Homelessness and what to do about it

[Deleted member 215]

Homelessness is a problem plaguing many American cities; the issue is especially pronounced here in the increasingly unaffordable Bay Area (and California writ large).

Around here I've been noticing major homeless encampments disappearing lately. Of course that doesn't mean these people have found housing (it invariably doesn't mean that); it simply means they've been moved somewhere else, to a less conspicuous place perhaps. Sweeping it under the rug essentially, not actually solving anything. But if it's out of sight, it's out of mind.

What is being done about homelessness where you live? What do you think should be done? What is the one thing that would solve the problem (if there is one)?

 

[SuperMatt]

Homelessness is a problem plaguing many American cities; the issue is especially pronounced here in the increasingly unaffordable Bay Area (and California writ large).

Around here I've been noticing major homeless encampments disappearing lately. Of course that doesn't mean these people have found housing (it invariably doesn't mean that); it simply means they've been moved somewhere else, to a less conspicuous place perhaps. Sweeping it under the rug essentially, not actually solving anything. But if it's out of sight, it's out of mind.

What is being done about homelessness where you live? What do you think should be done? What is the one thing that would solve the problem (if there is one)?

A lot of people in DC had been camping in tents in public parks. The park service kicked them all out, then put a fence around many of the parks with a sign that says “rehabilitation in progress.” Going past the park a few months later, their definition of “rehabilitation” seems to be keeping the fence up and letting the grass grow completely out of control.

DC has pretty good resources for the homeless, but many people in such situations don’t take full advantage of them. Whether they don’t want to, or whether the services are too far away, or whether they have mental issues, I don’t know.

 

[AG_PhamD]

Boston recently had a problem with a large homeless encampment amassing around “Methadone Mile” (the area near Boston Medical Center / Mass Ave where many Methadone clinics exist). There were about 150 people living in tents, not nearly as bad as other cities, but it was becoming a problem for the neighborhood, not to mention a safety problem for the homeless given Bostons cold winters and the amount of drug use and overdoses occurring. Furthermore, it was literally an open air drug market fueling the drug trade in the greater Boston area and non-homeless people would journey there to buy and sell drugs.

Eventually the city got itself together and turned some hotels and vacant hospital buildings into “low barrier” shelters- ie sobriety is not required. These facilities also offer social services, medical care, addiction and psych resources, vocational help, etc. The goal is to stabilize the lives of these people and keep them safe until they can be placed in permanent housing. They are not forced to get sober if they’re using drugs, but they have resources available. The clients have their own room or one roommate, private bathrooms, etc so it’s a much more comfortable environment and safer feeling than a traditional shelter. So the hope is to encourage people to voluntarily want to come to these programs. And hopefully such environments remind people the benefits of having housing.

A lot of homeless people are homeless due to addiction and mental health problems. It’s easy for people with addiction to be relatively content being homeless so long as they’re able to use drugs. Those with severe mental health issues can be willingly or unwillingly homeless, but don’t have the state of mind to take the steps to rectify the problem. They are often treatment adverse making it very difficult to help them get their lives back together. But they are not mentally stable enough to live a productive life.

In Boston, they ultimately made the decision to offer every homeless person at this encampment a bed in a shelter (or to leave), otherwise their possessions would be removed. They could not have their possessions removed until they were offered an alternative.

There seems to be this notion among some people, evidently a lot of politicians, that homeless people have a right to setup a camp on the sidewalk and that removing them is unjust and inhumane. As someone who works in psych medicine, I find this idea so wrong. First, these drug filled homeless camps with needles and feces everywhere are a public health hazard for the homeless and non-homeless alike. Secondly, suggesting society should accept people with severe mental health issues to sleep in boxes in freezing New England weather as some sort of social justice idea is ridiculous. This is inhumane. Most of these people do not have the state of mind to make decisions for themselves. They deserve rehabilitation and a safe living environment.

Forcing the homeless to continuously move from one spot to another is not a solution. Throwing them in jail only to not provide treatment and throw them back on the street only to re-arrest them is unproductive and unethical. But that does not mean letting them live on the sidewalk is somehow the benevolent thing to do, it’s not.

The last thing the government (or even private insurance) wants to spend money on is mental healthcare and addiction. It’s extremely expensive, has limited success, especially long term, and I think there is this stigma of why help people who are unproductive members of society.

What needs to happen is a commitment of funding rehabilitation and finding ways to encourage people to utilize these resources. For those who cannot be rehabilitated, bring back various levels of public funded residential psych housing.

 

[Deleted member 215]

I think it's important to distinguish between different types of homelessness. There will always be people who are homeless because of drug addiction and mental health issues; you could give them a home but they will probably end up out of it eventually. That is a more difficult problem to solve than say, the people who tend to live in RVs here in the Bay Area. Many of them have jobs. They are not homeless because they are too unstable to live in a house. They are homeless because they can't afford to live here. It's not a coincidence that homelessness became increasingly common as the cost of living rose. The two are absolutely related. There is not enough housing here. It's absurd that some seem to have convinced themselves that building housing would have no effect on the homelessness problem; of course it would. It would not solve it entirely; drug addiction and mental health would continue to make housing nearly impossible for some. But "sweeping" camps because they're unpleasant without providing a viable alternative (shelters are often a fairly shitty environment themselves) is not a solution. It's also very difficult for people with an addiction to be rehabilitated without stable housing.

 

[Macky-Mac]

I think it's important to distinguish between different types of homelessness. There will always be people who are homeless because of drug addiction and mental health issues; you could give them a home but they will probably end up out of it eventually. That is a more difficult problem to solve than say, the people who tend to live in RVs here in the Bay Area. Many of them have jobs. They are not homeless because they are too unstable to live in a house. They are homeless because they can't afford to live here. It's not a coincidence that homelessness became increasingly common as the cost of living rose. The two are absolutely related. There is not enough housing here. It's absurd that some seem to have convinced themselves that building housing would have no effect on the homelessness problem; of course it would. It would not solve it entirely; drug addiction and mental health would continue to make housing nearly impossible for some. But "sweeping" camps because they're unpleasant without providing a viable alternative (shelters are often a fairly shitty environment themselves) is not a solution. It's also very difficult for people with an addiction to be rehabilitated without stable housing.

there are a couple of different problems here......affordable housing for working people on the one hand, and housing for the unhoused on the other. They're two different problems.

For the unhoused, more immediate solutions are needed. Government building more housing is a very slow 3 to 5 year process that's invariably expensive and will only produce a very limited amount of new housing.......perhaps helpful to some of the employed population, but not so much for the homeless.

Instead of trying to address the ultimate need of permanent homes for unhoused people, perhaps the government's efforts should be focused on providing better short term situations that meet the temporary needs of people living on the streets......homeless campers need a safe place to camp, and every city has such places that don't conflict with the needs of the general public.

 

[Nycturne]

One of the annoying parts of this is partly that there’s a lot of debate and talk about what to do about homelessness, and various political groups with opinions on the matter rattle off causes, but don’t mention the numbers to paint a clear picture of the causes and the size of the problem. When I do run across a source that attempts to list causes in order of how common they are, mental health and addiction aren’t in the top 3 causes for individuals. Some cities this could be different as each region will have a slightly different mix, but things get a bit weird when you do find data. While this page cites 35% of homeless face substance abuse issues, they do stress that it’s not necessarily the cause of the homelessness, but can also be a symptom of it. Looking at more data further down the same page from Houston, under 10% of the sample there is attributed to substance use as the cause of their homelessness, with unemployment being listed as over 33%. At least in Houston, you’re more likely to be evicted by a family member, fleeing abuse, or just unable to find housing after being released from prison. If we assume the different two samples are representative enough to be roughly comparable (an admittedly tricky thing to do), this seems to say that the majority of homeless people with substance problems developed it after being subjected to homelessness.

That suggests you can make a good dent in the substance use side of things by tackling underlying root causes of homelessness directly.

There will always be people who are homeless because of drug addiction and mental health issues; you could give them a home but they will probably end up out of it eventually.

Is this truly a given though? In this very thread there’s the admission of the stigma associated with both of these. Mental health services are limited, and can be expensive with limited help from insurance or the like (i.e. unaffordable by those in this situation that need it). Drug addiction is criminalized in the US, one factor feeding a cycle of jail and homelessness. Folks coming out of the justice system face discrimination in employment and housing, making them more likely to be homeless. People that are homeless are more likely to have to interact with the justice system, for a variety of reasons, including laws that punish visible homelessness.

I think you can make a bigger dent in this than is being suggested in this thread with reasonable policy changes, if hard to find the political will to actually make those policy changes. But so long as housing in our society is treated as a privilege, rather than a right, I don’t disagree it will be difficult to stamp out homelessness when so many people are having to live paycheck to paycheck, can be discriminated against when renting, etc.

There is not enough housing here. It's absurd that some seem to have convinced themselves that building housing would have no effect on the homelessness problem; of course it would.

In the vein of affordable housing, I’d argue that the common policy of US cities that rely on urban sprawl and car dependence doesn’t help here. R1 zoning rules make it harder to build housing without ever more sprawl, when we should be adjusting zoning rules to allow for more density, and mixed-use construction. We need more zoning that exists between suburbs and urban core. Car infrastructure also happens to eat up land that could be used for infill construction, requiring more sprawl and spreading apart services, feeding car dependence (so does underfunding public transit, but that’s a separate, if related, topic).

 

[SuperMatt]

One of the annoying parts of this is partly that there’s a lot of debate and talk about what to do about homelessness, and various political groups with opinions on the matter rattle off causes, but don’t mention the numbers to paint a clear picture of the causes and the size of the problem. When I do run across a source that attempts to list causes in order of how common they are, mental health and addiction aren’t in the top 3 causes for individuals. Some cities this could be different as each region will have a slightly different mix, but things get a bit weird when you do find data. While this page cites 35% of homeless face substance abuse issues, they do stress that it’s not necessarily the cause of the homelessness, but can also be a symptom of it. Looking at more data further down the same page from Houston, under 10% of the sample there is attributed to substance use as the cause of their homelessness, with unemployment being listed as over 33%. At least in Houston, you’re more likely to be evicted by a family member, fleeing abuse, or just unable to find housing after being released from prison. If we assume the different two samples are representative enough to be roughly comparable (an admittedly tricky thing to do), this seems to say that the majority of homeless people with substance problems developed it after being subjected to homelessness.

That suggests you can make a good dent in the substance use side of things by tackling underlying root causes of homelessness directly.



Is this truly a given though? In this very thread there’s the admission of the stigma associated with both of these. Mental health services are limited, and can be expensive with limited help from insurance or the like (i.e. unaffordable by those in this situation that need it). Drug addiction is criminalized in the US, one factor feeding a cycle of jail and homelessness. Folks coming out of the justice system face discrimination in employment and housing, making them more likely to be homeless. People that are homeless are more likely to have to interact with the justice system, for a variety of reasons, including laws that punish visible homelessness.

I think you can make a bigger dent in this than is being suggested in this thread with reasonable policy changes, if hard to find the political will to actually make those policy changes. But so long as housing in our society is treated as a privilege, rather than a right, I don’t disagree it will be difficult to stamp out homelessness when so many people are having to live paycheck to paycheck, can be discriminated against when renting, etc.



In the vein of affordable housing, I’d argue that the common policy of US cities that rely on urban sprawl and car dependence doesn’t help here. R1 zoning rules make it harder to build housing without ever more sprawl, when we should be adjusting zoning rules to allow for more density, and mixed-use construction. We need more zoning that exists between suburbs and urban core. Car infrastructure also happens to eat up land that could be used for infill construction, requiring more sprawl and spreading apart services, feeding car dependence (so does underfunding public transit, but that’s a separate, if related, topic).

Thank you for this post. I believe it offers some real ideas to fix real problems. I have something to say about addiction and mental illness though after reading many posts in this thread.

I often see “mental health and drug addiction” listed as the magic things that need to be solved in order to fix homelessness or other societal ills. The thing is, both conditions usually stem from trauma of some kind. Most addicted people got to that point because of loneliness, or loss of job or family member, or some other external factor. If we address giving everybody a living wage and an affordable place to live, we will see less addiction and fewer mental health issues. Yes, some mental health conditions are hereditary or from a disease. But many are not. I recommend this video to give you some background of what addiction really is.

 

[Nycturne]

Thank you for this post. I believe it offers some real ideas to fix real problems. I have something to say about addiction and mental illness though after reading many posts in this thread.

I often see “mental health and drug addiction” listed as the magic things that need to be solved in order to fix homelessness or other societal ills. The thing is, both conditions usually stem from trauma of some kind. Most addicted people got to that point because of loneliness, or loss of job or family member, or some other external factor. If we address giving everybody a living wage and an affordable place to live, we will see less addiction and fewer mental health issues. Yes, some mental health conditions are hereditary or from a disease. But many are not. I recommend this video to give you some background of what addiction really is.

I'm surprised that one had to be re-uploaded to a different channel. This is one of their older videos I missed I guess. It is interesting though, since the assertions made align with the data I am seeing here: substance use among homeless individuals is much higher than it gets listed as a cause of homelessness. It also explains the data around homeless families how substance use is much less likely to be involved in those cases.

So this does make me more confident that we should be looking more at the inciting factors of homelessness and addressing those. But as @Macky-Mac also pointed out, those changes take time to have an effect. So we still need short term answers to help build these support networks and short-term housing needed. There are organizations that have the expertise to help here, but are dependent on donations to do the work that they do. So I'd argue that city governments should be seriously looking at monetarily supporting these organizations, especially when it means less need for spending on things like law enforcement.

 

[Cmaier]

Obviously the answer is that homeless people just need to become genocidal fascists.

Republican Lawmaker Says Homeless Should Look to Hitler for Inspiration — Rolling Stone

“He practiced his oratory and body language and how to connect with citizens, and then went on to lead a life that got him in the history books,” Tennessee state Sen. Frank Niceley said on Wednesday

apple.news

 

[Yoused]

Obviously the answer is that homeless people just need to become genocidal fascists.

Republican Lawmaker Says Homeless Should Look to Hitler for Inspiration — Rolling Stone

“He practiced his oratory and body language and how to connect with citizens, and then went on to lead a life that got him in the history books,” Tennessee state Sen. Frank Niceley said on Wednesday

apple.news

Niceley says that Adolf decided to be homeless. I am not sure how well that correlates to the broader homeless sector in the US.

 

[lizkat]

I'll just leave this here... along with my own observation that unfortunately these days, the response of people to the homeless crisis seems more oriented to "cracking down on crime" than to addressing the causes of homelessness... including debt from job loss and other effects of the pandemic, substance abuse issues, affordable housing shortages and related gentrification (even now in rural areas like where I live, where there are now two tiers of wealth in a broke-ass county with a median income of $28k but a raft of expat NYC investment bankers scarfing up real estate and driving up prices of land, rent and services in the towns and villages), shortage of mental health treatment providers and organized school-industry apprenticeship programs. All the little things.... and let's not forget long neglected improvements in public transportation, crucial to the poor for managing to get to jobs.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1520411466100355073/

 

[Spike]

My observations here in Europe are very different.

On a trip to Portugal, where I now live, maybe six years ago, we were sitting in the window of a restaurant and a man came up and stood at the curb. The waiter rushed back to the kitchen and came back a few minutes later with a bag which he gave him. We asked, and the waiter said he was a homeless man in the neighborhood and they gave him dinner.

A few years later, in Barcelona, we were in a bakery and the police went up to a homeless woman across the street. I asked the baker what they were doing and they said that she had arrived from eastern Europe a few days ago and the police were trying to find a hostel for her to stay in. The bakery said they gave her food that they couldn't sell at the end of the day. Also, I noticed bedrolls and carefully boxed goods on the street - the homeless don't steal from each other and people don't get rid of it as long as it isn't interfering with people.

Since moving here, I have observed very little homelessness. The homeless rate is 1/4 that of the US despite being a much "poorer" country. I'm not sure how, but they deal with mental illness differently, I don't know where they go but it's rarely a problem on the streets. Most homeless have substance abuse problems. The country has free help for addiction (including methadone) and the methadone trucks even go to where people work. There is a major effort to remove the stigma.

A law was passed a few years ago that gives everyone in the country the right to a home. It's pretty much impossible to implement, but it reflects the mindset.

The point I'm hopefully making is that there are solutions, but so far the US has refused to make them and considers homelessness and unsolvable problem. Money could be directed to progressive substance abuse and mental illness programs instead of to an immense defense industry and to corporate bailouts. (We do have corporate bailouts here but they are almost all for the struggling national airline.) Unfortunately, like so many US issues, the basic mean spirit that pervades half the country will probably prevent any of this from happening. But it could be done.