The Perils of Private Provision of Public Goods
papers.ssrn.com
papers.ssrn.com
As a customer, there's sometimes a smell, and you tend to sit where you can keep an eye out (since you never know the mental state of people in that situation), but I've never witnessed any real problems.
Honestly, it's heartwarming. It's dystopian, of course, that the provision of basic needs like these falls to a private coffee chain, but regardless of that I admire what they're doing (even though it's probably PR-driven, if we're being honest). It's not unpleasant enough for me as a customer that I'd refuse to go to that location (or even walk half a dozen blocks to the next one).
Thank you for judging people/organizations based on their actions and not their intentions. Intentions are complex and hard to accurately determine.
I live in a major metro city like Austin. The homeless can easily get three hot meals a day, a warm bed every night, and all the hygiene necessities they need for free.
I don't think you should assume they're in Starbucks because the resources aren't available elsewhere.
Some don't, but on average, it can be a net positive.
It's the kind of thing you need a scientific study with randomization to tease out. You can control for all the confounders you want, but you can never control for unknown/difficult to estimate confounders, like human emotion.
Or just... the fact that the company is still doing it. That's the other thing that's weird to me about this study: surely Starbucks itself has already studied and worked out the calculus that the PR effect is a net positive?
While SBUX has all that data, they would only see their own data.
The problem is the lack of randomization.
We can't know if something else Starbucks did at or around the same period caused the drop. E.g. the initial protests themselves upsetting customers in the first place or a change in pricing/promos by itself or a competitor. Maybe Starbucks jacked up its prices (or others starting discounting), which is why the public disclosures don't indicate the relative drop in traffic.
But "The decline in visits is around 84% larger for stores located near homeless shelters." is quite damning.
That is: it's hard to rule out the possibility of this being just coincidence.
Alternatively, I've seen how this has affected Starbucks in the nicer parts of San Francisco and the East Bay. Some Starbucks locations smell horrible, some of the restrooms are trashed and there is toilet paper everywhere. In one Starbucks on Market Street, a homeless person decided to hole up in the restroom and take a nap on the nice, cool floor with the a/c going.
I can never support forcing a private business into offering a public utility.
But this was decided by Starbucks itself?
I totally agree that the public sector needs to step up and offer its own solution. But in the absence of that, this is better than nothing.
>"In April, two African American males were arrested in a Philadelphia Starbucks after one asked to use the restroom but was told only paying customers could use them. After he sat down with his friend while waiting to be joined by a business associate for a meeting, the police came and arrested both, sparking national outrage.
Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson subsequently apologized to the victims and reached an undisclosed financial settlement."
So I suppose you support increase taxation to fund these public utilities?
Also, Starbucks wasn't forced to do this. They chose to.
In the US one has to compare all taxes including federal, state and city/county levels with other countries.
And the "have to" has an implied "to get the math right". You're being weirdly hostile to take that literally.
Paris has a metro for that.
edit: I bet Paris has more truly public free-to-use restrooms. It did take them a while to make them free and to keep many of them open at night.
https://en.parisinfo.com/practical-paris/useful-info/public-...
High taxes also have other cons and negative effects that are out of the scope of this particular argument.
I know that in many countries (including the one I'm from) this is the situation, but not in whole Europe.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle...
https://nyupress.org/9781479874729/the-poverty-industry/
> foster care agencies are hiring private companies to help obtain disability and survivor benefits from abused and neglected children. Rather than using the funds to help the children, the money is diverted to agency revenue or to state general coffers. Some foster care agencies take even more, such as taking Veteran’s Assistance benefits belonging to a child after a parent serves and dies in the military. The Maryland foster care agency drafted a regulation allowing it to take all resources from foster children
However, I've started to avoid Starbucks because of the homeless issue. I'm in SoCal, and I completely relate to the struggles of the homeless. I even donate my time to a local food pantry and our shelter. The smell and crazy stares are one thing, but what really drives me away is the bathroom use. The Starbucks near me have 1-2 bathrooms, and it's happened to me that these bathrooms can be occupied by a homeless person for 30+ minutes. This is an unreasonable amount of time for me to wait when I have to go and coffee is a diuretic.
Now when I want to work outside my home I drive to a library that's in an area without public transportation or nearby places for the homeless to congregate, and I can use it because of that. There's a starbucks with similar characteristics (not near public transport, no place to congregate near by), but it's too far. The library that's closer to me, the one I would prefer to go to, is completely overrun by homeless.
The homeless issue is so complex. Every solution has its pros and cons. The terrible thing is that there seems to be two sides to our communities and each side seems to only see the pros or cons of any solution (depending on their ideological bend) while the other does the same. No one seems to be weighing the pros AND cons in a reasonable way, or accepting that there are no perfect solutions. The issue is so polarized, even very intelligent people seem incapable of even admitting something as simple, and I would hope obvious, as the fact that any solution will have pros and cons. It's as if there's no getting past 'the other tribe has terrible ideas' mentality.
I find it dubious that a self -employed person who uses Starbucks to get away from home can, in any way, completely relate to the struggles of the homeless. And I’m seriously not just trying to nitpick here. It sounds like you may strongly sympathize with the homeless, but that’s not at all the same as completely relating to their struggles when you’re both employed and not homeless. Starbucks is a luxury and privileged escape for a self-employed person with a home.
I think it’s great you volunteer your time. But your lengthy comment still reads as an employed, housed person complaining about the inconvenience they encounter from the homeless. Have you been homeless before? Are you so good at completely relating to the struggles of the homeless that you recognize the privilege and luxury you’re enjoying to travel out of your way to avoid the homeless? And even just that bit—your comments about how solving homeless problems is complex is completely overwhelmed by your anecdotes of avoiding them (and still complaining about how inconvenient it is to you personally to avoid them).
I didn't grow up in an English speaking country. I guess more appropriate would be to empathize. I'll use that one next time. Thanks. :)
By the way, I don’t doubt your sincerity in any way—I’ve never met anyone who volunteered their time to the homeless who didn’t deeply care for them and their struggles.
However, I still think it’s worth pointing out to ourselves the many small ways in which we avoid the homeless—and I’m equally guilty of it. I’ve found that helping the homeless is something it feels far easier to do in volunteer settings—when it’s in a specific place set aside for the homeless, at a specific time, and we can just leave the homeless behind when we’re done. Those of us who are not homeless feel good about helping, but feel annoyed when they come into “our space”—spaces like Starbucks. This is where we have the privilege and luxury to pay for our presence, and find our metaphorical feathers ruffled when someone inconveniences us—which we somewhat loudly underscore when we complain about the greater inconvenience we are willing to endure just so we can avoid the inconvenience of encountering the homeless.
As an immigrant I'd never jump on them for it, regardless of race, religion or background. Language is about connection and understanding. Generally such situations involve someone trying to tell me 'you know what, I'm on your side', and I interpret it as such since I'm aiming to connect with them, not judge them.
There's a certain trend in people that take language very seriously. In this trend there's a lot of talk about empathy while using it as a whip to virtue signal. It's quite ironic.
You've edited out some of the more substantial parts of your comment now, but I'll reply to everything you originally wrote.
> First, I've already agreed I'd use a different word next time.
I apologize that explaining the colloquial meaning of the "I completely relate to X" has bothered you. You said you weren't a native English speaker, and I was only trying to further explain what that particular phrase means. Again, I'm sorry I bothered you by trying to explain the phrase.
> There's a certain type of person who uses takes language very seriously and they seem to not really care what the underlying feelings are. Ironically they talk about empathy while using it as a whip. These judgmental types will point holes at other peoples actions under the guise of empathy in an effort to virtue signal. It's quite ironic.
In your original comment, I found it quite ironic that someone would say they completely relate to the struggles of the homeless as an employed and housed person, and then complain about minor inconveniences they experience from the homeless (you occasionally can't use a bathroom when drinking coffee), and the extra inconvenience they willingly endure with the specific goal of avoiding the homeless (you specifically find a place the homeless cannot easily get to so you don't have to encounter them).
Sorry, but that isn't virtue-signaling. That is making an observation based on taking your words seriously as a true communication of your underlying feelings—and I found it worth pointing out there was a clear and strong dichotomy of feelings and actions when you claim to completely relate to a given struggle, while following it up with actions you take to avoid being face-to-face with people who are living that struggle. I wasn't passing judgment on the dichotomy itself, or on you—I was only pointing out the clear conflict.
> Though I don't agree I'm 'guilty'. What on earth do you suggest I do? Take them home? Be with them on the street? Of course it is safer to deal with the small % homeless individuals who are unstable in a controlled environment and of course I care for my own safety. I refuse to be guilt tripped over it though.
I think this is where wires seem to have been crossed.
I didn't suggest you're guilty of anything in the sense you've done something bad or wrong. Perhaps this is a result of using another English idiom, but when someone says "I'm guilty of it, too", they are simply saying, "I do the same thing!". I wasn't guilt-tripping you.
I also wasn't suggesting there was anything you should do differently. I was simply observing and talking aloud, recognizing more of that complexity you said existed in dealing with the homeless. I was attempting to engage you and relate to the struggle I thought we both shared as two self-employed people, with a house, who care about the homeless, think the problem is complex, and recognize that we both do things that help us avoid the homeless when we don't want to be inconvenienced by their presence and/or the challenges we're faced with. I wasn't making a moral judgment against you. I wasn't making any sort of judgment at all. I was merely observing and communicating there was something we had in common.
I'm a very introspective person, and I find it both valuable and personally beneficial to look at my own actions, and interrogate them for the underlying feelings behind them. I also find it beneficial to recognize when my actions are at odds with the things I say or believe I believe—not to pass any sort of moral judgment or guilt-trip on myself, but to better understand myself.
For me, there is value in reminding myself that going to Starbucks and paying for a coffee is a luxury I enjoy. It's a privilege and luxury to have money that enables me to pay for goods and services, and I recognize there are plenty of people who do not have that privilege or enjoy that luxury. Reminding myself of that is something I believe helps me keep myself in check so I do not take such privileges/luxuries for granted, or think poorly of someone who is in a different socioeconomic state. When I walk into a public space, nobody ever thinks twice about my presence as a clean, employed white man—there are no groans, I am not watched, nobody worries when I go to the bathroom, nobody makes an effort to avoid sitting by me or interacting with me. Similarly, I don't worry that a Starbucks employee will call the cops if I'm just sitting in the Starbucks. That's a very clear privilege I enjoy as a white person who has a home and earns enough money to at least go to a Starbucks whenever I want.
Anyway, that's a whole lot of words to write to ultimately try to accomplish a couple simultaneous goals:
1. I apologize for offending you by taking your words too seriously and engaging them as written.
2. I think there is value in interrogating our own actions to check how they align with our values and our conception of ourselves. Recognizing when our actions oppose our values is an important part of the feedback loop that helps us better align our actions with our values—especially when being true to our values requires we accept some level of personal inconvenience. Recognizing when we avoid that personal inconvenience isn't a moral judgment on failing—it's just another data point in the feedback loop.
Absolutely, we can disagree and not take it to heart. Someone who can stand the heat of an argument and coherently communicate, even if they have completely contrary view points, is someone I'd enjoy having a beer with.
Now, on the post: I think I fundamentally disagree with you, not on the language though, there's a difference in perspectives.
You say: > I found it quite ironic that someone would say they completely relate to the struggles of the homeless as an employed and housed person, and then complain about minor inconveniences they experience from the homeless (you occasionally can't use a bathroom when drinking coffee), and the extra inconvenience they willingly endure with the specific goal of avoiding the homeless (you specifically find a place the homeless cannot easily get to so you don't have to encounter them).
The implication of your use of 'irony' is that, if I had been homeless, I wouldn't avoid them or talk about avoiding them. But you treat this opinion as fact. I don't agree with your opinion and find passing off an opinion as fact is sub-optimal communication. Which seems ironic to me in a post that is seeking others to communicate more optimally.
I grew up poor in a tough neighborhood; I watched people die from gunshots, had guns pulled on me, got beat and stomped on and dealt with the gritty reality of my environment at the time. And I wasn't even in a slum, just a hard place. By all possible meanings of the word, I can say I completely relate to people growing up in a poor, tough neighborhood. I wish the people in such places the best. I avoid such places like the frigging plague. Is that ironic? I don't think so nor do any of the people I know who also managed to escape.
From my perspective, you have to be pretty disconnected from reality to think it's unreasonable, bad, or negative in any way to avoid such places. So I completely disagree with the underlying opinion and premise you have.
> that isn't virtue-signaling. That is making an observation based on taking your words seriously as a true communication of your underlying feelings ... I was only pointing out the clear conflict.
People normally have feelings that are conflictive. Life is fundamentally filled with conflicting forces, where both sides are needed and can be correct at the same time. This is perfectly normal and healthy. You pointed it out like it's something wrong. To me it seems you are taking your opinion and 'begging the question' in an 'observation' where to answer you I must first accept your premise. But I don't.
> Recognizing when our actions oppose our values is an important part of the feedback loop that helps us better align our actions with our values—especially when being true to our values requires we accept some level of personal inconvenience. Recognizing when we avoid that personal inconvenience isn't a moral judgment on failing—it's just another data point in the feedback loop.
Again, we fundamentally disagree. I mean, yes, accepting of inconvenience is something I do (surely you don't think it's convenient to volunteer?) but avoidance of inconvenience is also something I do. I mean, it would be best for the homeless if I accepted all inconvenience and I brought them into my home. But then I'd probably be stressed out and unable to cope with my current reality and might end up homeless myself. So limits need to be drawn and balances need to be made at the value level. It's to me what makes someone mature, understanding these nuances. When you have a nuanced value system, nuanced actions aren't contradictory to simplistic values. This is because simplistic values simply seem immature and incompatible with how the world works.
Life isn't an all or nothing. I don't think my actions were at odds with what I said or believe in any way that's unreasonable. I think you should apply your own advice and maybe see how your posts in this thread which to me seem judgmental and opinionated are at odds with your message of empathy. And I'm not saying you are judging me personally. As someone who is a perfectionist and introspective myself, I know we tend to be the toughest when judging ourselves. I say avoid the 'judgmental attitude' and try to connect with people more, even yourself. Introspection can be used as an ego weapon to prop our little egos up, instead of something that can be humbly and quietly used to seek connection, generally in fighting our own ego.
> I apologize for offending you by taking your words too seriously and engaging them as written.
You haven't offended me at all, no need to apologize. You were telling your truth. That can be a rough and tumble game, as our truth when put out in the world will bump into its limitations. And it's always painful when our truth collides, especially when we are forced to adapt our truth to better fit with other peoples truth and The Truth. And I truly believe it is only the brave who risk putting their truth out there. :)
> The implication of your use of 'irony' is that, if I had been homeless, I wouldn't avoid them or talk about avoiding them. But you treat this opinion as fact. I don't agree with your opinion and find passing off an opinion as fact is sub-optimal communication. Which seems ironic to me in a post that is seeking others to communicate more optimally.
No, that is not the implication of describing the irony in your comment.
The implication is there is a mismatch between how deeply you believe you relate to the struggles of homelessness, and the degree to which you willingly take on _extra_ inconvenience to avoid encountering the homeless. I provided no opinion on that mismatch, I simply pointed it out.
The only thing approaching an opinion I shared was expressing incredulity at how well a housed, employed person can completely relate to the struggles of homelessness. My opinion was that they could not unless they had previously been homeless—but we cleared that up as just unfortunate phrasing.
> From my perspective, you have to be pretty disconnected from reality to think it's unreasonable, bad, or negative in any way to avoid such places. So I completely disagree with the underlying opinion and premise you have.
This "underlying opinion and premise" you think I have is something you are projecting onto me and my state of mind. I have in no way in any of my comments suggested it is unreasonable, bad, or negative to avoid something dangerous. You've invented that claim.
> People normally have feelings that are conflictive. Life is fundamentally filled with conflicting forces, where both sides are needed and can be correct at the same time. This is perfectly normal and healthy.
Exactly. The conflict between what we believe we believe and what we do is the only thing I've been trying to point out here.
> You pointed it out like it's something wrong.
No. You're misconstruing me observing it into me judging you for it. This is why you are reacting the way you are to my comments.
I did not point out that people normally have conflicting feelings like it's something wrong. I simply pointed it out to make a note of its presence in your original comment. More accurately, I pointed out that there was a conflict between what you believe about your understanding of the homeless struggle and the way you behave when confronted with the homeless in certain situations. I made no judgment that this conflict was either "good" or "bad"—I only observed it was present.
> Again, we fundamentally disagree ... accepting of inconvenience is something I do ... but avoidance of inconvenience is also something I do ... When you have a nuanced value system, nuanced actions aren't contradictory to simplistic values. This is because simplistic values simply seem immature and incompatible with how the world works.
I'm pretty sure we do not fundamentally disagree. However, you keep reading a lot more into my comments than I have said and/or presented. You then keep reacting to what you are incorrectly attributing to me, instead of reacting to what I am actually saying.
Simplistic values are the starting point for the feedback loop through which we develop nuance—they're the priors. Our actions and encounters in "the real world" are data points that allow us to reflect on these priors, iterating on aligning our beliefs and actions over time. I don't think it's possible to develop any nuance without this feedback loop.
For example, we might start with a simplistic value of "do no harm", and as we go through life, we have experiences that provide a series of exceptions to that rule. This doesn't invalidate the value of "do no harm", but it provides opportunities to refine the value into something more nuanced that better reflects the real world. If I believe I believe in doing no harm to others, and I then find myself in a situation where I am physically assaulted and fight back—doing harm to my assailant in the process—my actions are now in conflict with my beliefs, and I engage the feedback loop to update to something like "do no harm unless you are forced to defend yourself".
Not sure what you fundamentally disagree with here.
> Life isn't an all or nothing. I don't think my actions were at odds with what I said or believe in any way that's unreasonable.
I never suggested life was all or nothing. Nor did I suggest your actions were unreasonably at odds with what you said you believe. I only pointed out they appeared to be at odds. I made no further judgment.
Here are a couple more examples of actions and beliefs being at odds—offered as things I might observe, without passing judgment:
- Alice, a young lady walking alone, believes a particular neighborhood is dangerous as a result of recent sexual assaults—and then she walks into that neighborhood.
- John, a white man, believes he understands the struggle of minorities as a result of centuries of systemic racism—and then he refers to some person in a moment of anger with a racial slur.
- Pete, a straight man, believes he has no problem with LGBTQ+ persons, and supports their right to be who they are—and then he punches a gay man who hits on him at a bar.
- Jane, a single mother, believes it would be better to live in a society that offered universal healthcare and free, high-quality childcare to all its citizens—and then votes for a political candidate who opposes such programs.
Yes, life is full of instances where our actions are in conflict with what we believe we believe. And that is what I am pointing out. Based on everything you've written here, it doesn't sound like you actually disagree—it seems you're maybe just reacting negatively to it being pointed out in one of your comments, and you're inventing, projecting, and attributing judgment where there was none.
Is it though? I'm an Australian so take my comments with a grain of salt. Seeing the US from an external viewpoint, it seems the mental gymnastics that people go through in the US to basically wreck the public spaces and infrastructure is fascinating. From a purely selfish point of view being surrounded by homeless unmedicated crazy people is a bad thing, the solution is fairly obvious - cheap medical for those that can't afford it, homeless shelters for the less fortunate, build more houses so that houses are cheaper, cheap education. Looking from the other side of the world, what started out as apparent greed some years ago has now become ideology - there is no solution. There are some with the same ideology here, they are trying to create the same situation, fortunately they are not winning, though it's a continual fight.
I've had the same argument with many people here - the argument seems to be dying though, which I find promising, why should I pay taxes? Well you should pay taxes for roads, you need roads? well yes. You want education for your children? well yes. Sewerage? Well yes, and so on. By enumerating the things that taxes pay for seems to make them acceptable.
Do you want to be surrounded by crazy people when you go out? No, well we should pay taxes to have cheap health etc. I was at our state library yesterday, it was crazy people free, there are always a couple of people sleeping in the library, but they seem to be looked after. There's a lot of support infrastructure that seems to keep them somewhere, I don't know really, but I know if the government spending is reduced they'll reappear so taxes are paid. Is there waste in my tax money? probably, the idea that private enterprise has no waste though is farcical - I've been a corporate consultant.
I'm all for cheap medical and build more houses. I think that would go a long way towards resolving the housing issue in the US.
I've had a college class on Homelessness and Public Policy and I spent nearly six years homeless. I blog about it.
It's routine for people to reiterate the same tired point of view that "It's all crazies and junkies and more housing won't solve it." Quoting data that increases in housing costs correlates to about 96% of the increase in homelessness and people still insist they're version of events is the one true explanation.
I'm not denying there's a lot of drug use and mental health issues on the street. But both of those are actively fostered by homelessness and there are millionaire rock stars who are in and out of rehab, so it's really not accurate to pretend that addiction is done kind of root cause explanation. It's just not that simple and the mantra of "junkies and crazies" mostly gets used to act like it's an unsolvable personal issue and not a systemic issue.
Our housing issues are rooted in events that occurred at the end of WW2. Most people don't see the connection between those events, the policies that grew out of them and the debacle we currently have.
I've studied this issue for many years. I don't know how to get traction on solving it. I'm a woman and I was homeless for years. Sexism and classism close a lot of doors in my face while people basically sit around listening intently to well-heeled white men repeat the usual BS as to why we can't actually fix anything.
Just an FYI for people tempted to jump up and tell me UBI is the solution: my personal opinion of UBI is that it's a puke worthy fuck you that intentionally and with malice aforethought shits all over the poor and actively excludes them from the halls of power. So let's just skip that part of the conversation. I'm not sympathetic.
I would like to see housing policy changed in this country and I would like to see us solve the healthcare stuff.
If I had unlimited funds, I would make a go of building SROs/microunits and Missing Middle Housing as a real estate developer. This country has torn down about a million SROs in recent decades and largely zoned out of existence the ability to build Missing Middle Housing, which used to be a common form of housing.
New Urbanism was an attempt to build walkable neighborhoods. It wasn't wildly successful in bringing back historical patterns of neighborhood development and became mostly enclaves of nicer homes for upper class Americans. It faced a huge uphill battle in getting anything built at all and it was apparently common for developers and architects to take their New Urbanist neighborhood plan to the city, get it declined and then comb through the building codes and regulations and rename a bunch of stuff on their map while making little to no changes. Then take it to the city again. Rinse and repeat until they got approval of something vaguely similar to their initial vision.
The new version of this is YIMBYism. What little I have seen of YIMBYism is political stuff and I am mostly not seeing them bring answers as to what kind of housing works well, what kind of financing works well, etc. They seem to just campaign for "more housing in my town" and that seems to be it, which has potential to go all kinds of bad places.
If I had both money and power, I would wave my magic wand and bring back walkable neighborhoods full of Missing Middle Housing (and SROs) that even ordinary joes can afford and I would move this country to single payer healthcare. And then I would go on vacation for the rest of my life, having done enough to feel satisfied with my life.
Sounds like you have a plan, here they're building a huge amount of apartments, and its keeping rents low. The other long term item I'd suggest is education, if a chunk of the population is uneducated then they're easily exploitable. The thing with education when you have a large population of working poor is that its a low priority for them. You can make education as free as you want, but when people are working 20 hours a day to live then it doesn't matter.
imho its a systems problem, with the underlying issue being the lower stratum of society aren't getting enough money - even if they work, its ridiculous. Its not socialism to pay people enough to live when they work, if people only have to work one job, then they can focus on things like night school if they want, looking after they're kids so they can go to school.
Again with my telescopic view from across the pond it does seem engineered to keep a class of uneducated god fearing slaves.
I doubt it's a system consciously designed to keep a class of uneducated God fearing slaves. I think "Never assume malice where stupidity while suffice to explain it" applies.
A lot of crappy stuff genuinely is rooted in people being oblivious and unable to really see it. It's part of why stuff is so intractable: The people orchestrating it frequently feel innocent and wrongly accused.
Indeed it's an emergent behaviour from a lot of stupid and greedy decisions of the past. I have found its a rare ability for someone to be able to stand outside themselves and see how something ended up there. Like the stuff Bernie is talking about, how it seems to be being called socialism, but over here it's just life. There are those on the extreme right that fight against it, fortunately they haven't won here, yet, imho.
> I doubt it's a system consciously designed to keep a class of uneducated God fearing slaves
I don't think it was designed that way, but I'd say there are people taking advantage of the status quo and quite happy to keep it that way - cheap labour is good, and there are many who enjoy feeling righteous by pointing a finger at the behaviour of those less fortunate. I suppose the question is whose advantage is it to fix it? Probably not many, it's easier to just increase the police force and keep these people in jail and prepare for the inevitable uprisings.
> The people orchestrating it frequently feel innocent and wrongly accused.
Yes, so there's a way to fix it working with these people, but there are forces at work fighting it now or not interested in supporting change and they have a lot of money. Think I'll get off my Sunday morning pulpit now :-)
Go have a beer (or whatever your preferred poison is) to even things out. ;)
(It's still Saturday here. Is this Time Travel? O_o)
Could you be a bit more specific about this? I'm not saying you're wrong, but you're not saying enough that I can tell what policies you have in mind.
> Just an FYI for people tempted to jump up and tell me UBI is the solution: my personal opinion of UBI is that it's a puke worthy fuck you that intentionally and with malice aforethought shits all over the poor and actively excludes them from the halls of power. So let's just skip that part of the conversation. I'm not sympathetic.
Again, I'm not saying you're wrong. But could you be a bit more specific about why you think UBI is malicious?
All our policies skew towards making it policy to finance and build single family detached homes and the result has been that such homes have more than doubled in size and added lots of amenities. Meanwhile, we have largely made it difficult or impossible to finance and build a lot of other housing options.
Then we come up with ridiculous hacks to get around the zoning issues, like Tiny Houses on wheels instead of on a foundation because if you put it on wheels, it doesn't have to comply with size minimums we have written into law. And Tiny Houses have a lot of problems. They fail to really solve the issue and they fail in part because we aren't changing our policies to make them actually work decently.
I don't wish to discuss UBI. That was the entire point of ending my comment with that disclaimer. So I'm going to stand on "I still don't really want to discuss that, thanks."
When I moved to the city I was a fair bit younger than I am now, and I had an idealistic view of the issue. Now, my partner and I have had enough nasty encounters with the homeless (including assault and battery) that we generally refuse to acknowledge their existence. To some folks with a social justice bent, this is an unforgivable sin against our community's most vulnerable members, but to me it's self-preservation.
I would love to see my tax dollars go to programs with a proven track record of fixing these issues, or even to experimental programs that show promise. But that (seemingly, to me) more reasonable middle ground seems to have been lost in a mess of ideological bickering. A friend of mine who works in local government told me that it's the center-leaning-right cities that tend to have the most pragmatic and effective programs, and I haven't independently verified that, but I believe it.
Seriously? Does anyone want to live that way - there was a guy who said he liked living that way many years ago I remember, he was the local homeless guy, he'd make the papers now and then and even saw an interview with him now and then. He said he had money and just liked living that way, I'm fairly sure he was the exception. This just seems to be more "framing" to me.
Like one possible scenario - kids have some mental health issues in their teens, but because their parents aren't at home because they're working 2 jobs to live and medical treatment is unaffordable they dont get treatment. So they self medicate, and they drop out of school, then they live on the streets, then they're so drugged out they dont know any other life and they say they're happy living on the streets, because they really dont know any better.
Children who aren't raised become animals - e.g. the children raised by wolves of English history fame. Then of course these children grow up and have children of their own, which are just totally animal. I'd suggest you're seeing the end results of 50 years of systems failures. recovery from this is expensive.
The problem is that the current plan is all about enabling the animals to continue being animals. Letting them have permanent camps/drug dens, and just giving them the resources to make their situation stable.
That helps nobody, it just breeds more animals.
Anyway, I think the usual framing from people with the viewpoint I mentioned is that most of the homeless don't have a choice, and that efforts to "ban homelessness" are a further victimization of the vulnerable and powerless. And in some cases, they're right—harsh crackdowns without offering actual solutions will make their bad situations worse. But on the other hand, I think efforts to improve the situation are often branded as insensitive, dehumanizing, and so on, with the implication being that we should just leave them alone to live their lives. Personally I disagree with both—having the homeless around is bad, and being homeless is bad. As a society it's our duty to solve both problems, because we're all in this together.
"Want" is not the right word, but a lot of folks who have lost housing security are in the situation that was most appealing out of a limited set of options. There are programs that will help people (though they often fall off quite harshly so their efficacy is pretty poor [1]), but they often insist on stringent behavior restrictions. This might seem like a small price to pay, but I think it's easier to understand if you understand the life that's just on the other side of being unhoused.
Often, if you're currently unhoused, getting housed is going to massively increase the amount of money you need each month (you can't get anything now, ofc, but you're insolvent so people can't get much from you). Likely your only option for work (due to both stigma and the fact that having low social capital makes you more likely to lose housing) is to do relatively boring low-paid work for many hours a week (often more than 40). Doing that will get you a room and food and not a ton else - the working poor have hard lives in the US (and other places ofc). For lots of people who don't have stable housing, this doesn't feel like a trade off they want to make.
Now, all of this gets even harder when you add in common histories of people who have lost housings (multiple diagnoses, chronic conditions, hectic personal lives). There is a large (and growing) population of people who don't have stable housing as such, but have strong enough social safety nets to stay off the streets. Those people aren't often seen as "homeless" largely because their personal medical situation is less severe.
So maybe this all seems like people protesting too much. Lots of people view the loss of housing to be a moral failing on the part of the person who "lost" it (an agentic claim I'm skeptical of). If that's how you feel, I'd ask you to consider how many more hours a week you would work to make your life twice as comfortable (food is 'better,' clothes are 'better,' but you have less time to do anything but work). I think that the choices that unhoused folks make to remain unhoused are similar to choices that upper-middle class folks make all the time. The upper classes are just viewed as having the agency to make those choices.
[1] Even the cato institute thinks so! https://www.cato.org/blog/new-study-finds-more-evidence-pove...
There's growing evidence that simply giving people resources without preconditions will cost less than our current approach as well as be more effective [1].
I think that the line between the "homeless" and the working poor is pretty deceptive. Many people exist on one side of the line who have the capacity to cross it. Reforms that make it easier to live as someone at the bottom of the ladder (increased minimum wage, rent support like the mortgage tax breaks, health care subsidies, transportation systems that don't rely on owning a car) would also likely make staying homeless less interesting to many people.
Also, at the end of the day, some people will likely always chose to be unhoused. I suspect that what most members of the public find distasteful is not the isolated fact that some people don't have permanent addresses, but their discomfort with the signs of vagrancy (poor hygiene, worn clothes, poorly controlled atypical behavior). Again, providing services will address most of those things and make life much more tolerable for those who can't, for the moment, find the capacity in themselves to be "normal."
It's unlikely we have ever (or will ever) live in a society where everyone is comfortable living like "average" people do. Right now, people who find themselves unable to do that are often punished and looked down on. Even if someone thinks homelessness is a condition of moral failure, I hope they can agree with the problematic nature of a system that punishes people in ways that feed that condition.
[1] https://www.vox.com/2014/5/30/5764096/homeless-shelter-housi...
at the end of the day, he isn't violent and he doesn't leave trash lying around. the worst thing he does is smell bad. I don't think it would be just to lock him away in an asylum until he gets better.
The issue isn't funding. It's how the funds are being spent.
1. https://calmatters.org/explainers/californias-homelessness-c...
2. https://www.10news.com/news/local-news/san-diego-news/lawmak...
IIUC, a lot of that spending is to get (or keep) people in housing.
The people thus supported aren't reflected in the homelessness figures, and redirecting that portion of money to the presently homeless would lead to these people being homeless instead.
It could be that the result would still be an improvement, but that's not obvious.
We should expect a 50% reduction (which is what I expect you mean by 2x) in homelessness to be implied by the money covering 2x the people you cited only if we expect the rate of homelessness to have otherwise remained unchanged. That's a terrible assumption over a period that has seen housing prices rise dramatically.
Taking a quick look for some numbers before I get to work, I find that (per [0]) there are "over 20,000" receiving support in San Francisco alone, where there are (per [1]) about 8000 individuals remaining homeless. I have no idea how those compare to the rest of the state, and would welcome more info from other sources.
[0]: https://sfmohcd.org/sites/default/files/Documents/MOH/SF%20H...
[1]: https://sfgov.org/scorecards/safety-net/homeless-population
Yes. It is, at least in America. Here, due process and trial by jury of your peers permeate almost every facet of our culture and its interpretation of law. It's why we have such a cultural aversion to rounding up homeless people and putting them in a shelter. We've tried it in the past and it was unpalatable and ineffective. We've tried getting people help but telling them they're free to go, and they usually end up going because they can't be compelled to stay.
It's a very complicated problem to solve here because the bill of rights is meant to protect the 'undesirables' that a majority can easily oppress - homeless, rebels, drug users, convicts, etc.
This argument doesn't stand up to close inspection at all. Why am I going to be better off being forced to pay for someone else's healthcare when I already had that choice to do that and chose not to? Speaking as an Australian; I do pay my taxes, we do have cheap healthcare and I'm still walking by homeless people every day.
I'm not against a government safety net to make sure everyone has access to somewhere to sleep that is out of the weather & 3 square meals a day but healthcare is a bottomless pit. There is no limit of any sort on how much we can spend on healthcare. The line has to be drawn somewhere, it has to be arbitrary because there is no other way of making the system work.
It is all very well to say that you can spend more of my money on things you think are good ideas; but why am I so incapable of spending money on things I think are good ideas? The major thing stopping me from spending money on roads, education, sewerage, etc, etc is that the government is taking all the money I'd use for that and giving it to old people who haven't saved and needy cases that I frequently disagree are needy. The amount of money in my taxes that goes towards infrastructure is tiny in proportion.
Population density is quite thin out here in the desert. Also, since we don't offer a social net like in Holland, you'd need to police it against people literally sleeping in them or simply destroying them. Not to mention using them for nefarious activities. I'm not being alarmist, just saying there's a real cost to dealing with such aspects when people are spread out as thin as they are here. Maybe once we know what the cost is we'd find that the funds would be better spent setting up more shelters WITH bathrooms? Not saying this is the case. But that's exactly my original point: all these solutions are nuanced and need to be seen for what they are; addressing deep rooted social issues, with no solution being perfect and tons of choices that need to be made. Even if someone knew the perfect solution, finding how to bring it about is what matters. And that's bound to be imperfect, since that is what we live in.
Or provide a social net?
I mean, certainly cleaning is the major cost of provisioning a public bathroom, and that needs to be carefully considered during the design of such things. but I don't think that makes public restrooms impossible, just more expensive.
EDIT: Okay corporations aren't people therefore cannot have empathy. Can we say "forced empathy?" There's probably a real word here. Either way Starbucks budged under some moral compass forced or otherwise.
Which therefore fits the term altruistic, whether they intended for this or not, as other businesses have not replicated what Starbucks is doing.
With all these possibilities, alongside a potentially contrived ideal of a founder to actually subsidize public bathrooms for all, doesn't that mean it is useless to debate and just accept the reality at face value of "they are providing a service and its nice"
An example for background (incomplete list of stuff they do): https://www.zmescience.com/science/nestle-company-pollution-...
I think the world would be a better place if we judged people based on action rather than intention. Intention is complex and hard to determine.
I'm not a native English speaker and I am confused when I see this word used in political conversation a lot in a way which is not clearly related to the dictionary definition.
>the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
But /altruism/ is a word that sometimes sets people off.
This could just as easily be a single executive implementing a comprehensive policy without justification based on a personal hunch.
Nothing to do with empathy.
Though it is bemusing as a PR example as it is a case of allowing people to Pee or else they will go aRggghh. Public Relations will never sound the same from now on.
they were more than willing to put their own employees at risk and their customers to score political points while they can safely hide in their headquarters any never experience the issue first hand.
this is no different than government officials in city hall pontificating to the rest how the rest need to accept homeless and more all the while protected in buildings with metal detectors and guards and security patrols for most of the higher ups.
That they made a business decision. Corporations don't have empathy, and CEOs wouldn't be where they are if they did.
From the linked study:
> In May 2018, in response to protests, Starbucks changed its policies nationwide to allow anybody to sit in their stores and use the bathroom without making a purchase.
From April 2018: https://www.npr.org/2018/04/17/603093380/protests-continue-a...
> Protests continued Monday at a Philadelphia Starbucks where two black men were arrested Saturday after an employee accused them of trespassing.
> According to SafeGraph’s privacy policy: “We obtain information from trusted third-party data partners such as mobile application developers, through APIs and other delivery methods. The data collection and use is governed by the privacy policy and legal terms of the data collector and the website using the data; it is not governed by SafeGraph.”
All other data came from correlating that data with census data.
The actual BS that is going on is that this data is being collected by "numerous smartphone apps (e.g. local news, weather etc.)"
More reasons to not install apps unless necessary.
The reason is that my data might be anonymized and used to help make academic studies more accurate? I'm not losing sleep over that
I think where McDo wins is that it has more places running 24/7.
More to the point, most Starbucks in the world, other than kiosk ones in larger establishments, are corporate-owned. So Seattle's decision to open all Starbucks to unlimited loitering and bathroom usage affected all of them, leading to what people are discussing here.
Less than 10% of McDonald's are corporate-owned. Franchisees, whether owning one or a hundred stores, are much more focused on the bottom line and less willing to tolerate homeless people driving away paid customers.
Of course, the least busy hours are always my work hours.
> To avoid having your device’s mobile advertising identifiers (and location data associated with it) used for our services, [...] iOS mobile devices, Settings -> Privacy -> Advertising -> Limit Ad Tracking: On [...] For Android mobile devices: Google Settings -> Ads -> Opt Out of Interest-Based Ads or Ads Personalization
Google Settings -> Privacy -> Advanced -> Ads -> Opt out of Ads Personalization
So how much in the 7.3% decline of traffic is attributable to the bathroom policy change and how much to the racism issue?
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/28/coffee-shop-ra...
Could still be dysfunctional though.
My impression from "reading between the lines" was that the city was both "trying to be helpful" and trying hard not to be too helpful or too good which would encourage the homeless to converge here. If that really is the underlying policy I think it sucks.
The McDonalds near me sometimes has to call an ambulance due to an overdose or medical distress in the bathroom. If there was no access control, it would be less likely to notice someone not leaving the bathroom in a timely fashion. A bathroom OD isn't great for business, but a dead body is worse.
Customer-only restrictions are a dead end because want we people to wash their hands before buying/touching anything.
It's too bad they'd get a tax credit if they wrote a cheque to a charity, but nada for directly providing free bathrooms and cups of water to everyone everywhere.
To keeps costs down even further, build community facilities. Those who can afford it can pay some rent.
I don't see that as a complex issue. It's simply rational. And where it's been tried, it works.
People will disagree endlessly about questions like these.
Lacking a home is actually not the problem for the majority of the homeless.
It's addiction and mental illness and both are very hard to treat, especially those unwilling to be treated.
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle...
"The cure for a cough is cough drops"
I feel it is important to idenify the root cause, not merely treat symptoms. _Why_ is the person homeless? How could it have been prevented in the first place? _Why_ is the person coughing? Do they have allergies? lung cancer...?
Where it has been tried, it works. (Yeah, a few fall off the wagon. So then ... it's either 100% success or a failure? Limp excuse-making)
95% of those who talk about the 'real' problems have no idea. They've never even been close. I've seen all of the condemnations and hang-wringing about costs. 95% of them are simply shitty attempts to create FUD so people will do nothing ... from people who really don't give a damn.
Where it has been tried, it works. Prime examples: Helsinki, HousingFirst. But that would mean actually analyzing the problem. Emoting is so much easier.
Agreed, but what's the root cause of not having a home? Drugs? Rent? Family? Local government? Solve that one, and the effects cascade to prevent the "whole lot of stuff" you mentioned.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, etc.
Studies show that increases in rent correlate 96 percent to increases in homelessness. Build enough housing. Make it cheap enough and possible to live life without owning a car. If that reduces homelessness by 96 percent and the remaining four percent are hardcore, seriously screwed up junkies and crazies, we can throw extra resources at them because we spend more on average on trying to help the homeless than annual rent would cost.
Sometimes hospitals provide free housing to seriously ill homeless because it's a fraction of the cost of leaving them homeless and seeing them in the ER constantly and hospitalizing them regularly.
You want to see fewer homeless? The single best thing you can do is advocate for more housing in your city.
I'm more interested in why they don't have a home. Is it really because rent is too high as you mentioned? Why can't they move to cheaper housing or take on a roommate? How come they don't have a family to fall back on (parents, siblings, etc)?
These are the types of questions I want studied, not "how can we most effectively slap a bandaid on this symptom we are observing?"
> You want to see fewer homeless? The single best thing you can do is advocate for more housing in your city.
What I really want to see is fewer people getting into a position where they need to rely on the government to survive. How can we identify and address those root causes?
For every 100 families living in poverty on the West Coast, there are no more than 30 affordable homes
https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-pove...
The Clear Connection Between Housing Costs and Homelessness
https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-clear-c...
The Missing Middle
https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-missing...
I actually "majored" in this in college, so to speak. Before I spent nearly six years homeless, I wanted to be an urban planner. I was pursuing a bachelor's in Environmental Resource Management with a concentration in Housing intended to eventually also get a Masters in Urban Planning. As part of that program, I took a college class on Homelessness and Public Policy.
I feel like I repeat these exact same points ad nauseum on Hacker News.
Our housing policies have increasingly encouraged a very upper class version of single family detached homes designed for nuclear families and our demographics have diverged from that population. We literally don't build housing designed explicitly for the needs of single people, childless couples, etc and we have more such households than we used to have.
We now have this insane expectation that single people should rent housing designed for a nuclear family and fill the extra bedrooms with strangers to split the rent. Then we make movies, like Single White Female, about what a nightmare it is to have to live with total strangers to make your life work.
We've torn down more than a million SROs. We've largely zoned out of existence new Missing Middle Housing.
People can't rent what doesn't actually exist and affordable housing in a walkable neighborhood mostly doesn't exist in the US. We simply don't build it.
Then we run around acting like homeless people are all crazies and junkies, irresponsible, don't have self discipline, etc etc. and when you say "Just build more housing that works for people" you get crazy-making replies saying "But WHY?????"
Because it would fix the vast majority of this problem. That's why.
And then I feel like spitting nails because I don't know what I need to do to more effectively communicate about this thing that I've literally studied.
Sounds to me like a core part of the problem is the disintegration of the nuclear family. Maybe we need to go back and start promoting good old fashion nuclear families as the core unit of society.
The relatively high percentage of nuclear family homes post WW2 was a historical anomaly and it's simply not sustainable.
So, no, that's not actually a better solution than "Let's build the kind of smaller homes in walkable neighborhoods that used to be the norm before we stupidly zoned them out of existence."
Private actors however seems to want to build a house and then get paid and move on, either by building condos or have each resident buy a "share" in organization that is formed to "own" the building. The apartments are thus modeled after people who can afford that large initial investment, and the dictated portion that need to be rent based is sized similar and selected among those that didn't get initially sold for one reason or an other.
So from what I see the problem is not that urban planners focus on the nuclear family, but rather that no one want to build houses in order to regain the investment through slowly renting it out to many low income residents. Of course this just an observation, so it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on it.
Co-housing works in Europe to make mixed income developments. In the US, with no financing available, it can only be built be a group of well-heeled friends who may not have poor friends and may not think to design the space to include anyone but their circle of friends because they are looking for a certain social experience and failing to see there's more to co-housing than shared meals with friends.
Single family detached housing financing and tax breaks and so forth has got our housing situation in a strangle hold. This was born of the events that led to the creation of the modern suburbs and most people aren't even aware of the history.
Single family detached homes in the suburbs are a standard by which we measure all housing and everything else is automatically presumed to be second rate and less desirable.
We are being haunted by these mental models and the nation as a whole doesn't really recognize it. So we go "Let's fix this problem!" and then we do more of the same, only bigger! prettier! more expensive! And we find ourselves stumped that the problem still persists and won't go away.
A builder in the Atlanta area owned three large lots and asked to chop them up into five smaller lots so he could build something sane and his request was denied in the name of preserving neighborhood character because the existing homes have big yards. So rather than build five homes more in line with the neighborhood character, he built three McMansions in order to make the profit he wanted or needed.
And this is part for the course.
We have studies that show that the way to preserve rural character and farmland is to build dense housing on a small strip nearby and keep the farms. But Americans are very resistant to that. Instead, they insist on designating minimum lot sizes and the result is the destruction of farmland to replace it with suburbs with ridiculous, sprawling yards.
We've got studies. We've got data. We know some things that actually work.
We can't get people to approve it locally and make it happen. It's partly logistical obstacles in the form of policy and financing and partly some bizarre mental block where we idealize and worship suburban patterns of development in ways and to a degree that amounts to cutting out own throats.
And it makes me spit nails. I don't even know how to begin talking with people in some kind of effective manner, much less begin developing stuff.
Most of the smaller shops source their beans from local roasters, or even do the roasting themselves.
The frozen jugs of coffee-flavored whipped cream aren't the trend anymore because Starbucks isn't.
2008: $9.15/share
2019 peak: $99/share
now: $75/share
Given that they are mainly expanding abroad these days (where their brand is stronger and less likely to dilute), they might even go higher in the next decade.
Here, there are public parks, but often those bathrooms (and drinking fountains) are closed in the winter.
What about SecondMeasure and other credit card tools used for market share?
Two black men in Philadelphia were arrested in a Starbucks. They were waiting to meet a white guy and showed up first. One of them asked to use the bathroom and someone who worked at Starbucks called the cops.
The white person they were waiting to meet showed up as they were being handcuffed. This individual told the cops "I'm the person they are waiting for." and the arrest proceeded forward.
The two men sued the city of Philadelphia and Starbucks corporate office decided to announce that anyone can use their bathrooms.
These two black men were not homeless. They were just victims of racist bullshit and then Starbucks made a poor choice in the aftermath concerning how to handle this.
Instead of firing the racist employee and admitting this was racist bullshit and apologizing for racist bullshit, they made a nice sounding policy change of "Anyone can use our bathrooms."
I spent nearly six years homeless. I often went to Starbucks while homeless to buy coffee, plug in and use their wifi. I never spent excess time in the bathrooms or trashed the bathrooms.
Starbucks did no one any good by making this policy change. This does not really help homeless people and did not really address the actual issue that led to this policy: Straight up racism.
In fact, it swept the racism under the carpet and tried to pretend that wasn't really a problem. The whole thing stinks to high heaven and will probably never be genuinely addressed. Instead, Starbucks will end up being hurt, not learn a fucking thing and if they go out of business, people will whine about how it's a loss to the homeless community and say nothing about "Yeah, Starbucks and its racist bullshit basically deserved to die for not taking the bull by the horns and addressing the racism in this incident."
Related link to make it easier to find more info on the incident if you so desire:
“The police were called because these men hadn’t ordered anything. They were waiting for a friend to show up, who did as they were taken out in handcuffs for doing nothing. All the other white ppl are wondering why it’s never happened to us when we do the same thing.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/16/arrest-of-tw...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/05/02/a...