Sure, the authorities can force all the people off their "campsites" and send all their belongings to the dump. But you've still obviously got the homeless person there, in a more vulnerable position than they were before.
Most will hopefully wind up in shelters.
It’s not like they get their own little studio apartment, and even then most would forbid illicit drugs.
Given that many homeless are also dealing with addiction, there may be sufficient shelter space yet still they choose the freedom of a tent or street life.
That all said, I would be surprised if there is enough capacity, but that is a solvable problem, probably not cheap.
It'd be possible to build tiny/modular complexes, which would be very expensive (but CA spend tens of billions with nothing to show), that could stem some of the tide with a bit of effort. But it needs to be located close to reasonable public transportation to other areas where work can be found if/when people are ready to get off the drugs or otherwise get life together.
That doesn't even begin to cover psychological and police needs. The amount of assault, rape and theft in homeless communities is massively disproportionate to the general public. There's also the medical needs, which are significant.
I mean yes, a lot of those people were literally shipped there from the rust belt or southern states. Famously Texas and company paying to bus or fly people to California and Massachusetts. I believe several of them were major press events etc - not a secret either.
You are correct.
They are small, you cannot keep stuff there, and you have to follow rules.
Camping represents the middle class of homelessness and is seen as a step up. It fulfills the desire for autonomy and is often the most comfortable long-term situation for people engaging in it.
It also has negative externalities which cannot be ignored.
> you cannot keep stuff there
If you are already low on belongings, having the rest of your stuff be stolen is not worth sleeping in a shelter
Pets often cannot be kept in shelters. This is huge, give up your dog just to stay in a shelter for one night?
> homeless or otherwise people do not like staying in shelters
They are unpleasant and often unsafe. Theft & violence are common. Many have really gnarly intake processes where you wait in line for hours to only find out after nightfall if you are going to have space or not.
I know the foster care system is terrible, but certainly better than the streets.
I think it's normal to want to the kids provided for even if the parents can't be helped. I just don't think the foster system could handle them all. I'd much rather see the problems leading to homelessness addressed than see the US try to get the foster system prepared to deal with the massive number of kids who don't have a stable home. It's hard to get numbers for homeless populations in general, but roughly, each year one out of every 30 children in the US is homeless.
Fortunately, a lot of that is short term homelessness. A family might only need a few weeks of living in a shelter or out of their car to get back on their feet. I'm not sure how much it would help in a case like that. If we had a better handle on homelessness in the US though, I'd agree that in many cases it would be better to take the kids into foster care.
Sadly, homelessness is at an all time high in the US. (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rent-homelessness-harvard-repor...) and I don't see that changing any time soon. Evictions are at record highs in many cities and counties too and that's absolutely going to put more children out on the street.
I wouldn't expect a city or state to have shelters on the level of a Ritz, but I wouldn't consider anything with fewer basics than a state penitentiary to count either.
If you can't keep belongings there, that doesn't meet the bar of "better than a prison". Having to follow the rules seems reasonable, but the rules similarly should meet the bar of not being worse rules than we force on inmates.
No. In 2023, California had about 180,000 homeless people [1] and fewer than 140,000 beds [2].
[1] https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2023-...
[2] https://homelessstrategy.com/how-many-total-temporary-and-pe...
Unfortunately, we've now learned the 'most right' (or, alternatively, 'least wrong') answer to your question of "what happens to the people" probably should be different for each locale. There are only a few places that tried some things which seemed to maybe move outcomes at least in the right direction. These usually involved unique combinations of different things which were highly localized and specific to the context of that city and determined in near-real-time by people working that locale's specific set of challenges hands-on every day.
Bottom line: currently there is no set of state-wide (or even county-wide) policies that work across all locales. Persistent long-term "Homelessness" is a broad symptom with a wide variety of different possible root causes. Frankly, the best thing to do at this moment is stop trying to solve it with state-wide policies and instead empower cities and their local agencies to find the most effective approaches for their unique local causes.
It's a "kick-the-can-down-the-road" solution either way. Can you enumerate other strategies that are part of the bold new thinking?
My estimation, the real bold new thinking are things like universal housing, UBI, and/or even more basic things like expanding shelters & making those reliable and safe places to be. All of these things require funds, and seemingly West Coast Americans don't want to pay for it. And so, the can is kicked.
I'm aware of a few things that were attempted in Seattle. Notably 'tiny-home-communities', which had some success. Though the rising land value where they were built displaced those communities and they were never rebuilt [1].
Which goes to my point, the real "bold" thinking was hardly ever truly attempted anywhere. Pausing sweeps is just kicking the can down the road, and I don't think many people were pretending that was an actual "bold solution." Arguably just a best of worst-options.
Though, while we differ in our perceptions of what has been attempted, and how sincerely those efforts were made - we agree on solutions. The solutions require serious efforts from a very empowered local community (which would imply state funding to support those efforts).
[1] https://www.fox13seattle.com/news/what-happened-to-south-lak...
The level of addiction is crazy. I think a lot of people should volunteer a few times with a feed the homeless or similar charity and actually talk to some of these people before suggesting definitive answers. Most solutions simply won't work with the strings often attached.
I don't think shipping people all over the country is a good solution... I do think that building a lot of cheap housing (the projected costs someone mentioned, like $1.4m per dwelling seems insane). Modular construction designs should be possible to deliver 1br or studio homes with a 3/4 bath and kitchenette for under $150k each relatively easily, including transport and final assembly.
It is really hard for me to understand that level of addiction or dissociation, but I've definitely seen it.
So for a local government that had the money in hand, it has built 4 highly contested tiny homes after 4 years that the people moving in will have to pay rent on. This, proclaimed by the mayor, will really help get people off the streets in our city. It feels like la la land.
I live in Northern California in the middle of ground zero for this issue. Ten years ago I would have agreed fully with what you wrote. But since then I've been paying very close attention to how this has all unfolded at the state, regional and local levels. I also happen to have a lot of social contacts who work at the city and country levels in the agencies directly responsible for dealing with homelessness, ranging from social workers to funding agencies to law enforcement.
Based on what I've seen in my community, in the media and what my friends who are directly involved have told me privately (which is more frank and somewhat different than what their agencies say publicly), my opinion has changed. Most fundamentally, I now understand that "homelessness" shouldn't ever be thought of as a single issue because there are vastly different kinds with different causes, consequences, costs and possibility of remedies. Most of the serious societal problems related to homelessness come from the particular subset which are chronically unhoused and treatment resistant, primarily due to chronic substance abuse and mental illness. Sadly, for many of this type, there are no consistently effective solutions - and no amount of funding can reliably solve it at scale - because any lasting solution requires first solving the underlying chronic addiction and/or mental illness. Unfortunately, these are wickedly complex, deeply individual problems and lasting solutions require making difficult "no win, lesser of evils" choices more related to morality than politics. Respecting an individual's right of self-determination can quickly conflict with their right to choose self-destruction.
I now understand that there ARE no "good solutions" to this type of chronic homelessness. Even if you or I were anointed "king of the world" and given virtually unlimited funding, at best, things might be a little better but the fundamental underlying causes would still remain unsolved. All solutions which might make a substantial, long-term improvement on chronic addiction and mental illness at scale involve moral positions I could not personally enforce on other people, such as forced treatment, conditionally withholding treatment or actively enabling essentially "slow-motion suicide" (as a social worker friend of mine called it).
He also told me the number one source of calls they get reporting homeless trouble come from their "regular" long-term homeless calling the police because a new homeless person is causing trouble like stealing from or fighting other homeless people or committing crime or perhaps behaving erratically due to mental illness. These "regular" homeless call and report this because they know sufficient disruption brings "heat" down since the police will have to respond. In fact, the "regulars" have the direct mobile phone numbers of officers on the homeless team just for this purpose.
I asked my friend about the scenario where a single-mom loses her job suddenly, can't make rent and ends up sleeping in her car with a kid. He told me when that happens, his officers have a budget to put that newly homeless, non-violent, non-addicted person up in a local hotel and they do it immediately, that night. No paperwork, no trip to the station. They get them off the street ASAP and then coordinate with local halfway houses which have dedicated family space and specific programs to put these at-risk people back in jobs and get them on a path to stability again. They act quickly because they've learned there's a limited window of time where they can get a newly homeless person turned around with high probability of success.
I can't speak to every locale in California but in our region at least, I now understand the primary issue behind persistent, problematic homelessness is not lack of beds or lack of funding. Non-violent, non-addicted people here have options and if someone wants help and is willing to abide by a few minimal rules (primarily to prevent harm to others seeking help), there is ample help available.
The flip side is, a significant majority of the issue comes down to drug addiction, from which any prescribed solution is likely to fail.
I'm not sure what the best answer is... but even relatively low cost studio apartments may be an answer. Something between a dorm and an apartment. Even then, the costs are extremely high, and in areas of excess NIMBYism and legislation regarding any construction both of which are heavy in California, it's harder still.
There's a pilot program by DignityMoves consisting of pre-fabbed tiny homes, but it has only a handful of units.