Breakdown of data on homeless populations across the U.S.

by dynm • 5 years ago

185 246 5 years ago

jseliger2• 5 years ago

There is mostly a housing crisis, with homelessness downstream of housing.

I originally left this comment a few months ago, but: CA especially has been underbuilding housing for close to 50 years (https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/) and now has a severe housing shortage, to the point where a parodic response, like "California will try absolutely anything to reduce homelessness, except build more housing" (https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-will-do-anything-to-en...) is the only reasonable one.

I've worked on Prop HHH and other proposals designed to reduce homelessness in California: https://seliger.com/2017/08/30/l-digs-hole-slowly-economics-..., but none of them work, or can work, without making housing easier to build.

Before someone mentions "mental illness" and "drugs" and other contributors to homelessness, yes those are real factors: that said, the lower the cost of housing, the easier it is for someone on the margin of being housed or being homeless to stay housed. The lower the cost, the easier it is for family, SSDI, Section 8, and other income supports to keep a person housed. As the cost of housing goes up, the number of people who fall from the margins of "housed" to "homeless" goes concomitantly up. So yes, mental illness and drug abuse are factors, but they're factors exacerbated by housing costs, and they're really red herrings relative to overall housing costs.

The homelessness problem is intractable without zoning reform, and the removal of barriers to new housing, whether those barriers are height maximums, parking space minimums, or "neighborhood input" or "community input," both of which are functionally barriers to building anything, anywhere.

Homelessness is mostly a housing problem: https://www.slowboring.com/p/homelessness-housing. We can and should remove barriers to building new housing, and, until we do that, we're going to keep seeing these problems. CA SB-9 and SB-10 are steps in the right direction but they're very small steps. Tokyo's approach would be better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16704501. Even places like New York are proposing density reductions, insanely: https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-ny/coronavirus/202....

aaronbrethorst• 5 years ago

Also, being unhoused exacerbates mental illness and substance abuse.

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/lack-housing-mental...

https://www.kalw.org/show/crosscurrents/2016-12-07/mental-he...

AlexandrB• 5 years ago

I don't buy it. In Toronto, there are new condo buildings going up seemingly on every block, but there are still 10,000 homeless[1].

The inconvenient truth is that building low-income housing is not very profitable and no entity driven by the profit motive wants to do it. The margins on luxury condos are much better.

[1] https://www.fredvictor.org/facts-about-homelessness-in-toron...

trinovantes2• 5 years ago

When you're severely constrained by where you can build thanks to NIMBY, you always build whatever has the highest margins i.e. luxury 1bd condos

chii3• 5 years ago

But the increased supply of the top would put pressure on the lower end as well. It's not isolated.

jseliger2• 5 years ago

See https://fullstackeconomics.com/how-luxury-apartment-building... for the empirical research refuting that point and agreeing with the basic supply-demand issue. The issue in Toronto is not just the anecdotal "new condo buildings" but how much housing Toronto has built per capita for the last several decades, which is almost certainly "too little." See the link in my original post to data from Tokyo, which is one of the few cities to have done housing right.

"Filtering" has always been a housing phenomenon: https://cityobservatory.org/what-filtering-can-and-cant-do/ and https://cityobservatory.org/how-luxury-housing-becomes-affor....

GhettoComputers8• 5 years ago

Before someone mentions "mental illness" and "drugs" and other contributors to homelessness, yes those are real factors: that said, the lower the cost of housing, the easier it is for someone on the margin of being housed or being homeless to stay housed.

This is assuming wrongly all people want to live in homes. #Vanlife, digital nomads, couch surfers can afford it and don’t want to. You’re ignoring that there’s a beautiful freedom people like, have you ever been homeless? Do you know what it’s like? It’s nice not to pay monthly utility bills, taxes if you own, do maintenance, and deal with neighbors, HOAs (the worst) and being able to leave somewhere without worrying about your lease expiring stress between jobs and paying for the apartment or landlord not fixing problems. If people really wanted to live in homes, they can move to where they can afford it, but they choose to stay and not live in a home. That is not an irrational decision, they are not ignorant cheaper houses elsewhere exist.

You talk as if you haven’t been homeless. You are assuming a lot of inaccurate things and I encourage you to live it to see what the real problems are such as consistent showering (doable with a gym membership), heat (living in a warm place fixes it), theft of valuables (stashing with friends and family or storage units), parking if you drive (Walmart parking lots are free), and nice socks (for the walking you’ll be doing or warmth) off the top of my head. Then I got a girlfriend and she wanted those things.

cheriot19• 5 years ago

We're a country of 350,000,000 people. Leaving 500,000 outside simply because municipalities don't want them around is inexcusable.

Solution in two parts

1. Make it legal to build homes where people live (looking at you California, specifically LA, SF, SV)

2. Build dorm style shelters for anyone that would otherwise sleep outside

There's complicating issues like not enough addiction treatment and mental health facilities, but neither of those is improved by leaving people to sleep on the street.

mulmen16• 5 years ago

What do you do if someone wants to sleep on the street?

Where do you build these dorms?

Are there barriers to living in these dorms? Sobriety requirements, job searching, etc?

We should definitely try to solve this but I don't think it is simple at all.

cheriot19• 5 years ago

What do you do if someone wants to sleep on the street?

When all of the available shelters are full this is not a relevant question.

Where do you build these dorms?

Near transit so people that can't afford a car can get around. There's not a shortage of underutilized land in west coast cities.

Are there barriers to living in these dorms? Sobriety requirements, job searching, etc?

no, none of those situations are improved by leaving someone outside.

We should definitely try to solve this but I don't think it is simple at all.

There are complex problems in our society, but not having enough bedrooms has a simple solution: build more bedrooms.

Someone is going to have a better chance finding a job if they get a good night sleep and have a place to shower.

klyrs3• 5 years ago

What do you do if someone wants to sleep on the street?

This describes an incredibly miniscule number of people. There are a lot of problems with existing shelters (as mentioned quite a few times in thia thread) so currently it's hard to disentangle "wants to sleep on the streets" from "doesn't want the available alternatives." Yeah, there probably are a few folks like this. Having an oversupply of 1% isn't going to break the bank.

pboutros2• 5 years ago

_What if they want to sleep on the street?_ Let's start by sheltering as many people as we can, and when our problem becomes "too many empty beds", then we can move on to that problem.

_Where do we build them?_ I bet there are choices we can make that house 100+ people for every 1 person who is mildly inconvenienced.

_Are there barriers to living in these dorms?_ No.

nradov• 5 years ago

We absolutely should build more homeless shelters. However many homeless people refuse to stay in current dorm style shelters because they don't allow drug use, or pets, or the other residents are dangerous.

cheriot19• 5 years ago

This is a debate that comes up and I'm only familiar with the specifics in San Francisco. I won't claim it's the same anywhere else.

The shelters are full so the obvious problem is not people refusing to sleep in them.

At the same time, many of the "offers" of going inside are disingenuous. People giving up all of their belongings (specifically tent and camping stove), leaving loved ones, and the promised shelter is only guaranteed for a couple weeks.

When I say dorm style shelters I specifically mean each person has a door to lock and feel safe behind. Most current shelters are dozens of cots in a large room. I wouldn't feel safe there either.

Bukhmanizer• 5 years ago

The drug free thing is frustrating because it seems like it’s mostly optics.

Can’t be seen to be implicitly supporting drug use, so you have to deprive your residents of privacy, protection, and freedoms.

brutal_chaos_• 5 years ago

Nor, in some cases, do they allow for oddball work schedules. So even if you have work, due to the hours you have, no shelter for you.

nostrebored3• 5 years ago

The problem is that people in the U.S. so often only see homelessness through the lens of where they live. Homelessness is a unique problem in each city. For example, the west coast has favorable weather and a history of being a destination for people after they are released from prisons or mental facilities. In cities on the east coast there is more leftist-narrative style homelessness: people who were depending on family and their family died, missing a check and sleeping rough for a bit, etc.

There are also huge problems with treating the many different problems the same way. For example, California would probably benefit a lot more from building a mental health crisis center and Georgia might benefit more from temporary housing that actually gives you your own address (so that you can list it on job applications, cell service, etc).

But in all instances there is typically an oversupply of homeless shelters that people refuse to use (due to restrictions on substance abuse etc.) it’s a tough problem.

cheriot19• 5 years ago

"But in all instances there is typically an oversupply of homeless shelters that people refuse to use"

What's a west coast city with empty shelters? The ones in my town are full.

woodruffw6• 5 years ago

I will repeat this every time someone uses “favorable weather” to explain California’s barbaric treatment of its homeless: nobody wants to die of exposure. You can die of expose at temperatures well above what housed people consider “comfortable.” The number of homeless people who would rather stay outside in your “favorable climate” versus being afforded the basic dignity of a roof and room is a rounding error.

1986• 5 years ago

an oversupply of homeless shelters that people refuse to use (due to restrictions on substance abuse etc.)

There's a lot hiding in that "etc". Some other reasons people refuse to use (some) shelters:

- shelter is / feels unsafe due to a subset of the sheltered population

- shelter has a curfew that does not allow you to maintain your work schedule

- shelter won't let you bring your child or pet or stuff

throwaway199372• 5 years ago

The west coast also has the 9th circuit's Martin v. Boise decision (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_v._Boise). It prevents criminalizing public camping unless there's shelter space for everyone. This is impossible given the number of homeless people so we're stuck with encampments everywhere.

lukeschlather• 5 years ago

But in all instances there is typically an oversupply of homeless shelters that people refuse to use (due to restrictions on substance abuse etc.) it’s a tough problem.

This is not correct. In most places, there is a wild shortage of shelters. For example King County has ~4000 shelter beds and ~12,000 people who need shelter.

AFAIK the only place where there are enough shelter beds is NYC where they are legally required to provide anyone with shelter.

coryrc4• 5 years ago

#2 people won't let you build shelters where it's affordable to do so. Seattle's homeless shelters should be built outside Moses Lake, not where a studio costs $300k+. For the amount we already spend, every single chronically homeless person could be housed in dorms built out there and pay for the social workers. Since they aren't doing that, it's clear the real motivation is not to help the homeless.

pseudalopex3• 5 years ago

Outside Moses Lake is far outside Seattle's jurisdiction.

bsder• 5 years ago

Shelters won't fix the issue.

San Francisco did a breakdown on their homeless.

Almost 75% have some chronic health problem. 15% have a traumatic brain injury.

That requires facilities for long term medical care. And it basically means universal healthcare.

Unfortunately this puts us back to "You know all those facilities that we closed back in the 70s? Yeah, closing them was a stupid idea and we needed to fix them instead."

agumonkey2• 5 years ago

Hygiene service vans with showers for the rest

zz865• 5 years ago

Make it legal to build homes where people live (looking at you California, specifically LA, SF, SV)

Sorry this is BS. Better solution is move people to where the homes are. Lots of cheap empty houses in America, just not on California beaches. Yeah I'd rather live in a tent on Venice beach than a run down house in Ohio too, but homeless dont have a right to live anywhere.

xvedejas• 5 years ago

If I may call BS myself: there's a combination of greater opportunity on the coasts and lack of landowner rights, so that it would make sense to work on both at the same time. Make building housing a right that landowners have, and we'll have more homes in areas of greater opportunity. It doesn't have anything to do with protecting someone's right to live on the beach. On the contrary, it's common sense that building more on the coasts has a greater cost-benefit ratio. There's so much more untapped value in our cities, and at least personally I'd prefer to avoid over-developing rural areas. That risks ruining what makes more natural areas unique.

cheriot19• 5 years ago

Housing needs to be where the economic opportunity is. That's why there's empty homes in Detroit and a rent burdened population in coastal cities.

epistasis5• 5 years ago

The only way I would ever support this is if the people who say "no more people after me, this place was perfect when I moved into my current place" pay for the complete construction costs of the née places elsewhere.

Everybody moved at some point, whether it was when they were born and they stayed in the same house their entire life, or when they moved out from their parents house, or when they moved out of the studio apartment after getting married and settled down.

If people want to keep others away, they need to pay for that privilege. Otherwise they are just leaches on society.

MeinBlutIstBlau5• 5 years ago

Wasn't there a study that came out showing every single one of those things done by CA or Seattle failed?

notJim2• 5 years ago

2. Build dorm style shelters for anyone that would otherwise sleep outside

We used to allow SROs, like the classic YMCA you'd see where people down on their luck would live in old movies. These are now illegal to build in most places, and the existing ones are being closed down.

telchar• 5 years ago

That seems to me to be a big mistake. People talk a lot about affordable housing but as far as I can tell they aren't talking about housing that would be affordable to build. People seem to only want to talk about subsidized housing in luxury developments, at least in the discussions I'm party to.

Of course only a few of these units get built in any development, after much wrangling from the city, and then the city and the developers pat themselves on the back while the lack of housing is hardly budged and the affordable housing advocates are unappeased. I think SRO-style housing is the only realistic way to make affordable housing widely enough available that people well below the median income for an area can be guaranteed housing.

BurningFrog2• 5 years ago

This seems weird until you understand the mechanisms.

The "Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics" says that when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. It's probably part of our inherent "human nature" sense of ethics.

The SRO landlord is seen as exploiting poor people by taking their money in exchange for pretty terrible housing. So we ban the SROs, and now these people have to sleep in the streets.

But that actually feels OK, because NOW THERE IS NO ONE EXPLOITING THEM!

https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...

GhettoComputers8• 5 years ago

Removing subsidies from people who got a lower rate with 3 bedrooms before and applied for price freezes would help, they have no reason to move. The rich not wanting their views obstructed with larger buildings or taking away cultural landmark statuses where housing can be built would help, but what about building codes and safety, since earthquakes are a fear?

Anyone who can’t afford housing where they’re at and wants to have housing moves, it’s often ignored that homeless people might be fine being homeless and prefer it to being housed in another area they can afford. I agree there should be housing for people who want it, but I don’t decide I want to live in Beverly Hills and demand affordable for me housing and refuse to leave. If only I could enjoy Echo Park or the Bay Area without paying for housing somehow...

m0zg• 5 years ago

neither of those is improved by leaving people to sleep on the street.

Neither is improved by giving them housing. Housing should be modest, and it should be preceded by forced rehab. Instead, in Seattle, for example, they're giving the homeless hotel-style housing without requiring them to get addiction treatment and without a requirement to do anything job-wise. Seattle's King county projects that such valiant (and extremely expensive!) efforts will triple the already sizable homeless population in 10 years, yet they are continuing down this path anyway, just like SF did many years ago. Why? Because it's already a billion dollar industry in the state, and as such it'll continue to metastasize, just like any other government "service".

So solution needs to have 3 parts at least, and part zero should be "forced rehab". Without that no other part will ever work. There needs to be a part about employment in there somewhere for people who are able to work. I don't care that they don't wanna.

khazhoux• 5 years ago

Make it legal to build homes where people live (looking at you California, specifically LA, SF, SV)

People keep saying this, but it's just a flavor of trickle-down economics. The idea that if we just let developers build out more (sure, yes they should) that then housing prices would drop and cascade down to where homeless people could afford a place to live. That's such a huge stretch, especially in those areas you mentioned, with median home prices over a million dollars, with rental prices to match.

SF had 5190 unsheltered in 2019. That is here the problem to solve: make housing for 5190 people. For reference, the largest shelter in SF --MSC-- houses 340 people. So you "just" need to build the largest shelter again -- 15 times. Basically, take 4-6 city blocks and dedicate them entirely to housing, is what this amounts to.

https://svdp-sf.org/what-we-do/msc-shelter/

refurb4• 5 years ago

And just like building bigger highways induces demand so will building more shelters in SF.

“Build it and they will come”

Not sure why we’d aim to building housing for homeless in the most expensive city in the US

cheriot19• 5 years ago

it's just a flavor of trickle-down economics

Trickle down economics is a Republican justification for cutting taxes for the rich. Building new homes under Prop 13 increases the taxes paid by rich people.

Between 2015 and 2019 SF built 19,000 new homes and added 60,000 new jobs. In what world does that not drive up prices? This obsession with developer profits is convenient rhetoric to justify a hunger games like housing market.

Even SRO rooms were going for $1,200 pre-pandemic. This is how struggling people become homeless. Houston doesn't have less homeless because Texas has a better safety net. It's because housing is cheaper.

Here's a simple fact: we need to have enough homes for everyone that works here, retired in place, and that's growing up here. We do not have that right now. Luckily building large residential buildings is something humanity has known how to do for the last 100 years. We "just" need the political will to do it.

AnthonyMouse3• 5 years ago

"Trickle-down economics" is not a well-defined term.

If all you're doing is giving money to Zuckerberg so he can buy more yachts and mansions, that money is not going to end up in the hands of regular people, and now he's bidding against them for scarce real estate.

If you give tax cuts to small business owners so they have more money to expand their businesses and make it easier to go into competition with incumbents so that consumers have more choices and competition drives down consume prices, that money is going to end up in the pockets of regular people.

SF had 5190 unsheltered in 2019.

In areas with a massive housing shortage, alleviating it would require building a massive amount of housing. So... build a massive amount of housing. There is no law against it, once you get rid of the law against it.

vineyardmike6• 5 years ago

The idea that if we just let developers build out more (sure, yes they should) that then housing prices would drop and cascade down to where homeless people could afford a place to live

Its obviously not true. Its a working theory - the more housing available, the lower the cost - is true. But SF has such a high demand you can probably double housing in SF and demand would not satiate. That said, seattle has built tons of housing, and stalled some of the exploding costs of housing.

There is probably no good solution to SF's issue - its so out of hand and so expensive that even if you doubled the city you wouldn't solve the issue. Like you said - 6 blocks just to homeless shelters is a lot (doable, but a lot). Especially for a city so geographically constrained.

cma• 5 years ago

Aren't people in homeless shelters still classified as homeless? From the site it is hard to tell how many are sheltered vs out on the street.

tonymet• 5 years ago

Another attempt to convince you that your personal observations must be incorrect because someone found a stat from a study somewhere.

LA, Portland & SF– are obviously measurably worse over the past decade. Portland is a case of going from beautiful downtown to cesspool in that timeframe.

There are a lot of reasons that stats are misleading. Noise in the data, biases, trivial statistics, incorrect measurement, poor geographic approaches.

Please don't sit at your desk and tell me what I see out my window doesn't exist.

mulmen16• 5 years ago

Add Seattle to the list as well. It has been years since I felt safe taking my family downtown but now I don't even feel safe in most parks.

Waterluvian• 5 years ago

How much geographic diversity does your window look out to?

I don’t doubt what you’re seeing. But that only tells a very specific story in the bigger picture.

strstr• 5 years ago

Seems like you didn’t read the article to the end. It discusses the spike in unsheltered chronic homelessness on the west coast, which is the most visible type.

cheriot19• 5 years ago

Did you read the article? It's saying chronic unsheltered poopulations are increasing on the west coast, which also seems to be your observation.

epistasis5• 5 years ago

You seem to be saying that the data is biased, but your personal anecdata is not.

Do I understand that correctly?

Or is it that when you say "homeless" you only mean the people you see, and not all the rest of the people that would typically fit the description of homeless?

What you see out your window certainly exists, but there is a whole lot of the world that you cannot see from your window. Claiming that your window provides the best view should at least come with some sort of argument about why it's a superior view.

whakim5• 5 years ago

Did you even read the article? The last two sentences are: "Still, I think we can see why people in Seattle might feel there’s a crisis. Maybe anecdotal knowledge ain’t so bad."

The whole point of the article is that things vary widely across different locales. In some places homelessness is increasing by a little bit; in other places homelessness is increasing by a lot; in other places it's decreasing. The article also makes the useful point that perceptions of "crisis" are often related to whether unhoused folks are sheltered or unsheltered. We don't hear a lot about the homelessness crisis in New York even though its homelessness rate is statistically the highest in the nation.

DoreenMichele• 5 years ago

Excellent breakdown of data on homeless populations across the US. It could use a better title. This is worth looking at. It is not your usual opinion piece on the topic. It's all data and it's very good.

dang• 5 years ago

I've replaced the title with your description. Thanks! Hopefully it will help the thread be more substantive.

(Submitted title was "Is there a homelessness crisis?")

dynm3• 5 years ago

I went ahead and changed the title of the article itself, too. Thanks for the feedback.

paxys3• 5 years ago

There are some exceptions. For one thing, despite being close to California, Nevada and some of the Montana-esque states saw big decreases in certain categories.

Someone people would look at this and go wow, Nevada and the rest did a great job providing shelters and help to their homeless.

I think a more realistic answer is that they just shipped them to California.

csee• 5 years ago

Evidence? I've read articles talking about homeless being shipped both out of CA and into CA, but no solid reporting that quantifies the gap between those two flows.

epistasis5• 5 years ago

The data doesn't really seem to support this, and my personal experience doesn't either. Most homeless people in my Californian town were living nearby when they became homeless. And though I didn't go to high school here, friends who did recognize people they grew up among the homeless.

There's a far bigger difference between California and its neighbors: housing costs and availability of housing even for those with money. I have known many well employed people in my town that have not been able to get an apartment even after applying for upwards of 20 apartments. When paired with application fees, that means that these people spend $500-$1000 merely on application fees before they finally get into an apartment.

That awful situation doesn't happen in Montana or Nevada, as far as I know.

klyrs3• 5 years ago

Yikes, application fees are illegal where I live. That's some pretty absurd rent-seeking. Is there a limit, or could an unscrupulous "landlord" post an ad with very low rent for a room, and live off the application fees without ever accepting an application?

Iefthandrule3• 5 years ago

How long were they in California before they became homeless? If they were living in a center for transients or were on a couch for a year before being homeless (but were relatively destitute in Nevada prior to this), then the data absolutely supports it.

paxys3• 5 years ago

There is never going to be official data on this by design, but there is evidence of it happening all over the country, and "friendly" places like California being on the receiving end of it (https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvg7ba/instead-of-helping-ho...).

Statistical anomalies are a proven way of identifying cheating in a wide variety of scenarios like elections, standardized tests and sports. It isn't conclusive evidence, sure, but still a good place to start looking.

whakim5• 5 years ago

I don't think this is true because it is non-chronic homelessness which decreased in Nevada. Is there any evidence for this theory?

MomoXenosaga2• 5 years ago

Homeless people aren't stupid. They go where they can live. Nobody wants to winter in North Dakota lol.

More money in panhandling too I bet.

FPGAhacker3• 5 years ago

I thought that too about the weather but what about New York?

notJim2• 5 years ago

From what I've seen, it's more likely that it's because it's easier and cheaper to building housing in Nevada than in California. The states where homelessness has improved are generally business-friendly and low-regulation states.

MeinBlutIstBlau5• 5 years ago

And also make homelessness a crime. But conveniently they push you toward places that help with people on the verge of homelessness. All things combined with yours that these coastal places do not. If people are threatened with jail for being a vagrant, they'll eventually take the path of least resistance and get a job.

rp14• 5 years ago

This data is interesting because it illustrates how few chronic homeless people there are, and yet people who live in cities with large homeless populations will tell you how disruptive they can be. In NYC, a homeless person getting in your subway car ruins the entire ride. This tiny portion of the population has an outsized impact on everyone else. For this reason, among others, society should find some help for these people.

crowbahr• 5 years ago

In NYC, a homeless person getting in your subway car ruins the entire ride

I've ridden with homeless in the same car as me plenty of times and only occasionally will they be disruptive.

I'm far more irked with showtime than with the occasional sleeping down-on-his-luck guy.

b9a2cab52• 5 years ago

Not sure what your meaning of disruptive is but I would define "ruins the entire ride" as making the entire car smell like urine and feces. I've also gotten on buses where it is plainly apparent someone peed on the bus floor.

noahtallen• 5 years ago

Definitely. As an example, say you walk in your neighborhood to the transit station. A single encounter with someone with a mental health issue will be enough to give you the impression that things are worse than they are. One isolated instance of feeling unsafe had an outsized impact on how you feel about the neighborhood in general. It’s just human!

And unfortunately, in west coast cities, it’s not even that isolated. If there is a camp near-ish your neighborhood for some time, there will be a lot of instances. And as you go into the city, the more dense “downtown” parts are areas where people might not live all the time, but a lot of different people do experience them frequently, and a lot of homeless people may be there too. So thousands of people might get a subconscious feeling of being unsafe, just from a small number of people who might not even be acting in unsafe ways.

That’s why people see it as a crisis: a lot of people in west coast cities feel increasingly unsafe. That’s partly founded (because violent crimes are increasing), and partly unfounded (just someone’s impression of a different person they aren’t comfortable around). So there is a huge emotional response.

s5300• 5 years ago

Personal anecdata is most definitely an issue, and a very hard one to solve.

For example - the greater LA metro area has roughly 19 million people (as of 2019 believe it's higher now)

19 million people is the equivalent of the populations of the 13 lowest population states. Including for example, South Dakota.

The last time I looked into this, roughly a year ago (and at 2019 numbers) the entire state of South Dakota has the same amount of crime as Los Angeles. However, the entire state of South Dakota is roughly 1/20th the population of Los Angeles.

We also have decades of data showing that people who grew up in or have lived large metropolises are at roughly 20%-25% greater disposition to severe mental illness such as schizophrenia. Simply for living in that environment.

So, that being said - I think somewhere like Los Angeles is doing pretty damn good for itself. It's an undeniably slightly crazy place to be living or growing up in, and their general crime levels are only at the level of a place with 1/20th of it's population, that is much less dense. In my eyes, it seems like a place with less population density would be less prone to crime.

Most people don't take any amount of time to become aware of information like this though... thus we get nowhere in solving issues.

StanislavPetrov3• 5 years ago

That’s why people see it as a crisis: a lot of people in west coast cities feel increasingly unsafe.

It's certainly not just west coast cities where this is happening.

So thousands of people might get a subconscious feeling of being unsafe, just from a small number of people who might not even be acting in unsafe ways.

In large part, it is a small number of people who make the masses feel unsafe. The issue recently has been the unwillingness or inability of authorities on every level of government to deal effectively with the small number of people causing the problems. Here in New York a series of actions have worked to make these problems far worse. Among other things, "bail reform" was passed, which eliminates holds on all but the most violent of criminals. This means that instead of removing the relatively small number of people on the street engaging in violent, anti-social and predatory behavior, they are able to roam free and remain a menace. You can't have a functional society if violent and/or mentally ill people are free to roam the streets and assault random passersby. You can't have a safe society when people caught possessing and using illegal firearms are simply released back onto the street. You can't have a decent society when street gangs are battling on the corners to control the open-air drug markets that have sprung up all over the city. And instead of dealing with, or even acknowledging these problems, officials in Albany and city hall spew rhetoric about mass incarceration and white supremacy.

The most basic and important job for any government is so maintain a basic, minimum level of public safety. Without that, nothing else they do much matters.

whimsicalism6• 5 years ago

a homeless person getting in your subway car ruins the entire ride.

i think it's more a person with one of a specific subset of mental illnesses that can ruin the whole ride.

not sure what the solution to that is.

throwaway0a5e4• 5 years ago

yet people who live in cities with large homeless populations will tell you how disruptive they can be. In NYC, a homeless person getting in your subway car ruins the entire ride.

I dunno man.

I've ridden Boston and DC light rail systems pretty extensively (and NYC to a small extent) and never had an obviously homeless person ruin my ride. Heck, I can't even think of a specific instance where one did anything of note.

My coworkers on the West coast however...

rp14• 5 years ago

Just ask anyone in NYC if this is familiar:

“Excuse me everyone. I’m sorry to bother you. My name is Mark and I’m homeless. I’m between jobs right now and I have two kids. If anyone could spare a few cents or even a dollar, then I would really appreciate it. God bless you.”

Happened multiple times a day on my commute.

whimsicalism6• 5 years ago

DC does not have a light rail system outside of the small H street project.

I grew up in DC and a classmate of mine murdered somebody on the Metro, so it is certainly not all smiles and roses.

I agree it is much worse on the West coast.

MeinBlutIstBlau5• 5 years ago

They should be punished for not taking the social service avenues intended to make them not homeless.

lostinquebec• 5 years ago

I think the articles problem is the lack of a definition of "crisis", and that leads to a bad mismatch between the headline and what is a reasonable look at the data.

My issues with the article are:

It starts from a too high aggregation level - almost no one is homeless in California, they are homeless usually in a very narrow area e.g. within 500 metres of bridge X.

Percentage change in raw numbers are not a good way to measure "crisis", and especially not at a state or city aggregated level. It seems more like traffic to me. Even in peak hour traffic, many roads are free of traffic, and the worst affected roads are those where the level of cars exceeds the roads ability to cope. That happens in a thin range of total cars per minute for specific roads, not due to X% increase overall. The same is true of homelessness in a city vs ... let's call them "hotspots".

Perhaps even more important than numbers in specific areas is the actual conditions homelessness creates in those areas. "Bad conditions" could be everything from human faeces on the street increasing, to murders, over doses, disease and unsanitary conditions, and it is possible for "bad conditions" to decrease and homeless numbers go up, or visa versa. That is harder to measure for sure, but probably closer to what most people mean by crisis.

spatley• 5 years ago

It would be interesting to see these rates alongside housing costs. Here in Seattle the median house price has tripled in the last 10 years and homelessness has shot up along with it.

stillbourne5• 5 years ago

I live in Denver, like any other metropolitan area there has always been a homeless population. What has been different is since 2016 there has been a staggering growth in the number of tents and so called tent cities. This isn't a problem just downtown either even if it is most visible there. The issue has expanded outside downtown and is filling in vacant properties in suburbia as well. Places like Aurora, almost every open space park, bike paths, bridges, everywhere you can fit a tent is turning into a homeless encampment. The worse part is I feel helpless, I'm making good money and barley able to pay rent. I feel powerless to help even if I could.

chii3• 5 years ago

I'm making good money and barley able to pay rent.

How can this be both true? If you can barely make rent, it must be that you're not making good money. Surely good money means you have excess after paying all necessities.

If you mistakenly believe you're making good money, but is in actual fact struggling, you must start looking for a higher paying job, lest you end up homeless due to a sudden economic shock or accident causing you to lose your income.

tristor• 5 years ago

It's possible because pay rates in Colorado haven't risen in line with housing costs going up. Colorado has suffered more than most states with an absolute influx of people moving there from California and driving up housing costs. Often not discussed when talking about homelessness is that the alternative for many people who can no longer afford to live in a particular area isn't to end up on the street, but to go elsewhere which if done in large enough scales can displace residents there in a cyclical path.

California has had net outflows of US citizen residents for many years, but net inflows overall due to high levels of immigration. As the housing shortage becomes even more of a crisis in California, it's driving many people out to other states, and this mostly people who are fully employed, not at risk of living on the street, but also not able to afford housing at a reasonable percentage of their income in California. Colorado housing costs now average roughly half what Bay Area housing costs, when a decade ago it was closer to 1/6th. Some cities in Texas like Austin are experiencing this as well. The population between 2010 and 2020 in Austin QUADRUPLED, and the vast majority of new residents came from California. Housing prices also have nearly quadrupled at the same time, but not quite thanks to it being very easy to build in Austin and lots of new housing being constructed. What you could buy for $250k in 2010 now costs closer to $650k in Austin. What you could buy in the Denver metro for $400k in 2010 now costs around $1M.

So it is absolutely true that in raw dollars, compared to median household income in the US, you could be "making good money" and now be barely able to pay rent if you live in a place that's had a mass influx of Californians over the last decade causing housing costs to skyrocket.

stillbourne5• 5 years ago

The apartment I rented for $1400 a month in 2015 is now $2200. It's still the cheapest in my neighborhood. Meanwhile I'm still making the same amount of money, I've hopped a couple jobs but the wages are stagnant. Also I don't like the tone of your voice you seem to be accusing me of some sort of moral failing for not making enough money. I make what's average for a developer in Denver. I'm putting as much as I can into my savings account but even then I have had to put less in each year to make up for the deficit I lose in rent.

BrianOnHN• 5 years ago

In addition to what's mentioned here[1], I like that "unhoused" implies that this is more of a societal problem, opposed to "home-less" which implies a deficit in certain individuals.

[1] https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/homeless-unhoused/...

GaryTang2• 5 years ago

I still have a difficult time understanding how increased homelessness is not a direct result of increased taxes and regulations. The data presented corroborates as much and though correlation doesn’t mean causation, correlation certainly doesn’t indicate a lack of causation either. We go to great lengths to justify the results when the simplest explanation is staring right at you.

oblaff• 5 years ago

I still have a difficult time understanding how increased homelessness is not a direct result of the number of comedy clubs per capita. The data presented corroborates as much and though correlation doesn’t mean causation, correlation certainly doesn’t indicate a lack of causation either. We go to great lengths to justify the results when the simplest explanation is staring right at you.

GaryTang2• 5 years ago

Yikes, to equivocate the impact of taxes and regulations to that of comedy clubs, I can’t imagine being so naive.

zwieback3• 5 years ago

This is great work, data I've been very interested in. It would be really fascinating to get to county and city level, where I live there's been a crazy increase in people living in tents with severe mental and/or substance abuse problems. It does reflect at the state (Oregon) level but I think it's a bit misleading because it feels like there are magnet areas where all the increase happens in one spot.

dynm3• 5 years ago

Hey, I do have plots at the city and county level, 387 of them! Go to https://dynomight.net/homeless-crisis/#all-plots and click on the second triangle thing.

zwieback3• 5 years ago

Wow, thanks, fantastic!

r00fus• 5 years ago

What about red states bussing homeless to the west coast?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/us/homeless-busing-seattl...

Until it's not possible to simply ship your problems away (kind of like how we handle recycling), governments are incentivized to do the wrong things.

whakim5• 5 years ago

The article you cited literally states that only 5 percent of Washington state's unhoused population became homeless out of the state.

whimsicalism6• 5 years ago

only 5 percent of Washington state's unhoused population became homeless out of the state.

homeless is an incredibly broad term. i would be curious in the numbers split across different subsets, like homeless with schizophrenia.

erik_seaberg• 5 years ago

If we want to know the magnitude of states shipping homeless people away, we need to start measuring how many had been supporting themselves. I’ve seen studies about California homelessness where a participant was counted as in-state if they bussed here and crashed on a friend’s couch for a little while.

zwieback3• 5 years ago

It's really good to see the breakdown into the four broad classes. The big question: should we as a society be allowed to force permanently unsheltered people with substance abuse and mental illness into some kind of facility for treatment? Most people who even want to do anything about these problems would probably say no but I think it's at least worth asking.

TaylorAlexander• 5 years ago

I would say no, absolutely not. You should build optional facilities and if people don’t go maybe it’s because your facility sucks. For example lots of places require you to be in at a certain time every night and vacate early in the morning. This may seem fine but it leads to problems for anyone who wants to work a night job or socialize with friends after a day shift.

It seems that housing-first is the way to go. Give someone keys to their own place they can come and go from any time. Offer medical and mental health services nearby. This gives people the time and space to get well and stabilize their life. Using cops to throw someone in to a facility is just one more difficult and disruptive challenge that makes people’s lives worse, not better.

caddemon• 5 years ago

Addicts (homeless or not) frequently make decisions that are not in their best interests. Decisions they would not make if they were not sick, including actively resisting help.

I'm not saying that help should be forced upon huge swaths of people (there are reasons to be against that in principle) or that they don't deserve a bed. I am just skeptical that housing-first would lead to much change in the mental health of that population. Addiction recovery rates are really not good even when looking at a much more financially comfortable population or people with family members that are trying their best to keep on top of them.

For many addicts, it is also difficult to recover and remain sober unless they stop spending time with others that are using. If only a minority of a dorm-style housing unit were serious about wanting to get clean this could make it even harder for them.

crateless• 5 years ago

I wish that there was a breakdown by gender as well. It seems somewhat incomplete as is.

azinman25• 5 years ago

SF has that data, but their report is 404ing at the moment.. I recall it being near equal?

tgbugs• 5 years ago

One piece of analysis I'd be interested to see is whether the transition probabilities among the 4 categories along with the implied 5th category of "not homeless" have changed.

This is harder to get good data for because it would require tracking individuals across time. The payoff is that it would likely reveal evidence of structural changes if such changes exist.

At the population level it is hard to tell whether and where changes are happening. Getting the transition probabilities would allow for more effective targeting of interventions (though most of the folks who work on this already know which transitions are the hardest to recover from).

antognini• 5 years ago

The huge decrease in homelessness in North Dakota is probably due to the end of the fracking boom. The map compares the homelessness rate from 2015 to 2020, and 2015 was just a few years after the height of the boom. During the early 2010s rents in North Dakota shot up enormously as tens of thousands of workers poured into the state to support the industry. There wasn't enough existing housing to support the newcomers so there was a lot of crowding into trailers etc. and it's no surprise that a lot of people ended up homeless.

Fracking has leveled off for the past few years and many of the workers have moved back to other oil fields so homelessness has decreased dramatically.

PaulHoule• 5 years ago

Wow. I've talked with people who "lived outside" and realized that they were in very different situations.

This article does a good job of breaking it down with a simple analysis. It makes me think of the book that inspired this musical

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subways_Are_for_Sleeping

which described quite a few different situations people were in.

rossdavidh• 5 years ago

Great article, but I didn't see (maybe I missed it) a notice of the fact that homelessness can be correlated with meth, mental illness, etc. with the causation working in either direction. Homelessness could be caused by, or increase the chances of, any of those other factors (or both).

vmception• 5 years ago

Great piece! One thing to add is to look into why the anecdotes are pervasive.

This data does a great job at distinguishing between the unhoused population and the sheltered homeless population.

Where the unhoused are visible drives the perception.

In California, the same is true, with unhoused being just the tip of the iceberg in the homeless population, the difference is where the unhoused are. In favelas and bazaars in the middle of very expensive areas.

Strolling through highly trafficked areas of NYC you wouldnt make the broad reductive assumption that “New York has more homeless people”, whereas strolling through highly trafficked areas of SF/LA would be a complete culture shock.

It is an interesting topic as it’s not clear how much people know everytime the topic comes up. Is a prologue about distinguishing between unhoused/sheltered before engaging further really useful? Hard to say

GhettoComputers8• 5 years ago

The article like most people that haven’t been homeless don’t know anything about homelessness aside from inferring from statistics and knowing what is the problem without actually talking to homeless people. #Vanlife people enjoying parking at the beach are chronically homeless and unsheltered.

It’s a great way to dehumanize people’s desires and motivations with wrong assumptions by lying with statistics.

paulpauper• 5 years ago

A lot of people through no fault of their own just cannot 'get it together'. Either they lack the skills to be employable, do not make or save enough money to afford a permanent residence, or cannot hold down a job for a variety of reason.

SeattleAltruist• 5 years ago

Homelessness expert here. This data set is garbage. HUD data only includes those in the federally mandated HMIS (Homeless Information Management System). This data excludes 1) people who don't access services; 2) people who access services from private, non-federally funded programs (like faith-based groups); and 3) typically undercounts those with SUD, mental-health issues, and especially people of color.

A recent BGC study estimates that, in Seattle, for example, HMIS data doesn't include up to 40% of people in encampments.

Garbage In -> Garbage Out. Pretty sweet effort, though. Wish the feds were smart like this.

dynm3• 5 years ago

Do you have a reference for that study? Also, what's your impression of how correlated this data is with the true numbers? Does a rise in the counts indicate the true numbers are also probably going up, or could it just be an artifact of more people being in the HMIC system or something?

zakm• 5 years ago

The unsheltered count is a thing and does include people who don't access services.

frankbreetz• 5 years ago

Since the reports main premises is that the number of homeless hasn't changed, does it matter that the groups you mention are left out?

Is there reason to believe the groups that are under counted experienced a larger increase the the groups that were included?

It seems the data collection has been consistent, so the conclusion of the article seems correct.

_zfxr• 5 years ago

This article is completely ignorant of the actual situation. These comments by most of you really show your true colors.

If you truly believe "mental issues" are "causing homelessness" You are blinded by privilege, deaf by choice, and dumb by default.

Greed is causing homlessness and these numbers are ridiculous. We're at 16% homelessness here in Atlanta.

There are solutions, but not a one of you has the intellectual capacity, balls or creativity to execute.

I am in awe at how out of touch these comments are.

cman1444• 5 years ago

Care to share any of your solutions then?

Iefthandrule3• 5 years ago

Our uncreative brains would not be able to understand!

999900000999• 5 years ago

Another great reason to not live in LA, homelessness exploded there since rent shot up.

Rent effectively doubled from 2009 to 2019. You can ether stay in Mayor Garcetti's fun house or leave. Factor in even if your able to starve off homelessness yourself, your still wasting money that's better saved. I'm happy to know America is full of functional cities where it's still possible to make it. No this doesn't mean you can afford a 2 bdrm on minimum wage, but you can find a room.

gverrilla• 5 years ago

"To eliminate poverty it was necessary to conceive of an industrial system more productive than our own. Such will be universal harmony which will produce at least triple — yes, without exaggeration — at least triple the yield of the civilised system in a well-cultivated empire. Accordingly, while Harmony will greatly increase the wealth of the well-to-do, it will bring about an excessive increase in that of the people, to whom it will guarantee a salary or in old age a decent minimum below which they cannot fall. This beneficence will be all the more simple in that humanity will reproduce much less in Harmony than in civilisation.

This is far removed from the theories of the philosophers, some of whom, the Demagogues, seek to rob the rich to provide for the poor. The others, who are called the Economists, do not have the welfare of the people in mind. They think only of enriching empires without worrying themselves about the fate of the individual. Thus the theories of the Economists have greatly enriched England without enriching the English. According to the Tableau de Londres you can find 115,000 paupers, prostitutes, thieves, beggars and unemployed in the city of London alone; the workers of Scotland live in a frightful state of misery. This is nonetheless the consequence of the modern systems which claim to alleviate the suffering of the people."

Charles Fourier, December 1803

Breakdown of data on homeless populations across the U.S.

Related Stories