I don’t understand who commissions and who reads pieces like this. Here is a person with no expertise in housing policy, no expertise in homelessness, and no expertise in tech. The only thing he’s bringing to the table is an opinion, which, as the saying goes, are like assholes. Blame inequality and tech and libertarians all you want, but it won’t do a damn thing to solve the homelessness crisis, which is fundamentally a housing supply issue. But I suppose that doesn’t lend itself to the kind of uninformed moralizing that apparently brings such delight to the hearts of lithub readers.
Okay, I disagree with a lot of views expressed in this piece, but still found it worth reading. It's well written. In particular, a lot of people here may agree with what the author wrote on housing.
Why is wealth inequality an issue for people who have mental disorders, chronic drug issues or people who just don't want to live by societal standards?
The scale of homelessness isn’t explained by individual traits. Societal factors produce and reproduce it. It’s greatest in areas of high inequality for example - a fact not explained by individual traits.
Take mental illness. A mentally ill person with more resources can get the care they need, but someone who is poor can soon find themselves on the street. And homelessness itself is quite stressful, and can produce or exacerbate mental illness as well as drive people to drug addiction.
Homeless people are just like the rest of us, with their own basic human needs, and just like everybody else are trying to navigate their world as best they can.
What do you mean by "The scale of homelessness isn’t explained by individual traits."? Are you saying it's not obvious that being high all day with no income will eventually lead to eviction from whatever housing you had?
No I am saying your just so story of why homeless people are homeless does not explain why places with more wealth inequality see more homelessness. Why would this be if your sounds-good-to-you explanation were the actual factor driving homelessness?
does not explain why places with more wealth inequality see more homelessness
That's just because it's not true. Aspen, Hamptons, Martha's Vineyard and other places with the peak wealth inequality do not see more homelessness (or any homelessness worth mentioning). Liberal cities are the epicenters of homelessness because they all follow the same policies of enablement.
What’s the homeless rate in the luxury enclaves you mention? I couldnt find reliable numbers. Note that your claimed statistics for such enclaves could still be true but not discount the overall statistical relationship - such enclaves can have their own housing dynamics (such as small populations and vacation homes) which don’t negate the larger trend we see when we examine many locales such as large cities and so on. So no, cherry picked counter examples don’t negate the larger statistical relationship between homelessness and inequality.
And attributing homelessness to “enablement policies” is another hot take. It’s just as plausible that enablement policies are enacted as a response to homelessness not a cause.
But at least now we seem to be beyond blaming homelessness on individual traits.
This research has nothing to do with wealth inequality or homelessness. It's simply documenting that young children form attachment bonds with consistent caregivers, whether that's mom, dad, grandma, or a stable daycare worker. The key word is stable. Kids need predictable, responsive caregiving from the same people over time. That's basic attachment theory, not a political statement about economic systems.
I am sorry, I cannot read that "actual research" but I figure it did not include places with the most inequality, like ones I've listed?
>Note that your claimed statistics for such enclaves could still be true but not discount the overall statistical relationship
If you know statistics then you might be familiar with the "correlation does not imply causation" turn of phrase. And yes, any counter example destroys a causation claim.
My pet conspiracy theory is there is a fair amount of coordinated manipulation to get political posts on the HN front page. Fortunately, they are often quickly flagged to the abyss.
That’s not a conspiracy theory. Anyone who doesn’t realize at this point that online discourse is heavily engineered and manipulated is an unthinking rube.
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives one.”
Knowledge is prerequisite for all else. Do pity the millions who will grow old before reading Ishiguro’s ‘The Remains of the Day’ - you too? Could you see its point?
Society is too large to see itself; someone must observe on our behalf. In this pursuit poesy may tell truth where ten thousand theses have honestly lied.
> No. They are 98% drug addicts or mentally ill people.
That might be true, but there are plenty of drug addicts and mentally ill people in West Virginia (#1 in per capita overdose deaths and well above CA/NY/etc in suicides) and yet West Virginia has a pretty low rate of homelessness (roughly 1/5th CA's and 1/8th NY's) so that's clearly not the explanation.
I'm sorry, who do you think the majority of homeless are? 2/3rd are people living in their car or moving from a friend apartment to another, sometimes sleeping in their school (I did that) if possible, or at their workplace (I know a cook who did that for a year). The visible homeless, sleeping in the street or in homeless camps, is the minority.
I guarantee you that 98% of homeless aren't drug addicts or mentally ill. Most of them are students from a poor family (me, for 2 years until my grandmother died and I use the inheritance to finance my last years) or working poors, who don't make enough to be eligible for rent.
But people have a mental picture of homeless, and it is people on the streets they see everyday, not families living in a van or someone couch surfing for years.
People shouldn't let the facts distract them from their feelings and opinions I guess then?
People should base their opinions on reality, not invent a reality that conform to their opinions. Not only because intellectual laziness is bad, but because if we can't at least agree on the material facts, we will never be able to agree on solutions, or understand other people point of view.
> The left love to imagine that homeless people are just down-on-their-luck people who just missed out on a mortgage payment or a rent payment.
> No. They are 98% drug addicts or mentally ill people.
Drug addicts and mentally ill people can be down-on-their luck. That somebody is mentally ill or have an addiction does not mean that society should discard them.
BTW addiction is very rarely the root cause of a wasted life. It's usually a failed coping strategy.
> It's well known that the money that gets given out attract more homeless people.
Homeless people are not infinite resource. You can solve homelessness on the country level, not only on the state level, and then it doesn't matter which state attracts more homeless people - because there's very few of them in the whole country.
> It's insane that left-wing governments think that spending MORE money will solve the problem when in fact it is the cause of the problem.
Poor countries in Eastern Europe does not have this problem. Maybe instead of pretending US is the whole world and if it can't deal with something - it's impossible to deal with it - try to listen to what people did elsewhere?
"Drug addicts and mentally ill people can be down-on-their luck. That somebody is mentally ill or have an addiction does not mean that society should discard them."
This line of thinking (IMO) is both manipulative and harmful. At some point we need to realize that we are enabling and not helping.
You really want to help both the person and the society that they are part of, you need tough decisions that will not be easy or fun.
The way to prevent addiction is to help people before they get addicted (and/or become homeless).
What caused the opioid crisis? Doctors prescribing opioids for no good reason. Why wasn't it happening in EU? Because in EU doctors are paid and controlled by the taxpayers not by the industry. And because in EU doctors have free public education so they aren't 100 000 dollars in debt when they graduate.
Ok but opioids is one way people get addicted/homeless. Another is that they get sick and don't have coverage. Again - in a sane country they get public healthcare so they don't have to default and lose everything - so they have no reason to get addicted.
How about mental sickness? Early childhood is very important. Most EU countries have 6 months or more of mandatory paid maternity leave. On top of 20+ days of paid vacations yearly and unlimited paid health leave. Mandated by the state for all employees. If you don't take them - your company gets fined. HR people force you to take the days off.
Do you see how that would prevent a lot of mental illness/addiction/homelessness?
You can go through most problems in the US, and ultimately they are caused by the insane labour laws, healthcare, or education system.
And the funniest part is - you make all these sacrifices by not having a civilized welfare state, and you still end up paying more for healthcare (yes, including the taxes) and living shorter than people in the EU. You get addictions, homelessness, crime, shorter life spans, AND you pay more :)
Agree with each of your points, but must add some counterpoints as illustration:
Land of the free, home of the brave, there are some Americans who will rebel against the requirements and constraints of their lifelong socialization. I think this is an underappreciated factor in the study of homelessness-- people fight to be free, and as the song goes, Freedom is just another word for "nothing left to lose". There is some serious freedom that does along with having only the clothes on your back and whatever is in your pockets...
I am from a "poor country in Eastern Europe". I'm not sure how you think homeless is dealt with here, but it is nothing that left-wing US liberal would find palatable I assure you.
I'm from Poland. Homelessness is not solved maybe, but it's nowhere near to the level of US.
The solution seems to be public healthcare, education, transport, safety net and cheap housing.
Addiction and mental illness are excuses. Eastern Europe has more mental ilness (generational trauma from WW2 is still alive) and alcoholism than US and yet it has less homeless people.
In early 90s my parents were earning 20 USD per month each. It was about average. There were still almost no homeless people.
It is not "solved", it is marginalized because homeless people are much less tolerated compared to, say, California. In very simple terms a homeless person getting caught shitting on someones porch in Eastern Europe gets punched in the face and kicked out. And no way homeless would be allowed to just squat some park or square with tent encampment in a major city here.
Overall, I don't see neither US nor Poland as a big outliers by looking at the stats[0], it just seems like some specific places (SF) made homeless population a highly-visible nuisance by feel-good unrealistic policies that can't possible work.
There are plenty of houses. The issue is demand; people are paying $4,000/month to live in a shithole because nobody knows what things are worth. Rich executives, H1Bs and digital nomads all flock there to displace working-class families that support the basic service economy. If you built 400 condos, 1600 more rich people move in. Supply is not the issue as far as I can see it.
We dont build high density housing. We killed off the boarding house. There's like one left in DC when there used to be dozens... They were common enough that even in the 80's you could make a tv show about it, now if you said bording house someone would look at you like you had 9 heads.
We dont have SRO's any more... In 1940 the YMCA of New York had 100k rooms for rent...
> If you built 400 condos, 1600 more rich people move in. Supply is not the issue as far as I can see it.
Do you know what the largest predictor of voting is? Home ownership. DO you know what drives home owners to the polls more than anything else? Protecting the value of their home.
The state has, and continues to sue towns for the fuckery that they have been doing to block housing development to prop up property prices. 60 percent of people who are the most likely to vote will turn up to the polls to make sure the costs do NOT go down. It is the tyranny of majority...
SO yes there are plenty of HOUSES, and not enough of everything else that we need for people to live.
Makes no sense. You can build until demand goes down. Demand is high in part because supply’s low. If there were more homes than rich people who wanted them, prices would be lower. But that doesn’t happen because of NIMBYism. I suspect you know all this but are mythologizing the situation as inescapable destiny.
Maybe you’re used to seeing half measures. Be careful with that because half measures are sometimes used as justification to throw out the whole idea of progress instead of doing it properly (“well we tried that and things were still bad so now we have to do it my way”)
I understand why building doesn't happen. OP is saying that even if you build, it's hopeless because demand is endlessly met by rich people keeping prices high.
Even when rents go down to cost, they are still going to be greater than zero and labor and materials won't turn free. Cost won't ever be so low that one could afford housing while doing nothing productive and even less so while indulging in a drug habit.
Since the US had been deindustrialized, most of the working class is now in service sector and does not produce much. Thus service labor is discounted and the construction labor is at premium. Basically, if it costs 1000 man-days of labor to build a house all in (materials, tooling, labor itself) it will have to cost 1000*k man-hours of waiting tables, where k is the discount coefficient between doing a skilled back-breaking labor and taking orders from the tables to the kitchen. At some values of k there is just not enough working days in the lifetime.
