I call it the Homeless Industrial Complex

https://truthonthestreets.substack.com/p/this-is-why-i-call-it-the-homeless

62 75 3 years ago

truthonthestreets.substack.com

I wonder if it's also how the public attention meant that the news had to be bite sized and simplified. But in real life homelessness is immensely complex and varies per person.

Rather than that, just slap a one size fits all onto everyone. Because that's what governments are best at handling.

shuntress7• 3 years ago

This skirts pretty close to saying that homelessness is an issue of "personal responsibility" while claiming to be apolitical.

Homelessness is a complicated issue but the core of the solution is very simple: Provide housing. Whether that is a short term stay in a shelter or a lifelong stay in permanent housing is going to depend on the individual. But either way, you need a safe place to sleep and live before you can start seriously addressing other problems.

wombat-man• 3 years ago

Author seems to suggest that housing first won't work. I might have missed it but I don't know why. What do they suggest instead?

unknown_user_84• 3 years ago

I get the sense that they are suggesting a housing + services approach. My read on why they think Housing First is flawed is that housing was offered and services were withheld. This implies some kind of public counseling service for the newly housed which could have its own set of issues. But in my opinion seems worth trying... if they're going to throw billions at this thing hiring a few qualified therapists couldn't hurt.

chmod6003• 3 years ago

It seems like the suggestion (by implication) is mandatory treatment for substance abuse and mental health issues.

nelsondev• 3 years ago

That’s an oversimplification and relies on the word “homeless” as an explanation and solution.

If the condition was called, “street living”, perhaps you would consider solutions that don’t solely address the lack of permanent dwelling, and instead look at why some people choose to live on the street.

Of course there are people whose problem is fundamentally lack of a home, in which case providing a home is the solution.

shuntress7• 3 years ago

"Housing First" is not "Housing Only". It's in the name. When you provide housing first, it is essentially a multiplier for all other services.

If someone is safe, happy, and healthy living on the street then they don't need services. But that is obviously not the case in the vast majority of cases.

woah• 3 years ago

I don’t think this piece is apolitical at all. It is stating the author’s political opinion on homeless treatment, apparently formed over a long career working with the homeless.

acover• 3 years ago

Housing costs have sky rocketed and vacancy rates for rentals are often under 1%. A 1 bedroom apartment often costs more than minimum wage earns. How is this not a failure of housing policy? The home owning majority have voted for restricted supply.

major5052• 3 years ago

See SF for example. The city where the council fights against zoning laws that allows the building of high rises.

In the meantime the population complains about having to fight with meth addicts in the streets while active voting this this council members.

Eumenes• 3 years ago

This skirts pretty close to saying that homelessness is an issue of "personal responsibility"

Can it not be personal responsibility? Does it _always_ have to be a systemic problem with our economic system? Believe it or not, there's always been segments of the population who can't cope with day to day responsibility and life. For every homeless person whose down on their luck or deeply involved in a drug addiction, there's 1000s who came from disenfranchised backgrounds who 'made it'

shuntress7• 3 years ago

What you seem to be driving towards is the idea that jail houses need to exist in order to house the people who "can't cope with day to day responsibility and life". I don't disagree.

Exactly like you say, some people just need a little more help to 'make it' some people simple can't handle it and need to be taken care of for their entire life.

SketchySeaBeast• 3 years ago

For every homeless person whose down on their luck or deeply involved in a drug addiction, there's 1000s who came from disenfranchised backgrounds who 'made it'

Given that there are ~528,000 homeless people in the United States that's an impossible statistic.

avgcorrection3• 3 years ago

Not necessarily with the economic system but any pattern in a large group can be explained as a group problem, yes. Then you propose the group-level fixes.

Imagine a personal development coach who said that “personal responsibility doesn't exist”. That's pretty absurd. Then imagine a sociologist that says that “group-level problems don't exist”. Equally absurd.

xg152• 3 years ago

As I understand the author, his main objection wasn't the housing (I hope) but rather, that it's only housing, folloed by a "hands-off" approach for aid workers, which requires the homeless to seek out any psychiatric help, anti-addiction programmes, etc themselves - even though, they might not be willing or capable to do so.

I can kind of understand this sentiment of the author, (at least as far as it concerns willing but incapable persons)

NoMoreNicksLeft7• 3 years ago

As I've said before, there is a counter-intuitive meta-problem with homelessness.

Fixing homelessness doesn't require love, or honesty, or any other virtue. Like most problems, it requires money. But no matter how much money is allocated to fix the problem of homelessness, fixing it attracts more homeless. Their feet aren't nailed to the ground on the other side of the continent... if they hear of a magical place that solves homelessness, they go there. They hitchhike, they'll panhandle for cash for a bus ticket, if nothing else they'll hoof it.

So while your city is busy celebrating its miraculous solution to homelessness that took 500 people off the streets and put rooves over their heads, there's an army of homeless marching there, invisible to you. 8000 of them, and you budgeted for up to 550.

But it really never even gets this far. Your local politician is a bit more savvy than you give him credit for, and he recognizes this meta-problem, at least subconsciously. So when it comes time to solving the problem for those 500 homeless, he deflects and postpones. He changes the subject, he asks for more studies. In the end, he has the cops chase them out and then bulldozes the tent city. And this happens regardless of his politics, because the meta-problem doesn't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican. It doesn't even care what the real solution is either. Maybe the homeless do need tough love, maybe they just need a handout. But tough love costs money just like handouts need money, and you can't ever allocate enough. Red state, blue state, it's all the same.

They need to fix the meta-problem first.

AbrahamParangi• 3 years ago

I don’t know that there is any evidence that ”the solution to homelessness is money” is true, other than that we intuitively feel it should be.

The homeless budget in SF has been growing much faster than the homeless population but the problem has been getting continuously worse.

https://files.sfchronicle.com/sfc-graphics-engineering/sros/...

giraffe_lady3• 3 years ago

The idea of homeless people as rootless resource consumers free and willing to migrate any distance for services is completely alien to the actual experiences and issues.

Almost half of homeless people have jobs. The "street homeless" are the visible tip of the iceberg but not representative. And even more importantly, almost all homeless people have family and friends, churches, AA meetings, coffee shops where they are welcome on rainy days, etc. These ties are just as important to them as they are to you, and they are just as reluctant to break them as you would be.

Surely people do move only for better access to services but I have never seen numbers on how many. More interestingly, in years of my own homelessness and later ties to those communities, I never met one who had.

bumbledraven• 3 years ago

GP was clearly talking about street homelessness, while you are talking about a broader issue.

bennyschmidt• 3 years ago

I agree with you. There are far more wealthy transplants buying the houses and changing policies after being here 4 seconds than there are inbound homeless.

NoMoreNicksLeft7• 3 years ago

Surely people do move only for better access to services but I have never seen numbers on how many.

First, there would need to be "better services" significantly better for that to be worth the trouble.

Which, again, I explained pretty clearly in the first comment. I plainly say "this is why no one does better services". Did you miss that part?

Ajay-p2• 3 years ago

This argument has been used to describe unchecked or open immigration. Those in need will migrate to those places that provide support. A crisis in one location will push those in need to flood into a neighboring location seeking help, which can overwhelm and strip available resources for that area, exacerbating the problem all over again. With communication among the poor and homeless not terribly great, more will keep coming because they heard there was a place that would help them.

How does one fix the meta problem? With immigration I can see, close the borders, require those persons to stay in their original locations and support them there, but short of drastically limiting aid I don't know how this is workable.

NoMoreNicksLeft7• 3 years ago

My solutions aren't applicable to immigration, which has a far simpler solution. We hand out green cards to people at border INS offices. Half-hour interview, one time, they get on the bus immediately afterward. If they show up with the right paperwork, instant background check passes, etc.

Now these people can't be cheated out of wages or paid below minimum. They pay into taxes. Employers have to pay for health insurance. They suddenly become much less tempting to hire. They too, won't want gangbangers and criminals ruin things, but now they feel safe to contact the police. They'll now snitch on people sneaking in. Most of the problems that even the right complain about are caused by keeping them an underclass. If, is as claimed, they "steal jobs from Americans", then doing this would probably reverse the flow and we'd see emigration.

LindeBuzoGray• 3 years ago

But no matter how much money is allocated to fix the problem of homelessness, fixing it attracts more homeless. Their feet aren't nailed to the ground on the other side of the continent... if they hear of a magical place that solves homelessness, they go there.

The federal reserve is meeting today and tomorrow. They usually say implicitly (although sometimes explicitly) what an Australian real estate mogul recently came out and explicitly said - they're trying to drive unemployment up and wages down. If this isn't done, it's a threat to the aristocracy, to the heirs expropriating their rentier wealth in profits, interest etc. This is the real meta-problem. The heirs and their allies are working to generate poverty, homelessness, unemployment etc., in the case of the real estate mogul quite openly. The recent corporate response to writers, auto workers etc. is yet another side of that.

soupfordummies• 3 years ago

Who's the real estate mogul?

davidw7• 3 years ago

The notion of 'highly mobile homeless people' is not born out by the actual statistics:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/california...

NoMoreNicksLeft7• 3 years ago

Yes, you're absolutely right. It's why there are equal numbers of homeless people in Minneapolis and Los Angeles in December.

_mxdo3• 3 years ago

There have been more wealthy Great Lakes (Canada, Michigan) people flooding to SF than anyone else for years now. Pretty much since Detroit died.

You can always tell because they don't assimilate. Canadians LOVE their own flag, and will typically wear it on their clothing every day, while condescending all the arrogant Americans lol. Same with Michigan and the color yellow. Look what they did to JFK in the park T_T

They have the exact same views toward homeless and home ownership and opportunities here in SF as they did back home. To us locals, it looks a lot like a wave of people from a failed city are coming here with their failed policies to try and kill this city next.

shuntress7• 3 years ago

"Caravan of 'Undesirables'" scare tactic.

Get real.

NoMoreNicksLeft7• 3 years ago

Is that how you read my comment?

I think I'm safe in saying that it's a documented fact that however many homeless there are in your city, there are more elsewhere. I feel confident in the assumption that if homeless people learn that somewhere they currently aren't the ex-homeless now don't have to live in gutters, and all they have to do is somehow go there... they'll go there. This isn't a scare tactic, it's a reality.

And it means that there is no budget large enough to solve homelessness in any arbitrary city, unless they budget to solve it for the entirety of the North American mainland.

EatingWithForks2• 3 years ago

Funny, this guy protests that he wasn't asked to return after saying they needed specific metrics and measurable results, but doesn't provide any metrics or results for alternatives to Housing First-- which does actually have studies.

He also talks about how he has witnessed the rise of homelessness and scoffs at the notion that the economic system (capitalism) is squeezing people into losing their homes, but provides no alternative system-wide issue.

jupp0r2• 3 years ago

There are plenty of capitalist societies without any homeless. Maybe it's the inadequate social safety net after all.

EatingWithForks2• 3 years ago

Sure! That could definitely be true. I'm just pointing out the essay is lacking in real alternatives to what the essay is critiquing.

edgyquant• 3 years ago

What societies currently have zero homeless? Looking at western nations I can’t find a single country “without homelessness.”

giraffe_lady3• 3 years ago

Author positions himself as an authority on homelessness by proximity to the people experiencing the issue. But nowhere in this is there the voice of homeless people themselves, or even a recognition that they are an authority as well.

I was homeless on and off for many years. The cause of my homelessness was not having enough money to afford a home; not having enough money to afford the healthcare that would allow me to work consistently enough to afford a home. I find "capitalism" an effective, useful, and accurate enough shorthand for that cycle.

The author of this article apparently does not, but neither does he offer an alternate nomenclature that still aligns with the actual experiences of homeless people. He erases our authority and replaces it with his own, but his is insufficient to the task.

avgcorrection3• 3 years ago

I was homeless on and off for many years. The cause of my homelessness was not having enough money to afford a home; not having enough money to afford the healthcare that would allow me to work consistently enough to afford a home. I find "capitalism" an effective, useful, and accurate enough shorthand for that cycle.

It's not terribly surprising that a lack of money could cause homelessness directly. But perhaps to the author.

banannaise• 3 years ago

It's wild how much he pushes the narrative of "the actual problem is childhood trauma/drug addiction/mental health" as if those aren't problems also common to housed people. I'm pretty sure that if I became homeless, my mental health problems (already not great) would worsen significantly, particularly without access to my medication!

avgcorrection3• 3 years ago

The implicit comparison (or just allusion) to the MIC is pretty nuts.

solardev• 3 years ago

How have other societies and cultures dealt with homelessness? Is this an American epidemic, or is it happening elsewhere too?

notaustinpowers• 3 years ago

Finland: Gov. owns 7,000 units across the country to provide long-term housing for any homeless person, some even being permanent. With on-site support staff and tenant resources.

Singapore: Long-term housing for homeless, with support. Converting to short-term transitionary housing for homeless people going from long-term housing to thier own house. Lastly, strict control of housing prices in Singapore, leading to a 89% homeownership rate for citizens.

It happens everywhere, and no one country has fully solved homelessness. But other countries focus on alleviating the "infection" (lack of stability, home, food), rather than America's approach of alleviating the "symptoms" (rehab programs, drug testing, work requirements). America as a whole has always been more leaning towards punishment of it's homeless population, not support. Especially as many cities now make it a felony to be homeless through various means.

pasttense01• 3 years ago

The rich Western European countries have large safety nets--unlike the U.S. which has a lot of holes in its uncoordinated safety net system.

_mxdo3• 3 years ago

All of the land is 100% owned, even the land that nobody ever uses. Nobody can use it - zoned off. There are no spots left to find and build a house somewhere. You're also not allowed to set up in a city - that's homelessness. You're not even allowed to plant seeds of food, that's illegal. The only way you are allowed to have a roof over your head or have food is when you pay someone for it, and it's all 100% already owned, you can't just go get it. How much should it cost? Hm, thousands of dollars every 30 days. Or you can get out of that if you pay hundreds of thousands up front for a mortgage and then property tax forever.

shuntress7• 3 years ago

I'm having a hard time following this.

It is definitely not illegal to plant seeds.

_mxdo3• 3 years ago

It is absolutely illegal to plant food on random land. Even on your own land, there is a strict limit to what you can grow, and how much of it.

Ajay-p2• 3 years ago

I don't agree with this author at all. Housing First has proven to be very successful when implemented on the local and state level.[0] This author seems to be taking a strange economic view that just because it has worked doesn't it mean it will continue to work, or work on a national level.

I hate to say it but he sounds very bitter and thinks this is just throwing good money after bad. IMO if it gets people off the streets and into a safety net, then we should try, and if it works keep doing it.

https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chroni...

jppope• 3 years ago

Can you provide any data on California? It may just be the skeptic in me but using Utah, with its large Mormon population and climate, feels like an exception not a rule. I'm aware that New York City has done some good work, but that predates Housing First if I'm not mistaken.

davidw7• 3 years ago

California has a huge homelessness generating machine: the housing market. There's no way that some charities and a few government programs can get people out of homelessness faster than the rising prices can generate people without a place to live.

jeffbee2• 3 years ago

After California builds some housing, then we can measure it.

freedomben• 3 years ago

Salt Lake City does have a high Mormon population, but Mormon's are actually a minority there (by population, not by power aka government office holding). Outside the city there are a lot more of course, but the city itself is a lot more diverse than most people think.

I think it's a useful comparison and resource for approaching California's situation.

mitchbob• 3 years ago

I'm currently reading Jennifer Egan's excellent article in last week's New Yorker magazine about a supportive-housing facility in New York City [1], and its depiction of their Housing First approach is one of the most encouraging things I've ever read about addressing homelessness. Meet people where they are, address their most basic needs, and their lives become much, much better. If it can work in NYC with all its challenges, I think it can work anywhere.

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/09/18/a-journey-from... (archived: https://archive.ph/2023.09.12-175108/https://www.newyorker.c... )

pdonis• 3 years ago

Housing First has proven to be very successful when implemented on the local and state level

Your reference talks about one state (Utah). Even if Housing First was successful there, that doesn't mean it was successful anywhere else.

Also, the definition of "success" in the article you reference is that a person gets into housing provided by Housing First. But the article under discussion in this thread is not saying that doesn't happen. It's saying that getting into housing provided by Housing First doesn't necessarily improve the lives of the people--the author describes "Massive drug use, fights, assaults, despair and death" in a Housing First building. So your definition of "success" seems to be different (and less stringent) than the author's.

davidw7• 3 years ago

Houston has also had good results with something that looks like Housing First:

https://calmatters.org/housing/2023/06/california-houston-ho...

shuntress7• 3 years ago

"Housing First" is a little bit like Universal Basic Income. Small scale programs have good results with indications that it will work just as well or better at large scale.

chmod6003• 3 years ago

Not sure if it's true or not but the author is suggesting that the housing is not a safe environment and that they don't have good access (or at least utilization) of services.

I read it more as an argument that it's an expensive way to keep the homelessness out of sight.

(Not agreeing or disagreeing, just my interpretation of the author's general point.)

alexb_• 3 years ago

Homelessness becomes a problem when building houses is illegal. Allow people to do what they want with their land, and the problem fixes itself. Central planning has failed every single time it has tried, even at local levels.

davidw7• 3 years ago

This guy came to my city over the summer, and he seems like he's got his own grift in terms of telling conservative politicians what they want to hear about homelessness and getting paid for it.

He mentions Obama and "Housing First", but it goes back further, to GWB, and was actually fairly successful: https://www.cnn.com/2013/04/29/opinion/frum-less-homelessnes...

Some people clearly need more than just a roof over their heads, but those other problems become much more difficult to treat when people do not have a stable place to stay.

And the statistics are very clear about the relationship between housing and homelessness:

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-...

jonhohle• 3 years ago

Great, so it’s (possibly) a housing cost problem. There are now more per-capita housing units in the US than at any time in the past 20 years (and likely ever). In the past four years, the US population grew 4M, and housing units grew 5M. There is currently 0.433 housing units per capita, more than enough to house every average household in the US.

Those aren’t new units in SF or NY, so why do people stay homeless in those locations rather than move to lower cost of living area of the country? How do those cities think they can get someone from having no income or resources to being able to afford $2-3K rents? If it really is primarily housing affordability, is it not reasonable to tell people they can’t afford to live in that city? I don’t live in SF, even though my previous job was there, because cost of living and quality of life would have been worse than my current situation.

I completely understand that increased housing cost is a driver of acute homelessness. I personally don’t subscribe to the idea that it is responsible for chronic homelessness. I also think the link’s analysis of policy is flawed. Benefit to rent ratio is not a granular enough measure. There are certainly some benefits that contribute more/less than others, the requirements to receive benefits, etc.

davidw7• 3 years ago

You're very much correct that there are a lot of details when you start getting into chronic homelessness. It's a complex issue.

The link is mostly about the high level correlation, and is not trying to say "just give everyone housing and presto, problem solved".

SF and NY have been really bad at providing enough housing, and part of fixing the problem is building more.

jonmayer• 3 years ago

The author gave up the game with the bald-faced assertion that "The reason why it was decided to make it voluntary is because all homeless people according to them are victims of capitalism and would not be fair to have any expectations of them."

This is a nonsense straw dog. The author bemoans the lack of "metrics" while neglecting to mention that metrics have shown that Housing First approaches have had a higher success rate than the alternatives.

I think the author's treatment at the hands of activists is deplorable but the arguments in the article don't hold water.

ruined• 3 years ago

the reason people are throwing rocks at this guy is because he will organize groups for "trash pickup" and then go into encampments and remove tents

nunez• 3 years ago

Apparently it’s more nuanced than that. Some of the tents were planted. https://www.foxnews.com/us/activists-plant-empty-tents-encou...

Now, this is Fox News we’re talking about here, so sources are probably dubious, but there.

jeffbee2• 3 years ago

Among housing advocates we usually call this the Non-Profit Industrial Complex. The NPIC is a shakedown racket that uses government powers to thwart market forces and funnel tax funds into their own pockets. It is simple corruption, because these organizations are also politically active, and the "community benefits" they extract amount to bribes, which are partly laundered into coordinated campaign spending. If you are ever dealing with people who say market-built housing is evil and we can only accept 100% non-profit housing, you are dealing with the NPIC.

The NPIC relies on your ignorance of the scale of the housing crisis. This article, as poorly written and argued as it is, appears to commit the same mistake. "Hundreds of millions of dollars" is nothing, can make no impact in a city the size of Seattle. In Berkeley, where I live, every little apartment building costs at least $100 million. That's just how much a building costs these days. Private industry in my county spent $6.8 billion on new construction last year. If you live in a county of several million people and the NPIC plan of record is to spend low hundreds of millions over a decade, that indicates that your local NPIC intends to perpetuate the housing crisis, which makes sense for them because otherwise they would need to get new jobs.

The only serious response to the American housing crisis involves West Coast cities spending at least $10k per capita per year on new construction for the foreseeable future. At least 95% of this money needs to come from private investment.

chmod6003• 3 years ago

A few tangential questions:

Assuming services are available and accessible on a voluntary basis, what is the success rate for overcoming major substance abuse or mental health issues?

How does that success rate change with various levels of coercion?

Assuming the success rate is fairly low, that still leaves a lot of people with substance abuse or mental health problems. What is the right thing to do for them? Independent housing is one option but wouldn't some kind of institution make more sense?

If someone's main problem is homelessness and some minor criminal behavior, I can imagine that free housing could turn their situation around quickly. But only if it's a safe environment around similarly-situated people.

elcano• 3 years ago

This is not possible. No other country have implemented a program against homeless that works, and those who tried in the past have given up because it's an impossible problem to solve. Ohh wait. Finland Housing First program have been running since 2008?

How do they can? Maybe there are other factors, like a better economy and support systems that generate less homeless people, maybe? Or maybe most homeless people die in the cold and are lost in the snow forever?

https://www.themandarin.com.au/205500-finland-ends-homelessn...

major5052• 3 years ago

Theres a great book in portuguese about about it called "Mafia dos Mendigos - como caridade aumenta a miséria" translate to somethinh likeThe Beggars mafia.

Its a book about a evangelic priest who lived in the streets among beggars for a year, and through observations came to write this a book about how non-goverment organizations make money exploiting the misery of this people.

xg152• 3 years ago

This was not enough though. We were only spending millions and the system wanted billions. So after months/years of intensive lobbying, in 2013 President Barack Obama inaugurated the Housing First model as a one size fits all solution to homelessness. Despite no evidence it would work the administration promised it would end homelessness by 2023.

So I guess, the problem really was Capitalism after all...

I call it the Homeless Industrial Complex

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