Ask HN: Thoughts on how we can alleviate homelessness? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Thoughts on how we can alleviate homelessness?

16 pointsmikeg818 comments

I've lived in the Bay area most of my (32 yo) life and in the past 7-10 years, the level of homelessness seems to be spinning out of control. If you've driven on 580 through Berkeley or parts of Oakland, you have seen encampments and trash piles that would seem unfathomable for the "5th largest economy in the world". It isn't normal.

What strategies/initiatives should be considered outside of the traditional methods (shelters, methadone clinics, street teams sharing helpful resources etc) that may be able to help with this is increasingly prominent issue??

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There's two sides to homelessness:

1. the health crises of addiction and mental illness

2. the economic crises of wealth inequality and housing costs.

These both create "chronically" homeless people, but they're distinct enough in their situations (the former are outcasts of society, the latter are functioning and mostly employed but "down on their luck").

The first thing we need to do is educate other Californians on the differences, because the solutions are going to look different. The former is going to essentially require permanent supportive housing units and something that looks more like the old asylum system than most of us are comfortable with right now, while the latter is going to require dismantling environmental and other local ordinances that inhibit new construction, while abolishing rent control and prop 13 to return housing stock to the market and create sustainable vacancy rates alongside new construction.

The bigger political issue for the bay area is that between the five counties, state, and god knows how many municipal governments any kind of meaningful change requires collectivism across the entire region. Basically we're all in this together, it affects all of us pretty equally, and yet any kind of change that would do something is impossible when it creates a legal fight.

I definitely like that you threw "collectivism" in there. I keep saying every day that we're all too divided. A little unity could go a very long way.

You can't. No one has at scale.

But incentives matter. The homeless congregate in certain areas (and not others) for a reason.

By force. There are a lot of people who can't take care of themselves - children. We restrict their freedoms seriously, mostly don't allow them to hurt themselves. If they don't take their shit together in a given period of time you just contain them.

I think Sewden or Norway gives homeless people an address and apartment (with stipulations). This gives them an address to use when applying for a job. Otherwise, the lack of an address can be a barrier to employment.

Criminal justice reform could also be a good idea. Many places will reject a job application for a stupid mistake that someone made years ago, even if it has no bearing on the type of work they are in.

The US copied that approach (it's used in several countries now) with immense success. [1] We call it the Housing First program. The concept is very simple: give them housing, and then work on everything else. It dropped the overall US homelessness rate by 17% against the backdrop of the great recession [2], while unemployment more than doubled. An outcome like that had never happened before in US history (not even remotely close in fact). It may also cost a lot less than operating shelters by comparison, based on some studies.

San Francisco has intentionally avoided this wonderful, easy solution because the city is filled full of fake liberals and progressives.

[1] "In August 2007, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development reported that the number of chronically homeless individuals living on the streets or in shelters dropped by an unprecedented 30 percent, from 175,914 people in 2005 to 123,833 in 2007. This was credited in part to the "housing first" approach; Congress in 1999 directed that HUD spend 30% of its funding on the method."

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

https://endhomelessness.org/resource/housing-first/

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/the-ast...

> It dropped the overall US homelessness rate by 17% against the backdrop of the great recession [2]

It's practically tautological that if you give homeless people homes, then the number of homeless people decreases ( unless there was a time limit on the house and the measurement was done long-term).

I think the article I read a few years ago was mostly using employment as a sign of success instead of just the decrease in homelessness.

My impression of the Housing First movement is that they believe that housing more people is in itself a good thing and people without housing is a bad thing.

I would probably agree to some degree.

So you could say of course homelessness decreases if you give homes, but that's like saying of course feeding hungry people decreases if you give them food.

The question of effectiveness, at least from the housing first perspective, here is whether or not this can be done in a practical manner and whether this has bad side effects.

This does make it a little harder to rely on data from housing first advocates if you do not share their assumption.

That being said my impression is there is some data that suggests better outcomes in terms of decreased drug usage and better employment, although I think there are some people who dispute this.

So I think there's a settled consensus that giving people houses can be done in a practical way, the extent of the benefits outside of housing is less settled, although on-average positive.

I'm not an expert though.

Not all homeless people are capable of keeping homes. I know a couple, their demons torment them too much to simply function as a neighbor.

I wouldn’t believe it myself if I wouldn’t have seen it. The worst bunch of them are the homeless that don’t want to be helped, yet keep causing trouble with their undiagnosed psychological afflictions.

Give them homes and access to medical care. The only thing stopping us is the belief that they have to “earn it” first.

Long term, rent free and safe housing too.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23303541

EDIT: Sorry for wall of text

I'd like to share my thoughts that came from experiencing homelessness myself for around a year. I'd like to split types of homeless people into groups but it's hard to do. Everyone has their own story, their own complications. Some things are similar, like being down on your luck or having addiction issues, but it really depends. Several homeless people that I knew back then are still homeless. Others come into and out of it on and off throughout their lives. Some people only experience it once. I'm really not sure of any exact numbers. I think there's projects out there that tackle that. Some shelters more than likely have that kind of data.

I think tackling the issue for real would require a pretty intense system change. Things we can do in the meantime are pretty much what you're calling traditional methods. The problem is that not everyone is taking each method seriously and not every method gets the amount of attention it needs.

At the end of the day, some people are unable to work or have a normal lifestyle. It might be because they can't hold a job because of their addiction, or can't because of other mental problems. In cases like this, we have to be able to determine who is who (because of limited resources I would imagine) and get those people the support they need to survive. Psychological, physical, etc...

One thing to realize is you probably won't ever be able to get all of those people on the streets to live a life that you consider normal. Some people are stuck in abnormal situations. Instead of trying to change that, we could instead come to terms with it in society, recognize that it's not really as bad as people think, get rid of the subjective norms that we have in our heads and create systems that take care of these people.

I'll give you an example. There's an organization in Des Moines called the Catholic Workers of DSM. They have a couple different houses each serving its own specific purpose. The volunteers there live an almost monk-like lifestyle. They gave up their possessions and basically get only what they need to survive. Sometimes the volunteers were actually once homeless people that eventually joined. They give away meals and clothes every day. They also do other sorts of work in the community. Instead of having the goal to get everyone a normal job and get everyone off the streets, we can set up a system that makes it safer, cleaner and healthier in general to live this lifestyle. That means some sort of housing, even if its extremely minimal, meals, fair treatment from the cops (in a lot of places cops can arrest you for being homeless and blame a variety of different laws), etc...

What I like about the Catholic Workers is they involve the people they help with their work. It's built for and by people in the struggle. It's maintained by the very people they help. In a sense, although they're not making a wage doing that work specifically, they have a job which is fulfilling and healthy.

Working with the homeless can be extremely challenging. You never know how stable someone is or how ready they are to do harm to get what they need to survive. I'm not trying to make homeless people look bad, but I'm telling you that while you're used to getting food out of the fridge when you need it, some people have been without food or sleep for a few days and their primal instincts are kicking in, so to speak. The reason why the Catholic Workers does so well is because they're in the struggle just like the people they're helping. They're familiar with their community, they know its people and they know what it's like.

The last thing I'll say is that just because you're not ending homelessness for everyone in one days of work, doesn't mean you're not making a tremendous impact in someones life by getting out there involved with the street teams and in other traditional methods. When I was in Memphis, I had a realization as I went to a nearby park to get food from a local church group that hands out meals regularly...Those people have been giving food for years. Sometimes no one even says thank you. They just get their meal and walk away. But the church group keeps coming out there and keeps working at it. If you really want to help people, at some point you have to realize that you can't do it all alone and you can't solve it in one swift blow. Anything and everything you do that is helpful makes an impact. Lifelong impact takes lifelong commitment.

You should get involved with a local organization, or several, learn what they do, learn the challenges they face daily and then ask them what they think the long term solutions are. You could learn a lot!

I'll go ahead and give a few ideas though of things we could start.

1. Build apartment style tiny houses which can be booked for a month at a time, for free, by people who are homeless. This would be basically like a tent-city except it's organized and maintained making it cleaner, safer, and healthier in general. We'd need quite a bit of funding to get this going anywhere. Would love to discuss ideas on how to get this implemented somewhere. Once the people have a safe place to live, we can focus on other things. That's first and foremost. You can't expect someone living under a bridge to be ready for employment. If we can't utilize motels/apartments that already exist, then we just have to build it from scratch. There's also the option of buying extremely cheap housing/property in poor neighborhoods and converting it to what we need. Check out the Catholic Workers for example.

2. Reach out to fast food chains in your area and ask them if they could sponsor free food giveaways. The more official/legitimate you can appear, the more likely this can happen. This method is interesting because it doesn't require you to have an official space or kitchen. If you do like cooking, Food not Bombs has tons of material on how to get the materials you need to make a TON of meals, for free or cheap. These methods could be used to provide meals to people living in the room-city explained above.

3. Contact universities and organizations in your area to find people willing to donate their time for free for things like therapy, counseling (mental well-being, job search, fighting addiction, etc). Tell them they can stick it on a resume (which they can). Then set up a scheduling system to where people can get sessions with these professionals. Honestly one person could in their spare time start a project like this and have GREAT impact. You just need a few hours a week to facilitate things.

4. Build a big network of people that work in the trades but also in low-skill occupations. If you have this network, then you could utilize it to help people find jobs.

Those are a few of my own ideas. I hope that helps.

Or send them to Europe as English teachers. They'll have a pretty decent life and have access to medical services.

Get them into the workforce.

We should legitimize urban camping, turning the odd grassy medians around our cities into safe and legitimate "micro campgrounds", each with density-adjusted designated camp sites, regular trash pickup, bathroom facilities, etc. Require urban campers to register for a camp site at very low or no cost. Require campers to follow standard rules regarding camp site cleanliness, noise levels, etc.

Then we should find all the empty homes in the area and start moving homeless people into them. Maybe charge an obscene tax on livable units that remain vacant so rents can fall. If we run out of homes and still have a problem we should build more homes near the homeless people and encourage them to move in. I think after this we will see very few full-time urban campers.

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