[HN Gopher] California needs to learn from Houston and Dallas ab...
___________________________________________________________________
California needs to learn from Houston and Dallas about
homelessness
Author : toomuchtodo
Score : 62 points
Date : 2025-10-03 13:36 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.governance.fyi)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.governance.fyi)
| poppobit wrote:
| I think this piece makes a strong point -- when there's already a
| working model, just copy it instead of endlessly debating. The
| homelessness crisis is real, and doing nothing while watching it
| grow worse is the worst option. Of course there's a chance it
| fails, but the bigger issue is that no one wants to take
| responsibility if it does. That lack of strong leadership is, in
| itself, part of the problem.
| nis0s wrote:
| I am not saying it's okay that anyone should be homeless, but
| it's baseless to call homelessness a crises for the U.S.
|
| The homeless population accounts for 0.23% of the total U.S.
| population, or about ~771K people.
|
| https://endhomelessness.org/state-of-homelessness/
|
| For comparison, more people are getting DUI citations per year,
|
| https://www.safehome.org/resources/dui-statistics/
| pessimizer wrote:
| What is supposed to be the relationship between those two
| things? Will you be comparing it to the number of ham
| sandwiches next?
| nis0s wrote:
| You would think that since DUI operators present a greater
| social problem, both in numbers and potential to cause
| harm, there would be all sorts of active campaigns against
| such an issue. But the present reality is that some issues
| have great political forces behind them, and the media
| takes care to paint such issues as "crises". Maybe it is a
| crisis, for a certain locality, and that reflects on the
| governance of that place. But I don't think it's fair or
| accurate to say your local problem is a problem at large,
| even if that means you get less federal monies to deal with
| it. Maybe what that means is that people need to reflect on
| how their localities are spending their budget, or sorting
| their priorities.
| watwut wrote:
| Why are you comparing amount of homeless people to DUI?
| superxpro12 wrote:
| Scale of the issue relative to the risk, I think.
| harpiaharpyja wrote:
| It's another public health issue that could also be
| receiving attention which causes harm to people.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| There's 8300+ homeless people in San Francisco.
|
| That's 1% of the population. Maybe not a big deal to you.
|
| There's only 13,000 city blocks in SF.
|
| That's a homeless person every 2 blocks.
|
| Kind of dangerous to be walking past people in all different
| states of desperation multiple times every trip everywhere
| you go, is another way to look at it.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Even if you end homelessness, you'll still be walking past
| people in all different states of desperation multiple
| times everywhere you go.
|
| People looking like they have homes or acting like it won't
| stop this. It doesn't make people inherently dangerous.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I think any percent of the population
| being homeless because of lack of options is a tragedy. (I
| don't really care if someone wishes to be so, and I think
| we should have appropriate living options for this). I
| understand that you can't really stop _temporary_
| homelessness - fires and urgent things happen - but that 's
| something we can deal with as needed.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Is your argument that, because x% of the population is
| desperate, we shouldn't care or do anything about x%+y%
| being like that?
|
| y% LIVES on the blocks - so the multiple on y is higher
| (higher probability you encounter them), and the
| desperation factor is also _likely_ much higher.
| nis0s wrote:
| Please note that someone giving you a quantitative
| context isn't necessarily saying don't care. But it's
| important to be mindful of how people use words in the
| media to describe certain issues because it benefits them
| politically or financially.
|
| The problem which sticks out to me is that homelessness
| can be addressed by providing housing, but that's not an
| easy solution to provide in a country that gets 10s of
| millions of illegal immigrants. So why is someone talking
| so much about homelessness relative to other issues? Do
| they want the U.S. to provide a house for every illegal
| immigrant who crosses a border? If political officials in
| states struggling with homelessness really care about
| solving the problem, they would do what other states are
| doing, as mentioned in OP's article.
| sroussey wrote:
| People drugged out screaming on the street in SF are not
| necessarily homeless. Just that they may have rules about
| drugs in their room.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Is this an argument that a homeless person per block
| isn't a problem?
|
| Or are you just what-about-ing?
|
| Homeless people can be a problem independent of housed-
| drug addicts being a problem.
| ThrowMeAway1618 wrote:
| Yeah! A big problem. We should just Brian Kilmeade[0]
| them all, right?
|
| They're a burden on society and should be removed. But
| why stop there? The bottom 20% of school kids are just
| going to end up being a burden on society too! Prison
| costs something like $50k/inmate/annum. So let's inject
| them too!
|
| But why wait for the kids? We know who is popping out all
| those burden-on-society babies. Sterilize them. Then we
| can use them as "comfort women" for our brave, selfless
| Immigration Enforcement heroes!
|
| USA! USA! USA!
|
| [0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fox-news-
| involuntary-letha...
| devmor wrote:
| I don't really think this holds the point you think it
| does.
|
| While property crime is more likely to be committed by
| people the lower their income level is, the majority of all
| violent crime is committed by people who have homes.
|
| In fact, the homeless are far more likely to be the victims
| of a violent crime than any other income demographic.
|
| Furthermore, the unstable and dangerous people you see
| behaving erratically on the street are not necessarily
| sleeping there - and the homeless in the area probably feel
| much more unsafe about their presence than you do.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > majority of all violent crime is committed by people
| who have homes.
|
| Gee, I wonder why, they make up 99% of the population.
|
| How could they ever make up more than 50% of crime?
|
| > I don't really think this holds the point you think it
| does
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Is it dangerous? I agree that people with means _feel_
| unsafe when encountering poverty but the "it is unsafe to
| ride the subway because there are poor people there" stuff
| doesn't appear to be proportionate with actual risk.
|
| I think that one of the huge limitations of how we think
| about homelessness in the US is that we view it as a
| problem that _non-homeless people_ encounter. This
| encourages a bunch of policies that make it easier for
| somebody to avoid ever having to see a homeless person but
| which do little to mitigate the suffering of a homeless
| person.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| 771K people isn't a small number. 0.23% isn't a small number
| when it comes to homelessness. This also doesn't consider
| people who are housed but are overcrowded or living in
| otherwise very poor environments.
|
| You also ignore that it's a rapidly _growing_ problem.
|
| Comparing it to DUI numbers doesn't make any sense
| whatsoever.
| nis0s wrote:
| Disagree that it's a growing problem, there are lots of
| states dealing with it correctly. Look at the article, for
| example.
| sethammons wrote:
| > it's baseless to call homelessness a crises for the U.S
|
| Sure, a quarter of a percent is not a big percent, but that
| sure is a lot of people. It is _more_ than the entire
| population of Alaska, Wyoming, or Vermont. It is near the
| population size of several other states.
|
| An entire US state's worth of people are unable to find
| adequate housing and not just because they are off their
| meds. According to the 2024 Point-in-Time count, the US
| Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated 22% of
| homeless are facing a severe mental illness. So nearly 4 out
| of 5 homeless are regular people who simply cannot secure
| permanent housing.
|
| That sure as hell sounds like a crisis to me.
| pandaman wrote:
| > So nearly 4 out of 5 homeless are regular people who
| simply cannot secure permanent housing.
|
| How does it follow? Not having a _severe_ mental illness
| makes one normal? It 's as same as saying that not
| suffering from severe obesity makes you fit and healthy.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Whether it's homelessness, DUIs, or fentanyl deaths (only 75k
| per year!), measuring the impact of something by ignoring the
| blast radius is disingenuous. All who are touched are part of
| it. In the case of homelessness, it's a burden on emergency
| services, creates unsafe environments, impacts businesses,
| etc.
| nis0s wrote:
| I think the article points out some useful ways to deal
| with the problem at hand.
| HankStallone wrote:
| A quarter of a percent still seems like a lot to me, even if
| it's not a "crisis."
|
| But we can't do anything about it until we face up to the
| problem. Spending more money won't help. I'm somewhat
| familiar with the activity at our local jail, and a good part
| of it is homeless people rotating in and out. They get
| brought in because they were trespassing or shoplifting or
| something, the jail cleans them up and dries them out
| (they're usually on drugs, which they somehow manage to buy)
| and tries to get them back on their medications, they get
| released, and the cycle begins again. Most of them are
| mentally unstable, and perhaps they'd be somewhat functional
| if they could stay on their medication, but they don't, so
| they can't function in society for long.
|
| We don't want to put them back in asylums, because some
| asylums really were hellholes, and I guess we don't trust
| ourselves not to let them be hellholes again. That seems
| awfully pessimistic; factories used to be pretty awful too,
| but we require them to be safe and clean now. Seems like we
| could do the same with asylums, but we won't even consider
| it. So we're left with letting them wander the streets, maybe
| bedding down at homeless shelters when they feel like it,
| using the jails as temporary asylums when they get in
| trouble, and throwing more money at the problem once in a
| while to soothe our guilt. It's sad.
| nis0s wrote:
| Different US states have implemented useful measures for
| helping homeless people, but states which are struggling
| with their implementation have other issues as well. Border
| states in particular have illegal immigrants to contend
| with as well, so a housing-first policy for homelessness
| gets taken off the table right away. California has the
| means and resources for dealing with its homelessness
| problem, but the political will is murky.
| captainclam wrote:
| I've always been surprised by the official homeless
| population count, but it turns out there's a lot more to it.
|
| The department of HUD generates this ~771K figure from a
| "point-in-time" estimate, a single count from a single night
| performed in January. They literally have volunteers go out,
| count the number of homeless people they observe, and report
| their findings.
|
| It's not hard to imagine why this is probably a significant
| undercount. There is likely a long tail of people that
| happened to be in a situation that night where they were not
| able to be counted (i.e. somewhere secluded, sleeping in a
| friend's private residence that night, etc).
|
| Even if these numbers are correct, to my mind a "crisis" is
| still more characterized by the trend than the numbers in
| absolute. From the first link you provided, we saw a 39%
| increase in "people in families" experiencing homelessness,
| and 9% in individuals. A resource from the HUD itself
| suggests a 33% increase in homelessness from 2020-2024, 18%
| increase from 2023-2024. That is far apace of the population
| increase in general.
|
| https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2024-.
| ..
|
| And even then, I would say many people would suggest that the
| change in visible homelessness they've experienced in the
| last 10 years would amount to "crisis" levels, at least
| relative to the past.
|
| It's completely fair to argue that it is not in fact a
| crisis, but claiming that it is certainly not "baseless."
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > The homelessness crisis is real, and doing nothing while
| watching it grow worse is the worst option.
|
| California isn't doing nothing.
|
| They keep spending even more money and wondering why it's not
| working.
|
| If it was a problem that could be solved by giving people
| money, they'd have solved it already.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| Everything except ending the ban on homeowners & landowners
| building market housing. (ofc they are taking bites out of
| this apple, especially very recently, but every step is
| fought tooth & nail by homeowners who prefer the status quo
| just fine)
| Spivak wrote:
| I'm fully in the camp of just give people dollars and let
| them decide how to spend it rather than navigate a
| bureaucratic nanny state system like SNAP. But if you're only
| doing that well no shit it doesn't help. You have to actually
| put them in a stable house/apartment and get them set up with
| work. Or if they're homeless due to mental illness get them
| admitted.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| >Or if they're homeless due to mental illness get them
| admitted.
|
| Therein lies the problem. A large proportion of homeless
| fall into this category [*], and it's very hard to
| institutionalize people against their will. We like to
| think that most homeless are functional people who are
| simply down on their luck, and thus putting them in stable
| housing and getting them set up to work would solve their
| problems. But this is sadly not the case.
|
| [*] This study [0] found that 80% of homeless people have
| some kind of mental illness, with 30% having severe mental
| illness. This is compounded by the fact that >50% have
| substance abuse problems.
|
| [0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8423293/
| HankStallone wrote:
| Right. As I touched on elsewhere in the thread, our local
| jailers know all the homeless people in town because they
| show up regularly when their mental illnesses and/or
| substance abuse get them into trouble. The ordinary guy
| who wound up homeless due to a string of bad luck and
| just needs a place to sleep and a new job to get back on
| his feet is more a movie trope than reality. These are
| people with real problems who in many cases need regular
| supervision in something like a group home, if not
| outright institutionalization. And as you said, the
| latter is very hard to do now.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| SF tried, didn't work. The homeless population increased,
| not offset by the people who got housed.
| mothballed wrote:
| That seems like an unfair metric. Any program that helps
| homeless people significantly more than anywhere else in
| the USA is going to become the new capital of homeless
| people and their population will explode. It doesn't mean
| the people helped are worse off.
| nradov wrote:
| Right, but the taxpayers in that city are worse off.
| That's why any solutions need to be driven at least at
| the county level and preferably at the state level.
| Leaving it to individual cities creates all sorts of
| perverse incentives. (SF is somewhat unique in that they
| are their own county so for that area specifically,
| shifting programs from the city to county level wouldn't
| change anything.)
| mothballed wrote:
| Taxpayers are pretty much always going to be worse off
| helping the homeless. Only a small fraction of the
| chronically homeless will become tax positive citizens in
| their lifetime.
|
| Either you start off with the first principle that it's
| OK for wealth-transfer schemes to make tax payers 'worse
| off' via compelled charity, or I don't think you can get
| to the point of supporting generalized homeless relief
| programs. Maybe programs targeted at short-duration stuff
| to get people into jobs that are capable of doing them
| and a housing contract might work, but it'd have to be
| extremely well thought out and wouldn't benefit most
| chronic homeless.
| nradov wrote:
| My point is that it's a lot easier to share the tax
| burden at the state level rather than in individual
| cities.
| creer wrote:
| I mean, San Francisco could spend that money housing
| their homeless in random cities spread around the country
| - investing in these cities and avoiding encouraging
| influx to a single spot... Possibly even cities with
| jobs, and funding corresponding service and construction
| jobs in these cities. Except of course for the NIMBY
| problem - I laugh at how that would be received in the
| cities I know about.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >SF tried, didn't work. The homeless population
| increased, not offset by the people who got housed.
|
| IIRC, For decades, the homeless "relief" programs run by
| states like Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and others
| pretty much ended at bus tickets to San Francisco for the
| homeless (whether they wanted to go or not) and that's
| it.
|
| Is it any wonder the population of homeless in SF grew?
| mothballed wrote:
| Then there's also the Williston / North Dakota oil boom
| model. I met tons of homeless people out there (I was one of
| them), many of which whom solved it through "one neat trick"
| of doing something like hitchiking to the oil fields, or to
| Seattle where literally anyone can get hired to work on a
| fish processing boat or facility and they give you "free"
| room and board and then ~$10k to go home with.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| That model clearly isn't working in SF where they spend
| >$100k per homeless person per year.
|
| So, sure, maybe it works if people sign up for it and show
| they actually want to do something.
|
| But it clearly doesn't work if you just hand it out and
| hope for the best.
| SolarNet wrote:
| > But it clearly doesn't work if you just hand it out and
| hope for the best.
|
| I actually think if they did just give 100k to homeless
| people a year that it _would_ actually solve itself.
|
| The problem is they give 100k to grifters who say they'll
| do something about it.
| Yizahi wrote:
| The problem is not that lack of examples. Technically, all two
| hundred something countries could take example of the best one
| in every metric and just copy most of the stuff to make life
| better.
|
| The problem is that politicians are afraid to do anything
| (outside of direct and indirect enrichment). No one can blame
| some John Doe, chief Busybody of the Busyarea, if he won't do
| something. Because that didn't happen, nothing to point finger
| at directly, except for "you don't do enough", which is generic
| enough to be used at anyone and so ineffective at everyone. But
| if he will do something and it is immediately painful to at at
| least some group, then he will be blamed and his opponent will
| do that with pleasure too.
| jsbisviewtiful wrote:
| How does Houston deal with those that can't be housed? Sure,
| 90% retention sounds nice for these people but California has
| limited housing/higher housing costs, in general, last I had
| read. The write-up even mentions rising housing costs or the
| Trump admin taking away their funding can crash the system, so
| unclear how easily this system could transfer to other cities.
| Sure, better communicating systems and a better hierarchy will
| lead to better outcomes for most orgs, but that's a pretty
| general statement about basically every org out there.
|
| I also feel like this write-up sugar coats some of the actions
| Houston/Texas has been taking against non-compliance. Ticketing
| homeless people $200 for existing on the streets seems a bit
| counter intuitive - and Texas has been systematically shipping
| homeless and immigrants around the country (human trafficking)
| for political theater, so are they excluding that data?
| Probably.
|
| I'm not an expert, but this write-up really comes off as one-
| sided since it's only talking about what's not working in
| California and ignoring some of the background stuff Texas is
| up to. Overall, do agree that better management and
| accountability would do other cities favors, but again, that's
| such an easy statement to make about any plan or org.
|
| https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/city-of-hou...
| nradov wrote:
| Higher housing costs in California are in some sense an
| artificial manufactured problem. California should mimic
| Texas by making it easier and cheaper to build more housing.
| Take approval power away from local governments, and give
| property owners and developers the right to build pretty much
| whatever they want wherever they want.
| stonogo wrote:
| That point _would_ be strong, but this article doesn 't make
| that point, or any other points I can tell. It does really
| weird things like comparing the annual cost of housing one
| Texan person to building an entire Californian housing unit,
| changes which definition of "homelessness" it uses (sometimes
| _mid-sentence_ ), ignores Houston's extremely police-oriented
| approach to the topic (police can cite you for trespassing if
| you're at a bus stop and don't produce ID), pretends the Texas
| cities aren't sweeping encampments (they are, right now, on
| Nance Street), and just generally plays fast-and-loose with the
| facts in Texas.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| I think there's a crisis of ineffectiveness in Center-Left
| institutions
|
| They are too deliberative, and take excessive time including
| voices of every stakeholder. So you don't just go do the "obvious
| thing". You cater to trying to listen to every voice in an effort
| to be as inclusive as possible. Committee after committee and an
| obsession with process. You can spend years placating NIMBYs and
| people living with their own alternate reality.
|
| Meanwhile real people are suffering from lack of action.
|
| This level of ineffectiveness just enables authoritarianism ("at
| least they get something done") and gets people to seek the
| private industry for their solutions.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| This is basically the entire theme of "Abundance" by Klein and
| Thompson, for those looking for a longer read on this.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_(Klein_and_Thompson_...
| spiritplumber wrote:
| thank you, i'll grab this!
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Another recent book along the same lines would be "Why
| Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress and How to Get It Back" by
| Marc Dunkelman:
|
| "When he looked into the history, Dunkelman realized that
| progressives have long swung back and forth between two
| opposing impulses. One is what he calls Hamiltonianism: the
| desire to achieve progress by empowering government and
| institutions to tackle big problems at the direction of
| strong leaders (like Robert Moses) and informed experts. The
| other is what he calls Jeffersonianism: the desire to prevent
| unaccountable centralized authorities (also like Robert
| Moses) from abusing ordinary citizens by empowering them to
| fight back."
|
| -- https://www.niskanencenter.org/why-nothing-works-with-
| marc-d...
| lkey wrote:
| Abundance is just https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Way
| neoliberalism with a new coat of paint. The answer to all
| questions is 'bust unions and environmental groups'. We've
| been here before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Alley
|
| All the Reaganite conservative institutions
| (https://www.abundancedc.org/speakers) that are leery of
| fascism, but _love business_ back this 'program'.
|
| We need a new 'New Deal', that rebuilds what was broken
| during these last 90 years. We need the
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Perkins of this era.
|
| "Frances Perkins was not just the architect of SSA: she also
| proposed and implemented many of the foundational labor and
| safety laws1 still relied upon by the American working class.
| We can also thank her for the 40-hour work week, minimum
| wage, unemployment compensation, worker's compensation,
| workplace safety, abolition of child labor, direct federal
| aid to the states for unemployment relief, a revitalized
| federal employment service, and universal health insurance.
| Well, except the last. We are still working on the last. "
|
| She got everything she wanted done as Labor Sec. Except for
| universal healthcare. And it was a great loss for everything
| living American every year since.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Somebody hasn't read the book, just knee jerk reactions to
| it.
| thrance wrote:
| Wow, deregulation and austerity, what a fresh perspective on
| the economy!
|
| This abundance "movement" has absolutely nothing new to
| offer, it is simply a rebranding of neoliberalism. It's easy
| to spot too, just look at who backs the movement: the same
| old establishment democrats and their wealthy donors. The
| same people who have entranched the democratic party into
| this technocratic blob of ineffectiveness and societal
| erosion. In particular, it is financially backed by, among
| others, Peter Thiel and Mark Andreessen. This should raise
| some red flags.
|
| Also, I personally like winning. This abundance movement has
| exactly _zero_ electoral hype. American voters don 't care
| about it _at all_. Meanwhile, populist leftists like Mamdani
| are able to generate momentum for the left for the first time
| in _decades_. That Klein, Thompson and the billionaires
| behind them are so harshly criticizing them should raise
| additional red flags.
| RetiredRichard wrote:
| The writer of this article (Dave) publicly dislikes Derek
| Thompson and keeps criticizing Matt Ygelasis for his
| austerity fetish, along with praising Mamdani
| Voloskaya wrote:
| Your argument boils down to "people already said some
| things like this in the past" (ok, and?) and "some people I
| don't like agree with part of it", which is very weak and
| doesn't address anything in substance.
|
| You know, you can still want to be able to build housing
| without having to wait 1 year for permitting or not want to
| live in a place where making a basic train track is
| basically impossible because of the number of stakeholders
| that have to come to a consensus and still vote for
| Mamdani. You are allowed to have non black and white
| opinions.
|
| You can even have 1% of the things you think are good in
| common with Peter Thiel, and that won't immediately turn
| you into a far right psychopath.
|
| You can even, hear me out, be for less regulation on
| specific areas where there has been a massive lack of
| supply but not for "deregulating the economy" in it's
| entirety!
| RetiredRichard wrote:
| I don't think Dave associates himself with the abundance
| movement
| snapplebobapple wrote:
| for as long as the left has not been about the working class
| and been about university educated white collar government
| workers this has been true though. It may have been true prior
| to that too i just dont have living memory to back it up. There
| is something about being removed from the reality of how the
| metaphorical sausage is made that turns the left from having
| some valid concerns but usually wrong ideas on how to address
| them into actively incomptent civilization destroyers. I would
| love to know why.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| When you go back to The New Deal, its absolutely the case
| that the Dem coalition was much more effective at delivery.
| To some extent because FDR acted very aggressively with
| executive action.
|
| My personal opinion is the working class, not the fancy
| educated types, need to run the Dem coalition. It would be
| far more effective in a number of ways... with broader
| appeal.
| cameldrv wrote:
| It's a different coalition now though. The FDR Democrats
| were labor focused. Then the 60s happened. The New Left
| student movements reoriented away from labor and towards
| racial/gender/sexual equality, and Kennedy signed the Civil
| Rights Act. Southern whites opposed this and you had George
| Wallace pop up, splitting the Democrats, and then Nixon
| swooped in with the Southern Strategy. The Democrats needed
| a new coalition and they went with disadvantaged
| racial/gender/sexual groups instead of labor.
|
| The transition didn't really finish until Clinton and the
| New Democrats though. Campaign money and TV ads got to be
| really important in Presidential politics, and to get that
| money, Democrats had to appeal to rich people, so they got
| rid of most of the labor aspects of the platform. Clinton
| signed NAFTA and MFN for China. Now there were two pro-
| business parties that served different identity groups.
| Ironically the last gasp of labor was the billionaire Ross
| Perot in 92 and 96 who ran on an anti-NAFTA platform. The
| only way he could do this credibly was to use his own money
| to buy TV time.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The FDR admin had 90% support in the House and Senate. He
| wasn't authoritarian, he was operating with the clearest
| mandate America had until Reagan (not that I agree with the
| mandate Reagan was handed and followed through on)
|
| The reason he was able to threaten the Supreme Court with
| packing is that it was a credible threat.
|
| The working class abandoned democrats, not the other way
| around, when LBJ decided that the Civil Rights Act was a
| good thing, and got bipartisan support for it. Several
| prominent (terrible human beings) Dixiecrats screamed about
| "Democrat authoritarianism" for (checks notes) forcing
| southern states to stop being racist as fuck, and the south
| has been thoroughly republican voters since. Don't worry
| though, Strom Thurmund insists he wasn't a racist, he is
| just against being forced to allow black people to get the
| same legal treatment as white people.
|
| A bunch of racists aren't willing to support welfare and
| public investment if black people get it. How do you form a
| coalition between them and black people?
|
| These same assholes want to go back to the 50s because it
| was very good for white male americans, and they do not
| care about the rest.
|
| FDR had this support because Americans rallied behind the
| New Deal because 1 out of every 5 Americans was jobless.
| That's the pain it took before America was willing to do
| socialism-lite.
|
| If you want democrat policy, you need to elect them. Simple
| as.
| nradov wrote:
| It hasn't always been that way. The US political left did
| used to focus more on working-class issues. They only really
| lost the plot in the early 2000s when they started navel
| gazing on performative ideology and luxury beliefs, leading
| to an inversion in some of the voting blocks for the two
| major political parties.
| Herring wrote:
| [..]
| softwaredoug wrote:
| "Provide more assistance"
|
| My point is that I'm not sure we need more assistance. TBH we
| need better, more efficient assistance. We spend a lot on
| deliberation, not enough on delivery.
|
| A lot of this is due to leadership gaps IMO. Center-left
| leaders (ie Schumer) look weak because they excessively
| triangulate every stakeholder. Instead leaders need to act as
| true leaders, which means being a touch less collaborative /
| trying to triangulate. And more focused on some top-down, cut
| through red-tape, have a vision, persuade people etc.
|
| (Then, arguably if people saw the system working well, they
| might want to award it with more money.)
| matula wrote:
| This is an interesting thought. I also wonder if Houston is
| "helped" by the fact that they're a blue city in a red state...
| that kind of ideological conflict of governance requires unique
| and localized solutions. Whereas SF is blue city in a blue
| state, so it creates a "too many cooks in the kitchen"
| situation.
| cootsnuck wrote:
| I think it also just creates a lack of "urgency" problem. I
| live in a blue city in a red state. Constituents expect
| results because we can't rely on our state gov. Local
| officials know this. There's more competition from more
| progressive candidates too locally which is helpful in
| keeping liberal officials more focused on results instead of
| the game of politics.
|
| Idk, I think it's different for every city. But I think the
| point I'm trying to make is that having some kind of
| _political constraints_ in governance seems to typically be a
| good thing for the sake of getting some shit done.
|
| Actually I think I'm just stating an obvious point now given
| the glaring ineffectiveness of our two party political
| system...
| rtkwe wrote:
| It probably does make it easier to make drastic changes as
| described to consolidate data sharing etc when they ultimate
| authority is likely the city/county instead of the state. The
| state level agencies will have their own policies, systems
| and goals/approaches that might not suite the individual
| cities so the programs remain separated and fragmented.
| mjd wrote:
| The article itself makes this point more than once.
| roenxi wrote:
| Nothing wrong with deliberation and listening to stakeholders.
| Great idea. The issue is the centre-left voters keep asking
| these institutions to take on more power, channel more funds
| and veto more projects [0]. I don't see how else they expect
| large centralised bodies to play out. I'm not sure if the US
| left even has a collective theory of how to fight institutional
| rot apart from stuffing institutions with leftists and assuming
| they do they right thing. Expecting good results from that
| strategy requires a certain naivete to the sort of people who
| seek power in government.
|
| [0] Not just them, the centre right also seems to love the idea
| based on what I've read. Not the brightest crowd.
| Yossarrian22 wrote:
| Isn't China even more centralized? They complete
| infrastructure projects in years not decades.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Nothing wrong with deliberation and listening to
| stakeholders. Great idea.
|
| True if you can identify the correct stakeholders and those
| stakeholders are aligned to the goal.
|
| It becomes unhelpful when the list of stakeholders is so long
| and disconnected from the goal that listening to stakeholders
| becomes an endless cycle of meetings and talking about the
| problem instead of doing anything about it.
|
| In my local experience, initiatives related to homelessness
| and drug addiction treatment attract a lot of people who like
| the idea of being involved because it advances their career
| or sounds good on their resume, but many of them are
| unqualified to be involved and think the role will involve a
| lot of delegation and deciding where to send money to other
| groups, not actually doing any of the work directly.
|
| Basically, a lot of people who want to be in charge and claim
| leadership but who also don't want to actually do the hard
| work.
| lkey wrote:
| SF, Dallas, and Houston all have Democratic leadership that
| could be described as center left? (For America. To an
| outsider, America has two conservative parties)
|
| The unhoused are 'stakeholders' too actually, so I'd describe
| Cali's problem as listening _too much_ to _wealthy /powerful_
| stakeholders, while ignoring those most impacted. Who can
| forget Newsom's camp-destroying photo-op and forced bussing the
| undesirables out of town to prevent people from _seeing_
| 'crime' aka 'poverty'.
|
| These institutions are not log-jammed by accident. "You cater
| to trying to listen to every voice" Reader, they only listen to
| their friends and donors, this is _the_ problem. These
| 'listening sessions' you are told are 'stopping progress' exist
| to placate legitimate concerns. Blaming unions is also fun, I
| heard that _a lot_ back in Cali, no matter the issue, no matter
| the union, from the wealthiest people.
|
| Politicians that _seem to_ do almost nothing are _preferred_ by
| the donor class. Bog standard Democrats have more smoke for
| Zohran (the sincere housing and affordability guy) than they
| have for their 'Republican colleagues' in this era. That
| should tell you everything you need to know.
|
| "This level of ineffectiveness just enables authoritarianism
| ("at least they get something done") and gets people to seek
| the private industry for their solutions."
|
| EXACTLY. THIS IS _INTENTIONAL_. PUBLIC COST, PRIVATE PROFIT IS
| _THE GOAL_. A WELFARE STATE FOR BUSINESSES, NOT PEOPLE.
| dylan604 wrote:
| From time to time, we see response here that doing X is dumb
| because it is not a perfect solve. It's very common in
| discussions about solving pollution or energy use. Don't bother
| using EVs as we're still burning coal. Don't recycle because so
| much trash is everywhere else. These people are suggesting
| doing nothing until the perfect solve is available. Perfect
| will never happen. Instead make as many things better where you
| can while you can.
| duxup wrote:
| A local school system near me was facing some financial issues
| a number of years ago.
|
| The superintendent noted that there were dozens and dozens of
| individual social programs that the school system managed. Many
| extending well beyond education and even testing the bounds of
| what might be called social work.
|
| While they all (on the surface) operated on the idea that if
| students got these services they would be more effective in
| school ... it wasn't clear for most of them if that was even
| the case / being measured.
|
| The superintendent noted that the only thing they could be sure
| of was that if they touched anyone of them, they were sure to
| be someone's baby and they'd face a backlash.
|
| Personally, I'd like to see a more "fail fast" type system for
| a lot of social programs. Run it, see what happens ... then
| make the call if it goes any further. But that would mean
| people would have to start up programs fast, and shut them down
| fast. Both are not easy.
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| The cities in Texas are run by Democrats
| josefresco wrote:
| > Houston has no zoning code
|
| Too many and too restrictive building codes are bad, but no
| codes? Yikes.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| I lived in Houston for six months and I don't understand
| anybody who would ever use it as a model for any city in any
| capacity unless they love endless interstate construction and
| taking 60-90 minutes to get anywhere. "Sprawling mess" doesn't
| even begin to cover it.
| akgoel wrote:
| Yes, it takes me 60 minutes to go 45 miles when I cross the
| extremes of the city. Oh noes! How far does the red line go
| in Boston and how long does that take?
| codyb wrote:
| I think the better question is general walkability.
|
| The extremes is a pretty weird trip to do comparisons of
| since most people go from the outskirts into the centers to
| work and play and then go back to the outskirts.
|
| The question becomes... once you get to your destination,
| can you get anywhere else without having to hop back into
| the car?
|
| In cities like NY or Boston you can ride into town, hit a
| restaurant, go to the show, grab a few drinks then hit the
| clubs all without getting back into your car or just by
| taking short stints on readily available public
| transportation or taxis.
|
| Can you have that same experience in Houston? I don't
| really know. Maybe. Where I'm from it's not concentrated
| like that so you go to your friends house... then you get
| in a car and go down to the bars... then you get in the car
| again to go to the arena for the show.
|
| Everything's very dispersed. I personally like that much
| less.
| vel0city wrote:
| You _can_ have that experience in Houston, but most of
| "Houston" isn't like that.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fMTaNYYvwE
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| > I don't understand anybody who would ever use it as a model
| for any city in any capacity
|
| They spent far less to basically completely solve their
| street homelessness problem compared to "model" cities like
| SF, so...
| wswope wrote:
| Speaking as a born and raised Houstonian, that's a
| completely delusional claim -- and you're believing it
| credulously because it fulfills a narrative that appeals to
| your preconceived notions.
|
| This article is the spitting definition of drawing a
| bullseye around an arrow. Houston's secret sauce of
| preventing mass encampments is a combo of sprawl and police
| brutality. There aren't as many dense areas to congregate
| compared to CA, and there are more places to hide away or
| squat to avoid notice.
|
| Enjoy your flavoraid though.
| bz_bz_bz wrote:
| Does being born and raised in Houston make you an expert
| on homelessness? It's interesting you are so quick to
| rebuke the article with sweeping generalizations and zero
| data. Could it be because it does not appeal to your
| preconceived notions?
|
| Houston was one of the first major cities to transfer
| chronically homeless individuals from encampments to one-
| bedroom apartments with almost zero friction (no
| intermediate shelters, no drug testing, no requirement to
| find a job). This was a highly successful program under
| Turner that had little to do with sprawl or police
| brutality.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| The bay area has sprawl and has been embracing police
| brutality on this issue, and homelessness is not
| improving here. If that worked, they would try it here.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| The police in my city regularly go through and rip apart
| encampments and scatter everybody to the wind. It
| literally solves nothing.
|
| I also find it pretty horrifying for someone to actively
| advocate for "police brutality." By definition it is
| immoral and should not be desired. You can't even be
| bothered to say "strong policing" and pretend you don't
| want law enforcement to abuse people who already have
| enough problems? You _actively want_ them going out and
| hurting people? Please correct me if I'm wrong because it
| really comes across that way.
| akgoel wrote:
| It's not quite true that we have no codes, but you wouldn't
| come here and find some hell hole of mixed industrial and
| residential. Land prices really do dictate use.
| staticautomatic wrote:
| You mean like the million dollar McMansions on the same block
| as a gas station, across the street from an office high rise?
| I think you're over-estimating the effect of land prices.
| Yizahi wrote:
| What's the problem with gas station (provided it keeps
| mandatory distance from the buildings) or the office
| building near the residential ones? In fact, close offices
| are often cited as a pros for certain locations, people are
| even trying to rent as close as they can in some cities.
|
| PS: I've lived the whole last year approximately 100m away
| from both gas station and large office complex. Neither
| bothered me at all, and it was a first floor.
| vel0city wrote:
| Maybe inside the loop, but go to Channelview or Deer Park or
| Baytown or La Porte or League City or even Webster.
|
| Go take a look around the Nasa Bypass and Gulf Freeway.
| You've got apartments, a Great Wolf Lodge, an oil pipeline
| holding station, and single family homes all right next to
| each other all right on top of the creek.
|
| The parks I used to play at had active oil and gas wells
| right next to them. My neighborhood growing up had a big,
| straight greenbelt that bisected the neighborhood due to the
| abundance of buried gas lines in between.
| Psillisp wrote:
| The loop will not save you
| Psillisp wrote:
| Have you been on Houston Avenue? It is an unwalkable hell
| hole.
|
| It literally goes townhouses, lumber yard, liquor store,
| train track, townhouses, bail bonds, Chevy dealership with
| limited sidewalks.
| jotux wrote:
| >> Houston has no zoning code
|
| >Too many and too restrictive building codes are bad, but no
| codes? Yikes
|
| You're confusing zoning codes (what land can be used for what
| type of structure, e.g., industrial and residential) and
| building codes (the rules for safely constructing a building).
| rtkwe wrote:
| Zoning code != building codes. Zoning deals with the types of
| buildings/uses that can be built in an area not the
| requirements for safety like electrical or structural building
| codes.
|
| It's definitely a mixed bag though, zoning keeps industrial
| uses away from residential which is good for pollution and
| noise reasons but it also restricts building dense housing in
| areas zoned single family.
|
| I'm always dubious about explanations that don't account for
| the fact that the weather in many California towns are more
| pleasant and survivable year round compared to Texas. Or that
| locations like SF are quite space constrained when it comes to
| new housing so new projects generally have to displace some
| current use making the process harder.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Like Dallas that rounds up the homeless and puts them on busses
| to drop off in Houston?
|
| "The success in Houston and Dallas came from building operational
| infrastructure to make encampments disappear permanently instead
| of temporarily."
|
| This is 100% BS. I drive past tent encampments every day. All
| that happens is the city comes in and disrupts the encampments so
| they are clear for a couple of days, and then everyone just
| returns. They have even started placing signs at the
| intersections where the people from the closest encampment under
| the bridge pan handle that discourages "street charity".
|
| If this is what is considered success, then it must be really bad
| elsewhere. At least on the west coast the homeless do not have to
| worry about the weather as much
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| > If this is what is considered success, then it must be really
| bad elsewhere
|
| Yes, it is, lol...
| alberth wrote:
| Texas still has its own struggles.
|
| "Tent cities" do still exist, regardless of what the article
| stated.
|
| And under bridges is still a common gathering point.
|
| But yes, to a way lesser degree than anything you'd find in CA.
| beardedwizard wrote:
| This is such a bad faith article, downtown Dallas is full of
| homeless and the cvs has everything locked up. If homelessness
| went down it's because they moved to CA.
|
| We do need more accountability for non profits though.
| rhubarbtree wrote:
| I've been to more US states and cities than most Americans
| and every city I've been to has a severe homeless problem.
|
| Whilst it's true that europe does have homelessness too, and
| it has gotten worse in recent years, it is incomparable to
| America.
|
| It doesn't seem like a problem that can be fixed by some
| local policy or other. It's a societal problem.
|
| America also has stratospheric levels of inequality, a
| terrible healthcare system, and lacks a functional welfare
| state. I do not think this is a coincidence.
|
| I'd much rather live somewhere more civilised, at the cost of
| higher taxation.
|
| It always irks me to see Americans taunt Europeans on social
| media about their lack of very large tech companies, whilst
| the Europeans are perhaps too dignified to point out the
| consequences of America's hypercapitalism (such as
| homelessness, crime, and trump) in return.
| bz_bz_bz wrote:
| What social media platforms do you use where Europeans are
| too dignified to point out the consequences of America's
| hypercapitalism?
| yardie wrote:
| I remember a report about either SF or LA converting a parking
| lot to safe place for homeless and the mayor going on TV to show
| how proud they were this was a solution. I was flabbergasted.
| Because in no way would my SE coastal sensibilities regard this
| as any fucking solution to homelessness. It was literally a
| parking lot full of tents for the homeless.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Good article. Very convincing. Even if the housing bit cannot be
| solved (NIMBY-ism in California is very strong) the other
| solutions should help. And there's no reason homeless people in
| SF or LA should stay in the most expensive housing areas of a
| completely Democratically controlled state
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Not sure the whole of California can take the advice from subsets
| of Texas, considering the state of the intersections in Austin.
|
| The brushing-along still happens
| otikik wrote:
| Didn't some cities "solve" the problem by buying homeless people
| bus tickets so that they go to SF? That is a system that "works".
| Psillisp wrote:
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/is-relocating-homeless-peo...
|
| Don't forget to donate for the excellent journalism.
| j3th9n wrote:
| Follow the money. Create a homelessness crisis, buy the cheap
| houses surrounding the tent cities and sell/rent them again for a
| bit/way more money when you fixed the crisis.
| estearum wrote:
| This helps too: https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/texas-transports-
| over-100000...
| Psillisp wrote:
| 100 degree plus days in summer
|
| Torrential rain
|
| Hail storms
|
| Hurricanes
|
| flash floods
|
| Houston is not a place to live outdoors.
| chaoticmass wrote:
| Not really fair to compare the two geographic regions. Nobody
| wants to live on the streets in Dallas or Houston. It's way too
| hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. That said, living
| in Dallas I have seen the odd tent city pop up under some freeway
| overpasses but they don't stick around very long so I guess the
| city does do something about it.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| What the actual fuck? The homeless problem here in Dallas is at
| an all time high. I've been in and out of the Downtown proper for
| 20 years now.
|
| Completely unbelievable premise and not worth reading.
|
| Citation: I was recently homeless following a stint in jail on a
| bogus Felony charge, and still frequent some of the resources /
| areas where I got help. 24 Hour Club. Dallas Public Libraries.
|
| Tarrant County has a very good homeless program. They throw them
| in jail. Then let them out to do meth, then put them back in.
| They were my company in Lon Evans.
| codr7 wrote:
| Does it look like they are even trying to solve the problem?
|
| Perhaps they're more waiting for the public to beg for permanent
| military presence. Create a problem for the solution you're
| looking to implement.
|
| I have no idea about California, but I do know that's how it
| works in Sweden.
| ckemere wrote:
| I'm a bit confused about this. I live and work in Houston, and it
| seems like the number of apparently homeless panhandlers I see
| (specifically in the med center / NRG) area seems approximately
| constant over the last decade.
|
| Disclaimers- I don't actually gather data. I don't explore at
| night to see who is actually sleeping rough.
|
| I do get report from panhandlers that they need $20 to stay at
| the shelter...
| refulgentis wrote:
| Article comes across as complete slop, if written by a human
| hand. Articles thesis is "build working systems" and "who knows
| if we're getting rid of the homeless people and drug users or
| just moving them around"[1] and top comment here is "committees
| are annoying."
|
| [1] true! what's the next thought from there? :)
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