SF spends ~$1B/y on homelessness with little to show for it. Maybe they need to invest in more SROs on the outskirts and/or a federal declaration of a disaster including voluntary resettlement with comprehensive support. It's too big of an issue to solve at the local level, and it's too expensive to solve in the most expensive areas.
S.R.O.’s, including residential hotel units and rooming houses, may have numbered as high as 90,000 in San Francisco at the inception of the 1930’s, meaning they were nearly as prevalent as apartments. By the early 1990’s the number of S.R.O. units in San Francisco had been reduced dramatically, to approximately 20,000.
The question you should be asking is how much is actually going to the homeless. A homelessness "tribunal" or whatever has a financial interest is keeping just enough homelessness around to keep their jobs. This isn't uncommon with other government projects and anyone who has been a contractor can attest to that. If they got homelessness to some absurdly low number surely the state would start to cut jobs.
I would imagine applying Occam's Razor here would show that there's likely a significant amount of corruption in a program designed to solve something like homelessness. It's JUST vague enough that you can manufacture all sorts of reasons to keep the federal dollars flowing in.
"Corruption" is your first instinct? I would suspect inefficiency of service delivery before outright theft or embezzlement. (Unless Mr. of Sen. Feinstein were involved.)
I think it's all about incentives and right now the current policies are completely oblivious to them. You need to deter people from even thinking about living outside. Just make it inconvenient. This may seem cruel at first but I think it discourages those who may have some alternatives left in their lives, maybe a relative or something like that. Once the system makes it inconvenient and deters people from certain risky life choices, those who are left will be a more manageable number of people to help out. I don't really know the details here but it's sure something that is not considered enough and instead everyone defaults to housing.
Do you really think it is convenient being homeless? The majority of people who are homeless have experienced levels of abuse, often beginning at a very young age, that are unimaginable to your average “well-adjusted” person. How high functioning do you think you would be if you were constantly beaten and raped as a child; if you were raised in an unstable environment full of constant violence; if you were exposed to addiction at a very young age? These things lead to severe mental illness – many homeless people, for instance, have been in states of constant psychosis for so long that it is nearly impossible for them to organize their thoughts enough to complete even basic tasks. Some people are so far gone that no amount of mental health support would help them.
You argue that the policies are ignorant of incentives; I’d argue that you are ignorant of how truly differently a vast portion of the homeless population experience their existence on this planet. Your mental model of the incentives doesn’t apply to a population who don’t function the same way you do. It is not convenient being homeless, and making it even more difficult will not solve anything.
Your mental model of the incentives doesn’t apply to a population who don’t function the same way you do
We all function the same, we're all human. It comes down to how much do we want to prevent people from spiraling down in the first place. If the laws were enforced and it was socially unacceptable to tolerate homelessness, then I think many people would look for alternatives at any cost. This would then expose those who truly have no other options. Instead what we have now is enablement of that lifestyle, at least implicitly by allowing it, but also explicitly in many cities by subsidizing it. This makes it into a viable option for many who would rather take the risk than seek for help as soon as possible.
If homelessness is so bad, why do we leave people to their own demise? Even with free housing it's not enough for many who struggle mentally, as you are pointing out. If someone is drowning they need to be forced out of the water instead of doing nothing because dragging them would hurt their arm.
The "stick" must come with a survivable "carrot". How does Japan do it? Perhaps make it illegal to be homeless but then with a mandate of comprehensive support services to eliminate rough sleeping and permanent shelter living?
I think Homeless is really a keyword for spending on <10,000 of the 750k+ people in SF who are X% target beneficiaries of those funds. Y% recipients dictate based on this <2% of the population.
It certainly explains status quo - SF spends ~$57k per homeless person per year, yet is somehow unable to "solve" it despite that amount being more than median household income in this country.
Demonstrably whatever the city is doing with money has nothing to do with solving homelessness.
Comments
SF spends ~$1B/y on homelessness with little to show for it. Maybe they need to invest in more SROs on the outskirts and/or a federal declaration of a disaster including voluntary resettlement with comprehensive support. It's too big of an issue to solve at the local level, and it's too expensive to solve in the most expensive areas.
There used to be many more SROs in the city. https://ccsroc.net/s-r-o-hotels-in-san-francisco/
The question you should be asking is how much is actually going to the homeless. A homelessness "tribunal" or whatever has a financial interest is keeping just enough homelessness around to keep their jobs. This isn't uncommon with other government projects and anyone who has been a contractor can attest to that. If they got homelessness to some absurdly low number surely the state would start to cut jobs.
I would imagine applying Occam's Razor here would show that there's likely a significant amount of corruption in a program designed to solve something like homelessness. It's JUST vague enough that you can manufacture all sorts of reasons to keep the federal dollars flowing in.
"Corruption" is your first instinct? I would suspect inefficiency of service delivery before outright theft or embezzlement. (Unless Mr. of Sen. Feinstein were involved.)
I think it's all about incentives and right now the current policies are completely oblivious to them. You need to deter people from even thinking about living outside. Just make it inconvenient. This may seem cruel at first but I think it discourages those who may have some alternatives left in their lives, maybe a relative or something like that. Once the system makes it inconvenient and deters people from certain risky life choices, those who are left will be a more manageable number of people to help out. I don't really know the details here but it's sure something that is not considered enough and instead everyone defaults to housing.
Do you really think it is convenient being homeless? The majority of people who are homeless have experienced levels of abuse, often beginning at a very young age, that are unimaginable to your average “well-adjusted” person. How high functioning do you think you would be if you were constantly beaten and raped as a child; if you were raised in an unstable environment full of constant violence; if you were exposed to addiction at a very young age? These things lead to severe mental illness – many homeless people, for instance, have been in states of constant psychosis for so long that it is nearly impossible for them to organize their thoughts enough to complete even basic tasks. Some people are so far gone that no amount of mental health support would help them.
You argue that the policies are ignorant of incentives; I’d argue that you are ignorant of how truly differently a vast portion of the homeless population experience their existence on this planet. Your mental model of the incentives doesn’t apply to a population who don’t function the same way you do. It is not convenient being homeless, and making it even more difficult will not solve anything.
We all function the same, we're all human. It comes down to how much do we want to prevent people from spiraling down in the first place. If the laws were enforced and it was socially unacceptable to tolerate homelessness, then I think many people would look for alternatives at any cost. This would then expose those who truly have no other options. Instead what we have now is enablement of that lifestyle, at least implicitly by allowing it, but also explicitly in many cities by subsidizing it. This makes it into a viable option for many who would rather take the risk than seek for help as soon as possible.
If homelessness is so bad, why do we leave people to their own demise? Even with free housing it's not enough for many who struggle mentally, as you are pointing out. If someone is drowning they need to be forced out of the water instead of doing nothing because dragging them would hurt their arm.
The "stick" must come with a survivable "carrot". How does Japan do it? Perhaps make it illegal to be homeless but then with a mandate of comprehensive support services to eliminate rough sleeping and permanent shelter living?
I think Homeless is really a keyword for spending on <10,000 of the 750k+ people in SF who are X% target beneficiaries of those funds. Y% recipients dictate based on this <2% of the population.
It certainly explains status quo - SF spends ~$57k per homeless person per year, yet is somehow unable to "solve" it despite that amount being more than median household income in this country.
Demonstrably whatever the city is doing with money has nothing to do with solving homelessness.