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Comment by darth_avocado | Hacker News Reader

I think the main takeaway here is government, as usual, thinking short term and spending more money on bandaid solutions.

Yes, the $2600 gets you services, meals, sanitation and staffing. But in reality, you can get a decent 1BR apartment for $1500 that is waaay bigger than a tent, sanitation for free since it is an apartment, and have almost $1000 for groceries left over. And, you can fit more people in the apartment than a 12x12 tent. I know that this calculation is an over simplification of costs, but it still gives you a decent perspective on what can be done with that kind of money.

And I disagree this will save money long term or elsewhere. When you don't address the root cause and spend money wisely, you only leave room for more spending in the future.

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You're misunderstanding the fundamental function of modern government. That $2600 goes to a contractor (political crony, friend, or relative) who then mostly pockets the money through salaries, sub-contracts, and such. This is the purpose of the spending and there was never an intent to help anyone in the first place.

Man it's so sad that you are right

And likely they are only spending it because of a court order.

This is completely baseless.

Agreed. It's unsubstantiated, cynical and I think meant to provoke a reaction and say something about the poster (it does). Downvote and move on.

get enough people to vote and you can change it in your area. simple as that

A jobs program, for those who know the right politician.

As a landlord, I would definitely not rent to this program though. I mean, would you?

But yes looking at this, the program cost is indeed insanely high

Which is why the money going to this program would be far better spent going towards the building of public housing. Tax payers get real estate assets, homeless people get homes.

why wouldn't you rent to it?

Way too risky. It would have to be significantly above market rate before I would consider it. Risk of damage to the property.

so you're saying you wouldn't rent to someone purely because they were homeless? w/ attitudes like this it's not surprising there's so many people living on the street

The government is not thinking short term. They are turning that mostly useless parking lot into affordable apartments.

Apartments? I thought tents are classified as single family homes.

It reminds me of the programs that some cities have to buy bus tickets for homeless people to send them to other cities/states just to get rid of them.

Or you could make vagrancy a crime and deter people from thinking that behavior is okay. Sure somewhat cruel, but so is making average citizens feel unsafe because there are thousands of people with nothing left to lose hounding them.

Some unaccounted things:

1) You have to pay extra to get a landlord to agree to the risk of housing a homeless person with likely no way to pay rent if the government program ends who also is more likely to have drug problems / mental health issues. This person may also be more likely to harass other tenants. Even if you don't believe this to be true, many landlords will and they won't agree to rent to such people without a substantial extra charge.

2) Cost in potential missed rent from neighboring tenants. If a landlord agrees to this program and other tenants move out due to the behavior of the homeless tenant, then that lost cost is also a problem.

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