift into the road, visible fires burning, throwing objects at cars, walking/crossing the highway or on/off ramp) nothing is done. Typically, it takes a call to your CA state senator to get any action (caltrans doesn't respond to messages within a month).

Yes, there is one between my complex and a highway in San Jose. There was a big fire there last week. No news coverage. We were lucky it did not burn our homes down. These people have been offered help in the past and refuse it. The area gets cleared out and they return. They harass women in the neighborhood and steal everything they can get their hands on. They have to go.

Go where, though?

The arsonists and thieves can go to jail. The rest can take advantage of the existing programs and stop refusing help.

When I first got to Baltimore there were a lot of studies on cities, and I became very involved in the problem of housing -- housing finance, housing collapse in the inner city, housing conditions in general. I was fascinated to do a series of reports for the city, and also for other agencies, about how to approach the whole question of urban regeneration, which is very much on the agenda there.

It was extraordinary to me that some of the ideas I got for that came out of reading Engels's famous saying on the condition of the working class in England in 1844; and also the housing question where he says the bourgeoisie had only one way to solve its housing problem: it moved it around. When I started to look at what some of the proposals were, they were about gentrification, which, in effect, would displace people and just simply move the problem around.

So I made a big pitch in these reports, saying, "If you're going to address this question, you can't address it in a way that simply moves it around. In order not to move it around, we have to deal with basic questions about income distribution, wealth and the like, and, also, of course, racism, and housing markets and so on." This was a very important principle that came out of reading Engels, and then importing it. I put it into these reports; I didn't cite Engels. I didn't cite Engels, and everybody thought this was a fantastic insight, and somebody said to me, "Where did you get that from?" I said, "From Engels," and they said, "Who is he?"

"Tom Engels, the local congressman"!

"Does he work for the Brookings Institution?" or something like that. It was funny. But this was how I would sometimes find myself using this stuff in factual ways, and it resonated with people. I got a lot of encouragement to stay with this framework, that when you actually laid it out, used it in this way, using these kinds of concepts, people understood what you meant. The only time they turn around and walk the other way is when you tell them where it came from.

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people4/Harvey/harvey-con2....

Heard of the quote "You don't hate Mondays - you hate capitalism" ?

I doubt the urge to scapegoat the homeless will become a widespread one, but I'm sure that some (ie land grabbing developers..) need to hear this:

"you don't hate the homeless - you hate how they serve as a reminder that you can always face ruin. The more you make, the harder it gets to empathize with a guy with a sign, or even to look him in the eye for more than a glance...

I hate the fact that we have involuntary homeless. We have more than enough in this country to fix that. It's a choice of the voting public and the politicians that scorn and hatred and blame is pushed on them.

Seems like we are going to be seeing more of this with drier conditions and ever growing homeless camps across California. There are numerous fire code violations at these camps and these were devised for a reason. Not sure what the best course of action is but clearly something needs to happen.

Devil's advocacy: must "something happen?". The point to allowing semi-permanent homeless camps is that people were being forced into hiding, sleeping in ditches and eating garbage. That's a serious social ill (no, I don't have numbers, but would be interested if someone does), and one that was trivially solved by allowing them to pitch tents and cook food. It's still not a great existence, but it's a whole lot better and it's something that lots of people will legitimately choose.

And if the cost of that is some non-zero number of burned homes? Dunno, but my gut says that's a worthwhile trade.

Not that I'd argue with running power to those camps and paying for some hot plates either, of course.

I agree that a tent does seem to be a step up from a ditch but I'm not sure you can say the issue was trivially solved. At least in the bay area many of the camps are in parks. This seems like a very controversial opinion but I really enjoy walking around parks and this really isn't possible with bustling, trash filled homeless encampments occupying the neighborhood parks. I don't have a solutions but I don't think tent camps are the way to go either.

Giving them houses might help.

So, give them yours. Maybe rent a room for free or something.

Or, we could raise taxes and try to make a real solution like a civilized society, instead of relying on random acts of charity. Charging property taxes on the actual value of people's property in California and using that to fund local government works would be a good start.

So people who bought their houses at a time they could afford them and are retired on a fixed income can have their property confiscated by the government when they can't pay the outrageous property taxes on their home's "value"...?

That is the propaganda that was used to pass Prop 13. But there are much less heavy-handed ways of achieving that, if that's your real goal. An age-based homestead exemption, for example. Meanwhile, we could start taxing the golf courses and corporate HQs that are still paying mid-70s rates.

I think this is a false premise, they don't need to stay in houses, if we actually built stuff they could move into smaller condos when retired. Easier access to ammenties, less stairs, less maintenance. All my grandparents in Canada did this.

2nd option, if you firmly believe that everyone must stay in their home until death then you simple offer tax exemptions to elderly with low income for their primary residence.

I would be surprised if low income retires represented the majority of the "winners" of prop 13. Big corporations and upper/middle class landowners.

We have this, it's called taxes.

I'd like to see the US government spend a lot more of that money on taking care of the neediest of its citizens and a lot less doing things like trying to overthrow the government of the latest country that inexplicably ended up on our shitlist.

Sure, share the wealth, and ideally have heeded warning for the last few decades. Similar Rx for everything from Middle East violence to environmental decline.

It’s just that people don’t listen until their shit burns down.

That seems a bit ironic.

People are either a liability or an asset, and how California responds to their housing crisis will ultimately play out in the consequences.

I have a modest proposal.

Well if that's not some kind of social commentary, I don't know what is.

Can you say, "False economy?". See, I knew you could.

Mayor Garcetti has been very soft on the homeless and refused to enforce laws targeted at these encampments:

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-garcetti-homeles...

Doesn't it look like homeless get punished for being poor? Do they got anywhere else to go?

Look...maybe you have a low opinion of him.. maybe you see him as slacking off from his Mayorly duties or decrees or whatever he should, in your eyes, be doing, fine... and I'm sorry for this wall of text but I just cannot allow a comment like that to not bear my scrutiny.

But just the !!insane!! rate of growth of the homeless in the last two years alone completely changes the game. It appears that, no matter where you look, all throughout the city of Angels is that housing is fucked expensive and in fucked supply.

> The startling jump in homelessness affected every significant demographic group, including youth, families, veterans and the chronically homeless, according to the report. Homeless officials and political leaders pointed to steadily rising housing costs and stagnant incomes as the underlying cause. [0]

I beseech you to be receptive to the idea that the problem goes far far far beyond simply flipping an "enforce preexisting laws" switch, or hiring more blue-suited hardasses that'll shine flashlights into the eyes of the homeless as they weather every night's accompanying total lack of guaranteed security...

Your 2015 article is by Gale Holland -- now compare the urgency of her writing, from earlier in 2017. The title alone is enough to alarm the shit out of you...

Headline: L.A. County homelessness jumps a 'staggering' 23% as need far outpaces housing, new count shows [0]

> Even the homeless veteran population jumped in 2017, marking a backsliding of the gains made last year by city, state and federal programs that slashed the number of homeless veterans by a third. With the number of veterans placed into housing slightly down, the count of 4,828 homeless veterans was up ___ 57%. __ (emphasis mine, but holy shit!)

> “There's no sugarcoating the bad news,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said at a news conference Wednesday where the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority released its report. “We can’t let rents double every year. I was particularly disappointed to see veteran numbers go up.”

> Garcetti called homelessness a problem that has persisted “through administrations, through recessions,” adding, “Our city is in the midst of an extraordinary homelessness crisis that needs an extraordinary response. These men, these women, these children are our neighbors.”

> The Homeless Services Authority linked the worsening problem to the economic stress on renters in the Los Angeles area. More than 2 million households in L.A. and Orange counties have housing costs that exceed 30% of income, according to data from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies included in the report.

> According to the nonprofit California Housing Partnership Corp., median rent, adjusted for inflation, increased more than 30% from 2000 to 2015, while the median income was flat.

Assume a plain-Jane compound interest growth formula (it's just a sketch, right?), use the rule of 72 with that 23% figure, and bam -- if that's how the process plays out, 3 years will be all it takes to double the number of people out on the street. That can't just be a linear issue of the number in bad situations either - it seems like super-linear complexity headache, with respect to the n = the growing number of disenfranchised people..

- How will you pay for the massive influx of cops necessary to address the doubled homeless population?

- What about the impact on the small businesses or cafes or corner markets and shit that will have a slowly-but-surely drying up of customers?

- Add to that, the ensuing evaporation of taxes funding the city..

- How much you wanna bet we won't have saved up enough to not hurt ourselves in the process of splurging on the whole 2028 Olympics extrava-freakin-ganza. Surely it'll be one of those hyper-spectacular moments in this boring dystopia of ours :)

And, once again, because it damn well bears worth repeating -- LA's homeless population jumped by 23%... IN THE LAST YEAR ALONE. AND The year prior had a 20% growth rate!!!!! And when they go homeless, it's more often the case of a gradual, year-long descent because of inability to pay, rather than a pinpoint-able, spontaneous event that made your home suddenly unlivable or irretrievable.

Look up the ancient Latin concept of the exiled man, homo saracer - a man whose life is worth so little that he may be murdered, freely and without any and all repercussion. Someone who is totally bereft of even being empathized with...

How can it be that the society can discard people to such tsunamic extent that we barely bat an eye at the fact that these slums share zip codes with the ultra rich and yet live worlds apart. Right at this very moment you are reading this sentence, dozens of wanderers - blacks, whites, latinos, disabled, boys, girls - extremely cautiously stepping along the highway. Petrified by how instantly their bones could be crushed into dust when you share a lane with any of the hundred thousand or so totally fucking insane drivers that live around here. To live like a dog, to be defenselessly curled up to rest their weary souls. To have nowhere to go except for the side of the road where tipsy assholes toss their empty sodas out their passenger side windows...

[0] http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-homeless-count-2...

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