- cross-posted to:
- urbanism@slrpnk.net
- cross-posted to:
- urbanism@slrpnk.net
cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/12369426
the purpose of a system is what it does
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It costs more than $10k a year per person to provide housing as pointed out in the cross posted thread.
Not if the government built and ran the homes. Public housing works, it just got it’s funding gutted by Reagan. And how can you put a price tag and cleaner and safer communities.
California is building housing at $1000/sqft, the city of San Francisco spends $100,000/year per homeless person
If it was somehow just as easy to build public housing, why wouldn’t they?
The tweet only talks about the cost of housing homeless people. Homeless people have other needs like mental and medical care. And $1000/sqft isn’t the norm and the tweet is generalizing about housing costs throughout the country, not the CA. You just seem dead set and making public housing seem untenable. And they don’t build public housing because it lowers rent for all renters. There’s no floor to housing so every renter can be implicitly threatened with the specter of complete destitution, holding them ransom for the ridiculous rents we have now.
The state is dead set on making public housing untenable through its inability to execute, even if given the money.
CA has the biggest homeless problem, with nearly 30% of country’s homless. They spend the most, and get the least results.
Le tweet is just some garbage dormroom study, even if it’s well meaning, it’s nonsense. SF doesn’t even house most it’s homeless and spends $100k/person, there is no way to bridge the gap between that and $10k/person just for housing, at least on average.
Market build high density vs star build high density will not lower the price of rent, the only way is to increase true supply (build more housing than the market can bear, which the state can’t afford to do at $1k/sqft) or decrease true demand (fewer people to house).
Your held hostage to rent where you live? Move. I did, it’s been great. It really solves several issues with one stone.
Housing First is the correct way to reduce homelessness. The main cause of homelessness is being priced out of the housing market, because the vast majority of housing in America is entirely privatized. Plus most public housing in America is not done nor funded well, until our European counterparts
Numerous studies show that housing first participants experience higher levels of housing retention and use fewer emergency and criminal justice services, which produces cost savings in emergency department use, inpatient hospitalizations, and criminal justice system use.
- 75% and 91% of households remain housed a year after being rapidly re-housed, according to multiple studies.
- $31,545 in cost savings per person housed, according to one study.
- Another study showed that a Housing First program could cost up to $23,000 less per consumer per year than a shelter program.
https://www.pdx.edu/homelessness/housing-first
This has worked famously in Finland
I don’t want to just dismiss that entirely, especially not in it’s approach to the problem, but I’m not really sold.
In this study you have: 150 hand selected people, who are “chronically unhoused” not long term homeless ( at least that’s how I’m reading it) A big town in a low population state A small total chronically unhoused population (est 513 in addition to the 150 included in the program) 18 year time difference, with 56% inflation since then A 23% dropout rate (which is probably better than it sounds) A small 15% decrease in substance abuse and increase in seeking employment
This really does not inspire confidence in its efficacy in America, more specifically California or New York where more than 50% of of the countries homeless are located.
The studies and examples in America are small because they are only done on a State level with no to little federal funding. You’ll need to look into how Housing First has been put in practice in European countries to get a better idea about how they can function with federal funding and support.
Doesn’t Finland have socialized medicine? We don’t have that in the US. So anyone in an addiction or mental health crisis has to jump through hoops to get help. A large percentage of our homeless are schizophrenics and addicts. It’s a sad sad state of affairs.
Access to mental health and addiction services is an important part, yes. Both are important and both help homeless people. I’d say Housing First is more important, since you need a stable living situation in order to stabilize the rest of your life.
I’m an advocate for both Housing First and Socialized Medicine
Where is this “$100k/person” statistic coming from? SF hates homeless people, so I kind of just don’t believe that.
Your held hostage to rent where you live? Move.
That’s great, I’m glad for you. Not everyone can do that. If 2/3 of your income is going to rent alone, where are you gonna get the money for moving costs? You’re going to need storage and/or shipping if you’re moving far enough that your rent is going to drop significantly, you’ll also need first month’s rent, last month’s rent, deposit, setup fees for utilities, termination fees for old utilities, and maybe even termination fees for your existing contract which usually just means paying the rest of the rent for the term of your contract all at once. Then you need a new job, new community, new resources, new doctors, etc. And don’t forget people who are unable to move to certain areas due to marginalization. Some areas are literally deadly to live in if you’re queer or a person of color, and some areas are completely unlivable if you’re disabled. What about people who are already homeless? They can’t move because social services are tied to the city where they last had residence.
Earlier in the thread you asked “If it was somehow just as easy to build public housing, why wouldn’t they?”. The answer to that is almost always “lobbying”, or “anti-homeless sentiment”. Why aren’t they building public housing? Because people with beliefs like yours are pushing back against it. You’re arguing that it doesn’t work because it doesn’t happen, and it doesn’t happen because it doesn’t work.
Why don’t Americans have healthcare? That would definitely be cheaper with that level of purchasing power.
What does purchasing power have to do with anything? Genuine question.
There are a third of a billion people in America. If the government bought the medication in bulk they should be able to get a really good deal on that quantity. That’s how it works in other countries. I was watching Bernie talk about it recently. I can try to find the interview if you want but if you just look up his recent interviews he’s probably mentioned it in them all.
I’m not sure that would actually help given the medication is produced in America, or by American companies at least.
From what I understand, almost all medication is produced in batches of a fixed quantity, and the tested and shipped out. Batches have fixed costs associated them, both by law and by business practices.
I know I’ve read articles describing how some drugs are being made through continuous manufacturing now and that it has lower costs associated with it, but it was like 2.
Basically, I’m not sure if buying the whole countries worth of a medication would help given the way the FDA has gone about certifying meds and the cost structures that has created. If you all of a sudden had to recertify most medications, many of them would stop being produced all together.
Another to consider is that under FAR, you must amortize the entire cost of an item, including testing and development, when selling to the federal government.
Wouldn’t those costs be absolutely insane? Wouldn’t that effectively turn big pharma into the new MIC?
Homelessness is not just a lack of having a house problem though.
Housing is a great place to start fixing it though. It doesn’t matter what other issues there might be if there isn’t any housing available to someone.
Sure, but what about those who don’t WANT the housing provided and would rather park their RVs on busy roads making commuting dangerous for themselves and others. And before you say this doesn’t happen let me take some pictures of the highway on my way to work.
I would rather NOT criminalize the down and out, but when they put others in danger it’s a bit of a different story.
You don’t already have a law that prohibits parking your car on a highway?
Because it doesn’t sound like your life is in danger by a sleeping person on a bench.
It doesn’t matter that we have a law because they don’t care. If the police chase them off they just wait a few weeks and come back. Technically they have to show movement every day, but that would mean that police would have to go out there every day to check on them.
I don’t live in a downtown area, but I do live in the city so there aren’t really any benches around TO lay on.
You know what would fix that?
Giving those people a safe and secure place to park their RV that isn’t the highway.
Again, we have those places. The people choose not to use them.
People usually don’t decide to do things like that for shits and giggles, so let’s try and empathize with them and see if we can find some rational reasons for what they do.
Maybe they can’t afford the rent at an RV park. Maybe the rules there are so restrictive that the RV park is unusable to them. A lot of jurisdictions have restrictions on how long someone can rent space before they get legal protections or require additional insurance, so a lot of short-stay places like hotels and RV parks put a cap of a week or two for a stay.
Have you tried talking to these people? You can learn a lot about why people act the way they do by just asking them. Most people are rational enough that they have reasons for doing the things they do, and they’ll probably be happy to tell you if you’re friendly and treat them like people.
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