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Re:This is Real, That's Not by timeeater on Saturday December 05, 2020 @02:17PM (#25317416)
Rising rents are not evidence that rising rents are a major cause of homelessness.

"what happens when you lose your job, and then lose your apartment as a result?"

Then losing your job is the cause, not the rising rents.

"So your theory is that rich people hire homeless people off the street to cater to them?"

I could imagine many people migrate to those places to try to make their luck, because there are many opportunities. Many people trying their luck means also many people failing.

Pretty sure that a couple of dozen Billionaires do NOT cause homelessness.

"Trickle down doesn't work."

People living in New York are probably quite well off in general. A bunch of homeless people don't contradict the trickle down effect. You yourself mentioned mental illness, addiction, and unforeseen events as major causes of homelessness. Notice how rising rents and high paying jobs are not on the list.

"> but also the jobs that make the rich people rich.

This is along the lines of saying "stop being poor, just get one of those jobs that the rich people have"."

Not at all, and this is becoming silly. All I said is that there are presumably the jobs that made the rich people rich, which will usually be a lot of jobs, because rich people will usually have sold a lot of things. Building lots of things requires many workers.

"I would encourage you just read up on the subject instead of inventing theories that sound good to you."

If you are so well read, then provide some convincing evidence for your claims. None of the three links you provided tell us anything about the cause of homelessness. I noticed in the last one that California has very low youth homelessness, though.

Frankly, your "well researched" theories about homeless sound mostly like leftist anti capitalist propaganda to me.

Re:This is Real, That's Not by tchaffee on Saturday December 05, 2020 @03:39PM (#25318105)
> I could imagine many people...

Yes, that's the entire problem I've been encouraging you to stop doing. You don't need to imagine. It's an extremely well researched subject.

I was sincerely hoping you'd put a little work into the research yourself (like I asked you to) instead of continuing to create mental fantasies about why homelessness might happen. We already know why it happens. Without any cherry picking on my part, here are the top five search results from "causes of homelessness". Is it really going to surprise you that "lack of affordable housing" shows up over and over? When average rents goes from $1000 to $2300 in a few years, that's a specific example of "lack of affordable housing" isn't it? It's plain common sense that skyrocketing rents are going to put some people on the street. If you don't believe the articles, talk to some real homeless people, like I have during my volunteer work to help them.

https://atlantamission.org/7-major-causes-homelessness/

https://www.homelesshub.ca/about-homelessness/homelessness-1...

https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/what-cau...

https://www.solutionsfdl.com/resources/what-causes-homelessn...

https://www.humanrightscareers.com/issues/root-causes-of-hom...

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Re:This is Real, That's Not by tchaffee on Sunday December 06, 2020 @02:12PM (#25325801)
You're moving the goal posts. You asked for this:

> If you are so well read, then provide some convincing evidence for your claims. None of the three links you provided tell us anything about the cause of homelessness.

I gave you five articles listing the causes of homelessness. Now you're claiming the articles aren't enough.

> If you could give everybody a free house, there would probably be less homeless people.

In many cities they have in fact done this and it works pretty well. It's significantly cheaper than the hospital visits and the extra burden on the police force.

You want to keep inventing theories out of your own imagination, while I have actual experience working with homeless people, in several major cities around the world. If you don't want to believe that gentrification in general and specifically rents going from $1000 to $2300 in a few years causes homelessness for those who were barely able to afford rent in the first place, that's certainly your choice. You can have the last word as I don't see this going in a useful direction.

Re:This is Real, That's Not by timeeater on Sunday December 06, 2020 @03:26PM (#25326340)
"I gave you five articles listing the causes of homelessness. Now you're claiming the articles aren't enough."

Um yeah, because they are not? They don't say anything about rising rents causing homelessness, they only mention the same correlation you also mentioned (rich city has many homeless), which doesn't provide any causation. In fact most of them don't provide any evidence at all. Some web site claiming "x causes y" is not actually evidence for anything.

"In many cities they have in fact done this and it works pretty well. It's significantly cheaper than the hospital visits and the extra burden on the police force."

Sure, but that was not what we are discussing. We are discussing the claim that rising wealth increases homelessness. That's an entirely different question. In fact wealthy regions would probably be better able to provide free housing for homeless people than poor places.

If you have actual experience working with homeless people, give us some real information.