Spike in Homelessness in US Cities Isn’t Slowing Down

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/the-spike-in-homelessness-in-us-cities-isn-t-slowing-down/ar-AA1dOiKW

by harambae • 3 years ago

62 141 3 years ago

msn.com

pixl97• 3 years ago

I mean, housing prices aren't going down significantly either.

klyrs4• 3 years ago

But we can't raise the minimum wage, because that would cause inflation! Or so I'm told.

bequanna• 3 years ago

Federal Government spending is a large contributor to inflation. It increased sharply during the pandemic and never corrected.

treesrule10• 3 years ago

There is some evidence that increasing minimum wage increases the prices of goods for minimum wage workers so that their rising wages don't actually give them more buying power, also we can just not make it illegal to build new housing in places where there is already housing but ymmv.

sonicshadow4• 3 years ago

Is inflation a myth to you? The lowest-paid people have seen the highest wage increases in the past several years, do you think the grocery store and Starbucks didn't adjust accordingly to raise prices?

local_crmdgeon4• 3 years ago

Almost no one in the US makes minimum wage. Last I paid attention it was <2% of workers.

davidw6• 3 years ago

Some good statistics about homelessness and what drives it. Lots of people see the unwell guy on the corner, but that's the tip of the iceberg: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-...

And a pretty interesting article on efforts to get people out of homelessness in Texas: https://calmatters.org/housing/2023/06/california-houston-ho...

itake• 3 years ago

Noah's article has many broad generalizations that don't hold water.

For example, Missippi's has a low cost of living and quality of life (cheaper for people to house mentally ill family members) [0]. California involuntarily imports homeless people from other states, which would lead to other states having less homeless and California having more.

Poor mental healthcare could mean that people that need better quality care leave for states with good quality care.

I stopped reading after that.

[0] https://www.midwesternmarx.com/articles/mississippis-low-hom...

davidw6• 3 years ago

It's pretty hard data, not generalizations.

It's odd how much people resist the notion that "fewer people can afford a good as it becomes more expensive" with housing. It's like the Twilight Zone of economics where supply and demand no longer apply.

local_crmdgeon4• 3 years ago

THIS THIS THIS THIS.

The vast majority of homeless are people "couch surfing" or "crashing with a friend for a bit." The guy on the corner screaming and smoking meth is NOT a representative homeless person - it's a second issue that doesn't really have a word. Vagrant maybe - either way it's not really separate in "the discourse."

Some small % of the people sleeping in their car to save up a security deposit will turn into that guy, but those people are in that position from housing costs. This is a housing cost issue, with an end result that's a public mental health/safety consequence.

You can arrest the guy (and I think you should, hot take for HN) for jerking off, but that won't solve the problem. The problem is that there's no fucking housing and it's illegal to build more. The vacant unit numbers you see thrown around are totally made up - they count houses in places like the Catskills and Kansas etc, not housing in SF/NY/Miami

caddemon3• 3 years ago

Arresting that guy will help solve the vagrant problem. It won't solve the homelessness problem, and that's definitely a hugely important point. Most people who become the vagrant type of homeless have serious underlying mental illness or got seriously deep into drugs though, and they're in a state where they are not going to voluntarily accept help. A guy down on his luck is unlikely to turn into this disruptive stereotype even if he does unfortunately end up on the street longer term, while there are vagrants who came from wealthy families and are on the street entirely by "choice" (which I put in quotes because they are seriously ill).

I heard a talk recently from a couple social workers that run programs for addressing homelessness in New York. There are 100 or so homeless people that are well known to services in NYC because they have repeatedly refused offers for help, and these people have stayed on the streets for years while an entire homeless populations' worth of people has been successfully helped back onto their feet (of course with a never-ending flow that keeps the overall population at high numbers). Occasionally one of the vagrants ends up in the news for attacking someone, but short of that they will be left on the streets, which is really a lose/lose.

calibas2• 3 years ago

The guy on the corner screaming and smoking meth is NOT a representative homeless person - it's a second issue that doesn't really have a word.

In general, those are mentally ill people who aren't getting proper treatment. They don't have family members willing or able to support them, so they slip through the cracks in our social systems.

To me, it's cruel to treat these people like criminals, so I fundamentally disagree that they should be arrested.

ChainOfFools• 3 years ago

Almost two decades ago I started dating this Chinese girl who had relatively recently come over from mainland, yet in the space of 5 years after arriving managed to leave an abusive home situation, find work as a medical interpreter ( and thereby secure her own work visa to stay in this country) and save up a down payment for a modest house.

She told me at the time, which I thought was some sort of amusing misunderstanding about language, that I was "homeless boy" - because I lived in an _apartment_. And thus that she needed to help me get into a house (hint hint) so that I could stop being homeless and be a "man."

I had never heard the word homeless used this way before, but as the years went by I began to understand that it was not a mistake at all but a very particular attitude about what constitutes being settled down and stable in one's life and that I, despite whatever other qualities I had that appealed to her, was unacceptably immature and reckless in this department.

Much later on I discovered that for various reasons, there's a certain generation of Chinese immigrants that as a cohort correspond roughly to our late gen Xers/early millenials, who broadly seem to share this point of view.

jdjdjdhhd• 3 years ago

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-... doesn't get it, obviously

hifromLA• 3 years ago

As a lifelong Californian I’ve seen homelessness expand from “expected” places like skid row into suburbs in (north) Orange County.

I’ve long felt that California was a harbinger for the rest of the nation and if they wanted they could choose to avoid the policy mistakes (e.g. SFH zoning, nimby-ism, prop 13, etc).

I’m not convinced that they have because the truth is the current status quo materially benefits a coalition of interest groups including current homeowners and property developers.

If we want to tackle this we need a national coordinated strategy. A piece meal approach at the city level is just playing whack a mole.

anon84873628• 3 years ago

It's almost like our entire political system is premised on the idea that house prices should never go down...

birdyrooster2• 3 years ago

it makes sense though as this is how the middle class sees a lot of their wealth passed through death and marriage, its houses for the middle class. its just that the middle class is shrinking and so now the same houses are owned by fewer families. for everyone else there is renting and homelessness.

exclusiv5• 3 years ago

There's some of that for sure, but real estate is a good inflation hedge. So if you print like we have been and new supply doesn't jack up, then here we are.

That's just a natural economic thing; not a political system at play, other than a byproduct of massive printing which has been out of control for some time.

I mean, we had interest rates jack up (for the US in modern times at least lol) and prices didn't drop as much as they should (and many that lost in bidding wars in the frothy market went to the sidelines)

When the Fed goes the other way because they have no real choice, prices are going even higher.

seiferteric3• 3 years ago

Even without the politics/nimbyism I am trying to imaging a realistic scenario where housing prices go down and stay down in California, but I just can't.

willcipriano3• 3 years ago

The real problem is wages aren't allowed to go up.

missedthecue3• 3 years ago

Is it possible to have a healthy flourishing community where housing prices decrease every year? Has this ever happened anywhere?

treesrule10• 3 years ago

Some states (montana Minnisota although the later is less likely to succeed imo) have started doing this at a state wide level, I think Cali has a particularly uphill battle since the housing situation is already bad and the headwind that we really will never be able to change: prop-13. (I think all the other things that are preventing new housing CEQA, SFZ poor public infrastructure can all be changed if we do it right but I don't see prop-13 ever changing even if we get these taken care of)

jjfoooo4• 3 years ago

Why is Minnesota less likely to succeed?

Gibbon1• 3 years ago

The malign thing about prop 13 is is basically means that for muni's property tax doesn't cover required services. It also distorts prices driving them higher.

BellLabradors• 3 years ago

I’ve long felt that California was a harbinger for the rest of the nation

This graph would counter that somewhat:

https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1678452715201130497

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F0sPvd2aEAANBCC?format=png&name=...

fortuna86• 3 years ago

Trump voting states don't offer services for homeless, so they leave for places that do. Is that so surprising?

Not to mention the morality of cutting soup kitchens and shelters just so your state's homeless become someone else's problem.

BryantD• 3 years ago

In the interests of constructive feedback:

Are those absolute numbers or per capita numbers? If the former, are there population trends which would affect the graph?

What happened between 2018 and 2023? Why is the Biden story missing?

Were there methodology changes anywhere in here? Are the methodologies the same between states? If they are the same, is it possible that funding issues affect how accurate the numbers are?

The graph honestly doesn’t tell me that much.

outside1234• 3 years ago

Tackling the issue nationally is key because a significant portion of homeless in the cities is from poverty / drug addiction in rural areas that results in folks showing up in cities desperate for help (it is estimated that 75% of SF’s homeless are from outside of the city).

It is not just a city problem. That is just where the problems end up because it is the only place with any infrastructure to handle it.

nebula8804• 3 years ago

If thats the case then its really a form of additional wealth transfer from the blue states to the red states. They save money on taxes by not tackling this problem/creating it in the first place and then dump the externalities onto blue state taxpayers.

rnburn• 3 years ago

"it is estimated that 75% of SF’s homeless are from outside of the city" -- Where are you getting that 75% number from? The latest survey I'm familiar with showed nearly exactly the opposite (71% of homeless in SF had a prior place of residence in SF). See https://sfstandard.com/2023/05/22/san-francisco-homeless-peo...

vkou2• 3 years ago

Prop 13 is a uniquely Californian problem, and yet homelessness is exploding all over the country.

The problem isn't Prop 13. The problem isn't entirely nimby-ism, either. The problem is that for a variety of structural reasons, housing costs too much, mental healthcare is not available, and there's no pathway for treating drug problems. This causes sick, addicted, or simply poor people who are living on the margins to slide into homelessness, with no way to climb back up the slide.

ketzo• 3 years ago

Well, California's housing crisis is uniquely intense by almost any measure (affordability, relative/absolute homeless population, median family wealth).

Prop 13 is a unique and meaningful contributor to a glacial housing market -- if moving homes (to an equally-expensive home!) would quadruple your property tax, you're probably not gonna sell. And slow/frozen markets result in increased prices.

stilldeadinside• 3 years ago

Housing costs are high because it's hard to build a house. It's a dangerous task requiring a lot of logistics and coordination. There are toxic chemicals, dangerous heights, sharp objects, and requires being in unhealthy poses and breathing in fumes during the construction. Then there's the financial risks, with people not paying as promised, or withholding some pay due to work quality. At the end of the day, people are not willing to sacrifice their health as cheaply, and there isn't a new influx of cheap migrant labor, so the costs will remain high in the future.

Karrot_Kream• 3 years ago

California has lots and lots of small local governments which makes it structurally harder in California than states where there aren't as many governments. The state government is trying to use RHNA allocations right now to force local governments to get in line but there's no substitute for a single governing body.

Eumenes2• 3 years ago

Neither is substance abuse

Supermancho2• 3 years ago

Neither is substance abuse

Or gambling or sex or foul language. These assertions are not useful on their own.

algoatecorn3• 3 years ago

Would you agree that an influx of narcotics from our southern border has a lot to do with a rise in homelessness across the US?

Arubis• 3 years ago

Regardless of whether this is true, I suspect you're conflating correlation and causation.

algoatecorn3• 3 years ago

Causality can go both ways

mbfg• 3 years ago

Unfortunately i don't see it going anywhere but worse, much worse from here. While there are some who try to do something, money is so now concentrated at the top that it will keep sucking in the next set of lowest economic group that still lives in a house of some kind. It's my future, unless i die relatively quickly.

MSFT_Edging2• 3 years ago

I recommend checking out this channel if you want to see what its like for people on the brink, or trying to claw back from homelessness. I found it today and there's a lot of privileged folks who just don't know.

One of the themes on there, is intermediate free housing helps a tremendous amount when people are falling down.

Another big theme is landlords evicting anyone who complains or wrongs them.

https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialBigSuper

petsormeat• 3 years ago

Glad to see this channel promoted (am not associated with it).

What had been an entertaining hate-watch of stupid McMansions for overpriced sale is now an empathetic, disturbing examination of how Americans can abruptly fall into poverty once they're old, chronically ill, or facing domestic abuse.

nobody99995• 3 years ago

And this is nothing new either. I recall a piece in the Village Voice from back in the 1980s whose title asked the question "What do homeless people want?" Which was helpfully answered in the first sentence: "Homes mostly."[0]

And another piece in the San Jose Mercury News from 2000 reporting on full-time public school teachers in San Jose living in homeless shelters because they couldn't afford the rent there.[0]

Homelessness is, at its heart, a housing affordability issue, not the "moral failings" of someone who can't afford to pay rent/mortgage.

The solution is, of course, more housing. But that would require local rezoning and likely higher density housing.

But there are powerful special interests that aren't interested in that, and are perfectly happy to see their fellow humans suffer. And more's the pity.

[0] I've repeatedly searched for online copies of these pieces, but have been unsuccessful on numerous occasions. That may be due to deficiencies in my search-fu, but there's also a lot of stuff from back then that just isn't online.

trinsic2• 3 years ago

Thanks for this. I am going to use it in my area of California. There is a lot of people here that believe that people dont want to pay rent and its really about cost inflation due to house flipping and ect.

HDThoreaun2• 3 years ago

Yes, for most homeless the issue is housing affordability, but for the homeless that people complain about, the mentally ill and violent drug addicts, housing affordability is not the problem. If the "annoying" homeless were all forcibly institutionalized no one would care about the "quite" homeless which is why discussion ignores them.

nobody99995• 3 years ago

Yes, for most homeless the issue is housing affordability, but for the homeless that people complain about, the mentally ill and violent drug addicts, housing affordability is not the problem.

I don't know about you and can't speak for anyone else, but I complain the loudest about people who are homeless (especially families with young children) because of housing affordability.

Those with mental health and/or substance abuse issues are (at least in my mind) a separate issue -- one that is related to public health and not housing. And we fail those folks even worse than those who just can't afford housing.

If the "annoying" homeless were all forcibly institutionalized no one would care about the "quite" homeless which is why discussion ignores them.

Are you really making that argument? If so, why stop with incarceration? We used to sterilize[0] those folks too. They're not really human anyway, since if they were, they wouldn't be homeless or mentally ill right? Because homelessness, addiction and mental illness are moral failings that only reflect on the individual and not on the society in which they live. In fact, why don't we just euthanize them. And why stop with the homeless? Those useless unemployed folks need to go too. And don't forget about the old and infirm. They don't add anything productive, so why should we suffer them to live at all?

Yes, I realize that you're not advocating for euthanizing Grandma, but what you are advocating isn't so far (as history has shown) from that. Or, as the old saw goes, "Don't wish for what you want. You might just get it."

[0] https://bpr.berkeley.edu/2020/11/04/americas-forgotten-histo...

megaman8212• 3 years ago

The vast majority of homelessness is caused by unaffordable housing in the area, or temporary money flow problems. This is a different population than the visible, chronic homeless. Sweeping them up into one group seems counterproductive. The mom who just lost her job and is getting evicted from her apartment just needs money or a more affordable living situation. The guy yelling a trees on the street, needs mental health treatment. When people complain about the homeless, it is mostly about the chronic homeless even though they are a much smaller population.

treesrule10• 3 years ago

I don't think this is super true, I think people become the random guy yelling at trees rather than some guy who works at the Duane Reade because homelessness causes you to go insane

vkou2• 3 years ago

Yes, homelessness absolutely causes people to go insane. I'm not sure why you're being downvoted.

But some people end up homeless because their mental health issues weren't treated (or weren't treated well) while they were still housed and functional. It can only take a few bad episodes to lose your job, and the next job, and then your home, and then you're screaming at the pigeons at 2pm in SOMA.

caput770• 3 years ago

The vast majority of people who experience homelessness are on the streets for 1 night before getting their act together and finding a place to live. That means the people who are on chronically on the street are dealing with more issues.

ch4s34• 3 years ago

The people you see shouting on the street are usually suffering from schizophrenia, which has a base rate of 1% in the general population but exceeds 20% among the homelessness. Untreated schizophrenia will lead someone to homelessness, almost inevitably.

tehwebguy4• 3 years ago

He needs both! But yes, he needs a home first, like everyone else needs.

megaman8212• 3 years ago

When you can't afford your place anymore; you live in your car and join a cheap gym with showers or sleep on the sofa of friends and family. Most people don't remain homeless, and aid spent for this group of homeless are super effective at getting them out of homelessness faster. The person that is driven to yelling at trees caused the stress of being homeless with no other underlying conditions, is the ultra-rare.

JohnFen2• 3 years ago

I'm no expert on homelessness, but I've spent a number of years assembling and distributing care packages for the homeless population in my area (not in California). I started doing this after seeing the body of a person who had died on the sidewalk from hypothermia one winter.

I've learned a whole lot of things from talking with these people over the years.

My first observation is that about half of them are homeless because they have serious mental or emotional problems that prevent them from functioning in society.

About half have serious drug or alcohol problems. There is an enormous overlap between this group and the mentally/emotionally ill group.

A smaller percentage are young people who have, basically, dropped out of "the rat race". They have chosen that life.

And the smallest percentage are people who suffered a serious blow in their life and were unable to recover. Most often, this was a serious illness of some sort. Sometimes it was the death of a loved one, a terrible divorce, that sort of thing.

I have developed a kind of "sixth sense" for telling if someone is homeless or not (you very often can't tell just by a casual look). I remember making my rounds one evening and spotting a 30something guy, clean, clean clothes, etc. But my sense told me he was homeless.

I approached him and offered a care package. He was exceptionally grateful. He told me that he'd been homeless for about a week, as a result of a horrific divorces in which he lost everything, followed by losing his job because he couldn't function as a result of his marital trouble.

I knew, and told him, that if he stayed on the street for very long, he would become trapped, and become one of the grizzled people yelling at trees sooner or later.

One of the things that makes this issue so hard is that there isn't just one cause of homelessness. It's a complicated problem. But one thing is very clear to me -- as a society, we are failing these people. The US is the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the planet. That we allow people to live like this is criminally negligent and inhumane.

And, another thing I learned because I've seen it first-hand, is that no matter how comfortable, established, or well-off you are -- it's possible for you to become homeless far faster than you would ever think.

bradlys3• 3 years ago

Build more housing and remove regulations - but wait… developers are never going to build housing that lowers the price of housing overall. This would only help people who have all the cash to build their own single family dream house… which isn’t the people we really need to help.

The answer is building public housing where the government has no incentive to constantly extract as much as possible out of the tenants.

I don’t see anyway forward for the US other than a public housing revolution. As long as everyone’s NW is tied up in property, public housing will be the only way to get more affordable housing onto the market. Every other action will constantly push the cost of housing up or keep it flat, at best.

dweissma• 3 years ago

Why are we assuming "developers are never going to build housing that lowers the price of housing overall"? This seems to run contrary to research on the issue. See: https://www.upjohn.org/research-highlights/new-construction-...

ch4s34• 3 years ago

You do realize that developers are in the business of building housing right? There will be developers building anything legal to build at any cost level that they think will lead to returns. However in most of the US, most kinds of housing are illegal to build. Building triplexes doesn't necessarily make single family homes cheaper(and generally will not) but it does product units that may be cheaper than the current average price.

As long as everyone’s NW is tied up in property

It's totally a myth that building new housing, specifically things like apartments lowers the value of single family homes. In some cases, building more housing might increase the value of your SFH, because there is more economic activity nearby and more potential buyers when you go to sell. Housing need not be 0 sum.

bradlys3• 3 years ago

There will be developers building anything legal to build at any cost level that they think will lead to returns

Have you ever considered that developers also own existing property and land?

Developers and construction companies are not the same.

sangnoir• 3 years ago

There will be developers building anything legal to build at any cost level that they think will lead to returns.

Developers will prioritize high-margin projects. Which is why almost all new developments are "luxury developments". I cant remember hearing about a low-cost development except as begrudging token to "affordable housing" tacked onto a luxury development to meet the letter of the law.

grrdotcloud• 3 years ago

Having been homeless I know the chasm between living on the street in a tent and a suburban home is about a ten thousand decisions over the course of several years.

I would argue the life we will have is very predictable, on a 5-year timeline, based upon decisions between today and the next year. Small things, like showing up to work on time, has a compounding impact upon one's life.

The ability to afford a mortgage has a dependency of a few thousand good decisions resulting from several years of positive actions.

giraffe_lady• 3 years ago

I've been homeless plenty and the only thing that got me out was luck and medical treatment. Years of good decisions can be undone by one accident or bad turn.

My best personal example of this is one of the first times I was trying to get sober, had gotten a chromebook and was beginning to work online. About halfway to saving money for deposit on an apartment when a cop threw my tent and backpack in the river. I was back in the bottle within a week. The life you live is very predictable, but that's one of the things you lose along with your home. I'm surprised you didn't learn that out there.

MSFT_Edging2• 3 years ago

I'm really sorry that happened to you.

There's a major lack of empathy for people who are homeless.

The response to homelessness being more police violence is horrific, especially how they basically throw away all their belongings just so people don't have to see the poor and desperate in their neighborhoods.

Its absolutely inhumane.

tehwebguy4• 3 years ago

The Bloomberg list in this article is a joke. It lists 10k families without homes in LA and simultaneously only 381 in Miami -- those 2 numbers cannot be correct, I suspect the Miami number is completely fabricated.

badrabbit• 3 years ago

Hear me out: more big cities. How you do that is have fast transportation, especially free public transportation to smaller municipalities.

In california, it seems the problem is the richest coastal folks are too powerful for eminent domain to be effective. If that is correct then the answer is political, cali has a decent track record of propositions making huge changes. Perhaps sound minded californians can organize a measure to put this on the next ballot: neuter the coastal commission and fund apartment and condos in the most desirable locations so that the rich still live in scenic coastal places, just stacked in apartments instead of houses and also give cities power to demolish arbitrary houses in lieu of apartments.

I see people complain about homelessness all the time but no one is willing to consider extreme measures, just complain about it.

zuminator• 3 years ago

What a weirdly framed article. It's purports to be a discussion about spiking homelessness in "US Cities." But it's really about a discussion about spiking homelessness in one US city, i.e. New York.

The numbers in the chart show that homeless families shot up from 52,824 to 72,675. That's an increase of 19,851. But out of that number, 17,145 represents New York City. The entire rest of the country only accounts for 2,706 families.

imtringued• 3 years ago

Modern day homelessness is a luxury problem. People prefer a society with homeless people because it gets them some private benefit, otherwise they would have fixed the problem if it was truly important to them.

e40• 3 years ago

I wonder if cities are getting better at counting the homeless. The big uptick in 2022 probably got them to pay more attention, hire people to canvas various parts of cities to count them. The numbers are definitely distressing. As someone in the Bay Area who has noticed a huge increase, it doesn't seem worse in 2023 than in 2022 (and Oakland is not on the list, which is odd to me).

111111IIIIIII4• 3 years ago

Under capitalism, cities have no incentive to get better at counting the homeless. In fact, they are more incentivized to increase their rate of death than to calculate their rate of existence.

MollyRealized• 3 years ago

Personally, I'd like to see taxes go towards cheap but secure housing, food and health care guaranteed for everyone within the US. (Barracks? Food prep like this [1]? Health care similar to Armed Forces?)

Then if you wanted to live alone and/or better, eat better food, or have spending money, that would be your incentive for a job or doing your own business, etc.

I'm kind of cribbing from MANNA (Marshall Brain, ASIN #B007HQH67U, I don't see an ISBN anywhere). But I kind of feel that the basic premise of "here's a safe place to sleep and you won't starve" is a base level we should aim toward.

[1] https://youtu.be/TT-N5wl0l-s

sharts• 3 years ago

It's mind-boggling that conversations never touch the total lack of fundamental recovery since 2008. Homelessness really picked up during the "great" recession and the only "recovery" I've seen since then has been in financial assets propped up by artificially low rates.

All of this only produced overvalued tech companies peddling products with little to no value ad, marginal if any fundamental innovation to level-up society in any meaningful way, and massively increased concentration of wealth in the hands of few.

Fundamentals seem weaker now than even back then and people are still hanging on by a thread. Things will only accelerate when this next downturn really hits. Whether child labor will be legalized this time around or if it'll take yet another cycle is really the only question left to be asked. Unfortunately, we need to directly experience abject conditions first-hand to begin caring about turning the ship around.

Spike in Homelessness in US Cities Isn’t Slowing Down

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