Homelessness is a failure of the Federal government that nobody there is even willing to talk about.
This can't be solved at a local or state level in a country with unrestricted freedom of movement.
This can't be solved at a local or state level in a country with unrestricted freedom of movement.
SF and similar CA cities have set up a program that encourages people to move there because it makes being “homeless” an actual possible lifestyle choice. Even an enjoyable one.
For those in more of a poverty trap situation, Finland has done quite a good job finding the right set of policies for their country to bring levels down so far that most Americans would consider them to have “solved” homelessness.[1]
https://oecdecoscope.blog/2021/12/13/finlands-zero-homeless-...
Reagan’s Legacy: Homelessness in America
https://shelterforce.org/2004/05/01/reagans-legacy-homelessn...
Any program by any state that helps the homeless in a country where you legally cannot create state level borders (and with the homeless you can’t establish residency by definition) would immediately draw homeless people across the country, especially since the homeless strategy in many states is to pay for one way bus tickets to a different state, and quickly overwhelm and undermine what could otherwise have been a successful program.
Any successful program must be funded and implemented at the Federal level.
I don't think you're correct.
Perhaps I am not correct, but what do you think will happen in a few years when we will have a 100 GB neural model able to drive any car in any environment, effectively obliterating 200+ million jobs worldwide? Fairly certain, if we keep the same policies and the same belief-system, homelessness will trend rather high.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/555795/estimated-number-...
[2] 2018, Abdullah Al-Beraidi, "The Trap of Neoliberalism for Gulf Cooperation Council Countries", https://online.ucpress.edu/caa/article-abstract/11/4/63/2579... PDF: https://caus.org.lb/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/The-Trap-of-N...
It is actually one of the few groups I've found that are worse than the socialist class reductionists, who think that every problem exists "because capitalism".
Yes, a land value tax can be a useful policy. But it simply has little relevance to the topic of people who are homeless because of mental issues.
And you bringing up georgism demonstrates a lack of engagement on the issue, and instead an attempt to shoe horn in your favorite ideology into any possible issue.
Homelessness is primarily a function of housing costs, so I'd suggest the land value tax is a lot more relevant than you think.
Just buy all the homeless people bus tickets to somewhere cheap in the middle of nowhere and pay the cheap rent for them there.
Problem solved. And easily solvable using the existing over inflated costs we pay now.
We, of course, don't do that, because it isn't going to solve the problem.
People could be paid to move or otherwise offered lots of benefits and best quality of life opportunities to do so. And paying people to move would be much cheaper than the amount of money we spend now on the problem to overpay for stuff in expensive cities.
The actual reason why we don't do this easy solution, is because home prices arent the sole cause of homelessness.
Simply doing the voluntary, cheap, and easy solution of giving people the voluntary choice to live in a much higher quality home in a low cost of living area simply wouldn't solve the issue.
I just can't wait for the full consequences of automated statistics-based decision-making to develop into realtime embedded robotics, giving rise to the $100 trillion company, evaporating hundreds of millions of jobs, burning down the world as it is, but at least silencing these squeaky, visionless voices: fiat lucrum, et pereat mundus.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism#:~:text=Georgism%20is....
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-net-worth_individual
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord%E2%80%93bondsman_dialecti...
That's what I just said.
But, the fact remains, that if you add a land value tax this doesn't do much to help the person who is homeless because of mental health issues.
55% of homeless were not mentally ill in January 2015 in "the most extensive survey ever undertaken" [1]. Not having a singular worldview is one query away.
[1] https://mentalillnesspolicy.org/consequences/homeless-mental...
Thats my point though. That someone's buzzword ideology or singular solution isn't particularly relevant to this discussion, and that Georgists are the worst of the bunch.
Its actually the only group worse than the internet socialists who just blame "capitalism" for everything.
And georgism is actually worse in that it takes a single topic, that of "land" and just attempts to shoehorn that one concept into everything.
> the Georgist word land abstracts away
Oh thats exactly my point! They take one single word, from an ideology of that was outdated even 100 years ago, and pretend like it applies to every single problem.
What if, instead of that, not everything has to do with "land"? Maybe, different problems are solved by different things and we don't have to stress the definition of the word "land" to apply to literally every single problem.
You just hate operator overloading, I understand. Hope you don't write much C++.
I do have a tendency to overload solutions, since there are so many problems. For instance, just to give you something more to kick, I believe all democratic issues would be solved by three changes in the electoral process:
(i) no political nominations, instead have a population-wide lottery, arbitrarily selecting 10 or so people as contenders [1]; (the principle behind: power should belong to those who do not want it)
(ii) to be able to vote "No", invalidating all the candidates, if majority vote, reducing the mandate duration, if not; (the principle behind: you are not free if you cannot say "No")
(iii) tie the mandate duration to the voter turnout: if only 60% vote, you get 60% of the duration of the mandate, not 100%. (the principle behind: politicians are better if they are changed often)
For China: "When the poverty headcount dropped below 10 percent of the rural population, targeted poverty alleviation and social protection systems started playing a more important role." [2], how neoliberal of them.
Meanwhile, "more than 800 million Amazon trees felled in six years to meet beef demand" [3], who needs oxygen anyway.
[1] Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rural_Employment_Guar... one of the main reasons for India's poverty reduction, "415 million people exited multidimensional poverty in the country in 15 years between 2005-06 and 2019-21", https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/india-lifted...
[2] "Four Decades of Poverty Reduction in China: Drivers, Insights for the World, and the Way Ahead", https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstrea..., p. 65
[3] https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2023-06-02/alm...
Lifting 800 Million People Out of Poverty – New Report Looks at Lessons from China’s Experience
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/l...
90% of families in China own their own home
Will never happen here though.
Try sleeping outside for a year in Phoenix or in Minneapolis. Try getting resources in a sprawling suburb without access to a car. It seems clear that SF, with its dense, walkable layout, access to public transit, and year round moderate climate, would be vastly preferable to most areas of the US.
It seems like it'd be politically palatable to allow places to run homeless programs that are only available to locals. There isn't a downside for anyone.
How will you define a local? What happens if someone lives in a town for 10 years then loses their home. What if theyre not a local but they are a minor? Or if they are an immigrant?
> How will you define a local? What happens if someone lives in a town for 10 years then loses their home. What if theyre not a local but they are a minor? Or if they are an immigrant?
I'm not sure what point you're wanting to make here, but yes. If a group of locals wants to solve homelessness in their area they will need to decide on answers to those questions. Frankly they aren't hard questions. Born in a geographic area or owned a home for 5+ years, yes, no, yes if they owned a home locally.
How do define who gets to be a citizen for a federal response to homelessness? It faces exactly the same problems. America can't afford to provide welfare for all of Asia.
First, homeless people tend to be much less likely to have the wherewithal to prove residency, either due to substance problems, difficulty navigating bureaucracy, or just not having the money to chase down paperwork or a safe place to store it. So hurdles like "being local", essentially whatever it means, could prove to be a huge barrier to uptake of your programs.
Second, "solving homelessness" for just one subset of homeless people may not actually provide the benefit you hope for. You might still have tent cities, RV encampments, people using drugs outdoors, etc. Now the people doing that are from just past city limits and entitled to no support.