Houston moved 25k people from the streets into homes of their own
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
This makes sense but is also surprising, I think most people think of the "chronically homeless" when they hear "homeless".
The loss of SROs is a huge hit that we never really compensated for, and something like that should be brought back or encouraged, even if not in the same form.
It really is worth a watch.
One of the things he breaks down is that there are really three homeless populations:
About 75% of people are "Temporarily Homeless", about 10% of people are "Episodically Homeless", and about 15% of people are "Chronically Homeless".
That last group consumes 60%+ of community resources in addition to costing taxpayers money in the form of consuming police and EMT resources.
Focusing on the chronically homeless is the highest leverage way to spend money. And the housing first model has shown amazing success.
Right, because the people who are most suffering from and also causing social ills are the chronically homeless. Being homeless for a short period of time is still very bad for the person, but I don't think it causes the same level of degradation that long-term homelessness does. And most of the "problematic homeless", the ones involved in drug dealing or chop shops or harassing random passersby, are likely the chronically homeless, not people who've been homeless for a few weeks.
Most use a hacksaw I suspect.
Right. It's unclear if that distinction is understood here.
Yes, I understand that the people doing the stealing and the people running the chop shop are usually not the same people.
It's now clear to me that you did not mean that, and rather meant something like "Homeless people that are street thieves."
A few tools, yes, but secluded space no.
https://abc7news.com/chop-shop-bicycle-theft-san-jose-downto...
The ones I'm more familiar with are for taking apart bikes. I imagine that's much easier to do, in terms of tooling and space, than cars (and also less likely to bring down the cops).
> It's now clear to me that you did not mean that, and rather meant something like "Homeless people that are street thieves."
No. Both the stealing and the taking apart of bikes seem linked to the growing homelessness issue we're seeing.
Chop shops are by definition for taking apart motor vehicles.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chop_shop
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chop%20shop
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chop_shop
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/chop-...
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/chop-shop
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/chop...
That's why the title of the article you link to is
"San Jose neighbors describe bicycle 'chop shops,' share concerns about additional criminal behavior"
with 'chop shops' in single quotes.
I'm sorry we can't agree on a common vocabulary. Take care.
Using the term to describe taking apart bikes has also become common. Language evolves. Don't blame me, take it up with *gestures at all of human history*.
It's true, especially for things like bicycles or small engines.
> Tools are expensive - where do they keep them?
Some of the camps are quite elaborate.
> Are they dissecting cars under bridges?
yes. It's been getting worse around Sacramento for several years now.
> Some of the camps are quite elaborate.
They are. However, tools are expensive thus need to be locked securely. Think: storage unit, not elaborate connected tents.
>> Are they dissecting cars under bridges?
> yes. It's been getting worse around Sacramento for several years now.
Hey, I live in Sacramento too!
I've never seen what you're talking about. Where in Sacramento can I see that?
They're really not. A Dewalt sawzall is a common catalytic converter theft tool. They're not super expensive, and tools are also commonly stolen items. You don't need a storage unit to keep a few tools you use to chop up bikes. (I'm not thinking of a whole vehicle storage yard when I think 'chop shop.')
>> yes. It's been getting worse around Sacramento for several years now.
>Hey, I live in Sacramento too! >I've never seen what you're talking about. Where in Sacramento can I see that?
where can you see homeless camps? they're all over the place. Down Folsom Blvd towards Sac State, the W/X freeway, all over the interchange, right off the 15th St exist into downtown, a few of them along Broadway down towards 99, etc. Those are just ones that I drive by on a regular basis.
It's really bad up along Roseville Rd towards the city dump too. so many RVs and homemade structures.
Up towards the Blue Diamond plant too, and a whole bunch of camps down along and under 160. It's almost unsafe to ride a bicycle across the C st bridge because of all of the camps that are in the parks along the American River. There's also a ton of RVs across 160 from Costco too.
not sure how you have never seen any of this, but it's really quite visible.
What is this based on?
Here's a 20 second video some took on Roseville Rd alone:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Sacramento/comments/glttob/rosevill...
And that's just one stretch of that road. Feel free to drive down that way if you are ever in the area. it's quite eye opening.
Every claim says it's 'reality'; that's why they need evidence.
The evidence is a Reddit video (!) of one road?
Your replies sound very (and unnecessarily) dismissive. I have nothing to prove. The situation proves itself.
https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/is-chop-shop-operating-plai...
I said years ago (during occupy wallstreet), that I think this class of person isn't homeless, they're friendless. Someone shouldnt be homeless for less than a month, with a job, so long as they have a few friends with a couch.
EDIT: Yeah yeah, edge cases, families etc. The problem scales with the quality of friend groups you have. And in the most extreme I'd expect collaborative groups to step in -- eg: for a family of 4 I'd expect my church to collectively solve this.
Relying on friends and family is poor societies safety net, a rich coubtry counting on that took capitalism one step too far.
Perhaps I think I kinda get the angle you're hammering on though? Are you kind of talking similar to the Walmart +EBT, right? ie No employer should get to pay so little that the tax payer subsidizes the worker's basic needs? For that I sort of agree-- albeit IMO a big part of the issue is rising costs of living, not a lack of pay raises... Pay raises are in the locus of control of a business, but a lack of housing supply caused by NIMBYism is not.
Focusing on the episodically homeless may be a better way to prevent more becoming chronically homeless; they may not have as many of the barriers (deeply seated drug addiction, mental illness, fear of being involuntarily committed) that is more prevalent among the chronic homeless, but I imagine they are more likely to quickly burn through their social network good will than the first category.
If I sell my house, decide to hotel/airbnb/etc for a month or two, then move into a new house, would I be considered homeless for those two months? Or because I can afford some form of shelter, not counted?
Serious answer: this always depends on the context.
>If I sell my house, decide to hotel/airbnb/etc for a month or two, then move into a new house, would I be considered homeless for those two months
Define home? Is a home a house? Is shelter a home?
In some cases people think of homelessness as a lack of adequate shelter, but obviously how you define homelessness matters to how it is constituted.
I assume it's counting people that reach out for help in some way, and not just anyone temporarily without a permanent address.
Huh. So whenever a city pats itself on it's back for how many people it has homed, it's very likely the majority were people who were going to get back on their feet anyway.
Seems like a valid point despite the positive result. At the least, a consistent measure should be used when comparing statistics between cities.
It's a "valid point" as far as you're talking about numbers not people but I don't think you should feel so comfortable only going that far.
Edit: off-topic, but amusing that Google is showing me ads for tents on the page. Hurray for world class ML.
Edit: I have only ever applied at apartment complexes owned by regional/national real estate management companies. I do not know what the experience is like for independent properties or small landlords. The fees I encountered were typically $100 to $250, non refundable.
https://www.zillow.com/z/rental-manager/rental-applications-...
All the law wound up accomplishing was to cause landlords to put "we do not accept reusable tenant screening reports" on the footers of all of their web sites.
Gotta get that fee income.
The holding deposit was the largest fee of them all (at $300) and would have been refunded if I was rejected but it's a ridiculous amount of capital required to _apply to_ an apartment.
We broke lease and moved out. Made it impossible to get into anyplace decent since we had abandoned the lease and refused to pay them to get it off our record.
Surprisingly lawyers were completely useless. Unless a doctor certifies that gas caused medical issues they won't touch the issue.
Screw mega rental companies.
p.s. I'm from Spain. As a Catholic this US approach seems crazy and deply unfair to me, as my religion teaches mercy. We all deserve to have a second (and third, and fourth, and n-th) opportunity.
A comment from the source research:
• Although Houston does not have formal zoning, its land-use regulations combine to create a de facto zoning system that replicates elements of a traditional code.
• Houston controls all the same land-use categories as other comparable cities with zoning, but it lacks a citywide overlay zoning map
• Despite the popular perception that Houston’s “lack of zoning” allows for a uniquely untethered housing market, it performed similarly to the cities of Dallas and Los Angeles in new housing construction and housing costs.
• Houston’s one-size-fits-all approach makes it more difficult to produce detailed plans for smaller areas—i.e. along commercial corridors or for different neighborhoods.
• The use of nuisance lawsuits to challenge otherwise legal land use has been challenging to interpret in a city with an informal zoning code. Although the success of these lawsuits varies, this form of land-use challenge still manages to stall construction and increase legal costs for developers.
• Houston’s less formal development system also means that challenging unwanted land uses requires that residents have the financial resources or know-how to take advantage of the existing tools to protect a neighborhood. This leads to disparities in which Houstonians are able to effectively organize and influence development within their neighborhoods.
[1] https://youtu.be/TaU1UH_3B5k?t=281
[2] source research - https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/105220/KI...
BTW, I meant to write "finding", not "funding". Too late to change now though.
still think the comment adds context for how Houston zoning works, so I'm going to let it stand.
Many cities have plenty of existing buildings that could be repurposed and many cities real estate prices are extremely high due to the land already being built out. Very few if any government budgets can afford (nor should they) to place homeless in ultra-expensive markets; it would be inefficient to do this.
Homeless may need to be placed in outlying areas (outside even the jurisdiction of where the homeless originated) where real estate is cheaper. Coordinating this though may be difficult since many homeless bring crime and drugs with them.
This has the causality backwards. Places don't become expensive due to the land being built out. The land gets built out because it's expensive, and in the process reduces the price of housing.
Doesn’t it make sense to have a centralized area with services for mental health, job training, housing to assist the homeless? And doesn’t it make sense to build these facilities in areas with cheaper land costs than downtown areas like San Francisco so that money spent reaches more of the homeless?
After all, the goal is to help these people as effectively as possible, without letting our individual conscience regarding having to move them to another area impact the efficiency of the operation.
Replace 'homeless' with any other minority group and you basically have the ethos of the American real estate market for the past 100 years.
America's strategy of the wealthy simply relocating undesirable groups without actually solving any of their problems is a very short-sighted one (read the classic: "San Francisco's problems today are the rest of America's problems in 20 years")
Also, This is not about a minority group. It is about people with no money, which believe it or not exists across all minority groups.
Homeless people are by all definitions a minority.
I can’t really understand why you are asking the other questions (accidentally replying to another comment?)
Source: bought a house in SF in the past year. The majority of SF's land area is single-family housing. There's as much undeveloped land in Sunset backyards as there is in all of Golden Gate Park - possibly more. Lots of single-family and duplex houses on the two blocks adjoining both N and L train lines.
Not to mention everything south of SF (Daly City, San Mateo, Mountain View, etc) is nearly 100% suburbia with absolute prohibitions on density of any kind.
There should be federal laws protecting your right to build to prevent cities like SF from preventing the construction of housing to try and push out poor people
Source: lived in midtown terrace for years in a serial-numbered home from '56. everything was bad. No functional ground in the electrical panel, plenty of paper-jacked BX wire. actually no insulation. My 1000 sq ft of living space in SF used as much energy in the winter as my 4k ft house in Colorado does, and the climates are way different.
so no, not all SFH in SF are shit.
You're not seeing the full picture because you're not looking at the problem long-term. The cheap housing of today is the expensive stuff built 30-40 years ago that has depreciated. I drive by mansions built in the early 1900s that have become apartments for college students.
Houses depreciate as tastes in style and location shift over the years. I've walked through ghettos where the buildings have beautiful Italianate brick work that probably cost a fortune to build new.
In 30 years, those trendy apartment buildings you see popping up all over will be subsidized housing.
No, but its famously permissive zoning also does not let NIMBYs veto all new construction and make housing utterly unaffordable either.
Homelessness is so fucked in America. Zoning is just some form of terrorism against the poor. Just build the apartments and get it over with.
That doesn't mean that American cities' zoning isn't deeply flawed, but zoning is not itself "terrorism against the poor."
People like you are the problem. Your words are just bullshit excuses, and you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve volunteered with homelessness programs for over two decades, and literally none of what you said has anything to do with the problem. Apartments are not being built plentifully enough to be affordable enough to support people. Period.
Zoning is the biggest perpetrator to the suffocation of affordable housing and rentals. Can you dispute that?
You are the enemy, whether you think so or not. People like you, who shift problems around while not solving any, are doing the poor in this country a disservice. You are the problem. I mean, not you specifically, as I think you think I meant, but people like you with those opinions and strategies.
The reason you think I’m angry is because it hurts to be accused of being irresponsible, you think it shouldn’t be your fault because you haven’t formed any ill will against the poor and should just be excluded from the burden.
Grow up, admit that you’re wrong, and educate yourself about affordable housing and the obstacles it faces and with any brains, you’ll arrive at the exact stance I’m explaining.
Your words are angry, so if you'd like me to read otherwise please reconsider them; right now I'm just getting a spittle-filled rant. Done here—cheers.
This is key to the 'housing first' model, which I don't think has worked well in California where close to half the US homeless currently live.
We see endless positive pr about the huge non profit industry that 'service' the homeless, but having been pretty involved in researching this for a while it is very important to get accurate data and answers.
A 12 billion homeless budget and astonishing sums spent on housing people with serious mental illness and serious substance abuse problems is not working well for anyone except arguably the California homeless industry.
('LA spending up to $837,000 to house a single homeless person A Los Angeles audit finds that a $1.2 billion program intended to quickly build housing for the city's homeless residents is moving too slowly, and costs are climbing' etc)
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/la-spending-837000...
As SF mayor Newsom pledged to 'end homelessness in two years' in 2001 and totally failed after spending vast sums.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/archive/item/A-decade-of-homeles...
The previous SMI/SA/transient model triaged people far more effectively imo, with shelters that ideally routed people to sobriety, mental health and wellness resources, with those responding and recovering being housed.
We currently have shelters in places like LA & SF that are too dangerous and understaffed for terrified newly homeless to stay, an almost total lack of sobriety triage compounded by budgets being spent on housing first pipe dreams and 'safe consumption sites' for opioids and meth. Many of the treatment beds in SF are empty. (Twitter is a good place to follow this slow moving disaster).
Many of the hotels in SF that were commandeered by the state for 'shelter in place' accommodation of homeless are now suing for huge sums as they are completely trashed. Many drug addicts would rather be on the street rather than behind a closed door because if/when they OD they can be seen and revived.
With the end of the rent moratorium and economic disaster we are going to have a fresh wave of homeless working poor who will need housing.
I don't know enough about the Houston model to comment - I hope it's working - but we have a dire situation on our hands that is getting worse by the day and is not working well at all. we have the cartels preying on the homeless as opioid cash cows.
This is a federal level problem. Cities, counties and states are squandering resources on various patchwork solutions. I really hope Newsom isn't the next president because he has spent two decades going in the wrong direction.
.. and those "vast sums" have only gone up since. This year's homeless spending is expected to exceed $1.1Billion (with a "B").
It's built on a swamp after all.
The summer is a brutal mix of heat and humidity that basically runs from May through September with frequent severe storms or tropical events. October and November start to get cold and from December through March it alternates between the 70s and 30s. March and April are nice again as long as you can get out of the rain.
Houston does not exist without HVAC and living without it is difficult and frequently dangerous.
I really don't understand how people are upset about stuff like this. It follows directly from commitments which nearly every voter/homeowner in the community would find obvious and uncontroversial.
* The state should address homelessness by buying homes for people who need them, within the high-cost metros where they are homeless.
* The state is only marginally different from other builders/buyers of housing. It may have preferential rules, but it can't totally bypass the rules, confiscate land, force construction workers to work for free, or anything like that.
* $837k is a very normal amount of money for a house in the region, and we should reject out of hand any changes which would substantially collapse property values.
You want the market rates to be high, and you want the state to pay close to market rates when it houses people, and you want the state to house people who have no ability to pay... ergo the state is going to spend quite a bit of money on each person it houses. How could it be otherwise?
San Francisco is spending $60k per year on each transient living in a tent on top of the various food stamps, general assistance and food deliveries etc. Many of these people are not from California. As I wrote previously this is a national problem not a local one - Hawaii is struggling with transients who have flown in and thanks to previous social networking know where to immediately register as 'unhoused'.
This is a huge intractable problem that needs cost efficient nationwide triaged solutions not complimentary housing in the most expense parts of the country for anyone who wants it.
People experiencing homelessness doesn't seem like an obvious source of cash.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10498607/San-Franci...
Imagine writing a story like that, adding a dozen pictures of random homeless people looking homeless and paragraphs of copy about Biden buying people crack pipes, but not bothering to either check out the claim or to list the sources of the funds, even if only to shame them.
edit: ah, 100% based on some reactionary twitter poster who interviewed the first homeless guy he saw, and must be too lazy to follow up on anything.
Atlanta and Houston were dealing with high number of 'mentally healthy and sober' homeless. They were ripe for rehousing, and the project was a relative success. DO NOT EXTEND THESE INTUITIONS TO YOUR TECH CITY.
Seattle and SF have seen an alarmingly high base/growth of mentally unhealthy homeless with substance abuse issues. Houston's solutions will not work here. There is reason a that residents of NYC do not complain about their homeless populations as much. They are overwhelmingly sheltered and able [3]. On the other hand, Seattle resident complain more about the sub-human interactions (property crime, harassment, flashing, open defecation) caused by for which the proportionally-larger mentally-ill/addicted population. Guess which city had an anomalous jump in meth consumption over a couple of years. It's Seattle [4]
Drugs and mental health are at the center of the homelessness, crime, urban fallout and lack of safety in west coast tech cities. It is a hard problem with no good solutions, but ""compassion"" and abolition are certainly not it. The safety of 'mentally healthy and sober' homeless can only be ensured through the Institutionalization (institutional care or forced social isolation) of the mentally ill and drug addicted.
Homeless shelters, social welfare workers and protection from police harassment are good learnings to pick from other cities. However, Seattle and SF should also consider reopening psychiatric hospitals, forcing mandatory rehab and unfortunately imprisoning repeat violent offenders who refuse care. Some might call it inhumane. But, it provides rehabilitation for those willing to seek care, it provides safety for those who've 'fallen on hard times' and makes the difficult decision to socially-isolate the small but dangerous minority within them. If you have a better solution, I am all ears.
Last but not the least, NIMBYism is selfish. It is okay to be selfish. But do not claim to fight injustices, for then you'd be a hypocrite. It is not okay to be hypocrite.[5]
[1] https://dynomight.net/homeless-crisis/
[2] https://imgur.com/a/KNbgDHr
[3] https://dynomight.net/img/homeless-crisis/coc/NY-New%20York%...
[4] https://dynomight.net/img/homeless-crisis/coc/NY-New%20York%... (sauce : https://dynomight.net/p2p-meth/)
Quoting you for emphasis. The “compassionate” version of addressing homelessness by Seattle and SF is anything but. Put another way: if I were mentally ill, homeless, and endangering myself and others on the street… I wouldn’t want to be left to my own devices, to OD. I’d hope that someone in my life would step up and actually help me through it, even when that help was hard, even when it meant putting me in an uncomfortable place like institutionalization.
Anything else feels cruel.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmPYI8jT328&list=PLs-p47Tpkz...
The proper solution is a long-term attack on the causes, not the symptoms. It is indeed noble to help the homeless who are mentally or physically disabled, or addicted to drugs or alcohol, or unemployable for lack of job skills or education, or abandoned by spouses or family, or simply too old and alone. However, it's unlikely you'll ever help enough of them permanently out of their holes to address the problem in any substantial way.
Instead, the first step has to be a truly intensive effort to educate and convince children, beginning at about ages 6 to 7, and continuing through high school, that they must do five things to have a successful and happy life: they must keep their bodies healthy and avoid addiction (because bad food, lack of exercise, unsafe sex, and using drugs or alcohol will disable you), they must continuously learn job skills that keep their labor in demand (otherwise you can be tossed out of work at any time), they must live within their means and know how to save money (because living on credit can make you a slave for life, and no one else will provide a good enough safety net for you if you can't earn a living), they must be self-sufficient (otherwise if your spouse or lover should disappear, the cupboard will be bare, and it will be especially tough if you have dependent children), and they must stay honest (otherwise you'll turn to crime, wreck other peoples' lives, and end up in prison).
You would think parents and our education system are already doing a decent job of indoctrinating our children about those important facts of life, and monitoring them to make sure they don't waiver, but we're not. If we make sure our growing children truly understand and follow the above five principles, I guarantee the next generation will have a much smaller percentage of people falling into homelessness, and we'll also enjoy a lower crime rate. There's no reason that trend couldn't be repeated for future generations.
Our free society makes it easy for us to make bad personal decisions, and decent education and good parental guidance aren't guaranteed, so it seems our country will always be doomed with a certain amount of poverty. Even when we do the right thing, unpredictable disease and our abominable lack of affordable health care for everyone guarantees some of us will at least fall victim to mental or physical health issues. However, the vast majority of causes of homelessness can easily be targeted and attacked and eventually overcome, if we just do it in a preventative frame of mind, instead of the typical too-late band-aid approach.
What it will achieve is enraging the greater populace at the supposed decadence of the homeless and sharpening a sense of moral superiority over the homeless, quenching political support for any tangible aid.
You dont have to come at this from a position of judgment, superiority, or avoiding aid. That is a false binary.
The idea is pretty simple: You need the disadvantaged to be active participants and stakeholders in building a better future. You can't do it without them.
In the case of homelessness, it points to earlier intervention. If someone becomes a teen drug addict, parent, and felon, their chances of escaping poverty are quite poor.
Third parties cant control behavior and choices throughout a persons life, but you can help them make smart choices and build the skills to do so.
This reminds me of designers who craft poorly designed interfaces which statistically guarantee that some portion of their users will make "mistakes". and then insist that users are exclusively at fault.
There are structural issues in the US which greatly exacerbate the problem of homelessness and which have nothing to do with what moral teachings the homeless may or may not have received. If anything, the vituperative contempt for the homeless illustrates a moral failing in a different population.
> You dont have to come at this from a position of judgment, superiority, or avoiding aid. That is a false binary.
In my view, the comment I was responding to did precisely that — came at this from a perspective of avoiding aid — by asserting that focusing on anything other than personal morality was bound to fail: "However, it's unlikely you'll ever help enough of them permanently out of their holes to address the problem in any substantial way."
>In my view, the comment I was responding to did precisely that — came at this from a perspective of avoiding aid
They acknowledged that providing aid to adults is indeed good, but critiqued it as insufficient.
It is indeed noble to help the homeless who are mentally or physically disabled, or addicted to drugs or alcohol, or unemployable for lack of job skills or education, or abandoned by spouses or family, or simply too old and alone
Instead, the first step has to be a truly intensive effort to educate and convince children, beginning at about ages 6 to 7
1) Importance of health and avoiding addiction
2) Value of education and marketable skills
3) The dangers of financial debt
4) Self sufficiency as a goal
5) Avoiding crime
I do, insofar as I believe the moralistic emphasis of the status quo is counterproductive.
> Do you think that this education and empowerment is unnecessary or somehow detrimental?
Yes, I believe that such moralistic emphasis is detrimental. I believe that emphasizing personal responsibility while deemphasizing structural factors is hypocritical and morally bankrupt.
To those failures who are the supposed targets of the teaching, they learn from the hypocrisy of their teachers that "personal responsibility" is just a cudgel to beat them with while they are being pressed down. To those who succeed, it induces a crippling inability to acknowledge the role of luck and environment in their success, and a corresponding tendency to "other" society's failures.
> They further advocated for providing aid that is missing,
The only "aid" that they advocate is moral teaching — which does nothing for the homeless, but gives people who are not homeless a narcotic bloom of superiority.
It seems like you are interjecting morality again into our discussion where none was included. A deficit of personal empowerment IS a structural and environmental factor. Not the only one, but it is one of the most important if not the most important in determining outcomes.
If you take a poor, abused, and neglected child and teach them they can not and will not amount to anything because of the material conditions of their birth, you are actively damaging their outcomes.
If you take the same poor, abused, and neglected child and teach them that that there is hope and clear goals which will get them out of poverty the vast majority of the time, you are actively improving their outcomes.
This doesn't require judging anyone. This is actively improving environmental factors which lead to success. The impacts are statistically robust and well understood.
Luck and environment played a huge role in my success. A huge environmental factor was parenting and education which made me understand how those 5 factors impact success, and instilling a belief that it was within my reach if I stuck to them.
This elevation of personal empowerment over all other factors is indistinguishable from an apologia for the status quo — a system can be corrupt without limit and it still applies. Even if 99.999% fail, it's true that for the 0.001% who succeed, a sense of personal empowerment was almost certainly "one of the most important if not the most important in determining outcomes".
> If you take a poor, abused, and neglected child and teach them they can not and will not amount to anything because of the material conditions of their birth, you are actively damaging their outcomes.
And if you actively damage their outcomes, by e.g. refusing under any circumstances to even discuss the role that the cost of housing has on homelessness let alone contemplate a policy response, you are actively damaging their outcomes.
Dial up the cost of housing, get more homelessness. It's as if an sudden epidemic of "lacking personal empowerment" bolts through the population!
It may be a personal choice that causes unwanted pregnancies, but putting the failure of teens to avoid getting pregnant on their moral failing has been a massive fail for decades until we fixed the social infrastructure around it instead to make doing the right choice easier.
Teen pregnancies were very high when many women were getting married at 18 and giving birth at 19. Birth rates for younger teens, <16, have never been higher. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/02/why-is-the-...
It makes sense to me that someone taking a roughly libertarian position on homelessness would be laissez-faire about birth control.
The approach of offering homeless aid exclusively in the form of personal empowerment coaching still seems to me analogous to abstinence-only sex ed.
It is not an apologia, it is a condemnation of the status quo. If 99.999% fail due to lack of personal empowerment, that is still a failure of the system, not the individual.
I am saying this is a significant problem, it is not the fault of the individual, and the system should work on a policy response to address it.
I don't think we can continue if you keep attacking a straw man position I am not making.
I don't think we can continue if you disagree that hopelessness, despair, and feelings of worthlessness are problematic.
A telling miscommunication appears to have occurred.
In my mind, I granted the normal distribution of personal empowerment to that that population — and therefore, the vast majority of the failures were attributable to something else (the "corrupt" system). In the fight to be part of the 0.001% successful, a sense of personal empowerment was necessary but not sufficient — lots of people believed in themselves, but belief alone was not enough.
But you seem to have thought I meant all 99.999% of them failed due to lacking a sense of personal empowerment. All the successes possess a sense of personal empowerment, and all of the failures lack a sense of personal empowerment.
I assert that ascribing success overwhelmingly to personal empowerment is an apologia for the status quo because it serves as an excuse to change nothing.
> I don't think we can continue if you disagree that hopelessness, despair, and feelings of worthlessness are problematic.
Homeless people feeling hopeless is a problem. Responding to that with moral teaching is futile if your goal is to do something about homelessness, although effective if your goal is to flatter the successful that they are virtuous.
Yes. But mostly the personal behavior of the ruling class and the super-rich.
Hoarding ludicrous amounts of property/wealth/resources should be just as unacceptable as a crack habit, as it's more harmful to society as a whole.
Homes should primarily be homes, not investments.
Elon Musk isn't why you went to prison for assault or selling fentanyl.
So, what we already generally have in many places in the US? We simply start with building more housing and reducing or limiting zoning only allowing single family detached homes. It's that simple to begin with. Moral grandstanding accomplishes nothing however.
I disagree. Finland is the only country in Europe where homelessness is steadily declining. The key to this success is Finland's "Housing first" approach (which you might call "attacking the symptoms rather than causes").
Here's statistics for you: https://www.ara.fi/download/noname/%7BE488F72B-AC94-4472-B52...
Maybe they are doing better at treating the root cause, and because of that their symptomatic treatment can actually help.
>Ninety-three percent of Finns graduate from academic or vocational high schools, 17.5 percentage points higher than the United States, and 66 percent go on to higher education, the highest rate in the European Union. Yet Finland spends about 30 percent less per student than the United States.[1]
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-s....
I imagine you would find similar differences in the other two categories.
No, I wouldn't have to show that, because we're not comparing the percentage of homeless people in Finland against the percentage of homeless people in the U.S. The data point I argued was "homeless rates are going down, and this program has something to do with that". You are implying that homeless rates are going down because education completion rates are high. That's nonsensical. If one metric is constantly high, that doesn't explain why another metric is changing. A proper argument would be "homeless rates are going down because education rates are going up". That argument could make sense (if it were true, which it is not).
> Maybe they are doing better at treating the root cause, and because of that their symptomatic treatment can actually help.
No, they aren't doing that. As I already explained in my previous comment, Finland's strategy against homelessness is rooted in "Housing first", which is a "treat the symptoms" approach to homelessness, not a "treat the root cause" approach to homelessness.
You are still ignoring the fact that Finland has already cured the root cause.
I am implying that education is a pre-requisite for any housing first approach
No. If Finland had already cured the root cause, then why did we have homelessness when Housing First was initiated?
Again, a steady metric does not explain a changing metric.
> I am implying that education is a pre-requisite for any housing first approach
No it is not, and that is completely missing the point what "housing first" means. Even the name is intended to contradict your approach. It's not "education first, then housing". It's "housing first", as in, "over here we treat the symptoms not the root cause".
A corollary to that is the 3 things one must do to stay out of poverty:
1. Graduate from high school. 2. Get a full-time job. 3. Don't have kids until you get married after the age of 21.
50% of the homeless population are/were clients of the foster care system, so I can't imagine the parents are doing a great job.
Your advice (health, addiction, savings, education) is basically, "just make more money!" and you won't be homeless.
>However, the vast majority of causes of homelessness can easily be targeted and attacked and eventually overcome...
So, which is it then? Can we end nothing, or can we overcome most of it?
This will be as successful as Nancy Reagan’s campaign to “just say no to drugs”.
I think @sema4hacker makes some excellent points about the lack of guidance for children and youths having been through the hell of chasing a child around on the streets to try and save them. Had I tried to educate that person when they were young maybe they would still be here and his mother wouldn't be a broken person.
I didn't mean the question as an ad hominem. I just thought it was interesting. I think people's socioeconomic background strongly affects their beliefs on how other people should behave in order to become successful (or in this case, perhaps simply: not homeless.)
But nobody is claiming that. You're right, it is nonsensical!
I think the question is: To what degree does one's wealth affect how one believes others should behave to achieve similar success and/or not be homeless?
Have you ever seen the Emo Phillips bit about whether someone about to jump from the Golden Gate bridge is an increasingly specific kind of Christian? [1] The challenge with trying to indoctrinate others with your value system is like standards there are so many to choose from. [2] In fact because there is no right answer and can never be, we've intentionally separated church and state in the US just to end the debate before it starts. Whether everyone agrees with that (and clearly some do not) is a separate issue.
Besides the fact that imposing your moral beliefs on the population is untenable, it also does nothing to address those already in need. Houston isn't trying to solve poverty, or immorality or anything else akin to boiling the ocean. They're just trying to get as many people as they can off the streets and into a stable living situation. As with anything, this also requires active participation from the recipient, which is why there is and always will be a subset of people who choose to stay homeless, whether or not that's objectively a rational decision. Issuing "we should all just" edicts won't do anything for them or change their behavior. All we can do is try to help.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3fAcxcxoZ8 [2] https://xkcd.com/927/
Why not just make housing cheaper to build? Zoning, building codes, permits, environmental regs, etc...none of these need apply to single family homes..and people could build a tin shack...there ya go...americans think the vast favelas of latin america are a horror show, but if you watch youtube videos of westerner youtubers who go in them and report, it's really a good place to live...
I would want to hear ideally from people who actually lived there and now live in other places. These are the people that know the truth about what it is like and also have a basis for comparison. A person of unknown journalistic integrity editing a series of interview of locals on his tax-break vacation who is incentivized by view counts isn't compelling.
Good place to live.