Homelessness reaches highest reported level in the U.S. in 2023

Homelessness for San Francisco was a mere PR problem during a state visit. Their is 0 appetite to tackle these social problems. Before implementation comes the actual political will to do something about it.

The one sees in cities are not those at all. Where they have access to shelters or even housing and they prefer to live as homeless instead is overwhelmingly because the housing and shelters are substandard, moldy, they’re exposed to risks of abuse including sexual abuse, they may not be allowed to bring their pets in, they may have addictions that they will be asked to wean off cold turkey (both understandable from the housing/shelter point of view, but it’s also obvious why someone addicted to a substance would not be able to do this), etc.

In my interactions I was genuinely surprised by the really large percentage of homeless who preferred to live on the streets (even in the winter) over decent shelters without many of these risks, because of pets not being allowed. For many the companionship with the pets are quite literally keeping them sane, and there’s no way they’d give them up, and yet the vast majority of shelters have a no pet policy (again, understandable, but it still is a contributing problem).

Now, there are definitely a few homeless who have mental health issues. And unfortunately, for obvious reasons those are the ones most people are likely to encounter (the sane homeless people prefer to stay out of the way and would prefer avoiding people altogether because of the shame and the judgment they’d encounter to begin with). So most people’s (including mine until I started volunteering with organizations that worked directly with homeless people) estimation of homeless people is based on this tiny minority at one extreme. Which is unfortunate because it makes passing actual useful policy that will help the homeless and reduce homelessness and all the issues that come with it, very difficult to bring into force.

Just as an example, one young man I spent a lot of time with had a family that wanted him to come home, but who wouldn't let him smoke weed in the house. I wouldn't have called him an addict by any stretch, but it was something he was unwilling to give up. He was a strong, able bodied guy that could have gotten a job. Despite all of this, he decided he'd rather live on the streets and do what he wants. (Could he have had severe mental problems and be making all of this up? Sure, but I don't believe that he did).

It's actually the biggest reason I stopped volunteering. Over the years that I volunteered, I noticed a steady shift from people who really need and/or want help to a large number of people like the young man I described. When helping out the homeless people you can't pick or choose or make judgements, so you treat everyone equally. But it became very hard to hand out things like sleeping bags to folks like that young man and then see people who really did have nothing unable to get one.

But, yes, in your example if you offer anyone a free million dollar house they will take it over living on the streets, but I don't think that's a very realistic comparison.

Also, to be clear, I'm just some dude. I don't have any realistic answers to fix the problem.

My homelessness exacerbates my mental illness, not only because of the stress of living out of a van but also the inability to have consistent healthcare being that I have to drive to warmer temperatures or cooler temperatures depending on the season.

And the treatments for psychiatric diseases are still stuck back about 50 years. I’ve had to run my own genetics and do my own research to find out what would help me. I mostly done it no help to any doctor or physician or psychiatrist.

Many people act like homeless people don’t want to get better, but I’m doing everything I can and no one is helping me absolutely no one. Psychiatrist who take Medicare have zero investigative initiative and psychiatric awards are for profit hotels for the mentally ill.

If anyone has a positive view of this country and the goodness of the people of this country, I want to dissuade you of that notion.

I am currently parking at Walmart in Palm Springs, California. The amount of wealth I see driving around me in vehicles alone could end homelessness in this country.

When I bring this up here, I’m told that these people just need to engage with some system and they’ll be well taken care of. I have seen no evidence of this myself; as the article and your experience would suggest, it’s just the opposite.

The best someone can have going for them is a family member with money, but the mentally ill tend to burn their last bridges quite often.

Further, while the US is seeing major shortages of mental health care providers, most European countries are even worse off, in large part because there's no class of master's-degree-holding therapists -- you either get a doctoral-level degree, or you just attend some basic courses and call yourself a therapist with no licensing or regulatory bodies governing your practice.

I'd actually argue that the US's system is better than most other western nations' mental health care systems -- which is not a statement in favour of the US, but an indictment of other nations' approaches.

(Source for my data and opinions here: I'm an American immigrant to the UK, and my wife has a master's degree in clinical mental health counselling - she only practised for about a year before she quit because the system is so broken in the US.)

https://oecdecoscope.blog/2021/12/13/finlands-zero-homeless-...

American local governments go out of their way to do everything as if they’re the only ones facing an issue, and I think solving that tendency in American governance is likely way harder than solving anything in the homelessness space.

Even outside of that there are very large downsides for local governments to handle such issues because any successful system would likely attract more people from other parts of the country which would put an even greater financial burden on local taxpayers. Considering cities are cutting services like libraries, etc. it’s a huge disincentive for any local government to enact an actual effective solution.

The problem isn't with high-density affordable housing but with building housing that segregates people based on income level. High-density development is a good thing generally and makes a neighborhood more varied and vibrant in my view.

The problem comes from concentrating poverty into a single location. Instead, the United States should spread it out evenly with affordable housing throughout our cities and neighborhoods. The development patterns in the United States end up with two extremes: single family houses or large apartment blocks, with nothing in between (the missing middle problem). There is a lot of implicit segregation by income there, even at the single family housing level, since different housing developments tend to build roughly the same size house repeatedly in any given development. Rather than building neighborhoods where everyone has roughly the same income level, as the United States does now, it would be better to build neighborhoods that can accept people of all income levels. That way, the problems associated with poverty and similar issues are diluted throughout a city and never concentrated.

What a lot of people don't understand is that the policy inadequacies that led to this point are mostly state-based, and in CA, cities simply couldn't do much about strung-out junkies on their streets once city councils started experimenting with decriminalizing drug use and deprioritizing drug enforcement. It's not like arresting them was a great solution, but it was the only thing available to city police forces, and it kept these people out of the public eye. Once that was removed as a tool, they were pretty much left with "Unless they're actively threatening someone, nothing we can really do."

That's changing, mercifully. Here in SF, a lefty-fringe position took over for a while, wherein homelessness with thought of as some sort of legitimate lifestyle, and society had to be forced to see it so we could all gaze upon the misery that tech money had wrought. After a while though, normal people just get sick of having to step over an unconscious body while taking their kids out for a walk.

While it's tempting to blame Reagan for the contemporary homeless problem, I'm not sure that's really right. Reagan was a giant piece of shit, but I don't find it plausible that his policy decisions in 1980 were the proximate cause of the homeless problem that started taking off in the late 2000s.

Personally I think a lot of the homeless problem comes down to two things that worked together to produce unintended consequences.

1. Opioids

2. Evolving attitudes toward drug use

Opioids are a scourge that created lots of new addicts. At the same time, society finally started realizing that criminalizing drug use was stupid. So the first thing to happen was the easiest: we stopped throwing people in prison. But it's not like these were people who had their lives together in the first place -- they had problems, and previously the prison system is how we dealt with those problems and kept them out of public view. And simultaneously, we were seeing an explosion of addicts thanks for opioids and pharma marketing. So lots more addicts plus lots less enforcement means lots more homelessness.

Now we're in a transitional phase where we're trying to figure out the best way to help these people and maintain their dignity. In the mean time, they live in tents on the street for everyone to see. CA is now codifying the obvious -- these people cannot care for themselves, and law-abiding citizens have a right to use public sidewalks without having to worry that a guy in a tent will think they're trespassing.

But the economy in general is not doing stellar, regardless. This bifurcation of wealth is going to lead, or is at least a marker, of an instability in the system. The fact that the Fed just decided that they’re looking at lowering interest rates means that they can’t lower inflation because the stock market and housing prices will crash. Housing prices increase because money printing increased.

Or rather, unless you put them up in hotels and send them back when done, how do you account for providing them housing when housing is already constrained?

Reading that article would be a start. They could also expand section 8 housing. They could also get rid of the countless nonprofits that siphon money away from the homeless. They could tie Social Security cola adjustments more towards housing and rental prices.

They Institute Medicare for all. They could ban the emptying of large amounts of houses by financial capital firms. Which they are already doing sort of. They could end Airbnb. They could ban making it illegal to sleep in a car or sleep on the street.

Or they can just really care.

I could go on, but again this is not a problem of not having the money, I mean we’re supporting two useless wars right now. This is a problem of people not caring or caring for the wrong things.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/One-party_state