Comment by jsjohns2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jsjohns2 | Hacker News Reader

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> Edit to add: before someone mentions "mental illness" and "drugs" and other contributors to homelessness, yes those are real factors: that said, the lower the cost of housing, the easier it is for someone on the margin of being housed or being homeless to stay housed.

I live in Santa Monica, CA. The notion that mental illness and drugs are not the primary contributors to homelessness runs totally counter to common sense and my lived experience.

Today, on 4th & Pacific, there was a man passed out asleep on a the median in broad daylight. No tent. Just splayed out baking in the sun. Earlier this week, I saw a man stop by each trash can along the Venice boardwalk to dig through and pick out half-eaten fast food. Eyes rolled back. An emaciated old woman passed out in the sand in a fetal position. A man using a power drill on the air and muttering to himself.

These people are not on the margins. They are never bouncing back. Homes could be $0 and they would still be on the streets. And they are the rule not the exception.

Meth is dirt cheap, widely available in Los Angeles, and it induces psychosis. Isn't it obvious that's the issue?

And they are the rule not the exception.

Meth is dirt cheap, widely available in Los Angeles, and it induces psychosis. Isn't it obvious that's the issue?

As a long time volunteer and giver to drug rehab programs, I'm very sympathetic to this argument, but I still agree with OP.

People don't really like drugs. That kind of addiction is usually closely connected to something else in their life going wrong. If the only happiness you can find in your life is in a pill or a pipe, then that's where you will go until it destroys you.

This is where OP's "on the margins" argument comes back. If housing is more affordable, you'll have fewer miserable people and fewer people on drugs. If you transform public schools from prisons/daycares into institutions that actually feed and empower the curiosity of children, they'll have less a reason to buy drugs from each other. If you make it easier for people to start businesses and follow their dreams, they'll have a purpose that feeds them instead of a chemical.

You can't eliminate the drug problem this way, but it can be improved on the margins simply by giving more people an easier path to happiness.

But how does this solve the immediate problem of psychotic people roaming my neighborhood?

That's not an immediate problem. That's a long term problem.

What are you going to do? Incarcerate them for life? If you let them leave before they die they are bound to roam a neighborhood.

If this isn’t a problem in need of an immediate solution, then what is? Those people need help today, not if/when LA figures out how to fix fifty years of housing stock mismanagement. I would be surprised if the old woman in the sand is alive in five years.

And what about the vagrant trying to break into my apartment complex last week? The other one with a sharp object who got arrested in my neighbor’s backyard a couple of weeks ago? The young guy in my old neighborhood who was stabbed to death in his backyard by a different vagrant? The man passed out snoring right outside my girlfriend’s front doorstep?

Along this line of awareness is something I've been noticing more.. with housing costs what they are, many people are stuck in toxic (sometimes extremely abusive) living arrangements.

Which may lead one or more people in those living situations to reach for an escape via drugs/alcohol - which may lead the others living with that to suffer more..

Yet neither of the two (maybe more) can afford to escape the living situation, as most people can not afford to move to a new place alone - it seems many are stuck with having (often multiple ) roommates - which keeps the living in pain cycle going, with no way out.

breaking a lease or eviction or leaving and having someone else fail via owing money / damages / eviction can make it even harder to get a better living situation - even if the damages were not in control of the person, sometimes the first person doesn't even know what happened until they've spent time and money to apply to a new place and get rejected.

There are indeed many more social / cultural costs beyond what most people consider I agree.

With people needing to work 75 hours per week to pay for an average place - any with kids will have much of our future generations being raised by cats and tvs, no parents around to guide anything - so we're also creating a repeating social hell cycle in other ways too.

I always wonder about one of the greatest contradictions in economic liberalism.

Employers complain about lazy workers. Citizens complain about drug addicts. Poor people can't manage their finances.

The contradiction lies in the belief that all people act rationally but as soon as someone behaves in a way you do not agree with they are automatically assumed to act irrationally.

Lazy workers are irrational but nobody stops and wonders if there is a rational reason for them to be lazy.

Drug addicts are irrational but nobody stops and wonders if there is a rational reason for them to take drugs.

Poor people are irrational but nobody stops and wonders if there is a rational reason why they can't manage their finances.

Really, what has happened is that rationality has been redefined to be subjective success and irrationality the failure to achieve subjective success. In other words, we did a simple language trick to praise the winners for winning and blame the losers for losing.

I think the top comment on the article nails it perfectly. There is a bit of a bait-and-switch happening when we talk about homelessness.

The first thing one has to do is define homeless, which actually has many definitions. By number, most homeless are socially normal people staying with relatives and friends.

But that isn't what people imagine when we discuss homelessness.

> The first thing one has to do is define homeless, which actually has many definitions. By number, most homeless are socially normal people staying with relatives and friends.

Me and my 5 kids just came within a hair of being homeless. As in, we beat the long, long odds and scored the 1-rental-for-every-100-families-looking.

To clarify, families with cash in the bank are facing strong prospects for homelessness this year. Families without cash, with special needs, or many other common factors might as well buy tents now because there is nowhere for them to go.

Most folks without a home don't want to be seen. Hell, most folks with a home don't want to be seen most of the time (since most peoples' free time is probably spent in their home).

It makes perfect sense that the people in the absolute worst position (severe mental illness or disability or severe, hard drug addiction) are going to be some of the most visible but it doesn't make them a majority.

Well, where is this invisible majority hiding?

No RVs at all in Santa Monica, limited parking in general, close to zero tents, a limited number of parks, and no forests. The city proper is filled with tent encampments but is otherwise not that much different.

I’m not sure what you are getting at? Being in a tent doesn’t mean someone is mentally ill or using hard drugs.

> I’m not sure what you are getting at?

There is one general characterization of a homeless person who has severe mental illness or is in the throes of addiction. There is another of a person who is simply down on his luck. He sleeps in his car on a side street at night, showers at the local YMCA, and takes the bus to his minimum wage job. If housing was cheaper, or if government assistance better, then he could afford a small apartment.

I agree that the latter exist and I think you would agree that the former exists. The data suggests that the majority of the population falls into the latter camp.

What I'm getting at is -- we should treat the data with more skepticism. It doesn't match what I see with my own eyes. Something is off. Either my eyes are grossly deceiving me or it's just wrong. Yes, I'm more likely to overestimate the number in the former camp than underestimate -- but it's just overwhelming. The ratio seems like it's 100:1 not 7:3 or something. They can't be that good at blending into society.

> Being in a tent doesn’t mean someone is mentally ill or using hard drugs.

My intuition is that there is a very tight correlation between the two. It seems almost tautological to me that someone who chooses* to live in filth in a tent on a median or under an overpass is mentally ill. Maybe I'm wrong.

* "Chooses", not in the sense that they should pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get a job, but in the sense that -- why don't they put up their tent in a cleaner less densely populated part of town and take a free bus ride into town?

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