Hacker News Reader

Comment by losteric | Hacker News Reader

You're acting like people aren't emotionally attached to their home cities.

Most people are born and raised in the same city or area their whole lives. The adult illiteracy rate is 20% and less than 40% get any kind of 4 year degree. Options are limited. People will cling to hope and the life (and community!) they know, until they're broke and lost their job... and at that point, they straight up can't move to Fresno and start that Walmart job. Walmart wouldn't hire them without a local place to live, and cheap Fresno landlords wouldn't rent to someone without a local job. Neither Walmart nor the landlord has an incentive to change, they're doing just fine exploiting the local Fresno populace.

Low-skill/low-pay life situations are a completely different reality than what well-off knowledge workers know.

View on HN

> You're acting like people aren't emotionally attached to their home cities.

Respectfully, you misplace the responsibility. When people go through a rough breakup, we don't call for the person experiencing attachment anxiety to be housed with their ex just because it would make things easier for one party at least temporarily. Life is full of hard moments and challenging choices. The fact that something is hard doesn't mean giving up is the healthiest path that the society should encourage.

Talk to people who work in social services. The fact is, visibly homeless (street homeless, most often addicted people) are in this situation not because they have tried everything else and have no choices. They don't seek employment and often refuse help. They are not part of a community (unless you consider other homeless people they randomly ended up living close to their true community).

As usual, the discussion about homeless is kind of pointless without clarifying which segment we are talking about. Homeless families with children, disabled non-addicts, etc are not someone I include in this discussion, and I never see them living on the street.

With all due respect, I was responding to your original highly reductionistic take

> Do you want me to solve this for you? Here you go:

As if your list was anything close to a viable solution for someone already homeless and addicted.

With this post, you're right - it is absolutely more complex. There are absolutely families on the street, they're just more likely in cars or squatting rather than assaulting people.

Beds can be located in places that lock people out of employment or introduce them to toxic elements... and becoming unhoused by itself causes mental health issues in a society which does nothing but stigmatize that from birth to adulthood.

Even within treatment, skilled help is chronically burned out and mediocre help is worse than a rubber duck.

There's a need for structural reform, from policing through sentencing and voluntary/mandatory rehabilitation, as well as public education. Not to mention real estate bottlenecks that drive up prices for everone from low-income odd-job workers, to the city police force, to building new institutional facilities, to staffing social services.

Agree with all your points. We just need the people in power to recognize and act on that, instead of pandering to the extreme vocal minority and throwing money at an industry that has no incentive to make itself more efficient and effective.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com