How to Solve the Homeless Problem, Once and for All
michaelshellenberger.substack.com
michaelshellenberger.substack.com
It does so in spite of opening with this:
California saw its homeless population rise by 31 percent even as the number of homeless declined 18 percent in the rest of the United States between 2010 and 2020.
We know that homeless people travel, that some organizations have a policy of solving their local homeless problem by passing out bus tickets and that some states have actively sought to dump their homeless on California.
California has a lot of problems, like terrible housing policies, that contribute to the problem. But I believe California has become the dumping ground for America's homeless and it's problematic to act like California's numbers have gone up because California is behaving badly rather than acknowledge that California's numbers have gone up precisely because homelessness is down elsewhere: California is where some of those people ended up.
And California has unsheltered homeless because the temperate, dry weather in large parts of the state make it tolerable to sleep outside most of the time and it's a better option than the shelter system for a long list of reasons, from the concentration of poverty to exposure to disease to the prison-like conditions.
I think this article is garbage. It contradicts everything I understand about the topic.
I spent nearly six years homeless. I've had a college class on the topic. I still write about it.
I think I'm more informed than average about such things.
https://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/
https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/
You might also be interested in this research piece written about me by a college student who interviewed me:
No way to take a shower. No way to be presentable for a job interview. No way to have clean clothes. No way to be reachable. No way to take bathroom breaks.
Basically, no way to reintegrate back into society because there is no real safety net.
I really, really hate this aspect of the United States.
The US is great if you're rich, but it throws everyone else under the bus.
> In addition to the enduring impact of systemic racism, an inadequate housing supply, and income inequality drive inflows to homelessness. Homelessness starts rising when median rents in a region exceed 22% of median income and rises even more sharply at 32%; in Los Angeles, the median rent is 46.7% or nearly half of median income.
Beyond the above, about 22% of our homeless population in CA came from outside the state (see the full presentation). If you actually want to tackle homelessness in CA, the solutions have been known for years, we just don't have the collective willpower to do any of them. 1) make other states actually deal with their own homeless problems instead of just exporting them to CA, 2) fix the absolute insanity of the housing market, 3) implement an actual social safety net so that people losing their job or priced out of their homes don't immediately land on the street. THEN we can talk about things like drug abuse, mental health management, etc.
[1] https://www.lahsa.org/news?article=726-2020-greater-los-ange...
We have torn down a million SROs and largely zoned out of existence the ability to create a lot of standard historical housing forms, currently known in some circles as Missing Middle Housing. And then we act like we just cannot understand why people are sleeping in the streets. It's such a mystery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy
There are other factors, but I desperately wish we would remedy the known dearth of affordable housing stock across the country.
Another opinion piece at https://eu.lcsun-news.com/story/opinion/2019/05/20/film-subs... quoting:
"film credit changes are estimated to cost $500 million to the general fund over the next five years (in addition to the $250 million that would have been paid out under the existing cap). Also, they note that the revised film program is “likely the most significant state investment ever in a single industry … despite evidence of about a 40 percent return on the dollar.”"
The data quite resoundingly shows that the “tired argument” that many homeless people have addiction and mental health issues is correct. Nobody is claiming that ALL homeless people have these issues, but acting like it’s not a significant driver because some homeless people are simply down are their luck is not productive.
about 22% of our homeless population in CA came from outside the state
I'm confused. On your blog which you linked below, you wrote (in 2017) [0]:
>Most people who are on the street have intractable personal problems, such as health issues, mental health issues or addiction. These difficult or impossible to resolve issues are always a major contributing factor to the fact that their lives have come unraveled.
Doesn't that point to the same root causes and solutions expressed in the link? It's true that other states ship their homeless to California, but unless California just ships them back, then the solutions proposed in the link seem reasonable:
>The way every other developed nation solves homelessness is through assertive case management, mandatory psychiatric care and drug treatment, and sufficient facilities of different kinds for different populations, from psychiatric hospitals to homeless shelters to permanent supportive housing.
[0] https://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/2017/10/c...
Addiction and mental health issues tend to grow out of other problems. There are plenty of addicts with well paid jobs.
It's common knowledge that rock stars are often heavy drug users. No one concludes that this must mean that the way to become a rock star is to snort cocaine all the live long day because, obviously, that's the source of their creativity.
But when a homeless person has an addiction, we blame their lack of housing on the addiction and we feel they first need to get clean before they deserve housing and a decent life.
It is unfortunately true that it is easiest to reach an audience if you meet them halfway on some of their assumptions. It's hard enough to get anyone to listen to anything useful and constructive even with that approach.
I've been writing about such subjects for years and I think it is reasonable to say I'm a Subject Matter Expert. I have very little traction. People mostly prefer to hear the same rehashed nonsense from larger news sources rather than promoting someone like me.
So I may never get much traction and that means I have little choice but to use some of the same language that is commonly used while wholly disagreeing with the way other people frame the problem overall.
But we don't want to give the homeless any credit for solving their problems in our awful system. We want to give credit to other people for kindly offering more beatings until morale improves.
The assumption people tend to make us that you have to force homeless people to solve their problems and only wiser, morally better (wealthier) people are qualified to decide for them.
Some people sometimes need a wake up call. A lot of people want their problems solved and need opportunity, something people mostly do not wish to give to homeless individuals, which becomes a head trip of a trap.
From what I can see the author is a self described "climate scientist" (with no academic credentials) who is very popular in right wing circles. You can probably guess what his views on the issue are - https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-stories-michael-shel....
Substack is very quickly becoming the new Medium.
Should we also demand that they seek treatment before housing them?
[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/homeless-population-there-are-m...
Given that psychiatric problems are subjective how do you keep shrinks from writing a prescription for a bigger paycheck when evaluating minors you are coercing.
Note: I have been homeless. I prefer a little more practical solution, which is unpopular with many people...as almost any solution will be.
If a person is arrested for breaking a statute (municipalities usually have ordinances against camping in areas), without a residence in the county, move them to a staging area for identification and program entry (assign a sponsor). If they repeat offend without having participated in a program via the sponsor (or have violated out), move them to a minimal camp in an unincorporated part of the state. Filtering those who want to contribute versus those who are opting out, benefits those who try versus those who are not going to recover. I feel for the homeless people with master's degrees from various disciplines (see Youtube), but urban areas breed urban problems like illicit drug distribution, disease, sexual violations, open fires, burglary, etc. We know this historically. Why we continue to allow people to concentrate where they have the most opportunity to predate on the public and each other while simultaneously being enabled in self-destructive behavior is beyond me.
So what you have a scavengers* that have opportunity to predate on the public and each other along with a trickle of aggregate wealth from access to panhandling and such. Human need to sleep is an incidental trigger for identifying those in need. After it's clear an actor cannot be supported (or doesn't want to be helped), there's no humanitarian way forward that's better than another. Err on the side of society without additional harm to the actor. They are never "charged" nor are they supported beyond what services are available.
*My particularly favorite thing was grazing at a grocery store in the morning when they are restocking and packages are open/damaged. Grab a fruit, eat a fruit walking through the store, grab a water and chug it, grab a granola or 2 or 3 or whatever you can get away with because who cares if you jack a couple waters? Dispose of cores/bottles/cans in a backroom box or behind a box or whatever. Move around a lot. Most city police let you go or city you for petty theft, but they tend to talk to each other and remember you.
The biggest problem from a large homeless population is trespassing and litter to those around them. The act of not having a permanent residence is hardly criminal. I would have to lookup it up again but pretty sure there is a supreme court case from around the great depression era that says its unconstitutional to criminalize not having a residence.
Its the other things some homeless do that is the problem, and honestly a lot them need help and a lot don't have friends or family to help them.
Its one thing to criminlize littering or sleeping/tresspassing on other peoples property. Its a whole an other thing to criminalize the act of not having a permanent residence.
In Belarus, it works this way: if someone is caught in the street in a distressed state or suspected to be a homeless, he's brought into a sorting station (приемник-распределитель), where he is checked.
If he can produce papers showing where he lives, get in contact with relatives and it appears obvious that it was an accident (someone partied too much and got "lost"), he's released, although his employer is notified.
If not, they check if he's an alcoholic or a drug-addict, he's placed into a prison-style rehab. Escape from it is difficult and it is punishable with an actual prison. After rehab, they are given a dorm bed and a job, and a social worker tracks to make sure they stick with it.
If he's mentally disturbed, a commission examines him and puts him into a prison-like mental institution, with similar consequences.
If he already been in any of the above and it didn't help, they try again, but after ~3 tries, he goes to prison.
It works. There are no bums in Belarus. Streets are safe.
And yes, technically there is no way to legally become homeless in Belarus. You parents can't check you out when you grow up unless you buy a place of your own and can transfer your permanent registration there - there is no way to not have a permanent registration, citizen registration office just won't accept an application to "check out my 25 year old son coz it's time for him to live on his own" if he doesn't have that new place to check in to. There are some cracks in that system so a very very small fraction of people (<1%) end up without registration, but it is technically illegal (although no one will bother before they find you in the street drunk), and must be in theory impossible. And yes, registration is separate from ownership. You can sell your apartment with people still registered there and they retain that registration and a right to live there (ofc when you file papers to buy an apartment, there's a way to check if there are any people still registered, so no one in their sane mind would buy a place with anyone still registered).
So here's a fix: make it legally impossible to not have a place of your own, and make it illegal not to.
https://nlihc.org/resource/supreme-court-upholds-ruling-home...
However, later cases like:
Robinson v. California
Powell v. Texas
Threw out that laws that criminalize a status of someone, so a lot laws regarding status in lower courts where ruled unconstutional.
However, yea things like sleeping have been in a legal limbo for quite some time. Since it is an action, but people need sleep to live. So seems like that case settles that question since criminalizing a necessity for life is kinda ridiculous.
Homelessness is a kind of criminal behavior and/or mental condition. People are homeless not because they are poor (nearly everyone in Belarus is poor for that matter, but there are almost no homeless), it is a delinquency, anti-social behaviour, a voluntary choice to live an anti-social lifestyle rejecting norms. It has to be deterred, and it's not hard to deter: bums hate prisons, because their lifestyle is all about absolute rejection of any norms and rules at all, absolute, limitless freedom - and prison is the opposite of that, it makes you follow very strict rules - so even as it gives a free bed and free food, bums are afraid of getting there.
So, basically kick people while they're down until they're so bloodied and broken that they spring up and go get a job?
At that point do you start living in fear of being caught while you try to get your life on track?
When you finally get caught and go to the homeless concentration camp if they find marijuana in your pee are you now stuck with paying for drug treatment for your imaginary addiction.
Maybe we can force homeless to do labor to earn their keep without paying them beyond room and board. Then we can partner with local business who can acquire cheap labor while teaching homeless valuable skills!
I'm sure it won't turn into permeant disease ridden hellholes of exploitation that effectively transfer the people's wealth to whomever runs or owns the gaol.
When your plan starts with if only we could do away with thpse inconvenient constitutional rights and build a wall to keep out those pesky ACLU lawyers it might be a good indicator that you are starting off on the wrong foot and may want to take the time to rethink your strategy.
I see a commentator below putting the onus of justifying said humanity, ne humane discourse, upon the backs of those who object to such obviously wanton cruelty. Au contraire, mon frere.
The fact that human beings are the subject of this article appears lost in the mix.
Crimes against humanity should not pose as rationalist technocratism.
Solve the "xyx problem" when xyz is a large swath of humanity resigned to grist for a cruel mill. At least pretend to care about your fellow humans.
WTF
Many of us have been there. It's obvious when someone really hasn't, yet feels they can contribute authoritative answers.
For the naysayer passers by: My spouse and I have direct, and on her part, professional experience. Working with people right now.
I do believe the author means well. It's not about that.
To start, it would be good to have a rational discussion about how people end up homeless. Then there is what it really takes for many to get out. It's a lot more than you think. Was, and to some degree, still is more than I think, just to be fair.
Had the title been, "How to fix the homeless problem" I may well have not commented myself, but "Once and for All?"
It's like saying they aren't an expert, and that's apparent from the content of the piece we are all reading.
Eg: Why did people take drugs? Why are people not working?
Nobody is barred from solutions. I do not think very much of this one proposed. It's very much a what and how proposal, and it almost completely ignores WHY.
In fact, the single most important thing we can do is educate people on this matter. It's complicated, and I made an edit above to clarify this fact.
And to be perfectly fair, many of our leaders have no damn clue.