What are we doing to get people into housing?
December 6, 2020 10:47 AM Subscribe
According to Need is a new five-part documentary podcast from 99% Invisible: "The way homelessness has exploded in California over the last decade, you’d think there was no system in place to address it. But there is one – it just wasn’t designed to help everyone." Produced by Katie Mingle, the Prologue covers her arrival in Oakland last year, Chapter 1 focuses on Tulicia's experience sleeping inside her car with her son, and Chapter 2 spends a day in the 211 "homelessness hotline" call center to find out why it's a dead-end for so many people.
Lets say the actual figure is many multiple higher. Lets say it is 30,000. How hard would it be to build two bedroom apartments for 30,000?
People in big chunks of California won’t even entertain the idea of four-story buildings. It’s important to recognize that homelessness and unemployment are desirable outcomes for landowners and employers.
posted by mhoye at 11:58 AM on December 6, 2020 [36 favorites]
People in big chunks of California won’t even entertain the idea of four-story buildings. It’s important to recognize that homelessness and unemployment are desirable outcomes for landowners and employers.
posted by mhoye at 11:58 AM on December 6, 2020 [36 favorites]
Yeah Measure fucking Y just passed in San Mateo with a super unreasonable low height limit for another decade. Those people who voted for that don't care about the homeless. And that's not a unique attitude among cities in the peninsula. People don't care and it sucks.
posted by Carillon at 12:13 PM on December 6, 2020 [9 favorites]
posted by Carillon at 12:13 PM on December 6, 2020 [9 favorites]
geoff, you have to understand that for huge numbers of people, their preferred solution to homelessness is that unhoused people just "vanish" -- whether to some other state where we don't have to think about them anymore, or unhoused people just aren't alive anymore, they don't really care. Part of the problem in jurisdictions like NYC and metro California is that is so expensive to build housing at all, that you could spend $100,000 building a decent apartment for an unhoused person easily. This doesn't even get into the issue of "taxpayers" throwing fits because Those People (drug addicts! criminals!) are getting FREE HOUSING while I have to pay for it!!! People will absolutely go apeshit if it seems like others aren't being sufficiently punished for the crime of being poor. That's not a moral reason not to give people housing who need it, but it complicates efforts to actually accomplish this because people who feel this way vote consistently and tend to have a lot of pull in the local political system.
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 12:52 PM on December 6, 2020 [13 favorites]
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 12:52 PM on December 6, 2020 [13 favorites]
Honestly I think people would balk at outright killing the homeless if you said it that directly, but if you couched it in enough euphemisms they'd totally go for it. (And if you think liberal cities are caring and compassionate, you haven't heard someone from San Francisco talk about the homeless).
There have been several studies on this, I remember New Orleans and Utah off the top of my head, and it's cheaper and cost-effective to just give people housing. Not means-tested. Not with a bunch of requirements. Just here. You live here now. (Unless you're actively a threat to other people). If you want to sit in your room and drink or do heroin all day, fine, just don't bother your neighbors. And it works. It's cheaper. It's cost-effective. You don't need a huge administrative bureaucracy. We know what works.
We just don't want to do it.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 2:07 PM on December 6, 2020 [43 favorites]
There have been several studies on this, I remember New Orleans and Utah off the top of my head, and it's cheaper and cost-effective to just give people housing. Not means-tested. Not with a bunch of requirements. Just here. You live here now. (Unless you're actively a threat to other people). If you want to sit in your room and drink or do heroin all day, fine, just don't bother your neighbors. And it works. It's cheaper. It's cost-effective. You don't need a huge administrative bureaucracy. We know what works.
We just don't want to do it.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 2:07 PM on December 6, 2020 [43 favorites]
If you want to sit in your room and drink or do heroin all day, fine, just don't bother your neighbors. And it works. It's cheaper. It's cost-effective
Yep, wet houses. But check out the opponent framing:
People who vote against increasing budgets or changing zoning to accomodate higher-density and/or low-income residents (not the same people) get all of their information about the homeless from TV and TV news, who gets 99% of their information about the homeless from law enforcement. It's quite the scam.
posted by rhizome at 2:31 PM on December 6, 2020 [10 favorites]
Yep, wet houses. But check out the opponent framing:
Dufty’s opponents also point out that elected officials would never support the idea of setting up shelters for homeless heroin addicts and handing out money or bundles of black tar heroin on a daily basis.Focus on the most serious cases, and raise the level of detail ("handing out," "black tar," "daily") for scandalizing purposes. On the other hand, "elected officials" passes as an undifferentiated collective, and if you raise the level of detail on them, we'll get "officials whose campaigns were bankrolled by law enforcement and moralizing religious interests." These groups are not the voting majority.
People who vote against increasing budgets or changing zoning to accomodate higher-density and/or low-income residents (not the same people) get all of their information about the homeless from TV and TV news, who gets 99% of their information about the homeless from law enforcement. It's quite the scam.
posted by rhizome at 2:31 PM on December 6, 2020 [10 favorites]
but if you couched it in enough euphemisms they'd totally go for it
They already do.
posted by mhoye at 3:28 PM on December 6, 2020 [9 favorites]
They already do.
posted by mhoye at 3:28 PM on December 6, 2020 [9 favorites]
Yeah Measure fucking Y just passed in San Mateo with a super unreasonable low height limit for another decade. Those people who voted for that don't care about the homeless. And that's not a unique attitude among cities in the peninsula. People don't care and it sucks.
Wasn’t that technically a vote to continue reserving themselves the power to vote on developments over a certain height? I agree that it’s not going to have a positive effect, but it’s pretty hard to get people to vote to lose their vote on things in the future.
posted by atoxyl at 6:11 PM on December 6, 2020
Wasn’t that technically a vote to continue reserving themselves the power to vote on developments over a certain height? I agree that it’s not going to have a positive effect, but it’s pretty hard to get people to vote to lose their vote on things in the future.
posted by atoxyl at 6:11 PM on December 6, 2020
I do recall Utah just putting the homeless in apartments or housing and it seemed to work (at least for a while). Though the homeless and mental problems seem to go hand in hand. If you want to fix homelessness you need to bring in proper mental clinicians to make it work long-term. Just putting people in homes or apartments will only work for so long. You have to address the underlying issue.
posted by cparkins at 6:31 PM on December 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by cparkins at 6:31 PM on December 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
In the US and other countries lacking in any sort of widely available mental health care, there is a positive correlation between mental illness and homelessness, both in the sense that people with mental illness are more likely to end up homeless, and in the sense that homelessness takes a toll on one's health (mental and physical). There are also plenty of homeless people who are not experiencing mental illness, or at least not yet. Anyway, housing is a mental health support - it is also the case that if you want to "fix" mental illness, you need to ensure that people have safe housing. Just bringing in proper mental health clinicians will only do so much.
(The correlation is, of course, a result of specific policy choices and budget priorities (or lack of priority). Both eradicating homelessness and preventing (where possible)/treating mental illness will thus require better policy and budget decisions, including directly housing people.)
posted by eviemath at 7:34 PM on December 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
(The correlation is, of course, a result of specific policy choices and budget priorities (or lack of priority). Both eradicating homelessness and preventing (where possible)/treating mental illness will thus require better policy and budget decisions, including directly housing people.)
posted by eviemath at 7:34 PM on December 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
Part of the problem in jurisdictions like NYC and metro California is that is so expensive to build housing at all, that you could spend $100,000 building a decent apartment for an unhoused person easily.
600,000.
600,000 dollars to build an affordable housing unit in Oakland. Or you know, any unit. Which means some tiny amount of affordable housing does get built for low-income and homeless people because grants are available through various government agencies, but there are no grants to build housing for average people. In the Bay Area we are only building housing for low income people or very rich people and that's it. It's a fucking impossible situation.
posted by oneirodynia at 7:39 PM on December 6, 2020 [8 favorites]
600,000.
600,000 dollars to build an affordable housing unit in Oakland. Or you know, any unit. Which means some tiny amount of affordable housing does get built for low-income and homeless people because grants are available through various government agencies, but there are no grants to build housing for average people. In the Bay Area we are only building housing for low income people or very rich people and that's it. It's a fucking impossible situation.
posted by oneirodynia at 7:39 PM on December 6, 2020 [8 favorites]
And of course we aren't building anywhere the amount of housing that low/no income people need either.
posted by oneirodynia at 7:40 PM on December 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by oneirodynia at 7:40 PM on December 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
Oh, and the estimate to build housing for the entire homeless population of California as of *February 2020* was 70 billion dollars.
posted by oneirodynia at 7:43 PM on December 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by oneirodynia at 7:43 PM on December 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
I don't get why there's so many barriers up.
Because Every. Single. Program. we put in place to help people in any way has to be means-tested to hell and back because Ronald Reagan made up the idea of welfare queens and GOD FORBID one single undeserving soul gets a cent of 'mah tax dollars'.
posted by graventy at 8:29 PM on December 6, 2020 [21 favorites]
Because Every. Single. Program. we put in place to help people in any way has to be means-tested to hell and back because Ronald Reagan made up the idea of welfare queens and GOD FORBID one single undeserving soul gets a cent of 'mah tax dollars'.
posted by graventy at 8:29 PM on December 6, 2020 [21 favorites]
Wasn’t that technically a vote to continue reserving themselves the power to vote on developments over a certain height? I agree that it’s not going to have a positive effect, but it’s pretty hard to get people to vote to lose their vote on things in the future.
Nope, I wish, it's a blanket amendment to the general plan, I'm almost certain there's nothing that comes to an individual vote.
The current General Plan has voter-approved limits on how tall and dense new buildings can be constructed within the City. In most areas planned for higher-density development, the limits for new building height is 55 feet or about five stories and residential projects are limited to 50 units per acre. Some areas (usually located near transportation corridors, major streets, commercial areas, downtown and train stations) are allowed to go up to 75 feet or about seven stories under certain conditions. Areas zoned for single-family homes have lower limits. These limits were first adopted by voters in 1991 and were extended in 2004 through Measure P until at least Dec. 31, 2020
It's shit and I'm really disappointed in my community.
posted by Carillon at 8:30 PM on December 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
Nope, I wish, it's a blanket amendment to the general plan, I'm almost certain there's nothing that comes to an individual vote.
The current General Plan has voter-approved limits on how tall and dense new buildings can be constructed within the City. In most areas planned for higher-density development, the limits for new building height is 55 feet or about five stories and residential projects are limited to 50 units per acre. Some areas (usually located near transportation corridors, major streets, commercial areas, downtown and train stations) are allowed to go up to 75 feet or about seven stories under certain conditions. Areas zoned for single-family homes have lower limits. These limits were first adopted by voters in 1991 and were extended in 2004 through Measure P until at least Dec. 31, 2020
It's shit and I'm really disappointed in my community.
posted by Carillon at 8:30 PM on December 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
I don't get why there's so many barriers up.
The Seattle suburb Renton is voting tomorrow to adjust their zoning plan so that the current covid-prompted homeless shelter in a hotel will become illegal in June, and any future shelters in the city are effectively banned.
The barriers are up because people are unredeemably selfish assholes.
posted by bashing rocks together at 8:50 PM on December 6, 2020 [25 favorites]
The Seattle suburb Renton is voting tomorrow to adjust their zoning plan so that the current covid-prompted homeless shelter in a hotel will become illegal in June, and any future shelters in the city are effectively banned.
The barriers are up because people are unredeemably selfish assholes.
posted by bashing rocks together at 8:50 PM on December 6, 2020 [25 favorites]
What is the solution to the NIMBY issue in countries with a housing first policy?
posted by Selena777 at 11:33 PM on December 6, 2020
posted by Selena777 at 11:33 PM on December 6, 2020
What is the solution to the NIMBY issue in countries with a housing first policy?
I still think in the US incentivizing living next to homeless would go a long way. Either through tax rebates or some sort of direct housing credit.
posted by geoff. at 11:47 PM on December 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
I still think in the US incentivizing living next to homeless would go a long way. Either through tax rebates or some sort of direct housing credit.
posted by geoff. at 11:47 PM on December 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
My experience working with homeless adults in the city of Chicago has been a nightmare, it's convoluted, the services are awful awful and the space isn't anywhere near the need . There are agencies that do relatively well, but everybody knows it, and the beds are just so super hard to come by.
Really, policy wise it feels like we have a hammer and a screwdriver and have been told to build a house. We might get some things done here or there, but the problem won't be solved, the tools are so incredibly insufficient .
It doesn't help that the biggest shelter in the city of Chicago is blatentltly a Christian mission, whose purpose is conversion to Christianity, with a captive audience, which may or may not help peoples homeless situation. I have so many stories about that place. The put conversions on YouTube. To stay during the day one must attend chapel 5 times a day. You can get a cot at night without the church services, but only get 30 days a time, and they lose some other services in the process. They also shelter adults in basically gymnasium style rooms, filed with people. They also don't take city funding, and sometimes the discrimination is utterly blatent. They seperate families by gender (they use to, though this might have changed? They have a family program now). I went there when i worked a job that have people subsidized apartments, and i was trying to find someone i had an apartment for. They refused to let me speak to get until chapel was done, even though she'd been approved for an apartment and we were scheduled to go look at a few THAT VERY DAY. They also gave that same person a loss of privalages for having a job, so she couldn't attend chapel and was late for shelter curfew because of said job. I could go on and on and on.
COVID made the bed situation significantly worse, and it's coming into a cold winter and there are no solutions that I know of. I worked this weekend and by 4pm beds were full for the night. There is no guidance for people who don't have beds. If you don't get one, that's that. There no waiting area shelter, or any designated places. Supposedly you can stay in hospital lobbies or police stations (which obviously that's problematic) but no hospital is letting anybody congregate indoors, much less a bunch of people experiencing homelessness who may not get beds for days.
There's lots of kinds of homeless, with all kinds of reasons. Homelessness due to mental illness looks very different than homelessness due to substance use (there's overlap, but when the primary cause is one over the other the interventions look extrodinarily differently and the motivations, the insight of the client, and the ability to participate in various support services varies dramatically. Homelessness due to economic reasons, homelessness due to domestic violence, homelessness due to immigration (legal or illegal), and homlessness in vets and older adults are all incredibly different.
Sometimes there's specialuzed services, sometimes not. DV shelters are on the whole better, but I run into situatons where adult siblings have violent dyamics, or an adult child still living with a parent, and even though those situations may have similar dynamics and concerns (control, loss of economic freedom, significant abuse and safety concerns, because it's not defined as intimate partner violence it just doesn't count).
Most of the complaints i hear about shelter are absolutely legitiment concerns. They are afraid of being infected with bugs (which happens at an alarming rate!), there's no security in terms of item safety, there's no privacy due to the nature of congregate shelter, the bathrooms are disgusting, they desire respect from staff and there's fear of violence. All of those requirements are logical, reasonable, and quite frankly basic expectations that social service agents refuse/can't to meet because some idea that giving someone a tiny bit of something is way more than someone should expect. And its utterly dehumanizing. And if shelters are better people might just live in them and never move out. Well, when you build a shelter like that, you've done a great job, and you should do more of that thing!
So of course people avoid the shelter system.
There's also just so so so many people and so few resources at the moment, that the referral system isn't taking anything into concideration. if someone refuses a bed (no matter how legitmate the reason (someone has a job they need to commute to, someone required/wanr to be do custody exchanges or dcfs related child visits, someone concerned about gang violence (i hear this one alot),etc. Those fears are founded and legitimate concerns. But to the shelter system, there someone less picky waiting, goodbye. You are not allowed to reapply for shelter for 24 hours. If a family refuses or leaves a family shelter, they are barred for 30 DAYS. I've had kids younger than ONE barred from shelter over assinine reasons because something happened and now the whole family is barred for 30 days.
Chicago is a centralized system, if you anger the powers that be, you pretty much have to leave the city to get shelter.
I get to explain this harsh reality alot. I hate it. In my corner of social work i have pretty much zero leverage in these things. It makes so angry.
posted by AlexiaSky at 6:13 AM on December 7, 2020 [30 favorites]
Really, policy wise it feels like we have a hammer and a screwdriver and have been told to build a house. We might get some things done here or there, but the problem won't be solved, the tools are so incredibly insufficient .
It doesn't help that the biggest shelter in the city of Chicago is blatentltly a Christian mission, whose purpose is conversion to Christianity, with a captive audience, which may or may not help peoples homeless situation. I have so many stories about that place. The put conversions on YouTube. To stay during the day one must attend chapel 5 times a day. You can get a cot at night without the church services, but only get 30 days a time, and they lose some other services in the process. They also shelter adults in basically gymnasium style rooms, filed with people. They also don't take city funding, and sometimes the discrimination is utterly blatent. They seperate families by gender (they use to, though this might have changed? They have a family program now). I went there when i worked a job that have people subsidized apartments, and i was trying to find someone i had an apartment for. They refused to let me speak to get until chapel was done, even though she'd been approved for an apartment and we were scheduled to go look at a few THAT VERY DAY. They also gave that same person a loss of privalages for having a job, so she couldn't attend chapel and was late for shelter curfew because of said job. I could go on and on and on.
COVID made the bed situation significantly worse, and it's coming into a cold winter and there are no solutions that I know of. I worked this weekend and by 4pm beds were full for the night. There is no guidance for people who don't have beds. If you don't get one, that's that. There no waiting area shelter, or any designated places. Supposedly you can stay in hospital lobbies or police stations (which obviously that's problematic) but no hospital is letting anybody congregate indoors, much less a bunch of people experiencing homelessness who may not get beds for days.
There's lots of kinds of homeless, with all kinds of reasons. Homelessness due to mental illness looks very different than homelessness due to substance use (there's overlap, but when the primary cause is one over the other the interventions look extrodinarily differently and the motivations, the insight of the client, and the ability to participate in various support services varies dramatically. Homelessness due to economic reasons, homelessness due to domestic violence, homelessness due to immigration (legal or illegal), and homlessness in vets and older adults are all incredibly different.
Sometimes there's specialuzed services, sometimes not. DV shelters are on the whole better, but I run into situatons where adult siblings have violent dyamics, or an adult child still living with a parent, and even though those situations may have similar dynamics and concerns (control, loss of economic freedom, significant abuse and safety concerns, because it's not defined as intimate partner violence it just doesn't count).
Most of the complaints i hear about shelter are absolutely legitiment concerns. They are afraid of being infected with bugs (which happens at an alarming rate!), there's no security in terms of item safety, there's no privacy due to the nature of congregate shelter, the bathrooms are disgusting, they desire respect from staff and there's fear of violence. All of those requirements are logical, reasonable, and quite frankly basic expectations that social service agents refuse/can't to meet because some idea that giving someone a tiny bit of something is way more than someone should expect. And its utterly dehumanizing. And if shelters are better people might just live in them and never move out. Well, when you build a shelter like that, you've done a great job, and you should do more of that thing!
So of course people avoid the shelter system.
There's also just so so so many people and so few resources at the moment, that the referral system isn't taking anything into concideration. if someone refuses a bed (no matter how legitmate the reason (someone has a job they need to commute to, someone required/wanr to be do custody exchanges or dcfs related child visits, someone concerned about gang violence (i hear this one alot),etc. Those fears are founded and legitimate concerns. But to the shelter system, there someone less picky waiting, goodbye. You are not allowed to reapply for shelter for 24 hours. If a family refuses or leaves a family shelter, they are barred for 30 DAYS. I've had kids younger than ONE barred from shelter over assinine reasons because something happened and now the whole family is barred for 30 days.
Chicago is a centralized system, if you anger the powers that be, you pretty much have to leave the city to get shelter.
I get to explain this harsh reality alot. I hate it. In my corner of social work i have pretty much zero leverage in these things. It makes so angry.
posted by AlexiaSky at 6:13 AM on December 7, 2020 [30 favorites]
I don’t think the government is going to be willing or able to pay people in the area surrounding the housing, Geoff.
posted by Selena777 at 9:31 AM on December 7, 2020
posted by Selena777 at 9:31 AM on December 7, 2020
According to Need is fascinating. I haven't yet finished the series, and I'm really hoping Katie Mingle explores more of the common questions the non-homeless have about homelessness. Already she is exploding the myth that well-meaning but clueless conservatives tell themselves: Services are available for anyone who wants help. This myth rationalizes not increasing funding for services, and it renders anyone sleeping on the street worthy of contempt because it deduces they must have rejected public assistance in favor of addiction and crime. Yes, there are services, and they have years-long wait lists, inadequate funding, and Byzantine limitations designed to exclude people.
Does anyone have links to further insightful pieces about homelessness? It's surely ignorant of me, but the thing I always want to know is why more people do not leave for areas with lower cost of living?
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 10:03 AM on December 7, 2020 [5 favorites]
Does anyone have links to further insightful pieces about homelessness? It's surely ignorant of me, but the thing I always want to know is why more people do not leave for areas with lower cost of living?
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 10:03 AM on December 7, 2020 [5 favorites]
Housed people are well housed! They aren't homeless! Homeless is a weird word that's used as an excuse to discriminate against a bunch of people for a bunch for reasons. And when you start using words that accurately describe the situation, you see that it's mired in discrimination for people who are suffering from a range of disabilities.
I've worked in a chronic homelessness to housing initiative. It was a pretty neat job, putting people in scattered site apartments . Some people were super successful, some people weren't, for a variety of reasons. There is a subset of the homeless population that have disabilities that make them extraordinarily difficult to house, and keep housed but most homeless people get an apartment and things get better. The people who can't succeed in individualized housing arrangements are really really being failed by the medical system and safety net system because we should have some supportive services for adults that are somewhere between full independent living and nursing home placement. That inbetween stuff is rare, and often times indaquate. Most programs are designed to be short term, and in some of cases their difficulties with housing aren't going to change.
Often times, even in subsidized programs, the biggest issue we faced is that it was required for people to pay rent. Which 1) most people were getting the base amount for SSI which was like 735 a month, and 30 percent of that was their portion of the rent. Sometimes substance use was a barrier, but lots of times they just wanted basic stuff like food, or clothes, the ability to travel around the city they live in, pay for a cavity to be filled or outpatient medicine, a cell phone, laundry, hygene products. Just normal every day things. And there was never enough to meet their basic needs. Sometimes there were child support payments, sometimes there was other family. People have complicated lives and needs, and for those who are unable to work the subsistence income provided isn't enough even when that person is lucky enough to get into a program that considers the total income to calculate rent responsibility.
posted by AlexiaSky at 10:04 AM on December 7, 2020 [11 favorites]
I've worked in a chronic homelessness to housing initiative. It was a pretty neat job, putting people in scattered site apartments . Some people were super successful, some people weren't, for a variety of reasons. There is a subset of the homeless population that have disabilities that make them extraordinarily difficult to house, and keep housed but most homeless people get an apartment and things get better. The people who can't succeed in individualized housing arrangements are really really being failed by the medical system and safety net system because we should have some supportive services for adults that are somewhere between full independent living and nursing home placement. That inbetween stuff is rare, and often times indaquate. Most programs are designed to be short term, and in some of cases their difficulties with housing aren't going to change.
Often times, even in subsidized programs, the biggest issue we faced is that it was required for people to pay rent. Which 1) most people were getting the base amount for SSI which was like 735 a month, and 30 percent of that was their portion of the rent. Sometimes substance use was a barrier, but lots of times they just wanted basic stuff like food, or clothes, the ability to travel around the city they live in, pay for a cavity to be filled or outpatient medicine, a cell phone, laundry, hygene products. Just normal every day things. And there was never enough to meet their basic needs. Sometimes there were child support payments, sometimes there was other family. People have complicated lives and needs, and for those who are unable to work the subsistence income provided isn't enough even when that person is lucky enough to get into a program that considers the total income to calculate rent responsibility.
posted by AlexiaSky at 10:04 AM on December 7, 2020 [11 favorites]
Just putting people in homes or apartments will only work for so long. You have to address the underlying issue.
I mean paying for people to live indoors, no strings attached, solves plenty of problems on a day to day basis. The problem with this is just that in a lot of places with a lot of unhoused people housing is fucking expensive for anybody.
posted by atoxyl at 11:21 AM on December 7, 2020 [6 favorites]
I mean paying for people to live indoors, no strings attached, solves plenty of problems on a day to day basis. The problem with this is just that in a lot of places with a lot of unhoused people housing is fucking expensive for anybody.
posted by atoxyl at 11:21 AM on December 7, 2020 [6 favorites]
The shelter system is also incredibly expensive, especially when you coincider use of emergency rooms, behavioral health hospitals, detox and substance abuse treatment facilities,
nursing homes and other things like detention facilities as places where homeless people end up seeking or recieving (especially in the case of jail) shelter even temporarily. Some high utilizers of ER services end up costing incredible amounts of money, though I couldn't find any figures quickly.
posted by AlexiaSky at 12:33 PM on December 7, 2020 [7 favorites]
nursing homes and other things like detention facilities as places where homeless people end up seeking or recieving (especially in the case of jail) shelter even temporarily. Some high utilizers of ER services end up costing incredible amounts of money, though I couldn't find any figures quickly.
posted by AlexiaSky at 12:33 PM on December 7, 2020 [7 favorites]
Two observations, no solutions: echoing the comments about local control and NIMBYism, here in Petaluma I'm seeing the NIMBY forces line up to CEQA the shit out of a fully conforming supported housing development on a major arterial right next to a train station because 4 stories and only 1.3 parking spaces per small unit.
And recent changes in funding policy mean that the local shelters have gone from picking and choosing to anybody through the door, which means that local "progressives" have gone from complaining about the lack of harm mitigation services to the problems of safety in the shelters. Complete with vicious personal attacks on the directors and sympathetic politicians.
And a larger problem is that often affordable housing is what happens to any housing in 30 years. Heck, the new neighborhood of relatively large homes built a decade ago 3 blocks from me is starting to see shared occupancy. But try to build a conforming development with large units (which is what the impact fee structure almost demands) and you don't have enough affordable units. Try to build affordable units and you have too many stories and not enough parking.
Prop 13 and CEQA both need massive politically unpopular overhauls, and we need to work on education so that self-described advocates for the poor don't keep destroying any possibility of changing anything.
posted by straw at 1:22 PM on December 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
And recent changes in funding policy mean that the local shelters have gone from picking and choosing to anybody through the door, which means that local "progressives" have gone from complaining about the lack of harm mitigation services to the problems of safety in the shelters. Complete with vicious personal attacks on the directors and sympathetic politicians.
And a larger problem is that often affordable housing is what happens to any housing in 30 years. Heck, the new neighborhood of relatively large homes built a decade ago 3 blocks from me is starting to see shared occupancy. But try to build a conforming development with large units (which is what the impact fee structure almost demands) and you don't have enough affordable units. Try to build affordable units and you have too many stories and not enough parking.
Prop 13 and CEQA both need massive politically unpopular overhauls, and we need to work on education so that self-described advocates for the poor don't keep destroying any possibility of changing anything.
posted by straw at 1:22 PM on December 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
Does anyone have links to further insightful pieces about homelessness? It's surely ignorant of me, but the thing I always want to know is why more people do not leave for areas with lower cost of living?
It's a reasonable question - and also one that is often asked of welfare/benefits recipients.
The answer is: some people do. I know people on ODSP (Ontario Disability Support Payments) who moved to Hamilton from Toronto, because housing was much cheaper. That said, 15 years later, they are being pushed out of Hamilton because so a lot of middle-class people have also moved there, because housing is cheaper.
But to address some of the major issues for low-income people and why they might not move:
- family and friends: people have personal connections who may be providing support to them, or to whom they may be providing support
- transit: low-income people are less likely to own a car, and less likely to even know how to drive a car. Most places with lower costs of living also have little to no public transit.
- social services: many people - especially those who are homeless or recently homeless - rely on services like drop-in centres and food banks which are located in specific areas. Someone I know was moving off the street into a studio apartment, but still stayed downtown because he was reliant on being able to walk to a food bank and drop-in centre. He would have had a lower rent in the suburbs, but no food support and no social support
- healthcare and/or education: many people, especially those with disabilities, have specialist healthcare needs that are not available in lower-cost areas. I'm in Ontario, so these healthcare needs are covered, but there are, for example, many fewer rheumatologists in rural areas. Similarly, if you have children with special needs, the local school system probably has fewer supports.
- jobs: if you are ever not going to be homeless, you need an income - and for most people that means a job. High-cost areas often have greater job opportunities (thus the increased demand on housing). Because you are low-income, you may not have a vehicle and/or know how to drive, and if you move out of a high-cost urban area with good public transit, you will never be able to get a job - also, you'd be trapped in your house without groceries, etc.
- Did I mention family? You can add to that history: homeless and low-income people have deep roots in the places where they live - family, history, friends, a religious community, knowledge of the local area, their local coffee shop where they are known by the staff. Moving to a new area means leaving everything you know, possibly to a very different culture. We mourn dying small towns and rural communities, but city people often have that same deep history.
Even moving from one area of a city to another can be enough to shatter friendships and make it difficult to maintain ties - especially if (as I've mentioned several times) you don't drive and it's 1-2 hours each way ride to get back to the old neighbourhood - and that's assuming that you can afford to pay for transit ($6 for a round-trip in Toronto) and are healthy enough to make a 3-4 hour round trip.
I realize that I've mentioned transportation several times, because it's a really big part of the story. People who drive live in a very different world from people who cannot - it's a larger world, a world with fewer boundaries. A town or city that is 1-2 hours away by car may actually be 3 to 5 hours away when you are taking an inter-city bus (you have to get to the bus station, wait for the bus, hope there is room) - or it may be impossible to get to. I have a friend who's parents invite us to their house in a nearby suburb for holiday dinners; it's a lovely gesture, but what for him is a 35-45 minute drive is for us a 2 hour bus-ride (if we make all the right connections), or a $100 car rental and still 90 minutes to pick up the car, do the paper work and go up. We're happy to do that for a special occasion, but we could never live there unless we bought a car (and I learned how to drive - something I'm working on, but still can't do).
Just putting people in homes or apartments will only work for so long. You have to address the underlying issue.
This is absolutely true. However, as pointed out by Housing First advocates, you can't really deal with the underlying issues until people have a safe and secure place to live.
As well, there are a great many homeless people for whom the essential underlying issue is poverty and the cost of housing. They are people who don't have addictions, whose mental health issues are caused primarily by a lack of housing, and all they need is a place that they can afford. Many of these people are also the invisible homeless - couch surfing, living with relatives or in a car, already in the shelter system.
Dealing with homelessness - as with any complex social issue - needs a multi-faceted approach. But one huge part of that approach is just to build more subsidized and affordable housing. There is a reason that subsidized housing was a big part of public policy for most of the 20th century - council housing in the UK, social housing in the Netherlands (which is almost 1/3 homes), public housing "projects" in the US - which may be notorious, but that's because no one invested in keeping them up, not because they were subsidized. There is no time in history of cities when the market has provided adequate housing for low-income people: we have 5000 years of homelessness and slums, except where social housing - whether medieval almshouses, council houses, public housing, co-ops - has alleviated some of the pressure (though never completely).
There are better and worse ways to design subsidized and affordable housing - but that's all about implementation and design (e.g. mixing subsidized housing in with market-rate housing to create mixed-income neighbourhoods). But we also need the simple political will to spend money on it. We have the money, but we don't have the political will from elites to make it happen. To get hyper local with my example, my city would rather spend $2.2 billion dollars to shorten the commute of 5000 drivers than to house the homeless.
posted by jb at 9:23 AM on December 8, 2020 [7 favorites]
It's a reasonable question - and also one that is often asked of welfare/benefits recipients.
The answer is: some people do. I know people on ODSP (Ontario Disability Support Payments) who moved to Hamilton from Toronto, because housing was much cheaper. That said, 15 years later, they are being pushed out of Hamilton because so a lot of middle-class people have also moved there, because housing is cheaper.
But to address some of the major issues for low-income people and why they might not move:
- family and friends: people have personal connections who may be providing support to them, or to whom they may be providing support
- transit: low-income people are less likely to own a car, and less likely to even know how to drive a car. Most places with lower costs of living also have little to no public transit.
- social services: many people - especially those who are homeless or recently homeless - rely on services like drop-in centres and food banks which are located in specific areas. Someone I know was moving off the street into a studio apartment, but still stayed downtown because he was reliant on being able to walk to a food bank and drop-in centre. He would have had a lower rent in the suburbs, but no food support and no social support
- healthcare and/or education: many people, especially those with disabilities, have specialist healthcare needs that are not available in lower-cost areas. I'm in Ontario, so these healthcare needs are covered, but there are, for example, many fewer rheumatologists in rural areas. Similarly, if you have children with special needs, the local school system probably has fewer supports.
- jobs: if you are ever not going to be homeless, you need an income - and for most people that means a job. High-cost areas often have greater job opportunities (thus the increased demand on housing). Because you are low-income, you may not have a vehicle and/or know how to drive, and if you move out of a high-cost urban area with good public transit, you will never be able to get a job - also, you'd be trapped in your house without groceries, etc.
- Did I mention family? You can add to that history: homeless and low-income people have deep roots in the places where they live - family, history, friends, a religious community, knowledge of the local area, their local coffee shop where they are known by the staff. Moving to a new area means leaving everything you know, possibly to a very different culture. We mourn dying small towns and rural communities, but city people often have that same deep history.
Even moving from one area of a city to another can be enough to shatter friendships and make it difficult to maintain ties - especially if (as I've mentioned several times) you don't drive and it's 1-2 hours each way ride to get back to the old neighbourhood - and that's assuming that you can afford to pay for transit ($6 for a round-trip in Toronto) and are healthy enough to make a 3-4 hour round trip.
I realize that I've mentioned transportation several times, because it's a really big part of the story. People who drive live in a very different world from people who cannot - it's a larger world, a world with fewer boundaries. A town or city that is 1-2 hours away by car may actually be 3 to 5 hours away when you are taking an inter-city bus (you have to get to the bus station, wait for the bus, hope there is room) - or it may be impossible to get to. I have a friend who's parents invite us to their house in a nearby suburb for holiday dinners; it's a lovely gesture, but what for him is a 35-45 minute drive is for us a 2 hour bus-ride (if we make all the right connections), or a $100 car rental and still 90 minutes to pick up the car, do the paper work and go up. We're happy to do that for a special occasion, but we could never live there unless we bought a car (and I learned how to drive - something I'm working on, but still can't do).
Just putting people in homes or apartments will only work for so long. You have to address the underlying issue.
This is absolutely true. However, as pointed out by Housing First advocates, you can't really deal with the underlying issues until people have a safe and secure place to live.
As well, there are a great many homeless people for whom the essential underlying issue is poverty and the cost of housing. They are people who don't have addictions, whose mental health issues are caused primarily by a lack of housing, and all they need is a place that they can afford. Many of these people are also the invisible homeless - couch surfing, living with relatives or in a car, already in the shelter system.
Dealing with homelessness - as with any complex social issue - needs a multi-faceted approach. But one huge part of that approach is just to build more subsidized and affordable housing. There is a reason that subsidized housing was a big part of public policy for most of the 20th century - council housing in the UK, social housing in the Netherlands (which is almost 1/3 homes), public housing "projects" in the US - which may be notorious, but that's because no one invested in keeping them up, not because they were subsidized. There is no time in history of cities when the market has provided adequate housing for low-income people: we have 5000 years of homelessness and slums, except where social housing - whether medieval almshouses, council houses, public housing, co-ops - has alleviated some of the pressure (though never completely).
There are better and worse ways to design subsidized and affordable housing - but that's all about implementation and design (e.g. mixing subsidized housing in with market-rate housing to create mixed-income neighbourhoods). But we also need the simple political will to spend money on it. We have the money, but we don't have the political will from elites to make it happen. To get hyper local with my example, my city would rather spend $2.2 billion dollars to shorten the commute of 5000 drivers than to house the homeless.
posted by jb at 9:23 AM on December 8, 2020 [7 favorites]
Two out of the three public spaces (parklets, basically) in my neighborhood have been converted into (or "taken over by," if you are anti) homeless encampments, and the first tents are appearing in the third just this week. The city has been providing outhouses and trash pickup, plus I believe the outreach teams are visiting on a routine schedule. At first it was all just tents, but now people have started building full structures out of lumber (which look like serious fire hazards for the camps, and I suspect will attract more negative attention).
On the one hand, this is tremendously better than making people move every night or coming in with surprise clearances to throw away their possessions, and providing the minimal level of services is at least acknowledging people's humanity. But, it also a crappy interim "solution" that won't last beyond the pandemic, is shitty for a neighborhood that has lost access to the very little public space available, and is a way for the city to not have to provide actual housing and services. And just because it is better than making people move every night doesn't mean that this comes close to respecting people's right to safe housing.
It's all really frustrating. People deserve better than this. All the bus shelters are full of used needles because those are one of the few spaces where people can get out of the rain to shoot up; that both makes the shelters unsafe for others, and the people who are injecting should be able to have safe and private spaces to do so, just like I can drink my evening beer in the privacy of my living room.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:16 AM on December 9, 2020 [2 favorites]
On the one hand, this is tremendously better than making people move every night or coming in with surprise clearances to throw away their possessions, and providing the minimal level of services is at least acknowledging people's humanity. But, it also a crappy interim "solution" that won't last beyond the pandemic, is shitty for a neighborhood that has lost access to the very little public space available, and is a way for the city to not have to provide actual housing and services. And just because it is better than making people move every night doesn't mean that this comes close to respecting people's right to safe housing.
It's all really frustrating. People deserve better than this. All the bus shelters are full of used needles because those are one of the few spaces where people can get out of the rain to shoot up; that both makes the shelters unsafe for others, and the people who are injecting should be able to have safe and private spaces to do so, just like I can drink my evening beer in the privacy of my living room.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:16 AM on December 9, 2020 [2 favorites]
Here in Seattle's streets, it's not the bus shelters, but any street with parking. RV's everywhere here in Ballard. Also, needles everywhere. And random piles of garbage. Any public space is also full of tents on the parking strips, or under any sort of cover, such as at the library. And observing the tenants, it's pretty clear how much mental illness exists in these populations. It is really sad and discouraging. Not sure how these populations will be integrated and helped.
posted by Windopaene at 12:02 PM on December 11, 2020
posted by Windopaene at 12:02 PM on December 11, 2020
« Older Respawn of the Dead (or: Cookie Crypter) | They Silenced Journalists, they won't silence the... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
I don't get why there's so many barriers up. I get there's limited beds available, I accept there will always be an N-1 situation here. Why can't there be a lottery system. Better yet, allotment of beds in a reasonable time frame.
I've yet to see a coherent reason why this still a problem and not something that is a problem yet we're working on incremental steps of solving. Every article I read that addresses this seems to throw its hands in the air and go "the system!" instead of having something resembling a plan that isn't being gutted by bureaucracy like like on The Wire.
Like homelessness isn't solved in a couple random days. You need a good 6 months of stable living to get something resembling a life back. That's ignoring all the co-morbid disorders that accompany homelessness. Like a night here or there does not solve the problem.
It looks like Oakland had ~4000 homeless in 2019 which seems ridiculously low figured largely juiced by I'm guessing the awkward definition. Lets say the actual figure is many multiple higher. Lets say it is 30,000. How hard would it be to build two bedroom apartments for 30,000? And you can't just have Soviet style blocks of homeless apartments or then you get the attendant stigma and crime. You need integrated housing but who wants to be next to homeless people? Give people money for that! In NYC I'd gladly pay for a slightly better apartment that just happens to be next to a homeless person or more likely qualified housing people or however you want to term it. Incentivize people to integrate homeless people and suddenly the newest secret will be the NYT article about "The hottest new penthouse in Manhattan? Next to the homeless! Inside NY's biggest secret!"
I'm not saying it is easy, I'm not saying we need an all encompassing solution. But we need to start somewhere. Make it a blind lottery and not a condescending checklist of things. Someone wants to smash heroin all day? Okay they have the same chance as a mother with a kid. It sucks, but when you start having to discriminate on which homeless "deserve" to be homeless or which should be in treatment, etc. you get into awkward situations like we have now.
posted by geoff. at 11:51 AM on December 6, 2020 [5 favorites]