Keep in mind the recent offering by a USian “thought leader”: emulate Chinese and Singapore handling of drug dealers, draconian punishment, to eliminate a “drug problem”. The Shiny portion of the population embraces and advocates the Puritanical punishment culture as solution for every problem.
This article lists states by their per-capita homeless population. Do cities in Mississippi, Louisiana, or Alabama, support their homeless populations like other cities do? Those states have plenty of poor people. Why do they have a low population of homeless?
Low cost of living. But those states also don’t tend to have a lot of large cities either.
I wonder what happens when you look at Texas, ranked 34, if you look instead at just Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin? The big, big cities. Compared to the very large rural areas. Would be interesting to know.
Why don’t you save this for when someone is actually advocating Puritanical punishment for the homeless.
The answer is pretty simple. There are a number of studies indicating that the single most important factor impacting homelessness is the availability of affordable housing. Over the last couple of decades, housing costs in large metro areas have skyrocketed and so has the number of homeless in these locations. Housing costs in MS, LA, and AL are much lower than in SF, LA, or NYC.
In other words, the single best indicator of the homeless problem in a given area is how much housing costs. There is a book just published that was reviewed in the LA Times that studied the issues being discussed here directly:
“By looking at the rate of homeless per 1,000 people, they found communities with the highest housing costs had some of the highest rates of homelessness,…What the places with the highest rates of homelessness had in common, Warth writes, “was a lack of affordable housing.”…You could fix all the addiction in San Diego right now and you’d still have a problem with homelessness because there just aren’t places for people to go who have lower levels of income.” By contrast, “The researchers looked at homelessness in West Virginia and Arkansas, which were hit hard by the opioid epidemic, and found the homeless rate was low. Housing prices in those states also are lower than in many cities with higher homeless rates,…The study also debunked a number of other common myths about homelessness, such as that states with greater public assistance have higher rates of homelessness (they don’t), … What’s at the Root of Homelessness? A Lack of Affordable Housing | Planetizen News.
Ask, and receive. According to the link I posted, the state wide homeless rate for Texas is 89.1/100,000. After ten years of working a program to get people housed in Houston, the city now has a homeless rate of 70/100,000.
Ask and receive. This article also notes that the state of Tennessee has made it a felony to camp outdoors.
The National Coalition for the Homeless has been shocked by the number of cities engaged in raiding encampments of people who are otherwise unhoused, throwing away valuables (medications, food, personal or historical papers) of those without anywhere else to go.
Homelessness couples with unemployment, failed education, poverty, housing costs, insanity, and deeply embedded culturally induced slothfulness, just for starters, in profoundly complicated and different ways. You do not solve it by separating the symptom of homelessness from its extremely varied antecedents. Attacking the entecedents requires moral courage and a long term point of view, both in alarmingly short supply in USA of today.
Start by learning from our betters all over the world. Ooops, a willingness to learn from others means admitting USA is lacking, and humiity is in shorter supply than anything but wisdom nowadays.
david fb
(had an expert homeless friend who taught me the ropes. He was brilliant, crazy, and profoundly alienated but not slothful, as he worked every cheap scam he could think of and did quite will until he could afford a two week binge of alcohol and drugs),
That isn’t completely true. It is the case for chronic homelessness (homeless for 12 months or more) as the large majority of these suffer from addictions or mental illness. For these folks, who make up roughly 20% of the homeless population, the shortage of affordable housing isn’t the primary problem.
But it probably isn’t true for the large majority of homeless who become that way because their income relative to the cost of housing in their location is insufficient to provide housing security. These folks are one financial crisis away from homelessness. For these folks the symptom is the cause…a lack of affordable housing relative to income.
This is demonstrated by a well-known Zillow study that identified a strong relationship between rents and homelessness. It found two rent thresholds. Homelessness begins to increase when the median rent rises to 22% of the median income. It increases sharply when rent is 32% of income.
In 2018, the US mean was about 28%.
In Birmingham, AL it is about 23%, while in Los Angeles it is about 48%. Guess which city has a bigger homelessness problem. On average one is far less likely to become homeless in Birmingham than LA. The effectiveness of this simple metric to estimate the level of homelessness suggests the problem is mostly economic, i.e., insufficient income relative to housing costs.
Texas: state wide ban on camping on public property, misdemeanor with a $500 fine. Cities in the state are required to enforce the law. Cities are also allowed to be more draconian. The bill’s sponsors say the law was enacted in response to the city of Austin repealing it’s ban on camping out during the plague.
Missouri: camping on state land is a Class C Misdemeanor. The law also outlaws cities using state or federal funding to provide affordable housing, only shanty towns, where the residents are required to submit to drug testing.
Tennessee: camping out is a 6 year felony, and loss of voting rights. The mind boggles. I can see how this could go: Thousands of homeless ushered into state prisons, the mob howls about them being “a public charge”, so prison industries expanded to make them work off the cost of their incarceration. The program excused with narratives like “we are teaching them about the dignity of work”, and “we are teaching them about personal responsibility”, but the reality would be half a step off of a Chinese style forced labor camp.
As Tim used to comment “beatings will continue until attitude improves”. I noticed the state laws in Texas, Tennessee and Missouri were all enacted in 21-22, as Shiny-land becomes more rigidly intolerant, and any effort to actually help people is dismissed as “woke”.
Portlanders with disabilities sue city over tents on sidewalks - OPB.
A group of Portlanders with disabilities is suing the city for failing to keep public sidewalks accessible. The issue isn’t curb cuts or sidewalk width. The problem, the lawsuit alleges, is tents on the sidewalk, which prevent people with wheelchairs and walkers from passing without difficulty.
The class action lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court accuses the city of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act by allowing people to camp on city sidewalks. The Americans with Disabilities Act, known as the ADA, bars discrimination based on disability and requires sidewalks be accessible to everyone.
Aside from making fun of “shiny” people (whatever that might be) do you have any suggestion for how to solve the problem of homelessness? Dumping on conservatives may be cathartic but it doesn’t seem all that productive.
I also wonder how many folks here would really be okay with there being a homeless encampment in the neighborhood park where your kids play at. Or how about a homeless shelter across the street from your house? This strikes me as one of those issues that generate indignation as long as it isn’t in one’s backyard.
Sure, its easy to make fun of the intolerance of redneck states but its not like NYC allows homeless encampments in Central Park and the very liberal electorate of San Francisco recently recalled their progressive attorney general who decriminalized public camping and public urination.
There is a desperate need for programs that go beyond just maintaining the status quo of temporary shelters and food banks. Allowing camping in public parks and city sidewalks isn’t a very productive or popular homelessness policy.
Read the article I linked to about what Houston has been doing. They have significantly reduced the number of homeless people by offering affordable housing and not requiring drug screens for applicants. The new law in Missouri bans the things Houston is doing, by preventing state and federal funding being used for affordable housing and requiring drug screens for people to even live in an approved shantytown.
Which is great. But note that Houston uses a carrot/stick approach. They ban public camping by the homeless if alternative housing or shelters are available. I would also note that during the time when Houston was reducing its homeless numbers, homelessness in the entire state of Texas was declining. Texas homelessness declined by 35% from 2007-2019. That suggests that much of Houston’s decline was probably due to a strong Texas economy that provided a lot of good paying jobs.
That’s not to take anything away from Houston’s efforts, which are admirable. But again, that emphasizes the point that the key factor in homelessness is the availability of affordable housing. That is what Houston focused on, finding more cheap housing. What Houston is doing is difficult to duplicate in places like SF, LA, NYC, and Honolulu where land is so much more costly and in demand.
One problem I have with this “mental health is the cause of our homeless question” narrative is that it ignores that mental health problems are often themselves a consequence of our social problems. Anxiety and depression are at an all time highs throughout our society, and why not? We have successfully created a fully individualized society in which all responsibility is personal, and all problems are your own. The only way out of our personal problems are through personal solutions, and, failing these, self medicating and escapism become the only real ways of addressing those problems.
The economic challenges facing less well educated people appear insurmountable from the ground. Even an $18/hr job, which looks generous for those of us who couldn’t tell you the price of a gallon of milk, is punishingly meager when trying to survive in the real economy. Rent alone will eat up 2/3rds of your gross income for a one bedroom apartment outside the worst slums in your city. You can’t get near a 600 sq ft apartment in DC for less than $2000/mo unless you’re willing to cross the anaconda.
We have created a ruthlessly individualistic and lonely society, fit only for the economic winners of our own hunger games. If our streets are filled with homeless people high on dope, and suffering from depression, anxiety, and a host of other mental disorders, is it any wonder? Until they happily reconcile themselves to a pittance and a hovel, we will continue to suffer the unsightly problem of the filthy poor littering our streets. But hey, maybe lithium will fix their problems.
Somewhere upthread, I looked at the data: Houston’s homeless population 70/100,000 is below the state average of 89/100,000. Missouri does not have a space problem, but outlaws cities using state or federal money to make affordable housing available, and requires a drug screening to even live in a shantytown. Houston does not require a drug screen to qualify for affordable housing.