e.g. The City of San Francisco is spending over $300M/year directly on services towards easing homelessness. This does not count state expenditures focused in the area, private expenditures, expenditures by surrounding areas, and the wealth of indirect expenses. Versus a homeless population of 10,000, this is $30,000 per year per homeless person in the City of SF-- just direct expenses by City of SF.
Clearly an overall change in approach is needed-- not just additional resources spent the same way.
Of course spending the money more efficiently would be preferable, but additional resources spent the same way would also work.
We are already spending, as a nation, much more than this. We spend roughly $3B federally directly on homelessness (not including other programs aimed at poverty that provide assistance). California spends $1B. California localities spend $3B. New York City spends $3B alone.
These are just governmental expenditures, aimed directly at homelessness, and ignore charitable efforts.
One caveat with the analysis is that your census of homeless people does not count the people housed as a result of these programs. It also doesn't count the number of people that would have to be served that are not presently considered homeless.
Ideally federal agencies should take care of this and make sure that every US citizen in need is taken care of where he lives.
Yes, there are circumstances where throwing someone on a bus to a locality where he has some family or other connections is the best move for all involved. But we need to make sure that is actually the case, not based on some tenuous connection and a desire to displace the costly individual somewhere else.
This isn't enough, though. Even without explicit governmental support to move, homeless people know that there are localities where it's "better" to be homeless and will move themselves.
That is close to impossible, I'm afraid. And even if federal regulation prohibits the executive branch from such programs, I guarantee that it will be replaced by some "church", neighborhood watch, political action group or whatever...
Fixing this requires bringing housing prices way down, which requires a ton of new housing built throughout the Bay Area. This is politically difficult because a substantial proportion of the people who live in suburbs full of single-family houses don’t want to have apartment buildings on the same street, and cities would rather have office buildings (which bring tax revenue but require few services) than housing (which brings less tax revenue and requires many services).
It would also help to fix the US health insurance system.
These demographic numbers are often misleading. E.g. ~70% of people in San Francisco had some sort of housing in SF at some point before becoming homeless; but that number includes people who were housed through governmental programs or spent a short time on someone's couch, and a majority of this 70% had not been in San Francisco long term.
> This is politically difficult because a substantial proportion of the people who live in suburbs full of single-family houses don’t want to have apartment buildings on the same street, and cities would rather have office buildings (which bring tax revenue but require few services) than housing
It's especially difficult because when you look at true bedroom communities, they have very low sales tax revenues already, and property tax revenues are low in California, and the share given thereof to cities is small. Expecting these communities to absorb further high-service, low-tax burden is unrealistic.
You can house all the homeless, and more will take their place on the streets.
But not everyone is willing or able to conform to the rules required for such housing. Further, people migrate to SF and join the homeless population faster than people are housed.
There's conditions required for any housing, including housing one owns.
I do not think the requirements that SF allows its housing partners to impose are excessive (don't destroy the housing; don't deal drugs from the housing; don't continually create noise/waste/smells that adversely impact your neighbors).
SF also requires that nuisance evictions be conducted with plenty of warning and efforts by landlords and caseworkers to cure.. e.g.
> Nuisance evictions should include numerous incident reports, tenant complaints, prompt writeups and a “last ditch” tenant conference meeting with notes or a signed agreement.
And said tenants are entitled to due process after these numerous writeups and conference meetings, and legal assistance.
That is, if you lowered rents 50% through increased housing supply, it's not clear how many formerly homeless people will now be housed.
All new houses and transferred properties are taxed at the value they were purchased.
Unrelatedly, Brisbane found that they could raise 9 times as much revenue and provide 0 times as much additional services to residents by approving hotels instead of housing. https://brianlui.dog/2018/08/01/housing-shortages/#_edn4
In a similar vein, I volunteer with a pigeon and dove rescue organization, and it's no secret that businesses install spikes on eaves and ledges to deter birds too. Although it always makes me sad to see them, I can understand and appreciate why they do it.
Furthermore, that attitude drives people away from philanthropic work by alienating them about what image their proposed good deed generates.
Just do good, any way you find.
Those aren't "tents", they're you if you made the wrong choice or had the wrong thing happen to you.
I bet most of the homeless have their normal social ties severed, and shame, guilt, hate and other such things keep them away from their former friends and relatives.
Also, I bet the great majority of them don't have a job, or another occupation, and lives on handouts and petty crime.
Overcoming this first is required to make these people feel like fathers, sisters, sons, etc again, and agree to come back into the society.
Americans have this "rugged individualism" to our culture. I left my own home when I was still 15, most people at 17 or 18.
I live in Istanbul, and the first thing I noticed was the lack of homeless people in this city of 15-20million (depending on with whom you are talking). This is because Turks have a much stronger family structure, and most people live with their parents until they're married at the very least.
I'm from San Francisco and have known many of my friends to become homeless over the past 20 years through combinations of, as I stated before, substance abuse, trauma, and a lack of a strong family / social support structure.
My closest friend is a homeless violinist hippy in San Francisco (who just returned after 4 years in Istanbul). He keeps tents in 6 or 7 spots around the bay, most of them with breathtaking views. He just likes being homeless. (Brilliant guy. Oliver. He plays mostly in Bart, the Mission, and North Beach. Say hi in any language, he knows it)
I also know a lot of kids from my various music scenes who are homeless on purpose. The street punks, for example, find a stronger family structure drinking 40s on telegraph or the haight all day than they ever did in their own middle-class homes. (PS: Fuck the kids on haight. They're basically an aging street gang, I used to be in a band with one of them.)
There's about 15,000 living in the streets of Istanbul, and about 150,000 living in the streets of Turkey according to NGOs.
150k per 80M compares to about 200k living unsheltered in the US (per 320M) or 550k homeless overall.