California Spent $17B on Homelessness. It’s Not Working

Re:California Spent $17B on Homelessness. It’s Not Working by labcomputer on Friday June 02, 2023 @04:05PM (#36170057)

I mean, the elephant in the room is that we easily build enough housing for 115k people for much less than $17B if we simply allowed it to be built outside an existing city in the Central Valley. There's plenty of relatively cheap land to build mid-density housing and all the services the population would need (hospitals, substance abuse assistance, public safety, etc).

It would be like having two new cities the size of Merced.

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Re:California Spent $17B on Homelessness. It’s Not Working by majormajor on Friday June 02, 2023 @04:31PM (#36170358)

I think the tricky thing with that scenario is doing this in a way that isn't just a fancy name for forced imprisonment, now that we're not only saying "you have to get off the street" but also shipping people to this new mega-complex.

It's not just an image problem either: let's say you kick the substances, get over some of the trauma from your time on the street, and want to get back into the world. Are the only local jobs "administration for the complex"? Is there no way to try to do something beyond that without having to travel a couple hundred miles and lose the support network and any social connections you'd made?

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Re:California Spent $17B on Homelessness. It’s Not Working by JoeAltmaier on Friday June 02, 2023 @04:32PM (#36170372)

I understand such people may be particularly fragile. But the rest of us move for a job all the time.

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