
Albuquerque program hires panhandlers to work in maintenance jobs - andersthue
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2016/08/11/this-republican-mayor-has-an-incredibly-simple-idea-to-help-the-homeless-and-it-seems-to-be-working/
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cheriot
It's an old concept sometimes called workfare. It can work until a government
gets short sighted and cuts their budget by replacing employees/contractors
with unemployed labor (let's use the homeless to mow the lawn at city hall!).
At that point it's using an unemployed person to create another unemployed
person.

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BenoitEssiambre
That is not how economics work. The money saved from employing low cost labor
is spent elsewhere which creates other jobs.

~~~
dogma1138
That's in theory but in practice this doesn't how it always works.

Especially when you are replacing already cheap "unskilled" or manual labor
with even cheaper labor.

In the long run markets will adjust but the long run in this case can be
longer than the life of a single worker.

Depending on how much labor you introduce you get get into a pretty never
ending cycle of rotating your employment force.

And one can make an argument that displacing day labor with homeless people
can have a bigger negative affect since employed day labor is more likely to
have financial obligations and dependants than a homeless person.

This is why it's very important to carefully manage these programs and ensure
they are at best self sufficient with some public funding but never
profitable.

You want them to maw the lawns where lawns would not have been mawend before
not to take over existing works.

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Mz
Oy. "The homeless" are not a separate race, religion, creed, etc. _If you get
housing, you stop being homeless._ Programs aimed at "helping the homeless"
tend to be inherently deeply fucked up.

We need more affordable housing generally and other solutions aimed at helping
_human beings with personal challenges._ Those are the folks who end up
homeless. Designing programs to help the homeless actually incentivizes being
homeless and becomes another barrier to getting off the street because you
need to remain homeless to qualify, and that is all kinds of fucked up.

Source: Had a class on homelessness, been homeless for 4.5 years, and I run
the San Diego Homeless Survival Guide (a blog).

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yazaddaruvala
I wish every city gave money to people to returned bottles to a bottle depot.
For those not familiar: Buyers of recyclables pay a recycling deposit up front
and any one who returns the recyclables will get the deposit back.

It would also be fascinating to provide transportation for the homeless to the
nearest garbage dumps. Pay them for sorting out any recyclables. Allow them to
take anything which might be of use to them.

~~~
andrewljohnson
You must not live in Berkeley. Thanks to a recycling center placed in town,
"independent recyclers" roam the streets, collect all the recycling from
people's bins on trash days, and it's a terrible situation for both the
collectors and other residents.

While collecting the recycling, the collectors steal (from my family multiple
times), root through unlocked cars, knife open garbage bags, trespass, wake up
sleeping people, and act aggressively towards anyone who interferes.

The collectors themselves live outside of the system of taxes and services,
have no safety equipment to to protect them from broken glass etc, and end up
in a constant cycle of unemployment, drug dependence, and other ills.

I feel like Berkeley manufactured this "picker" existence - it's an
externality of trying to be the most progressive recycling town, and it's no
good for anyone involved.

~~~
AWildDHHAppears
Exactly right. People _steal_ recyclables in my area, too, and many
Progressives seem fine with theft and the unreported income that results. We
have many other criminal acts (which have been caught on camera) associated
with this, including rummaging through cars and package theft.

When "three strikes" was foolishly overturned by pro-crime Californians, the
amount that you have to steal to be charged with a felony also increased. So
people can steal items from cars and doorsteps, in addition to recyclables,
and never have to worry about spending a day in prison.

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ethanbond
Are you actually being defensive about your garbage being your property?

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AWildDHHAppears
No. I am concerned about the city's property being stolen.

The recyclables belong to the city once I leave it out for recycling. They
collect the value from it, including any deposit value.

As a Taxpayer, I want this value to go to the city.

~~~
ethanbond
Ah what a bummer. A well articulated argument followed up by lame ad hominem.

Have a good night!

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MichaelBurge
I wouldn't mind seeing a $500-2000 per-employee annual tax credit for
businesses that employ the homeless. The types of jobs that are around minimum
wage seem like they'd mostly be low-margin businesses, so this would be a
pretty big incentive. And it seems cheaper than expanding shelters and similar
programs(though you'll still need some shelters).

Maybe it would be better to assess the tax on non-homeless needed for this
credit at the county level, since cost-of-living and homelessness are both
local issues. Maybe it would work better as a property tax than an income tax,
for similar reasons.

~~~
refurb
How would you ensure that the company is actually hiring homeless employees?
What exactly is homelessness? Where is the line? Who does background checks?
What are the penalties for lying about being homeless to get the tax credit?

~~~
MichaelBurge
There's already precedent in federal law, so I assume the states can just copy
that.

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/11302](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/11302)

There's also precedent in prioritizing auditing resources on offenders with
large payoff, having the computer watch for suspicious tax forms, pricing
penalties to include the people who get away with it, and whatever else they
do to enforce the existing 2600 pages of federal tax law plus whatever state
tax law.

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tootie
This doesn't seem like a very scalable plan nor will it help with the
chronically homeless. NYC does something similar with giving park clean-up
jobs to recently released convicts or other homeless people. It's better than
a simple handout, but doesn't address underlying problems.

[http://www.doe.org/rwa.cfm](http://www.doe.org/rwa.cfm)

~~~
helthanatos
There are multiple underlying problems: overpopulation, people not being right
for jobs, jobs not being right for people, education requirements, failed
federal programs, etc. It's very sad.

~~~
ende
Mental illness and substance-abuse as well. So much of homelessness in America
is a result of deinstitutionalization decades ago with no credible alternative
put in place.

~~~
tootie
Exactly this. This program will probably help a lot of people down on their
luck. Those kind of people utilize shelters and will generally do whatever
they have to to get off the streets. The classic panhandling hobo however, is
mostly incorrigible and nigh impossible to get on the right path. It takes a
huge amount of intervention to get a chronic subtance abuser or schizophrenic
to live independently.

~~~
peteretep

        > The classic panhandling hobo
        > however, is mostly
        > incorrigible and nigh 
        > impossible to get on the 
        > right path
    

Citation? *

* That doesn't fall prey to the No True Scotsman fallacy

~~~
tootie
I don't see how that fallacy can apply. We have pretty good definitions for
chronically homeless. Here's a good summary, and there's a linked PDF with
more data. Exhibit 2.7 in the PDF says that among the single homeless
population (not families) 68% are substance abusers and 48% are mentally ill.

[http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/526/homeless-
facts.html](http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/526/homeless-facts.html)

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tomjen3
Since the headline doesn't tell you: the city has started to hire penhandlers
for simple day jobs.

~~~
loukrazy
Thank you. Hopefully Facebook's changes will put a dent in these click bait
headlines

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notadoc
Really can't stand these type of headlines, really looking forward to when the
trend dies off.

~~~
brianwawok
A B testing will keep showing them better, so I suspect it will continue.
Unless you give up all privacy, then the producer can see YOU don't respond
well to click bait and fix your titles...

~~~
peteretep
A/B testing will show them getting good results until people get tired of
them, and stop clicking them.

