Unconditional cash transfers reduce homelessness | Hacker News Reader

Unconditional cash transfers reduce homelessness

pnas.org

46 pointssebg40 comments

“The specific bias in the current context is the tendency for the public to think that homeless individuals will increase spending on temptation goods (alcohol, drugs, cigarettes) when given the cash transfer compared to people who are not homeless. This bias can favor the provision of paternalistic forms of aid over more agentic forms of aid, thus presenting a barrier to the cash transfer policy.”

Earlier in the paper:

“Our preregistered screening criteria were: … [history of homelessness less than 2 years and] nonsevere levels of substance use (DAST-10), alcohol use (AUDIT),and mental health symptoms Colorado Symptom Index (CSI) based on predefined thresholds. These screening criteria were used to reduce any potential risks of harm (e.g., overdose) from the cash transfer.”

… Are you kidding me? Talk about hypocrisy.

I guess they weren’t testing for whether the bias is true.

Though yeah, it’s a bit wishy washy to call something a bias and not real, then design your test to avoid challenging the notion.

A bias could still be present though. A phenomenon can exist but be overestimated or underestimated in degree due to bias.

It’s much worse than wishy-washy. It’s purposefully deceitful.

People don't want to support cash transfers because they think that the beneficiaries will blow it on drugs. But they're wrong: if you eliminate anybody who would blow it on drugs, then that problem doesn't occur at all!

I think I've also heard of similar experiments where a significant number of the people who used drugs actually quit using drugs once they got other options.

I don't have a link, though. Just a vague memory of reading about this once.

Yeah, and we couldn’t disqualify people from UBI anyways, as that could mean banishment from an UBI-inflated economy. They might be unable to afford even the most basic necessities when the economy adjusts to everyone’s increased spending power.

So with UBI will come a certain amount of UBI spent on blow. And maybe that’s fine if overall humanity is better off. It doesn’t need to be perfect, just considerably better.

I am rapidly losing all faith in "science" as it is currently practiced. Between the overwhelming bias for only producing "correct" findings and outright fraud for professional advancement, and the coverup that frequently occurs in both cases, I think the level to which good intentions are presumed and trust is vested is neither deserved nor constructive. We are at a point that to me seems familiar as in many other industries when we empowered financial and technical agencies to self-certify only leading to unbelievably brazen deception with disastrous outcomes.

It is a shame to see so much potential wasted while years tick by that we will never get back.

"Public thinks homeless will spend cash on drugs, this is false. Our trial excluded people with drug issues, and we found no evidence cash was spent on drugs".

Well done!

Gotta get an ethics board to approve your study, which might affect the efficacy of the study, which might be an ethical concern. Oh dear.

Interested to see this study redone, but also toss them a handful of narcan and a wearable AED.

Are you saying they are wrong and the general public actually approves of unconditional cash transfers to homeless people /as long as they don’t have drug issues/?

I don’t personally see much support for giving cash to homeless people of any kind so I’m not seeing the hypocrisy in the statements here.

Do you support unconditional cash transfers to homeless people who are not drug users as defined by this study?

At a small scale this might work, as in a study with cases=50 and controls=65, in a largish metropolitan area. Can we see the result of an experiment where 100% of the homeless (say, 3-5% of the population in a given area) are given cash and have to compete for currently available housing? It just becomes a subsidy for landlords at that point.

Can you reduce homeless at scale with just cash and without building more housing? If not, why not do the experiment of building a ton of housing and tracing impact on homelessness?

Likely rent seekers will soak up their gains. We need to build for density and transportation to match.

I agree we need to build more cheap housing. But one could also ask: why don't we already build more cheap housing? Probably the answer is that nobody's able to pay for it. Making people able to afford cheap housing creates a market for cheap housing makes builders build cheap housing.

But sure, cut out the middle man and let the public sector build good cheap housing.

I don’t know what it looks like overseas, but in Australia a solid 20% of housing stock was built by governments right up until the 1980s when ‘the market’ was tasked with providing housing and governments withdrew.

We don’t build more cheap social housing entirely as a policy choice.

Expensive housing is more profitable than cheap housing. Cheap houses tend to get bought by real estate speculators looking to drive up the price of housing. I suspect that much of the housing scarcity is artificial.

That’s also a problem with a lot of the social safety net initiatives like UBI — small scope of the studies. It’s very difficult to say how these measures could affect the macro economy. It would be easier to pass/ratify laws for them if their large-scale effects were clearer.

For example, we don’t know if UBI would just result in more inflation. It could inflate prices so much that those ineligible would be in unbelievable poverty — perhaps not being able to participate in the economy at all. Or maybe not. It is very difficult to tell.

It's not really an experiment, but I read about these dudes on twitter a few years back: http://madhousers.org/shelter

Apparently, it works pretty well. I assume there's other groups doing similar things.

We used to call unconditional cash transfer charity.

Not sure I agree, my understanding of most charities is that they aren't unconditional, and they don't transfer cash, but other things instead.

That said, charity in the broader sense of "giving people stuff" would apply, but there are affective (i.e. psychological, emotional, and social) issues with this. Instead, mutuality and mutual aid focus on building relationships between people where they both provide acknowledged value to each other. This solves issues such as saviour/unworthiness complex, by binding people together in relationships where they support each other, which are more durable in the long term.

Why overcomplicate it? It’s money gifted for a good cause — charity.

I disagree. Americans think that this is charity for which you should show gratefulness and humility but in my country a social safety net is a right that is given to each citizen.

Unconditional cash transfers reduce the incentives to work and develop, as they create the feeling of being covered by the State for life

Believe it or not people don’t actually like being a burden. People like feeling like their lives and actions are worth something.

Believe it or not, there is people out there that consider that almost a human right

That what? Not starving?

To receive for life cash transfers from State

You're extrapolating your own experience to the entire population. I can assure you there are people out there who are happy to be burden. I know several.

The big question is: do you want to cripple your society in order to avoid supporting those people?

I don’t think those are the only two options.

Maybe not, but it's a surprisingly popular option. Policy-makers are often so afraid that someone undeserving might be helped by a policy that they'd rather hurt deserving people or spend more money to weed out the undeserving people that it would cost to just help them.

Doubt that. People will always want more than just a basic life.

If you want the latest yeezy shoes then you better get a well paying job even if you got a basic income.

That’s a potential problem with UBI. Prices could inflate to a level where if you want food you better get a job. Ultimately, UBI doesn’t create more resources in an economy - it just makes more nominal cash flow through it. Not to mention that the capitalistic imperative to maximise capital growth will definitely take advantage of a cash-rich market.

And this is a problem because what happens to those who then don’t qualify for UBI? How would they be able to afford the bare necessities? Withdrawing UBI from someone could mean banishing them from the economy, to a socioeconomic class of unimaginable deprivation (“cannot afford water nor food, nor any shelter, nor clothes” type of deprivation).

Good point, in regards to concerns about inflation devaluing UBI's can be addressed through progressive taxation, which ensures fair funding without burdening the less well-off. Targeted government spending and investments in essential services can also mitigate potential inflation while promoting economic growth. Crafting effective UBI policies involves striking a balance between economic considerations and social support systems to maximize positive outcomes.

Looks like you got some common questions that maybe this site can explain as well.

https://basicincomeaustralia.com/faq/

How does progressive taxation stop inflation? “Effective UBI” policies is the goal but doesn’t describe a solution to any particular problem.

My worry is that as long as every city with desirable jobs is housing constrained, UBI will basically be a subsidy for landlords and existing landowners.

It's not a silver bullet for everything, but it will at least avoid the effect of people picking non optimal jobs just because they need food on the table.

Ideally this will be combined with good urban design to encourage higher density living and good public transportation with a decentralized city layout.

>Ultimately, UBI doesn’t create more resources in an economy - it just makes more nominal cash flow through it.

You're assuming a competitive equilibrium. At that point you have reached optimality and it is impossible to improve, which then leads to the apparent conclusion that doing anything at all can make things only worse, not better.

"The current allocation of money is perfect. Optimality demands that these people stay homeless."

Only to then be disproven by this study as it proved net societal savings, which is impossible under the competitive equilibrium model.

The thing about assuming competitive is that it implies either that rational actors are non deterministic turing machines or P = NP.

> You're assuming a competitive equilibrium

No. That’s a different topic. I’m saying that it doesn’t matter how we distribute money — there is a finite number of real value in an economy.

And this is not an opinion, it is a fact in Argentina since 2001

I think it's an opinion, not objective fact. I respect your opinion but as a fellow argentinian I don't think this is true in every case, or even in most cases.

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