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Comment by serverlessmom | Hacker News Reader

Americans will do anything to avoid providing people with housing.

You are incorrect. We don't provide mentally ill people with even basic treatment, most particularly in cases where they are too sick to recognize the need themselves. Instead, we walk around people on the sidewalk as they suffer psychotic breaks.

I support this proposal 100%.

It will not solve the housing crisis in California, because it's largely driven by high prices. But it will help us restore basic decency in our treatment of fellow citizens who badly need help.

> Americans will do anything to avoid providing people with housing.

Including resorting to $60K per year tents. [1]

But we could steelman the argument for proposals like this one: you could see homelessness as a problem of loneliness, addiction, mental health issues and unstable families. This might be more realistic compared to seeing it as merely a housing issue.

[1]: https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/S-F-officials-w...

The fact that governments spend money on tents and 'temporary solutions' doesn't disprove my assertion that we refuse to build safe and stable housing for all our citizens.

I kinda meant that as evidence for your assertion. Sorry if I wasn't clear on that.

Ahhh gotcha gotcha. <3

Most homeless people in America are people who has some form of mental illness or have suffered from some traumatic event. In any case just giving them a home won't help much, those homes would quickly become drug dens.

A better solution is to provide them with shelter, community, mental help, education, and generally good care. This is actually even harder to do than just throwing houses at them.

But there is also merit to giving housing to people who are homeless but not mentally ill. Many European countries do this.

The strongest predictor for being unhoused isn't mental illness, but rather having any exposure to the foster care system: https://www.fosterfocusmag.com/articles/foster-care-and-home...

> Most homeless people in America are people who has some form of mental illness or have suffered from some traumatic event.

This isn't true, why does it get repeated so often.

Was this just something you've heard before and didn't double check before posting it?

Are you sure it's not true? Perhaps they should be more specific in that the majority of "long term" homelessness is due to mental illness or drug addiction.

Usually, when people refer to homelessness, they are talking about the people living on park benches and pushing around shopping carts or sleeping off their last high sprawled out on the sidewalk. Most of these people need mental health care. Not just a home.

My understanding in San Francisco is the majority of (visible) unhoused fit the GP description as those who are not mentally ill do make extensive use of shelter services and other avenues to be off the street. Whereas those with mental illness or drug issues do not.

>those homes would quickly become drug dens.

I don't see a problem with that. Sure it's trashy and sure I'd appreciate it if I didn't have to pay for it but a) the alternative is drugs on the sidewalk b) who am I to tell others how to live?

OK, say you go crazy for some reason. You want me to drop you off in a drug den, and tell the hospitals to refuse to admit you if you seek treatment?

You have to consider destruction of the housing.

You can't build a new million dollar home every 5 years for addicts.

Remember that virtually every homeless individual started out as a homed individual. To inhabit a home, you need an income to pay rent, you need food, and you need utilities somehow for a bare minimum existence. If you're making the choice to spend your income on drugs rather than rent every month, you're going to quickly return to homelessness and we won't have solved your problem.

If you're proposing giving people free rent, food, and utilities indefinitely, that starts to get uncomfortable as it edges toward slavery.

The serious crazies won't go to housing.

Those represent a very small fraction of the unhoused population.

But they are responsible for large portion of the quality of life issues impacting local residents.

I feel like the homeless issue is a case of two sides talking past each other. Homeless advocates (and the "industry") are doing their best to support the "down on their luck" individuals. These folks are capable of holding down a job (maybe with some support), but might struggle to afford rent. The "homeless industry" is heavily focused on helping them. Meanwhile, local residents are complaining about the decline in quality of life from having individuals with drug and mental health issues living on their doorsteps. These types of homeless are very resistant to the services provided by the traditional "homeless industry". When you see a significant amount of tax revenue going to homeless services, but the guy living in a tent down the street is getting no help, it can be very frustrating. Hopefully this measure is the first step towards solving that issue.

But probably the source of a large portion of the antisocial behavior that cities are trying to deal with (e.x. human feces in subway escalators that cause constant breakdowns in the escalators that aren't actually designed to be defecated into).

Is there something particularly attractive about an escalator to someone who needs to poop? Or is it just that there is so much pooping all over the place that some just ends up in the escalators?

As one who rarely defecates in escalators in subways I'd only be speculating, but I would imagine that at night, when the subway is closed, they afford more privacy and protection from the elements than the street.

And yet they are causing the majority of issues.

There are often lots of housing options with strict drug control policies which prohibit many homeless for joining.

Prevent is not the best word here, filter instead maybe? Some homeless refuse to join shelters because of these conditions

You might be right. I struggled for a good word.

The east cost for the most part doesn't have these problems or at least not to the same extent (with a couple exceptions for Philly and NYC both of which are nowhere near as bad as cities in CA/OR/WA)

This isn't an American problem. This isn't even a liberal/conservative problem. This is a west coast problem.

The east coast is cold. The homeless leave. It's hard for me to blame west coast policy when it's really just the weather that's the difference.

Your theory entirely falls apart when you acknowledge that there are warm places in the country that don't have large homeless populations.

Yes, homeless people want to live near wealthy people who don't mind being surrounded by the homeless. Most large cities in the US have this, but sunbelt ones typically are more conservative and therefore harsher on the homeless. There are of course many other reasons why homeless leave too. Harsh summers, car dominant culture are obvious ones.

The Los Angeles metro population would rank fifth largest were its own state. San Francisco's is similar to the size of Louisiana's.

Population density matters when talking about the visibility of homeless people, even before getting to how stupidly expensive those places are.

Yes, warm places, which in exchange for not having a brutal winter, have a brutal summer.

It seems to me that all 'temperate' locations, do have a huge homeless issue, Summer in Texas is enough to drive the homeless away.

But that's simply not true. Much of the Southeast US is considered a temperate climate, and homelessness is not an acute problem like it is on the west coast. Miami, while humid, doesn't often get above the low 90s and has one of the lowest homeless-per-capita rates of cities in the US.

The entire European Mediterranean region has similar weather to the Western US and doesn't have the same homelessness issue. Lake Tahoe, Chicago, NYC, Vancouver hit freezing in the winter and do have homelessness.

I think it's easier to permit homelessness when people don't freeze to death or become heat casualties, but the causes are way more complex than the weather being nice year round.

You try living outside in the Southeast during winter, and tell me how temperate it is.

It's definitely on the edge of the 'temperate' classification.

Winter or Summer.

It strikes me that the dysfunction stretches across state and country borders. The issues you see in San Diego and San Francisco are the exact same ones you see in Vancouver.

I'm in Massachusetts now, and as a west-east transplant I'm amazed at the stuff that just works. Cycle paths get built, housing gets built, state social and health services are extant and useful. I'm sort of at a loss to explain the difference.

The lack (or reduced teeth) of CEQA equivalents help, NEPA like laws make it hard to build things.

https://ceq.doe.gov/laws-regulations/states.html

The fact that CEQA applies to all levels of government in California makes it easier to throw sand in the gears.

Similarly there is too much good government sometimes, too much accountability makes it hard to accomplish anything. Too little means corruption is hard to root out. There is less accountability in the east overall in bureaucracy - any state not hit hard by the progressive revolution of the early 20th century seems to be better at doing thing.

I see more community focused expectations of behavior on the east coast (There is more of an expectation that everyone ought to behave a certain way, and do certain things in certain places).

There are other cultural differences too, east coast residents in my first hand experience tend to be more apt look the other way at penny ante corruption (the stereotypical "I know a guy.." culture), which somewhat perversely makes government more flexible work better. Generally the less moral imperative government has, the better it works.

I realize these are probably not popular opinions.

new money vs. old money i guess.

perhaps the same reason that it's really hard for me to view SF as a "real city" after living in NY for a few years. Even with all the money moving around in the bay area, so little of it actually makes its way back to the built environment.

NYC in many ways is "America's Only Real City." Seems like every other major city went for the 'burbs in the postwar period and ended up kneecapping their growth.

Well many non West Coast cities ship their homeless to other parts of the country like the West Coast

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/...

We have a similar problem with bark beetles in pinyon pine trees in the southwest. The theory I heard is that when winters don't get cold enough, too few of the beetles die off, and many pinyons can't handle the additional parasite load. The trees die and huge swaths of forest burn up.

Have you thought of the weather....

Lots of places in the country/worldwide have good weather and little to no homelessness.

If something even slightly threatens the capitalist dogma, it has to be reduced to a performative half measure. From healthcare, to housing, transportation... etc.

There has been a rise in homelessness and people becoming disillusioned by the tethers of society, to the point that people are voluntarily retreating into cities and wildernesses to live freely off the land.

Homelessness (particularly voluntary) is an existential threat to capitalism because it reduces the productivity of the working class. This in turn diminishes the gains of the proletariat, who need workers and purchasers of their goods and services (such as houses).

The title story seems like a scary way for the system to force people into becoming productive members of society. In the system's eyes, these people are useless, unwanted wastes of space, so they are going to force them into treatment so they can "lead normal lives," a euphemism for turning them into productive cogs in the proletariat's capitalist machine.

healthcare/housing/transportation are good for economic growth and "capitalists."

the issue is more that the landowner/rentier class are still the most politically vocal, and anything that upsets the status quo for them gets an insane amount of pushback.

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