Right. NYC and Boston politicians do better than LA and San Francisco when it comes to getting the homeless in shelters not because they have more willpower or better views on the public order aspect of homelessness, exactly, but rather because a failure to do so will result in dozens of homeless freezing to death every winter, an outcome that their constituents would regard as a horrific failure.
I believe you. Elderly people wouldn’t or couldn’t open windows when their AC went out. An apartment on the south face of a building could get killing hot.
Also, from things I’ve read sometimes they do own a home, they are just hanging out at the open drug scene.
From the account of a friend who was homeless for a short while, the shelters won’t take people who are violent, doing drugs, or prostitution. At least in the red state I’m in.
If I understand correctly, the west coast doesn’t have killing summers either. We have so much AC that people forget that hot summers can kill in the south. Back in the 80’s and 90’s the local news would always cover one or two elderly ladies dying in their home of heatstroke, during heatwaves.
I think I was just wondering why Florida or the southern states don’t have more homeless. It’s ridiculously easy to live outside thru the winter in the region.
Is it just public policy? That makes California and the West Coast states have so many more?
Go to Anchorage, AK and see homeless action. They are all over the place. I'm told that they congregate for the cruise season. I flew in a couple weeks before the ships were due and there was still a mob on the roadsides.
That sounds to me like regular beggars. We have always had panhandling, but it seems more of them these days. The principle that no ecological niche goes unfilled applies to economics.
There's a phrase I keep thinking when I see topics like this: "Chaos is a policy choice."
Allowing crazy people to take over streets and parks and libraries? It's a policy choice.
Allowing whole neighborhoods to become cesspools of crime where nobody is safe walking down the street at night? Policy choice.
Allowing a public school classroom to be unmanageable because of kids who can't or won't behave? Policy choice.
There are countries that make different policy choices, and we could, as well. Probably we won't because these policy choices come down to tradeoffs between different values and different interest groups, but there's no law of nature that says that public spaces must be owned by crazy people sleeping rough, or aggressive panhandlers, or small-time criminals. We could just decide not to let that go on.
“Fix” is totally an incorrect word. It will “change” but maybe into something more horrendous. It’s getting more difficult for reasonable people to live a life unaffected by bad actors. And it’s not just about $, it’s about temperament. Not much chance.
Of course it will fix itself. Eventually, we'll leave good governance so far behind that some other people, not burdened by this horrific unwillingness to face reality, conquer us. It's not so far away.
The major issue in homelessness is not the lack of housing. It's the refusal of society to say no. No, you can't camp in this city. No, you can't shit in the streets. No, you can't panhandle aggressively. No, you can't shoot up publicly and leave your used needles lying around. The fact that we are not going to allow you to destroy our city by doing these things is not our problem. It's your problem. You can solve your problem by not doing drugs, getting help for your mental problems, getting a job, and sharing rent with others so inclined until you can afford a place of your own, probably in a lower cost community.
This is not going to happen because the people we have elected allow the homeless to wallow in their victimhood rather than accept personal responsibility for their self destructiveness.
What specific steps should be taken by cities to deal with the problem? Cities should use all existing shelters and further provide simple shelter space with surplus military tents with mess and recreational tents, a medical tent and restroom and shower facilities (the way I lived in the army) on leased or purchased unused commercial or industrial sites on the outskirts of the city. As many who want to and are able to work should be hired to help feed others and to maintain the facilities. Individuals could use surplus military squad tents or their own for sleeping. When those facilities are available the city should send in crews to clean up existing encampments, without arresting anyone who does not physically resist.
Custodial care should be mandatory for those who are so mentally or drug addicted that they cannot care for themselves. We did a huge disservice to the mentally ill when we closed rather than reform our state mental hospitals. We need them back. This approach actually would cost far less and be far more effective than the current housing first attempts to fix the problem. Most of the homeless lack the capacity to live unassisted in modern society but that is not an excuse to destroy our beautiful cities and drive out our productive citizens.
Simultaneously saying the state needs to come in while also blaming the individuals experiencing homeless for not taking care of themselves seems like a contradiction. You aren’t offering them the choice to get better, you’re forcing them into a different way of life while saying they chose to be homeless in the first place. You can have one, but not the other
I agree, but saying it's their choice they are on the streets rather than viewing them as a product of the policies that let them exist there in the first place hurts your own point. If you view homeless people as a product of social and economic incentives, then you can just change said incentives to get them off the street rather than making moralistic arguments about their "weak will" or whatever. Get them off the streets, forcibly house them, provide employment opportunities, like you suggested, and you'll be remarkably surprised by just how many make the "choice" to suddenly be healthier and happier people!
Los Angeles and San Francisco have large homeless populations because they have decent weather year-round. Boston's homeless population surges in the summer, but you don't see many people living on the streets during a blizzard.
There's a kind of irreducible problem with the deranged homeless, in that no matter where you put them they make life miserable to everyone around them. So obviously, living on the street, they make life worse for normal people, but the other corollary is that putting them in shelters would make life much worse for the non-deranged homeless there.
I think this may just be one of those cases where there's no palatable solution -- the options are (1) leave them on the streets and make life miserable for normal people (2) pack them in shelters and make life hell for those who are temporarily down and out (3) put them into inhumane mental institutions (4) put them into humane mental institutions at great expense or (5) let them die. I don't love any of these, and I don't think we can really get consensus here.
I would suggest that a part of the solution would be to extend the lower range of available housing (e.g. Matt Y talks about how NIMBYs have eliminated boarding houses and trailer parks, link below), as it seems common-sensical that (much) cheaper housing options would lower the bar on the level of function required to avoid precarity. This wouldn't help the deranged directly, but it would reduce the number of people who would have to put up with them if we did throw the deranged in shelter, and give the state more resources to deal with them humanely by reducing the overall shelter burden.
(5)(a): Canadian Health Care. If it's good enough for our benevolent, enlightened neighbors Vancouver, BC, it's good enough for Vancouver, WA!
(I think it's a good sign that my #ModestProposal is rarely openly advocated).
I actually think (3) is probably an okay solution that wouldn't be loved but would be tolerated; we have process (albeit a difficult one to make happen) whereby someone gets put into long-term institutionalization at a cost the public can accept, until they can show that they can function on their own long-term (spoiler alert: they will never be able to show this). I don't know that I'd agree that these facilities would be "inhumane" but I'll agree they won't be nice; probably better than dying on the sidewalk, though.
I think Karens and deranged homeless can be symbiotic. Instead of patrolling neighborhoods they can imitate Nurse Ratched for the homeless.
It's not palatable knowing that in more frontiery locations, people shoot their pets. Or the various things that happen to animals on farms. But the reality remains regardless of what you think of it. This is another situation like that.
Well, the lack of a dominant option has implications both for what policy is best on the merits (they all entail compromises) and for the politics (complicated-to-intractable)
Thank you for talking about a topic that is often ignored. Currently my brother is a homeless veteran. He was in jail. He was in the hospital 24 hours, and he was then released from both places. He is homeless. I’m hoping a VA case worker can get him into a place. My brother is 72.
I'm really sorry to hear that. I have close friends in the same position, and their greatest wish is for their loved one to get arrested so they can at least be off the street for a while. Getting people help when they don't want to take it is so challenging, and it's heartbreaking to watch people give up.
I live in Fort Worth. We too have a homeless problem, and because I live in an area of town that is moderate to lower income/diverse area, we see more of them. Most are okay and keep to themselves or with others who are also homeless. Some approach cars at stop lights and act in a threatening manner. They scream or swing their hands in the air, etc. There is an area near downtown Fort Worth that has missions (plural.) Many of the homeless stay near those living under the overpasses, etc.
It's not just homelessness. Children with schizophrenic parents often suffer greatly. Mass shootings have disproportionately been committed by the severely mentally ill. We need to bring back asylums.
Housing scarcity causes homelessness like how gravity causes water to flow to the ocean. It’s the root, generative cause. With not enough homes to go around, marginal people get squeezed out. Marginal people include unemployable people, people who for various reasons can’t manage their finances to make rent, and yes crazy people and drug addicts. Imagine if, in SF, rent was 100 dollars a month. Even shitty people can scrape together that amount of money.
Of course, to your point, just because gravity causes water to flow, it doesn’t stop us from building a dam to keep a lake, levees to prevent a flood or a sluice to irrigate a field. When we commit homeless people to a facility, we’re managing the flood of people who get squeezed out of housing. And, given that homeless people suck to have around, it’s a good idea to put them somewhere where they can’t harm the neighborhood or themselves! But let’s be realistic. Homeless people don’t transform into high-functioning people when committed. They’re still the same people who fell into drugs, went crazy, can’t manage a budget or whatever. A lot of the homeless have some sort of issue in executive function or intellect. So, if we refuse to address housing scarcity, we’ll have to support the kind of marginal people who end up on the street indefinitely.
That's nice, but homeless people don't have a housing problem - they have plenty of shelters. The problem is crazies and drug addicts, who are always going to be a problem regardless of how cheap housing is.
You’re correct that there is a small group of people who are too crazy and too drugged out to make rent at any price. And you’re also correct that, no matter how cheap rent is, these people need to be committed. However, when rents are more expensive, there are more people who can’t make rent due to their issues. It’s a game of numbers. Think of crazy/on drugs as a spectrum. You have your XXX crazies/addicts who will be homeless no matter what because, like you said, they can’t make rent no matter the price. But you also have your level X crazies/addicts. These people could be difficult to employ for any number of reasons. Maybe they get in fights all the time. Maybe they’re really lazy. Maybe they’re just dumb. When rents increase, the homeless population increases because not only the XXX crazies lose their apartments but also the merely X crazy.
“ But more often, they’re back on the street immediately, resuming their slow-motion suicide. The outreach agencies will offer help a hundred times but never once make anyone take it.”
Not sure it’s that simple., but you touch on the truth nonetheless.
I can only speak for my city, but—for example—there are *no* homeless women with children. Why? They receive prompt help and are quick to take such and usually do not suffer from addition. Men, not so much.
Most every outreach program has *one* requirement, you must be “sober” to enter. Every night, there are unfilled beds at these agencies, yet men living in tents all around. Men, enslaved to their addition, will avoid such programs. Hence a growing problem of young, single men living on the street and begging for a “living”. Those men caught up in crime and sentenced to a “program” as part of their punishment will get the “30 days” standard “treatment”, which is not nearly enough to change their mental state and convert such to something resembling the norm among the populace, but does fit into the cost allowance of City, State, Federal, and insurance programs.
In my early grad years I knew such a recovering addict (no true recovering addict will claim he’s “recovered” as in past tense). We even co-authored a paper or two on the matter. I became convinced that the “broken” minds of addicts takes much more than a 30 day series of group therapy sessions followed by release back into their old environment. Indeed, my recovering co-author claimed he was not of acceptable sound mind for at least a year before he was able to resist relapse.
We, as a society, are simply not serious about treating or controlling addiction. Yes, there are cases of recovery in the present situation, but it’s not nearly enough to affect the problem of homelessness. Treat/reduce drug addiction and you’ll cure homelessness.
Love the data! Re "it’s because we have decided to allow them to do so." Whether we realize it or now, as a society we have "decided" that some of our children do not deserve to live in clean, safe, and nurturing environments. We have "decided" that most of our children don't need to do math well or write clearly. I condemn the Democrats for this, because they pretend to care but their actions say differently. Republicans at least have the coherent philosophy that people need to take responsibility for themselves, not the government.
The challenge is that “do whatever you want” does maximize liberty only if it includes “as long as you don’t hurt anyone else.” I don’t recall the “don’t tread on me” folk arguing for complete lawlessness.
And deciding where to draw the line between liberty and lawlessness isn’t obvious. Like most things in this complex world of us, the best answer tends to be found through experiment, intentional or not - and a system which has managed to find answers that actually work, however they were obtained, is one that should be studied and respected.
Now we actually do have such social systems, often religious. And that becomes an issue for many progressives, as they see what they consider the downsides of religion, and ignore the upsides.
“as long as you don’t hurt anyone else” is unenforceable though. You can easily construct a case that almost anything hurts at least someone in some way. No one actually lives up to it.
Yes, and that is why I said that "deciding where to draw the line between liberty and lawlessness isn’t obvious" and needs to be determined through practical experience. Human society is way too complex to derive the right answer from first principles.
This is why I’m leaving Portland, which wasn’t in the data but I can assure you is at least as bad if not worse than the Bay Area and Seattle. The city has been taken over and our mayor and governor refuse to do what it takes to get these people into shelters. https://getbettersoon.substack.com/p/why-im-leaving-portland
The problem is that forced treatment, either for mental illness or addiction, doesn’t work reliably. Even voluntary treatment for addiction mostly doesnt work! It’s not as easy as “just force them to be sane and sober,” even if we had the will to do that.
It's true that treatment is often ineffective. But it's still much better than the status quo, and costs less too. I think there's an odd defeatist attitude on this point, something like "they'll just stop taking their pills / go back on drugs once they're back out", and this is true, but the answer is just as obvious: "well round them up again when that happens." The point is you have to try. And in any case, getting street people sane and sober is only partly for their own benefit, there's also massive public benefit to getting them off the street even for a little while at a time.
This is an interesting article, but I find it to be somewhat statistically unsupported. This isn’t to say that it is incorrect in its claim, only that doesn’t provide the necessary evidence to fully convince me. Here’s what you would need to show to convince me of the claim that “Governmental action that forces homeless people to get off the streets decreases the rate of unshelteredness and problematic homelessness, and it is ultimately a good thing for the people most-directly affected.”
1. A clarification: is unshelteredness correlated with the particularly “problematic” homelessness? This article seems to assume that it is, and I guess I have no strong reason to doubt it, but I’m new to discussion of this topic and have never been to most of the cities discussed here.
2. Are homeless people in cities with laws forcing them to get off the streets truly better off for the homeless people than cities that allow them to stay? You write: “This unwillingness to apply any degree of coercion in service of a solution is the fundamental element of West Coast culture, and it’s killing the very people it’s meant to help.” If you want to convince me of this point, show me that death rates among homeless people are higher in cities without the suggested types of laws.
3. Do homeless people in the “less liberal cities” have a higher rate of finding permanent housing within 6 months than homeless people in cities with less strict laws? This would show that these laws are actually doing good for the homeless people affected. It might also show that these laws aren’t just redistributing them.
4. How do imprisonment rates for homeless people vary across cities, and what is the significance of this? Is this good for the people affected? Is it more common in more conservative-leaning cities? If it’s more common in liberal cities, is this evidence of a higher dangerous crime rate?
1) Yes, encampments and their residents are uniquely problematic.
2) Yes, death rates on the street are much higher than in institutions or shelters.
3) Unclear, but I doubt it's much different. Normal people make changes to find housing they can afford, including moving somewhere else. But they don't move into a tent on the sidewalk. The ones that do are the most dysfunctional of that subset.
4) Wide variation between states and cities, but I don't have specific data on this.
Have noted this before on SSC, but your point about there being different typologies of "homelessness" is one the major problems with the discussion; the NGO crowd relies on the visceral impact of the Type B Homeless (the wretched wasters you find dead on the street) to advocate for policies designed to fix the problem of Type A Homeless (marginally housed folks who form the vast majority of people who the stats capture, but are mostly functional). I would note that IME living in Seattle for a few years, there's also a Type C especially out on the Left Coast vagabonds who are perfectly functional but chose to be homeless. They are mostly harmless unless they fry their brains on a bad psychedelic trip
There’s also the fact that if NYC doesn’t get them off the streets, winter will.
Drug encampments follow the weather, along with the handouts.
Right. NYC and Boston politicians do better than LA and San Francisco when it comes to getting the homeless in shelters not because they have more willpower or better views on the public order aspect of homelessness, exactly, but rather because a failure to do so will result in dozens of homeless freezing to death every winter, an outcome that their constituents would regard as a horrific failure.
Don't underestimate subway tunnels and steam grates. One of the most popular tunnels is between the PATH and the subway system at 34th Street.
The Dark Days documentary, while dated at this point, is still pretty interesting
Cold weather kills many more people generally, but the media publicize heat deaths because AGW.
It was the 80’s they were poor, the news called out lack of air conditioning in their homes. I kid you not.
I believe you. Elderly people wouldn’t or couldn’t open windows when their AC went out. An apartment on the south face of a building could get killing hot.
Yes, you beat me to it. Climate plays a part.
Also, from things I’ve read sometimes they do own a home, they are just hanging out at the open drug scene.
From the account of a friend who was homeless for a short while, the shelters won’t take people who are violent, doing drugs, or prostitution. At least in the red state I’m in.
The same guest author for Noah has a chart claiming that it's not about the weather, but I can't imagine that non-lethal winters don't play a role.
If I understand correctly, the west coast doesn’t have killing summers either. We have so much AC that people forget that hot summers can kill in the south. Back in the 80’s and 90’s the local news would always cover one or two elderly ladies dying in their home of heatstroke, during heatwaves.
Beware the availability heuristic. Many more people die of cold. We don’t hear about them as much because they don’t fit the narrative.
I think I was just wondering why Florida or the southern states don’t have more homeless. It’s ridiculously easy to live outside thru the winter in the region.
Is it just public policy? That makes California and the West Coast states have so many more?
I suspect it’s public policy. Austin, TX has a growing problem.
Hawaii has an even worse homeless problem than California.
Go to Anchorage, AK and see homeless action. They are all over the place. I'm told that they congregate for the cruise season. I flew in a couple weeks before the ships were due and there was still a mob on the roadsides.
That sounds to me like regular beggars. We have always had panhandling, but it seems more of them these days. The principle that no ecological niche goes unfilled applies to economics.
Whole families of beggars are kind of uncommon anywhere else I have been.
With that said, the beggars at traffic intersections park their BMWs behind the bushes.
That’s typical. Many won’t admit unaccompanied men. Considering the client population, I wouldn’t blame them.
There's a phrase I keep thinking when I see topics like this: "Chaos is a policy choice."
Allowing crazy people to take over streets and parks and libraries? It's a policy choice.
Allowing whole neighborhoods to become cesspools of crime where nobody is safe walking down the street at night? Policy choice.
Allowing a public school classroom to be unmanageable because of kids who can't or won't behave? Policy choice.
There are countries that make different policy choices, and we could, as well. Probably we won't because these policy choices come down to tradeoffs between different values and different interest groups, but there's no law of nature that says that public spaces must be owned by crazy people sleeping rough, or aggressive panhandlers, or small-time criminals. We could just decide not to let that go on.
We can just wait for the problem to fix itself. It will, eventually.
“Fix” is totally an incorrect word. It will “change” but maybe into something more horrendous. It’s getting more difficult for reasonable people to live a life unaffected by bad actors. And it’s not just about $, it’s about temperament. Not much chance.
Of course it will fix itself. Eventually, we'll leave good governance so far behind that some other people, not burdened by this horrific unwillingness to face reality, conquer us. It's not so far away.
The major issue in homelessness is not the lack of housing. It's the refusal of society to say no. No, you can't camp in this city. No, you can't shit in the streets. No, you can't panhandle aggressively. No, you can't shoot up publicly and leave your used needles lying around. The fact that we are not going to allow you to destroy our city by doing these things is not our problem. It's your problem. You can solve your problem by not doing drugs, getting help for your mental problems, getting a job, and sharing rent with others so inclined until you can afford a place of your own, probably in a lower cost community.
This is not going to happen because the people we have elected allow the homeless to wallow in their victimhood rather than accept personal responsibility for their self destructiveness.
What specific steps should be taken by cities to deal with the problem? Cities should use all existing shelters and further provide simple shelter space with surplus military tents with mess and recreational tents, a medical tent and restroom and shower facilities (the way I lived in the army) on leased or purchased unused commercial or industrial sites on the outskirts of the city. As many who want to and are able to work should be hired to help feed others and to maintain the facilities. Individuals could use surplus military squad tents or their own for sleeping. When those facilities are available the city should send in crews to clean up existing encampments, without arresting anyone who does not physically resist.
Custodial care should be mandatory for those who are so mentally or drug addicted that they cannot care for themselves. We did a huge disservice to the mentally ill when we closed rather than reform our state mental hospitals. We need them back. This approach actually would cost far less and be far more effective than the current housing first attempts to fix the problem. Most of the homeless lack the capacity to live unassisted in modern society but that is not an excuse to destroy our beautiful cities and drive out our productive citizens.
Simultaneously saying the state needs to come in while also blaming the individuals experiencing homeless for not taking care of themselves seems like a contradiction. You aren’t offering them the choice to get better, you’re forcing them into a different way of life while saying they chose to be homeless in the first place. You can have one, but not the other
Izzy: You have to force them or they will die.
I agree, but saying it's their choice they are on the streets rather than viewing them as a product of the policies that let them exist there in the first place hurts your own point. If you view homeless people as a product of social and economic incentives, then you can just change said incentives to get them off the street rather than making moralistic arguments about their "weak will" or whatever. Get them off the streets, forcibly house them, provide employment opportunities, like you suggested, and you'll be remarkably surprised by just how many make the "choice" to suddenly be healthier and happier people!
Don't forget the non-profit class that makes money off of the homeless problem and has every incentive to keep the problem going.
Los Angeles and San Francisco have large homeless populations because they have decent weather year-round. Boston's homeless population surges in the summer, but you don't see many people living on the streets during a blizzard.
There's a kind of irreducible problem with the deranged homeless, in that no matter where you put them they make life miserable to everyone around them. So obviously, living on the street, they make life worse for normal people, but the other corollary is that putting them in shelters would make life much worse for the non-deranged homeless there.
I think this may just be one of those cases where there's no palatable solution -- the options are (1) leave them on the streets and make life miserable for normal people (2) pack them in shelters and make life hell for those who are temporarily down and out (3) put them into inhumane mental institutions (4) put them into humane mental institutions at great expense or (5) let them die. I don't love any of these, and I don't think we can really get consensus here.
I would suggest that a part of the solution would be to extend the lower range of available housing (e.g. Matt Y talks about how NIMBYs have eliminated boarding houses and trailer parks, link below), as it seems common-sensical that (much) cheaper housing options would lower the bar on the level of function required to avoid precarity. This wouldn't help the deranged directly, but it would reduce the number of people who would have to put up with them if we did throw the deranged in shelter, and give the state more resources to deal with them humanely by reducing the overall shelter burden.
https://www.slowboring.com/p/trailer-regulation, as well as some paywalled ones you can google
(5)(a): Canadian Health Care. If it's good enough for our benevolent, enlightened neighbors Vancouver, BC, it's good enough for Vancouver, WA!
(I think it's a good sign that my #ModestProposal is rarely openly advocated).
I actually think (3) is probably an okay solution that wouldn't be loved but would be tolerated; we have process (albeit a difficult one to make happen) whereby someone gets put into long-term institutionalization at a cost the public can accept, until they can show that they can function on their own long-term (spoiler alert: they will never be able to show this). I don't know that I'd agree that these facilities would be "inhumane" but I'll agree they won't be nice; probably better than dying on the sidewalk, though.
I think Karens and deranged homeless can be symbiotic. Instead of patrolling neighborhoods they can imitate Nurse Ratched for the homeless.
It's not palatable knowing that in more frontiery locations, people shoot their pets. Or the various things that happen to animals on farms. But the reality remains regardless of what you think of it. This is another situation like that.
Well, the lack of a dominant option has implications both for what policy is best on the merits (they all entail compromises) and for the politics (complicated-to-intractable)
Thank you for talking about a topic that is often ignored. Currently my brother is a homeless veteran. He was in jail. He was in the hospital 24 hours, and he was then released from both places. He is homeless. I’m hoping a VA case worker can get him into a place. My brother is 72.
I'm really sorry to hear that. I have close friends in the same position, and their greatest wish is for their loved one to get arrested so they can at least be off the street for a while. Getting people help when they don't want to take it is so challenging, and it's heartbreaking to watch people give up.
I live in Fort Worth. We too have a homeless problem, and because I live in an area of town that is moderate to lower income/diverse area, we see more of them. Most are okay and keep to themselves or with others who are also homeless. Some approach cars at stop lights and act in a threatening manner. They scream or swing their hands in the air, etc. There is an area near downtown Fort Worth that has missions (plural.) Many of the homeless stay near those living under the overpasses, etc.
It's not just homelessness. Children with schizophrenic parents often suffer greatly. Mass shootings have disproportionately been committed by the severely mentally ill. We need to bring back asylums.
Housing scarcity causes homelessness like how gravity causes water to flow to the ocean. It’s the root, generative cause. With not enough homes to go around, marginal people get squeezed out. Marginal people include unemployable people, people who for various reasons can’t manage their finances to make rent, and yes crazy people and drug addicts. Imagine if, in SF, rent was 100 dollars a month. Even shitty people can scrape together that amount of money.
Of course, to your point, just because gravity causes water to flow, it doesn’t stop us from building a dam to keep a lake, levees to prevent a flood or a sluice to irrigate a field. When we commit homeless people to a facility, we’re managing the flood of people who get squeezed out of housing. And, given that homeless people suck to have around, it’s a good idea to put them somewhere where they can’t harm the neighborhood or themselves! But let’s be realistic. Homeless people don’t transform into high-functioning people when committed. They’re still the same people who fell into drugs, went crazy, can’t manage a budget or whatever. A lot of the homeless have some sort of issue in executive function or intellect. So, if we refuse to address housing scarcity, we’ll have to support the kind of marginal people who end up on the street indefinitely.
That's nice, but homeless people don't have a housing problem - they have plenty of shelters. The problem is crazies and drug addicts, who are always going to be a problem regardless of how cheap housing is.
You’re correct that there is a small group of people who are too crazy and too drugged out to make rent at any price. And you’re also correct that, no matter how cheap rent is, these people need to be committed. However, when rents are more expensive, there are more people who can’t make rent due to their issues. It’s a game of numbers. Think of crazy/on drugs as a spectrum. You have your XXX crazies/addicts who will be homeless no matter what because, like you said, they can’t make rent no matter the price. But you also have your level X crazies/addicts. These people could be difficult to employ for any number of reasons. Maybe they get in fights all the time. Maybe they’re really lazy. Maybe they’re just dumb. When rents increase, the homeless population increases because not only the XXX crazies lose their apartments but also the merely X crazy.
“ But more often, they’re back on the street immediately, resuming their slow-motion suicide. The outreach agencies will offer help a hundred times but never once make anyone take it.”
Not sure it’s that simple., but you touch on the truth nonetheless.
I can only speak for my city, but—for example—there are *no* homeless women with children. Why? They receive prompt help and are quick to take such and usually do not suffer from addition. Men, not so much.
Most every outreach program has *one* requirement, you must be “sober” to enter. Every night, there are unfilled beds at these agencies, yet men living in tents all around. Men, enslaved to their addition, will avoid such programs. Hence a growing problem of young, single men living on the street and begging for a “living”. Those men caught up in crime and sentenced to a “program” as part of their punishment will get the “30 days” standard “treatment”, which is not nearly enough to change their mental state and convert such to something resembling the norm among the populace, but does fit into the cost allowance of City, State, Federal, and insurance programs.
In my early grad years I knew such a recovering addict (no true recovering addict will claim he’s “recovered” as in past tense). We even co-authored a paper or two on the matter. I became convinced that the “broken” minds of addicts takes much more than a 30 day series of group therapy sessions followed by release back into their old environment. Indeed, my recovering co-author claimed he was not of acceptable sound mind for at least a year before he was able to resist relapse.
We, as a society, are simply not serious about treating or controlling addiction. Yes, there are cases of recovery in the present situation, but it’s not nearly enough to affect the problem of homelessness. Treat/reduce drug addiction and you’ll cure homelessness.
Love the data! Re "it’s because we have decided to allow them to do so." Whether we realize it or now, as a society we have "decided" that some of our children do not deserve to live in clean, safe, and nurturing environments. We have "decided" that most of our children don't need to do math well or write clearly. I condemn the Democrats for this, because they pretend to care but their actions say differently. Republicans at least have the coherent philosophy that people need to take responsibility for themselves, not the government.
The challenge is that “do whatever you want” does maximize liberty only if it includes “as long as you don’t hurt anyone else.” I don’t recall the “don’t tread on me” folk arguing for complete lawlessness.
And deciding where to draw the line between liberty and lawlessness isn’t obvious. Like most things in this complex world of us, the best answer tends to be found through experiment, intentional or not - and a system which has managed to find answers that actually work, however they were obtained, is one that should be studied and respected.
Now we actually do have such social systems, often religious. And that becomes an issue for many progressives, as they see what they consider the downsides of religion, and ignore the upsides.
“as long as you don’t hurt anyone else” is unenforceable though. You can easily construct a case that almost anything hurts at least someone in some way. No one actually lives up to it.
Yes, and that is why I said that "deciding where to draw the line between liberty and lawlessness isn’t obvious" and needs to be determined through practical experience. Human society is way too complex to derive the right answer from first principles.
This is why I’m leaving Portland, which wasn’t in the data but I can assure you is at least as bad if not worse than the Bay Area and Seattle. The city has been taken over and our mayor and governor refuse to do what it takes to get these people into shelters. https://getbettersoon.substack.com/p/why-im-leaving-portland
I did find it curious that Portland was absent.
Thanks for sharing.
The problem is that forced treatment, either for mental illness or addiction, doesn’t work reliably. Even voluntary treatment for addiction mostly doesnt work! It’s not as easy as “just force them to be sane and sober,” even if we had the will to do that.
It's true that treatment is often ineffective. But it's still much better than the status quo, and costs less too. I think there's an odd defeatist attitude on this point, something like "they'll just stop taking their pills / go back on drugs once they're back out", and this is true, but the answer is just as obvious: "well round them up again when that happens." The point is you have to try. And in any case, getting street people sane and sober is only partly for their own benefit, there's also massive public benefit to getting them off the street even for a little while at a time.
This is an interesting article, but I find it to be somewhat statistically unsupported. This isn’t to say that it is incorrect in its claim, only that doesn’t provide the necessary evidence to fully convince me. Here’s what you would need to show to convince me of the claim that “Governmental action that forces homeless people to get off the streets decreases the rate of unshelteredness and problematic homelessness, and it is ultimately a good thing for the people most-directly affected.”
1. A clarification: is unshelteredness correlated with the particularly “problematic” homelessness? This article seems to assume that it is, and I guess I have no strong reason to doubt it, but I’m new to discussion of this topic and have never been to most of the cities discussed here.
2. Are homeless people in cities with laws forcing them to get off the streets truly better off for the homeless people than cities that allow them to stay? You write: “This unwillingness to apply any degree of coercion in service of a solution is the fundamental element of West Coast culture, and it’s killing the very people it’s meant to help.” If you want to convince me of this point, show me that death rates among homeless people are higher in cities without the suggested types of laws.
3. Do homeless people in the “less liberal cities” have a higher rate of finding permanent housing within 6 months than homeless people in cities with less strict laws? This would show that these laws are actually doing good for the homeless people affected. It might also show that these laws aren’t just redistributing them.
4. How do imprisonment rates for homeless people vary across cities, and what is the significance of this? Is this good for the people affected? Is it more common in more conservative-leaning cities? If it’s more common in liberal cities, is this evidence of a higher dangerous crime rate?
Briefly:
1) Yes, encampments and their residents are uniquely problematic.
2) Yes, death rates on the street are much higher than in institutions or shelters.
3) Unclear, but I doubt it's much different. Normal people make changes to find housing they can afford, including moving somewhere else. But they don't move into a tent on the sidewalk. The ones that do are the most dysfunctional of that subset.
4) Wide variation between states and cities, but I don't have specific data on this.
Cool 👍
Have noted this before on SSC, but your point about there being different typologies of "homelessness" is one the major problems with the discussion; the NGO crowd relies on the visceral impact of the Type B Homeless (the wretched wasters you find dead on the street) to advocate for policies designed to fix the problem of Type A Homeless (marginally housed folks who form the vast majority of people who the stats capture, but are mostly functional). I would note that IME living in Seattle for a few years, there's also a Type C especially out on the Left Coast vagabonds who are perfectly functional but chose to be homeless. They are mostly harmless unless they fry their brains on a bad psychedelic trip
The vagabonds are relatively harmless but they definitely commit their fair share of property crimes and add another variable to the encampment scene.