Bussing them out is just an idea done by the rich so they don't have to see the homeless any longer.
For example, many low tax base areas accumulate a population with more problems that have higher tax rates, insurance rates, etc (and a more strained social net) than a rich city.
It is important to make sure rich areas are at least paying some of the costs they create in selectively pushing people out or creating bottlenecks to set a minimum CoL on who comes in.
Everything in the article and this thread seems consistent with these programs actively running for rich coastal cities to return people or send them to places where their friends have space to spare.. That doesn't sound like Manhattan.
A convergence on rich cities getting more people is a possibility.. But the richer cities are setting precedents, have actual budgets for these things and regulations tend only to increase.
It seems just as likely to be a rich coastal city as anywhere else, tbh. The article makes a point of saying that they only do the most cursory of checks anyway, so we can basically assume they're meaningless.
> A convergence on rich cities getting more people is a possibility.. But the richer cities are setting precedents, have actual budgets for these things and regulations tend only to increase.
It's certainly a possibility. But I don't know if you live in a rich coastal city, but I do, and the homeless problem here is out of control. The homeless population in rich coastal cities is empirically growing very quickly, and it is not growing in the same way in other places, consistent with net migration of homeless into rich coastal areas, not the other way around.
These bussing policies have been in place for a while, and there is no epidemic of homeless leaving SF and setting up shop in Des Moines. So while it may theoretically be possible for this to increase flow in the way you describe, despite the policies being in place for a good while, that is empirically not what is happening.
A: show up to work on time
B: be groomed
C: establish a pattern of living
It’s hard to go to work not knowing if your car will be towed. Granted, where people COULD afford to live isn’t the city centers, where the services are and where people congregate. And the suburbs don’t want them either. Pretty sad state of affairs - we need to provide a real safety net so people aren’t stuck below the line of employability.
Putting a homeless shelter or no address at all on your work application is a great way to get it sent straight to the circular file.
Even living in public housing can be a job killer if the addresses are well known enough. People at Cabrini Green had to hope they had a relative that would allow them to use their address to apply for jobs with, and hope on top of that the public housing officials wouldn't find out about it.
If that were actually true, then there wouldn't be a homeless problem. The unemployment rate doesn't count these people. The unemployment rate only counts people who are 'actively looking' for a new job. People who aren't looking at all don't show up in the statistics.
> Bussing them elsewhere doesn't help when they still don't have a home, a bathroom/shower, clean clothes, food, etc.
Let's be careful about the conjugation of that verb. The city is not bussing them anywhere. The city is offering them free bus tickets, if they believe they will be happier elsewhere. If they want to stay, they stay. If they want to leave, they leave.
> Bussing them out is just an idea done by the rich so they don't have to see the homeless any longer.
It's really not. They're not being forced out. They're just being given free tickets if they want them.
That's entirely incorrect. We track all of these layers in fact.
We have the labor force participation rate, which is available further separated out into groups, such as by age or race. We track the employment to population ratio.
We have the U3, U5, U6 unemployment statistics, which track labor based on various conditions, whether full-time, part-time, discouraged, etc.
We track how many people total are employed full-time or part-time. We know how many hours they're working.
We track multiple job holders.
We track how many people are not in the labor force.
We track the flow of labor in and out of the labor force.
And we track all of these statistics for different age groups, men & women, races, etc.
For one big example, the prime working age 25-54 civilian labor force participation rate. Considered a critical measure of labor force health. It bottomed out at 80.6% in 2015 and has since climbed back to 82.3% as of October, slightly below where it was in 2004-05.
No....it is entirely correct. The unemployment rate that was quoted was exactly as I described. I didn't say the other statistics weren't tracked, I said the statistic quoted above, and the thing commonly referred to as "the unemployment rate" does not count it.
The point he was making though can be made even if the OP was referencing U3 which is if the fundamentals are looking better for employees (Which can be inferred from improving U3 numbers) then why are we seeing higher homelessness?
Are you seriously trying to insist that he could possibly have meant anything other than U3? The common meaning of 'unemployment rate' is U3. Google 'current unemployment rate' right now, and Google will tell you 3.7. Aka U3.
> The point he was making though can be made even if the OP was referencing U3 which is if the fundamentals are looking better for employees (Which can be inferred from improving U3 numbers) then why are we seeing higher homelessness?
Because the population looking for work and the population falling into homelessness are not the same population! Which is exactly the point I was making about U3. There is a massive population that has left the workforce completely, many of them are subsisting on disability or some other unknown way. It is highly likely that those people are the ones primarily falling into homelessness.
Why would a reasonable reader assume that "statistics" means "specifically U3 unemployment"?
Otherwise it's just conveniently moving the problem elsewhere.
The end result of your logic would essentially lead to caravans of homeless people because it would be cheaper to give them a bus pass and a pat on the back rather than take care of their own responsibilities. The idea that they have agency in this case is a facade because then the city could deny them care under the guise of 'well we gave them a chance for a better opportunity and they denied it'. It seems to be a uniquely American thing to ignore actually addressing the damn problem in favor of making it someone else's problem.
The city that they reside in is effectively denying them care. The tickets are an excuse to push them out of the city so that they don't actually have to give them proper care. If they weren't being denied care for whatever reasons, then there wouldn't be a reason to bus them out to other cities, now would there?
This is EXACTLY what happened when Nevada gave discharged patients from a mental health hospital one-way bus tickets out of town. They were given bus tickets and advised to seek health care elsewhere and were sued because of this program. So let's not ignore the fact that this actually occurs.
Well, one reason from TFA is so they can go back to where they have a friends/family support network. People actually do this on their own, parents get their kid a ticket on the Greyhound so they don't end up on/get off the streets. Happens a lot.
Given a choice between staying homeless where you happen to be or going somewhere where you have a fighting chance people seem to be going with the latter.
> They were given bus tickets and advised to seek health care elsewhere and were sued because of this program.
One alleged abusive program and this means they all share the same motivation?
Prisons do the exact same thing BTW.
What? How is giving them a free ticket pushing them anywhere? They're not being forced to take it.
> This is EXACTLY what happened when Nevada gave discharged patients from a mental health hospital one-way bus tickets out of town. They were given bus tickets and advised to seek health care elsewhere and were sued because of this program. So let's not ignore the fact that this actually occurs.
It is not even close to that. That was people being put onto these buses after being kicked out of hospitals. These are people who have already been living homelessly in the city, and the city saying "here, IF YOU WANT THIS, you can have a free ticket wherever you need to go".
This is a strict expansion of their autonomy, to paint it any other way is ludicrous.
As for the people in the Nevada case they were offered a choice by the hospital: They could be discharged early if they took a bus ticket to another state, and could leave even earlier if they had family/friends there. These were people given a choice, something that you mention as being incredibly important. Their autonomy was increased, was it not? They were not forced into taking the ticket.
Of course they were coerced, naturally. That's why I think your argument about choice ends up being complete bunk, because often there isn't a real 'choice' for many of these homeless people. For people who may have trouble making a well-informed choice due to poverty or mental illness or any other reason, to act like they have a full choice in the matter is ignorance.
I think they, and I, would argue that a big part of the problem is that people become stuck in places that don't have opportunity or support networks for them. Helping them go to those places is an important step in fixing the problem in an organic way.
> As for the people in the Nevada case they were offered a choice by the hospital: They could be discharged early if they took a bus ticket to another state, and could leave even earlier if they had family/friends there. These were people given a choice, something that you mention as being incredibly important. Their autonomy was increased, was it not? They were not forced into taking the ticket.
I don't know the details of that case, but if they were said "hey you can leave early if you take this bus ticket", I see no problem with that.
> Of course they were coerced, naturally.
Erm, what? Where, exactly is the coercion? Here's the situation: I am walking down the street and come across a homeless man. I say "Hey man, if you need a bus ticket somewhere, i'd be happy to buy it for you". Where exactly does the coercion happen? Is buying someone a bus ticket that they ask for coercive when the state does it? Does that make food stamps coercion?
> He was told the family was ineligible for services because they had housing options elsewhere, notably in Puerto Rico with his partner’s mother. To officials in New York, steering the family into accommodation instead of the city homeless system was the most sensible option. Ortiz’s decision to take the airline ticket was voluntary, but he did not feel he had much choice given the alternative likely meant sleeping in the park or on a street corner.