What I am against is a totally unstructured program where they hand cash out knowing that 90% of it goes into an open air drug market that they make no attempt to shut down or control.

I’m not arguing for work requirements or time limits. People who are legitimately struggling will fall through the cracks. But I don’t think it is insane or inhumane to require people to work with supportive assistance and be put on a pathway to supportive housing.

> I don’t think it is insane or inhumane to require people to work

Sorry if I'm missing something, but aren't these directly antithetical?

There definitely needs to be case workers or someone involved to help provide these people a path to recovery.

This article has an extremely click bait headline; it's entirely about one encampment and not at all about what the $17B is being spent on or any other aspect of the homelessness problem.

Nevertheless, one thing pointed out in this article is that some of the homeless do have jobs, so the issue of work requirements is not simple. And I think you need some evidence for your suggestion that anyone is being handed cash and spending 90% of it on drugs.

If access to money is not their actual impediment then you may be making their situation worse.

> I’m not entirely sure what your point is. Are you saying that adding more rules and conditions and whatnot is better?

You are drowning. I throw $1000 at you. Are you saying I should have done more?

> argue for fewer rules

Judging by living in the middle of this policy. The number of homeless has increased and the number of open air drug markets, prostitution, and suicides have increased with them. There is a concerted _lack_ of enforcement of rules. The homeless purchase RVs from scrap yards, move them onto the sides of streets, and live in them.

Zoning and parking laws are ignored. Noise laws are ignored. Drug laws are ignored. There is zero effort to serve this population and get them out of the literal gutter. Pets are a massive problem. Children are living in the middle of this. And our response is just.. "here's $1000 and a legal carte blanche for anything short of murder."

It's not working.

One of the most under appreciated aspects of this is that the current policies actually hurt the homeless people who are stuck in a poverty trap and want to get out. They have to live daily with an ever increasing number of people who are allowed to engage in dangerous and uncivil behaviour. There are parents and children on the streets who want nothing more than to get off them - but until that happens, their quality of life has been made considerably worse by the policies presently in place.

What if we apply your logic to your own scenario?

You are drowning. I will jump in and help you get to safety only after you have taken a blood and piss test. Are you saying I should have done more?

> You are drowning. I will jump in and help you get to safety only after you have taken a blood and piss test. Are you saying I should have done more?

I think his point was that if someone's drowning, you throw them a life preserver or jump in and save them. You don't throw them $1000, because that's not the solution to the problem they're actually having. It's not like the water will spit them out if you pay it.

And if your problem is addiction, $1000 might just make your problem worse. That $1000 might as well be considered a pile of drugs or booze.

When I was growing up I was friends with a kid whose Dad actually worked trying to help homeless people in a very cold climate. IIRC, one time they had a program to give out subzero rated sleeping bags, but stopped once they realized they were just getting pawned.

I jump in and help you to shore.

You immediately jump back in and start drowning again.

Someone else helps you to shore

You jump back in and start drowning again.

Eventually everyone who would help you wants some kind of evidence that this time you won't just jump back in before they help you.

You drown.

Are you saying they should have done more?

We've tried putting a "fence" around drugs, it doesn't work.

And we've decided that putting a "fence" around addicts (aka prison) is wrong.

So it seems like we really don't have options.

The real analogy would be that you have to consent to the would-be savior to verify you are actually drowning. Im not sure anyone drowing would think “no thanks ill take my chances”.

How do you pay to enforce all of this? Do jails have adequate space? Are there enough judges, courtrooms, and public defender's to handle this efficiently? Where should the children go?

"It's not working"

What are your suggestions for aiding people to be able to afford rent and sustaining themselves?

Well if you cant enforce it and jails don’t have adequate space shouldn’t you put more resources to those things? Or do you not actually think it should be enforced nor should people be put in jail?

I'd be happy to argue about the value of means-testing. However people who are in favor of means testing can rarely point to a study validating the effectiveness of it, because the reality of means-testing is that it: a) Increases administration costs, making it rarely cost efficient b) Increases barriers to access, leaving people who need help behind c) Tends to create poverty traps and weird distorting incentives.

I'd also be happy to look at data in terms of what services the unhoused need most, and what is the most helpful in terms of ending long-term homelessness and reducing the impact on society as a whole. This is a separate discussion.

In reality though, I think most people on both sides think of it on a local scale, and therefore are struggling to actually come up with solutions that will fundamentally solve the issue. Communities have generally gone with one of two solutions to these issues: 1) Making it difficult for those who are unhoused. 2) Trying to improve the situation of those who are unhoused.

The first approach doesn't actually solve the problem, it just shifts it to other locations. At its worst you see it with cities and towns busing their homeless to other places, but you see it expressed most frequently with the criminalization of homelessness. If this was the approach everywhere we would quickly enter an arms race of who could make things worse, and you would almost certainly see the problem nationally become worse.

On the other hand, you have communities trying to improve the lives of unhoused folks, which is really just a bandaid on the core issue.

The root of the problem is the cost of housing, and unfortunately this is an area which California has struggled to solve. However, this is completely orthogonal to how you treat your homeless populations. You can treat the homeless with dignity AND lower housing costs at the same time.

Like when world bank lend money to country that are bankrupted, they ask them to take the money for reform and try to improve their economy, same should happen here.

Doing this conflation is the worst kind of anti-ethical you can be. Just like assuming other things about whole groups of people.

For this debate, I can really recommend Rutger Bregman and his books. One of his important points about poverty is that people are that: Poor. And that is their problem.

There are plenty of homeless people who are in a poverty trap, as you describe, but I think it oversimplifies the situation to argue the arrow of causality only goes one direction for all homeless people.

I think over-complication is the issue in the states, which in turn makes a lot of these grants go to heads thinking about the issues rather than the actual issues.

I also think it is important to attribute issues where they are due: Mental issues is not a housing problem, it is a health care issue. Not being able to manage money is not a housing problem, it is a primary school problem. Etc.

With all respect for your previous life, it does sound like you needed some quality health care more than a parental system that handed out food stamps (in fear that the money otherwise would have gone to drugs).

SF is a ridiculously expensive city that people from across the US consider (who have homes even) consider themselves priced out of.

It seems mind boggling that people think everyone deserves a home in SF itself, instead of relocation to, say, a new suburb constructed a couple hours away (where housing is cheaper!).

Constructing that suburb would create jobs. The infrastructure needed to maintain it would create jobs. And even if it remains a net cash drain, it'll still likely be cheaper than 17B a year while giving people actual homes with opportunities to work their way up and out

The problem is that many homeless people would genuinely rather live on the streets or in shelters in the city proper where they have easy access to the things they want, versus having a house provided elsewhere.

They want housing near their preferred begging spots and their dealers, basically.

To take an unpopular example: Iran

Iran provides food and shelter to all it's citizens, making sure everyone has their minimum needs met. They've combined this with strict laws against begging. If they see anyone begging on the street someone will come up to them and ask "Why are you begging? Do you have some basic need that's still unmet?"

Outcomes will range from: - Helping them with that need (if it's legitimate) - Directing them to getting some kind of job if they merely want more income (even if it's selling trivial knick knacks on the street) - Presumably there's penalties for repeat offenders

Source: Iranian.

I am not opposing that they are statistically related. But it is not OK to assume that people are drug addicts when they tell that they are homeless. That is normal human decency.

Families are the fastest growing homeless demographic.

Treating unhoused persons as a homogenous population is probably the original sin of modern American homeless policy.

It gives you some useful tricks, though. E.g. if somebody complains about the chronically homeless addicts assaulting people downtown? Why, you just point out that X% of "the homeless" are actually just regular non-addicted people temporarily down on their luck, who just need a free hotel room for a couple weeks.

But ya, most people won’t notice, since they didn’t notice these people before.

But the subject isn't addicts, it's homeless people. Not all homeless people are addicts, and not all addicts are homeless.

Not sure what you think a drug addicts needs are, because usually at the top of the list is "drugs".

There other services provided en-masse for homeless people with addiction problems but you can't force them to take advantage of them.

The "free-money" isn't about treating the root cause of the recipients addiction the hope is to address a symptom and prevent people with addiction problems from committing crimes to fuel their habits.