[HN Gopher] Houston moved 25k people from the streets into homes...
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Houston moved 25k people from the streets into homes of their own
Author : js2
Score : 171 points
Date : 2022-06-14 15:35 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| olivermarks wrote:
| The claim here is 'The overwhelming majority of them have
| 'remained housed' after two years'. Data please....
|
| This is key to the 'housing first' model, which I don't think has
| worked well in California where close to half the US homeless
| currently live.
|
| We see endless positive pr about the huge non profit industry
| that 'service' the homeless, but having been pretty involved in
| researching this for a while it is very important to get accurate
| data and answers.
|
| A 12 billion homeless budget and astonishing sums spent on
| housing people with serious mental illness and serious substance
| abuse problems is not working well for anyone except arguably the
| California homeless industry.
|
| ('LA spending up to $837,000 to house a single homeless person A
| Los Angeles audit finds that a $1.2 billion program intended to
| quickly build housing for the city's homeless residents is moving
| too slowly, and costs are climbing' etc)
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/la-spending-837000...
|
| As SF mayor Newsom pledged to 'end homelessness in two years' in
| 2001 and totally failed after spending vast sums.
|
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/archive/item/A-decade-of-homeles...
|
| The previous SMI/SA/transient model triaged people far more
| effectively imo, with shelters that ideally routed people to
| sobriety, mental health and wellness resources, with those
| responding and recovering being housed.
|
| We currently have shelters in places like LA & SF that are too
| dangerous and understaffed for terrified newly homeless to stay,
| an almost total lack of sobriety triage compounded by budgets
| being spent on housing first pipe dreams and 'safe consumption
| sites' for opioids and meth. Many of the treatment beds in SF are
| empty. (Twitter is a good place to follow this slow moving
| disaster).
|
| Many of the hotels in SF that were commandeered by the state for
| 'shelter in place' accommodation of homeless are now suing for
| huge sums as they are completely trashed. Many drug addicts would
| rather be on the street rather than behind a closed door because
| if/when they OD they can be seen and revived.
|
| With the end of the rent moratorium and economic disaster we are
| going to have a fresh wave of homeless working poor who will need
| housing.
|
| I don't know enough about the Houston model to comment - I hope
| it's working - but we have a dire situation on our hands that is
| getting worse by the day and is not working well at all. we have
| the cartels preying on the homeless as opioid cash cows.
|
| This is a federal level problem. Cities, counties and states are
| squandering resources on various patchwork solutions. I really
| hope Newsom isn't the next president because he has spent two
| decades going in the wrong direction.
| 1024core wrote:
| > As SF mayor Newsom pledged to 'end homelessness in two years'
| in 2001 and totally failed after spending vast sums.
|
| .. and those "vast sums" have only gone up since. This year's
| homeless spending is expected to exceed $1.1Billion (with a
| "B").
| adolph wrote:
| > cartels preying on the homeless as opioid cash cows
|
| People experiencing homelessness doesn't seem like an obvious
| source of cash.
| olivermarks wrote:
| In California you get 500 bucks a month and a lot of free
| hand outs if you are on the streets. This has been blasted
| all over the western world media, arguably resulting in more
| migration to pleasant weather and resources.
|
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10498607/San-
| Franci...
| bittercynic wrote:
| Is there a program giving every homeless person in CA $500?
| The only information I could find was a UBI experiment in
| Stockton where they randomly selected 125 residents to
| receive the $500 monthly payments. Homelessness was not a
| requirement of the program.
| olivermarks wrote:
| General assistance. I suggest reading Shellenbergers 'San
| Fransicko'. The UK daily mail story I linked too was
| quoting this tweet thread of his https://twitter.com/shel
| lenbergermd/status/14914181200864542...
| pessimizer wrote:
| You wouldn't be able to tell from the Mail, which
| according to the url originally headlined the story
| something like "San Francisco homeless man says he gets
| paid $620 a month."
|
| Imagine writing a story like that, adding a dozen
| pictures of random homeless people looking homeless and
| paragraphs of copy about Biden buying people crack pipes,
| but not bothering to either check out the claim or to
| list the sources of the funds, even if only to shame
| them.
|
| edit: ah, 100% based on some reactionary twitter poster
| who interviewed the first homeless guy he saw, and must
| be too lazy to follow up on anything.
| olivermarks wrote:
| I think the Mail has picked up on Shellenberger's
| excellent reporting and twisted it for political and
| eyeball view reasons. He is most certainly not 'a
| reactionary twitter poster'. I just voted for him as CA
| governor as he has some excellent solutions, notably 'Cal
| Psych'. Shellenberger was obliterated by the Newsom money
| machine sadly. Read his book and twitter, he is a
| superstar.
| newbish wrote:
| Unlike many parts of California, Houston is not exactly a
| welcoming environment (weather) for the unhoused.
|
| It's built on a swamp after all.
|
| The summer is a brutal mix of heat and humidity that basically
| runs from May through September with frequent severe storms or
| tropical events. October and November start to get cold and
| from December through March it alternates between the 70s and
| 30s. March and April are nice again as long as you can get out
| of the rain.
|
| Houston does not exist without HVAC and living without it is
| difficult and frequently dangerous.
| worker_person wrote:
| Like 4/5th of the country is fairly brutal in summer and / or
| winter.
| screye wrote:
| Each city in the US has a unique homelessness problem. Relevant
| blog [1]. The most relevant distinction is between tech-cities
| that HN audiences live in (SF, Seattle) vs the success stories
| mentioned in this article (Atlanta, Houston). See the graphs
| here, credit to Dynomight: [2]
|
| Atlanta and Houston were dealing with high number of 'mentally
| healthy and sober' homeless. They were ripe for rehousing, and
| the project was a relative success. DO NOT EXTEND THESE
| INTUITIONS TO YOUR TECH CITY.
|
| Seattle and SF have seen an alarmingly high base/growth of
| mentally unhealthy homeless with substance abuse issues.
| Houston's solutions will not work here. There is reason a that
| residents of NYC do not complain about their homeless populations
| as much. They are overwhelmingly sheltered and able [3]. On the
| other hand, Seattle resident complain more about the sub-human
| interactions (property crime, harassment, flashing, open
| defecation) caused by for which the proportionally-larger
| mentally-ill/addicted population. Guess which city had an
| anomalous jump in meth consumption over a couple of years. It's
| Seattle [4]
|
| Drugs and mental health are at the center of the homelessness,
| crime, urban fallout and lack of safety in west coast tech
| cities. It is a hard problem with no good solutions, but
| ""compassion"" and abolition are certainly not it. The safety of
| 'mentally healthy and sober' homeless can only be ensured through
| the Institutionalization (institutional care or forced social
| isolation) of the mentally ill and drug addicted.
|
| Homeless shelters, social welfare workers and protection from
| police harassment are good learnings to pick from other cities.
| However, Seattle and SF should also consider reopening
| psychiatric hospitals, forcing mandatory rehab and unfortunately
| imprisoning repeat violent offenders who refuse care. Some might
| call it inhumane. But, it provides rehabilitation for those
| willing to seek care, it provides safety for those who've 'fallen
| on hard times' and makes the difficult decision to socially-
| isolate the small but dangerous minority within them. If you have
| a better solution, I am all ears.
|
| Last but not the least, NIMBYism is selfish. It is okay to be
| selfish. But do not claim to fight injustices, for then you'd be
| a hypocrite. It is not okay to be hypocrite.[5]
|
| [1] https://dynomight.net/homeless-crisis/
|
| [2] https://imgur.com/a/KNbgDHr
|
| [3] https://dynomight.net/img/homeless-crisis/coc/NY-
| New%20York%...
|
| [4] https://dynomight.net/img/homeless-crisis/coc/NY-
| New%20York%... (sauce : https://dynomight.net/p2p-meth/)
|
| [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljaP2etvDc4 (RIP)
| wfhordie wrote:
| > Some might call it inhumane. But, it provides rehabilitation
| for those willing to seek care, it provides safety for those
| who've 'fallen on hard times' and makes the difficult decision
| to socially-isolate the small but dangerous minority within
| them.
|
| Quoting you for emphasis. The "compassionate" version of
| addressing homelessness by Seattle and SF is anything but. Put
| another way: if I were mentally ill, homeless, and endangering
| myself and others on the street... I wouldn't want to be left
| to my own devices, to OD. I'd hope that someone in my life
| would step up and actually help me through it, even when that
| help was hard, even when it meant putting me in an
| uncomfortable place like institutionalization.
|
| Anything else feels cruel.
| RappingBoomer wrote:
| so giving away something that ordinary people people work years
| for, that is a good thing?
|
| Why not just make housing cheaper to build? Zoning, building
| codes, permits, environmental regs, etc...none of these need
| apply to single family homes..and people could build a tin
| shack...there ya go...americans think the vast favelas of latin
| america are a horror show, but if you watch youtube videos of
| westerner youtubers who go in them and report, it's really a good
| place to live...
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| No running water or toilets dysentery cholera high infant
| mortality.
|
| Good place to live.
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| Sounds like chunks of America.
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| Getting there more everyday.
| cgriswald wrote:
| This is like being rich and trying out homelessness for a
| month. No matter how authentic you try to make your experience,
| _you know_ you can always go home at any time and in any real
| emergency you 've got a lot more options than the average
| homeless person.
|
| I would want to hear ideally from people who actually lived
| there and now live in other places. These are the people that
| know the truth about what it is like and also have a basis for
| comparison. A person of unknown journalistic integrity editing
| a series of interview of locals on his tax-break vacation who
| is incentivized by view counts isn't compelling.
| tootie wrote:
| I'm guessing you didn't read it because the deregulation that
| lead to the boom in single-family housing is cited as a cause
| of massive homelessness. Shifting to multi-family would do way
| more to increase housing supply and be environmentally
| beneficial.
| bombcar wrote:
| > Nationwide, most of those who experience homelessness do not
| fall into that narrow category. They are homeless for six weeks
| or fewer; 40 percent have a job.
|
| This makes sense but is also surprising, I think most people
| think of the "chronically homeless" when they hear "homeless".
|
| The loss of SROs is a huge hit that we never really compensated
| for, and something like that should be brought back or
| encouraged, even if not in the same form.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > This makes sense but is also surprising, I think most people
| think of the "chronically homeless" when they hear "homeless".
|
| Right, because the people who are most suffering from and also
| causing social ills are the chronically homeless. Being
| homeless for a short period of time is still very bad for the
| person, but I don't think it causes the same level of
| degradation that long-term homelessness does. And most of the
| "problematic homeless", the ones involved in drug dealing or
| chop shops or harassing random passersby, are likely the
| chronically homeless, not people who've been homeless for a few
| weeks.
| WalterGR wrote:
| Is there a rash of homeless people running chop shops? That
| seems shocking. Tools are expensive - where do they keep
| them? Are they dissecting cars under bridges?
| conductr wrote:
| Thief and chop shops are separate specialties. I'd imagine
| if this claim is even true, the homeless people are
| acquiring raw assets and flipping them quickly
| WalterGR wrote:
| > Thief and chop shops are separate specialties.
|
| Right. It's unclear if that distinction is understood
| here.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| ...okay? Those are both pretty terrible things to just
| let go on, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make
| here.
|
| Yes, I understand that the people doing the stealing and
| the people running the chop shop are usually not the same
| people.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| Very literally, yes.
|
| https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/is-chop-shop-operating-
| plai...
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Not in the sense of "a large percentage of homeless people
| are running chop shops". However, you do find some notable
| examples of apparently homeless people just running chop
| shops in the open on random public land. Sometimes people
| who've had their bikes stolen will go them to find their
| bikes there and take 'em back.
| kansface wrote:
| When I lived in SF, there was a chronically homeless guy
| with essentially a permanent residence in front of my
| apartment. He ran a highly ineffective chop shop whereby he
| would disassemble stolen bikes with a 3' section of steel
| pipe. It was a slow/loud/labor intensive process. He was an
| OK neighbor besides that I suppose...
| convolvatron wrote:
| there's a guy living down by islais creek that sells and
| repairs bikes for other homeless. at one point the port
| authority cleaned out his camp. 4 large dumpsters full of
| bike parts
| agentofoblivion wrote:
| There's a caravan of dilapidated RVs on the road next to my
| gym in Seattle. The "homeless" have setup permanent
| structures and solar panels. A guy runs a bike chop shop
| out of his.
| jgust wrote:
| It's happening broad daylight in green spaces in Seattle.
| It's not pervasive, but it's there.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| At least where I live, it's mostly bikes and specific car
| parts that are accessible like the catalytic converter. A
| 20A multitool and steel cutting saw blades are not
| expensive (~$250 retail) and can get the job done very
| quickly.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Or you can simply steal any tools required as well.
| 83 wrote:
| No one chopping parts is going to spend $250 on a
| Milwaukee, they'll buy (or steal) the $55 dollar harbor
| freight version.
| bombcar wrote:
| I mean if you're going to steal one, why not steal the
| Milwaukee (though those are often locked up in the Home
| Depots in the bad part of town).
|
| Most use a hacksaw I suspect.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Break into a work van, steal tools, use stolen tools to
| steal catalytic converter.
| silisili wrote:
| Serious question: What specifically constitutes homelessness?
|
| If I sell my house, decide to hotel/airbnb/etc for a month or
| two, then move into a new house, would I be considered homeless
| for those two months? Or because I can afford some form of
| shelter, not counted?
| bobkazamakis wrote:
| > Serious question: What specifically constitutes
| homelessness?
|
| Serious answer: this always depends on the context.
|
| >If I sell my house, decide to hotel/airbnb/etc for a month
| or two, then move into a new house, would I be considered
| homeless for those two months
|
| Define home? Is a home a house? Is shelter a home?
|
| In some cases people think of homelessness as a lack of
| adequate shelter, but obviously how you define homelessness
| matters to how it is constituted.
| silisili wrote:
| Gotcha. I first wondered this when seeing a similar stat in
| my old hometown. The reported homeless was way higher than
| I expected, and it similarly said the vast majority were
| only homeless for a few weeks.
|
| I assume it's counting people that reach out for help in
| some way, and not just anyone temporarily without a
| permanent address.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| Relevant to this discussion at large is Lloyd Pendleton's TED
| talk:
| https://www.ted.com/talks/lloyd_pendleton_the_housing_first_...
|
| It really is worth a watch.
|
| One of the things he breaks down is that there are really three
| homeless populations:
|
| About 75% of people are "Temporarily Homeless", about 10% of
| people are "Episodically Homeless", and about 15% of people are
| "Chronically Homeless".
|
| That last group consumes 60%+ of community resources in
| addition to costing taxpayers money in the form of consuming
| police and EMT resources.
|
| Focusing on the chronically homeless is the highest leverage
| way to spend money. And the housing first model has shown
| amazing success.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > for six weeks or fewer; 40 percent have a job.
|
| I said years ago (during occupy wallstreet), that I think this
| class of person isn't homeless, _they 're friendless_. Someone
| shouldnt be homeless for less than a month, with a job, so long
| as they have a few friends with a couch.
|
| EDIT: Yeah yeah, edge cases, families etc. The problem scales
| with the quality of friend groups you have. And in the most
| extreme I'd expect collaborative groups to step in -- eg: for a
| family of 4 I'd expect my church to collectively solve this.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Nobody should be homeless, period. I know that homelessness
| is unavoidable, so I'll settle for nobody should be homeless
| with a job. And if unemplyed a social security net in a
| developed nation has to be strong enough to avoid tgat.
|
| Relying on friends and family is poor societies safety net, a
| rich coubtry counting on that took capitalism one step too
| far.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Interesting take. From my PoV I see a society that's _rich_
| in social fabric (such as relationships) to be a rich
| society, not a poor one.
|
| Perhaps I think I kinda get the angle you're hammering on
| though? Are you kind of talking similar to the Walmart
| +EBT, right? ie No employer should get to pay so little
| that the tax payer subsidizes the worker's basic needs? For
| that I sort of agree-- albeit IMO a big part of the issue
| is rising costs of living, not a lack of pay raises... Pay
| raises are in the locus of control of a business, but a
| lack of housing supply caused by NIMBYism is not.
| 99_00 wrote:
| I wonder if solving the problem housing people who are in the
| "are homeless for six weeks or fewer; 40 percent have a job"
| category will result in few people becoming "chronically
| homeless".
| zdragnar wrote:
| Most of the people in the first category don't really cross
| paths with the chronic population- they have friends or
| family who will take them in for a bit, and likely already
| have access to a bank account and other myriad things that
| the chronically homeless do not.
|
| Focusing on the episodically homeless may be a better way to
| prevent more becoming chronically homeless; they may not have
| as many of the barriers (deeply seated drug addiction, mental
| illness, fear of being involuntarily committed) that is more
| prevalent among the chronic homeless, but I imagine they are
| more likely to quickly burn through their social network good
| will than the first category.
| legitster wrote:
| > They are homeless for six weeks or fewer; 40 percent have a
| job.
|
| Huh. So whenever a city pats itself on it's back for how many
| people it has homed, it's very likely the majority were people
| who were going to get back on their feet anyway.
| ry4nolson wrote:
| no, the article says the opposite, these policies are
| specifically for the chronically homeless and "most
| vulnerable". These are not the ones most likely to get back
| on their feet.
| ebiester wrote:
| However, even if we say that the majority were indeed people
| who would be back on their feet, any effort to prevent these
| people from dropping into chronic state is a continual
| savings.
| tjr225 wrote:
| I think it takes a pretty extreme leap of mental gymnastics
| to figure out how to look at this in a negative light.
| legitster wrote:
| I don't get why this isn't a fair criticism. My city has
| both spent a record-breaking amount on homelessness and yet
| still has record breaking numbers of homeless. It seems
| worth pointing out that these programs might not be doing
| what we think they are.
| cudgy wrote:
| Is it negative to criticize a statistic for including short
| term homeless people who would have resolved their
| homelessness without aid in the total for homeless aided by
| the city of Houston?
|
| Seems like a valid point despite the positive result. At
| the least, a consistent measure should be used when
| comparing statistics between cities.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| It's taking only an external view of homelessness: what
| are its effects on _me_ and people like me. It completely
| ignores the consequences and experiences of _being_
| homeless: losing possessions, damaging relationships,
| stretching support networks, risk of acquiring long-term
| health and legal problems.
|
| It's a "valid point" as far as you're talking about
| numbers not people but I don't think you should feel so
| comfortable only going that far.
| ryan93 wrote:
| Actually people want to know about the street homeless
| and if they are being housed. You are being holier than
| thou
| fmajid wrote:
| > The scale of its woes does not approach what is happening in
| San Francisco, New York or Los Angeles.
|
| No, but its famously permissive zoning also does not let NIMBYs
| veto all new construction and make housing utterly unaffordable
| either.
| avrionov wrote:
| Stanford SIEPR did a seminar and published most of the discussion
| online about homelessness in California [1].
|
| [1]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmPYI8jT328&list=PLs-p47Tpkz...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Houston has the most permissive rules for building housing in the
| country, so funding housing _should_ be that much easier there!
| cudgy wrote:
| Is this really the boogeyman issue that is always mentioned on
| HN?
|
| Many cities have plenty of existing buildings that could be
| repurposed and many cities real estate prices are extremely
| high due to the land already being built out. Very few if any
| government budgets can afford (nor should they) to place
| homeless in ultra-expensive markets; it would be inefficient to
| do this.
|
| Homeless may need to be placed in outlying areas (outside even
| the jurisdiction of where the homeless originated) where real
| estate is cheaper. Coordinating this though may be difficult
| since many homeless bring crime and drugs with them.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| > many cities real estate prices are extremely high due to
| the land already being built out
|
| This has the causality backwards. Places don't become
| expensive due to the land being built out. The land gets
| built out because it's expensive, and in the process reduces
| the price of housing.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Of all the parcels in San Francisco, perhaps 1000 are
| terminally "built out" and the overwhelming majority of the
| rest are severely underused as detached simplex houses or
| parking.
| guywithahat wrote:
| I agree, and I'm not sure why people are downvoting you. SF
| is slightly more dense than Jersey City, so it should look
| like a slightly more built up version of Jersey City, not a
| bunch of single family houses and homeless on the streets.
| The built up portion of SF is tiny compared to the rest of
| it
|
| There should be federal laws protecting your right to build
| to prevent cities like SF from preventing the construction
| of housing to try and push out poor people
| abakker wrote:
| And the single family homes are shit! They are not
| seismically sound, they have poor to no insulation,
| single pane windows, 2x4 framing, rusting rebar
| destroying the foundation walls, and sketchy electrical.
| SF is supposed to be pro environment. If they were, they
| would permit the demolition of a lot of crappy unsafe
| houses and they'd build some new buildings that are
| actually up to modern standards.
|
| Source: lived in midtown terrace for years in a serial-
| numbered home from '56. everything was bad. No functional
| ground in the electrical panel, plenty of paper-jacked BX
| wire. actually no insulation. My 1000 sq ft of living
| space in SF used as much energy in the winter as my 4k ft
| house in Colorado does, and the climates are way
| different.
| kooshball wrote:
| i hope it's not surprising to you that some homeowners do
| pay to upgrade their place so it's actually maintained
| over time. if you don't do that obviously things will get
| worse, not better in 60+ years! I'm not sure why you
| think this is a SF phenomenon.
|
| so no, not all SFH in SF are shit.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Almost any home built in 1956 is going to be under-
| provisioned with respect to utilities and insulation by
| today's standards. I doubt this is specific to San
| Francisco.
| cudgy wrote:
| So tearing down existing extremely expensive houses and
| building new, even more expensive taller homes is the
| solution for the homeless? This is wrong on so many
| levels and would result in the continuation of
| homelessness and could eventually lead to people / voters
| feeling there is no solution at all.
| woah wrote:
| Building taller (we're talking 5 stories, not 100)
| apartment buildings results in more apartments on the
| same land. It's not rocket science.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Yes.
|
| You're not seeing the full picture because you're not
| looking at the problem long-term. The cheap housing of
| today is the expensive stuff built 30-40 years ago that
| has depreciated. I drive by mansions built in the early
| 1900s that have become apartments for college students.
|
| Houses depreciate as tastes in style and location shift
| over the years. I've walked through ghettos where the
| buildings have beautiful Italianate brick work that
| probably cost a fortune to build new.
|
| In 30 years, those trendy apartment buildings you see
| popping up all over will be subsidized housing.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| And here I thought the boogeyman issue was Houston's lax
| building codes letting all those people live in a flood zone
| but, sure, we can concentrate them in camps in the middle of
| the desert "for their own good". We'll keep the floodlands
| for the middle class.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Which is only viable because the Federal government throws
| money at them to rebuild after every flood.
| cudgy wrote:
| Not sure of your point since the middle class would be
| living in a flood plain and the "camps" would be on dry
| land.
|
| Doesn't it make sense to have a centralized area with
| services for mental health, job training, housing to assist
| the homeless? And doesn't it make sense to build these
| facilities in areas with cheaper land costs than downtown
| areas like San Francisco so that money spent reaches more
| of the homeless?
|
| After all, the goal is to help these people as effectively
| as possible, without letting our individual conscience
| regarding having to move them to another area impact the
| efficiency of the operation.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| >Coordinating this though may be difficult since many
| homeless bring crime and drugs with them.
|
| Replace 'homeless' with any other minority group and you
| basically have the ethos of the American real estate market
| for the past 100 years.
|
| America's strategy of the wealthy simply relocating
| undesirable groups without actually solving any of their
| problems is a very short-sighted one (read the classic: "San
| Francisco's problems today are the rest of America's problems
| in 20 years")
| cudgy wrote:
| Which wealthy people are going to be forced to sell their
| home for new development in San Francisco? That's what it
| is going to take. And where do these people live while the
| taller buildings are being built? And how much will it cost
| to build these new, shiny tall buildings? And how many
| homeless will actually be able to live in these new shiny
| buildings? None. These new shiny buildings will house more
| bourgeois techies, existing wealthy, and professional class
| people.
|
| Also, This is not about a minority group. It is about
| people with no money, which believe it or not exists across
| all minority groups.
| screye wrote:
| This is a common misconception. City Beautiful has covered it
| in detail here [1]
|
| A comment from the source research:
|
| * Although Houston does not have formal zoning, its land-use
| regulations combine to create a de facto zoning system that
| replicates elements of a traditional code.
|
| * Houston controls all the same land-use categories as other
| comparable cities with zoning, but it lacks a citywide overlay
| zoning map
|
| * Despite the popular perception that Houston's "lack of
| zoning" allows for a uniquely untethered housing market, it
| performed similarly to the cities of Dallas and Los Angeles in
| new housing construction and housing costs.
|
| * Houston's one-size-fits-all approach makes it more difficult
| to produce detailed plans for smaller areas--i.e. along
| commercial corridors or for different neighborhoods.
|
| * The use of nuisance lawsuits to challenge otherwise legal
| land use has been challenging to interpret in a city with an
| informal zoning code. Although the success of these lawsuits
| varies, this form of land-use challenge still manages to stall
| construction and increase legal costs for developers.
|
| * Houston's less formal development system also means that
| challenging unwanted land uses requires that residents have the
| financial resources or know-how to take advantage of the
| existing tools to protect a neighborhood. This leads to
| disparities in which Houstonians are able to effectively
| organize and influence development within their neighborhoods.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/TaU1UH_3B5k?t=281
|
| [2] source research -
| https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/105220/KI...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| This is a good argument against something I don't think I
| wrote...
|
| BTW, I meant to write "finding", not "funding". Too late to
| change now though.
| screye wrote:
| apologies, missed the italics :P
|
| still think the comment adds context for how Houston zoning
| works, so I'm going to let it stand.
| sema4hacker wrote:
| Plans to "end" homelessness are naive, because the will end
| nothing. At best, they will only help to make homelessness
| somewhat more bearable for those trapped by it.
|
| The proper solution is a long-term attack on the causes, not the
| symptoms. It is indeed noble to help the homeless who are
| mentally or physically disabled, or addicted to drugs or alcohol,
| or unemployable for lack of job skills or education, or abandoned
| by spouses or family, or simply too old and alone. However, it's
| unlikely you'll ever help enough of them permanently out of their
| holes to address the problem in any substantial way.
|
| Instead, the first step has to be a truly intensive effort to
| educate and convince children, beginning at about ages 6 to 7,
| and continuing through high school, that they must do five things
| to have a successful and happy life: they must keep their bodies
| healthy and avoid addiction (because bad food, lack of exercise,
| unsafe sex, and using drugs or alcohol will disable you), they
| must continuously learn job skills that keep their labor in
| demand (otherwise you can be tossed out of work at any time),
| they must live within their means and know how to save money
| (because living on credit can make you a slave for life, and no
| one else will provide a good enough safety net for you if you
| can't earn a living), they must be self-sufficient (otherwise if
| your spouse or lover should disappear, the cupboard will be bare,
| and it will be especially tough if you have dependent children),
| and they must stay honest (otherwise you'll turn to crime, wreck
| other peoples' lives, and end up in prison).
|
| You would think parents and our education system are already
| doing a decent job of indoctrinating our children about those
| important facts of life, and monitoring them to make sure they
| don't waiver, but we're not. If we make sure our growing children
| truly understand and follow the above five principles, I
| guarantee the next generation will have a much smaller percentage
| of people falling into homelessness, and we'll also enjoy a lower
| crime rate. There's no reason that trend couldn't be repeated for
| future generations.
|
| Our free society makes it easy for us to make bad personal
| decisions, and decent education and good parental guidance aren't
| guaranteed, so it seems our country will always be doomed with a
| certain amount of poverty. Even when we do the right thing,
| unpredictable disease and our abominable lack of affordable
| health care for everyone guarantees some of us will at least fall
| victim to mental or physical health issues. However, the vast
| majority of causes of homelessness can easily be targeted and
| attacked and eventually overcome, if we just do it in a
| preventative frame of mind, instead of the typical too-late band-
| aid approach.
| technofiend wrote:
| >Instead, the first step has to be a truly intensive effort to
| educate and convince children
|
| Have you ever seen the Emo Phillips bit about whether someone
| about to jump from the Golden Gate bridge is an increasingly
| specific kind of Christian? [1] The challenge with trying to
| indoctrinate others with your value system is like standards
| there are so many to choose from. [2] In fact because there is
| no right answer and can never be, we've intentionally separated
| church and state in the US just to end the debate before it
| starts. Whether everyone agrees with that (and clearly some do
| not) is a separate issue.
|
| Besides the fact that imposing your moral beliefs on the
| population is untenable, it also does nothing to address those
| already in need. Houston isn't trying to solve poverty, or
| immorality or anything else akin to boiling the ocean. They're
| just trying to get as many people as they can off the streets
| and into a stable living situation. As with anything, this also
| requires active participation from the recipient, which is why
| there is and always will be a subset of people who choose to
| stay homeless, whether or not that's objectively a rational
| decision. Issuing "we should all just" edicts won't do anything
| for them or change their behavior. All we can do is try to
| help.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3fAcxcxoZ8 [2]
| https://xkcd.com/927/
| cudgy wrote:
| "Just say no to homelessness"
|
| This will be as successful as Nancy Reagan's campaign to "just
| say no to drugs".
| yardie wrote:
| The first step to ending homelessness now is to start
| indoctrinating children into Kier Eagan's cult (Severance) now,
| and then they won't be homeless 12-18 years from now?
|
| 50% of the homeless population are/were clients of the foster
| care system, so I can't imagine the parents are doing a great
| job.
|
| Your advice (health, addiction, savings, education) is
| basically, "just make more money!" and you won't be homeless.
| WalterGR wrote:
| Are you really a millionaire? Per
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31710691
| olivermarks wrote:
| What's the relevance of doxxing here? I've had a young
| relative who never had any money problems (trust fund to look
| forward to etc) get hooked on opioids and eventually die a
| horrible OD death in someone's airbnb.
|
| I think @sema4hacker makes some excellent points about the
| lack of guidance for children and youths having been through
| the hell of chasing a child around on the streets to try and
| save them. Had I tried to educate that person when they were
| young maybe they would still be here and his mother wouldn't
| be a broken person.
| WalterGR wrote:
| Doxxing? You can see anyone's comments by clicking their
| username then "comments".
|
| I didn't mean the question as an ad hominem. I just thought
| it was interesting. I think people's socioeconomic
| background strongly affects their beliefs on how other
| people should behave in order to become successful (or in
| this case, perhaps simply: not homeless.)
| olivermarks wrote:
| I strongly disagree with 'People's socioeconomic
| background _strongly_ affects their beliefs on how other
| people should behave in order to become successful '. I
| would suggest a lot of people from lifelong comfortable
| backgrounds sometimes have little idea of what it is like
| to be poor, but they all too often know all about broken
| families, drug/alcohol addiction and serious mental
| illness.
| altruios wrote:
| when you say strongly disagree - why would it not? why
| shouldn't it be that how people treating money around you
| affect how you treat money? it would be nonsensical to
| imply there was no correlation.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| It is quite clear anyway the GP's socioeconomic
| background from the content of his comment... Hard to
| imagine that kind of paternalism from anyone making less
| than six figures.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| > The proper solution is a long-term attack on the causes, not
| the symptoms.
|
| I disagree. Finland is the only country in Europe where
| homelessness is steadily declining. The key to this success is
| Finland's "Housing first" approach (which you might call
| "attacking the symptoms rather than causes").
|
| Here's statistics for you:
| https://www.ara.fi/download/noname/%7BE488F72B-AC94-4472-B52...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| To make this case, you would have to show that education
| completion rates, drug addition, and criminal behavior are as
| bad or worse in Finland compared to the US.
|
| Maybe they are doing better at treating the root cause, and
| because of that their symptomatic treatment can actually
| help.
|
| >Ninety-three percent of Finns graduate from academic or
| vocational high schools, 17.5 percentage points higher than
| the United States, and 66 percent go on to higher education,
| the highest rate in the European Union. Yet Finland spends
| about 30 percent less per student than the United States.[1]
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-
| finlands-s....
|
| I imagine you would find similar differences in the other two
| categories.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| > To make this case, you would have to show that education
| completion rates, drug addition, and criminal behavior are
| as bad or worse in Finland compared to the US.
|
| No, I wouldn't have to show that, because we're not
| comparing the percentage of homeless people in Finland
| against the percentage of homeless people in the U.S. The
| data point I argued was "homeless rates are going down, and
| this program has something to do with that". You are
| implying that homeless rates are going down because
| education completion rates are high. That's nonsensical. If
| one metric is constantly high, that doesn't explain why
| another metric is changing. A proper argument would be
| "homeless rates are going down because education rates are
| going up". That argument could make sense (if it were true,
| which it is not).
|
| > Maybe they are doing better at treating the root cause,
| and because of that their symptomatic treatment can
| actually help.
|
| No, they aren't doing that. As I already explained in my
| previous comment, Finland's strategy against homelessness
| is rooted in "Housing first", which is a "treat the
| symptoms" approach to homelessness, not a "treat the root
| cause" approach to homelessness.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >No, they aren't doing that. As I already explained in my
| previous comment, Finland's strategy against homelessness
| is rooted in "Housing first", which is a "treat the
| symptoms" approach to homelessness, not a "treat the root
| cause" approach to homelessness.
|
| You are still ignoring the fact that Finland _has already
| cured the root cause._
|
| I am implying that education is a pre-requisite for any
| housing first approach
| rectang wrote:
| If you're going to make "a long-term attack on the causes, not
| the symptoms", focusing exclusively on personal morality and
| ignoring all structural aspects of homelessness (e.g. housing
| costs) is pretty limiting.
|
| What it will achieve is enraging the greater populace at the
| supposed decadence of the homeless and sharpening a sense of
| moral superiority over the homeless, quenching political
| support for any tangible aid.
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| > What it will achieve is enraging the greater populace at
| the supposed decadence of the homeless and sharpening a sense
| of moral superiority over the homeless, quenching political
| support for any tangible aid.
|
| So, what we already generally have in many places in the US?
| We simply start with building more housing and reducing or
| limiting zoning only allowing single family detached homes.
| It's that simple to begin with. Moral grandstanding
| accomplishes nothing however.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Personal behavior is the foundation that everything else is
| built on. There really is no alternative.
|
| You dont have to come at this from a position of judgment,
| superiority, or avoiding aid. That is a false binary.
|
| The idea is pretty simple: You need the disadvantaged to be
| active participants and stakeholders in building a better
| future. You can't do it without them.
|
| In the case of homelessness, it points to earlier
| intervention. If someone becomes a teen drug addict, parent,
| and felon, their chances of escaping poverty are quite poor.
|
| Third parties cant control behavior and choices throughout a
| persons life, but you can help them make smart choices and
| build the skills to do so.
| bluescrn wrote:
| > Personal behavior is the foundation that everything else
| is built on.
|
| Yes. But mostly the personal behavior of the ruling class
| and the super-rich.
|
| Hoarding ludicrous amounts of property/wealth/resources
| should be just as unacceptable as a crack habit, as it's
| more harmful to society as a whole.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I thought we were talking about helping the homeless
| here.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Maybe they wouldn't be homeless if the super-rich weren't
| hoarding so much property.
|
| Homes should primarily be homes, not investments.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Why is it whenever someone suggests we should avoid
| dangerous drugs and crime, someone responds with "But the
| rich!" as if that is some kind of clever retort?
|
| Elon Musk isn't why you went to prison for assault or
| selling fentanyl.
| rectang wrote:
| > _Personal behavior is the foundation that everything else
| is built on. There really is no alternative._
|
| This reminds me of designers who craft poorly designed
| interfaces which statistically guarantee that some portion
| of their users will make "mistakes". and then insist that
| users are exclusively at fault.
|
| There are structural issues in the US which greatly
| exacerbate the problem of homelessness and which have
| nothing to do with what moral teachings the homeless may or
| may not have received. If anything, the vituperative
| contempt for the homeless illustrates a moral failing in a
| different population.
|
| > _You dont have to come at this from a position of
| judgment, superiority, or avoiding aid. That is a false
| binary._
|
| In my view, the comment I was responding to did precisely
| that -- came at this from a perspective of avoiding aid --
| by asserting that focusing on _anything other than personal
| morality_ was bound to fail: "However, it's unlikely
| you'll ever help enough of them permanently out of their
| holes to address the problem in any substantial way."
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I would recommend giving it another read with a
| charitable mindset. I didn't see any moralizing or
| judgment of the poor. They had a critique of current
| methods for addressing poverty, but I'm assuming you also
| agree that the status quo is not working well.
|
| >In my view, the comment I was responding to did
| precisely that -- came at this from a perspective of
| avoiding aid
|
| They acknowledged that providing aid to adults is indeed
| good, but critiqued it as insufficient.
| It is indeed noble to help the homeless who are mentally
| or physically disabled, or addicted to drugs or alcohol,
| or unemployable for lack of job skills or education, or
| abandoned by spouses or family, or simply too old and
| alone
|
| They further advocated for providing aid that is missing,
| and focusing it on younger populations to empower them to
| avoid critical pitfalls and poverty traps.
| Instead, the first step has to be a truly intensive
| effort to educate and convince children, beginning at
| about ages 6 to 7
|
| They want to help children understand the following list
| and enable them make better choices on the following:
| 1) Importance of health and avoiding addiction
| 2) Value of education and marketable skills 3)
| The dangers of financial debt 4) Self
| sufficiency as a goal 5) Avoiding crime
|
| Do you think that this education and helping children
| make successful choices is unnecessary or somehow
| detrimental?
| rectang wrote:
| > _I 'm assuming you also agree that the status quo is
| not working well._
|
| I do, insofar as I believe the moralistic emphasis of the
| status quo is counterproductive.
|
| > _Do you think that this education and empowerment is
| unnecessary or somehow detrimental?_
|
| Yes, I believe that such moralistic emphasis is
| detrimental. I believe that emphasizing personal
| responsibility while deemphasizing structural factors is
| hypocritical and morally bankrupt.
|
| To those failures who are the supposed targets of the
| teaching, they learn from the hypocrisy of their teachers
| that "personal responsibility" is just a cudgel to beat
| them with while they are being pressed down. To those who
| succeed, it induces a crippling inability to acknowledge
| the role of luck and environment in their success, and a
| corresponding tendency to "other" society's failures.
|
| > _They further advocated for providing aid that is
| missing,_
|
| The only "aid" that they advocate is moral teaching --
| which does nothing for the homeless, but gives people who
| are not homeless a narcotic bloom of superiority.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >Yes, I believe that such moralistic emphasis is
| detrimental. I believe that emphasizing personal
| responsibility while deemphasizing structural factors is
| hypocritical and morally bankrupt.
|
| It seems like you are interjecting morality again into
| our discussion where none was included. A deficit of
| personal empowerment IS a structural and environmental
| factor. Not the only one, but it is one of the most
| important if not the most important in determining
| outcomes.
|
| If you take a poor, abused, and neglected child and teach
| them they can not and will not amount to anything because
| of the material conditions of their birth, you are
| actively damaging their outcomes.
|
| If you take the same poor, abused, and neglected child
| and teach them that that there is hope and clear goals
| which will get them out of poverty the vast majority of
| the time, you are actively improving their outcomes.
|
| This doesn't require judging anyone. This is actively
| improving environmental factors which lead to success.
| The impacts are statistically robust and well understood.
|
| Luck and environment played a huge role in my success. A
| huge environmental factor was parenting and education
| which made me understand how those 5 factors impact
| success, and instilling a belief that it was within my
| reach if I stuck to them.
| rectang wrote:
| > _A deficit of personal empowerment IS a structural and
| environmental factor. Not the only one, but it is one of
| the most important if not the most important in
| determining outcomes._
|
| This elevation of personal empowerment over all other
| factors is indistinguishable from an apologia for the
| status quo -- a system can be corrupt without limit and
| it still applies. Even if 99.999% fail, it's true that
| for the 0.001% who succeed, a sense of personal
| empowerment was almost certainly "one of the most
| important if not the most important in determining
| outcomes".
|
| > _If you take a poor, abused, and neglected child and
| teach them they can not and will not amount to anything
| because of the material conditions of their birth, you
| are actively damaging their outcomes._
|
| And if you actively damage their outcomes, by e.g.
| refusing under any circumstances to even discuss the role
| that the cost of housing has on homelessness let alone
| contemplate a policy response, you are actively damaging
| their outcomes.
|
| Dial up the cost of housing, get more homelessness. It's
| as if an sudden epidemic of "lacking personal
| empowerment" bolts through the population!
| jjulius wrote:
| >Plans to "end" homelessness are naive, because the will end
| nothing.
|
| >However, the vast majority of causes of homelessness can
| easily be targeted and attacked and eventually overcome...
|
| So, which is it then? Can we end nothing, or can we overcome
| most of it?
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| rectang wrote:
| I generally agree with your diagnosis but this comment
| violates multiple aspects of the HN guidelines.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| > _Be kind. Don 't be snarky. Have curious conversation;
| don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't
| sneer, including at the rest of the community._
|
| > _When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of
| calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be
| shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."_
|
| It could be improved by removing the "lmao" for starters.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Someone is in here literally blaming some of the most
| dispossessed people in our society for their own suffering
| and you're going after the one saying "lmao." This says a
| lot about what these rules are for and what they accomplish
| imo.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Nobody is blaming the homeless. You are the one bringing
| that to the table.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| > This says a lot about what these rules are for and what
| they accomplish imo.
|
| Civil discussion even when people strongly disagree with
| each other?
| rectang wrote:
| OT but since it's giraffe_lady whose comments I've often
| appreciated...
|
| In most cases, I just flag comments that violate the
| guidelines and move on, regardless of whether I agree
| with their substance.
|
| In this case, I agreed with the substance of the comment
| more than usual, so I tried to offer constructive
| criticism (in addition to flagging). Civility isn't
| appropriate in every context, sometimes incivility is
| important, but I think it's for the best here.
|
| I've had a lot to say about my disaffection with how HN
| is structured, particularly how "assume good faith" makes
| HN unfriendly for outgroups (e.g.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31215998 ) and
| frankly would love an alternative. But my ideal
| alternative would _also_ emphasize civility.
| joshuaheard wrote:
| I like your 5 things to do to live a happy life.
|
| A corollary to that is the 3 things one must do to stay out of
| poverty:
|
| 1. Graduate from high school. 2. Get a full-time job. 3. Don't
| have kids until you get married after the age of 21.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| These are probably still necessary, but not quite sufficient
| any more as 'things to do to stay out of poverty'... It is
| unfortunately the case in the USA that you can have a full
| time job and still be in poverty.
| adenozine wrote:
| Let me guess, it worked like a charm.
|
| Homelessness is so fucked in America. Zoning is just some form of
| terrorism against the poor. Just build the apartments and get it
| over with.
| tyingq wrote:
| The cheap ubiquitous access to background checks, both criminal
| and "tenant history" also makes it hard to get into housing for
| some of these people, even if they have money.
|
| Edit: off-topic, but amusing that Google is showing me ads for
| tents on the page. Hurray for world class ML.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I'm genuinely surprised at how expensive the fees are for
| applying to an apartment. I sense the background checks are not
| _that_ expensive to perform, nor are the credit score lookups.
| I can 't help but think the complexes are just being greedy and
| using the application fees as 1) a filter to keep out lower
| income residents in a totally legal way, and 2) a means of
| collecting even more money.
|
| Edit: I have only ever applied at apartment complexes owned by
| regional/national real estate management companies. I do not
| know what the experience is like for independent properties or
| small landlords. The fees I encountered were typically $100 to
| $250, non refundable.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| Had to put down over $300 to apply to an apartment this year.
| Comprised of an "application fee," "admin fee," and "holding
| deposit" (only the last one goes as a credit to my rent) for
| a 1 bedroom apartment.
|
| The holding deposit was the largest fee of them all (at $300)
| and would have been refunded if I was rejected but it's a
| ridiculous amount of capital required to _apply to_ an
| apartment.
| mikeodds wrote:
| Saw several places with $250 per person application fees in
| Austin.
| tyingq wrote:
| California caps it at $35: https://www.nolo.com/legal-
| encyclopedia/california-law-tenan...
| jseliger wrote:
| That has sure helped California be affordable and friendly
| to renters.
| hardtke wrote:
| Credit checks are actually somewhat costly for a small
| landlord. We had a rental house, and you can't just order a
| one off credit check. We needed to join a rental housing
| organization (or contract with a rental agency) to get access
| to credit checks. That being said, there is room in the
| market for a tenant friendly app that caches your credit
| check if you are applying to multiple apartments -- no need
| to run your credit multiple times within a few weeks.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| This is exactly what Zillow provides, but with the obvious
| caveat that the tenant doesn't decide which apartments use
| Zillow's application/tenant screening features. $29 gives
| you a 30-day window to apply to however many apartments you
| would like.
|
| https://www.zillow.com/z/rental-manager/rental-
| applications-...
| techsupporter wrote:
| Washington State tried to do this with reusable tenant
| screening reports but when the state landlord association
| heard about requiring them to actually be "reusable" (as
| in, landlords have to accept the report), they screamed
| so loudly that the requirement got yanked.
|
| All the law wound up accomplishing was to cause landlords
| to put "we do not accept reusable tenant screening
| reports" on the footers of all of their web sites.
|
| Gotta get that fee income.
| worker_person wrote:
| Yep. Moved into a house. Gas line wasn't installed correctly.
| Nearly killed me and family. Left a couple of us with permanent
| injuries.
|
| We broke lease and moved out. Made it impossible to get into
| anyplace decent since we had abandoned the lease and refused to
| pay them to get it off our record.
|
| Surprisingly lawyers were completely useless. Unless a doctor
| certifies that gas caused medical issues they won't touch the
| issue.
|
| Screw mega rental companies.
| wfhordie wrote:
| Why are you seeing ads? Is your adblocker broken?
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