But lack of affordable housing is still the number one cause.
We only claim someone's problems are entirely due to drug use when they hit skid row. We don't predict homelessness for millionaire rock stars who go to rehab repeatedly.
Drug use doesn't cause homelessness. Lack of housing causes homelessness.
The real solution is: We need to fix the housing crisis.
At that point, isn’t a moral judgement, just an effective use of limited resources (do we burn money trying to treat drug addicts who try to cook meth in the housing you give them, or do we spend $2k/month getting that non addict an apartment so they can get a job).
B. I would like to address the housing crisis per se as a first line of defense rather than wait until people are homeless and then try to decide who merits help and what the cost-benefit ratio is and etc.
For many people, if there was enough affordable housing, this whole argument about their merits and defects and etc wouldn't happen at all. There would, no doubt, be other arguments but my research indicates lack of affordable housing is the primary issue here.
I’d absolutely choose going all-in on affordable housing over a return to the war on drugs or doubling down on catastrophic decrim. But without limits on in-migration for social programs, the idea seems frustratingly doomed from the start.
The solution to this in-migration should be clear. These programs need to be offered in every single city in the entire country. People need to pay more taxes to fund social programs. I'm clearly not American ;)
But your point is valid. That said there's still probably enough friction in the system such that someone living in a certain place isn't just going to move to Santa Barbara. Moving is expensive and has uncertainties. People coming today to places like Portland or Vancouver, BC, are desperate. If they had some basic support where they're currently living they would be a lot less likely to take those risks.
I’m not sure if people would stay put in say great falls MT if the support was better. But even among the well to do housed, they often move from these towns because the economic opportunities are better in larger richer cities. People have freedom of movement in the USA and mostly use it across the economic spectrum.
The only debate right now is whether the first category mostly leads to the second category (and vice versa if the second mostly comes from the first). That is should we just treat the categories the same or not, then more affordable housing would help if most people in category two are coming from one. If the assumption is wrong, we will still see people on the streets even if housing is affordable.
The other part of the debate is whether these problems are local or national, which has implications in how homeless programs are funded and where the affordable housing should be built. If all of the country’s homeless decides to move to SF, Seattle, LA for their affordable housing, the program will obviously fail.
You: "Let's throw a bunch a people off a cliff and then assess who is worth saving afterwards!"
Me: "Let's stop throwing people off a cliff. If we stop doing that, we can stop arguing about who is too broken to save and whether or not it's a personal character defect that they ended up more broken than others who got thrown off the same cliff."
Lawmakers can’t magic up affordable housing, especially at the federal level. I get people have crazy ideas, but this is the craziest. We could do what Singapore or Austria does with a residency system, though, but progressives don’t like that either.
Me: "Thanks guys!"
The problem isn't simply housing costs. The problem is the lack of a social support structure. Shelters, access to (mental) health care of various forms, addiction treatment etc... Even in "socialist" (ha) Canada you're mostly on your own. BC used to have more money for those things and at some point in the early 2000's those budgets were cut with pretty immediate impact on the homelessness situation. That said housing should be part of the solution but it all boils down to the attitude that you don't need to take care of ($$$) your neighbor. Each to their own. Worse in the US ofcourse but still.
When I came to Vancouver ~23 years ago I was absolutely shocked by the homeless situation. I've never seen anything like that. It's much worse now. Again, boils down to are members of society willing to take care of each other- or is it each to their own and ignore the people who are down. House prices were 1/8th of what they are now but there was no shortage of drug addicts on the streets. North Americans seem to generally be ok with having a mix of worse than the 3rd world alongside middle class and well off. Nobody cares about what goes on in their city. I guess not trending on TikTok.
Houston for example simply throws your ass in jail if you’re doing drugs and houses you if you aren’t. They claim to have solved homelessness, and they have in that the actual folks you’re talking about end up housed or in shelters every night.
Being married to an immigrant who actually had to struggle in a third world country with almost no social or economic mobility has left me with almost no sympathy for the homeless in America. Folks in far shittier situations than them play their hands far better.
> Folks in far shittier situations than them play their hands far better.
Aren't you contradicting yourself here? If these folks were screwed up from the beginning doesn't this mean they had no hand to play from the start?
There are many, many folks in third world countries that don't make it through life too well either. Life is pretty doomed for you if you're just born in Sudan right now for example. Yet some, very few, of them will succeed in extirpating themselves from the situation.
Statistically there will always be people who fare better than others, through a combination of sweat, blood, and luck. I don't know if it's fair to have "almost no sympathy" for the ones who were too stupid and unlucky to be winners.
Still I think you meant extricate.
Luckily, we have studies we can rely on rather than feelings or Youtuber anecdata eg [1]:
> In many instances, substance abuse is the result of the stress of homelessness, rather than the other way around. Many people begin using drugs or alcohol as a way of coping with the pressures of homelessness
[1]: https://americanaddictioncenters.org/rehab-guide/homeless
Every single one of them had a home when they started using the hard drugs, and many had a home through most of their addiction, and only became homeless after the addiction had progressed to severe levels.
If most people have personal experience like mine, then maybe there are issues with the research (people blaming their personal failings on things outside of their control, for example)
This seems anecdotal too. Very meta.
In any case, I'd rather trust actual research rather than a random HN user and what they feel most people's experiences are like.
Those aren't mutually exclusive, and furthermore, they likely have major overlap.
Homelessness isn't a monolith. Treating someone who gets evicted after job loss the same as mentally ill drug addicts is making the problem worse. Homeless assistant programs are successful at helping people who accept the help.
The drug addicts you see on the streets are engaging in destructive antisocial behavior. Sadly the only effective remedy for this behavior is to be roughed up by police and thrown in jail.