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Comment by mullingitover | Hacker News Reader

This is simply false. For example in Los Angeles[1]:

> There are currently 435 sites countywide with 11,499 beds available.

Meanwhile there are 48,041 unsheltered homeless people in LA county at last count[2].

With that being said, some people do not want to use shelters, and because the shelter beds are wildly outnumbered by the homeless population the government is not allowed to penalize anyone for camping on the street. Only when the government has provided adequate shelter for everyone can any ordinances against street camping be enforced, per the Supreme Court ruling in Martin v. Boise.

[1] https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/400d7b75f18747c4ae1ad22...

[2] http://www.laalmanac.com/social/so14.php

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Comparing the number of available beds with the number of unsheltered homeless people does not disprove parent's argument that there is a bed for everyone who wants a bed.

A better question would be -- what the average shelter utilization?

> Comparing the number of available beds with the number of unsheltered homeless people does not disprove parent's argument that there is a bed for everyone who wants a bed.

It does, because the claim was not that there's a bed for everyone who wants one. The claim was exactly this:

> There are shelters for every homeless person already. The homeless prefer the street.

Which is a plainly incorrect statement, if for no other reason than the fact that 'the homeless' aren't a monolithic group with the identical goals.

> 'the homeless' aren't a monolithic group with the identical goals.

I didn't say that they were a monolithic group. I said the homeless prefer the street. Considering there is space for them in shelters this is obviously true. Obviously there are many reasons why they prefer the street, but they are monolithic in their choice to not utilize the shelters.

> I didn't say that they were a monolithic group. I said the homeless prefer the street.

If you're not making any distinctions within the population you're just spouting meaningless statements. You can also say 'the homeless prefer permanent housing,' or 'the homeless have never used drugs in their life' and it's equally true, because it's true in some cases.

> Obviously there are many reasons why they prefer the street, but they are monolithic in their choice to not utilize the shelters.

Considering the fact that there are in fact homeless people in shelters, saying they're 'monolithic' in their choice not to utilize shelters is incorrect on its face.

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