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Absolutely. I have personal experience with having a family member who was homeless due to mental health issues. Unfortunately, housing was not the solution for them nor was it the right solution. They were homeless for a couple of years before volunteering to be committed. Due to their illness, it was not safe to house them with family or around others who are on the road to recovery.

The system is slow and challenging to navigate and eventually (after several years) my mother was able to navigate the system to become a court appointed guardian.

On the other side, I have also been in government appointed committees that set housing policy and have had to listen to many “experts” explain that housing is the solution for homelessness and their suggestions is usually along the lines of “relax the codes and permitting process so builders can build more homes”. Needless to say, I’m somewhat sceptical of this argument but that is probably mostly due to my own bias.

Imho, I think our tax money should be going to social services and universal healthcare.

>On the other side, I have also been in government appointed committees that set housing policy and have had to listen to many “experts” explain that housing is the solution for homelessness and their suggestions is usually along the lines of “relax the codes and permitting process so builders can build more homes”.

This an artefact of lobbying by the building industry who can absolutely rake in profits building luxury housing but are restricted in terms of where they can do it.

It will absolutely nothing for the supply of affordable housing unless luxury housing is taxed to death and building affordable housing is engineered to be profitable, but they'll fight that tooth and nail. Nobody exchanges 16% profit margins for 4% willingly.

It might even make things worse if the stripped regulations are about mandating % of affordable homes in new developments (which theyd fucking LOVE) and it will probably ensure quality goes down the tubes.

Only public housing will actually solve the supply issue. Singapore is the best model here.

I agree. From my experience, a city does not have the budget for public housing, the free market doesn’t value it, and raising property taxes to pay for it is usually contentious.

So that leaves federal funding. Might as well use my taxes to provide funding for public housing projects.

That's largely by design. The campaign to end public housing has been going on for decades on multiple fronts.

It's not an exaggeration or even unfair to say that sociopathic wealthy lobbyists (like, e.g. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Foundation) are both causes of the current homeless crisis and seeking to exacerbate it.

Luxury apartments rarely stay that way long term. It’s a similar model as cars where used ends up moving down market.

Have you been around public housing? The idea in theory is great, but in the US and in Puerto Rico it is a hub of drugs, alcohol, crime, government dependency, broken families, youth gangs and a slew of other things concentrated into a single area - destroys nearby culture and societal cohesiveness as well as corrupts large swathes of otherwise bright and successful young people that reside within them.

Does it? Is the alternative really that much better, or do people blame it for things it doesn't cause as an excuse to not pay for it?

If I look into this argument, am I going to find research supporting the idea that, counterintuitively, taking away public housing helps these problems? Or am I going to find real estate developers pushing a narrative to rationalize taking from the poor, selling to the rich, and making tons of money by doing so?

What's hiding under this rock? You're telling me it's butterflies, but I have a feeling it's actually centipedes.

I think the GP has made a cogent argument. Having Lived near public Housing in NeWY0rk for many Years, I always found it uncomfortable seeing these homeless people gather around doing NOthing.

I h4ppenedToo bump into someOF these folKs 0noccasion. N0ne of Them HAd a CLear view of thEir LiVes. Having to DepenD on some0ne for their living is 0neTHeeng, n0tHavin a CLeer V1eWOF THeiR L1Ves is quite AnooTHa.

I am SAD.

I'm not proposing we take away public housing, but I encourage you to visit any of the public housing or even section 8 majority neighborhoods and just walk around for a while to take in the scenery and decipher what is narrative and what is reality. Government projects (no pun intended) can operate poorly and have negative effects that people don't want to participate in or fund without it being some grand narrative or conspiracy by "the rich"

I'd recommend the TV-show "show me a hero" for an interesting take on this stereotype. The show is about a town that started of with 'concentrated public housing' with these kinds of problems. Then by court mandate they need to move public housing into the rich neighborhoods. The city hires an expert who suggests a few small locations to help the neighborhood integrate.

Most of this show is about the political fallout of this situation. Because a majority of the residents of the town did _not_ want any low income housing.

The show is fictional, but based on a real story and a real town where this happened.

Yeah, I lived for 6 years in Singaporean public housing. Still the highest quality housing I've ever lived in and the safest. No private housing in any other country has ever been as good.

90% of the country is public housing. It used to be third world and have a serious drug problem. It built proper public housing, is first world and it has no drug problem.

America is moving in the reverse direction and accelerating. The odd publicly funded methadone clinic wont stem the tide.

Private housing is good in theory but in practice it leads to ever rising rents, drug addicted homelessness and a parasitic coke addled landlord class taxing away 40% of a median income while doing the bare minimum in repairs.

There is a rising consensus from a lot of young left wing people in the united states that is unknowingly becoming drawn towards Singapore style politics. A lot of the large government programs and initiatives they rally for within a society emphasizing individual freedom and a democratic republic result in rampant corruption and social dependence - and a benevolent dictatorship among a bureaucratic class becomes the foremost solution to the problems arising from these government ran social programs.

Im not at all drawn towards Lee Kuan Yew. He's a thug.

This particular policy was stolen from Singaporean communists in the 1950s out of a kind of desperate pragmatism. Lee Kuan Yew didnt really want to do it but he wanted the commies to win even less. They airbrushed that part out later.

It was similar in America in the 50s. When the ruling classes were desperately afraid of communists you got social housing, medical care, subsidized education and the middle class thrived and could easily afford cars, homes and education.

No more though.

All that bollocks about individual freedom (freedom to pay more rent!) was used to drive you into poverty while a state that works on "spreading liberal values" with tanks decided to trash the 4th amendment because what American elites really thing is that too much freedom = terrorism.

It's all rather ironic.

There is a concern among right wing people that by placing more and more people in government housing and programs, they will vote more and more in favor of state and federal power from promise of funding and/or more personal support, which will place people in powerful positions that see no issue with eroding and diluting the power of the US's constitutional freedoms (btw I don't see individual freedom as bollocks or a direct reason for higher prices on housing, see the local government building regulations that for economic, environmental, nimbyism, but mostly to retain prices of housing for existing home owners or ensure a luxury condo is still profitable after it's construction). You are absolutely correct that the powers that be despise the 4th amendment along with most of the bill of rights that are designed to protect individuals from government by limiting it's ability to intervene. Even today you can see otherwise innocuous groups of people socially being labeled as "domestic terrorists" in the US for opposing restrictions on a whole array of government laws and programs that they see as overreaching and infringing on their constitutional rights.

These can both be true at the same time. Yes, the biggest cause of homelessness is mental health and addiction but lack of affordable housing is the also contributing. The only city on the planet with falling housing costs is Tokyo. Tokyo also has the best urban planning policies in the world.

In America, our extremely restrictive zoning is massively limiting what can be built. In most Californian cities it can cost over $500k just for planning approval and environmental review. That's before any building materials, cost of labor, hiring architects, etc. Simply to be allowed to building something.

This is not sustainable. The fact that it's easier and cheaper to build a new development on virgin, untouched land then to upzone a single family house into a duplex is tragic.

"In America, our extremely restrictive zoning is massively limiting what can be built. In most Californian cities it can cost over $500k just for planning approval and environmental review. That's before any building materials, cost of labor, hiring architects, etc. Simply to be allowed to building something."

I agree that there is generally a lot of red tape around building things, and this is generally true of most developed nations. Your example of California is sort of the extreme for the US. There are vast areas of the US where zoning is not nearly as restrictive and permits are not nearly as expensive. In a lot of the US, converting from single family to duplex is not forbidden.

The real question is about population distribution. People choose to live in the restrictive areas. Maybe some don't have a choice because that's where the jobs are. It seems there is some self correcting market effect to this in that some companies are choosing not to stay in California with the high cost of living, taxes, and regulations. If there's really enough support, there's really nothing stopping like minded companies from forming their own city in a new area, or even reinvigorating the Appalachian cities that were once much larger than they currently are (Pittsburgh and Google are a slight example).

Just a point about Tokyo. The average dwelling is under 300 sqft. Perhaps the reason that housing is increasingly expensive in places like SF, or even the US in general, is that the housing size has drastically increased over time as has the preference for more amenities. Now I'll agree that the zoning/code tends to set a minimum size limit of about 600 sqft in many places, but even then, consumer choices make it a moot point since nobody want to buy a house that small (and people in many small NYC apartments complain about size too). So even if we change zoning/codes, we still have a culture problem that doesn't necessarily fit with Tokyo's system.

In the language of my country's homeless charities, there are "rough sleepers" - people who are literally sleeping in shop doorways and on park benches - but there's a much larger number of the "hidden homeless" - people who are sleeping on an accommodating friend or family member's couch, or some other temporary arrangement like the government paying for them to stay in a bed and breakfast.

Rough sleepers may well have untreated addiction and mental illness problems - there's a reason they've exhausted the patience of their loved ones - but many people among the hidden homeless have simply been priced out of the housing market.

I think you make a great distinction between the visible and invisible homeless, and that the solutions to those two problems are totally different.

Part of the problem here is that “homeless” has a pretty broad technical definition, while what ordinary people mean by “homeless” is specifically the highly visible indigent. They’re not thinking of the single mom at the woman’s shelter whose lost her apartment. There are two separate problems which both need to be addressed.

> These policy experts need to sit down with social workers, case managers, ER and psychiatric center physicians and staff.

> The most visible homeless people that are the jarring entropy in American cities are always going to be the low functioning indigent population with mental health and/or addiction issues.

The most visible homeless are also a small minority of the people who deal with Homelessness in America - which is why they are addressing housing. California had a homeless population of 150,000 in 2021 [1], most whom were not living on the sidewalk & dealing with drug and/or psychiatric problems.

[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/homeless-po...

For sure. It’s definitely a good thing to provide subsidized housing for the poor. Poverty mitigation is wonderful!

But I believe the public wants the visible homeless cared for in a more responsible way.

I suspect we all broadly agree here. Your point just feels...not irrelevant, but...odd.

It's not that there are two types of homeless people, and people are one or the other. The "visible homeless" are a progression from the invisible, semi/temporarily homeless.

I've known people who started down the path of homelessness (and one who spent some time in that state and got out). Poverty in general, and housing instability are two causes of that transition.

If you can afford rent, afford basic comforts and stability, maintain health coverage and afford healthcare, you're not going to suddenly jump into sleeping under a highway and raving at pedestrians. There's a long journey to that state. We want to prevent that initial slide into temporary homelessness that precedes long-term homelessness, and all the issues that frequently arise with it.

When the ship is sinking, and someone says "we need to plug the hole", you don't respond with "No, bail harder!" Sure, bail harder, but the issue isn't that the people trying to plug the hole are missing the core issue.

It seems more likely that the public wants to feel less bad about / unsafe around the visible homeless. Hence a way to get them out of sight without massive mistreatment would probably be enough to make the general public happy.

Put differently, my thesis is that the public cares about people who need the most help, not because they feel they deserve that help the most. Instead I think its because those who need the most help are also the most visible. This primarily makes the public feel unsafe, and secondarily makes it harder to ignore the problem.

An effect of this is that the non-visible homeless are de-prioritized for help for reasons of PR. That does not necessarily mean these non-visible homeless deserve more priority, just that their current level of priority could only be right be 'accident'.

For sure. Local politicians may lose elections based on how they deal with this minority “visible” population. Efforts to put up more low income housing would help a different cohort that resides under the same umbrella.

The intermittent homeless (or invisible homeless) are the majority and the cheapest to correct. They are also more likely to include children and can help prevent intergenerational issues.

That group can be helped by public housing.

I see a paper with this many graphs and you know that they are completely missing the point. They have tried to measure a phenomenon based on a reductive description of the problem. Defining "homelessness" to mean "not living in a house" means that you cluster a huge amount of people into that category, and you end up trying to solve a different problem.

I'm all for increasing housing supply to drive down the cost of housing, but that's a completely different problem. That solution may drive down your metrics of "homelessness" but it's obvious that a different solution is necessary to address the "visible homeless".