It’s not about building more housing. There is enough housing to house everyone in the US and then some.
Homelessness is not just about finding/funding a home. You need food and transportation for a job. If the solution were as simple as throwing money at the homeless, California would have long ago solved their homelessness issue.
My experiences with homeless people in California are very limited to my trip there 10 years ago. I did have a really good conversation with someone giving me some tips about SF for a dollar, and I was robbed by someone else while walking home late at night.
Neither of those guys seemed mentally ill, but if my own country is anything to go by, a lot of these people have serious mental issues to deal with, and sitting them in a flat isn't gonna solve the underlying issues.
One of my best friends is a social worker for re-integration of homeless people, and getting them a flat is actually the very first step. A particularly illuminating example he told me about is that he often has problems with landlords, because the people he is trying to house do not shit in the toilet, but will do so in the hallway or somewhere else on the property.
There's a lot of work necessary from social workers, psychologists and doctors to help people who were homeless for a longer preiod of time, and it has to be a longterm commitment.
The ones who can't use a toilet are a handful, and will never get off the streets.
Most homeless I have known whom are homeless just want a piece of land, with a outhouse, and maybe some fire pits so they can cook.
They want a piece of land where cops don't ticket, or get harassed.
Homelessness is just going to get worse. It's time to open up available federal, state, and local land, to free camping.
I've given up on housing. It's too expensive, and comes with too many rules.
Most of these guys just want to pitch a tent, and live the rest of their short lives out with a bit of false dignity.
And the drug use?
I once heard a homeless guy say, if you had to crawl into Scothbroom, after a day of being harassed by cops, and looking for food; you might want a stiff drink too. Let's not forget about the amount of self-medicating going on either.
(I know it's easy to throw your hands up, and lump all of them together. They are all very different. There are some professional beggars out there too. I've noticed a lot of foreigners working sympathy beg. Foreigners with jobs. Every American homeless person I know would never think about begging if they had a roof over their heads.)
Homelessness is not just about finding/funding a home. You need food and transportation for a job.
In some sense, you are correct. We've torn down about a million SROs and largely zoned out of existence the ability to build Missing Middle Housing in mixed use, walkable neighborhoods.
This is a primary root cause of lack of affordable housing in the US. You need a car to get anywhere from the suburbs and it drives up the baseline cost of housing.
There are myriad other issues with our housing policies, but no it not just enough to build more housing, though studies show simply building more helps. It's also about building the right kind and we aren't doing that which is helping fuel various trends, such as living in RVs, the Tiny House movement and other alternatives people are pursuing in the face of cities simply not creating the kind of housing they need.
> By the 1980s, homelessness emerged as a chronic issue. There were many factors, including the federal government deciding to slash the budget for affordable housing. By then the California state government had significantly cut taxes and gutted social programs, including for state-funded mental institutions, resulting in thousands of people with mental illnesses and other difficulties struggling to make it on their own.
> Yet the core reason for the crisis boils down to supply and demand for housing. As regions like the San Francisco Bay Area became magnets for highly paid professionals in the computer-driven economy, they failed to build enough new units to keep up with demand.
> A 2016 study by McKinsey Global Institute estimated that California needs 3.5 million new housing units by 2025 to deal with its chronic housing shortage. Yet new housing construction has only slowed since then, despite Gov. Gavin Newsom's campaign promise to lead an effort to produce those 3.5 million units. Even before the pandemic wrought havoc on the construction business, California was constructing only about 100,000 new homes per year, way below the minimum 180,000 per year that analysts say the state desperately needs.
> Gov. Gavin Newsom's campaign promise to lead an effort to produce those 3.5 million units.
He is leading an effort. Whether he's spending enough of his own political capital is another question. But one of the problems in California is that the state constitution guarantees municipalities "home rule". That means very little can be accomplished without local cooperation, including local zoning board cooperation. It's like federalism at the state level--the central government can ban practices relatively easily, but it can't force positive action, only coerce through tax revenue incentives, which has its own constitutional restrictions, not to mention political barriers.
> California is a NIMBY paradise, legally speaking.
100%
However the state has and can overrule cities. First ADUs were legalized and next, if SB9 passes, duplexes. It's baby steps, but it's possible and probably the only way forward.
In California, it initially was because Reagan closed mental institutions. We had the housing (the mental institutions). Also, housing back then was affordable. You can’t chalk it down to housing till close to the 2000s.
Now you have this toxic brew of people with mental issues, drug addicts, people with family issues, and economic issues all feeding into each other.
Housing is then only a start. Also, any city that gives homeless more services than other areas just attracts more homeless.
It is monstrously expensive. Look at what SF is spending and watch what happens when the COVID-19 funds and state IPO windfall run dry.
Both the left and the right are at fault. Some of these people need to be institutionalized. Cities need to be cleaned up. Housing should be provided. Shipping homeless to other cities is not cool.
No city is probably willing to pay what it truly costs. It is probably roughly how much we pay for the criminal justice system.
$146K per person for the criminal justice system and then multiply it by 2 or 3 for social services, mental health services, drug treatment, etc…
Roughly 250 billion a year. You need to make the underlying institutions more efficient but institutional capture has already occurred. In other words, in a few years it is more likely to be 500 billion a year and the problem would be just as bad.
Of course if you wanted to turn around the criminal justice system as well, then you immediately jump into the trillions.
Homelessness is not just about finding/funding a home. You need food and transportation for a job. If the solution were as simple as throwing money at the homeless, California would have long ago solved their homelessness issue.