It's way past time that we start dealing with homelessness as the national problem it is rather than leaving it to cities who are ill-equipped to deal with it. Cities like San Diego only have homelessness problems because they have weather that's amenable to living outdoors. The vast majority of their homeless population was born elsewhere. It's unconscionable that we leave the job of providing services for these people to these cities. When people are made homeless by hurricanes and flooding, we don't question the need to help and we give FEMA free license to spend what's necessary to provide support. And yet when it comes to the long-term homeless population, we act like there's no moral obligation to help. These kinds of outbreaks are just a natural and expected outcome when we take such a localized approach to homelessness.
Seems like we need to address all of these issues. Literally the only institutions that provide all of these things are jails, which many homeless attempt to get into.
Not true at all. These things are all provided. Welfare, public housing, food stamps, public education, Medicaid. That we still have a homeless problem indicates that the reason for long-term homelessness is something else.
There is a really huge shortage of genuinely affordable housing in the US. Public housing is generally pretty crappy and in short supply to boot.
Having studied the problem in an actual college class and also spent the last 5.5 years on the street: It's complicated. But we need more solutions for people and fewer aimed at poor people specifically. Programs to help the poor are routinely craptastic.
Affordable housing and single payer medical coverage would go a long way towards reducing the problem.
>There is a really huge shortage of genuinely affordable housing in the US. Public housing is generally pretty crappy and in short supply to boot.
This is disingenuous, the housing shortages are all in the highly desirable locations like the SFO, LAX, NYC, etc. There is no housing shortage in the vast majority of the country (look at Detroit).
It's completely unsustainable to try to support a model where anyone should be able to live in whatever city they choose for an extremely low cost.
Listen, I support single payer systems, but how do they figure out how much to pay in each region? Same question for UBI.
I have come to believe that UBI and all other safety nets have to come with immigration requirements. Not just everyone is going to be accepted to live among rich billionaires without concern for running out of money. And so on in every neighborhood.
Thus, UBI needs for each area needs to be tied in with community membership, and be based on the Consumer Price Index in that area.
Communities can open themselves up to more people from time to time.
I have enough faith in the American people that we would never permit the end of freedom of movement. For one thing, it would take a Constitutional amendment to legalize internal border controls. For another, geographical mobility has been core to American identity since the earliest days of the country. You're talking about locking the Okies in the Dust Bowl. Locking the autoworkers in Detroit even after the auto industry dried up. Preventing the Great Migration of Southern blacks to the more hospitable Northern states. Deepening inequality by locking in the regional disparities that perpetuate it.
This is insane, dystopic (literally, geographically-based caste systems feature in dystopian fiction with some regularity, for example the Hunger Games and Elysium), un-Constitutional, and un-American.
If internal border controls ever became law, I'd be the first to sign up for the resistance in the resultant civil war.
Whoa whoa, who's talking about ending freedom of movement? To be clear we are talking about being eligible to receive free money from whichever local area agrees to issue it to you.
> we are talking about being eligible to receive free money from whichever local area agrees to issue it to you.
This looks pretty similar to the English Poor Laws, which in the end proved to be quite despotic. It started like this, at the end of the 15h century:
> In 1495, Parliament passed the Vagabonds and Beggars Act ordering that "vagabonds, idle and suspected persons shall be set in the stocks for three days and three nights and have none other sustenance but bread and water and then shall be put out of Town. Every beggar suitable to work shall resort to the Hundred where he last dwelled, is best known, or was born and there remain upon the pain aforesaid." (taken from the wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Poor_Laws)
but it turned out that that made people dependent on their "original" parishes and that the other parishes/towns would not want any of them on their streets, thus impeding the free movement of people across England. There were other major ills caused by this law (this subject also has its own wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_the_English_Poor...), I for myself first learned of its bad effects (and of the bad effects that similar laws can cause) by reading some Bentham.
Once again, this is NOT about forcing anyone to do anything. This is about ELIGIBILITY FOR UNCONDITIONAL BASIC INCOME. You can move anywhere you want -- but you are not guaranteed benefits. Should be obvious!
If you don't allow communities to limit who can join, what is to prevent 50,000 people from various parts of California moving to Beverly Hills the next day and demanding enough UBI to live in a mansion and having private doctors?
> You can move anywhere you want -- but you are not guaranteed benefits. Should be obvious!
You're not explicitly forbidding them to stay, you're doing that implicitly, by correlating their getting financial assistance with them remaining in a specific place. It's the same thing with saying "you're free to leave your job anytime you want!" when you're full of financial responsibilities (rent/mortgage, kids, older relatives you have to take of) which means that you are not in fact "free" to leave that job.
> If you don't allow communities to limit who can join, what is to prevent 50,000 people from various parts of California moving to Beverly Hills the next day and demanding enough UBI to live in a mansion and having private doctors?
The way I understand UBI (I may be wrong) is that whenever and especially if it would be implemented then exclusive places like Beverly Hills will have to go, i.e. the society would have to become more equal.
No, inequality will always persist. You can't have 10,000 people come live in a place where water is expensive and then demand that society bring water to them. You speak of freedom - freedom brings inequality as different communities make different choices.
Back to your point - you are free to leave your job if another company will hire you. You are free to leave your community if another community will pay for your UBI. Or if you saved up enough to move, or if you actually make enough money now etc.
You do realize the UBI is on top of what you'd be making anyway, just to help you save up?
Perhaps the community will pay UBI only to those who move there and work there (contributing to the society), or prove inability to work. But then it wouldn't be unconditional anymore - and who gets to say that the "poet" who muses for 10 hours a day isn't doing some productive work? Communities would then be tying UBI to certain kinds of work.
But just giving unconditionally UBI to everyone is unsustainable because it just completely overlooks the cost of living in a certain area. If millionaires can afford super duper doctors and other gentrified stuff in that area, how would you figure out how much UBI to give to the people moving there? If you give the same amount to everyone everywhere, they STILL couldn't afford doctors in Beverly hills.
Now you are talking about price controls forcing an ace surgeon in Beverly Hills to take the same as someone who barely graduated medical school and never got better, who works in SomewhereCheap Kansas. That's unrealistic.
And you're forcing a water company that supplies water to a desert place to charge the same for that necessary good as a water company that delivers 100 feet from a local aquifer.
Think it through and tell me how your proposed UBI system without immigration quotas would even workz
The shortage of affordable housing is very much real. It is not something I am making up. And, yes, every American city should have housing that single people with entry level jobs can afford without an hour long commute or three roommates. We did historically. We tore a lot of it down in the 60s and 70s when it wasn't really needed, then never rebuilt it when the need for such came back, in essence.
We have Single Payer for the poor and near-poor (Medicaid covers 1 in 5 Americans) and the U.S. government spends a couple hundred billion dollars a year on housing subsidies (directly and through the tax code and through subsidies in the mortgage market). Most federal public housing is privately administered through public vouchers to landlords and non-profits.
Since the demand for housing assistance often exceeds the limited resources available to HUD and the local housing agencies, long waiting periods are common. In fact, a PHA may close its waiting list when it has more families on the list than can be assisted in the near future.
Having government benefits available to some people but not others, who are in the same circumstance, seems immoral and very prone to corruption. If someone qualifies for housing assistance and gets it, then moves out of that situation, and if they need it again it might not be available. This is a system that discourages a person from getting off of assistance (dependence).
Yes but costs vary from neighborhood to neighborhood. How do you determine how much to pay the doctors and who gets to live where? Obviously not every homeless can move into Beverly Hills tomorrow.
There are tons of Section 8 apartments in my city. While I work my butt off trying to make my rent and have leaky faucets and 50 yr old single pane windows, the section 8 across the street has new windows, min splits, and granite counter tops...
The landlord gets garaunteed income, huge waiting list of tenants, can VERY easily have them evicted for violations and actually get MORE than market rate brcause the govt pays better for the section 8.
It's driving up rents and drug related crime has already increased.
I'm currently looking at moving out of the city core and into a suburb.
To be clear, I am not for more Section 8 housing. I am for market based solutions.
In the 60s and 70s, we tore down around 80% of the SROs we had because the Baby Boomers came from an unprecedentedly well off, large middle class and did not need minimal housing of that sort. Boarding houses used to also be common. Now, most housing is designed with a nuclear family in mind and our default expectation is that single adults should get one or more roommates to make such housing work for them. There is far too little market based housing aimed at singletons and childless couples. Meanwhile, our demographics have changed and we have drastically more singletons, childless couples or single parents, drastically fewer nuclear families.
I want market based solutions, not more government interference of this sort. There are good things done by the government, but most programs to help the poor only entrench poverty and the problems that lead to it.
My comment was written 13 days ago. I have since gotten off the street with a market based solution. I am in an SRO.
Historically, we had a lot more SROs and boarding houses than we do currently. Up to 80% of SROs were torn down in the 60s and 70s when they weren't needed by Baby Boomers, who were a demographic anomaly. As demographics returned to something more normal, we never rebuilt them.
They are less profitable than other land uses. This is not the same as being unprofitable.
In California, residential prices are skewed by protectionist government measures. Dismantling the government interference that pushes housing costs up in the state would very likely reduce the need for government vouchers et al for the poor.
I left California to find someplace I could afford.
All the programs you named are chronically underfunded and subject to restrictions and red tape designed to force people to jump through many hoops to prove they "deserve" help. And there is a nasty history of attitudes among those in power as to what kind of people "deserve" help and what kind of people don't.
Well-funded truly universal (i.e., every citizen is automatically eligible and automatically presumed eligible by the administering agency) have not been tried in the US.
>That we still have a homeless problem indicates that the reason for long-term homelessness is something else.
I presumed it was common knowledge that the vast majority of homeless people have mental health issues. America seems to lack any public mental health services. I was disgusted by the number of disturbed homeless people roaming the streets of California when I visited in ways you never see in most of europe. There seems to be absolutely no support for the most vulnerable in society over there.
Around the same time, the Court ruled, in O’Connor v. Donaldson, that a Florida man named Kenneth Donaldson had been kept against his will in a state psychiatric hospital for nearly fifteen years. The ruling added momentum to a nationwide campaign to “deinstitutionalize” the mentally ill. Activists decried the existence of mental hospitals that were filled, as one account put it, with “naked humans herded like cattle.” During the next two decades, states across the country shut down such facilities, both to save money and to appease advocates pushing for reform. But instead of funding more humane modes of treatment—such as community mental-health centers that could help patients live independently—many states left the mentally ill to their own devices. Often, highly unstable people ended up on the streets, abusing drugs and committing crimes, which led them into the prison system.
That's ... a fantasy. Do you understand the limits of welfare? Do you know the waiting lists on typical public housing? Have you seen how much the SNAP program has been cut? Have you seen the limits of medicaid? Are you aware of how underfunded our school systems are in general and how poorly educated students can be even if they've been given a diploma?
Every single program you've listed has a coverage that is only a fraction of what it needs to be to actually keep people housed, fed, educated, and alive.
Public housing: Section eight has been closed for years. The sign up list has been closed for years now--in many counties. Of yea, the current lease for Section 8 housing is 47 pages in my county. 47 pages of "can't, and do this!". It's beyond petty.
Food Stamps: Requires a degrading elegabily approval. Designed so people just don't even sign up. (Clinton made it very degrading, and cut people off after a certain time period. Obama had a heart. Who know what Wonder boy will do to the program.) Then finding stores to buy food. Then being told you can't buy orange juice. Why--I don't know, just overheard the demeaning conversation. Another one that stuck with me. A mom bought a cheap birthday cake for her child. The Checker "schooled" her on how to bake a cake from scratch. The women said, "I need to buy 10 ingredients for one birthday cake?" Cashier, "I don't make the rules lady!". Yea--I wanted to pull the guy across the counter. She walked out in silence, with child looking perplexed.
Public Education: great if you live in the right district.
Medicaid/Medical: It's almost like having no insurance. So much is not covered. So many doctors don't take it. 30 day supplies on a very restrictive Formulary. I imagine it does when wheeled into the emergency rooms.
So many of our Welfare Programs are purposely administered so people just give up. Personally, I think we need to open up any available federal, state, and county land to allow homeless to at least pitch a tent. Right now being homeless is for all practical purposes a crime. We are beyond finding solutions. Americans shouldn't be forced to sleep on the sidewalks--just waiting for a ticket, or being the victim of a random crime.
We have a huge problem in America. And it's the way we treat those that don't fit in. Tech community should take notice. When the balloon pops; you just might see the misery first hand. I know Willie Brown is wondering out loud what San Francisco will do when Iwasfired.com happens.
Poor white people in the rural United States have all of those things. Even the poorest of them have basic food, housing and education that we might consider "first world".
I notice that they aren't following their passions and climbing up to the peak of mazlows hierarchy.
Instead, the lack of self-determination and "purpose" causes a despair that drives them to substance abuse.
(apologies for the cascading UBI debate, below...)
Most places that offer food or financial assistance do so in a manner that is detrimental to those receiving it, specifically due to sentiments like yours. Those in power with similar political mindsets as you purposely neuter the usefulness of these programs, making them difficult to obtain and then taking them away for arbitrary reasons at the most inconvenient of times, setting back those relying on them, probably while they're trying to become financially stabilized.
" ... specifically due to sentiments like yours. Those in power with similar political mindsets as you purposely neuter the usefulness of these programs"
The only sentiment I expressed was that I am open-minded about UBI. You have no idea what my political mindset is nor do you have any idea what my background is.
I think you need to provide some sources for the statement that poor people have "basic food, housing, and education." Education, sure, in the form of public k-12 schooling (which is not always great, but certainly qualifies as 'basic'). But, food and housing? Let's forget about "white" for a second: tell me, where does an able-bodied, poor person get basic, safe housing, and food that's at least somewhat healthy to survive on? Are you talking about section 8 and food stamps? Because if that's what you're talking about, that's not really what I would consider fulfilling the role of "basic housing and food."
Rural America has a similar kind of "brain drain" phenomenon as developing nations, although it might be more apt to call it "ambition drain" as there isn't the same artificial selection as with international migration. "Drain" is also a misnomer when the smart/skilled/ambitious emigrants had no constructive outlets for their abilities back home. Whatever it's called, people who want to leave usually can, even if it means they may end up homeless in Hollywood.
The same is said of San Francisco, but it's just not accurate: "The majority - 71 percent in the last count - became homeless while living in San Francisco."
Despite being one of the richest places in the world, California does a terrible job at providing affordable housing and accessible mental health care for its residents. This lack of provision is a result of the choices Californians have made.
That question doesn't capture the full picture. A high school dropout who arrived in SF w/$250 dollars and lived in a SRO for a year could qualify as becoming homeless while living in SF. I'm looking for more recent numbers, but in the past the number of homeless in SF that had been there more than 5 years was ~33%. For a variety of reasons, SF attracts people living on the margin, and prone to fall into homelessness.
A couple numbers for context - only 65% of San Franciscans were even born in the US, and only 37% were born in California, so there is a huge flow of people into the city.
There is a homeless survey that SF does every few years which is comprehensive you can try searching for. In my recollection a majority of the homeless were longterm residents by any reasonable definition but I'm going off memory.
They don't ask the question. They only ask where the lived when they became homeless. IMO, they intentionally don't ask because the answer isn't helpful to increasing sympathy for the homeless.
Many places in California don't allow anything besides low density sprawl, creating a situation where you can't build sufficient housing (esp. for the working poor) and real estate prices escalate upward in short order.
Should housing in major cities be nearly doubling in price every decade?
It isn't a national problem, it is a local one and almost entirely the result of local zoning and drug addict/mental health outreach strategies. San Diego has a homeless population of 14,000 out of a population of 3.3 million. Even the locals are saying the problem is strategy and leadership, not resources. http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/columnists/dan-...
Taboo question: What is an acceptable homeless population? What is your reference point? Obviously, poverty will always exist in some form, but how much can we realistically improve it?
It sort of depends on the definition of poverty. Poverty is currently often defined as percentage of the median income and that would make it "exist" unless all income would be close to the median. It's possible to conceive a society that distributes wealth in such a manner, but I'd currently regard that as implausible.
What you describe is "relative poverty". Statistics indeed says this will always exist. This is about inequality. That's not very relevant here.
When talking about homelessness, you're talking about "absolute poverty": the lack of means necessary to meet your basic needs (food, clothing, shelter). In this case, by definition, you can't meet at least the need for shelter.
There's no reason that homelessness (or even absolute poverty) should always exist.
Homelessness is a problem related to poverty, but it's cause is not always poverty alone. Homelessness exists in Berlin, where most of the homeless are covered by basic social security and have a right that the state provides a home. It's still there. It's often related to a mental health problem, though the initial cause and effect are muddied. I'd advocate for treating homelessness as a (public) health issue (with associated funding, ...)
Absolute poverty should not exist in germany at all, but relative poverty is still a major issue: no access to a lot of the public life, less access to education, these are still problematic, even if the basic survival is ensured.
I doubt many homeless people in the US live in absolute poverty as it's officially defined:
> In 2008, "extreme poverty" widely refers to earning below the international poverty line of $1.25/day (in 2005 prices), set by the World Bank. This measure is the equivalent to earning $1.00 a day in 1996 US prices, hence the widely used expression, living on "less than a dollar a day."[3] The vast majority of those in extreme poverty – 96% – reside in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, The West Indies, East Asia and the Pacific; nearly half live in India and China alone.
Surely most homeless scrounge together at least $1 per day? I bet just begging gets you more than that on average.
Sure that $1 won't get you very far in the US, but it brings you out of absolute poverty and into relative poverty.
There are some people who, if they are free (as in not institutionalized), will waste, misuse, or destroy any amount or kind of help given to them. Mostly such people have mental illnesses.
(No, I'm not saying it's their fault or that they deserve to suffer. Just making a positive, not normative statement.)
I agree that there is a portion of our society who are mentally ill and expected to achieve a level of success in our society by themselves somehow. We seem to understand that children should not have to fend for themselves because they are not mentally equipped, but many mentally ill people have the mind of a child yet still expected to act above their ability.
It's also notable that the gradient between fully functional people and the mentally ill people you describe is entirely smooth.
The clear medical distinction between "mentally ill" and "not mentally ill" is an artificial construction that makes the situation easier to describe by throwing away most of the information.
In truth, there is no clear line where one goes from "needs institutionalization" to "self-managing adult". It's all a matter of degree, which makes the whole discussion really difficult.
What happens to the people who aren't medically diagnosible as mentally ill, but do have personalities, habits, or traits that make them take decisions that always destroy any opportunities or resources available to them?
This group gets ignored a lot, often (I think) because it's uncomfortable to think about how such people exist, because in some moral systems there is no solution that doesn't hurt somehow.
Norway has practically zero homelessness, since everyone who are incapable of providing for themselves are paid a living wage by the state (and are also provided free housing).
There are probably a few people who fall between the cracks in the system, e.g. illegal immigrants who are on the run from the authorities or people who are mentally ill and actively resist medical care or help from the government. But there are practically zero people who are involuntarily homeless, for some fuzzy definition of the term involuntary.
> But there are practically zero people who are involuntarily homeless, for some fuzzy definition of the term involuntary.
For curiosity's sake, how hard would it be to survive a Norwegian winter as a homeless person? Could that impact how much pressure the government feels in solving the problem?
My impression from living in San Francisco is that nobody really wants to solve homelessness. Sure there's a lot of virtue signaling and a lot of volunteering and donating and stuff, but when it comes right down to it, nobody really cares enough to do anything about it. It's just sort of a part of SF culture/charm that it's full of crazy homeless people who shout at their demons in the street and sometimes drop their pants and masturbate or take a dump on Muni.
Everybody shrugs and goes on with their day. Sometimes they update the latest "poop map" app with their sighting or make a "OMG SF is so weird" post on social media.
But would they pay more taxes to build more homeless shelters? To make mental health care available to everyone? To have a livable basic income for the unemployed? Hell no, that's where you've gone too far from virtue signaling towards solving the problem. Wouldn't want that
practically zero is 1.4 per 1000, the US is only at 1.7 per 1000. Norway might be able to lay claim to practically zero because the nations population is so small. A smaller number does not indicate it is solved, the per 1000 is the number to watch.
the majority of conditions you give for people falling through the cracks applies to the vast majority of Western countries. The world has a need to better mental health treatment. Cities in the US spend tens of millions and more to combat homelessness but it is not a simple problem.
there were stories about banning begging in Norway, I guess hiding a problem makes it go away. Don't fret, it is a practice many big American cities use as well, especially when large number of visitors are in town. hence the problem, we want to pretend it doesn't exist so we hide it
It's not quite as simple as "persons per 1000 without a fixed address". _Yes_, strictly speaking this is the definition of homelessness (and this number was indeed around 1.2 at the last count in Norway), but the debate is in reality about the misery of the poorest in society.
No one will debate that a person without a fixed domicile that receives $800/month[0] by the state and is regularly encouraged to seek free mental health care, is much better off than someone that receives no financial aid and is forced to beg or eat trash in order to stay alive.
The situation with begging in Norway is complex and not a direct proxy for extreme poverty[1]. Do agree that better mental health treatment is required in large parts of the world, and that homelessness and poverty are complex and cannot be solved by simply paying someone to fix things.
What I was trying to say was that it is a problem that can to a large extent be mitigated, if there is a cultural will to do it. It is by no means a phenomenon that will always be unacceptably bad if some moderate measures are taken to alleviate it.
that isn't achievable or sustainable in the US at a national level. The entire country Norway has a smaller population than the largest county in the US.
Maybe the long term plan should be to give homeless people a one way ticket to Norway. (sarcasm)
Of course it's achievable, if you just look at the money. This is a vastly wealthy country, the money's there to provide for every social program imaginable.
It's not culturally achievable because Americans buy into a just world fallacy for every social ill: all the wrongs in the U.S. are because whoever's suffering deserved it. For all the people who say capitalism is our national religion, I'd say this fallacy is one of our ten commandments, right after "screw you I got mine".
No, the American govt is too big and inefficient. That problems like this have never been solved by countries the size of the US is not a coincidence.
If power was transferred from the central govt to the states, then each state would be able to function like a small country and better manage local problems like homelessness much like Norway. Socialism nor capitalism function efficiently at this large of a scale.
So you have two statements:
(a) Norway's approach is impossible in the US
(b) Norway's approach is impossible in the US without changing how inefficient the US government is
In my opinion, (a) is false, while (b) is true. Moreover, I think we can change the government over time, and we'll also have to change how we treat corporations. For example, corporations will have to be taxed much more (perhaps as much as 50% of profits).
This makes me really sad. I'm originally from San Diego and left when I was 18. At one point my mother was even homeless there (alcohol abuse). A lot of homeless people travel up and down the coast (meaning, this could spread). Many of them refuse treatment or can't abide by the rules of the house, so they get kicked out.
I'm living in Saigon now. While millions of people here are painfully poor and have almost nothing, they almost all have somewhere to live. There is drug use, but it is really looked down upon. I see signs everywhere warning people able the dangers. People seem to take care of each other more as a clan, as a family, as humans.
I recently went back to San Francisco to sell everything and move to SE Asia full time. I'm never going back. The homeless in SF was awful. MUNI and Bart have people openly defecating, shooting up and sleeping in the stations. Nobody does anything about it.
> Many of them refuse treatment or can't abide by the rules of the house, so they get kicked out.
> While millions of people here are painfully poor and have almost nothing, they almost all have somewhere to live.
I think these are the two key points. Many countries allow and tolerate slums and cheap, DIY housing that people own or 'own'. The US has not tolerated slums in 100 years, and the past 50 years has really tightened the regulations on the quality, safety and 'DIY-ness' of housing.
The poor get funneled into 'free' housing, but as gov't programs these are not owned and do not tolerate breaking the rules. Especially by the tax payers who fund them.
Not sure I see a quick solution as each of these are reasonable on their own. I do think cheap, 'ugly' housing owned and maintained by the low income ends up better than most gov't housing projects in the US.
I spent 4 hours yesterday motorbike driving around and exploring District 8 in Saigon, which is a series of man made islands separated by water canals (sadly full of sewage and trash).
Many of the homes near the water are illegal slums and could be torn down by the govt. at any time. Yet, from appearances, it looks like a long time since that has happened. I suspect they'd just rebuild anyway.
Every legal house has a 'name book' that has the names of the people who live there in it. The really sad bit it is that no book means to no school for the kids who live there.
Even with no school, no safe house to live, literally every one I saw was smiling and friendly. This is such a different planet from where I came from and I find my mind expanded every day I'm here.
> Many countries allow and tolerate slums and cheap, DIY housing that people own or 'own'. The US has not tolerated slums in 100 years, and the past 50 years has really tightened the regulations on the quality, safety and 'DIY-ness' of housing.
And with perfect reason: "slums" always end up being a hazardous environment. Fires, pests (due to trash and excrements being everywhere), streets too narrow for ambulances, susceptibility to wind or rainfall...
A more cynical reason is that Western states have three pillars of exploiting the middle class: Taxes, health insurance and housing costs.
The cost of these redirect the value that a middle class person produces to protected interest groups like civil servants, the military industrial complex, doctors and landlords.
It is vital for the system that everyone either has to pay a high rent or buy a house.
> The California State Legislature is reviewing whether the amount of health resources in the county are adequate. Its findings are expected within the next several months.
The closing lines tell that there's not enough being done if this has been going on for 10 months.
Almost like the start of a zombie movie. "Nothing going on here, we're assessing the situation" Then boom, national guard and CDC checkpoints.
I work in East Village, have for a few years. I'd say part of the problem is the local gov decided upkeep of the public restrooms they had was too expensive, so they removed them. They kind of shot themselves in the foot it seems. http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/sdut-portl...
This is why I fought my doctor and my insurance plan for the HepA/HepB vaccines. Doctor did not think it was needed as I was not a medical professional. Insurance company was being cheap. I had to point out that they were both on the CDC recommended vaccination list for all adults.
The moment there is a safe enough HepC vaccine out, I will be getting it. I'd rather have AIDS over HC. Nasty disease with nasty drugs.
There's a Hepatitis A vaccine and it's readily available, yet trying to get a doctor to give you one requires a lot of conning and manipulation. Why is this? They say this is a disease only found in other countries, so if you tell your doctor you travel a lot, they'll finally give in and give it to you. How about giving the vaccine as a default? Clearly, San Diego is not in another country. This should be a standard vaccine encouraged and administered to anyone and everyone who wants it. This is certainly not a healthcare system that works well or at all.
Wow. In Australia, Norway and England theyll give you A/B vaccines easily on request. I find it hard to believe they wouldnt do tbis everywhere bar a few exceptional circumstances.
I wouldn't be surprised if you get some resistance towards the Hep B vaccine unless the doctor knows you're in what is considered a high-risk group. The reason for this is that the vaccination requires a total of 4 shots - the first three are given in one month intervals, and then a final one a year after the 3rd. Because of this, there's a high rate of people not following through and getting all the required shots.
Jus† got the Hep A. S†ill working to convince them about Hep B. Yup, we're really backward here in the states with our healthcare, even for people who have insurance / can pay. There are many, many other ways we're backward here. Let's just say outside of emergency care, healthcare here is just horrific. And that's putting it nicely. Insurance or no†.
Ugly truth in any western country is the mental health issue. Here in Poland (i'm certain in USA is the same) many homeless people are mentally ill and refuses help in many cases. Also they get aggressive with people. Without those problems it would be much easier to help them.
Without those problems it would be much easier to help them.
The solution to the problem is to eliminate the stigma of mental health issues, to subsidise mental health therapies, and educate people about the signs of deteriorating mental health so they can seek help earlier. If people can be helped before they're homeless then they'd never become a homeless person. That's better for everyone.
I strongly suspect this would be incredibly hard to implement in any country that doesn't have a national health service though, and even if a country does it'd still be difficult.
Make living on the street a crime, take away people's freedom. Get them on a path back into society by placing them in work camps and reform them. Or, if they're mentally ill, properly hospitalize and care for them.
If you do this, the looming public health crisis can be averted. Otherwise, plague.
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[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 349 ms ] threadSeems like we need to address all of these issues. Literally the only institutions that provide all of these things are jails, which many homeless attempt to get into.
Having studied the problem in an actual college class and also spent the last 5.5 years on the street: It's complicated. But we need more solutions for people and fewer aimed at poor people specifically. Programs to help the poor are routinely craptastic.
Affordable housing and single payer medical coverage would go a long way towards reducing the problem.
This is disingenuous, the housing shortages are all in the highly desirable locations like the SFO, LAX, NYC, etc. There is no housing shortage in the vast majority of the country (look at Detroit).
It's completely unsustainable to try to support a model where anyone should be able to live in whatever city they choose for an extremely low cost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system
Listen, I support single payer systems, but how do they figure out how much to pay in each region? Same question for UBI.
I have come to believe that UBI and all other safety nets have to come with immigration requirements. Not just everyone is going to be accepted to live among rich billionaires without concern for running out of money. And so on in every neighborhood.
Thus, UBI needs for each area needs to be tied in with community membership, and be based on the Consumer Price Index in that area.
Communities can open themselves up to more people from time to time.
This is insane, dystopic (literally, geographically-based caste systems feature in dystopian fiction with some regularity, for example the Hunger Games and Elysium), un-Constitutional, and un-American.
If internal border controls ever became law, I'd be the first to sign up for the resistance in the resultant civil war.
This looks pretty similar to the English Poor Laws, which in the end proved to be quite despotic. It started like this, at the end of the 15h century:
> In 1495, Parliament passed the Vagabonds and Beggars Act ordering that "vagabonds, idle and suspected persons shall be set in the stocks for three days and three nights and have none other sustenance but bread and water and then shall be put out of Town. Every beggar suitable to work shall resort to the Hundred where he last dwelled, is best known, or was born and there remain upon the pain aforesaid." (taken from the wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Poor_Laws)
but it turned out that that made people dependent on their "original" parishes and that the other parishes/towns would not want any of them on their streets, thus impeding the free movement of people across England. There were other major ills caused by this law (this subject also has its own wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_the_English_Poor...), I for myself first learned of its bad effects (and of the bad effects that similar laws can cause) by reading some Bentham.
If you don't allow communities to limit who can join, what is to prevent 50,000 people from various parts of California moving to Beverly Hills the next day and demanding enough UBI to live in a mansion and having private doctors?
You're not explicitly forbidding them to stay, you're doing that implicitly, by correlating their getting financial assistance with them remaining in a specific place. It's the same thing with saying "you're free to leave your job anytime you want!" when you're full of financial responsibilities (rent/mortgage, kids, older relatives you have to take of) which means that you are not in fact "free" to leave that job.
> If you don't allow communities to limit who can join, what is to prevent 50,000 people from various parts of California moving to Beverly Hills the next day and demanding enough UBI to live in a mansion and having private doctors?
The way I understand UBI (I may be wrong) is that whenever and especially if it would be implemented then exclusive places like Beverly Hills will have to go, i.e. the society would have to become more equal.
Back to your point - you are free to leave your job if another company will hire you. You are free to leave your community if another community will pay for your UBI. Or if you saved up enough to move, or if you actually make enough money now etc.
You do realize the UBI is on top of what you'd be making anyway, just to help you save up?
Perhaps the community will pay UBI only to those who move there and work there (contributing to the society), or prove inability to work. But then it wouldn't be unconditional anymore - and who gets to say that the "poet" who muses for 10 hours a day isn't doing some productive work? Communities would then be tying UBI to certain kinds of work.
But just giving unconditionally UBI to everyone is unsustainable because it just completely overlooks the cost of living in a certain area. If millionaires can afford super duper doctors and other gentrified stuff in that area, how would you figure out how much UBI to give to the people moving there? If you give the same amount to everyone everywhere, they STILL couldn't afford doctors in Beverly hills.
Now you are talking about price controls forcing an ace surgeon in Beverly Hills to take the same as someone who barely graduated medical school and never got better, who works in SomewhereCheap Kansas. That's unrealistic.
And you're forcing a water company that supplies water to a desert place to charge the same for that necessary good as a water company that delivers 100 feet from a local aquifer.
Think it through and tell me how your proposed UBI system without immigration quotas would even workz
not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does.
synonyms: insincere · dishonest · untruthful · false · deceitful · duplicitous · lying · mendacious · hypocritical
That is a personal attack.
The shortage of affordable housing is very much real. It is not something I am making up. And, yes, every American city should have housing that single people with entry level jobs can afford without an hour long commute or three roommates. We did historically. We tore a lot of it down in the 60s and 70s when it wasn't really needed, then never rebuilt it when the need for such came back, in essence.
https://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/topics/housing_cho...
The landlord gets garaunteed income, huge waiting list of tenants, can VERY easily have them evicted for violations and actually get MORE than market rate brcause the govt pays better for the section 8.
It's driving up rents and drug related crime has already increased.
I'm currently looking at moving out of the city core and into a suburb.
In the 60s and 70s, we tore down around 80% of the SROs we had because the Baby Boomers came from an unprecedentedly well off, large middle class and did not need minimal housing of that sort. Boarding houses used to also be common. Now, most housing is designed with a nuclear family in mind and our default expectation is that single adults should get one or more roommates to make such housing work for them. There is far too little market based housing aimed at singletons and childless couples. Meanwhile, our demographics have changed and we have drastically more singletons, childless couples or single parents, drastically fewer nuclear families.
I want market based solutions, not more government interference of this sort. There are good things done by the government, but most programs to help the poor only entrench poverty and the problems that lead to it.
What would that look like?
I assume it's not profitable for builders...or else there wouldn't be a problem? If it were, they would build them everywhere.
Historically, we had a lot more SROs and boarding houses than we do currently. Up to 80% of SROs were torn down in the 60s and 70s when they weren't needed by Baby Boomers, who were a demographic anomaly. As demographics returned to something more normal, we never rebuilt them.
They are less profitable than other land uses. This is not the same as being unprofitable.
In California, residential prices are skewed by protectionist government measures. Dismantling the government interference that pushes housing costs up in the state would very likely reduce the need for government vouchers et al for the poor.
I left California to find someplace I could afford.
Less profitable - yet profitable - sounds reasonable. I'm not familiar enough with the builders pricing to know.
Well-funded truly universal (i.e., every citizen is automatically eligible and automatically presumed eligible by the administering agency) have not been tried in the US.
I presumed it was common knowledge that the vast majority of homeless people have mental health issues. America seems to lack any public mental health services. I was disgusted by the number of disturbed homeless people roaming the streets of California when I visited in ways you never see in most of europe. There seems to be absolutely no support for the most vulnerable in society over there.
Around the same time, the Court ruled, in O’Connor v. Donaldson, that a Florida man named Kenneth Donaldson had been kept against his will in a state psychiatric hospital for nearly fifteen years. The ruling added momentum to a nationwide campaign to “deinstitutionalize” the mentally ill. Activists decried the existence of mental hospitals that were filled, as one account put it, with “naked humans herded like cattle.” During the next two decades, states across the country shut down such facilities, both to save money and to appease advocates pushing for reform. But instead of funding more humane modes of treatment—such as community mental-health centers that could help patients live independently—many states left the mentally ill to their own devices. Often, highly unstable people ended up on the streets, abusing drugs and committing crimes, which led them into the prison system.
[0] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/02/the-torturing-o...
Every single program you've listed has a coverage that is only a fraction of what it needs to be to actually keep people housed, fed, educated, and alive.
Edit: Here are some interviews that explain what poverty is really like in the US today: http://www.wnyc.org/series/busted-americas-poverty-myths
Public housing: Section eight has been closed for years. The sign up list has been closed for years now--in many counties. Of yea, the current lease for Section 8 housing is 47 pages in my county. 47 pages of "can't, and do this!". It's beyond petty.
Food Stamps: Requires a degrading elegabily approval. Designed so people just don't even sign up. (Clinton made it very degrading, and cut people off after a certain time period. Obama had a heart. Who know what Wonder boy will do to the program.) Then finding stores to buy food. Then being told you can't buy orange juice. Why--I don't know, just overheard the demeaning conversation. Another one that stuck with me. A mom bought a cheap birthday cake for her child. The Checker "schooled" her on how to bake a cake from scratch. The women said, "I need to buy 10 ingredients for one birthday cake?" Cashier, "I don't make the rules lady!". Yea--I wanted to pull the guy across the counter. She walked out in silence, with child looking perplexed.
Public Education: great if you live in the right district.
Medicaid/Medical: It's almost like having no insurance. So much is not covered. So many doctors don't take it. 30 day supplies on a very restrictive Formulary. I imagine it does when wheeled into the emergency rooms.
So many of our Welfare Programs are purposely administered so people just give up. Personally, I think we need to open up any available federal, state, and county land to allow homeless to at least pitch a tent. Right now being homeless is for all practical purposes a crime. We are beyond finding solutions. Americans shouldn't be forced to sleep on the sidewalks--just waiting for a ticket, or being the victim of a random crime.
We have a huge problem in America. And it's the way we treat those that don't fit in. Tech community should take notice. When the balloon pops; you just might see the misery first hand. I know Willie Brown is wondering out loud what San Francisco will do when Iwasfired.com happens.
I am open minded about UBI, etc.
However, it has occurred to me recently that we already have a decent experimental result with regard to:
"Basic income, basic housing, basic food, basic education, basic healthcare"
Poor white people in the rural United States have all of those things. Even the poorest of them have basic food, housing and education that we might consider "first world".
I notice that they aren't following their passions and climbing up to the peak of mazlows hierarchy.
Instead, the lack of self-determination and "purpose" causes a despair that drives them to substance abuse.
(apologies for the cascading UBI debate, below...)
Most places that offer food or financial assistance do so in a manner that is detrimental to those receiving it, specifically due to sentiments like yours. Those in power with similar political mindsets as you purposely neuter the usefulness of these programs, making them difficult to obtain and then taking them away for arbitrary reasons at the most inconvenient of times, setting back those relying on them, probably while they're trying to become financially stabilized.
The only sentiment I expressed was that I am open-minded about UBI. You have no idea what my political mindset is nor do you have any idea what my background is.
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Questions-about-San-Franc...
Despite being one of the richest places in the world, California does a terrible job at providing affordable housing and accessible mental health care for its residents. This lack of provision is a result of the choices Californians have made.
A couple numbers for context - only 65% of San Franciscans were even born in the US, and only 37% were born in California, so there is a huge flow of people into the city.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_San_Francisco
Should housing in major cities be nearly doubling in price every decade?
http://www.povertyinsights.org/2013/10/14/did-reagans-crazy-...
If this is true, don't you think it makes it a national problem?
It's not obvious to me why that should be true. What is your logic?
When talking about homelessness, you're talking about "absolute poverty": the lack of means necessary to meet your basic needs (food, clothing, shelter). In this case, by definition, you can't meet at least the need for shelter.
There's no reason that homelessness (or even absolute poverty) should always exist.
Absolute poverty should not exist in germany at all, but relative poverty is still a major issue: no access to a lot of the public life, less access to education, these are still problematic, even if the basic survival is ensured.
> In 2008, "extreme poverty" widely refers to earning below the international poverty line of $1.25/day (in 2005 prices), set by the World Bank. This measure is the equivalent to earning $1.00 a day in 1996 US prices, hence the widely used expression, living on "less than a dollar a day."[3] The vast majority of those in extreme poverty – 96% – reside in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, The West Indies, East Asia and the Pacific; nearly half live in India and China alone.
Surely most homeless scrounge together at least $1 per day? I bet just begging gets you more than that on average.
Sure that $1 won't get you very far in the US, but it brings you out of absolute poverty and into relative poverty.
(No, I'm not saying it's their fault or that they deserve to suffer. Just making a positive, not normative statement.)
It's also notable that the gradient between fully functional people and the mentally ill people you describe is entirely smooth.
The clear medical distinction between "mentally ill" and "not mentally ill" is an artificial construction that makes the situation easier to describe by throwing away most of the information.
In truth, there is no clear line where one goes from "needs institutionalization" to "self-managing adult". It's all a matter of degree, which makes the whole discussion really difficult.
What happens to the people who aren't medically diagnosible as mentally ill, but do have personalities, habits, or traits that make them take decisions that always destroy any opportunities or resources available to them?
This group gets ignored a lot, often (I think) because it's uncomfortable to think about how such people exist, because in some moral systems there is no solution that doesn't hurt somehow.
There are probably a few people who fall between the cracks in the system, e.g. illegal immigrants who are on the run from the authorities or people who are mentally ill and actively resist medical care or help from the government. But there are practically zero people who are involuntarily homeless, for some fuzzy definition of the term involuntary.
For curiosity's sake, how hard would it be to survive a Norwegian winter as a homeless person? Could that impact how much pressure the government feels in solving the problem?
My impression from living in San Francisco is that nobody really wants to solve homelessness. Sure there's a lot of virtue signaling and a lot of volunteering and donating and stuff, but when it comes right down to it, nobody really cares enough to do anything about it. It's just sort of a part of SF culture/charm that it's full of crazy homeless people who shout at their demons in the street and sometimes drop their pants and masturbate or take a dump on Muni.
Everybody shrugs and goes on with their day. Sometimes they update the latest "poop map" app with their sighting or make a "OMG SF is so weird" post on social media.
But would they pay more taxes to build more homeless shelters? To make mental health care available to everyone? To have a livable basic income for the unemployed? Hell no, that's where you've gone too far from virtue signaling towards solving the problem. Wouldn't want that
the majority of conditions you give for people falling through the cracks applies to the vast majority of Western countries. The world has a need to better mental health treatment. Cities in the US spend tens of millions and more to combat homelessness but it is not a simple problem.
there were stories about banning begging in Norway, I guess hiding a problem makes it go away. Don't fret, it is a practice many big American cities use as well, especially when large number of visitors are in town. hence the problem, we want to pretend it doesn't exist so we hide it
No one will debate that a person without a fixed domicile that receives $800/month[0] by the state and is regularly encouraged to seek free mental health care, is much better off than someone that receives no financial aid and is forced to beg or eat trash in order to stay alive.
The situation with begging in Norway is complex and not a direct proxy for extreme poverty[1]. Do agree that better mental health treatment is required in large parts of the world, and that homelessness and poverty are complex and cannot be solved by simply paying someone to fix things.
What I was trying to say was that it is a problem that can to a large extent be mitigated, if there is a cultural will to do it. It is by no means a phenomenon that will always be unacceptably bad if some moderate measures are taken to alleviate it.
[0]: https://www.nav.no/no/NAV+og+samfunn/Kontakt+NAV/Utbetalinge...
[1]: https://tv.nrk.no/serie/brennpunkt/mddp11000617/18-04-2017, documentary following beggars in Bergen for two years. A large proportion is found to be part of specific human trafficking schemes.
Maybe the long term plan should be to give homeless people a one way ticket to Norway. (sarcasm)
It's not culturally achievable because Americans buy into a just world fallacy for every social ill: all the wrongs in the U.S. are because whoever's suffering deserved it. For all the people who say capitalism is our national religion, I'd say this fallacy is one of our ten commandments, right after "screw you I got mine".
If power was transferred from the central govt to the states, then each state would be able to function like a small country and better manage local problems like homelessness much like Norway. Socialism nor capitalism function efficiently at this large of a scale.
[0] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/10/nevada-settles-b...
[1] http://www.sacbee.com/news/investigations/nevada-patient-bus...
I'm living in Saigon now. While millions of people here are painfully poor and have almost nothing, they almost all have somewhere to live. There is drug use, but it is really looked down upon. I see signs everywhere warning people able the dangers. People seem to take care of each other more as a clan, as a family, as humans.
I recently went back to San Francisco to sell everything and move to SE Asia full time. I'm never going back. The homeless in SF was awful. MUNI and Bart have people openly defecating, shooting up and sleeping in the stations. Nobody does anything about it.
It is a really sad situation.
> While millions of people here are painfully poor and have almost nothing, they almost all have somewhere to live.
I think these are the two key points. Many countries allow and tolerate slums and cheap, DIY housing that people own or 'own'. The US has not tolerated slums in 100 years, and the past 50 years has really tightened the regulations on the quality, safety and 'DIY-ness' of housing.
The poor get funneled into 'free' housing, but as gov't programs these are not owned and do not tolerate breaking the rules. Especially by the tax payers who fund them.
Not sure I see a quick solution as each of these are reasonable on their own. I do think cheap, 'ugly' housing owned and maintained by the low income ends up better than most gov't housing projects in the US.
I spent 4 hours yesterday motorbike driving around and exploring District 8 in Saigon, which is a series of man made islands separated by water canals (sadly full of sewage and trash).
Many of the homes near the water are illegal slums and could be torn down by the govt. at any time. Yet, from appearances, it looks like a long time since that has happened. I suspect they'd just rebuild anyway.
Every legal house has a 'name book' that has the names of the people who live there in it. The really sad bit it is that no book means to no school for the kids who live there.
Even with no school, no safe house to live, literally every one I saw was smiling and friendly. This is such a different planet from where I came from and I find my mind expanded every day I'm here.
And with perfect reason: "slums" always end up being a hazardous environment. Fires, pests (due to trash and excrements being everywhere), streets too narrow for ambulances, susceptibility to wind or rainfall...
The cost of these redirect the value that a middle class person produces to protected interest groups like civil servants, the military industrial complex, doctors and landlords.
It is vital for the system that everyone either has to pay a high rent or buy a house.
The closing lines tell that there's not enough being done if this has been going on for 10 months. Almost like the start of a zombie movie. "Nothing going on here, we're assessing the situation" Then boom, national guard and CDC checkpoints.
The moment there is a safe enough HepC vaccine out, I will be getting it. I'd rather have AIDS over HC. Nasty disease with nasty drugs.
At one time, the US did mass inoculations in schools, using air injectors. Just lined everybody up and zapped them.
The solution to the problem is to eliminate the stigma of mental health issues, to subsidise mental health therapies, and educate people about the signs of deteriorating mental health so they can seek help earlier. If people can be helped before they're homeless then they'd never become a homeless person. That's better for everyone.
I strongly suspect this would be incredibly hard to implement in any country that doesn't have a national health service though, and even if a country does it'd still be difficult.
If you do this, the looming public health crisis can be averted. Otherwise, plague.