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Comment by gotoeleven | Hacker News Reader

Surprisingly it turns out that if you subsidize homelessness you get more homelessness.

Surprisingly it turns out that if you don't build homes, you get more homelessness.

The chronically homeless are incapable of benefiting from affordable housing because that's not why they're homeless in the first place. It's pretty much always mental health, drug and alcohol addiction.

If that were the case we wouldn't see the chronically homeless all disproportionately clustered around areas where housing costs have exploded, and it's not just because of money spent on services there.

The homeless are always going to flock to where the people with money are.

It does seem counterintuitive, but when your local economy is shit (i.e. panhandling in ghettos), you're going to emigrate somewhere with more opportunity.

That does not explain SF's homelessness.

>> 70% of people homeless in San Francisco in 2019 reported becoming homeless while living in San Francisco: 22% came from another county within California, and 8% came from another state.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_San_Fran...

This has been my experience. Most "normal" people will just move somewhere else. They're not going to stay homeless in SF when they can move 100 miles away and live in a safe town with a roof over their head.

To a close approximation, all of the "rough" homeless (i.e. the ones you see on the street) are mentally ill or addicts, not people down on their luck who cannot afford to rent or buy a home.

most use to be

Most people with drug addiction or other mental illnesses have no problem keeping a roof over their head in other parts of the US. 20% of Americans experience mental illness any given year.

It almost seems like a certain personality of people are drawn toward comfortable places with free food and no law enforcement.

Shocking, isn't it? All of the well-adjusted, professional people I know prefer uncomfortable places, expensive food, and overzealous law enforcement.

Seriously though, I can't imagine what point you're trying to make here, other than to share a deep insensitivity to other people's suffering.

I think it's pretty obvious what point he is trying to make.

I lived in Hoboken, NJ for nearly five years and had some friends who volunteered at the homeless shelter through church that entire time. The homeless there had pretty good access to food, water, shelter, and drugs (mostly cigarettes and alcohol but I'm sure others). At some point there was talk of a program to move some of the chronically homeless into government housing; when asked if they wanted to participate nearly all of them said no.

Think about that. In a city with very little housing where students and young families are clamoring to make rent payments, and the temperature in the winter gets below zero, they were offered free housing (on taxpayer dime) and turned it down. They actively preferred to be homeless.

Why? Maybe there were too many carrots being given out, and not enough threatening with sticks. (Mind you, the sticks do not have to be cops and jail, although those are pretty big sticks. Forced rehab sounds pretty good.)

Did someone ask why they didn’t want to move into government housing? Because this is a known issue and it’s not because the homeless aren’t being punished enough. People are afraid to be split from their community, don’t want to be forced to leave if something goes wrong, or don’t want to move to an area far away from the resources they need for their daily lives [0].

0: https://www.vice.com/amp/en/article/v74y3j/this-is-why-homel...

Hoboken NJ is only one square mile, so those factors don't really apply.

Also the link you provided is about why they don't want to move to shelters. GP is talking about people who are in shelters but do not want to move to permanent housing.

Fair enough. Here [0] is a survey of the homeless population in Hudson County. Last page shows pretty much everyone wanted housing help. But it doesn’t specifically ask about permanent housing, so I might need to keep digging to get a clearer picture.

0: https://cdn.monarchhousing.org/wp-content/uploads/njcounts20...

1. If someone asked for the reason I don't know it.

1.5. Full disclosure, "shelter" was probably the wrong word because I don't think anyone was sleeping at the church. There were definitely some people eating multiple meals a day there, though. So I don't know if you would call that temporary housing. That makes it even wierder (to me) that they would refuse permanent housing.

2. "Punished" might not quite be the right word here. I remember there was a guy - I think his name was Don - who was very mentally ill and very scary. Well over 6 feet tall and looking absolutely wild, he would roam the streets shouting incoherently at people, usually women. He interacted with one of my friends at the shelter so often they were on a first name basis and several times he would just approach our group screaming at him. He had little sense of his surroundings and would often wander right into oncoming traffic, it was a miracle he live through my time at college.

Whether you think scooping Don up and sticking him in a mental hospital is "saving" him or "punishing him" depends on your worldview, but I lean towards thinking that Don's situation wasn't good for him or anyone else and that someone should have done something. And give his nature, I would expect that to require force...

> "shelter" was probably the wrong word because I don't think anyone was sleeping at the church

I assume you're referring to the former church at 3rd + Bloomfield? AFAIK it's legitimately a shelter with 50 beds. The building was still an active church until 5-10 years ago so maybe it wasn't fully a shelter before then, not sure.

> he would roam the streets shouting incoherently at people, usually women

Sadly there are multiple people here who fit this description! My guess would be either Nicky or Chuey, as these guys are well-known in town -- they've been doing this for over a decade. But especially since the pandemic, a few additional unhinged shouty guys have appeared.

I don't know what the solution is. Clearly the local government doesn't know either, because I've personally seen them arrest one of these guys quite a few times, usually when he gets particularly riled up or violent. He's always back though, sometimes in just a few days.

Feels like most people want a ethical system for guiding people like this out of the street and to a place that is safe and healthy for them and their community. This is impossible when you need to argue over who’s gonna pay for it.

So instead, poor systems are put in place, forcing the police to deal with these situations using the few tools they have at hand, including arrest, sweeps, etc.

It costs a massive amount to keep arresting and releasing these same people, on a weekly or monthly basis, year after year. Funding isn't necessarily the issue... the problem is the lack of any clear alternative.

Concretely, what ethical solution do you propose in the situation of a violent schizophrenic who refuses to take their medication, or a violent meth addict who won't stay clean? These people want to remain in their local community, but their community isn't large enough to have specialized facilities for their problems. And even if such facilities were local and taxpayer-funded, these people repeatedly refuse to remain in any voluntary treatment facility anyway. So what do you do, even if you had unlimited funding?

I agree funding isn’t the issue. The issue is the constant arguing over whose fiscal responsibility it is, causing the funds to be poorly used.

As for an ethical solution, I can’t say concretely in either of the cases you’ve listed because they are hypotheticals with no actual human details. Therein lies one of the biggest issues: social services do not scale easily. The only solution I’ve seen work is to get more professionals out and solving each case, one by one, according to their specific needs. This costs a fortune, but I guess we agree money isn’t a problem.

How is homelessness subsidized?

Seattle has, until recently, tolerated encampments on public property. The city council spends great chunks of money on outreach nonprofits that have dubious effectiveness (there are organizations doing good/effective work, to be clear).

The Seattle Police Department is woefully understaffed and has given up on responding to many quality of life and public order calls. In addition to drug use, car prowls, etc there is a thriving shoplifting-fencing business going on in spots throughout downtown. Enforcement has been very limited, so the problem has gotten out of hand. I have no clue why the Target near Pike Place remains open - they must be locked in their lease.

In the mid-2000s when I lived there the city had a policy of not actively disrupting homeless encampments. There was a very well-known encampment located under the I-5 overpass just south of downtown called "The Jungle" [0]. SPD was prohibited from clearing it out and was only authorized to respond to reports of violent crimes. Not theft, drugs, prostitution, public inebriation, etc.

Occasionally, it seemed maybe once per year, they would actually get a task force to go sweep it out. But that was mostly only in response to outrage from residents of the adjacent Beacon Hill neighborhood. And then they would go back to ignoring it. And a month later the whole camp was back.

This is just one anecdotal example of Seattle's long history of indifference, even tolerance, of "shanty towns" and homeless camps. I don't know how it is now, but King County in general used to be littered with these things and people just seemed to think it was normal.

It is absolutely _not_ normal.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle_(Seattle)

This. When you feed bears, you get problem bears.

The National Parks system knows this, but cities like SF and Seattle do not.

So your suggestion is to return the homeless people to their natural habitat in the woods, so they can forage for berries as nature intended?

> This. When you feed bears, you get problem bears.

> The National Parks system knows this, but cities like SF and Seattle do not.

It should be noted that homeless people are people, not animals.

Also, don't park systems kill "problem bears" (e.g. https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/waterton-lakes-national-park-staf...)?

tablespoon says >It should be noted that homeless people are people, not animals.<