Hacker News Reader

Comment by LoganDark | Hacker News Reader

$1,000 a month won't even get you a small apartment where I live. You'd need double that just to rent one. Denver citizens must be lucky.

My current home costs around $1,600 a month, utilities not included.

View on HN

You don't need a small apartment to get out of homelessness, you just need a room What's the cheapest shared room (roommate wanted) where you live?

e.g. https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/roo?max_price=500#search...

You obviously have never lived with unstable people who often live just above the poverty line. There’s a reason why share houses and shelters don’t work.

We live just barely above that line, and recently got $600/mo of food stamps revoked, which did an order of magnitude more harm than the pitiful raise that got us there.

Means testing is a nightmare. Sorry to hear about your situation.

The abrupt cutoff for benefits is one of the most inept things the government has ever done. A reduction in benefits should always be less than the increase in income.

I should qualify for my own benefits, theoretically. I'm autistic and bed-ridden, but don't get any of those benefits, because they want me to provide evidence of an active, ongoing job search, as well as previous rejections that show attempts to get a job.

I don't want to do that. I am not someone who needs to tire themself out working for the rest of their life. Yet that is what I would need to do in order to qualify for any support.

I have burnt out of at least 2 jobs already because of severe ADHD and this is just totally soul-sucking and terrible.

I have diagnoses of ASD and ADHD. They know I have both. Soon they'll know I also have DID. Maybe at some point they'll realize how much I need the help.

Anyway, sorry for veering off-topic.

I totally grant you that $1000 doesn't solve long term homelessness driven by drug addiction and mental illness. That group likely wouldn't spend the money on housing anyway.

But it does offer a viable solution for transient homelessness for working poor who might have lost a job, become disabled, been evicted, etc..

I suppose the cheapest room I can find here is $700 a month. Which wouldn't be unlivable, I suppose. There was a group in the study that only got $50 a month, after all.

The hope is that having more money can bootstrap a virtuous cycle which allows them to generate a more livable income. The old adage "you have to have money to make money" is not entirely incorrect.

Yes, it's not enough. But read the interviews to see how it helped: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iX4U46CdPIjjQtq0-P5jlHNfloc...

”We were already looking for a spot because I got into a housing program. [...] For the month, I need $3,000 to get through and live paycheck to paycheck. But then getting approved and accepted for it [DBIP], it was definitely a relief. I wasn’t going to have to come up with all the money for the apartment."

"I was actually able to pay off my debts literally just in time for me to get into a place, and I got the receipt just in time saying that I paid off my debt so that I was able to be accepted into housing."

"It's going to rent, to my car, to be able to afford living. To be able to go to this little program I’m going to for 22 weeks [of job training], to be able to make 50-60k a year. For me, that’s living life. That’s where I need to be. [...] Right now, the way I’m striving, I just feel proud."

Along with sharing rent with roommates, homeless people can and do still work and combining that with a basic income can get them over the hump and into stable housing where a single job sometimes can't.

You may have a higher standard of living than a recently homeless person. Also consider that this may not be their only income, and they might share some of the burden with others.

> Denver citizens must be lucky.

LOL

1000 a month can easily get you an illegal room in some basement or someone’s adapted garage, with enough money to spare for a good outfit, a workable phone, and an internet subscription to start applying for jobs.

Your takeaway from this should not be Denver has a low COL. It does not.

Even if it did, the cost of moving would be far too prohibitive for me. Even moving between two apartments in the same complex, when someone flooded our building, would have costed over $5,000 if we hadn't made their insurance cover it.

This is true, but it can often be combined with income from working, and often people will share housing. (Students, for example.)

Almost everywhere if you move little further from the center of the city and from the subway, the prices become more reasonable.

Tell me of this denver subway...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com