* 41 percent of San Franciscans spend 30 to 50 percent on rent, despite a lot of rent control for longer-tenure residents and a population average income being $104k as well as median $77k.
* Zoning rules have restricted the housing supply so much that the median age of a San Francisco building is 1964, despite multiple boom times after that which should have lead to upzoning. http://demomemo.blogspot.com/2017/02/age-of-housing-stock-by...
* On the peninsula there is one housing unit for every four jobs. Cities have build offices and garnish the income from that, but forces the externalities on housing and infrastructure onto surrounding cities because city boundaries does not reflect where those fall
A lot of problems solve themselves when a one bedroom doesn't cost $3600 per month. We have plenty of space to build up and are mainly limited by zoning that.
There is no question in my mind that when even my tech friends can't afford to live on their own a normal middle class family is in trouble.
Then there is the "poverty" that is caused by urban planning issues in urban and coastal California. There are families making six figures who can qualify for affordable housing programs here. In no way should a family bringing in six figures be just barely scraping by, but due to the increasing rent burden that’s where many find themselves.
The Cal budget center presents these facts: http://calbudgetcenter.org/resources/californians-parts-stat...
* The problem is state-wide. Cost burdened or severely cost burdened renters; Far north 42%, San Francisco Bay Area 37.8%, Sacramento Region 38.4%, Central Valley 38.9%, Sierra Nevada 36.8%, Central Coast 42.1%, los angeles and south coast 46.1%, Inland Empire 42.7%
* more than half of California's renters and over a third of homeowners with mortgages face high housing costs
* 8 in 10 low income Californians have unaffordable housing costs
The US census shows that people without means can't afford the living costs are self-selecting themselves away:
* A snapshot of more recent U.S. Census migration numbers shows that nearly three-quarters of those who have left California for other states since 2007 earn less than $50k a year.
If they had suggested merely that housing costs are an issue for californians, I would not have argued.
Legislators seem to disagree with you and passed a bill to require relevant cities to zone for farmworker housing https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm... and there is another one proposed this year.
Everything I read attribute this to a lack of housing supply. https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/09/19/housing-affordability... and http://capitolweekly.net/crisis-affordable-housing-grips-cal...
For instance, Stockton leads California rent increases with a 10.4 percent increase in rental price between July 2016 and July 2017 and their home prices have increased 92% in the last 5 years. In a supply balanced market this would not happen as the landlors do not have leverage to increase rent this much, and developers/owners don't have the leverage to sell housing for this much more.
I'd also suggest that unless you're looking at county adjusted poverty levels (as in adjusted to cost of living by county) - you're gonna end up with a skewed picture.
That said, the right is correct about something - once you get on the social safety net, its very hard to get off of it, because benefits don't gradually fade out as your income goes up, there is instead a cliff, and all of your social safety net benefits turn off at once - this is why I feel that means tested welfare is social ill, it helps too few, and doesnt provide a soft landing when you dont need help anymore. I'd much rather us do straight up income redistribution (in the form of a minimum income scheme) and medicaid for all.
I'd consider leaving intact WIC, because I look a a GMI mostly as a replacement for minimum wage.
I'd pay for it with a financial transactions tax (something minuscule like .001 cents on the dollar for any money transfer, and a VAT.
Something like 30-40% of this program could be paid for by feeding in dollars existing programs, the lions share of the rest of it from the financial transactions tax (sucks if your business is high frequency trading), and a smaller portion from a VAT.
edit: you dropped that "Sure, they abuse them now". I saw it.
At what cost?
Minimization of poverty is important but I don't believe it can ever be totally eliminated. You and I just have different fundamental beliefs about human nature and motivation.
If the OP is right (and I think he is), the more safety nets and welfare programs there are the more poverty. This is because they have a learned helplessness and are subject to fiscal cliffs preventing them from escaping poverty.
in other words: Poverty ought to be minimized. Therefore, if giving people free shit increases poverty, we shouldn't do it.
Give me an impossible to abuse welfare system
Everyone over the age of 18 gets a check from the government for 1,000 dollars a month. The only qualification to get the money, is being 18 years old, being alive, residing in the united states and being a citizen or permanent resident of the united states.
Short of creating fictitious people, with fictitious identity documentation, its virtually impossible to cheat it.
I'd probably allow anyone who was not working overseas for longer than a year to continue to draw it, its really about your permanent residence and where it is - on the other hand the number of americans who work abroad is astonishingly small - so probably not enough to worry about.
Part of what a GMI would need to overcome is ensuring that we have an accurate tracking program - a death should trigger an semi-automated removal from the rolls - as in you need to present yourself.
No system is foolproof, and even the best one in the world is going to have upwards of 2-3% fraud - that said the social security administration historically has been VERY good about tracking them down, and remarkably successful at clawing overpayments back.
In the end, by eliminating means testing you close down a ton of venues for fraud.
I agree, and that’s why I would never say it was virtually impossible to cheat one.
No system in the world is going to stop people from doing stupid shit - you try the best you can, but at the end of the day, people have to choose to do the right thing.
This is correct. Warm winters is also a significant pull-factor.
Agreed, but I think it's weird that that isn't weird. Our parents' generation were able to buy a home, save for retirement, and raise a family on one person's income. Now we sign over half our monthly income to a landlord, and spend the rest on Avocado Toast.
The sort of lifestyle you describe is still easily available to two-income families, at least, (maybe one-and-a-half) in most mid-sized cities even in many larger cities. Those cities are mostly great for raising a family. For a single person, often not so much.
Not really, but it is an increasingly popular excuse for people trying to mentally justify the stupid decision to stick it out as a homeless person in California.
However, the most outwardly visible facet of homelessness is individuals who are unsheltered, i.e. sleeping in public places or vehicles. The states with the highest rates of unsheltered people (out of total of those experiencing homelessness) was in California, Nevada, and Hawaii, Oregon, and Mississippi [1]. On the other hand, the statewide percentages themselves are not particularly insightful as to the magnitude of the problem, as they aren't weighed by the total number of individuals.
Surprisingly, raw population of unsheltered homeless individuals per metropolitan area, or as a share of total population in a metropolitan area, is a metric rarely aggregated in reports, but from digging though the data [2], one can see that the absolute number of unsheltered homeless individuals is indeed highest in Los Angeles (34000+), San Francisco (~9000), Seattle (~5000+), and New York City (4000+). Weather is certainly a factor in outcomes of unsheltered individuals, but I'm not convinced weather is a factor in contributing causes in the particular concentration of people. It appears that New York City seems to muster more assistance to individuals experiencing homelessness than Los Angeles, where in the latter more people end up on the streets, and San Francisco's problem is, in both absolute and relative terms, not as acute as that of Los Angeles, despite public perception occasionally being the contrary.
Sources: [1] https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/2017-AHAR-P... [2] https://endhomelessness.org/resource/homelessness-populous-u...
I had a class in Homelessness and Public Policy from SFSU some years ago. I lived in California a total of 12 it 13 years, iirc. Five and half of those were as a homeless person.
I am author of the blog the San Diego Homeless Survival Guide, which means I hear from both homeless individuals and reporters periodically. I still participate on a homeless discussion forum where it is not uncommon for people to ask where they should move to as a homeless person. I traveled from Georgia to San Diego as a homeless person. I went there in part for the dry, temperate weather.
I recently got off the street in part by traveling to someplace cheaper. It is much wetter here than the places I lived while homeless. Nonetheless, it is a relatively temperate part of Washington and seems to attract a lot of homeless. I am fairly confident the relatively temperate weather is a factor.
Only 10% of total counted reported living outside of California when they became homeless. I can intuitively understand that weather may be a draw, but San Francisco's findings this year, as well as in 2015 don't appear to back that a majority of those experiencing homelessness in San Francisco are travelling there from outside the state.
[1] http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017-SF-Poin...
If only we shut the borders like those great red states want to do, we'd have a lot fewer poor people and our stats would be higher!
However, it failed to cite any kind of causality. It seems just as likely that those kinds of benefits are precisely why they come here.
I'd also be interested in knowing if it's truly a trap -- do immigrant families come here, get those benefits, then move up? Or is it the same 55% decade after decade?
US psychiatric, APS, and CPS services are poor, and can't adequately deal with the needs of those already here. It's only going to get worse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Sta...
This article has some factual information about it, including statistics from census data and some details. e.g: substance abuse, people being priced out of their homes, etc.
I would keep politics and ideology aside.
I propose that California's poverty woes are disproportionately due to a permanent and ever-growing underclass, whose existence and continued plight isn't caused by policies like rent control, welfare reform, and targeted eco-taxes that end up being regressive; but rather, is a simple consequence of individuals desperate for more prosperity and financial security making tough choices for the good of their families.
They are attracted to the cores and fringes of urban areas that play host to islands of productivity and wealth, where they work long hours and multiple jobs in an effort to provide. Some are later-generation Americans born to immigrant ancestors, some are youth from elsewhere in the US trying to flee metros with no growth, some are recent arrivals from regions of the world plagued by poverty and strife, and some are undocumented, working under the table and living in the shadows of mainstream society, more avoidant of law enforcement than groups who suffer the most violence at the hands of the law, and always at the mercy of their employer, handlers, and pure luck.
These groups are there because in California they can capture a larger portion of the effects of trickle-down than in North Carolina, Texas, or New York; and because the state-provided safety net, average people's compassion, and availability of human connections and capital allows them a small, but more meaningful chance of breaking out of the poverty trap.
In other words, the prosperity, concentration of wealth, human capital, and laxer attitude of California allows these marginalized groups a better shot than elsewhere -- especially places like Mississippi and West Virginia, whose poverty is primarily indigenous, and isn't among recent arrivals. California is somewhere where trickle-down does display elements of it working, at the very least in the hearts and minds of those attracted to the state. We can argue about its magnitude all day long, but to flagellate all manner unrelated policies after a myopic reading of statistics is absurd.