Comment by nosianu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nosianu | Hacker News Reader

About that example in the text, new housing to solve the homeless problem (anti-)NIMBYism.

Would it? I'm not so sure.

Wouldn't most if not almost all of the homeless just remain what they are and the new housing would be used by new people moving into the city? Unless there is a program actively moving homeless into the new housing, paying for them, and also a services to take care of mental health issues. For how many homeless would it work to just provide them housing, and from there they get back on their feet, into a job to pay for the rent by themselves, on their own? Compared to how many need a lot more active guidance, and how many will never stand on their own feet, for example because of health issues?

I'm pretty sure I saw this and actual real world experience and projects discussed here on HN, but I don't remember any details.

I think there is a lot more to it than just building housing, and that the topic deserves a closer look, for example here: https://www.feantsa.org/download/final_housing_toolkit_en-34... (PDF, Europe)

EDIT: Okay guys, please tell me why these thoughts are wrong.

The vast majority of homeless/unhoused people are completely normal healthy adults that had one bad turn in life and could not get back.

In a 2016 Census, only about 12% of the homeless population aged 15 and up were actually unable to work due to various maladies[0]. According to the same census report a whopping 62% of homeless males were currently employed.

The issue is not to just remember the 3 or 4 homeless people you've seen clearly dazed and likely unable to work, it's the thousands of people living in their car because rent is unaffordable for their income. That's the first point, abundance of housing lowers rents to the point of being affordable to Minimum-Wage workers.

Secondly, one of the first issues homeless shelters noticed is that employers require and address to even apply. So if one of those people living in their cars or under a bridge and still heading to work god forbid loses their job, they literally cannot apply to another one without a fixed address, another way affordable/abundant housing explicitly affects homeless employment.

The 12% that cannot work should probably not be on the street and should be cared for in shelters, but many shelters are filled with people who's employers underpay or pay an unlivable income and so also require shelters. Abundant housing thus allows people in the work-force to not be priced out of a roof, opening up shelters for those that cannot care for themselves.

More housing is a win-win-win. Except maybe it means aunt Karen notices more busses, which she doesn't like the sound of, hence no more developments to appease those with the ability to make their points to local government, at the cost of those that many people even avoid eye contact with.

[0] https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cp5hpi/cp...

> The issue is not to just remember the 3 or 4 homeless people you've seen clearly dazed and likely unable to work, it's the thousands of people living in their car because rent is unaffordable for their income. That's the first point, abundance of housing lowers rents to the point of being affordable to Minimum-Wage workers.

For a bit aged, but probably still reasonably accurate article backing this up:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/05/california-h...

> Other parts of California have seen similar increases. Los Angeles county had a 12% increase in the homeless population over the last year, with the numbers surging to nearly 59,000 across the county. Officials tallied 9,981 cars, vans, RVs and campers acting as shelters for a staggering 16,525 people in 2019 – 28% of the county’s entire unhoused population.

I think that when you talk about homeless people, you talk about visible homelessness (those sleeping in tents or on bench). I'm not sure it's even a third of the homeless.

I was homeless while studying CS. I only had enough to rent an appartment for one year when i started, and since the school wasn't recognized by the state yet, i didn't qualified for most state aid for students. I slept at school, or at my friend and family 's apartment for almost two years. I wasn't the only one living like this btw, i think this was quite common in Paris. I also didn't own a car, and i think most homeless do sleep in their cars, it's easier.

Lower rent prices (1/3rd of what it was at the time) would definitely have helped me.

Not building is a symptom of a larger problem, not the disease itself. The issue people take with your comment is that it has gotten to the point that building pretty much anything would alleviate the disease, and you are applying nuance where it is unneeded.

More supply = lower prices = more people able to afford housing = less people forced into homelessness.

Imagine you built 400 million homes in San Francisco. Would every one be filled?

Programs show time and time again that housing homeless people massively helps and reduces the problem of homelessness

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_First#Evidence_and_out...

> Wouldn't most if not almost all of the homeless just remain what they are and the new housing would be used by new people moving into the city?

There's truth to that as the new stock would only go to those that could afford them, and the vast majority would be swept up by investors, unless they were actual public housing - the kind of housing that NIMBYs are most upset about. Either way having more stock ought to have a deflationary effect on housing costs. Though maybe perverse incentives/legislation could cause the opposite.

I think you are kinda right in that it might be very hard to get people out of homelessness, but what more housing could do is prevent homelessness in the first place.

Presumably most people start their lives as not homeless, and at some point that changes, because housing prices exceed their income. More housing would lead to lower housing prices and less homelessness.

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