Utah is Ending Homelessness by Giving People Homes | Hacker News Reader

Utah is Ending Homelessness by Giving People Homes

nationofchange.org

177 pointsjamesbritt138 comments

This is not a whole lot different from public housing projects that are subsidize by the state, just more subsidized.

The system works in a number of countries. As far as I know, it works. Eventually the only people on the street are people who are unable to cope/deal with the system and who fall through the cracks, such as mentally ill.

Of course one of the costs of any state welfare system is the tragedy of the commons. For example people keeping houses they no longer need and people not maintaing the houses they are in. I would be surprised if the former social problems of slums are improved by bricks and mortar.

I was in South Africa for a vacation recently. They are giving inhabitants of shanty towns small houses. Once they have moved them out they bulldoze the now-vacated land to build more houses.

Someone I met asked me if I could give an old woman a ride to her government provided house at the edge of a shanty town she used to live in. She told me that the solar heating water system installed by the government on all these houses does not work. I could see her house, which could not have been more than 5 years old, was already decaying. I suspect corrupt builders/politicians cheaping out. It was also clear that some of the ever newer houses were quickly deteriorating and were blending into the slum across the small dirt road that separated them, mostly from lack of rudimentary maintenance.

I could not help but wonder what those housing developments will look like in 10 years or 15 years and if the government will have to start rebuilding them at a huge expense.

Probably, but it doesn't mean the idea is flawed--just the execution. Also Africa has a rather horrific corruption index, IIRC. I'd almost be surprised if things were planned ahead properly there. With some laudable exceptions, their governments and politicians tend to have a remarkable and depressing lack of foresight.

Eventually the only people on the street are people who are unable to cope/deal with the system and who fall through the cracks, such as mentally ill.

This is a pretty variable part too, perhaps even more important than the actual "official" level of benefits. One of the bigger differences I've noticed moving from the U.S. to Denmark is not so much that the social welfare system is more generous (though that's true also), but especially that it's more proactive and less bureaucratic. If someone mentally ill is in need of support, qualifies for it, and cannot navigate the system themselves, a social worker will help them out. If they need somewhere to live and can't rent their own apartment, they'll get helped out there too. Someone will literally rent them an apartment, take them to it, make sure they settle in, and then check back later.

In the U.S., none of that is true. I have some pretty recent experience with an American uncle who has advanced M.S. and has gotten basically no useful support. For a while he was unable to live alone, but officially the government didn't give a shit, so he did anyway, and injured himself regularly. He alternated between living in his apartment for a few weeks at a time, and ending up in the emergency room several times per month each time he injured himself. You might think: at this point, shouldn't he move to an assisted-living facility? It'd actually be more cost-effective, but nope, neither SSI Disability nor Medicare Disability cover that. SSI Disability will pay his rent to live at home, and Medicare Disability will pay his hospital visits, but neither will pay for him to move to somewhere that makes more sense.

He would probably have ended up homeless or dead if some family members hadn't agreed to take over power of attorney, navigate the system on his behalf, and find money to pay for his rent. The U.S.'s joke of a stingy social system surely hasn't done anything on that front.

>would probably have ended up homeless or dead if some family members...navigate the system on his behalf.

This is what I've observed as well. Part of the reason I feel like I have to move out of the US as soon as I possibly can is that I have no blood relations to take care of me if I become fully disabled again. It's absolutely terrifying.

> but especially that it's more proactive

this was my main shock moving to work in the US. americans sell the image of workaholics. but...

from dmv, cafe baristas, to VPs on the fortune 500 companies... nobody, bloody nobody will move a finger to do something that is not strictly what they are being paid to do.

sometimes i think that if any of my coworkers would drop a pen during a meeting, it would be socially acceptable as an excuse for not taking any notes, since it is not his job to pick up a pen.

Spoiled children -> learned selfishness.

In my experience, it's the people who fear that they are going to be taken advantage of the moment they do anything they don't absolutely have to. It seems unlikely that getting spoiled as a child causes that kind of distrust.

That's just the power in the word "no". It's easy to say no, requires little thought, and no effort. This is not endemic to the US, I encounter it all the time in France as well.

So you learn not to ask, just do it. Or use a bit of reverse psychology to get to why it can't be done.

True, it is the very same I get in France. But french people does not sell themselves inconsistently as the americans. ;)

if your looking for charitable people amongst those in cafes and such your looking in the wrong place. People who tend to those locations are more concerned about themselves than others.

You want to find the people that care, go to the Goodwills, Salvation Army stores, and the like. Its not hard to find the charitable people if you would bother to look where they are instead of where you are comfortable.

Besides, based on personal experience, many of the very higher ups in the companies I work for put more time into charity than the techies ever did.

i wasn't even slightly referring to charity. Well, i was replying to one comment about social workers doing their job, but my comment was 100% about doing a job, regardless of field.

e.g. the baristas in the US will not pick up a napkin to you if you ask for the napkins, he will usually nod in the general direction of the pile of napkins.

>nobody, bloody nobody will move a finger to do something that is not strictly what they are being paid to do.

That reads as an excuse for not paying somebody to do something. I certainly don't do anything for my job that I'm not being paid to do - why would I expect a social worker who is being paid a third of what I get paid to work for free?

It's easier to think of societal problems as moral problems rather than problems of governance, but it's not productive, just bikeshedding.

if you simply says "it is not here" instead of saying "it is not here, it is at window 7, down the corridor to your left", are you really destroying years of unionized workers fight? or just not being an ass at your expected job?

not saying that you should clean the office before you head home :)

That's just part of the workaholic culture. You get rewarded for putting in long hours, not for doing good work, so people put in long hours but don't bother with actually doing a good job.

This is the other face of the "personal responsibility" that you've no doubt seen many prominent American politicians talk about. It's good because it means that you can succeed on your own merits, but it also means that if you fail, it must be because you suck.

It's a bit strange to me, because several of the theorists who are supposed to be beloved across the ideological spectrum, even (especially!) on the right, also noticed this problem. One of F.A. Hayek's concerns through a number of his writings was: what about the risks common to all people, such as the risk you'll end up disabled and unable to work, or that you'll contract life-threatening cancer? The traditional solution was a form of "personal responsibility" that actually becomes collectivism: southern-European and Middle-Eastern families have large extended families who are expected to effectively provide the insurance policy. If you fall seriously ill, your family clan, religious sub-sect, or other such collective membership entity covers for you.

To Hayek, this was not in keeping with the ideals of individual liberty. Instead, he preferred a state that assured everyone basic personal rights independent of their family/clan/religion, including both things like enforcement of contracts (even if you're not from an important enough family to enforce your own contracts) and protection against the threat of indigence (even if you're not from a close-knit religion that takes care of its own).

The number of so called Hayekians whom have actually read and understood significant parts of Hayek is depressingly small.

(for what it's worth you can probably say exactly the same thing about Keynesians).

That's really not a helpful reading of the situation, I think. In both cases, a significant pile of benefits is being given to the person in question. The US may very well be spending more on our person, since we're talking about pushing them through an expensive medical system with some frequency. But the US does it poorly.

I think part of how we've gotten there is our political class is satisfied spouting exactly that sort of glib generalities about "the evils of capitalism" and then just throwing more money in the general direction of the problem from too high a level with too bureaucratic a process (Federal or State), instead of letting people think and act on their thoughts. Nobody in the US situation is allowed to think, all the benefits are too rigid, and probably being administered from a thousand miles away or more.

It seems they consider it just a choice to be made, do you want to succeed or fail. But in a lot of cases due to personally circumstance the odds of success are greatly stacked against you. People from very disadvantaged starting points could succeed by advancing their personal and financial position from their parents and still be poor.

U.S. welfare is bureaucratic because it doesn't enjoy broad-based popular support. Conservatives don't believe it should exist, and liberals feel somehow guilty that it does exist.[1] This leaves no room for debate about how to improve service: all energy is spent simply defending the systems' existence.

[1] Hence the liberals' lionization of Clinton, whose big push on the social welfare front was the very conservative goal of cutting welfare rolls.

The goal of any welfare is to get those that can survive off of it, off of it - through gainful employment and counseling if need be. And for those that, for whatever reason, cannot survive off of it, well.. don't they deserve at the very least respect over squalor, just by being human?

Keep in mind that nearly all the social services in the US are run at the state level and there is a wide variability between states in terms of the services they offer.

What you're saying is true though, most states in the US don't help out with home care at all.

That's kind of why public housing failed in the first place: rents alone could not make up the entirety of the needed maintenance and staffing budgets.

> This is not a whole lot different from public housing projects that are subsidize by the state, just more subsidized.

They seem very, very different to me. The homeless are a teeny, tiny demographic, compared to, say, the entire lowest income quintile.

I think this is why Utah is also providing a social worker to each person.

This is yet another short term positive but long term disaster.

1) This creates an incentive to become "homeless." Now any kid can drop out of college, declare himself homeless, and get a free apartment. While it takes time for such incentives to kick in, this WILL happen.

2) This creates classic housing projects problems which inevitably turn into centers for crime, over time deteriorating neighborhoods and creating tension that is bad for everyone.

Every generation, we forget how terribly housing projects work out.

The solution is a basic income, possibly phased out slowly with earned income increases. This allows for a mobility and rational incentives housing projects can not provide.

Public housing projects perpetuate poverty and crime and this will end no differently. It's great that some homeless people have a place to sleep today - just wait 10 or 20 years and see how it turns out. Look at projects and low income housing in every city across the world.

Why do you think every generation forgets, if it's so obvious as you say? Perhaps it is not, in fact, so clear.

Just for the record, we have a similar system in New Zealand, and it works great.

1) In New Zealand there isn't really any incentive to become homeless, because a case worker takes you through an assessment process. This ensures that houses are only given to people who are truly homeless. Furthermore, I suspect you might underestimate the negative social image associated with living in state housing. If you need it, no-one really looks down on you (our current Prime Minister grew up in state housing), but if you're a young 20-something with a job, state housing is certainly not 'cool'.

2) The housing projects I have witnessed have not turned into centres for crime. It probably helps that these housing projects are really just clusters of 5-20 individual houses on a common plot, in the middle of some suburb. They're not segregated and concentrated.

EDIT: rXoX and im_a_lawyer, it looks like you've both been shadowbanned.

Many many people would rather accept state housing than work. I'm not even opposed to that choice on the whole. What I'm opposed to is rewarding that choice, and a more fair basic income takes care of that.

> 2) The housing projects I have witnessed have not turned into centres for crime. It probably helps that these housing projects are really just clusters of 5-20 individual houses on a common plot, in the middle of some suburb. They're not segregated and concentrated.

This is the biggest problem with American housing projects. They tend to be high density apartments in the cities, with thousands of poor people living together, segregated from everyone else. This is the result of the massive hypocrisy of American suburbanites. The county where my parents live in northern Virginia voted for Obama 60-40, but everyone would flip the fuck out if anyone built public housing in the suburbs near them. To them, public housing means segregating all the poor blacks and hispanics into the inner city so they don't run across them at the local shopping mall.

The US hasn't been pushing high density public housing projects for twenty years. The last major construction initiative for public housing initiative was Hope VI. More recently, programs that funnel public money directly into the private sector have seen greater favor, e.g. Section 8 vouchers and Low-Income Housing Tax Credit projects.

Ironically [or cynically depending on your point of view] LIHTC projects in particular saw increased funding in the rush to fund 'shovel ready' projects as housing cratered due to oversupply.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HOPE_VI

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_8_%28housing%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-Income_Housing_Tax_Credit

if you're a young 20-something with a job, state housing is certainly not 'cool'.

I'm pretty sure in the USA, state housing would be very cool in the right groups, because you are getting free housing and also "sticking it to the man". Shit, I could totally see a future where only people with state housing are "hip".

That's a pretty cynical view. You're a assuming people will strive for the lowest common denominator of living standards just so they can get free housing.

Do some people take advantage of welfare? Sure. But if you're doing pretty ok making $30k a year, would you drag yourself into unemployment just so you can take food stamps? Doubt it.

In fact, I see it completely reversed. It's a short term problem, with a long term solution. If you look at Maslow's hiearchy of needs, people who have their basic necessities met (housing, food, friends, etc) will naturally strive for higher living standards. In the short term, people will become homeless to claim free apartments, but in the long term strive for higher living standards.

I don't think supporting basic income instead of housing projects is a cynical view. A basic income that guarantees enough money to have a basic living should help most poor much more than housing projects or food stamps.

Do we have evidence of this? I'd like to believe it's true, but there's a part of me that thinks giving people food and housing rather than money makes it less likely they'll spend it on drugs.

Which is like arguing that distributing condoms causes teenagers to have sex, or needle exchange causes drug use. You're solving the wrong problem.

We can be sure addicts are going to get their drugs, and they're going to get the drugs whether they have a place to live and food on the table or not. The question is whether they're going to be committing other crimes that put society at risk in order to do so. I'd rather they spend my tax money than break into my house.

My problem isn't that they're using drugs, at least in the immediate; my problem is that if we give them money and they spend it on drugs then we haven't done anything about the fact that they're still hungry and homeless.

The problem we want to solve is that these people don't have food and shelter - or from a more selfish perspective, that these people are costing us money on prisons and emergency services. Now, would giving these people money solving these problems? Would giving them money be more effective at solving these problems than housing projects and food programs? Like I say, I'd like to believe giving them money works, but I want to see the evidence.

Then I think you either missed the word "most" or have bought into the lie that "poor" and "drug addict" are synonymous.

> You're a assuming people will strive for the lowest common denominator of living standards just so they can get free housing.

Not exactly. I'm assuming SOME people will take advantage of the system. Some people ALWAYS take advantage of a system with bad incentives.

Lots of people don't want to work, which is fine. However we don't want to reward people more for doing less.

I think we'll just have to wait and see how it goes. I don't see many people becoming homeless just to get a free house, and there are ways to prevent housing projects turning into ghettos. I'd be more concerned about whether they have knowledge/skills/motivation to live in a home. I suppose case workers will help with that.

> This creates an incentive to become "homeless."

Something tells me you've never had to deal with the homeless. If you did you would know you can't simply declare yourself homeless.

Here are all the ways a typical college dropout isn't homeless, when you show up to a shelter they'll ask these questions:

Do you have family you can stay with? Do you have friends you can stay with? Do you have assets you can use to stay in a sublet or studio?

Can a typical college studio say no to all of these?

The counselors job at the homeless shelter is to get you into housing as fast as possible, hopefully within the same night, sometimes it can take a week. Any longer than that and you start to mentally break down. They'll go through your entire phonebook and family tree to find a place for you to live that isn't the shelter.

> Public housing projects perpetuate poverty and crime and this will end no differently.

Public housing are a victim of their own success. People need help to emerge from poverty, move into the projects, and once they have built up enough resources they buy a home, or rent privately, and move out. After a while only the most indigent are left in the projects. So only the very poor are left in these places, the marginally poor have moved up and out. Projects don't start out a shithole, they get that way through neglect.

Why can't the college dropout simply lie and be uncooperative with giving out the phone numbers of their family and friends?

There are a few projects/experiments around inclusive living situations where either caseworkers/staff live on-site, or such apartments are mixed with others owned by the rest of the population.

Common Ground is one example running in Australia, I think inspired by a project in the US: http://www.commongroundadelaide.org.au/

Public housing projects worked great for Vienna (Austria).

Even though a third of Vienna's population (2.4 million) lives in public housing [1] today, Vienna has one of the highest standards of living in the world. [2][3]

There're a lot of things that I don't like about Austrian policy, but not having masses of homeless people roaming the streets is certainly not of them.

> 2) This creates classic housing projects problems which inevitably turn into centers for crime, over time deteriorating neighborhoods and creating tension that is bad for everyone.

Depends on how well it is implemented. Here they are distributed across the whole city thus preventing concentration of the poor in one neighborhood.

There are still parts of the city where more poor or rich people live, but there is no part where you'll find only one type precisely because there is public housing everywhere.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemeindebau

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercer_Quality_of_Living_Survey

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_most_livable_cities

Ideology aside, it seems to be working better than any other state's solution and for less money. It seems pragmatic enough. I would be curious to see some numbers on success of people the enrolled in the program in 2005-6.

I wish I could remember where I first read it, but from what I understand the average long term homeless person is a middle aged disabled man with either a mental illness or some form of substance dependency. Many are also veterans. It seems silly to tell that person to bootstrap. So for 11k a year for a roof and social worker vs. 16.65k for E.R. visits, jail, etc it seems like a no brainer. that's 5.65k in savings each per year.

There are also the quality of life improvements for the general populace of not having homeless on the street at all times and possibly also a measure of increased safety.

I'm respectfully dubious about the safety claim. Maybe perceived safety, but the last time I checked in my city (Baltimore) violent crimes weren't being perpetrated by the homeless, but rather the homeless are often victims. So, its safer for those people taken off the street.

More importantly, it unburdens city ERs and police departments. So, ok, maybe there is an indirect safety effect from freed up police resources.

Interesting how hairy and interconnected all of these complicated issues become when you dive into them.

The "less money" part is not so obvious. The article does not go in details about that part, so it's very hard to say whether it's BS or not. A house needs frequent maintenance, renovation, cleaning, etc... and this costs a lot of money in the mid-long run, as facilities degrade.

As for the ideology itself, I wonder how people who are working just to get enough money to survive and rent a place feel about this. I would be fine with the idea that a homeless person gets a home for a while, as long as they actively sort their life out and find a way to get to work again in a reasonable timeframe. Unless they are mentally ill, of course.

You could probably negate resentment from the working poor/other people working hard just to survive by making the facilities kind of basic, but available to everyone. People who want something prettier, in a better location, or with more amenities can pay for that experience. People in desperate situations will likely take whatever they can get.

I'm under the impression that the program is aimed at the chronically homeless, who tend to be disabled and or mentally ill. Also, after reading more about the program here http://jobs.utah.gov/housing/scso/hprrh/ it seems that when possible the program is focused on reentry into the workforce. The state claims that its successful and saves money, and its not like the place is run by Bernie Sanders.

It's true that it costs some money to maintain this kind of thing, but it costs a lot of money to maintain the current solutions, so the bar to beat is not exactly low. The current solutions for housing long-term homeless include, in varying proportions, such expensive facilities as: jail cells, hospital rooms, 72-hour holds in psychiatric facilities, and homeless shelters. My own guess is that Americans don't actually care about the cost, but are extremely paranoid that someone is getting something they feel they don't deserve. If someone is locked up in a prison cell for 5x the cost of renting them an apartment, then that's fine, because at least you know they were "punished" for spending the taxpayers' money, not getting something subjectively nice.

"but from what I understand the average long term homeless person is a middle aged disabled man with either a mental illness or some form of substance dependency."

That's stereotypical homeless.. what we imagine when we think of homeless people.

The average homeless person is 9 years old. Children represent 1/3rd of the homeless population (1.35m out of 3.5m).

These were the first results from Google:

http://www.opendoormission.org/about/fast-facts

http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/pages/basic-facts

Sorry, I should have clarified. I meant the average long term homeless adult. Sorry for the pdf http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/homelessness/symposium07/caton/repor...

This report states that the average age of people enrolled in services for the long term homeless is 40.

It's not clear how much those $16k costs for ER visits and jail stays are reduced, if at all. We can't conclude from the information provided if there are any savings at all

If there is adequate social work to follow up, I'm betting those ER visits and jail stays are reduced quite a bit. See also: Denmark

I laughed at the following line:

"But Utah’s results show that EVEN CONSERVATIVE STATES (emphasis mine) can solve problems like homelessness with decidedly progressive solutions."

Why do you Americans have to make everything either liberal or conservative? Republican or Democrat?

Life is about tension. If you want to hold a bird in your hand, you have to hold it loose enough that it isn't crushed, and tight enough that it doesn't fly away.

> Why do you Americans have to make everything either liberal or conservative?

Because there are different groups of people who have diametrically opposed views on how to solve many of the social problems modern America is facing.

> Life is about tension. If you want to hold a bird in your hand, you have to hold it loose enough that it isn't crushed, and tight enough that it doesn't fly away.

That's the problem with you Europeans. You refuse to make decisions, so you structure your society by averaging out all opinions. In the end, nobody's happy, and none of your problems are really solved :)

Ok, I know there is a smiley at the end of that. But I also think that a lot if non-Europeans take that half serious. "In the end, nobody's happy" in Europe just isn't true. :)

http://unsdsn.org/happiness/

The report identifies the countries with the highest levels of happiness:

  1.Denmark
  2.Norway
  3.Switzerland
  4.Netherlands
  5.Sweden

There is serious criticisms as to exactly what those studies measure. At best you can say that they measure contentment. That people from those countries are more content with their lives and have less significant complaints. That is quite different from happy in the joyous sense of the word.

I think this contentment is a good thing to strive for anyway, even if it does not equate to true happines.

Of course they measure contentment. "Happiness" isn't really meaningful at large scales.

Arguably, the people who are the happiest are those who strive for contentment instead of happiness. :)

The United States offers more potential for happiness than the countries listed above. The average mainstream person may be happy in Scandinavia and Switzerland, but I'm willing to bet that a dark-skinned or Asian person with a huge entrepreneurial drive is going to be quite frustrated. Christian-Muslim tensions are growing in some neighborhoods, and anti-Semitism has returned as well.

The United States has plenty of flaws, and we discuss them ad nauseam to the point where the rest of the world thinks of us as a horrible place. Probably, the majority of Americans are discontented, and have been since the 1960s when our cohesive society was ripped apart by overseas war and domestic social unrest.

But, discontent is what spurs people to seek change, not just change in their own lives but change in the political process. American politicians love to use "change" as a campaign slogan, e.g. "Time for a change!" (Clinton) and "Change!", "Hope and Change", "Change we can believe in!" (Obama).

Would you choose a life of contentment or a life of discontent that calls for disruptive change? I think I'd go with change, simply because it offers unbounded horizons for a dreamer such as myself. Perhaps for others, a safe shell of contentment is best--state-provided housing, health and retirement, jobless support, etc.

I think you are describing social mobility. I don't think the US is a horrible place. Having live in the US for a number of years, and in the UK, Sweden, plus having family in Switzerland and Spain, I have opportunity to compare firsthand. IMHO people in the US overestimate the social mobility in the country and essentially buys into the often repeated message that the US is the best place to live. Repeated by the wealthy and their media channels. Which if course serve them well.

That the US has lower social mobility is corroborated in some studies [1], especially lower than those listed as "happier" above.

"[A] study found that of nine developed countries, the United States and United Kingdom had the lowest intergenerational vertical social mobility with about half of the advantages of having a parent with a high income passed on to the next generation. The four countries with the lowest "intergenerational income elasticity", i.e. the highest social mobility, were Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Canada with less than 20% of advantages of having a high income parent passed on to their children." [1]

"In spite of this low mobility Americans have had the highest belief in meritocracy among middle- and high-income countries."

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility#Country_compari...

It sounds like you're addressing general prosperity, but I'm talking about individual opportunity. There's been plenty of articles and books about the wealth divide in the U.S., the permanent underclass of mostly Black and Latino poor who have had trouble rising out of poverty, the decline in the quality and the power of education to uplift people economically, the decline of the white blue collar working class, etc.

But for individual entrepreneurial opportunity, I would maintain that the U.S. is still a top destination. Entrepreneurship is essentially disruptive. Is entrepreneurial activity in Sweden as active as it is in the U.S.? In years past, it was not; perhaps things have changed.

I think we are talking cross purpose. A chat over a beer would be better. Entrepreneurship is easier than it was.

> Because there are different groups of people who have diametrically opposed views on how to solve many of the social problems modern America is facing.

And furthermore, the FPTP voting system shoehorns every political controversy into liberals versus conservatives.

I think Chris Rock summed it up best (NSFW, language): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3s5XYHQdAs

I had the same reaction, and I am American.

The site's tagline is "Progressive Journalism for Positive Action". I imagine they have to include a dig on Republicans/Utah...ites? to show that the author does indeed think Republicans are Bad, lest the commenters crucify him.

Utahn

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_demonyms_for_U.S._state...

Because politics is a team sport for far too many people. The people who cling to an "R" or a "D" often fundamentally agree on many issues with the other side. But because its their team they will spout the vitriol they hear from their "leaders" (think, Rush Limbaugh) because they want to win.

This is exacerbated by both sides doing a masterful job over the past 50(+/-) years of making Americans absolutely hate one another. They use that wedge to gain power which is all they really want. It all has little to do with actually making the country better.

I wish more states would implement this. It doesn't have to be a house, just an apartment. It doesn't even have to be a big one. Even just a single mattress in a small room or a studio with a kitchen is a huge quality of life improvement--and relatively inexpensive, as it seems they've found. Kicking them off of park benches is about as helpful as sloshing water around within the same bucket and then looking surprised that the contents haven't appreciably depreciated. Homeless are not going to just disappear. (Unless they die, which I suppose is what people like the sledgehammer guy in the article would prefer...)

Just build capsules hotels, just like in Japan. That's cheap enough, and it has everything. But it only works if people can behave well in community...

Yeah, even something like that would work (maybe a little more spread out in places that aren't so urban). It's just appalling to me that so many people don't even have a place to stay out of the snow in this day and age. I wonder how many homeless you could house for a month for the cost of [insert luxurious iProduct here].

Well accommodation should not be so expensive in the first place. That's why you get so many homeless people as well. Accommodation prices are completely up the roof for a number of reasons (some State-related), and there is no clear end in sight for this problem.

Hong Kong cages http://www.businessinsider.com/hong-kong-rich-live-in-mansio...

You mean like a housing project. They were tried in the 50s and 60s and were pretty much a complete failure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_the_United_St...

They're a success in most first world countries. Like health care, the US bungled the handling of it something awful. Still, there have been some successes. NYC's housing programs have been (for the US) relatively competent. This was in large part because they didn't do what another commenter wrote about chicago's system: corral all the poor people into a place with no transit so that the rich didn't have to look at them. NYC sprinkled its housing projects here and there, and it turned out much better (or at least, much less worse) as a result.

From a humanitarian point of view, it seems strange that the money-saving aspect is the deciding factor on this, as opposed to improving quality of life. But even so, even if it saves costs, people - including the prevailing winds on HN - are still against it.

There seems to be a large number of opponents who'd rather spend a multiple of that housing and social care cost on jails and other measures designed to make sure these people stay away from society without any chance of coming back. I'd genuinely be interested to hear why. If a program exists that re-integrates a majority of these people, wouldn't it be worth the expense even if it cost more (which it apparently doesn't)?

> I'd genuinely be interested to hear why.

Many Americans are sadists who think the poor deserve what's coming to them, and are actually willing to spend extra money to ensure it comes to them.

See also: just-world hypothesis:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis

The word "perverse" has been used on this thread and on other occasions to describe social improvement measures. I'm not sure all these people here are sadists, there must be something else at work.

As far as I can tell the standard argument seems to be that these homeless aren't productive members of society so it somehow makes sense to put resources into actively punishing them for it and making sure the conditions are reinforced that allowed them to become antisocials in the first place. Yet, at the same time, there are a lot of true parasites in society who actually get paid a lot, and who we kind of worship.

In the end, you might be right. But it's not a satisfying explanation.

>The word "perverse" has been used on this thread

Only in the phrase 'perverse incentive'. Which simply means a system has a high potential for unintended consequences / being gamed.

It has absolutely nothing to do with whether the basic idea is noble.

I think the one thing that nearly everyone can agree on is that all current welfare systems are quite broken. In Australia, welfare comes in the form of money being deposited into your bank account. Many on welfare claim that it isn't enough to live off properly (probably true) and many not on welfare claim that the system is being abused by people who shouldn't be on it, which is also probably true.

I'd like to see a country that experiments with giving people the most basic essentials that they need to get out of welfare. Things like temporary accommodation, basic food, etc. That way there would be no point to abusing it, and no one can claim it isn't sufficient for basic living. I imagine that it would also result in cost savings for the government since they would be buying in bulk rather than distributing cash for those on welfare to spend individually. There's still problems with this approach, but I think it might strike a better balance than current systems.

> Many on welfare claim that it isn't enough to live off properly (probably true) and many not on welfare claim that the system is being abused by people who shouldn't be on it, which is also probably true.

I think one of the primary differences between the (US) liberal and conservative mentality with respect to welfare is that, while everyone acknowledges that the system isn't going to be perfect, the liberals are incensed by false negatives (the criteria are erroneously set such that someone who truly needs assistance won't get it) whereas the conservatives are incensed by false positives (the criteria are erroneously set such that someone who doesn't deserve assistance and is gaming the system will get it).

In other words, both sides acknowledge that the criteria for "deserving" assistance are going to be flawed, they just differ on whose side they'd like to err on.

I really think that once you realize this, you can better clarify your own priorities on this issue and come up with a more nuanced position than the usual "you're a monster" / "you're a bleeding heart" blather.

So focusing more on the essentials including: healthcare, housing, food, transportation, education, motivation and a little cash

Basic income or a negative income tax would be a better solution.

Giving people free homes creates a perverse incentive.

Yeah! Who doesn't love the homeless bum taking up four seats on the subway? We can't let such a valuable part of urban scenery disappear!

'nostromo is advocating an alternative solution to homelessness, not advocating that we not address homelessness. The aim of his solution would still be to get people off of the streets.

Your sarcasm, and comment in general, are misplaced.

People need to have it at least slightly together mentally to successfully rent a place, even if they have money. It seems like it would be more effective to provide the housing directly, given that inability to do this is part of why they are homeless in the first place (especially true in the case of mentally ill homeless). Many homeless have attributes that make them a turnoff to landlords, so even with a basic income, they might still end up on the streets.

That is a more reasonable response, since it actually addresses the idea.

Anyway, there is certainly room for, and a need for, specialized social programs in a basic income scheme. However a major benefit of [basic income|negative income tax] is that they have the potential to prevent homelessness (particularly when coupled with universal healthcare).

In theory basic income would greatly reduce the strain on specialized programs; the fewer people who become and stay homeless for long periods of time because of basic income, the fewer people need to be serviced by programs such as Utah's.

Basic income treats an underlying cause (income inequality) instead of treating a symptom (people without homes). It may be necessary to stabilize the patient by treating the symptoms in the short term, but that only goes so far.

It's true that those same qualities may make them poor fits for this program. I don't know the details, but I'm sure there are rules about the housing (you can't damage it, etc) that may be barriers to some of the target population living in it.

Many of the people who would have trouble paying rent every month will also have trouble staying within the rules of state-provided housing.

But giving people a free income doesn't create a perverse incentive?

First, we already have such 'free income' in forms of various welfare programs and SSDI. This creates a whole number of issues, however.

The problem to the perverse incentive problem, however, is not to remove the income when they get another source of income (as effectively it ammounts to a 100% tax!) -- while this may prove difficult to pass through any legislature, another approach could be to frame it as a progressive negative income tax.

That said, this is a different problem than homelessness: the two causes are usually extremely expensive housing and mental illness rather than lack of work. Mental illness means the jobs aren't stable, but extremely expensive housing means that even if they have a job, they won't be able to have a normal home: I've noticed this pattern a lot in San Jose, there are many cases of people living in their cars, used RVs, using work/gym to shower, and so on... They actually have jobs but are unable to go through a credit check and come up with an initial deposit.

This kind of housing solves both problems: the mentally ill have a stable address which makes it easier to follow through with a treatment problem; those who don't earn enough to get a place, can stay long enough to be able to save more, get a better paying job, and/or find roommates.

Free income to those without jobs is often arranged as to create perverse incentives. Free income period doesn't provide much in the way of incentives at all. So no it doesn't.

According to this article it does - work is reduced by 13%.

https://decorrespondent.nl/541/why-we-should-give-free-money...

(Unfortunately no primary sources are cited for that claim, which is pretty common for articles on the topic.)

A solution with similar benefits but minimal perverse incentives is the Basic Job - if you can't find a job the government will give you an unpleasant one at below minimum wage.

Basic Job is horrible idea. It means hiring someone in made-up job. You take all the time that this person could spend with his/her family/children or on self-improvement or looking for a worthwhile thing to do, waste some of your resources that are required to set up this made-up job and pay so little money that the person will struggle to support himself/herself.

Communist states had basic jobs. I lived in one, it wasn't pretty. People got bored and lazy at the job, drank a lot of booze at work to kill the boredom and not care about what they did at all because that they knew they'll get their sh*t-money anyways.

Nowadays part of civil service office workers in my country fit the description of Basic Job. They sit 7-8 hour pushing unnecessary papers for near minimum wage. They are wasting their lives to prove that they deserve a handout. It's most often women that can suffer low pay and toxic work environment. Government could reduce much waste if it just sent them home with the same pay so they can take care of their children better instead.

They aren't made-up jobs. They are simply jobs with value lower than minimum wage.

In the US, we are often told about our "crumbling infrastructure". Roads have potholes. It's not hard to find parks which are not as well maintained as they could be. Government buildings are rarely spotlessly clean. If we are going to pay people who can't find a job in the private sector, why not have some of these problems fixed?

Similarly, many people complain that the cost of day care prevents productive women from working. If we are going to tax a productive businesswoman to pay for a basic job, why not at give her cheap day care (provided by low productivity people) in return?

The problem with Communist states is not the existence of the employer of last resort, but the lack of anything else.

Just give more money to you government and it will hire more people to do the jobs that currently it thinks it can do without. Like keeping government buildings spotless.

So the only thing you need to do to realize the idea of Basic Job as you see it is give more money to your government. Pay more taxes. Vote for people that want to raise taxes. Government will gladly use your money to hire people at minimum wage to do the jobs that have value lower than minimum wage. Or just move to Sweden.

Of course other people will say that government pays to much for cleaning parks and government buildings and filling in potholes. That it's not done as efficiently as it should be. And they will also be right. After all, why invest in labor saving technology such as cleaning machines if half of the point why this cleaning job exists is to have an excuse to give money to the person that can't find a job that has value higher than minimum wage.

No need to raise taxes - we are already spending the money. All I propose is that we get something in return.

This solves the perverse incentives created by a Basic Income and costs a lot less (you only give it to some people instead of giving to everyone).

So you don't want to give money to the people who currently are not gettinga any? You just want to discurage people who are getting money by ordering them to do some work?

Where do you get money to pay people to organize the job and supervise that it's actually done? How do you treat people who don't do the job right? Do you deny them the money and the job? Do you put them in jail? Communist states did that.

What do you plan to do about people who won't take the money if they have to lose third of their time for it?

Do you give those people money/food/shelter for free or do you let them starve or freeze?

I believe your idea is incredibly complicated in detail. I like the idea of basic income because there's so little that can go wrong. The only proble I see is that rent could just go up and suck almost all basic income into pockets of property owners.

We already have a negative income tax. The bottom 40% of earners pay -9% in taxes ... meaning, the top 60% pay 109% of taxes (this is entirely independent of other entitlements, welfare, etc ... this is just the income tax money moving to and fro)

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/cbotop-40-...

I am really ... shocked I guess, how can you not like this. I was not born in the US, but in 10 yrs I lived here (and liking it obviously), I was always bothered that such a great country can have so many homeless and destitute people. I can write about this pages and pages... Studies show, once someone ends on the street, he never comes back up, this is the only way for many of those to get themselves up. I am even liking numbers about how much it costs to care about homeless vs. helping them.

Seriously, this costs little and helps a great deal to people who genuinely need it.

The key isn't so much the home but the social workers they provide. Most homeless people are not just folks like you and I who happened to be out of work a little longer, they are people with various mental illnesses and addictions. It's no coincidence that homelessness skyrocketed when deinstitutionalisation started.

Are the actually ending homelessness for good? Or are they placing a bandaid on the problem and possibly making things worse?

Hawaii has a homeless problem because it is a very forgiving place for the homeless to live, mainly the favorable temperature imho.

Vancouver/Victoria B.C. have a much larger visible homeless population than Toronto. Again, because the winter temperatures won't kill you in Vancouver, buy they very well could in Toronto.

In time, once "word of the street" gets out that Utah is giving away free houses to homeless people whether they follow their suggested rules of living or not... I think we might be seeing a few more thumbs on the highway with signs for Salt Lake City.

SLC probably has the advantage that your average homeless drunk has a much harder time getting booze.

Is booze still only sold in state-sanctioned stores?

I went to a rodeo in St. George, Utah last year.

It was sponsored by budweiser. Yet, not a single drop of beer or any alcohol was sold on site.

Utah sure is an interesting place to be.

I wish this was possible here. People need to work for years before they can even think about buying a house.

Sounds like a really good idea for a place like Utah - props to them.

Seems like a sustainable permanent solution...

Sarcasm? It's almost certainly more sustainable than trying to run them out of town or put them in prison.

According to the original source[0], the solution has been in place since 2005, and had reduced the homeless population by 74% by 2012. The cost savings was about 5k per homeless person per year.

"In 2005, Utah did a study that found the average annual cost for emergency services and jail time for each chronically homeless person was $16,670. The cost to house them and provide case management services was only $11,000 per person."

Obviously those two numbers don't account for the fact that even a newly homed person might continue to have some emergency services, and jail time. Yet, Utah continues the program and "... the state is on track to meet its goal by 2015", where that goal is to eliminate chronic homelessness.

As Mr Deming once said, "In God We Trust. All others bring data."

I'm impressed that the typical moral outrage of people being given "handouts" was short-circuited by rational data analysis, and a solution driven by said data. Kudos Utah!

Indeed. What prevents other homeless people to "migrate" to Utah in order to benefit from that program ? If that's the case, the costs of the program would explode, and the savings would be gone. That's typically what happens. Not sure what they are doing to avoid that scenario.

Across the plains in their stagecoaches?

Hitch-hiking.

is that still a thing? Also, how are they supposed to hear about it? And who picks up hitchhikers anymore? I mean, maybe a few people would do it, but I'm skeptical that it would ever be a problem.

I've ran out of gas in Silicon Valley and had people pull over to offer a ride to the gas station. So folks are still awesome.

Yeah, but you probably don't look like a homeless person.

Yes people still travel by hitchhiking. Yes it is possible to do so. I know someone who hitchhikes all the time.

well...ok

Hasn't happened in the last 8 years---the programme's been running since 2005). And from a national point of view, better to house the homeless in cheap Utah than in a more expensive state.

I read that Nevada was busing their homeless into California to get them off the books; clearly they were doing it wrong and should have sent them to Utah instead.

It's funny you should say that because that's exactly what Utah was accused of doing to Las Vegas in order to clean up the streets for the 2002 Olympics.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/14/sports/olympics-the-street...

I'm not sure there's enough history to know. Certainly counterexamples are easy to find: cities like Chicago tried providing huge amounts of housing to the poor and those projects were unmitigated disasters and have over the past decade or so been mostly torn down.

There was a good book the other year that covered the failure of Chicago public housing. Basically they demolished a lot of serviceable neighborhoods and shoved all of the displaced people into Concrete silos with people from all over the city, but not necessarily their old neighborhoods. Then, they never planned for or accounted for children and teenagers who roamed the buildings unsupervised while their parents were working or out looking for work. In the old neighborhoods, children played in the streets where any number of people could see them from store keepers to police or nosey old people. In the high rises, they were left completely to their own devices. Additionally, these high rises were built apart from other things in the city and not very accessible by foot. This meant that you couldn't walk from one to a grocery store, your church, your job, or anything really.

So basically, Chicago built giant human warehouses to store all of the poors they had collected from around the city. Not hard to imagine why that failed. IMHO, Utah's program of housing the chronically homeless is totally different.

This would be an awesome project to contribute coding skills to - imagine a platform managing this type of program and helping redistribute that knowledge back out to the world.

Yay! There is even place in this budget to give every homeless a Mac and subscription to codeschool.com. Guys, do it. Utah will become the next Silicon Valley.

Does the state also give jobs or money so they can afford these homes?

Terrible grammar in this article

I personally believe that punishment should be severe, but that people need second chances. Perhaps many people end up homeless after making poor choices in life that lead to their predicament. But society must offer ways for everyone to redeem themselves.

edit> Our society (The US) has become really good at punishing people, but is terrible at helping people back up.

I'm not sure if it is just the wording or what, but I find it really wacky that you seem to be conflating poverty with crime. "Punishment"... for being poor and homeless?

I've never seen it stated so clearly but I think that it's fairly common sentiment. If you made bad financial/job decisions in your life you deserve to not be provided with such basic necessities as food and shelter that we provide to even most serious criminals.

Basically in public opinion not getting rich enough (to support yourself in economy of the time) is very serious crime and you should be punished for it with hunger and homelessness.

Punishment for what?

For deigning to be poor, of course.

> Perhaps many people end up homeless after making poor choices in life that lead to their predicament

I don't really have any data at hand, but a lot of people become homeless due to health issues, family conflicts, socio-economic problems (high unemployment rates, factory closings, lack of affordable housing), or even by being born poor or homeless... I believe some of those reasons are outside of the control of a single person.

You don't need data; OP is suffering from the Just World Fallacy, he doesn't understand how the world actually works.

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