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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   30230 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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I’m at work right now and unable to read the whole report at this time, but the question that jumps immediately to mind is: How many of the people surveyed are so-called “hidden homeless” - people who are couch-surfing, living in their cars, staying with a succession of family members and friends without officially establishing a long-term residence, etc. - versus the “chronic homeless”, i.e. the ones living on the actual streets?

If I lost my job tomorrow, I feel like I could find a new one fairly quickly, but let’s say for some reason I couldn’t. I have some savings that could get me through for a while, and even if I didn’t, I have a network of family and friends on whom I could rely on temporary financial/housing assistance.

So, even though I live in a very high-COL major city in California, that cost of living would not result in me living in the street unless a ton of other things went wrong in my life simultaneously. Namely, I would have to burn bridges with a lot of different people in my life in order for things to get to that point.

Even if my entire family and social network were much poorer than they are, presumably they would still have couches I could sleep on and bathrooms which I could use to shower and shave. They wouldn’t let me get to the point where I’m a filthy bum sleeping on the sidewalk.

So, yes, I can fully understand how high COL could contribute to a larger number of “hidden homeless” - functional individuals who are down on their luck and temporarily relying on help from others - but I don’t think it does much to explain the proportion of homeless people who become “chronic homeless”; these people must have been real fuck-ups to have exhausted the generosity of all of the people in their lives who could have pitched in to prop them up while they get back on their feet. Again, I understand that people who grow up in an impoverished family/social situation have a smaller pool of assistance to draw from, but I still don’t understand how a person with family and friends ends up out on the streets unless they have consistently done something to wear out their welcome with the people who could have at least provided the bare minimum support, namely a roof over their heads.

Some examples of how someone would wear out their welcome with the people in their lives: chronic alcoholism/drug abuse, stealing from others (like, for example, to feed the aforementioned alcohol/drug habits), domestic violence/threats, being so mentally ill that you’re considered a liability by others, being generally insufferable to be around, etc. People get to the point where they give up on helping you because their investment is wasted, and they can’t bear to be responsible for you any longer.

So, I don’t know to what extent high COL explains those people. Again, I haven’t yet read the report, and maybe it explains a lot of this stuff.

There’s also the factor that high COL localities tend to have many more people in lower working class households, so the family and friends of lower working class people in San Francisco simply have less ability to put up a down on their luck friend or relative because their houses and apartments are overcrowded already.

I think you're also overlooking that low-functioning-but-not-cartoonishly-deranged people are simply incredibly frustrating to deal with when they won't get their shit together and insist on abnormal behavior. People who could solve most of their problems with "just be normal" don't get much sympathy as page five news stories about floridaman, and in real life they wear out their welcome pretty fast. Not by pissing people off, not by doing drugs, not by getting in fights and causing property damage, but just by needing a helping hand because of their own poor decisionmaking and frequently enough refusal to do mildly unpleasant or boring things.

Thanks for your perspective, voted for AAQC.

This perspctive is what I agree often gets missed when we talk about homelessness. It's strange to me that even when a strong study is presented that says hey, maybe homelessness is about, you know, HOMES, so many people here immediately jump to drugs and shitting on the street.

The real problem is that housing, a basic human need (maybe right depending on your beliefs) is denied to many because they simply cannot afford it. And this isn't a complex problem like many try to make it out to be - as others have said, if we just stop artificially constraining the supply the market will help solve the problem. It won't fix it entirely of course, but not shooting ourselves in the foot repeatedly is a good start.

It's strange to me that even when a strong study is presented that says hey, maybe homelessness is about, you know, HOMES, so many people here immediately jump to drugs and shitting on the street.

Because it amounts to a bait and switch. The people pushing this study have preferred policies about subsidized housing, and they're using the claim that the homeless problem can be solved with those policies to push them. But the "homeless problem" as most people understand it isn't about people couch-surfing or living in their cars or even illegal immigrants making camp near Home Depot; it's about the drug-addled street shitters who make life miserable for everyone else. And you can't fix that with homes; you can give those people homes and they'll wreck them in short order.

But the "homeless problem" as most people understand it isn't about people couch-surfing or living in their cars or even illegal immigrants making camp near Home Depot; it's about the drug-addled street shitters who make life miserable for everyone else. And you can't fix that with homes; you can give those people homes and they'll wreck them in short order.

I see it as a nuanced problem with more than one solution. Ideally we strictly police the defectors ruining the commons, but at the same time we tackle the issue that is creating them in the first place.

Personally I'm for stricter policing of public spaces, crackdown on illegal opiate/meth dealing, and building more housing. Just because we do one doesn't mean we can't do the rest.

"Fixing the root cause" is the standard leftist answer to all our intractable problems, and as can be determined by "intractable", it doesn't work. The root cause of street shitters simply isn't high housing costs anyway.

The root cause is something close to personal responsibility and lack of religion, in my opinion. I hope to fix that too. But again, you're reducing me to one view.

We can do all of the things I mentioned above and also push for personal responsibility and the importance of religious belief.

What do you think the root cause is?

I don't know what the root cause is. If we found it, I doubt we could do anything about it -- maybe 4000 people out of 4 million are just irretrievably broken by the vagaries of chance. I think the main priority should be containing the problem.

I'd say that it's maybe closer to 40k. Treatment resistant schizophrenia is a big one. Also intellectual disability. Of course you have drug addicts, but they can at least in theory get clean.

I mean, true, but the ability to be obscured by lots of people who just can’t afford a house provides cover preventing these people from being beaten by the police/arrested/otherwise persuaded to change their ways.

They aren't obscured at all except by those deliberately conflating them. And it isn't that preventing them from being beaten or arrested; it's another part of the leftist memeplex, a part I'm more sympathetic to (though getting less so).

As for those who just can't afford a house, I have no sympathy. If you can't afford San Francisco because the prices are too damn high, there are 332 cheaper cities with populations over 100,000 that you could move to. I can't afford to live in SF either, why should I subsidize those who are living there without a fixed address?

As much as I sympathize with your individual plight, I don’t think it counts into the “homeless problem” in the society’s view. Shelters or non-profits or churches might be interested in helping you, but people like me (normal, well-off, employed people with families and mortgages) do not care about you much. Indeed, there are a lot of poor and struggling people on this planet, and I can’t spare too much energy or emotion on you.

Instead, what I see as an actual problem is crazy, unpredictable, aggressive hobos taking over the commons, and making the city dangerous and unlivable for normal people, while collectively consuming more government resources per capita than the poorest working people actually subsist on. This is the problem for me, because it actually affects me in a substantial and negative way.

My point here is that you are or were not like them, and it is unlikely that any solution that applies to one group will also apply to the other. The hidden homeless are overlooked on purpose, because they are only a problem to themselves, not to anyone else.

Shelters or non-profits or churches might be interested in helping you, but people like me (normal, well-off, employed people with families and mortgages) do not care about you much.

Be that as it may, some of your tax money is already being used to, supposedly, help the homeless. I am not sure what you would prefer, but you can of course support not spending tax money on this. If you do support spending tax money on it, then there is a question of whether it should be spent as it is currently being spent, or whether more of it should be spent to give the homeless housing.

How many of the people surveyed are so-called “hidden homeless” - people who are couch-surfing, living in their cars, staying with a succession of family members and friends without officially establishing a long-term residence, etc. - versus the “chronic homeless”, i.e. the ones living on the actual streets?

Here's their breakdown:

More than three quarters (78%) noted that they had spent the most time while homeless in the prior six months in unsheltered settings (21% in a vehicle, 57% without a vehicle). Over the prior six months, 90% reported at least one night in an unsheltered setting.

re:

Namely, I would have to burn bridges with a lot of different people in my life in order for things to get to that point.

I think it definitely remains true that becoming homeless doesn't require just having lost your house, but probably having lost your friends as well. This is part of why I described (I should probably clarify this is my own take rather than the study or podcast's) that we're talking about a demographic of pretty low-functional people that are near the bottom of society in general. But clearly in states with twice as much poverty, worse opioid problems, etc, if these people can afford a place to stay it makes a pretty siginificant difference in whether they'll wind up on the street, where their pathologies will become a public nuisance/safety issue, and where it becomes significantly harder to get someone back from after they've landed there.

I wonder how much of California's homelessness problem stems from a large portion of their population being transplants? West Virginians today are pretty much all descended from people who lived in West Virginia in 1950 and so have nearby relatives, whereas Californians very frequently are descended from people who didn't live in California in 1990 and so have few to no nearby relatives.

That's a good point, I'm not sure. Here's what I dug out of the paper though not sure if it really answers our question:

Overall, 36% of participants had sought help to prevent homelessness, but most sought help from friends or family, rather than non-profits or government agencies...

Seeking support was more common for adults in homeless families, where 61% sought assistance. The most common sources of support sought across all participants were friends and family (22%); community-based organizations, religious organizations, or domestic violence services (16%); and government agencies (8%) (Figure 20). Adults in families sought help from any source more frequently than single adults and TAY.

Twenty-three percent of all participants received help. Adults in homeless families were more likely to receive help; nearly half (48%) of adults in families received help of any kind (compared to 21% of single adults and 24% of TAY). The most common reported types of support received were from friends and family, community-based organizations, and government agencies. Adults in families received help from any source more frequently than single adults and transition age young adults

More remarkably, for where people stayed the previous night:

More than three-quarters of participants (76%) stayed in unsheltered settings the night prior to their interview; 20% stayed in a vehicle, and 56% without a vehicle. Nineteen percent stayed in an emergency shelter, 0.3% stayed in a domestic violence shelter, 2% stayed in a motel, hotel, or trailer paid for by the government or an organization (e.g., as part of a COVID program), 0.1% stayed in a motel or hotel paid for by self or family, 1% stayed with family or friends, and 0.5% stayed in institutional settings, such as hospitals or jails.

If people had been homeless for less than six months, we asked where they had spent the most time during their episode of homelessness. The responses were similar to where participants had been the previous night: 78% were in unsheltered settings (21% in a vehicle, 57% unsheltered settings without a vehicle). Fifteen percent reported that they spent the most time in an emergency shelter, 0.3% in a domestic violence shelter, 2% in a motel, hotel, or trailer paid for by the government or organization, 2% in a motel or hotel paid for by self or family, 0.5% in a substance use treatment program, and 2% with friends and family.

In fairness, at this point we're interviewing a group of people who've lost all ties with friends / family, whether they had them to begin with or not. Lower down it suggest these people did have connections but their family and friends were just unable to accomodate them for one reason or another:

Families and friends can be a source of housing support for many individuals, providing places for individuals to live. But many participants noted that their family or friends were not able to provide a place to stay (Figure 36). Half (51%) of all participants noted that their family and friends were unable to accommodate them, with 39% noting it as a barrier that impacted them a lot. This issue was more frequently identified as a barrier among transition age young adults (70%, with 53% indicating it impacted them a lot) and adults in families (65%, with 57% indicating it impacted them a lot) than single adults (49%, with 37% indicating it impacted them a lot). This finding could be because family or friends do not have space or resources for the participant to live with them, or because rental agreements for market-rate or subsidized housing may limit the number of residents permitted to reside in a unit, or the length of time a guest is allowed to stay there.

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