New York State law also mandates that cities must provide shelter beds for their homeless population, so there is enough shelter space for their homeless population, there is no such law in SF/CA.

A significant proportion of the rough sleeper population are not easily housed. They may have significant mental health issues that do not warrant involuntary hospitalisation, but cause them to be extremely disruptive or unwilling to be housed. They may have unmanaged substance abuse problems, particularly alcohol dependency. Trauma and PTSD often play a significant role. Sometimes, they're just antisocial assholes. Most of these people can eventually be housed, but it often takes years of intensive support and dozens of false starts.

Homelessness exists in a complex relationship with many other personal and social problems. The provision of shelters is only one element of the solution. If you aim for a complete and rapid elimination of visible rough sleeping, you'll inevitably end up persecuting rough sleepers or bussing them off to somewhere else. There is a great deal that can be done to reduce rough sleeping and much of it isn't being done, but there's no magic wand.

> They may have significant mental health issues that do not warrant involuntary hospitalisation, but cause them to be extremely disruptive or unwilling to be housed. They may have unmanaged substance abuse problems, particularly alcohol dependency.

When you make housing for the homeless dependent on being sober and clean, just what, exactly, do you expect as an outcome if not that?

THIS moralizing "Oh, but you've got to DESERVE the help!" is partly why homelessness (and poverty) are still major problems in the US.

(Oh, and the truly pathetic NIMBYism in San Fran doesn't help anything... It makes solving the housing problem in general intractible. Seriously, shut up about the "character of the city" when you're really just using that as an excuse to increase your home value and when that "character" leads to a whole bunch of homelessness and rent that is impossible for people seeking jobs to afford.)

>When you make housing for the homeless dependent on being sober and clean, just what, exactly, do you expect as an outcome if not that?

Note my use of the word "unmanaged". It's possible to house people with active substance abuse problems, but it's considerably more challenging, particularly heavy drinkers and crack users. There is a significant impact in terms of care because you're dealing with people who have a limited capacity to look after themselves, but the primary impediment is aggression and violence. It only takes one difficult resident to turn the whole facility into bedlam, at which point you're faced with few options other than evicting them for the sake of the other residents.

Wet houses do exist, but they're a lot more expensive to run and they face far more local opposition. They're a fundamentally good idea, but housing alcoholics and other difficult-to-house groups is a lot more complex than just "open more shelters". You need a highly skilled multidisciplinary team to make it work, and you're still going to have some amount of unavoidable rough sleeping.

If you still don't see where I'm coming from, imagine a crack addict with diagnosed antisocial personality disorder. Imagine someone who has been arrested multiple times for assaulting medical staff and police officers. Imagine someone whose life revolves around multi-day crack binges, which usually end in an episode of drug-induced psychosis and either an ER visit or an arrest. These people are not exceptional in the population of chronic rough sleepers, but they're exceptionally difficult to house.

Sounds like they're exceptionally difficult when you don't house them as they end up in contact with police or medical staff.

Sometimes the best answer is to just give them their own space instead of a shared facility.

I've had plenty of contact with the homeless, have housed them in my own home for a night or three. They all have at least some kind of substance abuse problem (every one smoked, for instance). But if you push them out on the street, they'll end up eventually in the ER or in contact with police. This is way more expensive.

Highly dysfunctional people generally become less dysfunctional when they're housed, but they also become your problem. In an ideal world society would see the benefits, but in the real world, you're going to have to deal with an onslaught of problems. The neighbours are going to kick up an enormous fuss if the guy down the hall is stumbling around drunk at all hours of the day and night. The police are going to be all over you if your property turns into a crack den. You've got liability issues if one of your residents burns the place down.

Housing is a crucial part of the response to homelessness, but it's only a part. Some people can walk straight into a home and get back on their feet, but some people will need intensive support and others just aren't ready to be housed.

Do you have any advice on how I could find someone who knows how to assemble a team like the one you described, for managing wet house?

I'd start with local agencies that provide support for people experiencing homelessness and addiction. I'd also look to work with anyone who might be seen as a "community leader". If you're looking to open a wet house then you'll need great staff, but you'll also need good working relationships with other agencies. If you can't get the local government on your side, then you're doomed from the outset. You need people who are connected and know how to work the system.

Good luck.

>How do you know?

I've worked in housing advice and have been personally involved in rehousing homeless people. A member of my immediate family is a director of a housing association and has run several supported housing facilities.

It'd be fantastic if homelessness was as simple as "give people homes", but it isn't. Housing is part of the problem - a very large part in some areas - but chronic rough sleepers have very complex needs.

If you don't believe me, go out and talk to some rough sleepers. Ask them about their life stories. Ask them about the people they've met on the streets. You'll find some people who have had a bad run of luck and just need somewhere to stay, but you'll also find people who are highly dysfunctional and need intensive support to rebuild their lives.

I read that Finland managed to "solve" homelessness,by unconditionally giving to every homeless a place to live and more support, if needed.

Is it true? And if so, why isn't this model being copied, at all?

Finland have substantially reduced homelessness, but they're some way from eliminating it. The most effective element of their programme appears to be homelessness prevention, through early intervention for families and individuals at risk of homelessness.

The obvious difference is simply money. Finland spends 50% more on welfare than the US as a proportion of GDP. They have publicly-funded healthcare of exceptionally high quality, extensive social support and a comprehensive public housing programme.

This all connects together. Fewer people fall into homelessness as a result of poverty, because they have a comprehensive welfare state. Fewer people become homeless because of mental illness or drug addiction, because there's comprehensive healthcare coverage and easy access to rehab. Fewer people become homeless when leaving prison, because ex-offenders are referred directly to social workers who can provide personal support, drug treatment and housing. The housing-first model is one element of a holistic strategy to reduce poverty and destitution.

The US could achieve something similar, but it'd cost somewhere in the region of $500bn a year, even accounting for efficiency savings. It also takes a long time. Finland's homelessness initiative more than halved homelessness, but it took the best part of 20 years to achieve. Sadly, I'm not sure that America has the political will to spend a lot of money over a long period of time.

https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/153258/YMra...

I've yet to meet a person in SF who wants these policies towards the homeless.

Compassion is reducing the friction to life, somehow creating $500/month apartments with no credit checks and month to month.

Compassion isn't letting the homeless do anything, camp and violate other's rights, disrupt and distress the working lower to middle class, and reducing the penalties for petty crime while increasing the fines for minor infractions by taxpayers.

New York City has homeless shelter capacity for 60,000 or more people every night. It puts San Francisco to shame in that regard. The reason tens of thousands of homeless people aren't all in the street, is because they have such vast shelter capacity.

San Francisco can't manage to handle 3,000 to 4,000 people without permanent shelter (~6,600 total homeless), despite its immense affluence as a city. It's a failure of priorities.

I think you need to account for the fact that SF has a population of ~860,000 where as NY has a population of ~8,500,000. You also have to account for the weather in SF vs NY. Not defending either city just trying to put the numbers in to perspective

I was accounting for that. NYC manages to provide shelter space for 10x the number of homeless persons as there are total in SF, while having 10x the population of SF.

I'd argue that it's easier for a smaller affluent city of 860k to solve a problem of roughly 3,000 +/- homeless people (their problem isn't the 6k overall figure, it's a smaller subset of that), than it is to deal with 10x that homeless figure at 10x the city size. Human problems like that get more difficult with scale rather than easier.

I'm not sure how SF weather plays in to providing shelter space for the homeless as a problem. It should be easier and cheaper for SF to do it, as SF requires both less air conditioning in the warm months and less heating in the cold months. Of course, this is also where SF's terrible zoning laws show up as usual.

The weather effect isn't about the cost of the shelter space. There is less incentive to put up with shelter rules (or risks, as the case may be) when the homeless can sleep outdoors somewhat comfortably year-round.

Anecdotally I can tell you shelters begin to fill up when it snows or gets extremely cold. This weekend NYC is looking at lows in the teens. SF, lows in the mid 40s.

Having lots of homeless people on the streets is the opposite of solving the homeless problem. SF should be demonized.

What beaner is saying is: If City A orders cops to hassle rough sleepers and panhandlers, closes homeless shelters and offers the homeless bus tickets to other cities; while City B doesn't do those things; then City B will have more homeless people on the streets despite the fact their policies are kinder, more charitable and more humane towards the homeless.

Are there statistics on Homeless -> Employed figures?

Only if you frame the problem as "I see homeless people".

And your framing is "homelessness isn't a problem" I assume then? Because that's San Francisco's policy.

I live in NYC, and we're currently in the middle of a two-week-long span of high winds and average temperatures of -9°C, with lows of -15°C (before you add in wind chill).

If you don't have good shelter for these conditions death is pretty much a guarantee. I sure as hell would never want to be homeless in NYC during a winter like this one. You cannot discount the effect of weather on homeless populations, and even the homeless can typically scrounge together enough money for a one-way bus ticket to somewhere warmer, once.

Basically. I think weather is likely main reason places like SF, LA, and San Diego have huge homeless populations.

That in combination with unaffordable housing. There are plenty of homeless people in these places who aren't mentally ill and do in fact still have full-time jobs; they just literally can't afford a place to live and end up living in their car in a parking lot somewhere. If everything else about their situation remained the same, except rent prices were cheaper, they wouldn't be homeless.

I agree, weather plays a huge role. To praise NYC for lack of homelessness when very few homeless could live there as a result of that factor, doesn't make much sense.

>This is a product of SF being extremely welcoming and supportive of the homeless and the poor.

>NYC has less of these things because it has undergone extreme gentrification and has politics and police which treat the homeless much worse.

This is part of the puzzle. However, I think there are other contributing factors too, like the weather. If I was homeless I sure wouldn't want to be in NY in winter.

Also NYC does have an enormous homelessness problem. It's just that it also has a culture of police action driving homeless people out of upscale areas so that the well off don't have to be distressed by noticing it.

San Francisco is a perfect illustration of a liberal ethos : "Let me step over a homeless person on my way to a party where I can pontificate with my compassionate friends about the homelessness over a glass of Aubert"