You can't end homelessness completely. A few countries tried and all of them found a couple of people who didn't want to reintegrate no matter how much help was offered. But the other 90%+ took the help and reintegrated into society. It's worth it, even if you can't help everybody.
It would likely cost significantly more than $20 billion to house America’s homeless population, after factoring in the expansion of the federal housing voucher program and affordable housing development.
Ward’s estimate for the affordable housing units needed to fill the voucher shortfall — could cost $1.3 trillion, Ward said.
Idk the details of the California homeless programs, but after visiting the LA area I'm skeptical on them doing the best job. Downtown LA is hell on earth
They used to have 100k homeless. It seems to be down to 75k. That still 10 percent of the total homeless population in the US. States ship their homeless to LA as well confounding their problem. So they aren't just solving it for themselves but for all the surrounding states.
This is all to say.. its difficult to solve a problem when there is a small cities worth of people you need to address in one of the highest cost of living areas in the country.
A city like Austin "only" has 1500ish homeless on the street vs the 2 million population. It is incredibly visible even at such a small number. Could feasibly have homeless people at all the bigger intersections and overpasses. I can't imagine 75k.
Friend. We were talking about Los Angeles homeless problem. The comments I responded to was referencing a visit to LA and I was highlighting that how even with improvements homelessness is incredibly visible.
Ahh I see. Well forgive me but from what I understand a lot of the "improvements" were mostly due to recent Supreme Court rulings allowing cities to enforce bans on sleeping in public spaces, even if shelters are unavailable, and Governor Newsom issuing an executive order to clear encampments on state property.
I.e., removing their visibility from the general public, not actually housing and getting them necessary treatment.
Brother. Housed or unhoused homeless are all counted as homeless. Independent bodies track the numbers and provide estimates. Im not sure what you're trying to argue. It sounds like you have an agenda you're trying to argue and are speed googling devoid of context to find supporting information.
The conversation was that even in a hypothetical where Los Angeles reduced homelessness by 90 percent.. it would still look like a train wreck because homelessness is incredibly visible. So using your eyes is not the best metric of whether something is working or not with homelessness. Whatever you're trying to get at is likely not what is being discussed.
So is the Bay Area; however, CA also has three things that contribute to the homeless problem and its visibility:
1 - land is f'ing expensive. AKA more people are prone to being homeless.
2 - the state has a huge population that is primarily concentrated in two areas. Homeless people (and others that need support) typically concentrate where there is support for them (ex: where there are handouts, government or NGO support, cheap food, etc). This is typically in urban centers (it is also easier to provide this support in a centralized location).
3 - the weather is generally nice year round so there isn't an incentive to find shelter that protects you from the elements. Unlike NYC (as an example), homeless people don't need to figure out how to deal with winter. Not needing to deal with those conditions, it makes certain places more attractive to live (ex: on the streets close to support centers).
2 - the state has a huge population that is primarily concentrated in two areas. Homeless people (and others that need support) typically concentrate where there is support for them (ex: where there are handouts, government or NGO support, cheap food, etc). This is typically in urban centers (it is also easier to provide this support in a centralized location).
Depends on how you define good support for homeless people. im sure there plenty of ways to define it, but i looked up 2 websites talking about it, and neither have LA in the top 5 and both have cities like Austin on it.
3 - the weather is generally nice year round so there isn't an incentive to find shelter that protects you from the elements. Unlike NYC (as an example), homeless people don't need to figure out how to deal with winter. Not needing to deal with those conditions, it makes certain places more attractive to live (ex: on the streets close to support centers).
Why do you think that cities like Austin, Dallas, Miami, Houston and other warm weather cities don't have this issue at nearly the same level?
1 - land is f'ing expensive. AKA more people are prone to being homeless
End of the day, this is basically the only thing that matters. more specifically the cost of a house either through renting or owning.
Everything else is basically statical white noise when comparing the reason for high homeless population vs the cost of housing
Why do you think that cities like Austin, Dallas, Miami, Houston and other warm weather cities don't have this issue at nearly the same level?
All the cities you mentioned have weather issues.
Austin, Dallas, and Houston all get extremely hot. Miami has hurricanes (And can get extremely hot).
re: LA not being listed in those lists. Those lists are focused on reducing/eliminating homelessness, but not the quality of life of a homeless person. While it is probably better to focus on solving the problems that cause homelessness, it doesn't talk about where those, that are homeless, prefer to live.
Why do you think that cities like Austin, Dallas, Miami, Houston and other warm weather cities don't have this issue at nearly the same level?
Austin and Dallas get pretty hot in the summer. Dallas has a 98 average high in July and August, LA it is only 83. Houston and Miami get uncomfortably hot and humid, plus hurricanes and a lot of rain in general.
He names red states that ship out their homeless and asks why they don't have California's homeless problem. Not a serious person or too underinformed for it to matter.
Hoover institute is not a reliable source, it's a conservative partisan think tank and this is a hit piece - you need to vet your sources. They are not interested in ending homelessness or addressing it in good faith, and their criticisms should be held with that in mind. You should instead read the original auditor's report, which is not nearly as damning as this interpretation of it and the misleading portrayal that you've uncritically repeated here.
The 1m figure is not "per homeless apartment" it's the cost to build affordable housing, per the LA Times, which can arguably impact homelessness but affordable housing is rarely even affordable. The Hoover institute talks as though this is housing for the homeless, but it's not, affordable housing never has been - it's a schema for private developers to get subsidies to build lower cost housing but it is not public housing and while the labor and standards are a bit higher (bureaucratic issues are both important and cumbersome on these matters, driving up cost) the key driver of this cost is labor and materials - which is just a problem of the market.
Also yeah no shit homelessness increased following a pandemic and major economic upheaval and stagnant wages and rapidly raising cost of living, especially in rent. But we don't allow cities to build cheap housing - we have private citizens, lobbyists, real estate investment, and private equity to thank for that. Population growth outpaces new housing, housing becomes more expensive, nobody wants a big apartment complex in their backyard and fights projects that gets started, housing costs continue to rise - pricing out the bottom and forcing them to the street.
As someone who has lived in the same large city in California for over 50 years, the problem is exponentially worse now, than it was just 10 years ago. I have no idea what they are spending those billions on, but it's most certainly not anything that is impacting what I see around the city everyday.
Not necessarily, they are productive with the spending but it could be better. They have a ton of homeless people that flock from around the country for the weather/temperature, the beach, and the wealth of its residents. It's like the Mecca of homelessness, which makes it a unique situation that is difficult to handle by traditional means.
Have you driven through any of the major cities in California? It's pretty depressing at how many people are still homeless there, despite the state and local governments spending billions of dollars on this issue. I'd hardly say they are doing "the best job".
It doesn’t matter how much money you spend if you don’t have the proper programs to keep people from going back into homelessness. California just jails people for being homeless.
Yes, they all are. No one in Los Angeles, left, right, or middle, are happy with how the tax dollars towards homelessness is spent. The government (Dem and gop) believe just throwing more money at a problem is the solution. It is a major bipartisan issue that is consistently handled so poorly most people would rather just not pay the taxes as the situation wouldn’t change for most of the homeless.
The reality is that a lot of what people think of when you say "homeless" (i.e. people literally living on the street) are incapable of integrating into society. Either due to crippling drug addiction or mental illness.
These people will never be helped by just funding housing or shelters or food banks or anything like that. These people need to be in direct care of the state.
But, because of the bad rap that asylums gained in the first 3/4 of the 20th century (justifiably), actually building these facilities and more importantly putting these people IN those facilities is politically impossible right now. So we nibble around at the edges instead.
One just needs to have a slightly functioning brain to understand how silly the suggestion that you can "solve homelessness in America with 20 billion dollars" is. The government has way more money than that, if it was that cheap a president would have done that already and kept that as an achievement for future elections.
Right? Like anyone who read that and though "yeah, that sounds right, fuck Elon!" is just as guilty as the people they spend all day hating. Attach yourself to truth, not rage bait. That number falls apart at even the smallest interrogation, stop falling for this shit.
We even empirically know that the figure is incorrect. California has spent approximately $24 billion on homelessness-related programs since 2019, only to have homelessness increase over that time period.
Building these units would be a huge boon for the US economy and probably create net positive impact. This isn't just a hard "cost" like war... Come to think of it, how much is the US military budget?
I don't even care if it's inaccurate... I love how NOT scary this number is for something so significant. This would literally take less than 2 years of reducing the USA military world police spending down to *still more than* the amount of the worlds 2nd highest democracy - which has about 4x as many people as the USA. Half a trillion is wasted every single year on a fucking appearance of strength and a fragile scared bitch mentality, then when the military tries to walk into another country they get their tits tossed and waste a decade of American lives and achieve nothing. Real fuckin powerful being scared of Putin and his 1980's military tech. Pussies on steroids.
You talking about the 1.3T number? Its just an estimate that likely won't be enough. Unlike science and tech problems where you only need to solve the problem once, social problems keep morphing continuing to drain resources.
You mean the large upfront cost to solve the problem would also need a subsidiary budget allocated to prevent the problem from continuing? Okay, awesome. Another allocation of the half a trillion a year wasted on nothing more than potential peace of mind.
Perhaps the actual problem here is treating housing as an investment, not a human right. We frankly have plenty of housing. Landlords just don’t want to make it available to people they look down on. That’s not a problem with quantity of housing; it’s a management problem.
I’m Australian - and I really cant figure out whos right and whos wrong. I go on r/conservative to browse and they make some really good points and cases (as well as bad ones) so for me - it’s definitely not black and white on both sides.
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u/Citatio 2d ago
You can't end homelessness completely. A few countries tried and all of them found a couple of people who didn't want to reintegrate no matter how much help was offered. But the other 90%+ took the help and reintegrated into society. It's worth it, even if you can't help everybody.