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Notes -
Has the Beinoff Homelessness and Housing Initiative Report been discussed yet here? You can read the report here, an executive summary here, and a transcript of the report being discussed on the Ezra Klein Show here.
Released in June, it’s a statewide study on homelessness in California, the largest of its kind in some thirty years. It’s built on “nearly 3,200 participants, selected intentionally to provide a representative sample, and weighted data to provide statewide estimates. To augment survey responses, we recruited 365 participants to participate in in-depth interviews”. No question as to the state of focus: California is just over a tenth of the American population but nearly a third of its homeless population and nearly half of the unsheltered homeless population.
Other takeaways are that contra claims that homeless populations are traveling to California for warm weather or social services, 90% of interviewed participants said they were from California (and 75% from the same county they were homeless in), and backed it up with various details about their hometowns and whatnot. This also aligns with the finding that only about a third of the homeless even sought out government services, suggesting that most people are not taking advantage of whatever unique government services for the homeless California offers (which aren't good anyway). This overall makes some common sense imo - if you’re so broke you don’t have somewhere to live then your options for travel are likely limited as well.
The paper is interesting as a resource in its own right, but I think it’s most useful combined with the claims made in a book referenced in the Ezra Klein discussion of the report: “Homelessness is a Housing Problem.”
The piece argues that housing costs are the primary driving factor behind homelessness. For those who claim that homelessness is mostly a reflection of insanity and addiction, researchers point out that those things are frequently worse in other states with less severe homeless problems (correlations available in the hyperlink).
For instance, West Virginia has worse poverty, mental health, and substance abuse, but has a homeless problem vastly less bad than California's (0.09% vs 0.4%). The only thing California performs worse than West Virginia on is, predictably, housing costs. Or why does San Francisco, with a poverty rate of 11.4%, have such a worse homelessness problem (0.95%) than much poorer cities like Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New Orleans, all of which have poverty rates more than twice as high around 23% and homelessness rates around only 0.27%? The clearest answer is the most straightforward: San Francisco is simply twice as expensive to live in (a studio apartment in SF is little over $2k vs a little over 1k for the other three cities). This also lines up with the survey responses, with 89% of respondents saying housing costs were a barrier to them finding housing.
This doesn’t necessarily mean those mental health and addiction aren’t highly important here are as well, but that there may be a demographic of fairly low functioning people who are able to take care of themselves, just barely, at low costs, but are simply unable to under heavier financial burdens. Jerusalem Demsas compares this to a game of musical chairs: as you take away chairs one by one steadily the slower and weaker kids will find themselves without a place to sit. But if you don’t have enough chairs / are going through a severe housing shortage, of course you’re gonna have a worse chairlessness problem then elsewhere, even if their kids are slower and weaker.
And once you’re out, it can be very hard to get back on your feet. Your credit history is gonna be terrible, as is your appearance. Maybe you live in your car for a while but then it gets impounded because you have nowhere legal to park it and can’t pay for the tickets. Then you’ve lost your shelter as well as your ability to go to a job. From there you’re really in the streets, which is scary - some people may take uppers due to fear of being asleep in public where people can hurt you or steal from you, and thus pick up addictions. Things spiral very fast from bad to worse.
Taken together, these suggest early intervention and a clear policy prescription to build more housing and do what can be done to lower costs - not because every disheveled person on the street is a fresh-faced suburban homeowner waiting to happen, but specifically the opposite - that every poor or unstable person living on the cusp of not being able to afford where they stay bears the risk that it’ll be much harder for them to bounce back from a fall than to sustain where they are.
Interested to hear what other people thought.
It is right, but wrong. The problem is more about where homeless people want to live, which is in premium areas. Look at where your typical homeless encampment is, then ask yourself, "if there was a studio apartment in this location, what would rent be?" The answer is always "astronomical." Most US cities actually have lower population now than in 1950, yet they still have homeless people, along with lots of unused housing stock. How can this be? Because that housing is not in the urban core, instead they are abandoned, formerly working class, neighborhoods who's sons and daughters moved to the suburbs, and the people moved to Florida/died. Why don't the homeless live there? The housing is already there. It is cheap/free, it had plumbing at one point, and could get it again, etc. They don't live there because those neighborhoods are for relatively hard working people who are willing to do a 20 minute commute on a bus/rail. Which the homeless are not.
There's not enough density in those cheaper areas to survive as a homeless person. Less traffic to beg at, fewer dumpsters to go through, fewer bikes to steal.
A bit uncharitable, but I think there is some truth to this, which is why housing doesn't fix the problem. Only raw force can fix the problem.
If you live in eastern Europe, you observe the threat of 'raw force' in action regularly.
City I live in has a modest (~1500 m^2) underpass with a little shopping downtown. A fifth of the time I pass through there I see the cops giving a talking to some crusty looking homeless types. You almost never see any homeless camping out in the underpass being loud & smelly & visually offensive. (a lot of them seem to have piercings, studded clothing or wear leather shit)
Haven't seen them actually beating anyone but Czech beat cops go around dressed in a very militarised fashion and they will happily use force if talking doesn't work.
And if the beat cops aren't up to the task, every city police department maintains a riot company of feisty young cops who relish the odd chance of getting into a serious fight with a band of football hooligans.
pictured: on the left, state police cop, on the right a municipal police officer from the covid era. Town cops are the lowest, least respected, paid and qualified form of cop life. (you should see what people say about them on police forums,lol). About 66% of applicants to state police force are disqualified on personality grounds.
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