Hacker News Reader

Comment by jeffreyrogers | Hacker News Reader

How would you solve it? I think it's a really tough problem and a significant fraction of the homeless population has serious mental health problems. I live in a city (Salt Lake City) that did a great job fixing its homelessness problem... for a couple of years. Now it's worse than it has ever been. Partly this is because more homeless people are coming to the area because they've heard about how great the resources here are. The problem with trying to solve homelessness is that most things that work to solve it incentivize more homeless people to move to the area that is solving the problem. At least that's what it seems like to me.

View on HN

It's simple.

We need more fucking housing. Period. End of story. We need condo towers. We need townhomes. We need mid-rises.

And secondly, we need free and low cost mental health services.

That's it. Problem solved. The problem is we're 20 years behind.

Nope, your just indentfied the problem that needs to be solved. You haven't "solved" the problem, which is massively more complex.

More affordable housing only solves a problem for those with moderate incomes. Evidence: every other city in the US that has cheaper housing but also still plenty of homeless. Free and low-cost mental health services are closer to the mark, but still far from a simple problem. Many homeless people have complex, multi-faceted problems. Many resist initial contact. Many have trouble with maintaining any kind of regular schedule for either medication or counseling. Funding that many therapists (not just head-counters) and ensuring their security is a challenge unto itself. Not a simple problem at all.

If there's one thing that makes Silicon Valley unpleasant to me, it's the "simple, just do X" hand-wave that so many there indulge in regarding every damn topic. I'm sure your job isn't so simple a child could do it. Why act like everybody else's is?

Really I think that hints that homelessness should be addressed federally just to stop the buck passing. Not helping matters is the electoral college biasing against urban areas where homelessness is more of a problem.

The buck-passing however is from San Francisco to other cities. Guardian published a piece estimating San Francisco would double its homeless population if it hadnt exported it.

The point is that it is multi-lateral circular shipping as a result of incentives - following them doesn't speak well to their character but it is a systemic problem.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com