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Comment by vkou | Hacker News Reader

I assure you, if they stopped spending that money tomorrow, things would get dramatically worse, as all the people that money keeps off the streets would be on them.

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Spending less money more efficiently would not make the problem worse.

But currently housed people becoming street homeless would.

Unless you mean to say that you don't care either way if they do.

(If your value system places zero value on that, then my value system places positive value on spending your money on things you very explicitly don't value.)

This argument is so dumb. SF spends so profligately that a well–run system could spend less money and be just as effective, if not more effective. Nobody would be turned out onto the street just because less money was being spent. Half of that money is probably going to fraudsters who are bilking the government. A lot of it is probably being spent in useless ways that ensure that more money will be spent on the problem in the future, to keep the cash spigot running to the NGOs that profit from the homeless.

Do they spend $100,000 per homeless person in Europe and Asia? If not, why don't they have similar problems?

Closer familial ties + extremely harsh laws for drug sale and use. Asians realized how opium fucked China for a century and made sure none of that shit flies.

If they're spending money on, say, school lunches for poor kids and on substance abuse programs, they're not technically spending money on homeless people, but it's hard to see that the money that isn't being spent on the unhoused doesn't help people not become unhoused in the first place.

EU:

The social net prevents homelessness.

We don't get broke because of medical bills.

Labor laws prevent being fired without prévenance.

Being fired grants you employment benefits.

The vast majority of the homeless you see on the streets in the US are there no because of money trouble, but because of mental health or drug issues (or both).

People with money issues can almost always lean on friends or family. It’s the people that no longer have any friends or family willing to put up with them that end up on the streets.

Then the question becomes why US has such a huge problem with mental health and drugs that most other countries don't have with this scale. Maybe it's easier to develop mental health and/or drug issues when there are no societal safety nets, like accessible healthcare, decent affordable housing, unemployment benefits, ...

We really should go with a harsh Chinese solution. If you do drugs in China, you hope your dad is Jackie Chan or you are going to have a really hard life. And being caught homeless in a big city gets you a free escorted bus ticket back to the poor rural area your hukou is in, where you couldnt make it either.

The more western solutions are compassionate containment like in Finland.

America cant make up its mind if it wants to be like China or Finland.

I don't know why people seem to think the US has "no societal safety nets."

We have medicaid, unemployment benefits, how expensive our housing is completely depends on location just like other places (rural-ish areas are probably cheaper than almost all of Europe), etc.

I live in Berlin and there's a ton of homeless people on the streets. As bad as most major US cities (SF is worse, or at least was - I haven't visited in a few years).

As I remember, in Finland everyone is guaranteered an apartment, even if the person has no money.

google medical bankruptcy, zero (0) other first world countries deal with this concept

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