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Comment by pseudalopex | Hacker News Reader

> Most homeless are elderly and mentally Ill. The solutions are institutionalization and retirement housing/pensions but no state did this after Reagan and instead made homelessness an issue to ignore.

Most homeless people are working age and homeless under a year. Costs of living are the strongest correlates of homelessness rates.

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>Costs of living are the strongest correlates of homelessness rates.

I suspect this is strongly skewed by half of all homeless living in California where they seem to be mostly from out of state and coming here for the weather, lenient drug laws, and many social benefits. You can just ask them and they will tell you--most of them are from red states where they'd be locked up for what they do here. As such, they came to California because they can get away with it and it's the easiest place to survive on the bottom as a drug user since you have temperate weather and lots of social programs giving you money, clothes, tends, and food. Why be homeless in California rather than move somewhere you can actually afford? It's the drug laws like Prop 47 that decriminalized hard drugs and theft up to $950 per incident (not even per day).

Recent research shows this largely isn't the case: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/california...

You seem to be under an assumption that unhoused people are making detailed plans to travel cross-country to do drugs in California. As opposed to the reality that most unhoused Americans migrate here because our laws and weather are a bit less cruel.

Seems fairly obvious that outlawing sleeping on the streets will make homelessness itself a defacto crime, which will ultimately benefit the prison industrial complex by providing a whole new stream of nearly free labor, thanks to the 13th Amendment. Tack on the housing swiftly becoming unaffordable almost anywhere in the country (major metropolitan areas especially) and you’ve got a recipe for dystopian profits.

I became homeless in SF 6 years ago, probably would have been out after like a year if not for pandemic. Same program over and over, feels like I'm about to get off the street again 3 hours outside SF. Housing here is so reasonable. $1,000 for a 2 bedroom right in town. Plenty of employment. Not saying where I am until I'm off the street. But I've been working on survival guides and my 'Homeless Guy' vlog videos are popping my channel off.

We really need to get homeless people distributed to small towns. Centralizing them in big cities is so backwards. There are indeed 2+ strata of homeless as another has mentioned, I'd call them addicts and life happened-ers. I'm the latter, life happened and pandemic and more life happenings made it into a complex/non-linear situation.

Literally been working 6 years to get like $20k to fix my life with. Used to be a software engineer, got into a legal dispute and that messed me up bad, gotta get into housing before I try to fix that and then try to get back into tech. Not interested in free jobs that I don't go through the normal pipeline for, happy enough working as a dish washer / grocery clerk for the past several years. I'm not available by email or phone, too difficult to communicate logistics. Can't wait to get back to meaningful tech work tho.

I'm one case, the life happened-ers are all different. But I think getting them to small towns to rebuild is definitely the way. Really easy for me to save money and nobody knows I'm homeless, just very very slow. But it's fair and sustainable.

It's amazing how people who don't know homelessness talk about it. I never see my own experiences reflected in these hot takes. Something about the topic breaks people's brains. I suspect people are simply terrified of homelessness and will do anything to distance themselves from the reality that there but for the grace of God they go.

There is a huge bias against homeless populations throughout the states. They’ve been depicted and demonized unilaterally as drug users and law breakers/undesirables but that couldn’t be farther from the truth for many many people. Homelessness is the direct result of a societal failure to secure our populations basic needs and that means we are all to blame to a certain extent. They are people from our communities that we’ve sidelined and largely ignored but nobody likes to think they’re the bad guy.

it's the 80/20 rule man. the minority of homeless that are drug addicts or violently mentally ill leave such a sour taste in the average person's mouth that a going nuclear on the homeless policy seems like a great idea. The majority of homeless that are only a very minor inconvenience or are no problem at all are completely overshadowed by the minority screaming on the street, taking dumps in alleys (or in the middle of the street!), and causing other major problems pretty much continuously.

You can't really blame people for their hot takes either, when you're on month 32+ of powerwashing your alley and front sidewalk every day to try and get a few hours of the place not smelling like poorly maintained urinals/horse stables your overton window starts to shift to making more extreme solutions acceptable just because you are so supremely fed up with how things are and your sympathy was all used up years ago.

> most of them are from red states where they'd be locked up for what they do here. As such, they came to California because they can get away with it and it's the easiest place to survive

This sounds eerily similar to the origin story of the early American colonies

Your california bias is showing. Seattle and Vancouver BC (and Vancouver WA, the northern suburb of Portland OR, along with Portland) have even worse homeless issues than the bay area, and they don't have favorable climates for the unhoused. Try almost 300 days a year of rain, and winter temperatures that often dip to the 20s. Your arguments would imply that New Mexico, a poor blue state with a favorable south-western climate should be full of homeless people

It's the other factors you mention, and "Cascadia/The PNW" has more in common with each other than it does with the rest of its countries (This is bioregionalism and it's strong out here). The only reason you'd know you went to Canada when you arrived at Vancouver BC from WA state is that you'll see a lot of tim hortons around. SF bay area and Vancouver BC have the same exact problems despite wildly different weather. It's culture and laws.

Honestly, our culture and laws which allow this to happen are super based and awesome, and having a large homeless population as externalities of booming economies, and lax drug laws is worth it. The rest of the world wishes it was the PNW, and being the "Prussia of the USA" is the position that California will naturally find itself in as a result of its northern half having the same factors which drive it to have so many unhoused.

> Your california bias is showing.

They weren't even right about California. Most people in CA are homeless near where they were last housed.

> I suspect

Never do this. No one cares what you "suspect" but never bothered to investigate. And you're completely incorrect. People study these things. You could just read what they wrote.

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2023/06/425646/california-statewid...

I suspect there’s a bimodal distribution between shorter and chronic homelessness

People who are short term homeless usually still have a friend's couch to sleep on, so they won't be victimized

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