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Comment by breakyerself | Hacker News Reader

It's comforting to think homelessness is caused by people making bad decisions, but it's almost entirely a result of bad public policy. West Virginia has a much higher rate of drug addiction than Portland, but much less homelessness. Because drug addicts in West Virginia can afford housing. Other places have worse access to mental healthcare but less homelessness for the same reason.

Demand in metropolitan areas has drastically outpaced supply. Because zoning laws prevent increasing density and because the government got out of the housing business and put it entirely in the hands of the private market which doesn't like entry level homes because the profit margins are less.

As the cost of housing increases relative to median income homelessness increases. It's basically a control knob.

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Housing is cheap in West Virginia because it's currently experiencing the largest population exodus in the US.

https://apnews.com/article/al-state-wire-west-virginia-lifes...

So perhaps the solution is more affordable senior housing built in lower cost of living areas? If we’re subsidizing the housing, medical care (Medicare), income (Social Security or a bridge to it), you don’t need to build in expensive urban cores; location is not as important. Suburban cores are probably fine if the land cost is reasonable and close enough to public transit.

> So perhaps the solution is more affordable senior housing built in lower cost of living areas?

That's still necessary but we're past the optimum point where that is helpful.

Once folks transition into homelessness, they've lost their income earning ability. Reacquiring employment is much harder after homelessness and much worse for older people. For them, the pool of who will hire them sharply decreases year by year.

We need a modern sort of WPA. Even for some of the mentally ill homeless people there is plenty of work in the city for them to do if we bothered designing a jobs program.

Connections to your community, family, and friends are important. No one wants to go die somewhere far from everyone they know because they can’t afford otherwise. Plus in California you’d have to go remarkably far before apartment prices actually significantly dent. Go way out to lancaster in la county and you still pay high rents, nv and az aren’t too much cheaper now either, so whats left then in the southwest, tijuana?

West Virginia didn’t outlaw new housing like Portland did. American cities largely rejected supply and demand over the last decades, as land-owning interests found alliance, variously, with renting incumbents and the economically naive.

Charleston didn’t make better policy than Salem; it simply didn’t pass the bad ones.

I agree, but also think it's important to remember that the federal government didn't used to just leave it up to the private sector. The government used to be a major source of homebuilding. Had the federal government not abandoned the project of building public housing supply would be higher. They're much better equipped for overcoming local zoning limitations than a land developer.

Federal response used to also be much more in line with this being a housing crisis. They built a quonset hut village that held a couple thousand people in LA after WWII before postwar homebuilding caught up more. That could be done with a pen stroke again today and thousands could be housed tomorrow, but you can imagine the political footballing that would be involved with something like this.

Single family zoning is still a thing in west virginia, its just you have a lack of jobs so there aren’t a ton of people moving there.

Portland recently passed legislation to allow infill of 2- and 4-plexes. There is new construction (corporate and residential) going up everywhere. Your agenda is showing.

Doesn't matter why. Whether it's through policy or by accident affordable housing keeps homelessness low.

I think it’s hard to compare West Virginia to Portland, and conclude that the differences are a result of policy decisions.

can you expand upon that? What else other than policy decisions would have a major impact? demographics?

Wikipedia pegs the largest city in West Virginia as Charleston, pop 48,000. Portland is population 650,000 with over twice the density. Homelessness is an easier problem to solve when you have fewer people and more available land per person.

One's a major regional metropolis built on top of trade and the other is a rural area built on top of coal mining. You would need to add 2 more locations to make it closer to a social science examination, perhaps New Orleans and the Powder River Basin in Wyoming.

No West Virginia didn't make housing affordable through policy, but the fact that housing is affordable and homelessness is low despite high levels of drug addiction highlights that housing costs are a powerful control knob for homelessness and blaming drug addiction is a red herring.

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