
Utah is Ending Homelessness by Giving People Homes - jamesbritt
http://www.nationofchange.org/utah-ending-homelessness-giving-people-homes-1390056183
======
steve19
This is not a whole lot different from public housing projects that are
subsidize by the state, just more subsidized.

The system works in a number of countries. As far as I know, it works.
Eventually the only people on the street are people who are unable to
cope/deal with the system and who fall through the cracks, such as mentally
ill.

Of course one of the costs of any state welfare system is the tragedy of the
commons. For example people keeping houses they no longer need and people not
maintaing the houses they are in. I would be surprised if the former social
problems of slums are improved by bricks and mortar.

I was in South Africa for a vacation recently. They are giving inhabitants of
shanty towns small houses. Once they have moved them out they bulldoze the
now-vacated land to build more houses.

Someone I met asked me if I could give an old woman a ride to her government
provided house at the edge of a shanty town she used to live in. She told me
that the solar heating water system installed by the government on all these
houses does not work. I could see her house, which could not have been more
than 5 years old, was already decaying. I suspect corrupt builders/politicians
cheaping out. It was also clear that some of the ever newer houses were
quickly deteriorating and were blending into the slum across the small dirt
road that separated them, mostly from lack of rudimentary maintenance.

I could not help but wonder what those housing developments will look like in
10 years or 15 years and if the government will have to start rebuilding them
at a huge expense.

~~~
_delirium
_Eventually the only people on the street are people who are unable to cope
/deal with the system and who fall through the cracks, such as mentally ill._

This is a pretty variable part too, perhaps even more important than the
actual "official" level of benefits. One of the bigger differences I've
noticed moving from the U.S. to Denmark is not so much that the social welfare
system is more generous (though that's true also), but especially that it's
more proactive and less bureaucratic. If someone mentally ill is in need of
support, qualifies for it, and cannot navigate the system themselves, a social
worker will help them out. If they need somewhere to live and can't rent their
own apartment, they'll get helped out there too. Someone will literally rent
them an apartment, take them to it, make sure they settle in, and then check
back later.

In the U.S., none of that is true. I have some pretty recent experience with
an American uncle who has advanced M.S. and has gotten basically no useful
support. For a while he was unable to live alone, but officially the
government didn't give a shit, so he did anyway, and injured himself
regularly. He alternated between living in his apartment for a few weeks at a
time, and ending up in the emergency room several times per month each time he
injured himself. You might think: at this point, shouldn't he move to an
assisted-living facility? It'd actually be more cost-effective, but nope,
neither SSI Disability nor Medicare Disability cover that. SSI Disability will
pay his rent to live at home, and Medicare Disability will pay his hospital
visits, but neither will pay for him to move to somewhere that makes more
sense.

He would probably have ended up homeless or dead if some family members hadn't
agreed to take over power of attorney, navigate the system on his behalf, and
find money to pay for his rent. The U.S.'s joke of a stingy social system
surely hasn't done anything on that front.

~~~
gcb0
> but especially that it's more proactive

this was my main shock moving to work in the US. americans sell the image of
workaholics. but...

from dmv, cafe baristas, to VPs on the fortune 500 companies... nobody, bloody
nobody will move a finger to do something that is not strictly what they are
being paid to do.

sometimes i think that if any of my coworkers would drop a pen during a
meeting, it would be socially acceptable as an excuse for not taking any
notes, since it is not his job to pick up a pen.

~~~
Shivetya
if your looking for charitable people amongst those in cafes and such your
looking in the wrong place. People who tend to those locations are more
concerned about themselves than others.

You want to find the people that care, go to the Goodwills, Salvation Army
stores, and the like. Its not hard to find the charitable people if you would
bother to look where they are instead of where you are comfortable.

Besides, based on personal experience, many of the very higher ups in the
companies I work for put more time into charity than the techies ever did.

~~~
gcb0
i wasn't even slightly referring to charity. Well, i was replying to one
comment about social workers doing their job, but my comment was 100% about
doing a job, regardless of field.

e.g. the baristas in the US will not pick up a napkin to you if you ask for
the napkins, he will usually nod in the general direction of the pile of
napkins.

------
crystaln
This is yet another short term positive but long term disaster.

1) This creates an incentive to become "homeless." Now any kid can drop out of
college, declare himself homeless, and get a free apartment. While it takes
time for such incentives to kick in, this WILL happen.

2) This creates classic housing projects problems which inevitably turn into
centers for crime, over time deteriorating neighborhoods and creating tension
that is bad for everyone.

Every generation, we forget how terribly housing projects work out.

The solution is a basic income, possibly phased out slowly with earned income
increases. This allows for a mobility and rational incentives housing projects
can not provide.

Public housing projects perpetuate poverty and crime and this will end no
differently. It's great that some homeless people have a place to sleep today
- just wait 10 or 20 years and see how it turns out. Look at projects and low
income housing in every city across the world.

~~~
chad_oliver
Just for the record, we have a similar system in New Zealand, and it works
great.

1) In New Zealand there isn't really any incentive to become homeless, because
a case worker takes you through an assessment process. This ensures that
houses are only given to people who are truly homeless. Furthermore, I suspect
you might underestimate the negative social image associated with living in
state housing. If you need it, no-one really looks down on you (our current
Prime Minister grew up in state housing), but if you're a young 20-something
with a job, state housing is certainly not 'cool'.

2) The housing projects I have witnessed have not turned into centres for
crime. It probably helps that these housing projects are really just clusters
of 5-20 individual houses on a common plot, in the middle of some suburb.
They're not segregated and concentrated.

EDIT: rXoX and im_a_lawyer, it looks like you've both been shadowbanned.

~~~
rayiner
> 2) The housing projects I have witnessed have not turned into centres for
> crime. It probably helps that these housing projects are really just
> clusters of 5-20 individual houses on a common plot, in the middle of some
> suburb. They're not segregated and concentrated.

This is the biggest problem with American housing projects. They tend to be
high density apartments in the cities, with thousands of poor people living
together, segregated from everyone else. This is the result of the massive
hypocrisy of American suburbanites. The county where my parents live in
northern Virginia voted for Obama 60-40, but everyone would flip the fuck out
if anyone built public housing in the suburbs near them. To them, public
housing means segregating all the poor blacks and hispanics into the inner
city so they don't run across them at the local shopping mall.

~~~
brudgers
The US hasn't been pushing high density public housing projects for twenty
years. The last major construction initiative for public housing initiative
was Hope VI. More recently, programs that funnel public money directly into
the private sector have seen greater favor, e.g. Section 8 vouchers and Low-
Income Housing Tax Credit projects.

Ironically [or cynically depending on your point of view] LIHTC projects in
particular saw increased funding in the rush to fund 'shovel ready' projects
as housing cratered due to oversupply.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HOPE_VI](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HOPE_VI)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_8_%28housing%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_8_%28housing%29)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-
Income_Housing_Tax_Credit](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-
Income_Housing_Tax_Credit)

------
ch4s3
Ideology aside, it seems to be working better than any other state's solution
and for less money. It seems pragmatic enough. I would be curious to see some
numbers on success of people the enrolled in the program in 2005-6.

I wish I could remember where I first read it, but from what I understand the
average long term homeless person is a middle aged disabled man with either a
mental illness or some form of substance dependency. Many are also veterans.
It seems silly to tell that person to bootstrap. So for 11k a year for a roof
and social worker vs. 16.65k for E.R. visits, jail, etc it seems like a no
brainer. that's 5.65k in savings each per year.

~~~
ekianjo
The "less money" part is not so obvious. The article does not go in details
about that part, so it's very hard to say whether it's BS or not. A house
needs frequent maintenance, renovation, cleaning, etc... and this costs a lot
of money in the mid-long run, as facilities degrade.

As for the ideology itself, I wonder how people who are working just to get
enough money to survive and rent a place feel about this. I would be fine with
the idea that a homeless person gets a home _for a while_ , as long as they
actively sort their life out and find a way to get to work again in a
reasonable timeframe. Unless they are mentally ill, of course.

~~~
_delirium
It's true that it costs some money to maintain this kind of thing, but it
costs a _lot_ of money to maintain the current solutions, so the bar to beat
is not exactly low. The current solutions for housing long-term homeless
include, in varying proportions, such expensive facilities as: jail cells,
hospital rooms, 72-hour holds in psychiatric facilities, and homeless
shelters. My own guess is that Americans don't actually care about the _cost_
, but are extremely paranoid that someone is getting something they feel they
don't _deserve_. If someone is locked up in a prison cell for 5x the cost of
renting them an apartment, then that's fine, because at least you know they
were "punished" for spending the taxpayers' money, not getting something
subjectively nice.

------
milesf
I laughed at the following line:

"But Utah’s results show that EVEN CONSERVATIVE STATES (emphasis mine) can
solve problems like homelessness with decidedly progressive solutions."

Why do you Americans have to make everything either liberal or conservative?
Republican or Democrat?

Life is about tension. If you want to hold a bird in your hand, you have to
hold it loose enough that it isn't crushed, and tight enough that it doesn't
fly away.

~~~
coffeemug
_> Why do you Americans have to make everything either liberal or
conservative?_

Because there are different groups of people who have diametrically opposed
views on how to solve many of the social problems modern America is facing.

 _> Life is about tension. If you want to hold a bird in your hand, you have
to hold it loose enough that it isn't crushed, and tight enough that it
doesn't fly away._

That's the problem with you Europeans. You refuse to make decisions, so you
structure your society by averaging out all opinions. In the end, nobody's
happy, and none of your problems are really solved :)

~~~
bjelkeman-again
Ok, I know there is a smiley at the end of that. But I also think that a lot
if non-Europeans take that half serious. "In the end, nobody's happy" in
Europe just isn't true. :)

[http://unsdsn.org/happiness/](http://unsdsn.org/happiness/)

The report identifies the countries with the highest levels of happiness:

    
    
      1.Denmark
      2.Norway
      3.Switzerland
      4.Netherlands
      5.Sweden

~~~
dagw
There is serious criticisms as to exactly what those studies measure. At best
you can say that they measure contentment. That people from those countries
are more content with their lives and have less significant complaints. That
is quite different from happy in the joyous sense of the word.

~~~
namlem
Of course they measure contentment. "Happiness" isn't really meaningful at
large scales.

~~~
willismichael
Arguably, the people who are the happiest are those who strive for contentment
instead of happiness. :)

------
Crake
I wish more states would implement this. It doesn't have to be a house, just
an apartment. It doesn't even have to be a big one. Even just a single
mattress in a small room or a studio with a kitchen is a huge quality of life
improvement--and relatively inexpensive, as it seems they've found. Kicking
them off of park benches is about as helpful as sloshing water around within
the same bucket and then looking surprised that the contents haven't
appreciably depreciated. Homeless are not going to just disappear. (Unless
they die, which I suppose is what people like the sledgehammer guy in the
article would prefer...)

~~~
ekianjo
Just build capsules hotels, just like in Japan. That's cheap enough, and it
has everything. But it only works if people can behave well in community...

~~~
Crake
Yeah, even something like that would work (maybe a little more spread out in
places that aren't so urban). It's just appalling to me that so many people
don't even have a place to stay out of the snow in this day and age. I wonder
how many homeless you could house for a month for the cost of [insert
luxurious iProduct here].

~~~
ekianjo
Well accommodation should not be so expensive in the first place. That's why
you get so many homeless people as well. Accommodation prices are completely
up the roof for a number of reasons (some State-related), and there is no
clear end in sight for this problem.

------
Udo
From a humanitarian point of view, it seems strange that the money-saving
aspect is the deciding factor on this, as opposed to improving quality of
life. But even so, even if it saves costs, people - including the prevailing
winds on HN - are still against it.

There seems to be a large number of opponents who'd rather spend a multiple of
that housing and social care cost on jails and other measures designed to make
sure these people stay away from society without any chance of coming back.
I'd genuinely be interested to hear why. If a program exists that re-
integrates a majority of these people, wouldn't it be worth the expense even
if it cost more (which it apparently doesn't)?

~~~
_delirium
> I'd genuinely be interested to hear why.

Many Americans are sadists who think the poor deserve what's coming to them,
and are actually willing to _spend extra money_ to ensure it comes to them.

~~~
Udo
The word "perverse" has been used on this thread and on other occasions to
describe social improvement measures. I'm not sure all these people here are
sadists, there must be something else at work.

As far as I can tell the standard argument seems to be that these homeless
aren't productive members of society so it somehow makes sense to put
resources into actively punishing them for it and making sure the conditions
are reinforced that allowed them to become antisocials in the first place.
Yet, at the same time, there are a lot of true parasites in society who
actually get paid a lot, and who we kind of worship.

In the end, you might be right. But it's not a satisfying explanation.

~~~
Dylan16807
>The word "perverse" has been used on this thread

Only in the phrase 'perverse incentive'. Which simply means a system has a
high potential for unintended consequences / being gamed.

It has absolutely nothing to do with whether the basic idea is noble.

------
jfoster
I think the one thing that nearly everyone can agree on is that all current
welfare systems are quite broken. In Australia, welfare comes in the form of
money being deposited into your bank account. Many on welfare claim that it
isn't enough to live off properly (probably true) and many not on welfare
claim that the system is being abused by people who shouldn't be on it, which
is also probably true.

I'd like to see a country that experiments with giving people the most basic
essentials that they need to get out of welfare. Things like temporary
accommodation, basic food, etc. That way there would be no point to abusing
it, and no one can claim it isn't sufficient for basic living. I imagine that
it would also result in cost savings for the government since they would be
buying in bulk rather than distributing cash for those on welfare to spend
individually. There's still problems with this approach, but I think it might
strike a better balance than current systems.

~~~
hamburglar
> Many on welfare claim that it isn't enough to live off properly (probably
> true) and many not on welfare claim that the system is being abused by
> people who shouldn't be on it, which is also probably true.

I think one of the primary differences between the (US) liberal and
conservative mentality with respect to welfare is that, while everyone
acknowledges that the system isn't going to be perfect, the liberals are
incensed by false negatives (the criteria are erroneously set such that
someone who truly needs assistance won't get it) whereas the conservatives are
incensed by false positives (the criteria are erroneously set such that
someone who doesn't deserve assistance and is gaming the system will get it).

In other words, both sides acknowledge that the criteria for "deserving"
assistance are going to be flawed, they just differ on whose side they'd like
to err on.

I really think that once you realize this, you can better clarify your own
priorities on this issue and come up with a more nuanced position than the
usual "you're a monster" / "you're a bleeding heart" blather.

------
nostromo
Basic income or a negative income tax would be a better solution.

Giving people free homes creates a perverse incentive.

~~~
ams6110
But giving people a free income doesn't create a perverse incentive?

~~~
yummyfajitas
According to this article it does - work is reduced by 13%.

[https://decorrespondent.nl/541/why-we-should-give-free-
money...](https://decorrespondent.nl/541/why-we-should-give-free-money-to-
everyone/31639050894-e44e2c00)

(Unfortunately no primary sources are cited for that claim, which is pretty
common for articles on the topic.)

A solution with similar benefits but minimal perverse incentives is the Basic
Job - if you can't find a job the government will give you an unpleasant one
at below minimum wage.

~~~
scotty79
Basic Job is horrible idea. It means hiring someone in made-up job. You take
all the time that this person could spend with his/her family/children or on
self-improvement or looking for a worthwhile thing to do, waste some of your
resources that are required to set up this made-up job and pay so little money
that the person will struggle to support himself/herself.

Communist states had basic jobs. I lived in one, it wasn't pretty. People got
bored and lazy at the job, drank a lot of booze at work to kill the boredom
and not care about what they did at all because that they knew they'll get
their sh*t-money anyways.

Nowadays part of civil service office workers in my country fit the
description of Basic Job. They sit 7-8 hour pushing unnecessary papers for
near minimum wage. They are wasting their lives to prove that they deserve a
handout. It's most often women that can suffer low pay and toxic work
environment. Government could reduce much waste if it just sent them home with
the same pay so they can take care of their children better instead.

~~~
yummyfajitas
They aren't made-up jobs. They are simply jobs with value lower than minimum
wage.

In the US, we are often told about our "crumbling infrastructure". Roads have
potholes. It's not hard to find parks which are not as well maintained as they
could be. Government buildings are rarely spotlessly clean. If we are going to
pay people who can't find a job in the private sector, why not have some of
these problems fixed?

Similarly, many people complain that the cost of day care prevents productive
women from working. If we are going to tax a productive businesswoman to pay
for a basic job, why not at give her cheap day care (provided by low
productivity people) in return?

The problem with Communist states is not the existence of the employer of last
resort, but the lack of anything else.

~~~
scotty79
Just give more money to you government and it will hire more people to do the
jobs that currently it thinks it can do without. Like keeping government
buildings spotless.

So the only thing you need to do to realize the idea of Basic Job as you see
it is give more money to your government. Pay more taxes. Vote for people that
want to raise taxes. Government will gladly use your money to hire people at
minimum wage to do the jobs that have value lower than minimum wage. Or just
move to Sweden.

Of course other people will say that government pays to much for cleaning
parks and government buildings and filling in potholes. That it's not done as
efficiently as it should be. And they will also be right. After all, why
invest in labor saving technology such as cleaning machines if half of the
point why this cleaning job exists is to have an excuse to give money to the
person that can't find a job that has value higher than minimum wage.

~~~
yummyfajitas
No need to raise taxes - we are already spending the money. All I propose is
that we get something in return.

This solves the perverse incentives created by a Basic Income and costs a lot
less (you only give it to some people instead of giving to everyone).

~~~
scotty79
So you don't want to give money to the people who currently are not gettinga
any? You just want to discurage people who are getting money by ordering them
to do some work?

Where do you get money to pay people to organize the job and supervise that
it's actually done? How do you treat people who don't do the job right? Do you
deny them the money and the job? Do you put them in jail? Communist states did
that.

What do you plan to do about people who won't take the money if they have to
lose third of their time for it?

Do you give those people money/food/shelter for free or do you let them starve
or freeze?

I believe your idea is incredibly complicated in detail. I like the idea of
basic income because there's so little that can go wrong. The only proble I
see is that rent could just go up and suck almost all basic income into
pockets of property owners.

------
desireco42
I am really ... shocked I guess, how can you not like this. I was not born in
the US, but in 10 yrs I lived here (and liking it obviously), I was always
bothered that such a great country can have so many homeless and destitute
people. I can write about this pages and pages... Studies show, once someone
ends on the street, he never comes back up, this is the only way for many of
those to get themselves up. I am even liking numbers about how much it costs
to care about homeless vs. helping them.

Seriously, this costs little and helps a great deal to people who genuinely
need it.

------
ry0ohki
The key isn't so much the home but the social workers they provide. Most
homeless people are not just folks like you and I who happened to be out of
work a little longer, they are people with various mental illnesses and
addictions. It's no coincidence that homelessness skyrocketed when
deinstitutionalisation started.

------
GigabyteCoin
Are the actually ending homelessness for good? Or are they placing a bandaid
on the problem and possibly making things worse?

Hawaii has a homeless problem because it is a very forgiving place for the
homeless to live, mainly the favorable temperature imho.

Vancouver/Victoria B.C. have a much larger visible homeless population than
Toronto. Again, because the winter temperatures won't kill you in Vancouver,
buy they very well could in Toronto.

In time, once "word of the street" gets out that Utah is giving away free
houses to homeless people whether they follow their suggested rules of living
or not... I think we might be seeing a few more thumbs on the highway with
signs for Salt Lake City.

~~~
jff
SLC probably has the advantage that your average homeless drunk has a much
harder time getting booze.

~~~
midas007
Is booze still only sold in state-sanctioned stores?

~~~
GigabyteCoin
I went to a rodeo in St. George, Utah last year.

It was sponsored by budweiser. Yet, not a single drop of beer or any alcohol
was sold on site.

Utah sure is an interesting place to be.

------
inglor
I wish this was possible here. People need to work for years before they can
even think about buying a house.

Sounds like a really good idea for a place like Utah - props to them.

------
wyager
Seems like a sustainable permanent solution...

~~~
ekianjo
Indeed. What prevents other homeless people to "migrate" to Utah in order to
benefit from that program ? If that's the case, the costs of the program would
explode, and the savings would be gone. That's typically what happens. Not
sure what they are doing to avoid that scenario.

~~~
wmf
I read that Nevada was busing their homeless into California to get them off
the books; clearly they were doing it wrong and should have sent them to Utah
instead.

~~~
eco
It's funny you should say that because that's exactly what Utah was accused of
doing to Las Vegas in order to clean up the streets for the 2002 Olympics.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/14/sports/olympics-the-
street...](http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/14/sports/olympics-the-streets-
loitering-behind-the-clean-streets.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm)

------
michaelrhansen
This would be an awesome project to contribute coding skills to - imagine a
platform managing this type of program and helping redistribute that knowledge
back out to the world.

------
ommunist
Yay! There is even place in this budget to give every homeless a Mac and
subscription to codeschool.com. Guys, do it. Utah will become the next Silicon
Valley.

------
lafar6502
Does the state also give jobs or money so they can afford these homes?

------
systematical
Terrible grammar in this article

------
jostmey
I personally believe that punishment should be severe, but that people need
second chances. Perhaps many people end up homeless after making poor choices
in life that lead to their predicament. But society must offer ways for
everyone to redeem themselves.

edit> Our society (The US) has become really good at punishing people, but is
terrible at helping people back up.

~~~
throwaway34020
> Perhaps many people end up homeless after making poor choices in life that
> lead to their predicament

I don't really have any data at hand, but a lot of people become homeless due
to health issues, family conflicts, socio-economic problems (high unemployment
rates, factory closings, lack of affordable housing), or even by being born
poor or homeless... I believe some of those reasons are outside of the control
of a single person.

~~~
gnaritas
You don't need data; OP is suffering from the Just World Fallacy, he doesn't
understand how the world actually works.

