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Comment by djsumdog | Hacker News Reader

All the money spend to fighting for this legislation could have gone into actually housing people; real permanent housing for those too poor.

Utah has shown that housing people first alleviates a lot of stress. It takes away that fear of not having a basic, consistent place to sleep and be somewhat secure. Cities that implement housing first programs save a lot of money, as it's easier for those people to get to find work and get themselves out of the system.

Will some people abuse it and stay in government housing forever? Sure. But even with those people, municipalities still save money because a good chunk of the people can build their way out once their basic needs are met.

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Utah has shown that if you have a small city with lots of cheap land, freezing cold winters, mostly-white population and a religion that expects everyone to do community service you can have a much lower homeless rate. This doesn't hold many lessons for California.

Oh, I think the lesson to be learned is accountability of spending. California is now famous for spending billions on homelessness with very little to show for it. In one San Fransisco trial, ~$100k per homeless participant was spent, with none of them being housed at the end. The program could have literally paid for them to take a bus to a cheaper city off the coast, bought them a year in a nice furnished condo, then given them cash vouchers for tens of thousands of dollars, and been a cheaper more effective program.

And yet no one will dare admit complete incompetents are in charge of solving this problem.

All of the money would then be spent fighting the NIMBYs who would prevent any homeless shelters from being built anywhere close to their neighborhoods...and indeed several tens of millions have been spent in courtrooms fighting off NIMBY lawsuits to the more than 2-dozen potential shelters that could have been built since the passage of Measure H.

The fundamental failure of Measure H was that while there is the money to build the necessary housing, and the general political will to build somewhere....there is intense political opposition to any specific place that gets proposed as the location for homeless or transitional housing.

Not sure why you're being downvoted; this is exactly what is happening in SF right now. Many/most neighborhoods are fighting tooth and nail to prevent Navigation Centers from being built near them.

Quite a few of these are planned for areas that already have a sizeable homeless population. It's beyond me how people think they're less safe with a Nav Center rather than just a bunch of people on the streets nearby, defecating on the sidewalk and ranting at the sky all day. (And before I get accused of stereotyping, this is literally what I see on my walk to work.)

> All of the money would then be spent fighting the NIMBYs who would prevent any homeless shelters from being built anywhere close to their neighborhoods

If this is an expected outcome, I would consider it fiscally irresponsible to propose building housing shelters in NIMBY neighborhoods and instead choose other places where money won't be wasted on litigation. There's no good reason for homeless shelters and other charitable services to be located on extremely valuable real estate and in NIMBY neighborhoods.

> There's no good reason for homeless shelters and other charitable services to be located on extremely valuable real estate and in NIMBY neighborhoods

There are tons of good reasons. The primary reason is that "place" is a huge determination of societal outcomes for individuals. Homeless individuals in a nicer neighborhood will on average have better outcomes (rehabilitation, returning to normal life, seeking mental health treatment) than homeless individuals in rougher neighborhoods.

I never said anything about putting them in rougher neighborhoods. You're projecting.

There are plenty of places in the US where you're less likely to meet costly legal resistance where people can get rehabilitation, returning to normal life and seeking mental health treatment.

Furthermore, even those services, such as rehabilitation and mental health treatment should be moved to lower cost of living markets where each dollar goes much further than in San Francisco. The salary of a social worker in SF is approximately 30% higher than some place like Dallas, TX.

If the mere perception that people might sue was sufficient to dissuade one from building at such a location wouldn't every neighborhood be a nimby neighborhood? At that point where do you build?

Those who can afford the legal costs should pursue such litigation if they think it's worth doing so. Organizations addressing homelessness are among the least able to afford such litigation. As someone who has donated to solve this problem, knowing that money is going to be wasted on litigation makes me less likely to support organizations who are going to waste it.

When I donated money last year to address this issue, I donated to an organization in Texas, despite living in San Francisco, because I knew the money was going to be wasted on the problem in San Francisco. When people making 6-figures right out of college have difficulty finding stable living arrangements in a place, it's futile to try and keep people in that same place that don't have nearly the same capacity to support themselves in an extraordinarily expensive market. For many homeless people, keeping them in SF is tantamount to keeping them homeless in perpetuity because almost none of them have a chance of escaping homelessness in that environment.

As much as I'd like all able-minded and able-bodied people to try to be productive in society to whatever extent feasible, if that's not an option, I would much rather they "abuse" government housing instead of living on the streets being a public nuisance and health hazard, as is often the case.

I really have no problem with the concept of "criminalizing homelessness" -- as long as we can provide sufficient housing for everyone, regardless of their financial state.

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