Profiles of people living in homeless encampments, rarely what you’d expect
latimes.com
latimes.com
The first person is an addict who chops up stolen bikes. The second person has untreated mental health issues. The third person came to LA with no money or employment because the weather was nicer.
They've all had struggles and we need better support for all of them, but nothing surprising here. It is nice to get a more individualized and personal background on each, it's easy to dehumanize when you're walking by and afraid of who is the 1-in-100 that's dangerous.
There's also the factor that it is a nation-wide problem. Once city can't solve it, if they did everyone would just go there.
How does an inner city lefty being against such a law (which just seems to be criminalizing extreme poverty), put them in league with the people who don't want a social safety net and so are placing people in that very situation?
Isn't it cheaper to give them food than to lock them in prison ... and then give them food?
More specifically, supporting the mentally ill to refuse treatment. Later (as you allude), they will vocally support not enforcing various quality of life laws that have been broken. Logically, these two things are in conflict. Either the mentally ill are competent to make decisions, or they aren't... pick one.
This, combined with lack of funding are the primary hurdles to helping these folks get into places to care for them. I would also support other subsets of the homeless population to be helped. But, a lot of people prefer them just where they are apparently. The results of their actions speak louder than words.
You can call or email Lourdes Morales in the non-partisan CA LAO if you're truly interested.
Note that nearly 1/4 of the entire United States homeless population currently resides in California. The state deals with homelessness at a scale/complexity that makes advice like "we should have better government" and "people should be accountable" not very helpful.
Anyway, housing first is a proven method for resolving the cycle of homelessness[0]. Rather than placing restrictions on people (get sober, get a job, etc) to access shelter, putting people in a stable home environment right off the bat has greater success at keeping people housed long-term.
I learned about a study on housing first and one of the primary champions of the initiative in a fantastic podcast series called According to Need, by the 99% Invisible crew. It's an eye-opening look at the beuracracy that keeps people unhoused when they seek help[1]. Bonus points that it's reported on in the Bay Area, where the problem is completely out of control. Episode three deals with housing first, but I'd really recommend listening to the entire series if you have the time.
"However, for the chronically homeless population, which represents about 10 percent of the homeless population, research has shown, and our experience has been, that when these individuals have a place of their own where they can be safe, the drinking and drug use decreases. Also, with effective case management support, we have found a positive supportive community is created in the single site locations."[2]
[0] https://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/Housing-First-Research... [1] https://99percentinvisible.org/need/ [2] https://www.kitsapsun.com/story/opinion/editorials/2016/07/1...
I'd expect something like: You get 1 year of "housing-first"-style free housing with no requirements, then you get 1 year of "tough love" free housing with sobriety and job-search requirements, then you get kicked out.
People with complex issues have variable amount of time to resolve it. Can't put a time on it. But you can figure what cost you more and how much you value human dignity within that cost framework.
So an arbitrary time limit in this case does not make sense as a government public welfare policy.
Sounds cheaper as well compared to the policing and emergency hospital bills needed to deal with them as well.
I honestly think the drug problem is more powerful and detrimental than homelessness itself. The drug trade definitely feeds on homelessness, but it would likely still find a vulnerable population if homeless people were eliminated.
It’s still probably the best idea we have going, but it’s not without significant downsides. Where I live, many small time landlords who have agreed to participate in programs like this with the city have had to evict the tenants placed with them because they made the entire property unlivable for other people through actions like smoking meth in their apartments, letting their dealers move in with them, or in one case, piling all their belongings into the bathtub and lighting them on fire in a state of meth induced psychosis.
In Portland, there is a large housing complex called Bud Clark Commons that provides low barrier housing to the homeless. Since it was constructed, the area around it has become far more dangerous than it was before. There are hundreds of tents surrounding it, meth dealers operating openly from RVs, and trash strewn all around the area. But what’s really interesting about Bud Clark Commons is that the staff actually struggles to keep people there. People cycle in and out, often leaving to return to the streets voluntarily.
It’s really depressing to consider, but it seems clear that some of the people living on our streets have been fundamentally changed in such a way that will make it extremely difficult for them to find their way back into society again. Especially for addicts, the call of euphoric oblivion right outside the door seems very hard to resist in the long term.
Housing first doesn't work, shelter first probably does.
In LA 3 times more homeless people died than in NYC.
https://michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/three-times-more...
Until you actually implement it and discover that the problem isn't housing, it's drug use and mental health. After all, homeless individuals have "stable" housing in their encampments (which is why they form in the first place).
And then you realize that the problem isn't solved until you can force the individual into rehab or into treatment, which you can't do because the homeless advocates will fight you in court to prevent treatment and cite stories like the above, but these homeless advocates are the reason why the bureaucracy doesn't work.
Mental health care or substance use treatment just cannot be very effective if a person doesn't have a safe, climate-controlled place to be and keep their stuff. If policy insists that the mental health or substance use must be addressed prior to housing support, then money is being wasted. More importantly, people who could have gotten better under a housing first system are being denied the chance to do so.
Homeless advocates are not the reason for the failures of housing policy. There's barely any of them and they have basically no power. It seems strange to blame them when all they do is ensure that people's rights are upheld, and clearly there are much larger forces at play.
As someone who works in human services, forced treament almost always leaves the person being subjected to it worse off; it's used to satisfy the needs/biases of providers. Once someone is isolated from their supports, that's when they are most vulnerable. Providers treat people as objects to fulfill their own incentives; abuse runs rampant.
The idea that we could fix homelessness if we just canceled the human and legal rights of people who are homeless is a terrifying take. If this ethical stance is unconvincing, please know that it would cost more and be even less effective in helping people.
You know what the most effective way of treating homeless drug addicts is? Forcing them into rehab, while incarcerated.
You know what the most effective way of treating mental illness is? Forcing them into mental hospitals where they are forcibly medicated.
You know what the least effective way of treating mental illness and addiction is (of the ways where some sort of action is taken)? Housing first. Because it focuses on the wrong problem: it focuses on the symptom (homelessness) and not the cause of the homelessness (drug addiction or mental illness).
If housing first worked, then permanent shelter assignments would be the quick and easy fix to the homeless problem.
The idea that we could fix homelessness if we just canceled the human and legal rights of people who are homeless is a terrifying take. If this ethical stance is unconvincing, please know that it would cost more and be even less effective in helping people.
This is the kind of silly belief that keeps the mentally ill and the addicted on the streets, shitting themselves and being eaten by rats and preyed on by rapists and drug dealers. Human rights are an theoretical concern for the homeless, not a tangible one.
Since you are appealing to your authority: I have worked with the homeless. I have also been homeless. I know firsthand what works and what doesn't. You are wrong.
> You know what the most effective way of treating homeless drug addicts is? Forcing them into rehab, while incarcerated.
> You know what the most effective way of treating mental illness is? Forcing them into mental hospitals where they are forcibly medicated.
Both of these are absolutely false, both in my experience and according to every study I've ever come across. Involuntary treatment, whether physically forced or coerced by denying certain benefits, almost never has successful outcomes. Why would it? Recovery is an active process that cannot be forced onto someone.
> You know what the least effective way of treating mental illness and addiction is (of the ways where some sort of action is taken)? Housing first. Because it focuses on the wrong problem: it focuses on the symptom (homelessness) and not the cause of the homelessness (drug addiction or mental illness).
You're now arguing with a strawman. Housing first claims to be neither mental health care, nor substance use treatment. It just makes those things dramatically easier. As I said in my first comment, housing first programs always offer mental health and subsrance use support in addition to the housing.
It should be self-evident that navigating treatment is easier when you have a safe, consistent place to live. It's easier to get mail fron Medicaid and other supports (and you should know that you can lose your benefits if you don't respond to certain pieces of mail!). It's easier to have providers arrange transportation to and from appointments. You have a physical boundary you can set with people who are triggers for unhealthy behavior. And it just takes off a massive cognitive load so you can focus mental energy on recovery.
> If housing first worked, then permanent shelter assignments would be the quick and easy fix to the homeless problem.
Be consistent. Don't compare it to "quick and easy". Give an honest, apples-to-apples comparison to your suggested alternative.
If we take all the permanent housing assignments after forced treatment, are those "quick and easy solutions"? No, long-term success rates are abysmal.
Housing first isn't a magical spell, it just works better, at a lower cost, with less authoritarianism than the alternatives.
> This is the kind of silly belief that keeps the mentally ill and the addicted on the streets, shitting themselves and being eaten by rats and preyed on by rapists and drug dealers. Human rights are an theoretical concern for the homeless, not a tangible one.
No, it's the hardass mindset which you're advocating that prevents sufficient funding toward evidence based approaches. Having safe, stable housing one controls reduces the chances that someone will be "eaten by rats" or "raped". We've tried what you're proposing and it was a human rights disaster.
During my time in the system, I avoided seeking help at times because I knew I might get psychiatrically locked up and lose my job. That's my human rights being a tangible concern.
It's very cavalier of you to suggest other people's human rights are "theoretical concerns". Thank goodness our (including anyone who is homeless, me, and you) human rights are legal, and not subject to what you deem "theoretical". They matter to me, and to the people who I support in my work.
Involuntary treatment, whether physically forced or coerced by denying certain benefits, almost never has successful outcomes. Why would it? Recovery is an active process that cannot be forced onto someone.
Absolutely false. It has worked 100% of the time I have seen it forced upon my clients (in every case because as their legal guardian I made that decision for them).
Every single one of my clients was happy that they were forced into treatment. EVERY SINGLE ONE. Because they didn't want to be mentally ill, but when their illness surfaced they couldn't make the decision to take their medications or go in for treatment. And the addicts abjectly refused to voluntarily get treatment because they were absolutely terrified of the effects of withdrawal, which in almost every case required hospital settings to manage.
But once they were sane/sober again, they were glad that I made the decision for them, because they absolutely preferred sanity and sobriety over the alternatives but couldn't get their on their own.
Housing first isn't a magical spell, it just works better, at a lower cost, with less authoritarianism than the alternatives.
This is false. LA County spends many multiples on its housing first strategy than it does when it simply commits someone to a mental hospital. Not surprisingly, mental hospitals are cheaper and more effective than housing first.
And critically, you ignore a very crucial thing about your housing first mantra: it only works for those individuals whose addictions or mental illnesses are mild enough that they can handle their own rehabilitation or medication, or in other words, a very small minority of the mentally ill and homeless in LA County.
It's very cavalier of you to suggest other people's human rights are "theoretical concerns".
When someone is so far gone that they're shitting themselves in the middle of a busy downtown street, their "human rights" are purely theoretical given the likelihood that they will die very shortly.
Thank goodness for people like me who ignore the theoretical human rights concerns so that these homeless/addicts can get the treatment they need and actually survive long enough, and be sober/sane enough, for their human rights to actually matter to them.
A lot of rampant predatory quackery involved when forcing therapy and medication on those with no means of recourse, too.
most “work” a lot flying signs out in the heat to make a few bucks, some drink it all away.. some use it to try and get the hell out of town. some are just so into survival mode they don’t know any better
but what i find the most interesting is how most are just nice people.
you wouldn’t know that by reading this thread.
most homeless people just want to talk, share their stories and have a friend. They’re tired of being arrested for sleeping. They’re tired of their stuff being stolen - a lot of their mental issues stem from lack of sleep and filling that void with drugs and booze..
it’s unfortunate how people get treated and this thread is no exception to people perpetuating their high and mighty views of a world they know nothing about - merely to protect their world view that dehumanizes these people.
if being without a home is decriminalized and we work to build systems that support these people they wouldn’t be under bridges and in parks.. they sometimes get pushed into camps but those camps rarely give glimpses of hope and service but rather make them feel like outcasts. and everyone is a NIMBY when it comes to this - the OP being no exception to it.
They don’t care about people, they care about appearances and property values and thus nothing will ever change or happen.
This is my experience too. Which is a testament to the human spirit, given how shunned they are.
> a lot of their mental issues stem from lack of sleep
I lose it after a few nights of bad sleep in my comfy bed, in my warm secure bedroom. I'd be such a wreck on the cold hard concrete.
https://www.ted.com/talks/david_r_dow_lessons_from_death_row...
His example is someone who's mother tried to kill him.
> And I said to him, "I know the story. I've read the records. I know that she tried to kill you." I said, "But I've always wondered whether you really actually remember that." I said, "I don't remember anything from when I was five years old. Maybe you just remember somebody telling you."
16:46 > And he looked at me and he leaned forward, and he said, "Professor," -- he'd known me for 12 years, he still called me Professor. He said, "Professor, I don't mean any disrespect by this, but when your mama picks up a butcher knife that looks bigger than you are, and chases you through the house screaming she's going to kill you, and you have to lock yourself in the bathroom and lean against the door and holler for help until the police get there," he looked at me and he said, "that's something you don't forget."
everyone can be helped, you just don’t want to be bothered. Some people need professional help but again, why start the discussion off with jobs and money when those people with severe mental issues probably don’t have either?
what’s interesting is they views your behavior as disruptive. Go watch a hobo or homeless youtube channel and they will describe you to the T - slave to wages, kids with problems and bills and credit card statements to look forward to but instead of breaking fee of that we do more to protect it.
ahh well.. i’ll never change your mind.. but you can go change it yourself by volunteering and fining things out first hand instead of assuming.
> they views your behavior as disruptive
That's great, but they are not the majority and I and many others will continue to vote for policies and politicians that remove people like them from our cities. For example, many cities in SoCal empower their police to actively remove homeless. I have a feeling the 2022 election will only strengthen these initiatives.
> slave to wages
Some of us actually enjoy our jobs - what a concept!
And maybe homeless encampments are the absolute worst place for someone struggling with mental health or drug issues, heightening the risk of every injury and surrounding them with enablers.
I don't blame people for keeping their distance. "only 1 in 100 is dangerous" is very cold comfort when you encounter hundreds every week.
Forty percent chance of a dangerous encounter/week is too much imho
You probably walk past rapists, pedophiles and murderers all the time without putting yourself at any serious risk.
- Section 8 housing takes forever.
- Work programs are for menial jobs that don't pay anywhere close to livable wages.
- Cash assistance amounts to $5 per day.
- Food assistance amounts to $7 per day (without a means of refrigeration).
- Medic-aid is barely accepted by any doctors except random ones. Medicare with SSDI takes years to get.
- Make just enough to try to get ahead, then you can't afford medications. Working severely penalizes the destitute into even more impossible situations.
- Everything takes longer and is more difficult and more expensive: laundry, showering, and transportation.
- Social workers don't go outdoors in most of America. They sit at desks, fill out paperwork, and randomly stop benefits based on errors, assumptions, and their lack of communication.
What makes you think any sort of government intervention will solve this? If you implement universal healthcare these doctors will still have revenue streams from rich people and won't need to take poor patients. You can't force doctors to treat people they don't want to.
There used to be some "abuse" (according to the national health insurance administration) where people would, supposedly, try to see specialists for no reason. So they figured that everyone should have a "family doctor" and, with a few exceptions (dentist, eyes, maybe others) you always have to go through this doctor first.
Now most of these doctors are "full" and won't take any new clients. You don't need to be poor, they don't even ask your situation. If you call them up, they'll ask you if the doc knows you. If not, they hang up. And even if they're your family doctor, you better hope your cough isn't anything too urgent, 'cause they're in no hurry to see you.
Of course, there are doctors who will see you, but usually they charge extra, so they're not fully covered by the "free" healthcare, if at all.
Every private insurer I've ever had in the US has the exact same requirement.
The scenario you're described had the opportunity to be borne out in dozens of countries and generally didn't.
The only way it would get struck down is if there were activist judges and if there was no political will to repair the Supreme Court. I would assume that in a world where the US political system manages to fix itself enough to pass universal healthcare that would be dealt with or fixable, because those are more urgent issues.
The Democrats could have done this of their own volition in Obama's first term, during periods where the Senate had a filibuster-proof majority. Instead, they came up with the ACA.
How much more than the ACA (a campaign promise) and stimulus did you expect them to get done in the 4 months of the first term that they had a filibuster-proof majority?
https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/2012/09/09/when-oba...
They could have done universal healthcare instead of ACA and with much simpler legislation and less regulatory authoring burden.
> Lieberman, 67, used his deciding vote in Congress to help strip out a provision for government-run medical insurance, intended to set up competition to the abuses of private companies, by threatening to filibuster the legislation.
> Senate leaders agreed to drop the public option for all in favour of allowing people over 55 to buy into an existing government-run scheme for the elderly. In September, Lieberman supported the measure, as he had when he was Al Gore's running mate. But just as it seemed that a deal was done, Lieberman scuppered it by announcing that he had changed his mind and would block any bill that expanded government insurance coverage. Obama gave way.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/dec/16/joe-lieberman-...
Most actual universal healthcare does not ban private insurance.
>Basically, every single country with universal coverage also has private insurance,” says Gerard Anderson, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who studies international health systems. “I don’t think there is a model in the world that allows you to go without it.”
https://www.vox.com/health-care/2019/2/12/18215430/single-pa...
You're conflating private insurance and duplicate private insurance, and ending up on a very mistaken conclusion because of it.
There are other countries with a system between complementary and duplicate where private insurance may also pay for duplicate care, but you still aren't allowed to not subscribe to the public healthcare plan.
Duplicate healthcare insurance is deeply toxic and
You left out Germany and Switzerland, probably others. Hardly "developing countries".
So you agree that universal healthcare systems do not almost always ban duplicate coverage, and you agree that there is no "worldwide standard" of banning duplicate coverage though private insurance.
You're just in favor of banning private insurance and are willing to engage in sweeping hyperbole toward that end.
Wanting better coverage - lower wait times, higher quality doctors - is deeply toxic? Getting higher quality doctors who don't want to get paid pennies by the public system is toxic? (for example Medicare pays substantially less than most private insurance in the US today to care providers, which is one of the biggest reasons why many doctors don't take Medicare patients)
I don't see how being able to have a private plan isn't a win-win for doctors and patients. Doctors get paid more by private insurance, and patients get better care. If you want to use the public system you have the option of doing that.
What happens in the long run if you force doctors to exclusively get paid public system rates? Doctors make less and less smart people want to become doctors. Why do you think the federal government can't hire top tier software talent? It's because they pay pennies on the dollar compared to private companies. You can't regulate your way out of a market. The Soviet Union found that out the hard way.
It's probably more cynical than the reality warrants, but it's visibly closer to the truth than the current "let's poll the money and hire some people to help the ones in need".
UBI switches the question : "we think the people themselves would do a much better job if they just had the money". It's gonna be true in some cases. And completely wrong in many others.
2. the other possibility is that for the very mentally ill, they actually do need 2x the median income to survive, eg. because of mental illness counseling costs.
also the load time is wack, and the stats aren't backed up, im confused
India has slums, and Brazil has favelas. They aren't good but they are better than the street. US used to have rooming houses. Now, if you cant afford an apartment, and can't get an expensive one gifted from the state, you have to live in the street. (Not in your car; that's usually illegal too.)
A minimum wage job will get you at least $900 a month.
You can get an apartment for $500. Health Insurance is $30, utilities $200. You can get a minimum of $50 per week in food stamps. You will get about $1000 in EITC each year.
That is with bare-bones, $7.25 an hour minimum wage and the lowest level of assistance.
With a tiny bit of advancement you can afford much more.
>>You can get an apartment for $500. Health Insurance is $30, utilities $200
Right off the bat, you're not "getting an apartment for $500." MAYBE you can find someone trustworthy who can rent you a bedroom for $500/month in some cities but:
As of 2020, monthly rent averaged $1,164 nationwide; median rent is $1,104.
-- https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/renting-statistics
Only 7% of US counties have 1-bedroom apartments affordable on the prevailing minimum wage.
-- https://reports.nlihc.org/oor
Also, you need first month's rent ($500), security deposit ($500-$1000), utility deposit ($50 - $500), and sometimes last month's rent ($500).
So now we're talking a few grand. Better hope you spent the past three months working that guaranteed-40-hours/week minimum wage job without spending a single penny of your wages!
I also hope that your job is very close to your new apartment because you're going to need to spend a LOT of time chasing all the benefits that you seem to think are easily handed out and you don't have money for transit. Nope, you can't afford to take a whole day off work to wait in line for a free transit pass -- after all, you're going to spend $700 of this month's $900 income on housing and utilities!
At least make up numbers from this century if you're going to pull this Horatio Alger stuff :-)
Example 1: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/01/nyregion/overcrowding-wor...
Example 2: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/23/nyregion/base...
>Check Zillow
There's literally zero matches for rents under $500 in LA County.
But...don't live in LA county... Or even California, the options are not either be homeless or live in the most expensive place in the US.
Why? I thought charitable work/donations were a libertarian talking point against social welfare and related programs
For what it's worth, I'd be completely incapable of handling a minimum wage job.
(Genuine Q) if someone were to provide a home, would they be able to keep that?
I'm struggling to find an article I read years ago (feel sure it was somewhere at theguardian.com) in which it was proposed that just providing houses wouldn't all by itself "fix" homelessness.
In the Bay Area or L.A.; not the other 90% of CA.
Probably possible with a roommate. Still possible without, but rarer. I’ve seen dirt cheap one rooms available (think like $350/m) in middle of nowhere Utah. In certain cities, you can even live in the city, for maybe a little more than $500. I’ve seen them for example, in Des Moines.
I wouldn’t necessarily blanket any region, as as you drill down, you find that some places where’s you’d expect cheaper housing don’t have it because of whatever local bureaucracy is preventing it.
In New York City: Example 1: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/01/nyregion/overcrowding-wor... Example 2: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/23/nyregion/base...
I grew up poor in Eastern Europe. When I came to the US in one of those work&travel programs, I was shocked people were sooo bad with their finances. I had a lot of financial responsibility because I grew up poor but most people did not have such a thing over there.
Or, you know, wake up to find shit on their driveways, smashed windows on their cars, needles thrown on the street, etc.
Rationally you can think "that's just the mental illness or addiction causing someone to behave that way". But over time, even if you rationalize the behavior it wears down on your empathy.
1. The limitations of the oppressed vs. oppressor view of the world, which is very popular at the moment. It takes a comfort with cognitive dissonance to accept that some haves aren’t necessarily oppressors, but it’s easy to assume that they are. See also: the scorn heaped upon small time landlords.
2. Accepting that some people will take advantage of a given situation, even homelessness, for their own gain is a very disconcerting thought if you tend towards empathy for homeless people. I struggle with accepting this myself, even though I can see it happening in front of me.
3. The bifurcation of all political ideology into Republican vs. Democrat, and the suspicion of crypto-Republicanism that is now levied at ideas outside the acceptable Overton window.
4. Bitter jealousy towards people who have managed to secure property in a desirable area that others feel locked out of due to rising costs. I used to feel this quite intensely myself.
1) How many homeless people are interested in a productive life, with the work/sobriety expectations (and the housing/benefits) that implies?
2) How many of those are actively working towards this goal?
It sure seems to me that there are lots of people who want to live irresponsibly, and prey on our sympathy to facilitate that lifestyle.
Almost all, as becomes evident if you compare the drastically different homelessness rates in other countries.
What other countries do you mean? In northern Europe, you can't nonvoluntarily do anything to anyone that isn't imminently a danger to themselves or others. Everyone gets help that needs it, no excuses, and we have virtually no homeless people at all.
In my home state, Oregon, we voted to decriminalize all “personal use” amounts of all drugs back in 2020. However, the folks who crafted the ballot measure left out a lot of the “stick” parts that have made Portugal’s efforts more successful. That has not worked well. At a time when meth use was already skyrocketing, it has enabled dealers to proliferate rapidly. They simply have to make sure they only carry a personal use amount on them at any given time. I’d really like to see us implement some of the more persuasive elements of Portugal’s model to curb some of the downsides we’re now dealing with.
Anecdotally, a friend of mine has attempted to hire homeless people on multiple occasions to help him in residential demolition projects (no clean clothes, resume, or shower necessary). In one instance, he scheduled work for the following day and zero out of 8 people showed up. I'm sure there's homeless people that would like to work their way of the situation, but I don't think they are in the majority. Any solutions to this problem need to be more realistic about the motivations and intentions of the group they're trying to assist.
The pay is terrible. In his case, it was below minimum wage. He argued he could get better labor for minimum wage, so they could either take it or be replaced.
He was also renting them the same place they were renovating. It was a slum, and he was using their labor to improve it so he could kick them out and replace them with someone that would pay. Not exactly a thrilling proposal.
There was no safety equipment provided. It was an old building, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was full of asbestos (and maybe why he didn't hire a reputable company in the first place).
The place was filthy. Human feces in a bucket kind of filthy.
> Any solutions to this problem need to be more realistic about the motivations and intentions of the group they're trying to assist.
There's a grain of truth here. My phrasing would be "Any solution provided needs to be better than panhandling." Doing difficult physical labor for below minimum wage doesn't meet that criteria. Even at minimum wage, I don't know if it's better.
I assure you many people on earth would enthusiastically clean the worst filth in order to feed their families. This should not be regarded as degradation, but rather strength and triumph.
Many people and cultures have celebrated and promoted leisure. The US strain of the Protestant work ethic is not most of human history, most people, or imposed by nature.
> This should not be regarded as degradation, but rather strength and triumph.
It can be an individual triumph over circumstance, but the circumstances are still degrading.
The protestant work ethic has led to the most successful economy on earth. Other economies competing for the title work just as hard. There is an ongoing competitive/evolutionary process of culture and ideas, and "work hard" is winning.
> the circumstances are still degrading
Why do you say that? What is degrading about destitution, exactly? I'm not sure those who live it, and especially those who choose it, would agree that they exist in a degraded state. I don't think degradation exists in nature, it is a condition imposed by one group of people on another. Destitution however is encountered frequently in the natural world, and in itself does not imply a moral condition.
> To elaborate, it seems that for most of human history the value proposition for most people, as imposed by nature, was "work hard or starve". Somehow, sometime, we've decided that this value proposition was unethical.
For myself, that turning point is when food ceased to be a scarce good. When food is scarce, somebody has to starve and allocating by contribution is a reasonable way to do it. When food is so plentiful that we inefficiently convert it to crappy gasoline because we have so much (corn) and cram caves full of it (cheese), letting someone starve is more of a conscious decision than an incredibly unfortunate situation.
In other words, being unable to share essential goods is very different from refusing to share essential goods.
I'm willing to sacrifice a portion of my efforts so that people don't starve. The "work hard or starve" mantra has a nasty implication that people who can't work should just starve. If you're going to provide for the disabled, it's no longer "work hard or starve", and you need a new justification for why people who can work but don't deserve to starve. It becomes very morally murky and arbitrary.
> I assure you many people on earth would enthusiastically clean the worst filth in order to feed their families.
Many people on earth would also enthusiastically kill each other to feed their families. That doesn't make it a noble pursuit.
> This should not be regarded as degradation, but rather strength and triumph.
I don't see any triumph here, so you might have to expand on that thought. I guess they're triumphing over starvation, but that's not really a show of strength in a country with 1.4 billion pounds of cheese stashed in a cave. It seems like calling breathing a triumph over asphyxiation.
If they were paid enough to live a remotely decent life, that would be a triumph. Enough to afford somewhere to live, food, a little leftover to pursue a passion.
Working hard and foul jobs so your boss can pay you so little that you're almost jealous of barn animals, so they can then use the money they saved to throw you out seems very degrading to me.
Most people take better care of their household pets than we afford the homeless. Most dogs do nothing but emotional support, yet we feed them, take them to the vet, make sure they come inside when it's hot/cold. Cats don't even do emotional support, they're mostly a walking curiosity. Everybody's happy with that arrangement, but the homeless wanting a semblance of fair pay for shitty work is a step too far?
"Civilization" hasn't really changed the realities which give rise to these optima. It only defines the boundaries of acceptable behaviour. It doesn't change the rules of the game, as it were. We've not suddenly become a colony of ants, selflessly behaving as a single organism. Nor do I think it reasonable to carry the expectation that we suddenly will. Nor do I consider it particularly virtuous to compel us by force to emulate the ants.
Indeed we do have an excess of calories in our society, but that's not really the problem the parent post describes. It describes homelessness - often correlated with drug addiction and mental illness. When I see a homeless person, they don't seem much different to me than the similarly destitute animals sometimes depicted in nature documentaries. Those animals who, by failure or misfortune, have found themselves unable to compete with their peers and unable to carve out a niche for themselves. They wander listlessly, with ever decreasing energy and opportunity, until they finally succumb to their fate.
None of this strikes me as particularly "wrong" or "degrading" or really having any moral character at all. It is just an inevitable, inescapable, fact of life. To suppose otherwise is to think that human beings are somehow more special, or more intrinsically valuable than other animals. Given your comparisons to household pets, this clearly doesn't hold any water. In the scheme of things, we're just a hair more clever than our ape ancestors, and that has pushed us past a tipping point into civilization. I don't see how this makes us any "better" or more worthy.
Personally, given all of the above, I think it's best to embrace reality. We live in a world where optimal behaviour is self-interested and the cost of failure is total. This isn't a statement of values, it's an observation of fact. The only question that remains is how comfortable are you using force/authority to compel cooperation? I myself don't want to force anyone to do anything (and rather resent being forced myself). Authority should be used to ensure our coexistence is peaceful, and that we resolve disputes via due process. Beyond that however, I'm not very comfortable telling other people how they should behave, or whom they should help. I would rather die destitute than pry greedily into the pocket of an unwilling and uncharitable stranger.
This is very much not true. It doesn't even make sense from an evolutionary perspective; why would an animal risk their life and waste energy to protect something they don't need? Some animals do take a sizable territory. Typically carnivores, who need a crazy amount of space to get enough meat. Most animals aren't even territorial.
> Furthermore, having secured the best territory, food, and mating opportunities, they (whether as individuals or in groups) will spend their free time harassing their competitors.
Again, this isn't true. Why would they do that? It's a risk and an energy expenditure for no gain. They'll fight over territory if they have to, but I have never heard of an animal going out of it's way to harass each other for the sake of it.
> It doesn't change the rules of the game, as it were. We've not suddenly become a colony of ants, selflessly behaving as a single organism. Nor do I think it reasonable to carry the expectation that we suddenly will. Nor do I consider it particularly virtuous to compel us by force to emulate the ants.
I think you're basing this on a flawed understanding of nature and how we fit into it. The only way humans are a dominant species is through cooperation. Not every person all the time, but in aggregate.
Humans are not particularly strong. Humans are not particularly fast. We are smart, but that's only helpful insofar as it improves our fitness, and can be a weakness due to increased caloric needs. As individuals, we are not particularly high on the food chain. What puts us high on the food chain is the ability to collaborate. We invented farming, giving us a caloric surplus. Then we created societies, allowing us to use that surplus to have people dedicated to research. We then use that research and some caloric surplus to have people create things like guns and concrete and ships that make us highly adaptable and deadly to the rest of the food chain.
Without that collaboration, we go back to being the middle of the foodchain and jumping at every shadow at night.
> We live in a world where optimal behaviour is self-interested and the cost of failure is total.
Self-interested behavior is too local of a maxima to be useful as a species. Evolution encourages the survival of the species, not the survival of the individual. A purely self-interested view would see the optimal solution being to take from others, leading to a collapse of the species. It takes a lot less energy to kill the farmers and take their crop than it does to actually grow the crop.
> Authority should be used to ensure our coexistence is peaceful, and that we resolve disputes via due process.
And this is the logical (rather than moral) reason why we take care of the less fortunate. Starving animals tend to become very aggressive, and humans are no exception. During the Soviet famines, people killed and ate each other. You can't tell someone starving to death that they need to peacefully coexist; it won't happen.
It is dramatically cheaper and easier to prevent that by just preventing starvation.
To displace its competition and further secure its dominance of the local area. Too much is always better than not enough. Even animals who occupy enormous territories will seek to expand them further at any opportunity. Bands of chimps will murder neighbouring bands over territory, despite neither group being remotely close to starving. Coalitions of male lions will seek to take possession of a pride of females by killing the existing males and all of their juvenile offspring. Many groups of human hunter-gatherers, ignorant of the modern world, will kill strangers in their territories on sight.
Nature evolves these behaviours simply because animals who display them have a greater chance of passing on their genes. Anything but hostility to direct competition is usually suboptimal.
Human dominance evolved through cooperation in small familial groups numbering less than 100. That is what our social biology is equipped to handle. There are many examples of company culture fragmenting past ~150 headcount. Past that group size, we're no longer able to cooperate based on shared in-group status and mutual trust. The mechanism of civilization is bureaucracy, but the interactions are still between small tribes of people each competing for their own interests, and in practice totally apathetic to outcomes outside their group.
We've managed to put some rails around the process, but legal and corporate interactions are the civilized equivalent to war. The same language is even used. We're still the same apes, with the same limitations regarding, frankly, how many other people we are capable of giving a damn about.
> It takes a lot less energy to kill the farmers and take their crop than it does to actually grow the crop.
Not really sustainable over a generation though, is it? Your strategy has function long enough for your offspring to reach maturity, and their offspring, etc. The winning strategy is to take as much from the farmers as they will tolerate and funnel it into extravagant displays of power and social status that further cement your position. All we've done is put some rules around the taking, mandating (in civil society) that it be voluntary and not under the threat of violence. This way, you invent iPhones, sell them at huge margins to all the farmers, become absurdly wealthy, and no one need die. It's a winning system.
> It is dramatically cheaper and easier to prevent that by just preventing starvation.
I'm not actually sure that's true. Shocking escalation of violence is also effective, and very cheap. In places where amputation is a common punishment for theft, wouldn't you know it, people don't steal as much. In places where punishment for crimes is severe, and police are effective, crime rates are low. Japan being a great example.
Have some empathy please.
In order to permanently get people to leave you need to build semi-permanent camps. But these camps do need to be in somewhat desirable areas because the people in the camps need to live near where they can find work (many don't have cars.) You put them out in the boonies they're just going to come camp in the city because there's no jobs in the boonies and they are mostly normal people who want to find work and not have to camp in tents.
Obtaining land and permitting such camps is hard. The more expensive option is building permanent housing. The most expensive option is prison.
Or... housing.
But a PAC against this has been established and passed a ballot measure in 2021. The city government first ignored it (they've made up a 4-stage plan to implement it where each stage consisted of asking homeless not to camp) but the PAC stuck around and kept engaging the city in the courts and pushing other measures on the ballot. This caused a real fear of losing for the current mayor and city council so suddenly they've found a way to get rid of all the camps.
Where there is a will (to stay in office) there is always a way.
But yeah, I try to avoid downtown if I can, but I've seen the camps off I-35 for years, just haven't been by in a month or two myself.
Then there's also Invisible People which has been interviewing homeless people for even longer. [3][4][5]
1. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCvcd0FYi58LwyTQP9LITpA/vid...
2. https://www.softwhiteunderbelly.com/
3. https://www.youtube.com/c/InvisiblePeople
4. https://invisiblepeople.tv/
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_People_(organization...
>$197.95 a month after 7-day free trial
Holy cr*p! I mean, it's a free market, but that's steep.
Edit: Oh, it's $197.95 on the local currency, thought it was USD. Thanks to others who pointed out it's $10USD.
> $10 a month after 7-day free trial
Right across the street, someone camped on the empty lot at the intersection. They chose this spot because of the outlet that powered the christmas lights. Few days later, the whole thing caught on fire, including the tent. Few weeks later, the city cleaned it up and installed plants and a fence so no one could live there. Well, someone moved on the other side of the road and ran a daisy chained outlet that went over the intersection and into the plug... It also caught on fire.
I was there when the police came in the middle of covid and destroyed all the tents and kicked everyone out. It took a long time, but eventually someone installed a single tent by the library. Then someone else joined. Now there is an entire community that lives there.
Venice is the most confusing place in the world, it has million dollar homes with homeless people tents surrounding them. It's really hard to decide what is the right thing to do.
There was a man that slept right in front of the door of our building. Sometimes when I'm leaving work in a hurry, I'd stumble on him. I got used to it and didn't report him or anything. But then, he started pooping on the stairs. As terrible as that is, it's not my building. But, the owners have found a cruel and effective solution. They installed sprinklers on the stairs and in the parking lot.
These stories resonate with me because those are the people I see outside right now. When you struck a conversation, this is what you hear. Someone who has lived a whole life just to end up here. Young men that look like surfers living the life, they are stuck here. Young ladies wearing fancy clothe and make up, but live in a honda fit. You don't need a mental illness to be homeless here. You can't afford anything anyway.
The reality is this encampment, like many others, is pretty close to hell on earth. It's a site of abject misery, squalor, and violence. People regularly get stabbed, beaten, and raped there. The people in the camp set fires, scream wildly at all hours of the day and night, fight with the fire department, consume hard drugs openly (i.e. meth and fentanyl), and destroy the surrounding environment with an astounding amount of trash and human waste. The park they occupy as well as the nearby library are now unusable by the general public.
An example of similar journalism--here's a cover story from the Madison, WI local paper "painting a picture" of the "troubled" life of a "local activist" after his arrest went semi-viral a few years ago: https://isthmus.com/news/cover-story/in-his-name/
For some reason, "empathy for the unfortunate" has turned into "a complete inability to prescribe moral judgements against anyone who meets a certain set of criteria".
It's a complex issue, and people tend to talk about different things when discussing the homeless problem. As far as I can tell, there are two groups of people - able people who have been displaced due to financial, medical, job-related reasons and are now homeless, who need social support (in the form of cash) to get out of the poverty hole and not fall back in.
And then there's the second group, for whom living on the streets is preferable to entering shelters or rehab facilities due to a crippling drug dependency. This is the group that makes the headlines, mainly because they're the ones making public spaces unsafe (there's a headline every day about an assault in Seattle where somebody gets attacked unprovoked by someone in this second group of people).
What do you do with the repeat offenders who refuse to go to rehab and stay clean? Public spaces should be usable by all.
"Public spaces should be usable by all."
I don't mean to paint with broad strokes here: there are many kind, honest homeless people who really just need help finding a way to live. There are also a lot of shucksters who will tell you exactly what you want to hear.
I mean the guy Coconut looks like he's holding a meth pipe - and personally I wouldn't believe a thing he says. Tells you his ex RAN away with the kids, that his daughter wants nothing to do with him along with his sisters who send him money. He also likes to play games where he lies to people and sees what they'll believe. Seems to take zero responsibility and tells grand stories of the things he's done...
Still sad about the others, but yes some actual journalism would be nice!
> If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t have moved to Texas because things there started taking a turn for the worse.
A few sentences earlier, he said
> After Michelle, I met my second wife, Kristy, in rehab.
I'm not making light of his situation or addiction, but things had taken a turn for the worse long before Texas.
> How do I get money to pay the dues? I build electric bikes and choppers. I get parts from different places.
"Different places." Smoothed-out, indeed. It makes me suspicious of profiles that weren't published.
Oh god think of the property values /s
Because there are often laws or rules against that sort of thing. Taking in a long-term boarding guest who is unrelated to you is against city ordinance in many smaller jurisdictions, and if someone rents (like many do) their leases often prohibit such arrangements.
So now instead of one person looking for housing, you have two or more.
(Note that my reply omits all of the other arguments about how individual action for collective problems is very unlikely to solve the problem in a meaningful way and this is why we have societies and governments, and so on.)
You say there are "often" laws against what I proposed, which is having someone sleep in a spare bedroom.
What percent of Americans do you think are subject to those laws?
What is the homeless population? Something like 0.1% of Americans. How many Americans have bleeding hearts when thinking about the homeless? I dunno, maybe 5%?
So even if 50% of people lived in restrictive housing locations where they couldn't implement it, you'd still only need 4% of the remaining bleeding hearts to take in a single homeless person to solve the problem.
Well, as with many things in life, it depends on the location. The odds of there being a non-familial occupancy limit are a lot lower in Loving County, Texas than they likely are in Harris County, Texas, simply because more population tends to beget more situations where society has decided we need more rules.
While overall percentages are likely low, the percentages in the areas where homelessness is most acute are almost certainly higher. For example, San Francisco's occupancy ordinance says that, in general, the upper limit is two people of occupancy per bedroom. While San Francisco has repealed its rules about non-familial cohabitation, Dallas still has some limits (though they are sparsely enforced).
Further, areas where homelessness is most acute also tend to have a higher percentage of people who rent, since the barriers to building any kind of housing make all but the most expensive kind of housing--rental units with long-term ROI built for "luxury"--the only kind that get built. According to media reports in 2021, people who rent make up 65% of San Francisco's households. Same for Seattle, where 50.3% of households rent their dwellings. It is likely the case that not all of these rental agreements have restrictions on who can move in and at what time, I would bet one months' rent that the overwhelming majority do.
> It's literally thinking "thoughts and prayers" for homeless people will help them, and deriving some kind of smug moral superiority for that.
I agree that simply having empathy but not backing with efforts is the most hollow of gestures. However, simply saying "well, why don't they live with you" isn't helpful. For another reason beyond what we've discussed, why is it automatically the case that someone who is unhoused would want to live with a stranger? There are myriad justified complaints about congregate shelters and short-term transient housing. The answer isn't "find roommates for everyone," it's "build housing at the rate and income levels needed to house people." But for the howling NIMBYs of the group, we could probably do this. So would it not be more effective to get many of the BS rules blocking housing out of the way?
It's not a short-term fix, but we already know what other short term fixes are that aren't people taking in roommates: buying hotels and converting them, for one; tiny house villages with proper doors and sanitary facilities are another. Not sweeping people from one "unsanctioned" campsite to another with nowhere to go is a third.
Housing is complex, takes effort. To build and pay for, and then also to maintain and keep livable and operational.
Many of those homeless have observed inability to take care of things consistently over times. Probably related to impulse control. It's a continual effort/challenge to keep one's life on the 'straight and narrow' to keep the many aspects working. It's hard for the average person - they work at it continually.
Whether, and HOW it's possible, for which percentage of the homeless population, to be able to keep on the 'straight and narrow' and look after a home they have been gifted from others hard work is an important part of the 'the answer' that you talked about.
Otherwise you get the situation of the workers building the homeless expensive buildings that are not treated with respect as homes but instead neglected or actively destroyed over time.
So 'the answer' you proposed isn't realistic. The closest thing to what you said that may actually work is to first build them a home, then maintain it for them financially as well as operationally, and then continually repair that home when the damage gets too bad.
In other words a house with ongoing service agreement. And of course food and healthcare as well. Oh and internet and entertainment, and support when the drugs has caused another problem.
Meanwhile this is like 'retirement' that the hardworking part of the population strives and works their ass off to get to as a 'goal'.
If I understand your proposal of taking lifes major goals for the productive and just giving it to those who don't take accountability for themselves, I wonder if your solution would be fundamentally destructive to society because then why would productive people work, if instead they can get high regularly while other people work for them?
It's far less risky from a personal standpoint to be able to donate and pursue effective altruism that it is to individually (versus a proper social collective) shoulder the responsibility for an entire human being.
And even though this isn't an argument against what you're saying, ask yourself, do you currently shelter a homeless person in your house? Even if you don't know a homeless person, you own a car don't you? Surely you have a moral obligation to go and drive through your city, locate a homeless person and shelter them until they're back on their feet.
Now, don't get me wrong, it looks awful and I don't want unnecessary suffering. And most of all I bet a lot of those people could slot into housed productive lives if there was a smart and well funded platform for them. That's what I'd love...
But I want to see a survey of :
Criminal status. Health issues. Drug use. Mental Health. Education. Age. Sex. Gender. Marital Status. And then aptitude tests in English and Math. Maybe even an IQ test. But most of all a Big 5 personality test.
Many of those answers could lead towards to matching a person with substitutes or hopefully even a job.
My fear is that a majority can never be self sufficient. Who would that be? Low intelligence and low agreeableness. With or without attendant health issues those two dimensions make for a life of pure misery without a rich support network.
There are many steps involved to qualify for housing or to apply for disability benefits and it can be pretty overwhelming to navigate.
One person needed a birth certificate to get ID, they born in a state on the other side of the country, you had to mail forms to apply for the new birth certificate and then you needed an address where it could be sent, and there was a fee for a new one.
My dad’s approach is to not worry about solving Homelessness, but instead to partner with someone and help them solve homelessness in their situation.
Another example was someone who wasn’t homeless (friend of friend), but was facing thousands in monthly medical treatment bills.
He came to meet with the person and noticed a military bumper sticker and it ended up that the person was a veteran and likely qualified for VA benefits meaning it would basically be covered. They had some bad VA experiences in the past and had written them off.
But that person very well could have ended up on the street with such large medical bills piling up.
Is this a representative sample? The article/title certainly suggests this, but the cynic in me thinks that only the interesting stories get published.
I want to see a real survey, not a pile of picked cherries.
1. https://www.youtube.com/c/InvisiblePeople/search?query=drugs
They don’t say it directly, but woven throughout all these sad stories is a lifetime of abuse.
Homelessness is a national problem that manifests itself in places where we take care of the homeless.
It's simply more visible in California because we don't try to brush our problems under the rug and pretend they don't exist.
But there were a number of profiles involving people, usually outsiders, who made decision to come to southern California because they wanted to live near the beach (on a $600/month social security check) or they wanted to break into show business or the music industry.
One young couple from Detroit had a friend of a friend of a friend who was a producer, bought a one-way ticket to LA and when that connection didn't pan out were stuck on the street. Even Lopez, who has done a lot to document the human tragedy on the streets of LA, seemed a little exasperated by these cases which had their origins in unrealistic assumptions about making it big or leading some sort of dream life in LA ... and the burden put on the already overwhelmed system to help people in need.
I also recommend viewing some of the "Invisible People" interviews all over North America and sometimes Europe:
1. Triage first. There's a small fraction of the homeless population incapable of caring for themselves because they've got serious mental issues, and probably need institutional care. Mixing these people in with everyone else is a recipe for disaster.
2. Housing second. Putting people in even minimal housing, like tiny homes, where they can keep their pets too, and have a little bit of privacy and access to bathrooms (shower, toilet) and kitchens (sink, stove, fridge), means they can start getting their lives in order.
3. Jobs third. Once you've got a place to live, you can likely get a job of some kind. This really improves mental well-being, you're part of something else. Doesn't really matter what it is: you have a place to show up to and something useful to do and if you can keep that together, that's a huge help.
Now, even with this there will be failures. Some people will be drug addicts and alcoholics (same thing, really) and won't be able to keep down jobs or keep their places in a livable condition. They probably need health care intervention of some kind.
As far as the plausibility of all this, well, look at every other country will this kind of basic safety net for their citizens which prevents them from falling below a certain line. They don't have the homeless encampments in every city in their country, do they?
But sure, keep on with the tax cuts for the wealthy and the CEOs who make 50X what the entry level workers do and the expensive private health care, and the situation will stay as bad as it is or even get worse. It'll look a lot like Cuba under Batista in the early 1950s, or like Germany's Weimar Republic, and then you'll get either fascist or communist authoritarianism, fun times.