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Comment by 999900000999 | Hacker News Reader

The city has been too far gone for 20 years.

You have some of most inept local politicians you can imagine, who are more focused on taking glamor shots in front of half a million dollar per unit homeless shelters.

If it's really costing half a million dollars to house a single homeless family, why not just give them $5,000 to move?

Even for someone like myself, and I do consider myself to be somewhat upper middle class, LA is a bad deal. Deal. The bare minimum to afford a place to live plus transportation ends up being around 3,200 per month. That's about $2400 for a 1 bdrm + 800$ for a car payment / insurance/ gas.

Compared to Chicago where a 1bdrm in a fantastic metro accessible area can be had for 1300$ or so. 100$ metro pass gets you around.

LA and much of California is past saving, get out while you still can.

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> If it's really costing half a million dollars to house a single homeless family, why not just give them $5,000 to move?

I'm sure they would if they could, but with all the greyhound buses full of people going to LA from places like Texan prisons, how do you prevent them from coming back? Also, I don't think $5k provides as much influence these days as you think it does, even to someone who is homeless.

> LA and much of California is past saving, get out while you still can.

Yes, LA has too many people with more coming, housing prices are too high, and again growing. Chicago is losing people, so it is much easier to live there.

This. Texas once openly bragged about how they've solved their homeless problem by simply buying their homeless a bus fare to L.A. (See Gov Rick Perry bragging about this during one of the GOP presidential candidate debates.) While they don't openly brag anymore, this is still their primary policy for dealing with the homeless...

We know this because while writing a series of LA Times articles a few years ago on the homeless situation in Hollywood, George Lopez (the reporter, not the comedian) discovered that most of the homeless people he was interviewing weren't even L.A. locals. The overwhelming majority of the homeless came from the Midwest (mostly: Texas), because someone bought them a ticket and told them the weather here was great.

And the bigger problem: when offered shelter, most homeless refuse because almost all shelters in L.A. are sober facilities that do not allow contraband (i.e., booze or drug paraphenelia) and they would rather keep their drugs/alcohol than have housing. This is why L.A. is attempting to introduce new rules that would prohibit individuals from camping in public areas if there is shelter space available and they refuse shelter.

> they've solved their homeless problem by simply buying their homeless a bus fare to L.A.

They don't even have to do that. If you get released from prison without family to pick you up, they give you an open bus ticket to go wherever. And...they really don't have many choices if they want to survive without support.

5k is more than enough to get established in a more reasonable state.

I'd say offer families a one time lump sum if they want to relocate. After that forbid them from ever receiving another dime in assistance. While you'll have some who try to take the money and come back anyway, I imagine many would find better places to live.

California is losing people

https://ktla.com/news/california/california-sees-its-populat...

> I'd say offer families a one time lump sum if they want to relocate.

You say families, but these already get the most help from the system via welfare and other programs. The real problem are the single homeless people who have addiction or mental illness problems. And they are incredibly mobile, they'll take your $5k, buy a bunch of drugs, and be back next week. And your solution to cut off the funding spigot...well, why not just do that already? I think it is a great idea, the fact that homeless people flock to cities with the best services and benefits means that the problem can never hoped to be solved at the local level anyways.

> California is losing people

Yes, finally. When you look at the population graph for the last 80 years (starting of which California and Texas had about the same amount of people), you'd think the boom had to end sometime. It is time for the other slacker states like Texas take some people.

But my guess is that the LA area and Bay area will start growing again once the pandemic subsides. People simply have no sense, the "its too crowded so no one goes there anymore" contradiction will never go away (since...if it really does become less crowded, more people will decide to fill the empty space).

I'm optimistic more people will look at moving to places where they can afford to pay rent.

The average income in LA is only around $70,000 for a household, but the rent keeps skyrocketing every single year. Back when I was a bit younger could still find an apartment in LA for $600, try doing that now.

I very much miss the working class city of my youth. It was such a fun, funky place.

While you do have tons of homeless people who have no interest in changing their situation, many are just stuck. Help people who want to relocate relocate. I'm extremely fortunate in that I make enough money where I can just up and move to practically anywhere in the United States. But if you're working class, this is near impossible.

It wouldn't be a bad thing if people fled LA en mass for the next 20 years or so while housing catches up. Then in 2040 the city might have a middle class again.

> Back when I was a bit younger could still find an apartment in LA for $600, try doing that now.

What cities in the USA could you still find an apartment for $600? Inflation has long blown past those prices. According to:

https://www.rent.com/research/cheapest-rent-in-the-us/

The only city that comes close to $600 is Fargo ND.

> While you do have tons of homeless people who have no interest in changing their situation, many are just stuck.

Those are the easiest homeless cases to solve and I'm not convinced that they aren't being solved already (by public services and/or charities).

> I'm extremely fortunate in that I make enough money where I can just up and move to practically anywhere in the United States.

People are extremely mobile when they don't have roots (either an owned house or job or family or a kid in school that they like). It actually is pretty easy to just pick up and move. And that's what has happened throughout history (including the original Okies that moved to California during the great depression).

> It wouldn't be a bad thing if people fled LA en mass for the next 20 years or so while housing catches up. Then in 2040 the city might have a middle class again.

I agree, but the law of supply and demand probably means that will never happen. If people fled LA, there is enough demand from people wanting to live there that other people would move in and keep things about the same as they are now. As long the wish is "I hope LA becomes less popular so I can move there", it is simply never going to happen.

Yeah, it is too expensive. Nobody goes there anymore

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