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Comment by jjeaff | Hacker News Reader

It seems that rather than trying to fight the laws of economics with rent controls, special housing, and welfare programs, the focus should be relocation and job placement in less expensive areas.

It's unrealistic to try to get someone a low end job that will support them long term in one of the most expensive cities in America.

With the $1.2B bond measure, you could rent housing for every single homeless person in LA for a good 5 years in middle America. (less than $500 a month all in).

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Given that about a third are mentally ill, that would not be adequate - the other states would undoubtedly object - so some sort of interstate pact or national program would be required for that sort of plan.

Isn’t the problem that republican controlled midwestern states chase all their homeless people out to democrat controlled big cities? They are not willing to pay anything to help the homeless. They are not even willing to look at them. They want it to be somebody else’s problem. I think that is a problem with having open borders between states but not equal social programs. It leads to a race to the bottom.

This is a very curious comment. Troubling, too.

The answer you’ve offered up for confirmation reflects a perspective that is as bad as the one you’re demonizing.

Not exactly - the bigger problem is that all the republicans controlled midwestern states are shitty economies and so people move to places where they hear that people can get jobs (functioning liberal states) and when that doesn't work out they end up homeless in the new city. (Various polls of homeless people in Seattle have found that most of them were already in the area immediately before they became homeless).

Not sure you made it a Republican/Democrat thing when I can think of several high unemployment/poverty Democrat states and low unemployment/poverty Republican states.

Not surprisingly, facts don’t back that up, at all...

https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm

There areno jobs in these areas in middle America. And sometimes the water and air is poison where there is affordable housing anyway in these places. We need social programs that actually help and that actually are accessible. Some of the Medicaid forms I've seen were more difficult to complete than a dissertation and turn everyone away until they literally have nothing, i.e. when it's so too late for help to actually help in any lasting way that could be built upon.

You are beyond ill informed. The huge majority of middle American housing is located in areas with much better air quality than any of the big coastal cities like Los Angeles.

I thought we were talking places where people can work/live. Detroit came to mind: affordable housing, a few jobs- not many. But then I remembered: oh yeah! They have a giant trash incinerator blowing poison air on the whole Metro Area. It is at its worst where the housing is at its most affordable. Then I thought Indiana, Ohio- also having cities with some of the worst air quality in the country. Detroit's is worse than LA. Evansville is up there. Let's not even start with the water issues in the midwest, starting with Detroit.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/23/detroit-garb...

Detroit is one of the worst in America and being nearly on the Canadian border, I don't think many consider it "middle" America.

Middle America is more socioeconomic than physical. Chicago, south of Detroit (but mostly just further from the border with Canada), wouldn't be considered Middle America. North Dakota probably would. Detroit is a strange city, but I think many people would probably refer to it that way. The midwest in general can conjure some of the aesthetic pretty well, despite physical locations sometimes being quite north.

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