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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

This article isn’t really useful. If we are dumping almost 100% of our homeless resources on drug addiction then the fact that this is only 20-40% of the population is more of a travesty than a “so what”. You can’t solve their homelessness problems without figuring out a way to stabilize them (or they just burn down the housing you give them), and the fact that this minority overwhelms our support systems (and it’s immoral to prioritize non-substance abuse cases), means that we are stuck in a rut of throwing tons of resources at cases ($10k+/month/person helped) that go way beyond just subsidizing or covering their rent.

If it were just a housing problem, it could be solved with more housing. But we’ve conflated it with drug addiction (at least here in Seattle) and it has become much less solvable as a result.

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There are really two distinct homelessness problems:

1. The “temporarily unhoused”. These are people who have fallen on hard times and need temporary assistance to get back on their feet. These people live out of their cars and are largely invisible.

2. The chronically homeless. These are drug users who infest public spaces and are highly visible and disruptive.

When laypeople talk about “homelessness”, they typically mean 2 as it’s more visible and disruptive to them.

This is a good point, but part of what the article is saying is that where housing is cheap, some of even those "at the margins of society" people with some drug problems can maybe stay housed. Which means fixing the drug part of their problems is easier than if they're moving around on the streets.

Ya, but isn’t that complete BS? I lived in Vicksburg MS, and while housing is definitely cheap, it’s not free, and you can’t really survive there if you can’t make any money at all. So you either die or move.

It's kind of helpful to think of the world in percentages, rather than "1 or 0, black or white".

Some people with drug problems are able to hold down some minimum wage work or part time jobs or something that brings in money.

In Mississippi, that might be enough to keep you housed. In Los Angeles, it's not.

Also you're more likely to be able to stay with a friend or relative with some extra space if housing isn't so tight:

https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-housing-shortages-cause...

Yes, that’s totally true! I think this is a much more interesting problem when we get rid of the drug addiction component. It is just sad that drug addiction is consuming all of our social resources that could otherwise go into solving housing problems.

A lot of kids from Vicksburg also move to LA and don’t make it because of housing costs, so they move elsewhere. But should they have made it? Should LA be affordable enough for everyone who wants to live there to live there? If not, but we want to subsidize housing for some segment of the American population to live in LA, how do we prioritize? If yes, how much housing do we need to build to satisfy all American and international demand to live in LA?

> drug addiction is consuming all of our social resources that could otherwise go into solving housing problems

What is that based on? Also, why are people with a drug problem less deserving than people with housing problems.

Finally, what I understand from experts is that the first step to helping people with drug problems is to get them stable housing.

Not OP, but

> What is that based on?

This is based on the fact that we have finite resources. Any resources that go to housing drug addicts could have been used for something else. There is a real opportunity cost there.

> Also, why are people with a drug problem less deserving than people with housing problems.

There are a few issues with housing drug addicts:

1. Understand, these people aren't just run-of-the-mill addicts. They are so addicted to drugs that they'll live in unimaginably horrid conditions to support their addiction. Any housing they receive will be destroyed and made uninhabitable.

2. Housing them makes the system more miserable and undesirable for everyone else. If you're a parent with children and you're facing homelessness, are you really going to use a resource where close contact with heavy drug addicts is possible?

> Finally, what I understand from experts is that the first step to helping people with drug problems is to get them stable housing.

That's actually the second step. The first step is getting the addict to want to quit drugs. Many addicts don't want to stop using, and giving those people housing is not going to be an effective way to combat their addiction if they aren't first interested stopping their addictive behavior.

The problem with that is that they're also a problem when they're on the streets, sometimes even more of a problem. Someone who's not a problem and generally minding their own business is less of an threat than someone who's drug addiction is driving them to commit violence. We can't arrest them before they do anything violent, and after they've harmed someone else is too late.

> We can't arrest them before they do anything violent

Why not? Using drugs is illegal.

Where are you? Surprisingly that's jurisdiction dependent and it's often not.

I'm in NY. Possession of a controlled substance is a class A misdemeanor here[0], which can carry a maximum prison sentence of 1 year.

0: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/PEN/220.03

You said using, not possession, and after you've used it, it's no longer in your possession, externally. That distinction does not matter in New York, however, as it's not one of the places where it's illegal to posses but legal if you've just used it. (Unless it's weed.)

I feel like we're talking about semantics here. You must posses drugs before / while actively using, and heavy addicts use multiple times a day.

> The problem with that is that they're also a problem when they're on the streets, sometimes even more of a problem. Someone who's not a problem and generally minding their own business is less of an threat than someone who's drug addiction is driving them to commit violence.

That applies to every criminal act, so why are we signaling out people addicted to drugs? Plenty of people on Wall Street commit crimes daily, stealing money from innocent people - do we worry about how to preemptively stop them?

The answer, IMHO, is that some have effectively demonized people with drug addictions and people who are unhoused, to legitimize hate and violence in our society (and to get rid of people they don't like). 'I hate/fear unhoused / mentally ill people, so it's ok to choke one to death or lock them away without trial.'

It's not only hurts and oppresses those individuals, but it lays the foundation for the next stages - progressive protestors, and soon mass detention of immigrants. It's either human rights for all or for none.

Again, what is that all based on? It disagrees with most of what I read from researchers and people on the ground, especially that quitting is the first step before housing.

I've seen where many people with those problems live, and the places aren't horrid, just lacking in money and social services.

It just seems like demonization of yet another group - this time, people who have drug addictions. Why is it important to demonize them?

> This is based on the fact that we have finite resources. Any resources that go to housing drug addicts could have been used for something else. There is a real opportunity cost there.

And anything spent on other things could have been spent helping people addicted to drugs. Why is one more important or deserving than the other, other than the demonization?

The second category isn't just drug users. It's also people who are not mentally capable of keeping up the routine of decisions that keep them off the streets. Opposite of the "temporarily unhoused" category, they tend to be "temporarily housed".

> There are really two distinct homelessness problems:

> 1. The “temporarily unhoused”. These are people who have fallen on hard times and need temporary assistance to get back on their feet. These people live out of their cars and are largely invisible.

> 2. The chronically homeless. These are drug users who infest public spaces and are highly visible and disruptive.

What is that based on? Do you have any data to support these categories as something real? It sounds a lot like, '1) people I like; and 2) people I hate.'

It's wrong to discuss human beings like animals, and as if they exist to please or displease you, and as if they can be treated like animals.

They are people with their own experiences, like you, sensations and emotions and lives, who matter just as much as you do and belong in public spaces just as much. I've spent lots of time in major cities; chronically homeless people are among the least disruptive, and I've talked to many and know a few people in that situation; people on opioids are in their own worlds, often in a dream.

I'd recommend a quick Google search for "types of homelessness" or "chronic homelessness" before proffering any personal attacks.

If you are making the claim, it's up to you to support it. I'm not doing your research.

I'm not asking you to do research, I'm asking you to look up definitions you don't understand. There's a difference.

It is a housing problem though. That is what the data show. That's why homelessness correlates so much with high housing costs. That's why places with serious drug problems like Ohio or West Virginia don't have such high rates of homelessness.

None of which is to say that drugs are not a problem, or to say that someone with a drug problem isn't more likely to become homeless.

All of that is explained in the article which you responded to without reading it, judging by the timestamp on your comment. Let alone the video, which goes into more depth and talks extensively about drugs.

Places like Mississippi don’t have high homeless problems because they lack services and good weather, so drug addicts who have burned their family/friend networks, at least, hop on a bus to somewhere they can survive (usually a west coast city with mild weather and a progressive voter base that is willing to throw lots of money at the problem). That segment of the problem is 100% mobile, and even self reporting surveys show cause (like 60% of king counties homeless population saying they had previous housing in pioneer square).

If you can’t afford housing anywhere, you just won’t survive very long in lots of places, so survival bias starts to show up.

This is a great narrative, but it turns out that it's not true.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/california...

> The overwhelming majority of homeless people surveyed were locals, not migrants from far away: 90 percent lost their last housing in California, and 75 percent lost it in the same county where they were experiencing homelessness. Of the 10 percent who came from elsewhere, 30 percent were born in California. Most of the others had familial or employment ties, or had previously lived in the state.

Again, those are self reported surveys with biased surveyors (who want to push the narrative you believe in) with very weird results. They are basically trying to convince us that the unhoused population is more local than the housed population, sometimes by an order of magnitude, and it really isn’t statistically possible. Something like 75% of the general population are transplants but only 25% of the unhoused population are?

It's unclear to me why this is isn't statistically possible. Could you please explain?

But anyways, this article (paywalled) claims that 48% of California adults were born in the state as of 2022: https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2024/california-populat...

In SF and LA those numbers are nowhere near to being 50%. And I guess the wording is important, since many people can crash on a couch for the first few months and then are considered previously housed by the self reporting survey question.

The survey was done across California -- not just SF and LA. Either way, wikipedia claims that 37.7% of SF residents were born in California which is slightly closer to 50% than the 25% figure you quoted (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_San_Francisco#...).

The survey also states that "Most participants (87%) were born in the United States. ... Two-thirds (66%) were born in California."

I still don't understand why the survey is statistically impossible.

The article is useful and the author specifically goes into the case of why drugs are not the reason.

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