I Used to Be Homeless | Hacker News Reader

I Used to Be Homeless

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197 pointsevo_9314 comments

I was homeless in Silicon Valley many years ago. There were a lot of ‘us’. We stayed hidden in the woods, bathed often, and dressed impeccably in public. Some had jobs. Some were grad students. Several couples. There were no drugs, alcohol, beggars, or thieves out there. $5/day was enough. It was hard physically, but very spiritual, financially free, and altogether one of the best times of my life. Today it’s too dangerous. There are way too many criminals and addicts on the street. There’s nothing worse for a good person who has fallen on hard times than a policy that is lenient on crimes, drug use, public consumption, and public nuisance of the homeless. You can walk away and lock the door. They can’t. Just imagine yourself out there being victimized by bad people only because rich people feel guilty for them. For them. The one that just mugged you for their next high, or worse. Guilt for them. Good luck, kid.

This is so on point. I can not stand how little the police does to address the entirely open air drug sales and use, indecent exposure, and plethora of public safety issues (shattered glass bottles, prostitution, trespassing, selling stolen goods like bicycles) because the perpetrators are homeless. I’m not saying punish homelessness, I’m saying enforce existing laws regardless of who the perps are.

Do you think it has to do with generating income? Like if someone is homeless the odds of getting them to pay a fine is next to nothing. But snag a guy walking out of a bar pissing on the wall you're going to get some money out of it.

Probably as much to do with the revolving door as it does with generating income.

If you have a home / money, a fine or brief jail time are punishment. If you don't have home / money, you won't pay a fine, your time and lack of freedom won't solve an addiction brought on by being desolate. So, a month later, a cop has wasted hours, a judge has wasted hours, and the "criminal" still can't pay the fine, is still addicted, and will waste that same time again.

tldr; A fine of $50 for someone who doesn't have money to eat is in ways as inconceivable as a $1bln fine to someone in the middle class.

Sorry I don't understand your comment?

The purpose of a fine for doing something illegal is supposed to be corrective. If a person can not pay the fine, if they're not further inconvenienced by being arrested and sent to hours until jail; the effective corrective action is being applied to the judge, police; They can arrest the same homeless, mentally ill, drug addicted person each day; or put them in prison where they don't belong -- or they can fine/arrest violent offenders or people who are "corrected" by a jail time or fine.

It's a good point. Punishment in the form of losing something does not work on someone who lost everything.

You're correct. deterrent is the correct word.

> "The purpose of a fine for doing something illegal is supposed to be corrective."

that's almost certainly not true. a fine is primarily a deterrent, and failing that, is punitive. it's not corrective (or restorative), because it doesn't "correct" anything.

an example of corrective action is a burglar being required to return/replace stolen items.

Punitive actions are meant to correct the aberrant behavior by acting as a deterrent. The end goal of anything in criminal justice is to make the victim whole, and if that is not possible to deter future crimes of that type. This is why there are limits to how cruel we are allowed to be, as cruelty for vengeance sake is no more effective than is securing an individual who is very likely to continue their behavior.

Yeah, it sounds like he was going somewhere - or have a point, but lost it - or thought they finished but didnt. The question is, so what penalty for a homeless person would help them to re-align their values (or help rehabilitate them)?

This is a complicated issue because the Drug War is inherently discriminatory, and asking for our government to enforce these laws will always lead to discriminatory practices. All of the other issues definitely need to be addressed, however.

I was homeless as a teen for a short time. I guarantee you that there are moral/ethical homeless people that don't steal or attack people. (even when high)

So, I can say wholeheartedly it's not discriminatory against homeless or the disaffected, it's discriminates based on behaviour. Period.

If law breaking behaviour (theft, assault, etc...) exists most prominently in addicted homeless people, that shouldn't be surprising nor ignored. And it certainly shouldn't negate the laws of the land.

It's discriminatory against the poor, not the homeless

I've been poor most of my life. It's not discriminatory against the poor at all.

I lived in a van with my wife, and we didn't steal. There were people in the parks that would steal, and the police would come after them, not us. I speak from life experience.

You are helping spread a deadly lie.

I challenge anyone to prove me wrong. Go be genuinely poor, it's really easy to do. Just use a tiny amount of money to live off of. And see if it causes you to commit crimes.

Move to a single room apartment, or be homeless. It does not make you immoral or unethical or cause you to mug people or steal.

You seem to be taking this personally. I don't see how your personal experiences address the claim that the poor are disproportionately inclined to commit petty crimes

I don't think he's disputing that crime and poverty are correlated. I think he's disputing both the idea that poverty causes crime and the idea that cracking down on petty crime hurts the poor.

There are many people who are poor due to unfortunate circumstances, but more than likely, if a poor person commits crimes, it has less to do with their poverty and more to do with other factors that caused both their poverty and criminality. We may have reasons to feel sympathy for or try to help the criminally inclined poor, but showing them leniency doesn't usually help them.

It also doesn't help poor people in general, because typically the victims of poor criminals are other poor people.

I would add that sometimes, getting really in trouble is what helps some younger people straighten up in life. It's a disservice to the poor to ignore their crimes against others.

It's a disservice to the poor to allow them to become unfairly entrenched in the legal system. No one is ignoring crimes wholesale. This argument is about which of these "crimes" are legitimate and which aren't.

My mother's family was so poor that they ran out of beans to feed 7 kids one winter. They never stole, hurt anyone or broke any laws.

That's great for her, but that doesn't define the moral boundary.

Society decides the moral boundry, and currently stealing is immoral.

No. It's all about context. Thinking in such absolutes is a sign of low intelligence and empathy.

Then clarify your context, what crime is appropriate for homeless people and the poor to be arrested for?

I say it's the laws that currently exist, what do you say?

What kind of question is that? It doesn't even make sense and I don't know what kind of answer you expect. Why do you continue to derail this conversation so hard?

I was discussing this point:

>"It's discriminatory [law] against the poor, not the homeless"

I think it's fair to express how my experience is evidence that this is not a universal truth and there is room to challenge it.

Threads naturally change topics as they grow.

You're telling me that if I was rich I would still have risked my freedom to steal food from the supermarket during the time when I was homeless and extremely sick and unable to work?

And conversely, that I should have just starved instead of stealing food in order to maintain my moral standing? That is arguably an illogical position.

Obviously I am saying neither of those things, because I am speaking in generalities (as they apply in the US) and have no knowledge of you in particular.

That's exactly my point. Your absolutisms and generalities discriminate against many individuals.

If the generalizations I am making are an inaccurate reflection of the reality of poverty and crime, then please enlighten me.

In America (my personal frame of reference) I could eat 7 meals a day as a homeless person. No one starves here if they go and look for food. I got food stamps the day I walked into the social services office.

"Starving or stealing" in the US today is a straw man argument.

That's not a straw man. What you're thinking of is a false dichotomy. Not everyone is in the same position you were, and it's stupid to think that your experience is the baseline experience. Sounds like you were doing a lot better than others.

If you live in San Franscico there are a ton of places you can get food:

https://www.kqed.org/bayareabites/110356/where-homeless-peop...

Where do you live? I will likely be able to find food for you online. If not from a website, there will be a church, if not a church a social network that will get you food.

I've even seen people post on imgur.com and get sent pizza by people on the other side of the country.

If you need help getting food right now, post an email address here and I will find a way to get you food.

I've used plenty of those programs growing up in a poor family. It was never enough. And today, with budgets becoming ever tighter, it's less than ever. I work hard for the food on my table but it wouldn't be here and I wouldn't be here if I had never stolen food when I needed it most. But none of this has a damn thing to do with your straw man argument that I was saying being poor causes someone to commit crimes, and it has nothing to do with the drug war. I'm done talking with you because you're just playing devils advocate and derailing the conversation.

Every single time I asked for help I got something, even if I had to ask a few different people.

I am sorry you have experienced bad times. But have you considered that you could have asked for food instead of stealing it? Every restaurant I ever worked at gave food to people who asked. A number of other companies did as well. I have given people food that weren't even asking for it because I could see they needed it. (I have plenty of experience dumpster diving, which I chose over stealing)

You can justify breaking the law, and I wouldn't hold it against you for the sake for food, but it doesn't means it's the right thing to do. I begged on the streets and found charity every time.

The post is about being homeless, and your original comment was this:

>This is a complicated issue because the Drug War is inherently discriminatory, and asking for our government to enforce these laws will always lead to discriminatory practices. All of the other issues definitely need to be addressed, however.

But you seem to have derailed the conversation in your response, because the comment you replied to was this:

>I’m not saying punish homelessness, I’m saying enforce existing laws regardless of who the perps are.

I am discussing laws and the effects on poor people, I feel this is on topic, just like the original comment. And in my experience the law protects everyone from everyone, and the loudest claims of "discrimination" were from people who broke the law, just like you are doing now. And the people who don't break the law don't feel discriminated against.

The parent comment to this was how a homeless guy bent over backwards to fit in with society and did not break the law. Yet you seem to be the only one saying the poor/homeless are victims of the law and discriminated against in this entire thread.

If you change the topic, you should expect to be challenged.

Maybe consider the possibility there is a completely different way to live that protects you from what "seems" like discrimination, and that would be suffering a little to do what is right. Humble yourself and ask for help instead of blaming others and breaking the law.

I don't disagree that they are "inclined" to commit petty crime, just like the rich are more inclined to cheat on their taxes. (when is that last time you heard a poor person rant against the inheritance tax?)

But, I disagree that your social status decides guilt.

Rich/famouse/politicians shouldn't get away with crimes they commit based on their status anymore than a poor person should. Crime is crime. Just because the judge/police/whoever feels social pressure to not enforce the law means everyone else suffers.

Feeling pity for someone's situation does not absolve them of their actions. Personally knowing poor/homeless people gives me a perspective that they aren't total victims and that they don't deserve absolution based on status. (just like the rich don't)

I've been extremely poor most of my life. I've been homeless. And neither of our personal anecdotes have any bearing on the reason why the drug war began.

I suggest checking out The Emperor Wears No Clothes for a background behind the start of drug prohibition as a new way to discriminate and make use of bolstered police forces after the failure of alcohol prohibition, as well as prevent the disruption of several entrenched industries.

It's a short read, extremely informative, and it's available freely online here: https://jackherer.com/emperor-3/

> Go be genuinely poor, it's really easy to do. Just use a tiny amount of money to live off of. And see if it causes you to commit crimes.

That's not the correct way to look at it.

We are artificially creating crimes from things which shouldn't be illegal and which infringe upon basic freedoms, and then creating the conditions that lead to people committing those "crimes".

"Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime," as Beria says. The Drug War is a tool to, among other things, benefit the new tax-supported slave trade disguised as a private industrial prison system. Affluent citizens are usually able to circumvent the system, as designed, and thus these laws are able to discriminate against the poor while seeming "fair".

I don't disagree with anything you are saying. But you aren't hearing what I said, being poor doesn't cause you to commit crimes.

If you have been homeless, you know that there are both good and wonderful people that are homeless and rotten crooks. Neither of which adding money to their pocket would change.

The argument isn't about being poor causing someone to commit crimes. That's a complete straw-man. Let's focus.

The argument is about discriminatory laws and conditions forcing a percentage of those in poverty to be considered criminals. Specifically, the drug war. That was all my original comment deconstructed. We could extend the moral boundary to stealing food in order to survive provided you don't hurt anyone, but that's it.

I never made any claim that being poor causes some kind of effect on people that turns them into criminals. You're barking up the wrong tree.

>..a percentage of those in poverty to be considered criminals. Specifically, the drug war.

I knew tons of people that did drugs on the streets (most of them) and none of them went to jail accept those that committed crimes while doing drugs.

Is there statistics somewhere that shows "x number of people are in jail for inhaling while minding their own business"?

The police are always around on the streets, they don't have time to arrest people for just "drugs". I am amazed this is the refrain still going around. Consider how many states have made weed legal now, those same states decriminalized weed decades ago. No jail for weed in a lot of places for a very long time.

If you want to talk about other drugs, and pretend like they don't lead to crimes, bring up the stats, I'd be curious to know.

I got in a car accident, and it turns out the driver had a tiny crumb of marijuana in a booksack, and I got six months jail time for it because the judge was incredibly corrupt and complicit with how the system works.

I watched someone else who got caught trespassing and hunting without tags, caught with several grams of marijuana, his second possession arrest, only get a few hours of community service because he wasn't poor or youthful.

This charge has had an extremely negative impact on my life, and I did nothing to deserve it.

Your understanding of how the world works is so small and broken, you need to work on developing empathy for others caught up in the system and stop assuming that just because they are in it, they deserve it. You have no idea what police are arresting people for outside of your little town, and it's arrogant to assume otherwise. Read that book.

My experiences are LA, Portland, Tampa, Key west, Phoenix, Tempe, Tuscon and a lot of other places where I was homeless.

I didn't get into fights, I didn't argue with the police when they told us to move or leave an area, I was respectful and decent. While people right next to us caused problems and got arrested.

So, I have seen plenty of police action, and rarely was it undeserved.

I think people who don't want to take responsibility for their actions are blind to the effects they have on others and simply can't see how their actions are scary for police to deal with and feel entitled to be belligerent.

> The police are always around on the streets, they don't have time to arrest people for just "drugs"

Meanwhile, my local police blotter is littered with "adolescent charged with drug possession/paraphernalia" reports.

> No jail for weed in a lot of places for a very long time.

There are plenty of fines, and if you can't pay them, you have the option of voluntarily or involuntarily spending time in jail over them.

In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.

That doesn't respond to the 'public safety issues' the GP was discussing.

Being on the streets is a spectrum of bad luck and bad choices. Yes, that means there are generally examples of people who are mostly one or mostly the other and plenty in between. Usually what happens is a few things go wrong at the same time from either category and life spirals out of control.

The problem is that it's hard to get people back on their feet again and the criminal justice system is quite terrible at it in general, but that doesn't mean that people never learning that there are consequences for their actions is a good thing, either.

Part of the problem is that various criminal societies have developed and need to be dismantled so as not to self-perpetuate the harm they cause to others.

there was a documentary about this, seen on Italian TV (English doc with subs)

Would it be ok if I ask you about this in details ?

That sounds like a nice hippy colony you had there. My experience was different.

Winter kills people. Summer kills people. Have your shelter from the elements planned, or you wont make it. The Homeless Shelter doesnt have the resources to help you all day. And they only let everyone sleep on the floor for the coldest 3 months of the year, when Christmas donations make feeding everyone ONE meal possible. When that runs out, or by county statute, you're on your own.

There's always someone that keeps the light-sleepers awake during those months. There's always someone bringing a virus in to that shelter. And there's always the one who needs to get voted off the island for everyone's safety - and sometimes he gets to stay, which keeps everyone awake except the security officer. Sometimes there's even the person who should be in a nursing home, but cant afford it and will defacate on theirself, and let it run down the floor. They can't help it, and we only get tapwater to clean it with.

So you make other arrangements where you can. If you had your wits about you and enough resources, you could get by on a daily basis. Those "criminals" were just fellows looking for their next meal, same as me. I didnt bother them except as a "heads up," and they returned the favor in both ways.

Same with cops - who, after enough analysis from this perspective became just another gang. The "heads up" I gave them were just of a different sort - fast food menus or coffee are things you'll have in common. Always have "normal" conversation ready for cops that isnt snitching - running & hiding only makes them chase, and you're going to have to walk near / with one eventually.

Always smile and wave to the cop. I dont care if you have a kilo of coke in a trojan condom up your ass, wave to make the man with a gun think you're friendly when he simply drives past and ignores you. You want to be human but forgettable.

And that's just the lay of the land - you better know them - cops, gangs, geography; be friendly rather than a nuisance around their turf. Even the hardest of them usually appreciates some manner reciprocity and a genuine nature from the lowest among us.

Then again, I didnt have access to suits. So I looked homeless, even with as much of a job as I could keep. All my money went out the moment it came in - ITS DECEPTIVELY EXPENSIVE TO BE HOMELESS SAFELY.

In order to not get picked up by the cops, I needed to move around A LOT.

Friends - fellow "travellers" and otherwise make survival possible. Need a ride to get out of dodge? Need folk medicine to survive, need a meal? Better share, so you can be shared-with. And you usually dont wanna be known as homeless, just a "slob".

At the same time most of those fellows in the same situation are going to be drains on your resources, not worthwhile investments of your time. Do you wanna eat, or just stare at someone else who's hungry until you punch each other? But you need to know that guy's name, have him like you enough to not try to steal from you.

Need to see a doctor? Need a dentist, a shower, a hot meal that isnt convenience food or similar junk food served by a soup kitchen? You better have a job that makes these possible - if not, you're screwed. And thats rarely a ticket out to a liveable life.

So every motherfucker has their lotto-ticket dream that they know is gonna work out. Emotionally, this keeps them alive. It doesnt matter what it is, or if its realistic. They're not gonna take "no" for an answer if they can help it, regarding that. This is how people fucking snap - they run out of ideas they think they can work.

Or worse - they settle in, and accept their lives as the perpetually ignored. They can last for 30 years, but they usually dont make it through the next winter.

Even cheap folk medicine became a terrible expense, and neglected health problems become untenable. This is what gets us all, eventually. And then someone steps in to help if you're lucky and young, after usually irreparable damage is done, and what's fixable costs a fortune.

Local "assistance" agencies requiring folks to be homeless for a Full Year to qualify for any help made it worse. But then, requirements that folks have their last address within that county, and not leave the county to seek opportunities elsewhere? Just makes it worse.

You get three hots and a cot - after trying and failing for a full year, tied down to the place you keep failing in. That year of failure breaks most people in some way.

No, not everyone is entirely out of options. But so many of us kid ourselves - we turn it into a "choice," when it was really just the only way to escape an even worse situation of similar poverty - that was my story.

I had kept the same job for years before, and through my time on the streets. It was the hardest time there, feeling ashamed around those people about my... "lifestyle". Its still painful to look back and see how I just... Changed.

Dont get me wrong - I kinda miss parts of it. Getting off work and being free to play and code, to wander, to learn whats around me in a new spot to explore. The stargazing simple dates, and

But hey. Tell me more about your bougie homelessness.

Yes, those things existed. I saw very little of them, and mostly avoided them. That wasn't easy either. I had some special training in survival and evasion, and it wasn't that serious, but it was the mindset I was coming from. I did a lot of walking, all day, all night, carrying everything with me, and very little sleeping. Sometimes I'd try to memorize a song, and in harder times I'd just repeat to myself, "I will always keep myself mentally alert, physically strong and morally straight". During the summer it was bougie homeless. The numbers dwindled as the weather got cold until I was alone for all I knew, and the cold was brutal, especially up in the hills when everything I had was wet from the rain. The first time I got really sick, I was freezing and miserable, and I gave up; I walked out and headed into town to catch the bus to a shelter. I got on Hotel 22 at about 2am, and realized pretty quickly that I was in a bad place, and I was headed to a worse place. The driver made it clear: the dude in a t-shirt shaking wild-eyed and moaning was going to the VA shelter, and everybody else was there to avoid it. I went back into the hills with a bit more acceptance of fate in my mind. I'm not sure that it would be as easy to avoid today. I've watched it get worse, thankfully not up close. "There but for the grace of god go I". I whisper that to myself every day, and conversely, no matter how much I succeed and achieve and prove myself professionally, I'll never feel like I truly deserve anything better than "cold nasty brutish and short". That may be what I liked about it most of all, a feeling like I didn't owe anybody anything, like there was nothing to feel guilty for. That's a special kind of freedom.

This article reminded me of a childhood experience of mine. At some point when I was in high school my dad brought home a homeless man to live in our house. At first it seemed weird, but I understood that we were in a position to help so I got over the feeling that our family was different for helping someone from the street. Then it started to feel weird that this guy completely bunkered down in his room. The few times I was able to peer through his door, it totally looked like a horder’s nest. He kept all kinds of things that seemed of little value and layed on top of it all. And there was definitely a stink of body odor that wafted out whenever the door opened. Mostly he stayed in his room and watched TV day and night. Which made sense, he was on disability for back issues, so eventually I got over the weirdness that someone would choose to lock himself and in his room 24/7.

At some point though, after several years of this he seemed to really be getting better. He was always friendly, and he’d smile and say a few words if I saw him, but he seemed to be getting genuinely happier and psychologically better. The smell in the room started to subside, I think my folks had a talk with him about showering as terms of staying at one point, but it was still a steady increase. And he seemed to be getting out more and more, and I was more likely to see him outside than just in the hall.

I say all this, because it somehow feels pertinent in this forum. It’s also not something you hear a lot. There is a real healing that can often only be possible with long term stability. I often wonder how I’d cope if I was homeless, who I’d turn to. I’m not sure I have as many multi year options as I’d like. I also wonder if I’d be able to tolerate someone living in my house for as long as my folks did.

It would be great if you and your family elaborate more on this experience through an AMA and/or blog post?

Sharing an experience like this would definitely help bring awareness and empathy to the cause.

OP's parents and the man they hosted should consider if reaching out to someone about their story would be something they'd like to do.

My Dad joined the "big brother" program (back when it was for teens without Dad's, not government spying).

We had a kid live with us for maybe half a year. My Dad said the kid just didn't want to change anything, but I think you have to be patient like your parents were to actually help anyone. (So thanks for sharing that story.)

We learned how to drink raw eggs from this guy. And he didn't do anything bad that I ever saw. But my Dad didn't bring anyone else home after this.

That was, to put it mildly, exceptionally generous of your dad and mom. Very few people would go that far in helping a complete stranger. And what happened to the homeless man eventually?

> People often ask me what they can do to help the homeless and I always say, "Just look around you!" When someone has so little, it doesn't take much to help. You can start by not judging the homeless.

This indeed where it all starts. There are so many voices telling us that these people aren't human, but deep down these rationalizations are just trying to cover the uncomfortable emotion we feel when we see a fellow human who is down on luck. Even if it's just $1 or a granola bar we can give, it can make a huge difference in someone's day. After all, the crisis they are going through is objectively more important than my comfort.

This may work when the concentration is low. I’d estimate 15-20 homeless people on the daily walk between my front door in SOMA and the Muni Metro. Often in relatively dense tent encampments. I’d feel pretty weird giving to one and not the others on the same block. Especially since it’s probably the same people day in and day out. It’d take some serious preparation before going out the door to pack enough for everyone, and then stop every few feet to deliver it. At an even lower level than compassion fatigue, it’s logistics.

If only there were some sort of professional, centralized entity to collect some of our money and distribute it equitably.

Charities? Some waste too much money on administration, but I think the smaller ones are pretty good.

True, but few of them waste 1/10 as much as the government and they all work off of willful contributions.

I understand what you're saying, but you're literally saying you feeling awkward is more important than someone having food that day.

Sure, it's not the most efficient or probably effective, but giving a little bit does make a difference.

>you feeling awkward is more important than someone having food that day

Have you ever spent any money on something that would make you feel less awkward that you could've donated to help feed the hungry? Have you ever bought new clothes when second hand would've worked and you could've donated the difference to feed the hungry? Have you ever spent money eating out when you could've saved money by cooking and donated the difference to feed the hungry?

I wonder if there is anyone who could answer no to such questions?

Let's consider a proposal, then. A simple approach. Whenever you encounter a homeless person, stop and interact for a bit. Treat them as a human being, deserving of respect and dignity and humane treatment as a friend and neighbor. Find out what they need. Give the at least enough for a meal.

I'm going to assume 5-10 minutes and $10 per person per encounter per day.

Given that I pass at least 20 of my neighbors experiencing houselessness on each leg of my daily commute, I'm looking at $400 a day in donations and upwards of three hours. This may be sustainable for you, but it would quickly leave me unable to afford to eat myself. And that's assuming everything always goes perfectly, which my experiences living in an area with a sizable population of my neighbors being unhoused suggests may not always reliably be the case.

With this pointedly ridiculous hypothetical in mind, it may be worth considering that people have to choose their own boundaries, in their own lives, and for their own reasons. Your heart is in the right place - compassion and kindness matter! - but it's possible that shaming people for choosing their boundaries might not be the most productive of all possible uses of your time and energy.

I choose one out of the many, and it doesn't have to be every day - or every week; and I do this only when I have some real time to spend to talk, in case a conversation gets deep, which can happen and is a good thing. At least a third of the time I bring say cherries or a couple of bananas (scurvy from Vitamin C deficiency is not uncommon for homeless people.) The food donations would be more common except that I don't always carry food, and I try to avoid theatrical and practiced begging, since that's more likely to be for drugs so won't stop for the first apparently homeless person I see.

I don't feel weird "giving to one and not the many," since I've read some Kant and know that I have no moral obligation to do the impossible; I don't even think I have an obligation to do so much that I start to hate doing it, and might quit. I don't mean to be unkind, but "I can't help everyone." and "It might feel weird" do seem like rationalizations to me.

The guy I've sat with most had a serious (obvious impact) brain injury, and when I last talked with him, he was drinking while contemplating whether he should go to a meeting that had been set up with his son, who he hadn't seen since his childhood. He was very worried his now-adult son might not like him. I told him (on the basis of previous our conversations) that he should be proud of himself; he was shouldering a huge burden better he would than most of us would. That it didn't really matter whether his son "got that" or didn't; he should go to help his son understand the world, and understand himself. I have no idea whether he ever met with his son or not.

Break some boundaries, experiment a bit, you don't have to go overboard.

Have you ever seen Schindler's List? There's a scene, near the end, where Oskar Schindler breaks down. He looks at all the little luxuries in his life, tallies their cost, and lists off how many more lives that could have saved. It nearly destroys him.

To Schindler, "I have no moral obligation to do the impossible" would have come off as a self-serving rationalization for not doing as much as you can.

For all that, you're absolutely right. Break some boundaries! Challenge yourself! Experiment! Just understand that some other people, having gone through similar processes, might arrive at personal conclusions that could in some instances perhaps differ slightly from yours. Perhaps you and I could be more careful in what we deem justified and what we deem a rationalization, knowing that those are intensely personal decisions.

If you read carefully you will find that I have argued for doing as much as you can sustain doing. (I have edited slightly to make that clearer, now.) At the same time, unlike yourself, I thought it a best marketing practice to encourage people to get started with good actions, not to sell them on saintliness immediately. "First get a yes," as salesmen say. Perhaps that seems like a bitter trick to you, but Aristotle advises that establishing the habit of good action takes time.

Also remember, you don't know my circumstances - I'm trying hard not to use a wheelchair now, for example, so I may not be as active as you. I'm not young. Kudos if your charity can be relentless.

So do note that my argument was a limited one, I was arguing in favor of at least some action, not trying to define ceilings other than what you can sustain doing. Which, as it turns out, over time - is actually the greatest possible effort one could offer.

Not to mention that homeless people are but one possible focus for charity so I can't accept your apparent insistence that I should devote all my energy to them exclusively; I spend far more time and effort trying to help the severely chronically ill in my own way and am not willing to give that up. If only because chronic illness often leads to homelessness.

It's cool that you do this and I enjoyed reading the comment, but I'm not too keen on the idea of actively encouraging random strangers on the internet to try the same when they clearly are openly hostile. I can readily see that going bad places.

When I was on the street, people sometimes treated me like a zoo animal they could gawk at and would waste my time and energy and violate my personal boundaries by peppering me with invasive questions. No, they weren't going to be a positive social experience for me. No, they weren't going to help me brain storm or problem solve. No, they weren't going to do anything for me.

People who have nothing but contempt and excuses can just keep walking as far as I'm concerned. They don't need to listen to stories of how you behave, filter it through their mind and come to bizarre conclusions that are likely to just add to the problems of the poorest of the poor.

I take your point, and it's a good one. My counter would be that I would like to encourage the less-narcissistic to be of a little help and make contact, in part because, just as you say, right now those who aren't homeless but are willing to interact with them are not always the best people - they often have selfish or trivial agendas. We need a few more making real contact who don't. You know, actual mature human beings.

So I wouldn't want to think that I've encouraged "poverty tourism" (which has a long history, right back to Victorian slum tours, and probably further back than that.) I'm absolutely not trying to indulge my curiosity when talking to a homeless person; that seems exploitative at best. If a question would be intrusive and unnecessary if you posed it to a billionaire, it's probably not polite question for a homeless person, either. You've better expressed what I meant when I said I always made sure I had time to talk: sometimes homeless people are new to town, or just have something on their mind, and I'm happy to brainstorm (or help fix a bike one time.) But that's up to them of course.

I guess I would say your first three paragraphs (of the comment in question) were fine, but your closing sentence is of questionable value and veers into territory that concerns me.

/unasked for feedback

I've no idea how to interpret your remark. It's always up to anyone to freely decide to engage in conversation or to refuse a chance to chat. To accept a hand fixing a bike or to decide instead that it's more likely that the job will get done properly if they do the whole thing themselves. Etc.

It’s a fair criticism. But if that’s the social contract - that a pedestrian in an urban area is obliged to empathize with and offer support for all the destitution along his path - then we are doomed to drive around suburbia forever. Walkability is a compelling goal, but at that price, it seems impossible. So I reject the notion that it’s the price. I realize that’s flawed reasoning.

It’s in San Francisco’s DNA to welcome the desperate and downtrodden from everywhere in the world. I don’t begrudge it that. But it means the streets will never be free of poverty until utopia reigns on every last inch of the earth. Which seems unlikely to happen soon. There’s got to be a pragmatic trade off for the next 50 years.

SF just passed 300 million/year measure that's supposed to help the homeless and that's in addition to the 240 million/year of funding that's already there. Both of those combined exceeds the budgets of most cities. First I would say, let's figure out how to use that money so that it's actually working. 540 million/year is enough to give the 7000 homeless in SF 77,000$ per year. Let's put that to good use and make sure it doesn't end up in administrative waste before throwing more $ at it.

Are those numbers correct? If so, that's insane. For $77k/year, SF should be able to house every single one of them with money to spare.

The latest tax increased it from 30k to about 60-70k. As to why it's doing so little, there's a variety of explanations. Some say that homeless often have mental or drug abuse issues that keep them from being able to live on their own. Others (including the mayor) say that the money is more than enough, and we need more accountability of what we already spend. 70k is about the median wage of a single person in SF.

Even losing half the bureaucracy, that leaves 35k/year for actual aid. Toss half of that at misc care and other programs. 17.5/year left for housing. Not much, but should still be enough for group home type arrangements. Or, at least I would hope so.

I've never been involved in these programs on either side, but it's amazing that $70k/year might not be enough to house somebody.

1/2 for bureacrazy? that sounds like a lot for just overhead

Well, whatever money you spend to provide a service goes straight into someones pocket first, before a homeless person gets anything in return.

You're going to be real surprised then when you find out what assisted living or memory care costs for your parents. Hint it's at least double what normal cost of living is. And many of these folks do need that level of care and supervision.

Sure, that doesn't surprise me.

But how many of those 7000 homeless need that level of care? Half? 2/3? SF should at least be able to get the "easy" people off the street.

Maybe they already have?

They have definitely worked hard to do so. On BART I happened to start talking with somebody wearing a jacket from the Homeless Outreach Team. It's his job to talk people into getting the help they need and getting off the streets. The ones we talked about are definitely the difficult cases.

That doesn't surprise me at all. There's a homeless guy in my neighborhood I've been talking with at least 7 years. He has mentioned being born at the hospital 3 blocks from my place, and I'm sure he grew up in the neighborhood. He's polite, friendly, and very set in his ways. I suspect he has some sort of alcohol-induced anterograde amnesia. He has absolutely no interest in living in any sort of setting where he'd be constrained by others. From the way he talks about it, I expect there's some sort of history of abuse by authority figures.

I don't think it's impossible for him to get help. But I think it would have to include living in his neighborhood and I think it would need a lot of patient and intensive help from professionals. Otherwise he's just going to do what's familiar to him.

There's a lot of bureaucrats and cronies taking their cut, I'd be surprised if 10% of that actually made it to the homeless

Considering the annual cost of a taxpayer for a prison inmate is $31k a year, surely thats a problem that can be solved with that budget.

In California it's about $75k/yr[1] so that budget should be roughly enough.

https://www.politifact.com/california/statements/2017/aug/09...

A fair amount of resources spent in prison inmates is dedicated to keeping them inside the prison.

The divisor should be 7000 people + however many people are not homeless because of the money SF spends reducing homelessness. I certainly hope that's a number much larger than 7000.

Ah, true enough. Maybe the 7000 are truly the worst off, and in need of extra services.

You're correct. A full 50% of the budget is housing assistance. 10% is eviction prevention. After that, we're getting into the services and support for the 7000+ people that the point-in-time count captures.

The vast majority of that 300 million per year will go to bureaucrats for group meetings to discuss how to solve the homeless problem. San Francisco voters have no say in the matter and they are unable to influence change because these organizations are run by unelected bureaucrats. If you vote for another figurehead they will keep the same bureaucrats.

Reference, please.

Using the point-in-time count as a divisor for the entire budget is so ridiculously asinine I'm shocked so many folks are engaging with it in good faith. "Let's figure out how to use that money" might begin with understanding how it's already spent. Here's a more in depth article correcting this fallacy: http://beyondchron.org/sfs-homeless-spending-myth/

“Since the 1980’s, the media has created an impression—now shared by the public and some supervisors—that you can simply divide homeless spending ($165 million) by the homeless numbers (7000) and then give that amount of money (over $20,000 per homeless person) to get them off the streets. But most of SF’s “homeless budget” is spent on people already housed. The city is not spending $165 million on 7000 reported homeless, but on thousands more living in supportive permanent housing.” - same author, from 2014

This is dangerously ignorant analysis and I'd hope you would take some time to research where that money is spent before sharing your opinion again.

A vital figure is missing from the article, how many people are actually being housed with that budget?

If it's 10k people, that is $16,500 per person (ignoring administrative costs). So that is pretty damn effective budgeting. (roughly)

But, it's 1k people that is $165,000 a person, which is piss poor.

So just shouting down someone else that is missing a few numbers is pointless without all the numbers. You may end up agreeing with their sentiment if you find the end results are the same. (ie, possibly the budget is going to rich land owners pockets instead of actually helping more people)

I'm sorry, taking a budget for homeless and homeless assistance and dividing by point-in-time count is destined for asinine useless territory no matter what information I lack. 50% of the budget is housing assistance. 10% is eviction prevention. 20% is medical care. So just napkin math and 2/3rds of the 77k/y figure is for folks outside the point-in-time count. His "sentiment" is wholly based in steadfast ignorance over what those numbers pay for. Pretending to have a firm enough grasp to _direct_ future spending when whiffing on those basics isn't as endearing as you'd think.

I'm thrilled by the success of the Navigation Centers pioneered by Ed Lee. But it's really, really hard to talk about those specifics with people who just want a numerator and denominator to talk about per-person abstract figures as if policy can drop out of an equation. This may shock the HN crowd, but I live in SF and have awareness of this issue not gleaned from the immediate article.

If you're going to baselessly insinuate that "rich landowners" are pocketing funds, I'd appreciate if you could name the organization you suspect? Hamilton Families? Community Housing Partnership? C'mon, lets rat out those fat cats!

A charity group for the "police and fire fighters" calls me up and asks me to donate. I ask a simple question "how is donated money spent?" I ask them to send me info on this to research before I donate and I never get any.

If we can't see how the money is spent (ie, audited by an actual CPA as the ultimate) then we are all guessing as to how it's spent and who ends up with the money in the end.

You are guessing unless you have seen the books. Outrage against uncontrolled and unmonitored spending is appropriate.

I'm sorry? I listed two specific charities that receive this money and your chosen example, wholly ignoring those two or anything approaching relevance to the topic, is "some rando scam call" you got? I really don't know what you want out of this conversation. So far beyond anything even masquerading as good-faith engagement.

I have had some experience researching charities. Just because you listed two doesn't mean they are good or spend their money ethically. (most do not)

The fact that you think they are good implies that either you researched them and have proof, or you have blind faith in them.

If you researched them, can you provide your sources? If you have not, why do you think they are ethical with their spending practices?

I brought them up. You hand waved about unrelated scams from unrelated persons. The sheer gall to act like you've been engaging in good faith is remarkable.

Do folks normally volunteer for your made up research quests after this much acrimony and baseless conjecture? Ridiculous.

The only thing "dangerously ignorant" is giving someone a free place to live on top of the most expensive real estate in the world, merely because they threaten they might be on the street instead of moving somewhere cheaper like everyone else.

A free place to live? Which program is that, exactly? Refresh my memory if you'd be so kind.

I mean, I'm certain you're not denigrating housing assistance programs for persons who lived in the city before they were homeless and painting it as dangerous outsiders getting free rent. That would be unconscionable.

It would be “unconscionable” to object to a 90% housing subsidy (but not a 100% subsidy) for someone to live on the most valuable real estate in the world rather than moving somewhere cheaper like everyone else?

Um, okay then. Forget I said anything, I guess.

Nah, I'm referring to how you're wildly misrepresenting your position and now presenting an exceptionally poor reading of the objection. If you manage to say anything of substance I'll be sure to recall it.

But really, I'm game! Name a specific program you object to? Single out one of the nonprofits that receives these funds? I'm curious what the nice folks down at Hamilton Families did to deserve this much of your ire.

I mean, it couldn't possibly be sour grapes that those lucky ducky homeless folks get to stay in smoke-drenched SF while you had to bounce to Austin like "everyone else?" How was ACL this year?

Presumably, the things a government needs to buy to help are housing and personnel, which are unusually expensive here by a wide margin. So having far and away the highest spending per person needing assistance seems correct.

> distribute it equitably.

<sarcasm>You communist</sarcasm>

I was having a discussion a couple minutes ago about the situation of Cuban doctors in Brazil and the simplistic solution some supporters of the far-right government proposed - to give citizenship to the ones who take a test to validate their degrees.

Unsurprisingly, not that many would be attracted by the moving from a country with nearly zero crime, assured retirement and free education and healthcare from cradle to grave to one that's violent and just elected a xenophobic, homophobic and racist president. Life is much more complicated than that.

If only there were some sort of professional, centralized entity to collect some of our money and distribute it equitably.

Here ya go: https://www.catholiccharitiessf.org

I used to make regular donations in person when I was able to. It’s eye-opening to see what they do.

One day a random woman walked in because she’d pooed herself due to a medical condition. She was immediately whisked away to be showered, given clean clothes, and fed. No questions asked.

To live in, In SF. your choices are a 1.5 million dollar condo or a 50$ dollar tent. Seriously people, we need to allow for more choices than that. I'm sure builders and entrepreneurs would line up around the block to build solutions that are cheaper and more cost effective, but you first have to make it legal (get rid of the mountains of regulations and zoning headaches that make this problem so insurmountable), without that, will never make any progress on this problem.

Why do you think the internet took off as quickly as it did? or the facebook app store in 2008, etc. It's because there were no regulations (or almost none). This allowed thinks to take off very quickly.

Let's designate a section of several cities, say a 1 square mile section as regulation free, with an absolute minimum of zoning requirements, and almost 0 regulations. Then let the market have at it, see what gets built. Sure, maybe you don't like what happens in version 1. But, if we never iterate on this problem, we'll never make progress on it and in a 100 years we'll still be talking about this same self imposed problem which is completely solvable.

The cost of your "regulation free zone" will likely be measured in human lives. Does that seem like an acceptable risk?

The cost of the current homeless situation can also be measured in human lives

That's just in the beginning. Not every regulation saves lives - some are just on the books to protect rent seeking entities and lobbyists, and some are just there because they've always been there.

This is true of course, but it's always a giant red flag for me whenever someone refers to the vague concept of "regulations" as being the problem, vs. complaining about specific regulations. Complaining about the very concept of regulations seems really naive, like precoscious high schooler who just had his mind blown by Atlas Shrugged naive.

The current POTUS made a campaign promise that he would only allow a regulation to be added if two more were eliminated. This is asinine. If there are unnecessary regulations, get rid of them. Get rid of them because they're unnecessary or counterproductive, not because they fall into a category of legislation referred to as "regulations". Losing a regulation isn't an inherently good thing any more than gaining one is an inherently bad thing. The only thing that matters is whether or not it's a net positive, and that's specific to each regulation. It's like saying, "there's too many laws! We need to get rid of some laws!", and proceeding to randomly choose laws to get rid of until numberOfLaws <= totallyArbitraryMaximumLawCountThatSomeoneMadeUp.

"Regulatory theater" with many laws, almost no money for enforcement, and small penalties that are never updated for inflation seems very common to me.

Fewer, well-chosen regulations with very strong penalties that easily pay for strict enforcement activity - that's much rarer; and I'm cynical enough about how gets to influence lawmakers, that I know why that is.

Ah, the “you just want people to die” argument. I wondered when that would show up.

How about a largely deregulated area where you can mix housing and business zoning. Like we use to with downtowns. At the same time get rid of the caps on building height. Tokyo has tall buildings and earthquakes. Allow SF to modernize. A 60 story apartment building neutralize the cost of the property.

Another option is to make SF a stronghold for the rich. Nothing wrong with that either. Push the poor out to locations they can afford.

Few will die in either scenario.

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The OP literally made the argument that, in the extreme, people must have to die if regulations are relaxed. OP did not assume good faith. OP pushed the argument to the extreme. I responded by pointing out that out. I appreciate civility, but won’t assume good faith when the other participant has shown bad faith.

"Ah..I wondered when that would show up." was just being condescending and snarky. "But they started it!" is not a defence.

It's possible that innovations established in the the area that is absent of regulation may save lives, possibly more lives than would be saved by applying the preexisting regulation to that area.

While there is some truth that some regulation is needed to account for living in the Ring of Fire and also for SuperFund sites created in the 20th century, NIMBYs tend to overly abuse environmental impact concerns in order to stop high density housing development and even business development; which has helped exacerbate the housing crisis.

I lived in a $3000/mo condo that was a 45 minute BART ride away. By myself. Without stock options.

There are ways to live in the bay, but I'm looking forward to SF trying new ways to content with the street life problems there. Ultimately, it was definitely a discouraging element of life in the city.

I think you're underestimating the real estate market. A significant reason new developments cost so much is that the land they are built upon costs so much.

For example, in Portland Oregon, where I live, most new developments are being built on expensive real estate in central areas. As a result the apartments built there, even if they aren't particularly nice, end up going for high amounts. This is due to non-physical assets, like location and proximity to public transportation.

Your solution would give free reign to developers to cut costs and still rent the housing out for exorbitant amounts because the housing market in SF is already so ridiculous. It would take a lot more than 1 square mile to significantly affect the market.

Then start new cities in open areas and create incentives (just in the beginning) for business to move jobs there. There's so much open space surrounding the bay area. In the east bay, From our clogged 6 lane highways, i can see nothing but green and yellow for miles as far as the eye can see.

I have friends in Tokyo renting 1 bedrooms in the city center for $500 ~ $900 month.

Those buildings were not built as affordable housing. They became affordable housing when other developers built newer, nicer buildings somewhere else in Tokyo. Older buildings had to lower prices to keep tenants coming.

Unless there is a literally infinite supply of rich people, I don’t see how increasing supply cannot create more affordable housing.

Likewise, land values are so high because the completion over developable land is so fierce. As with buildings, increasing the supply of developable land will also lower prices.

It's counter intuitive but sometimes adding supply actually increases demand. Of course at some point you do run out of rich people, but there are a lot of rich people now so that can take a long, long time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand

This pertains to traffic, not housing market. This does not seem relevant to the dynamics of supply and demand for housing.

How big is a Tokyo 1 bedroom renting for $500/month? Are you sure it isn’t a < 50sqm micro-studio with shared bathrooms?

50 square meters would be very large for a 1 bedroom in Tokyo. My 3 bedroom two hours outside Tokyo was 85m^2 and cost around 2500/month.

Ya, they would be much smaller.

Rents in Tokyo appear cheap, until you look at them on a square meter basis.

This is an interesting contrast though - similarly in Paris, apartments can get much smaller than SF. The difference is, in SF, you simply don’t have the choice.

A lot of that has to do with American building and rental codes.

Never tried to rent in Tokyo, but I can imagine the prices are astronomical in any decent areas.

They really aren't, they are just small compared to western standards. You can get a two bedroom in Shinjuku for $1900/month, it's just going to be around 625 sqft. Transport in the Tokyo area is so good it's not really a big deal to live further out either.

A big reason is that the Japanese land zoning approach is far more rational than the US approach. Much has been written about it[1].

1. https://www.vox.com/2016/8/8/12390048/san-francisco-housing-...

That's astronomical for that amount of space.

Re the $500 per month friend; 1 kitchen/dining, bathroom, 1 separate bedroom, no living room. So nothing shared. Not sure the exact square meters, but it is very small.

The secret to the cheap price is simple: the building was built in the 1970s (ancient by Tokyo standards).

Edit: no need to take my word for it. A quick search on suumo.jp will show the abundance of Tokyo apartments available for under $900 (~¥100k).

Tokyo housing is very affordable.

I’ve seen some pretty shabby housing in Japan. Some lacked indoor heating even (well, Japan did invent the kotatsu for a reason). I don’t think it is very comparable to housing in say Sam Francisco. They get affordability through various means that wouldn’t be allowed in the states.

Japan has very high standards for buildings. Their building codes ensure structural integrity during earthquakes, prevent spread of fires, and ban usage of hazardous materials like asbestos. Japan also has environmental building codes that mandate levels of energy efficiency for new buildings. As in the US, they are still relatively new, but have been strengthening over time.

If there really is a law in the US against building homes without central heating, then it is a rather idiotic one.

I lived in a Japanese apartment without central heating. I bought a $75 space heater and was never cold.

The grandparent pointed out that the housing options in SF are luxury condos and $50 tents. Maybe that's because the laws in SF basically prevent developers from building anything in between? "Can't be more than x tall, can't be in these areas, must have x amount of parking, with x kind of heating, x amount of green space, and at least x sq feet per unit, " and on and on. With all those zoning and building regulations, it doesn't really surprise me that the only kind of housing you can reasonably develop and make a profit on is luxury condos.

> < 50sqm micro-studio

Ah, the spoiled Americans. Here in Poland I live in a 1br appartment (two rooms, kitchen, bathroom) that's 37 sqm. Perfect for one person, livable for two or even two and a child.

I lived in something that small in Switzerland. They even had immigrant families sharing that space. My only point was that we should compare apples to apples, not oranges.

In S.F and Vancouver, the city can't expand in most directions thanks to salt water. Therefore, the old buildings tend to be razed, in order to make room for a new buildings. This is a stark contrast to say, Houston or Calgary.

Up until this year, Vancouver had one of the highest proportions of single-family-housing zoning (over 60%). Vancouver is one of the worst cases of restricted (low-density) development in North America. Vancouver's housing problems are political, not geographical.

They're both, I have lived in Van. The politics aren't great there, but they were actually worse in prairie cities I've lived in. It's just that the geography prevented old buildings from being replaced so frequently in cities that were able to expand in every direction, which helped the poor quite inadvertently, yet considerably.

SF has plenty of room for growth without increasing the land area.

NYC, for example, has population density of 10.4k/sq km versus SF's 6.2k/sq km. Paris has ~20k / sq km.

Tokyo is hard to get a good stat for since Tokyo officially includes a handful of mostly unpopulated islands, but I think if the islands are excluded the density is around 8.5k/sq km.

> the land they are built upon costs so much

The land costs so much because so many people want it. So many people want it because they want a place to live. If you build up, you provide places to live with less land, reducing demand on lane. It doesn't matter if it's high value condos being built, you're still providing an increase in the housing supply, which reduces prices for the entire market. If the high end market gets more supply, prices fall there, allowing more people access to that market- which reduces demand in the next-lowest band of prices, repeating the process.

I'm desperately trying to find the article I read on it but Portland is actually a shining example of this working. (Someone tell me I didn't make that story up in my head, because I swear I saw it here!). Portland allowed high end condos to go up and low-end rentals went down in price.

The problem is that NIMBYs elect politicians who won't allow real development, because they want their houses to be "investments". But you can't have housing be a "good investment" vs the market, with prices of housing constantly increasing faster than inflation, while also having your children buy houses at the same price (inflation adjusted) that you did.

No, anarchy is not a solution to over-regulation. If it were, then we would not have regulations. Markets are not a solution for all problems: market failures are quite real, and no, they are not all caused by government.

> Markets are not a solution for all problems: market failures are quite real, and no, they are not all caused by government.

This particular market failure is definitely caused by government.

Homelessness never existed before government regulations?

Not answering your question directly, but the homeless crisis in the US seems to have hit the radar in the early 1980s.

Part of that may be changing terminology -- earlier use of "homeless" tends to focus on "people made homeless" (or "... left ...") after some calamity: structure fire, flood, hurricane, etc. In the 1980s "homeless" became a chronic condition. Other terms may have existed for the long-term unhoused. I'm not aware of them.

What specifically changed, I'm not certain, though circumstances leading to the role of real estate as an asset rather than a utility may be part of that.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=homeless%2C%20...

> Homelessness never existed before government regulations?

The context of the parent comment is high real estate prices in San Francisco, which are caused by government regulations.

They're arguing for the removal of regulations in a general sense, not just specific problematic regulations. The solution being proposed is incorrect, regardless of whether the problem has been correctly identified.

FWIW, people who have a problem with street people are largely not concerned with people living in unconventional shelters (such as tents and cardboard boxes). They're concerned with what street people do. Drug use, syringes left on the ground, shit and piss everywhere, piles of trash, theft, vandalism, etc.

Agreed- a lot of people (on HN at least) are hypersensitive to any suggestion that any homeless people are voluntarily homeless, dangerous to themselves or others, or engage in any activities that everyone living around them would prefer they not engage in.

I get it; acknowledging that can be a slippery slope towards demonizing all homeless people, which in turn could lead to people rationalizing not trying to help the situation, or dealing with it in ways that don't help those in need.

But it's dishonest, and it's a weird sort of virtue signaling to try to shame anyone who says they don't like wading around in syringes and human waste and clearly mentally ill panhandlers when they visit SF. Mass homelessness is absolutely a problem not just for the homeless themselves, but for everyone in a city. There's nothing wrong with saying that mass homelessness makes a city a worse place for everyone, not just the homeless themselves. Accepting that makes it a lot easier to motivate people to actually do things to improve the situation.

Anecdotally, it's an issue where people tend to hold extreme positions with no middle ground- either SF's homeless are primarily noble beings fallen on hard times who need our help, or (the other extreme view) they're primarily panhandlers taking advantage of local sympathies and weather and are fine with sleeping in doorways and pooping in alleys if it means they don't have to have jobs. In reality it's some combination, but I have no idea what the demographics are or if anyone even knows.

If there's no common ground with how people define the problem, there's no agreement on the solution. It sucks but if people don't view it as a huge gray area with multiple valid perspectives, it can't ever get fixed in a meaningful way. People will just continue arguing over whether to arrest them all or throw money at them, and the problem will persist indefinitely. Having said that, I really hope the additional funding approved by voters last week turns out to be a step in the right direction that makes a tangible positive difference for everyone in SF, homeless or not. I have no problem with throwing money at the situation if it actually helps.

Now try your sentence with "what black people do" or any other group, and see how it make you feel. You forgot to put in "a minority of." The street people you see (many of which aren't homeless) are a minority compared to the homeless (some of whom pick up litter) who stay mostly out of sight, sleep out of sight, aren't practiced beggars.

> Now try your sentence with "what black people do" or any other group, and see how it make you feel.

So if I have a problem with people who drive drunk, my concerns are invalid because, if I replaced the category “drunk drivers” with “black people” in statements I make about the societal harms caused by drunk drivers, it would come across as racist?

Also, nice try on the “not all homeless” trick, but I’m already hip to that particular rhetorical maneuver. As such, I didn’t use that term. I used “street people” because I am specifically referring to all of the people who are living in public spaces in broad daylight.

Any classification that's actually defined by behavior, such as "drive drunk" as opposed to "streetpeople" is perfectly fine by me, as I think would be obvious. Both streetpeople and homeless are highly heterogeneous groups, so I don't think this affects my point. Which is that your one-to-one mapping is literally stereotyping. Just back off a little, so that you're only complaining about those you're really angry at, please. That's all I'm asking. If you want to say "a majority of" and have proper sources for that, I won't object to such a statement and I would genuinely be interested in the sources.

Do you have a preferred term for the people I am trying to refer to? Specifically, the people who live in public spaces and visit mayhem upon the surrounding community? I am asking honestly. Such a term would be very useful in furthering the discussion around the “homeless”. That was my intention in using the term “street people”.

Also, “street people” is a class that is defined by behavior. They are people who live in public spaces.

Just say "some of." Location isn't behavior and certainly isn't objectionable be itself, nor were you making that objection. At this point at least one of us is cavilling, so I won't reply further.

JFC. In my original post, I was specifically pointing out that people mostly have a problem with behavior and, specifically, behavior other than merely taking shelter in a tent in a public space (aka their location).

I agree that removing restrictive zoning requirements from suburban neighborhoods (which prevent the construction of apartments, for example), would go a long way to address the lack of housing, but it wouldn't fix everything. To assume so is to oversimplify the problem. You still need antipoverty programs and a social safety net.

Not to mention that trying to change zoning laws in suburban neighborhoods is to fight a losing battle.

"The researchers combed three years worth of meeting minutes from 97 cities and towns in the region, and found nearly two-thirds of residents who stood up to speak about proposed housing developments did so to oppose them, while just 14 percent spoke in support."

[1] https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2018/08/30/researchers-...

> Sure, maybe you don't like what happens in version 1. But, if we never iterate on this problem, we'll never make progress on it and in a 100 years we'll still be talking about this same self imposed problem which is completely solvable.

I think the iteration already happened. The v1 was sometime at the XIX century and were currently and v1000 or something.

It is perfectly possible to have too many regulations, but that doesn't mean that the answer is no regulations. The simple fact is that we (human beings) have demonstrated quite well that when there are no rules, exploitative power structures form very quickly and do not self correct. Not to mention things like dealing with the problem of the commons.

Regulations can be useful, since none of us are saints, they are required.

> I was overqualified for most minimum wage jobs.

The author lost me here. I have taken jobs way below my expectations to make ends meet. I got startlingly close to not making rent, but I took a job that barely got me by and rode it out until I was able to move to a company that understood the value of my experience.

People are often turned away for being overqualified at such jobs.

So go through a temp agency. They don't care how over-qualified you are. You're just another body on their call list. If they don't like you they won't call you with any work.

Edit: I worked for temp agencies for through college. At the time I probably would have been more useful to them automating some parts of their workflow. They stored everything in spreadsheets but manually copy pasting everything around for their workflow. I kept my mouth shut and did the work they asked me to do.

Even temp agencies will not take you for the same reasons often - you're too qualified for an entry level role, but no one will hire you because of a lack of recent experience - the min wage, and temp places dont want you, because they assume you will leave as soon as you find a better role.

I've worked for temp agencies. That is absolutely not the case. They don't care if you're over-qualified. If they think you're going to leave they're just not going to give you any temp to hire or long term roles. They'll still call you up when the convention center calls them up asking for bodies to serve food and sweep floors. If you are over-qualified then working for a temp can give you access to potential employers who (after you've shown them you're not a deadbeat while working as a temp) you can then approach about a direct hire position in something you're qualified for if they happen to have one available.

The author may just have meant that he was rejected from such jobs due to being honest about his education when asked, which is a fairly common practice.

There's nothing dishonest about omitting irrelevant qualifications and experience from a job application.

Sure. But if you are asked directly you may not feel comfortable lying about it.

I can't imagine that the McDonald's manager is going to ask whether you have as Master's degree but just didn't write it down.

No, but people ask - what were you doing between date A - date B where there is a gap in your work history.

If you present as something unexpected (more educated, different social class, different age range, etc.) to someone hiring, they are often going to try and figure you out.

Genuine question for you (and anyone else), while on the topic. If you had a Master's degree and all you did was "normal" office job type stuff, but now if you want to do hourly burger flipping or whatever else, how would you go about tailoring your CV? You can drop a degree or something but now you have to also account for 5 to 7yrs of full-time job experience.....I am trying to rack my brain.

I doubt you need to account for a gap in work experience for a burger flipping job.

I had a friend who had a BS and wanted a temp part time job but got turned down a lot....and these were simple jobs!

I omit irrelevant info from my resume to taylor it towards it's intended audience. I would downplay and even flat out lie to an employer to avoid becoming homeless.

I do wonder what a resume would look like if it contained a HS diploma, one fast food job, and a 30 year employment gap, though...

No it's not. I left off 80 percent of my resume when I needed to apply to jobs that were "below" me. Its what you do.

It absolutely is a common practice that people be turned down for jobs because those hiring think they are "overqualified" for various reasons. Something you are obviously aware of by trimming your resume; you were being strategic.

Whether or not the OP was strategic about this I have no idea. Sometimes people are turned down just because they give the impression of being overqualified, or because omitting that experience leaves too many gaps.

I started a software company out of college. By the time I was 25, my car had been repossesed and I'd been evicted from my condo. I had $400 to my name, that I'd intended to use for rent.

I bought a bicycle and got a day job doing credit card collections for a bank.

That was my 'big break'; I still work for a bank, but now I write the software. I worked my way up.

One afternoon I was talking to someone from human resources, and she mentioned that they didn't want to hire me for that job, back when I was 25. Why? Because I'd scored so high on the entrance exam. Basically they thought it was pointless to hire me because I was overqualified. Yet I was homeless at the time, having been evicted from my condo!

I think the fear was that you would take the job and then leave ~6 months later for a better one.

I have been refused jobs where the person highering had less experience and fewer qualifications than me and felt I was a threat. In one case the technical interview turned into me unknowingly shaming them in front of the CEO because they weren’t using modern best practices.

A minimum wage job may have allowed you to make rent, but it isn't a reliable path out of homelessness. If you're homeless, not only do you have to find a cheap apartment, but you also need to be able to put down three months rent (first, last, security) all at once. Could you have made rent that month if it cost 3x as much? Could you have made rent if you had to leave work early to check into a shelter everyday by 3pm?

Overqualified means that employers don't want you, because they assume you will leave very quick or will not be motivated or there is something wrong with you. Employers assume that overqualified people are getting lower job just as temporary solution and prefer someone who will stay longer.

Question for the author or anyone else with similar background: I've previously done a lot of work with homeless and poverty-stricken people, and one of my biggest remaining difficulties is people who won't accept help, or are offended when people only do little things to help. Part of that certainly could come from any drug or mental issue that contributed to their homelessness in the first place, but I'm sure it's also unavoidable when you're an outcast from much of society for so long even without those problems. So my question is this:

What can people who work at food pantries, distribution centers or just strangers do to come off as less condescending and have their help be more readily accepted?

When you say that they won't accept help, what do you mean? What did you try to offer that they didn't accept?

I can't speek for the parent poster. I don't feel comfortable giving money, so instead I offer to get them something at a local restaraunt, or try to give them some of my food if I have it on me.

In some (but not all) circumstances, I've been told to "f!ck off" and "suck a c!ck" becaue they want money, presumably for drugs/alcohol/etc.

Again this is my experience. Your mileage may vary.

I don't give money to homeless people for the same reason. The occasional rude responses can absolutely be frustrating but I think it helps (and is very difficult) to try to put yourself in the shoes of someone suffering from addiction.

There's a homeless man in my neighborhood named Kevin that I chat with most mornings when I walk my dog. He goes to a methadone clinic to help treat his addiction. I usually see him when I'm walking towards the coffee shop, ask him for his coffee/breakfast order, and he hangs out with my dog while I go inside. Most days he's a nice, personable, friendly guy who tells me "dad jokes" and has a bag of dog treats for his neighborhood friends. Sober Kevin is appreciative and would never dream of asking me for a dime. Some days he's coming off a bender and looking for money to buy more drugs and is kind of a dick. A lot of the benders coincide with him being unable to get to the clinic for one reason or another.

Occasionally sober Kevin will apologize for the way he spoke to me when he was single mindedly focused on his next high. He once offered the analogy of when you really need to pee. The absolute only thing your brain is capable of focusing on is finding a bathroom. You're urgently trying to solve this one, desperate problem. You're walking around asking and asking where the bathroom is and people keep saying "I can't help you find the bathroom, but here's a vending machine."

It's by no means an excuse for someone to be rude to a stranger trying to help but it certainly helps me have a little bit more compassion for those dealing with addiction. I think it's frustrating for them, too.

I wish there were more kind, sane people like you on HN. Some commenters in this thread really lack empathy :(

One thing I did for a while (I no longer live in a place with many panhandlers) was restaurant gift cards. It can't be spent on drugs or alcohol (at least not directly), and most cheap restaurants aren't going to kick out a homeless person very quickly on a cold night. I don't think I ever gave out double-digits of those, but I never got a bad reaction...

Here's the thing: 1. Homeless people are screwed by society in almost every possible way. 2. There are a million ways to get free food when you're homeless. I.e. hunger is a solved problem for most homeless people.

With this context in mind, you can see how offering someone your half-eaten leftovers, or forcing them to go on some journey with you in exchange for a basic meal, is not only unhelpful--it's downright insulting.

If you don't feel comfortable giving them money, or engaging in an honest conversation, then just say sorry and walk away.

And if you feel like you want to help homeless people without giving them money, then give the money to an organization instead.

The bottom line: don't expect homeless people to be grateful to you, especially if what you're offering is next to nothing for them.

A friend of mine because of his job encounters the homeless on a regular basis. He is very plugged in to homeless resources and offers to get them a roof tonight. The #1 response to this offer is, "can I do anything I want there?" -- in other words, will I get kicked out for doing drugs?

Once we stop judging addicts as being intrinsically bad people and see it as a mental health issue, we can solve a lot of this problem.

> Once we stop judging addicts as being intrinsically bad people and see it as a mental health issue, we can solve a lot of this problem.

I suspect what mental health issues mean to most people is you now have a vaguely scientific explanation of why someone is intrinsically bad.

Mental health issues aren't intrinsic. Like physical health issues, you might be born with them or you might acquire them as a consequence of your environment. But they should be seen in the context of how to cure or manage them. They don't need to be a defining characteristic of who you are.

I know we don't like to imply that things about people's personality is "wrong", but if you're unable to be self-sufficient, I think addressing whatever is preventing that is reasonable.

I agree with you 100%, but you are coming from a more liberal viewpoint.

From a moralistic viewpoint, these people are bad, and should not get help, since it is their own damn fault.

From a more conservative viewpoint comes the moral hazard argument: Some believe that if you help that person then they will never have to deal with their "bad" behavior. And it will encourage other people to engage in the same "bad" behavior so they can get whatever free goodies you are giving away.

People have all these different mental models of homelessness.

In terms of not accepting help, I've had people refuse to be put in a motel for the night or placed with someone who had a room for rent. That was primarily a case of pride as they've usually been very newly homeless, but they end up sleeping somewhere unsafe and / or illegal, so I'd love to be able to break past that mental barrier for them.

In terms of being mad about help given, the strongest example in my memory was a group that was offering free hygiene kits (this came to mind because of the article's comments on dental problems) at a soup kitchen. Some people were very offended at the idea and thought it was given in a judgmental way. I can see why they might think that, but... they need those items. So how do you avoid giving that impression? They ended up having a bin of items instead of handing them to everyone - it definitely didn't get received that much better.

I've distributed hygiene kits such as those in a shelter environment and most people were very grateful for them. It probably depends on the environment you're in. But the bottom line is if something isn't well received then don't offer it, or try to offer it in a different context.

If someone was really dedicated, then they would sit down with one or two people from the homeless community and ask them what they want and how they want to receive it.

Most of us aren't willing to do this, and that's fine. I think the problem is that we expect it to be easy to please a homeless person because they "have nothing." But in reality they are complex human beings like everyone else and they don't want to be treated as lesser.

I was homeless for less than a year. In my experience, it was easy to meet basic needs when you have friends, government programs, and non-profits i.e. strangers will not realize that you are homeless. It wasn't pleasant, but it was also not impossible to no longer be homeless relatively quickly due to the same sources of help. Past research backs up my experience. Most homeless people (approx 80-90% of the homeless population) are only homeless on average for 4-8 months. Depending on the study, only 10-20% of the homeless population is chronically homeless. In the majority of cases, the underlying issue is either mental illness, drug abuse, or a combination of both. imo chronic homelessness will be extremely hard to solve unless the federal government steps in because the states just play "hot potato" with the chronically homeless, shipping them away to another state or even country, instead of trying to address the root of the problem

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/...

In a very narrow sense, that "hot potato" game could work.

After all, there are different opportunities and cultures in every place, so for hard cases moving around might be how they finally find the place that works for them.

It only works for the non-chronic homeless. It does not work with the mentally ill. All it does is temporarily redistribute the problem

> Homeless people are not going to kill you

I understand a lot of the insight this person has provided us about homelessness, but I beg to differ on this point, and I'm sure it's location dependent.

I currently live in Santa Monica, and the vast majority of the homeless here clearly either have substance abuse problems or mental illness(I'm sure it's often both at once). I've had countless instances where a homeless person will step in front of my car, blocking my way into an intersection or parking lot, and try to intimidate me by shouting obscenities. The other day, I had to tell off a homeless man who was standing at an outdoor cafe and rambling on about how "women are whores" and other wisdom in front of women and children(not that men should be exposed to that either). Yesterday I witnessed a homeless man urinating in the middle of the street in broad daylight.

When I was living in Pasadena earlier this year, I worked next to a homeless shelter. For the most part it was safe, but there were days where we were warned to be on the lookout for certain characters who were harassing people on their way to work. There was the occasional rape and the occasional stab, although it was almost always homeless-on-homeless. Down the street there was a vacant restaurant where a homeless couple sneaked in and lived for some time, until it turned into a murder/suicide and they had to put up extra fencing to prevent such incidents from happening again.

One of the biggest reasons that people drive instead of take the train in LA, besides the fact that our civic planning has a history of sucking, is the fact that the homeless make many train rides very unpleasant. I don't have enough fingers on my hands to count the number of times I witnessed homeless individuals, sometimes barely clothed, out right screaming and threatening random passengers. In my experience, this sort of thing happened at least a few times a week. It happened enough that there came times where I thought "fuck this shit" and decided to start driving to work again.

The homeless aren't viewed as dangerous for no reason. Even if they aren't technically dangerous, many of them are legitimately scary. There are places where the homeless are mostly people down on their luck or living that way by choice; I grew up in a town where the homeless are that sort of benign. But in cities like LA, the word "homeless" has an almost completely different definition.

Sorry, but I'm not about to throw out my pepper spray.

ADDENDUM: The reason I bring up relatively harmless behavior like the public urination is that when the average person sees that, they're going to think in the back of their minds that "If he's going to do that so brazenly, what else is he capable of?" Add to that the perception that the police are ineffective against the homeless, which they are, and even small misdemeanors can seem as signs of danger to the non-homeless.

Your comment and mine are currently next to one another in this thread. Having just come from SaMo I can attest to your experience. Your insight that homelessness in LA almost has its own definition is spot on. It might be part of why the conversation on this topic is so complicated.

There are certainly scary homeless people; psychopathy is one of many reasons one might become homeless. But beware of publication bias - mentally ill homeless people are far more likely to draw your attention than either sane homeless people or someone who screams in their own living room a lot. Your well-housed neighbor isn't necessarily a lot more sane or well-behaved, and certainly not less violent I've read. Diseases of inflammation are on the rise, and depression and Schizophrenia increasingly look like brain inflammation. (These don't correlate with excess violence to others, however.)

Offering this comment in a here's-information-you-might-not-have sense, not trying to be a pedant: What you mean is "selection bias" or "sampling bias," the general terms, not "publication bias" which is a specific instance of the fallacy.

I live in Central LA (near LACMA / La Brea Tar Pits), and share my neighborhood with dozens of homeless. Most of the homeless in my area are what I would deem "regulars", as they tend to sleep / hang out in the same spots day in and day out.

I can't tell you how they landed in the situation they are in, but I can safely say that 9/10 appear (and I'm not a doctor, so I can't obviously say for certain) to have at minimum a substance abuse issue, which could be masking or exacerbating a mental health disorder. As such, I choose not to give cash to any of the homeless near my home and only ever give food. Having seen first hand with my father and step-mother the pull of substance abuse, I'd rather know any donation I give helps them sustain life, not speed up their demise.

All that being said, I constantly struggle with what is the right moral thing for us to do as a collective society about homelessness. On the one hand, these are cognitive human beings who have a right to self-determination. On the other hand, their self-determination comes with the detriment of my neighborhood. I get harassed a few times a week, mostly just yelling incoherently at me, but sometimes following me. I've had garbage thrown at me as I walked past an encampment. And, I've had my dog come up limping a few times from shattered glass that gets up into her paws.

To me, every community in LA, whether you're in the richest part of Beverly Hills, or the Watts housing projects, deserves clean & safe streets. I'm unconvinced that we can have that while we allow people to live arbitrarily on them day in and day out.

So, what do we do?

[1] We shouldn't send these people to jail, as incarceration is just a revolving door of negative reinforcement.

[2] We should detain individuals indefinitely in mental health and substance abuse facilities, and give those facilities the time it takes to start the process of recovery and treatment (we're talking months, not days or even weeks).

[3] We should provide indefinite housing & treatment for those who are unable to take that next step and fully re-enter society and take care of themselves.

[4] We should repeat the cycle as many times as necessary, given that we know substance abuse relapses are common, and going off medication for those who are mentally ill is a common issue as well.

This is expensive. This is complicated. And, in many states, this wouldn't be legal. We've decided that humans have the right to self-determination (which is a good thing), but we've lost sight of the fact that when a human being is in the grips of an addiction or mental health disorder, they have already lost control. The addiction is what is now determining their behavior, not their own personal choice.

When I tried to get my father hospitalized in 2015 during the final days of his alcohol addiction, he was unable to walk, rarely ate, and spent the entirety of his day in bed drinking. We were finally able to get the local sheriff to pink slip him (72 hour hold) at a hospital in Columbus, where they kept him alive while the alcohol left his system. It took 10 days for the hospital to choose to release him because of how poor his health was, and their primary recommendation was that he go into a nursing home (for context, he was 61 at the time). While he initially refused, we convinced him to give it a try, but that lasted only 48 hours before he returned back home.

Once home, he was able resume his drinking, and was dead 5 months later. Less than three years later, my step-mother would be dead as well from the same issues.

In neither case did I, or the state, have any legal authority to get him into real rehabilitative care. Lawyers reaffirmed that even given his diminishing cognitive state, Ohio's laws made it clear that he had a right to drink himself to drink himself to death. I contend that his addiction was the one making that choice, not him, and that our laws are enabling addiction, rather than defending independence.

While my father was not homeless, that was just a byproduct of his early good fortune. If he had come from lessor means, he would have been on the street for years and potentially died more rapidly. In both cases, the state would have (and did) protected his right to be homeless and drink himself to death.

I recognize how reasonable people can disagree heavily on this topic. I recognize how I very well may be wrong (massively wrong) in my vantage point. However, I can tell you that whatever we are doing as a society right now is not working, and it feels worth trying something new at this point.

I'd read a little about the problems caused by involuntary commitment. Even a novel like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman or Woman on the Edge of Time might give you a different perspective. I understand where you're coming from, but making it possible for people to get others committed against their will has historically not worked out.

Yes, institutionalization has many problems too, which is one of the things that led to a dramatic increase in homeless populations in the US[1] when many asylums were closed. But throwing mentally ill or addicted people on the street isn't a solution either. There needs to be some more complex system that avoids the ills of both of those.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation

i don't know how this works in the US, but in the netherlands we have an extensive system of mental healthcare (financed through the public healthcare system). This system goes from crib to coffin as far as age brackets go, and is integrated with each other.

This system seems to work quite well because it has a lot of different methods of dealing with issues people have. Some people live in semi-independant communal homes and function normally in society, while other are being put in a closed enviroment ("gesloten inrichting").

Most people with mental health issues seem to be able to live relatively normal lives, although they need (some) support from the outside and society in general.

This is really great to learn about, thank you. It's nothing like that here, primarily because we have such a fragmented system. If one is poor, you will qualify for medicaid, which will vary wildly in terms of quality and access depending on the state in which you live. Even with medicaid, you'll have out of pocket expenses, because of the way our insurance system works in the US. If you are homeless or someone who is working poor, even the smallest co-pay is a barrier.

The semi-independent communal home concept is what I generally have in my head as being the right alternative to what we have now, and I'm glad to hear it already has some proof points. Look forward to reading more about it.

some more information can be found at the dutch website for help (roughly translated)[0]. It is in dutch, but with a bit of google translate you should be able to make out how these "open instellingen" function. (most are aimed at youth and young adults, because the issues seem to be more prelevant there).

some more information about how long term healthcare works in the netherlands can be found at [1]. and more info about communal living here [2].

[0] https://www.regelhulp.nl/ik-heb-hulp-nodig/verblijf-in-een-j...

[1] https://www.regelhulp.nl/ik-heb-hulp-nodig/wet-langdurige-zo...

[2] https://www.regelhulp.nl/ik-heb-hulp-nodig/langdurig-verblij...

You're absolutely right.

At the same time, it's worth considering that giving people the freedom to die in the gutter does not seem to be working out as well as might be hoped. So perhaps alternatives might be worth contemplating.

Part of living in a free society is the freedom to completely fuck up your life. But I agree that we should be funding housing and medical treatment, not drug wars and incarceration.

Sorry for your loss and thank you for sharing your story.

Thank you, David! I know for many, there's a stigma and shame around substance abuse, particularly involving family members. My hope is that by sharing my story, others will feel more comfortable seeking help for themselves, or their family members, knowing that they aren't alone in what they are going through.

I live in Seattle where the homelessness problem is particularly acute and I completely agree with you.

Our philosophical and moral systems aren't well-equipped to handle drug addiction where a substance changes a person's brain in a way that undermines their autonomy.

The line between "harm-reduction" and "enabling" is blurry, as is the line between "personal freedom" and a person's obligation to their community.

I don't think there are simple solutions to this problem. Unfortunately, complex solutions are hard to sell and this is a problem that needs wide buy-in from many people to make progress.

There are also some significant economic blocs which make money off of various shades of addiction. The most obvious are gambling and substances like alcohol or nicotine, but to a lesser extent there are other cases, like caffeine, scuzzy religious gurus, or gaming companies willing to take outrageous sums of money from "whales".

While the solutions may be complex -- or perhaps merely difficult -- it's exacerbated by those blocs who rely on the status-quo.

Homelessness != Substance Use Disorder

Moreover, why does treatment have to come at the expense of self-determination? The reality is that people want to receive treatment--if they don't, it is because they encounter a barrier to treatment.

Barriers to treatment include: lack of treatment facilities (hospitals do not count), poor quality of existing treatment facilities, unwillingness of treatment facilities to take anything but an abstinence-only approach, lack of other treatment options, such as medically assisted treatment.

So I would say yes to all your points, except number 2. If people don't want to recieve treatment, then we should assume that the treatment isn't good enough and needs to be improved. But indefinitely detaining someone in a place that they don't want to be is frankly a human rights abuse, and contradicts your first point.

> Homelessness != Substance Use Disorder

True. But the Venn diagram overlaps a _lot_. If we magically solved homelessness for everyone with a substance-abuse problem, the people still left homeless would be the ones cities are already able to help.

If you solved homelessness (not with magic, but with money) for everyone with a substance use disorder, then a lot more people would seek treatment, and a lot more would be successful. Even better, you could make that housing into supportive housing, which would prevent deaths from substance use in isolation.

One of the features of addiction and many other mental health issues is a total denial of a problem. It's one of the symptoms of the disease. That's why the first step in 10-step programs is _admit you have a problem_.

The majority of homelessness is caused by economic issues like the loss of a job, lack of sufficient income, lack of affordable housing and domestic violence. I did some work for an Australian charity that works with the homeless, so I have this graphic[1] on hand.

Here's a relevant graphic for the US[4].

The top three obstacles to obtaining permanent housing in SF are lack of affordability, unemployment and lack of housing availability[2].

The figures I've seen put substance abuse and alcoholism between ~10% and ~20% of the reasons for homelessness[3].

[1] https://probonoaustralia.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/w...

[2] http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2016/02/san-franciscos-ho...

[3] https://www.spur.org/sites/default/files/wysiwyg/Figure%206_...

[4] http://www.homelesshouston.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/lo...

Thanks for taking the time to provide background data. This is all really great.

I'm skeptical of the percentages you shared, not because I think people are liars, but that rooting out causative effects is complex, especially in self-reported cases.

I have an aunt who was homeless for the better part of a decade. If you had spoken to her during this period of time about why she was homeless, she would have said many things such as (1) she lost her job (2) she got evicted (3) her family kicked her out. In reality she is a paranoid schizophrenic, who does not understand when she's not on her medication that she has schizophrenia. So, was she homeless because she lost her job? Yes. Did she lose her job because she was scaring customers due to her mental disorder? Yes.

When my father was in the hospital and detoxing from his alcohol abuse, he was asked repeatedly "Russ, do you have an alcohol problem?" He uniformly responded "No I do not." He only changed his tune when he believed answering in the affirmative would get his release.

My general point is that homelessness and substance abuse are deeply intertwined, and that if we pull on the thread long enough in someone's backstory, we'll often find that substance abuse was a catalyst in the chain reaction that resulted in their homelessness, but they aren't willing to, or aren't self aware enough, to recognize it.

Research that goes beyond self-reports echoes the sentiment that homelessness is overwhelmingly an economic issue. That's not to understate the impact that health, substance abuse and domestic violence play, either.

This is important to recognize, because families are falling victim to homelessness due to loss of jobs, insufficient income and the rising cost of living.

You could probably shake a few alcoholics out of that population, just like you could with the general population, but the overwhelming majority of them became homeless because of economic reasons. Those reasons, from here[1], include lack of affordable housing, unemployment, poverty, and low wages, in that order.

I have an uncle that became homeless after his divorce. It's a hole anyone can fall into if just the right bad things happen.

There's plenty of research available. I implore anyone who is reading this to Google "causes of homelessness", or start here[2] and continue researching by checking out the citations.

[1] https://www.nlchp.org/documents/Homeless_Stats_Fact_Sheet

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Sta...

Reading more on what you shared, and a more contemporary study [1], I think the issue is that when I say "homeless", I'm talking about the chronic homeless in unsheltered situations in Los Angeles. Many of those who are also commenting here live in LA & SF, where we have the largest number of unsheltered homeless in the US, per capita.

All that being said, this survey seems to be absolute junk (the mayor survey, which is cited elsewhere). The survey instrument is at the bottom of the page and is remarkably subjective / at the whims of the reviewer. The word "alcohol" shows up once in that whole report. As does the word "drug[s]".

[1] https://endhomelessness.atavist.com/mayorsreport2016

This is what I mean. There are plenty of people experiencing homelessness because, say, they lost their job and they were already behind on their rent, so now they're couchsurfing or living in their car. That is not a complicated problem for cities to solve, if they have enough money and the political will to spend it. Housing vouchers, job placement counseling, domestic violence programs: there are lots of successful ways to help people without substance abuse issues.

But my uncle Jim, an alcoholic whom I most recently saw panhandling on a freeway on-ramp in Seattle? His problems are not easy to solve, and nobody quite knows how to turn money and political will into solutions for people like him. His family doesn't know how, his city doesn't know how, and I certainly don't know how. I gave him a few bucks, which I'm sure he used on his alcohol of choice, and tried not to think about how my dad looked just like him.

>The reality is that people want to receive treatment--if they don't, it is because they encounter a barrier to treatment.

It sounds like you don't know many people with Schizophrenia.

>The reality is that people want to receive treatment--if they don't, it is because they encounter a barrier to treatment.

While I agree that there are huge barriers to treatment, I'll respectfully disagree that people with substances abuse regularly want to receive treatment. Getting someone to just admit they have a substance abuse problem is remarkably challenging (the story of my father is just one of many in my family). Then, it's another hurdle to get them to recognize they can't do it on their own. Then, it's another hurdle to get them to stick with a program. Then, it's another hurdle to get them back into a program once they relapse.

So, I'm right there with you that we need to improve access dramatically. But, just improving access won't open the floodgates, sadly.

Certainly, where I am, far, far more people want treatment than can get it. So much so it's impossible to guess how many don't want it (yet.) How effective current treatment is - other than naltrexone perhaps, is another story. I'm pessimistic there, too.

I don't think our two statements are at odds with one another. There is absolutely a resource shortage to deal with these issues. In addition, there's the pernicious side effect of the disease in that it keeps you from wanting to seek treatment.

> Homelessness != Substance Use Disorder

An officer of the Commissioned Corps of the Public Health Service told me that in the greater Boston area, he estimates ~90% of the homeless population has a substance use disorder. I agree that not all homeless are in their condition because of substance use disorders, but I suspect it's a clear majority who are in this condition.

> The reality is that people want to receive treatment--if they don't, it is because they encounter a barrier to treatment.

Everyone, really? That's a bold claim, where is the evidence?

> Homelessness != Substance Use Disorder

True, but a very large portion of the homeledd population has such a disorder, and an overlapping very large portion has at least one mental health disorder; they are deeply intertwined problems.

> The reality is that people want to receive treatment

The reality is that they often don't.

>This is expensive. This is complicated. And, in many states, this wouldn't be legal. We've decided that humans have the right to self-determination (which is a good thing), but we've lost sight of the fact that when a human being is in the grips of an addiction or mental health disorder, they have already lost control.

I agree with you, but providing full-time housing is just not feasible and would be very sensitive and pre-disposed to abuse.

I may be wrong as well, but my thought has always been that homeless camps are a good idea. One could build wells and outhouses similar to what you'd see at any standard family campground and designate "lots" for homeless to set up tents or a lean-to or what-have-you. This would also be the ideal location to distribute services to the homeless, or where charities could operate, all in a few centralized locations. Most of the charities that work for the homeless in my city are in the downtown area, consequently most of the homeless population can be found downtown despite the fact that there are very few safe places to sleep in the big city.

There are many variations of the camp idea, and certain modifications. One could require that a person register to be in the camp, or that they have no record of addiction or are currently in recovery, or that they have a case worker. These restrictions would help prevent a kind of "festering city" situation where the camp just becomes a place you can go to safely shoot up.

I can see an option for dedicated bus routes to and from the camps and then to other organizations in the city that could help the homeless (counselling centers, charities, drop-in centers, job centers, etc.)

Ideally it would be run like a community. Charities and organizations plan events in the camp, with dedicated hosting buildings and whatnot, with people who live in the camp encouraged to become active in helping with maintenance and organization and maybe even some wage-paying jobs within the camp (they would be considered government workers in that case).

Because the facilities are limited and there isn't much infrastructure to maintain, the camps would be cheap for local governments to build while also being a relatively long-term option for people (mostly homeless people are looking for a dedicated and safe place to sleep, which the camps would provide).

For anyone who wants to better understand homelessness, check out Seattle’s 2018 survey: http://allhomekc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/FINALDRAFT-C...

The first section is a one-night count. Scroll past it to page 23 for the the survey results, which are incredibly informative. n=1056, margin of error +- 2.9%.

We have experienced a form of homelessness due to gang stalking and intimidation and a lack of the system doing anything about it because of Antisemitism: https://www.scribd.com/document/389212460/Antisemitism-in-We...

Wow

Ten years ago I spent two years trying to get a homeless person off the streets and made a movie about it:

http://graceofgodmovie.com

I can vouch for everything this guy says, particularly the "Homeless != uneducated" part. My main subject had a masters degree.

In San Francisco, nearly $40K is spent per homeless person. How much money do we need to spend and how should we spend it?

Where did you get that stat? Not debating it, just curious about this data and what else it has.

The budget is ~$270M: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/29-million-incre...

The number of homeless people is around 7,500.

This also doesn't include medical emergency services, private organizations, federal & state programs and many other sources of money. This is just the budget for the city program.

does it not dawn on you that perhaps this is the wrong way to think about solving the problem?

I think it's great to hear this number, as long as it's accurate. A lot of regular folks probably think we spend very little on homeless people, so they think anything we do to help will be a net cost and more taxes. Getting people aware that we spend money either way is very helpful because then you can make arguments about how to save money. If we spend 40K right now, then how much can we save if we spend $10K a year instead in free housing. I.e. what SLC did.

Measuring "dollars per homeless person" is, IMO, worse than useless. The problem is that the better you do the job, the worse the number looks. If you manage to house all but 1 person, suddenly it rockets into millions of dollars per remaining homeless person!

If there's one homeless person and you're spending millions of dollars on them, perhaps you should stop?

How do you distinguish between A) unnecessarily spending millions of dollars on a single homeless person and B) spending millions of dollars to reduce the otherwise large homeless population to only one?

The best approach is probably not to cut spending to zero and then wait to see what happens. But perhaps it's reasonable to cut spending by 10-25% and then monitor the results?

By distinguishing between funding to homeless people, and funding to at risk but still homed people? Also by making sure we are counting people correctly (if 10 people are all temporarily homeless at some point during the use of the funding, and then homed, we had 10 homeless people not 0).

So as soon as someone moves from being classified as "homeless" to "homed", you have to shuffle around all the budgets for every service you're providing to them? This seems like a good way to increase bureaucratic overhead and ways for people to fall through the gaps, with the only advantage being neater numbers for bean-counting.

If we are trying to measure how much money we spend per homeless person we have to identify what portion of the money goes to them. That can just be done by measuring instead of budgeting before hand of course...

This $40K doesn't include emergency medical services, private programs, federal & state programs. It's just the city budget for the homeless.

Any project should have metrics to judge its success and a reasonable budget to accomplish the goal. If you were given a budget of nearly $300M for 7,500 homeless, how would you decrease the number of homeless? If you really think outliers take up the majority of the cost, how many homeless could you house with what budget?

You have completely misunderstood my point: if I housed 7,498 homeless with a budget of $300M, leaving just two homeless people on the streets, I would have then spent $150M per homeless person. You also have to keep spending money on someone for some amount of time after they stop being homeless, to keep them from becoming homeless again.

I agree that metrics are useful, but using a terribly flawed metric just because it's the only one we have seems like a bad idea.

(I will not respond to your other points about budgets because I don't have any easy answers for them--this subject is not my main area of expertise. I will leave it to others who are more informed than I to provide actual statistics and actionable suggestions elsewhere in these comments.)

measuring dollars per homeless person is useless, you're right. SF isn't spending money on people who are homeless, they're spending money to prevent the number of homeless from rising. If suddenly all 7000 homeless people left san francisco they would still need to spend money on the system to keep others from falling into homelessness

"How should we spend it?"

Give people money. Unfortunately, you could only do this effectively on a national level. In San Francisco, $40k isn't even enough to cover cost of living.

You could also give people housing vouchers, but you need to have available affordable housing for that to work.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-expensive-is-san-francis...

Giving people money can work well for those who are just down on their luck, but it's pointless and counterproductive for those who are addicted and/or seriously mentally ill. Those people need active interventions, not passive hand outs.

Then offer them treatment as well, but the fact remains that being poor with a substance use disorder is worse than having money with a substance use disorder.

Let me ask you this: if someone doesn't have money, how do they get drugs?

Refusing help to people with substance use disorder is a form of toxic moralizing that does nothing to help them.

This man escaped homelessness by winning $50,000 on Wheel Of Fortune.

It seems like he might have an even more interesting story to tell than what's in this article.

Link to Wheel of Fortune win - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ThuQb2uz34

I wonder where he is now, though? $50k these days will only get a person so far.

If you are still homeless after getting an $50,000 pay day, your problem is not lack of money.

I wonder if the high minimum wage makes it harder to employ people who tend to be homeless. I ask because I see many young people homeless these days, and it isn't clear why they are homeless.

it can be even as simple as working for a startup it crashing and burning and resulting in no broadband for years...my case have code out the wazu for android app dev such as this devops setup' https://gitlab.com/fred.grott/droidktdevops

and yet yc early stage cos once they find out that I have no phone and getting wifi through mcdonalds refuse to take a llok at code...will be homeless shortly

What do you mean by "high minimum wage"? Federal minimum wage in the United States is still $7.25 which is not enough for someone to live on, especially in a high cost of living area. I don't understand.

https://www.minimum-wage.org/federal

Well, I'll venture into non-pc territory here, but for some reason immigrants do not seem to have the same homelessness problem, and undocumented workers can work for much less than Americans.

That's because undocumented workers live in undocumented housing which is to say illegally subdivided dwellings that people who aren't part of that community will not have access to even if they wanted to live in a fire trap.

Yes, it seems that our legislation on wages and housing make it harder for citizens to have a home than it is for undocumented immigrants.

The problem is a lack of social safety nets and a minimum wage not indexed for inflation, not government regulation against squalor.

It could be both/and instead of either/or. The other angle is we as a society have given up on personal responsibility for each other (i.e. lack of social safety net), and instead look for help from big government, which is notoriously inefficient, corruption prone and scammable.

Government is the framework through which we help each other. My tax money goes in, social services should come out. I will not comment on the unfounded generalization ("notoriously inefficient, corruption prone and scammable"). Government is not perfect, but it is not what you describe.

I would like to ask the parent comment if he thinks there is a more efficient way of managing society and all it's people.

Actually, lets start with defining what "efficient" actually means in this context? That the goverment spends little money? That it is able to do it's duties effectively?

There are already a lot of homeless people working minimum wage jobs. Check any construction site. What's the point of a job if it can't even put a roof over your head?

I think this has more to do with a "social safety net" than minimum wage. Immigrants often come to the U.S. knowing other immigrants who are already here. This network of friends and family help them get on their feet. They have a community of people to help them when funds are tight. A couch to sleep to on if you can't make rent, an extra plate at dinner if you don't have enough for groceries this week. Many Americans, particularly those who wind up homeless, don't have any sort of safety net beyond what the government provides. Which is to say, almost nothing.

But they usually don't. They work harder, longer, and more efficiently than most americans and there's just as many people paying them fair wages as not. Also, when you have 6 working people in a house, it's a lot easier to justify the costs. How many roommates do you have working full time jobs and contributing to everything in the house?

They're not more efficient. It's a combination of willingness to work for less, longer hours to make up for it, and pooling resources with extended families that enables them to get by

If you've ever worked in the trades, you'd know this is untrue. In America, $$$ is everything and jobs go to the lowest bidders.

It may seem that way, but at least here in the UK homelessness is a huge problem in the immigrant community. It is virtually invisible though. You can get kicked out of the UK as a migrant (even from the EU) for being homeless, so keeping a low profile is essential.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/05/st-mungos-ho...

https://www.homeless.org.uk/connect/blogs/2018/jan/10/migran...

When you write immigrants do you mean undocumented immigrants? It's confusing because your next clause is about undocumented workers so we the reader are left unclear.

My personal experience just from San Jose is there are a lot of immigrant homeless from southeast Asia, Mexico, and central America, it just depends on what neighborhood one visits.

Also, people who actually interviewed homeless, found something different from your speculation (I am assuming you didn't actually talk to a lot of homeless people), this story is just Los Angeles but there were a lot of other news stories and it's obviously an issue because the federal government made undocumented immigrants not eligible for federal aid in 1996.

https://www.scpr.org/news/2016/07/14/62582/immigrants-a-larg...

I recently toured for 5 months in the US on my bicycle. My average cost was $30 per day. That included sightseeing, an airline ticket every month and a bus ticket every month. I used Warm Showers and wild camping, so I rarely paid for housing. $7.25 per hour is enough to live on. You just need to work enough hours, do long commutes and be very, very disciplined in all your purchases.

Just to get this clear: you’re suggesting a viable alternative to homelessness is… being homeless? Or is wild camping considered a domicile, these days?

Question for you: at most national/state parks, there are available campsites that cost in the range of $5-$20 per night. These are advertised on their usual websites. These are sites for car camping. However, the couple times I've called, I've asked about primitive camping (aka hike into the woods and camp at the primitive sites), and it turns out that this is free. But the primitive campsites aren't ever discussed on the park websites.

Does this match with your experience? Where did you usually camp?

Many state parks in California has a special area for cyclists and hikers at a special rate ($5 - $10) and no reservation is needed. 1 night only in each park.

AFAIK, primitive camping for a night or two in a National Forest is free. Just be far enough away from roads and water sources. And many national parks have national forests near them.

Also check out freecampsites.net

I did camp on private property a few times without permission and only got discovered once: It was at a church and the pastor gave me free breakfast.

Even if you live in a state with no income tax, work full-time at your minimum wage job, and live as you describe (which is homeless) your take home pay would only barely cover your $30/day budget. What happens when you get sick and have to miss a shift? Or need to see a doctor? What happens if your job is in New England where it's well below freezing at night for a significant portion of the year?

It's disingenuous to perpetuate the notion that "discipline" is all that's needed to survive on minimum wage and it's patently ridiculous to suggest that people on minimum wage ought to "wild camp" in order to make ends meet.

I live on less than 30/day (including rent) working a poorly paid manual labor part time job in a state with income tax. No, I don't own a car. Yes, I split housing costs with other people.

> What happens when you get sick and have to miss a shift?

As mandated by state law, I get paid for my normal hours.

> It's disingenuous to perpetuate the notion that "discipline" is all that's needed to survive on minimum wage

It's also amusing to be lectured about how your situation is impossible by people who are going into debt making 80k+ a year.

Nobody wants to hear that there are some people who are just not equipped for an environment A) with abundant access to addictive substances and B) where economic success is dependent on being reasonably intelligent and able to delay gratification.

Epigenetic damage can undoubtedly predispose one to addiction, etc. But bad health in general can get you unhoused, and there's an epidemic of chronic illness. Delaying gratification and a good IQ aren't sufficient to pave your way in the world.

>As mandated by sate law, I get paid for my normal hours.

Paid sick time is not mandated by law in most states. http://www.paidsickdays.org/research-resources/current-sick-...

If I had to survive on minimum wage, I would do things differently: No airline tickets, no long distance bus tickets and no sightseeing. Cooking ramen noodles instead of eating the dollar burgers at that I bought at McDonalds.

I would also work much more than 40 hours a week.

I would share a flat in a poor neighbourhood with someone.

I'm not saying everyone has the discipline to pull it off. I'm just saying I can see how some immigrants can live off minimum wage and still send money home every year.

Why would it be better to be unemployed at 15U$S an hour that employed at 5U$S an hour?

This assumes you're healthy and have no other responsibilities. A minor health problem would lead to ruin with this lifestyle, and it's just not possible if you have to care for family members.

Let them bike tour (and eat cake)? Besides the camping, you also relied on the kindness of strangers for showers and other hospitality. I find your response pretty heartbreaking because it illustrates just how big of an empathy gap we're dealing with in the US between the rich and poor.

   You just need to work enough hours, do long commutes and be very, very disciplined in all your purchases.

This is an old idea, but it's never been a good or accurate one. I think it appeals to some people because it allows them to dissociate from any feeling of collective responsibility, by placing that on the individuals alone.

So you were homeless this whole time? It sounds like you are saying you can live on minimum wage if you are willing to be homeless? Do I have that right?

"high minimum wage" probably refers to the minimum wage set by high costs cities, that is "higher" then the federal. Seattle , for example, it is $15 for certain types of employment.

>What do you mean by "high minimum wage"? Federal minimum wage in the United States is still $7.25 which is not enough for someone to live on, especially in a high cost of living area. I don't understand.

He/she means "higher than the federal minimum".

Homelessness problems seem to loosely correlate with cities and states that have higher minimum wage (edit: so do many other things and homelessness problems might actually be correlating with one or several of those).

this has more to do with the fact that cities are far more favourable for homeless people to live.

The US has more holess problem than all the other developed countries yet has a very low minimum wage. So I would say no.

That's not true. The rate of homelessness is higher in France, Sweden, Luxembourg, New Zealand, the UK, etc.

do you have some sources for this?

https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC3-1-Homeless-population.pd...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/homeless-sta...

https://web.archive.org/web/20170521060915/http://www.homele...

Read the article and the links he provided, he touches a little upon why people are homeless. There are numerous causes, including mental illness like schizophrenia, financial woes, losing your housing unexpectedly, losing your job unexpectedly, as well as the scourge of drug addiction. Suffice to say, there are MANY reasons, and your pointing to the "high minimum wage" (you call 7.25 per hour high??) is not sensible or squared with my own knowledge.

One common myth you're expounding here is that homeless = jobless. The reality is housing is very pricey in many cities, and the minimum wage may actually be too low, not too high. A friend working for a homeless non-profit told me nearly 50% of the homeless in my state have employment.

It would certainly be interesting to see exactly the state of homeless people. If they cannot afford housing individually, yet have jobs, why not band together and rent an apartment?

Toxic relationships with other homeless people. Desire to avoid the substance use of peers. Inability to gather enough money for the first, last and security deposit. Lack of large apartments that are affordable. Inability to coordinate a group of people who have strict shelter schedules. Discrimination by landlords.

(I worked in a shelter clinic for 2 years--these examples come from conversation and experience working with homeless people.)

Because the economics frequently don't work out? Because you need a lot of documentation to rent an apartment, and saying you want to move in with a bunch of other homeless people isn't going to make a prospective landlord jump up and down with excitement?

Would they be able to get past a credit check?

I'm not saying they wouldn't; I honestly don't know but I imagine these are the kinds of problems that they deal with which are difficult for people who aren't homeless to empathize with.

"it isn't clear why they are homeless."

Domestic violence, for starters. "Among families [typically a single mother and child, which account for 37% of the homeless population] that reported domestic violence in the prior five years, 88 percent reported that it contributed to their homelessness a lot." [1]

Other causes include: lack of affordable child care, underemployment, lack of affordable housing, societal neglect of substance use and mental health disorders, inability to find work because of disability or discrimination against those with a criminal record. [2]

Naturally, an adequate social safety net would address many of these issues. Moreover, an effective anti-poverty program (such as an expansion of the child tax credit, or the creation of a social wealth fund), could outright eliminate a few as major contributing factors.

Finally, did you not read the article? One of Mark Anthony's main points is literally: "Not all homeless people are jobless people"

[1] https://www.doorwaysva.org/our-work/education-advocacy/the-f...

[2] https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/what-cau...

you forgot to mention bad decisions as a source of homelessness

Do you believe a person can have negative productivity after their employer takes into account costs of supervision, losses arising from poorly done work, and suchlike?

Seems to me you might get some rough sleepers into work by lowering the minimum wage, but so long as there are rough sleepers with untreated mental health and/or addiction problems, you're never going to get them all into work even if there was no minimum wage whatsoever.

> I ask because I see many young people homeless these days, and it isn't clear why they are homeless.

The people you see on the street have drug abuse and mental health issues.

Wow. Sources needed. You're right in some instances. But the U.N. says a third of young people are raised in abusive homes, and escaping that is the main source of youth homelessness according to what I've read.

"Homeless" for 9 years in the Valley. AMA.

>You can start by not judging the homeless.

Instead of flying out the gate accusing people of judging homeless, consider this:

Not everywhere is like San Francisco where you have actual homeless people living in tent/tarp hovels on sidewalks in busy neighborhoods, come to downtown Indy and many of the 'homeless' people you find randomly around are absolutely not homeless and simply know they can make much easier money off of people coming/going from bars and restaurants. The bulk of the properly homeless people congregate around the Wheeler Mission shelter downtown, or are in suburban neighborhoods spread out over 368 (three hundred and sixty eight) square miles.

If there isn't a big event downtown, or it's a slow bar/restaurant night, you'll notice there's considerably fewer of them. If the weather is harsh, you'll notice there's considerably fewer of them.

A few years back we passed a law (here's an article how it was only partially effective https://www.wthr.com/article/panhandling-law-loophole-lets-r... ) here preventing people from pan handling within so many feet of intersections, guess what happened? Within a month they were completely gone, they quickly discovered they couldn't make worthwhile money that far away from the stoplights and stopped. I used to say multiple every day on my commute, now I only ever see the occasional people in suits 'collecting donations' coughbullshitcough for their 'ministry' and they will just pop up at a busy intersection with a long light for an hour or two because they know they have a very short window until they get run off by police.

What I'm getting at is, a lot of 'homeless' people get judged because there are a considerable amount that aren't actually homeless in many places. I honestly believe I've NEVER seen a homeless person on the street until I visited San Francisco in June and saw tent/tarp cities and people passed out on the middle of sidewalks in broad daylight.

Here in Indy the common homeless you'll see have relatively clean nice clothes, will usually have some sort of phone, look well fed, shoes in great condition, and sometimes are considerably overweight. In San Francisco I saw people in filthy clothes, a few people had shoes that were beyond shot and had clearly been worn well beyond their useful life, that were often pushing being underweight. From my window at the Proper I watched a man sleep on the sidewalk all night, when public transportation started running in the morning he got up and paced the sidewalk wrapped Assasin's Creed-style in his blanket with sneakers that looked nearly as old as I am, that guy was legitimately homeless, the feelings I have for the 'homeless' in Indy are nothing what like I felt for that man, watching him for an hour or so over the course of 12 hours left me in a funk for days, the 'homeless' here you walk by thinking "I bet he makes more in a few hours on the weekend than I will in a day of work". Truly homeless people here aren't a common site in public unlike what I saw in a day and a half in San Francisco. There's absolutely a homeless population here but the bulk of 'homeless' that we see are fakers, so we get conditioned to judge.

They're also attempting to pass more legislation to end panhandling downtown as it's still very much a problem https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2018/09/14/indy...

Here in Colorado we have "actual homeless". Going to a homeless shelter in the winter time provides a great sample. And, there are dangers in those shelters where homeless people are still too scared to stay there.

It's been enlightening to see the surveys of the homeless in my area: who they are, how they got that way, how long they've been homeless.

There are now even prediction models for how unlikely an individual is to be alive in a year if they check 8 of 10 boxes in part of the survey.

The programs I've most been impressed with are the ones creating a stronger resistance layer to falling from having a home to homeless. They save society so much money.

Forming and maintaining relationships, in addition to $, are also important factor. Consider where in your network, homeless people could join and connect with you.

>The programs I've most been impressed with are the ones creating a stronger resistance layer to falling from having a home to homeless

I live in Colorado as well. Out of interest, which programs are you referring to?

> If there isn't a big event downtown, or it's a slow bar/restaurant night, you'll notice there's considerably fewer of them. If the weather is harsh, you'll notice there's considerably fewer of them.

You observe this and the conclusion you make is that, 'many of the 'homeless' people are absolutely not homeless and simply know they can make much easier money off of people coming/going from bars and restaurants.'

or maybe they are homeless and know that their best bet of survival is going to the places with the most people willing to help them out.

or maybe harsh weather means that they aren't capable of being out in the open exposed to the elements, and are instead hunkered down somewhere where they can at least get minimal shelter.

I think the point of the article is that your surface conclusions from simple observations are probably not entirely accurate, and more likely a false assumption made by someone who has never experience homelessness and can't possibly know the motives or circumstances of that population.

>You observe this and the conclusion you make is that, 'many of the 'homeless' people are absolutely not homeless and simply know they can make much easier money off of people coming/going from bars and restaurants.'

The homeless population in Indianapolis congregates around the homeless shelters, not around businesses where police will tell them to keep it moving. As such most people here never witness the real homeless, where San Francisco you have tents alongside billion dollar businesses and police walking around people asleep on the sidewalk.

My point is, this article is shaming people for 'judging homeless' and that in some cities, the visible 'homeless' are often not homeless and are in fact con artists.

"Hey how dare you judge someone" well, when the ones many people are exposed to are scammers and not legit you get conditioned to be extremely wary of any person presenting as homeless.

Again, we passed a LAW here to discourage these scammers from making money by making it a crime to panhandle at intersections https://www.wthr.com/article/panhandling-law-loophole-lets-r...

And they are working on legislation to go after the panhandling downtown as well https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2018/09/14/indy...

Criminalizing homelessness doesn't end homelessness.

They aren't 'criminalizing homeless'. They're making it illegal to set up at busy intersections walking up and down cars "hey spare some change, spare some change" and from harassing people (I mean HARASSING) people downtown when they enter/leave businesses.

The common ploy downtown, since the smoking ban took effect, was to find groups of smokers "hey can I bum a cigarette" or "hey can I get a light". If you engage them, with a yes or a no, they then starting asking if you have any money or try to sell you cheap plush toys.

I am all for solving the homeless problem, I was profoundly impacted after going to San Francisco and seeing people literally sleeping on sidewalks. It's a huge problem and unfortunate HOWEVER people absolutely abuse the charity of others this is why cities like Indianapolis have passed laws about panhandling.

My whole damn point in this thread is the author is accusing people of 'judging homeless', my point is MANY people have never experienced proper homelessness, they've experienced con artists and addicts that BELLIGERENTLY attempt to extract money out of people. When your experience is primarily with those types, you get jaded reeeeeeallllll quick.

This article reads like

'I was homeless once and that makes me better than you, listen up while I judge you because some people judge homeless people'.

June 24th 2018, at 33 years of age, is the first time I have ever seen someone sleeping on a sidewalk or the street. In San Francisco. The first time I've ever seen someone living in a tent or improvised tarp and cardboard tent, was on June 24th 2018 at 33 years of age in San Francisco.

While I have seen actual homeless people here in Indy, it was never in a tent/tarp/lean to on a sidewalk or street, never someone's camp in an alley, it was seeing people milling about outside of a homeless shelter when they are made to leave until night and never once while in that area was I ever hit up for money. I have however been hit up, and driven by people with signs, countless times in other areas by people that looked absolutely nothing like the men outside of the Wheeler mission or the individuals I saw in San Francisco. Unless they pan handlers just abruptly became homeless, the simple state of their shoes and the cleanliness of their clothes and person screamed they were running a con unlike the legitimate homeless people I have encountered.

Holy smoke, talk about reinforcing stereotypes about Indiana

> talk about reinforcing stereotypes about Indiana

Because I think the author is unfairly JUDGING people claiming they're 'judging' homeless people? I imagine most of the population of the United States has never had an interaction with someone they would describe as homeless.

Not everyone is judging people for being homeless, most just don't have context for actual homelesness. The bulk of their encounters are people hanging outside of gas stations "hey man, ran out of gas, laid off, kids and wife back in car, dog died, trying to get to dying grandma, could you spare 20$" or the people with a cardboard sign "homeless need money" working traffic lights day after day after day after day.

People judge what they see, most people don't see the kind of homelessness that downtown San Francisco has, or NYC has. Most of the country is suburban or rural.

What I'm saying in this thread is, the author seems to be incredibly myopic using his own limited experience as a way to judge others for judging.

>What I'm saying in this thread is, the author seems to be incredibly myopic using his own limited experience as a way to judge others for judging.

This is quite a judgemental statement to make about someone who says he's been homeless for almost 20 years from someone who (I assume) has not been homeless before. Do you have less limited experience to make you less myopic? Also except we're reading different articles I don't know what you're talking about when you say the author is 'judging'. The article says homeless people don't always live on the street, have no education, do drugs or have no jobs, and you say "don't be judgemental, that's myopic". Does that really make any sense to you?

Another problem is the conflation of homelessness with heroine users. Forget the professional homeless (which my fiancee's parents have been at times). The problem is we treat both as "homeless" when they are very different animals. Social programs tend to elevate and help those who can be and it doesn't look like a dent is made because, statistically, the remaining homeless are either deranged (renting to newly rehabilitated homeless has wrecked properties I managed) or drug users.

>You can start by not judging the homeless.

It's not a complex topic, but the judgement is based on information and the existing information speaks volumes.

I was born/raised in a poor-ish place in south asia and you are generally trained by your parents to believe that most of the homeless/panhandlers are 'fakers'. This myth was quickly destroyed once I spoke to like 5 of them including some people that worked for me who panhandled in their free time (even when they had a job!). They would quickly lay the math out for you and it becomes clear very quickly that these folks don't do this by choice.

I think the faker argument is simply a story richer folks tell to themselves and their kids to prevent major cognitive dissonance since otherwise how can you justify the INSANE amount of homeless/panhandlers there? Branding these folks as the out-group makes it easy to turn a blind eye. No-one chooses to live 10x worse than the general population, beg and be looked down upon.

It's a pervasive cardinal sin for "working really hard yet still poor" people to hate on homeless people: to say they're faking, using drugs, crazy, lazy, etc. It's mean and evil, but unfortunately very common.

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