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Comment by penumbragement | Hacker News Reader

I have to say that I find little pragmatism in asserting that either tent encampments or more permanent housing may be of more worth, when the fact is that both are necessary to combat our homelessness issue as it exists right now.

Real people, right now, are living in tents in the woods somewhere because that's all they can afford. Many, if not most, are hiding there in fear of being kicked out of yet another living space. Tent encampments remedy this issue.

Just to be clear, I am speaking of government organized encampments, with access to clean water and toilets. Not just tons of tents in the middle of some street somewhere.

There are many, many days in the year...surely some of them can go to solving homelessness from both vantage points.

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> Real people, right now, are living in tents in the woods somewhere because that's all they can afford.

Living in a tent in the woods isn't even that bad, not if it's a real wilderness that can provide game for hunting and vegetation for foraging. You've just gone native, big deal.

But living in a tent in a concrete jungle is a completely different situation. There's no natural habitat to be had, the resources are all locked away behind commercial gatekeepers. When you try go native in an urban center you're for all intents and purposes becoming a criminal. Instead of picking berries and killing rabbits, you're stealing from vendors and/or residents.

I don't think tent encampments are appropriate for urban centers. The big SRO buildings always struck me as the tent encampment equivalent for an urban center. But even if you make those available to the homeless, you still need to give them access to some kind of currency as that's the key required for accessing resources controlled by the gatekeepers. Otherwise you'll just have a building full of thieves.

I thought it was pretty well established at this point that homelessness isn’t a financial issue, but instead a mental health / drug abuse issue?

It’s not either / or and that list isn’t exhaustive. People who don't make enough money to stay housed may be in that situation for all kinds of reasons: market forces, mental health, addiction, disability, disease, extremely bad luck.

And it's shameful that greater society allows those causes to result in this outcome. At least that's at the root of my stack when I backtrace through my reaction to homeless encounters: shame and helplessness.

That's not a universal truth but rather a statement about one slice of space time. A recession is coming, so that might increase the numbers of homeless.

I'm pretty linked into to those providing social services to homeless in the bay area.

> I thought it was pretty well established at this point that homelessness isn’t a financial issue, but instead a mental health / drug abuse issue?

The answer to this is a definite "no". There is a meaningful sub-population of homeless with mental health / drug abuse problems for whom financial and housing support seems insufficient, but they're not the only kind of homeless and in places like the Bay Area they don't even make up the majority.

I encourage you to look at this graph[0] showing a correlation between housing prices and homelessness. But also if you are in the Bay Area, going to some of these camps and meeting people can be very instructive. I've been to a few and most people I encounter, while not the most together people you'll ever meet, many were obviously employable just not at a rate that affords housing and in the Bay Area.

[0] https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr...

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