Denver's mayor hopefuls want to arrest homeless living on the street | Hacker News Reader

Denver's mayor hopefuls want to arrest homeless living on the street

axios.com

25 pointslando231915 comments

It "works" in Florida. The incarceration rates are 200 per 100,000 more than Western states (and that's lower than many other southern states). That's 40,000 extra people in prisons. Portland has an estimated 5000 people living on the street. So, there's your solution if you want to go there. And, since the southern states won't even hold a vote on whether incarcerated can be forced to work (some call that slavery) you get the benefit of extra revenue from companies that don't mind hiring "criminals."

As a recent transplant to Florida, this was all news to me. And, very discomforting.

More likely this is simply a function of housing cost. Median home price is much greater in Portland and Denver than any major city in Florida.

It's tempting to see homelessness as an individual problem, but cost of housing is a much stronger correlation than addiction/mental illness.

That sound dubious. Can you back that claim up?

What causes you to find it dubious? Homelessness rates track housing costs pretty directly in studies I’ve seen.

I read the book 'Homelessness is a Housing Problem' by Greg Colburn recently, it has a lot of data and makes a good argument for this position. A good direct comparison is between Seattle, WA and Charlotte, NC... they've both experienced a ton of growth in the last couple decades, but Charlotte's more favorable geography has made it much easier to build housing to keep up with this growth.

You can also look at places like West Virginia, or Balitmore, which have high rates of crime/addiction but low rates of homelessness- housing is cheap over there.

But isn't the crime and livability correlated such that low crime areas like Seattle are more desirable places to live. And, that's why housing is more expensive?

Baltimore is very high crime and as such inexpensive and as such low levels of homelessness.

That's why you just cherry pick the data to fit the narrative you like of course

> much greater in Portland and Denver than any major city in Florida

Well, barring Miami, maybe.

Cities with high housing costs also tend to have more funding behind social programs that can enable homelessness (Seattle, Portland, SF). Also, circuit court jurisdictions governing how localities can manage a homeless population may account for some difference (9th vs 11th, in this case).

What is the causality behind the social programs? You are saying they are enabling the homelessness, but it seems more likely that high housing cost cities are simply dealing with their resulting homeless populations?

I believe you but.

Hasn't crime risen more sharply in the west coast cities? If so, is it simplistic to say that homelessness leads to crime? I think the mental health issues are a stronger correlation: without the meth induced psychosis being added to homelessness, you wouldn't have nearly as much crime.

Sadly, I've come to the conclusion that forced incarceration is necessary for a certain small group of people on the streets. A guy I used to know in Portland owned a club in the east side, and said there was a homeless man throwing railroad ties into the windows. Then, he murdered his girlfriend and burned himself alive in his tent. Completely anecdotal but I can't forget it. If we really cared about people on the street, we should have figured out a way to get him off the street.

But, that note in the article about data driven solutions showing that incarceration is not effective makes me pause, and I'll go read that now that I've sprouted off misinformation.

I agree that mental health issues are a serious driver for homelessness. We see that 20-25% of the homeless population has serious mental health issues... not all of them, but much higher than the regular population.

However, this doesn't explain why some cities have way more homelessness than others. It's not like there's way more insane people in Portland than other cities. Take a look at the third chart on this page- https://www.sightline.org/2022/03/16/homelessness-is-a-housi...

This is excellent. Thanks for sharing it. The recent changes to zoning in the west coast might radically change things in regard to housing stock. I'm hopeful.

Absolutely not a housing problem. I interact often with homeless people because I literally live next to them. You don't need to run a study to know 10/10 of these folks are heavily addicted to drugs. We can't help them out if we continue ignoring this fact. Homelessness is a consequence of their mental health. If you give them a house they will still be addicted. Actually, some if not all would not be willing to relocate if that means they will be far from their suppliers. Having experienced drug addiction myself, I know there's no way out unless you are forced into treatment. You need medical care, medications and a good support system to get sober, particularly after using the nasty stuff on our streets today.

You are ignoring the 99% of the homeless in shelters and living in cars who work and can't afford housing.

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