
Homelessness rises in U.S., driven by California housing crisis - hhs
https://www.axios.com/hud-homelessness-rises-in-us-driven-by-california-f231500a-2fee-4477-813e-e838923e0288.html
======
i_am_nomad
These articles keep claiming that high rents, mental illness and substance
abuse are the causes of the homelessness surge. But rarely, if ever, are any
statistics cited. The HUD report referenced by the article does not discuss
causes either.

I can tell you from my experience working in homeless encampments in Oakland
that most of the people living there are neither mentally ill, nor abusing
drugs. Most of them are people who would ordinarily work on the very bottom
rung of the employment ladder, in jobs that 20 years ago would be a good fit
for someone undermotivated, or quirky, or otherwise unfit for a more
“responsible” job.

But there’s no place for them anymore; automation has replaced some of those
jobs, and a combination of plunging wages and a more ruthless Amazon-style
workplace has made many of the jobs that are left intolerable. People are
choosing a tent in the park in Oakland over working three part-time jobs and
being micromanaged by an AI just to barely afford 1/7th of an apartment. And,
we have imported tens of millions of unskilled, mostly unauthorized immigrants
who are happy to take those jobs - another thing you won’t hear discussed in
these articles.

~~~
chewbacha
> People are choosing a tent in the park in Oakland over working three part-
> time jobs and being micromanaged by an AI just to barely afford 1/7th of an
> apartment.

Sounds like you agree that high rents are at least somewhat to blame for
homelessness.

~~~
i_am_nomad
Proximally, they are. But all too many people point to that as the One True
Cause of the homelessness surge, when it is not. The two factors I pointed out
- illegal immigration and an increasingly brutal workplace - are topics that
news outlets shy away from, for political and business reasons. It's
infuriating.

I would take all this a step farther, in fact: the recent surge in illegal
immigration is, itself, a proximal cause; that phenomenon is being now driven
by climate change. But again, you don't usually hear that mentioned when
people and news outlets discuss illegal immigration.

~~~
kevinventullo
_the recent surge in illegal immigration is ... now driven by climate change_

I’m curious what you mean by that. According to the DHS [1], Mexico is far and
away the most represented country of origin for people who have immigrated to
the US illegally. Are you saying this is caused by climate change acutely
affecting Mexico’s economy?

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_U...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_United_States#Countries_of_origin)

~~~
michaelbrave
There was no recent surge, it peaked out in 2005 and has been declining.
[https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2018/11/27/u-s-
unauthor...](https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2018/11/27/u-s-unauthorized-
immigrant-total-dips-to-lowest-level-in-a-decade/)

------
tempsy
Strange when I see HN diverge from “tech twitter” in this situation. Why are
so many on here skeptical of the legitimacy of the housing crisis in
California? Maybe it’s that this website draws a broader audience, but it’s a
fairly accepted fact among people that live in CA, including myself, that it
is indeed a crisis.

And no, not everyone who is homeless is a meth head.

~~~
baby
I suspect a lot of people here own housing in the bay and are trying to spread
FUD and blame current issues on mental health.

~~~
friedman23
Everyone is only willing to believe the facts that support their own interest.
California home owners will deny housing is the cause of homelessness similar
to how Texas oil barons will deny climate change even exists.

~~~
hellisothers
This is a poor comparison because nobody is claiming homeless doesn’t exist.
If you had said “as oil barons will claim oil isn’t the cause of the climate
crisis” that would be better. It’s also better because like fossil fuel
burning literally damages the environment, lack of affordable homes in an area
is literally the cause of homelessness. But that is a useless point, of course
more homes would fix the issue but to what end, are you going to build enough
homes so everybody who wants to live in the Bay Area can? Obviously not, so
there will still be homelessness. “Just build more houses!” Not being an
actual answer is the point

~~~
friedman23
> are you going to build enough homes so everybody who wants to live in the
> Bay Area can? Obviously not, so there will still be homelessness. “Just
> build more houses!” Not being an actual answer is the point

This is a strawman argument. There will always be homelessness because there
will always be people that prefer to be homeless. Building more homes will
reduce a significant amount of homelessness that exists due to structural
reasons.

------
jph
Homelessness in California is one of the volunteer topics at Hack For LA
([https://hackforla.org](https://hackforla.org)) and Code For America
([https://www.codeforamerica.org](https://www.codeforamerica.org)).

The purpose of the code is to assist social services case managers, who match
people at risk with potential resources such as shared housing placements.

If you're interested in volunteering, feel free to message me. If you're
interested in donating, see
[https://donorbox.org/hackforla](https://donorbox.org/hackforla)

~~~
i_am_nomad
We have to treat the causes of homelessness. And I don’t think the cause is
“not enough software.”

------
scurvy
This article is rather thin on facts connecting the rise of California real
estate to homelessness. There's a passing mention of a WaPo article that
mostly lists addiction and legal hurdles as the reason for homelessness.

How did this reach the top posting while being...so thin?

~~~
ailideex
> How did this reach the top posting while being...so thin?

people upvoted it.

~~~
scurvy
Without actually reading anything more than the headline

Edit: Sans real data, this article just fuels anecdata based political pissing
matches. This article is flotsam.

~~~
xwdv
People don’t need to read the article to upvote what they already know. This
morning I stood on the balcony of my San Francisco apartment on a very high
floor, but not high enough where I could not see and hear the homeless people
croak. Someone has to do something.

~~~
scurvy
Understandable for sure. I'm not a nimby but I don't see how blindly building
housing in certain areas will ever lead to a stopping of public heroin
injection and meth smoking.

The housing cost link seems flimsy on its best day. "these people smoke crack
on the streets. Housing costs are high. They must need a low income condo,
then they'll stop smoking crack outside my balcony."

Fund mental health and public health care if you want to stop the aggro
homeless buildup. Don't build more studio apartments.

~~~
xwdv
If people spend money on a house, they won’t spend it on crack and heroin.

If they are already addicted, throw them in some kind of rehab center, away
from sight.

------
kelp
This is one of the rare cases where I agree with the Trump administration.
California does deserve all this criticism for years of policies that over-
regulated housing, leading to a severe shortage.

And the California solution continues to be stricter tenant protections and
more housing subsidies.

But the subsidies are nowhere near enough. This article suggests it would cost
$12B for the Bay Area alone. [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/10/cost-to-end-san-
francisco-ba...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/10/cost-to-end-san-francisco-
bay-area-homelessness-would-be-12point7-billion-report.html)

And when polled, 57% of Californians continue to blame the wrong causes:
[https://extras.mercurynews.com/blame/](https://extras.mercurynews.com/blame/)

Blaming developers, rather than the local governments that restrict supply.

I’ve been following these issues closely for years, and have been active in
advocacy around them. I’m now convinced it won’t get substantially better
without federal involvement.

------
seriesf
This is a problem of supply. “An unprecedented $1 billion” will buy you at
most three thousand new dwellings, probably fewer given high cost and
inefficiency of housing construction in California.

California has been under-building housing for decades, to the extent that
people will call this current activity a housing “boom” even though it’s only
slightly above historic lows.

~~~
Zarath
I wonder how many people you could pay to just sweep streets and clean up
garbage for 1 billion.

~~~
vuln
Little Rock is doing this.

[https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/little-rock-homeless-
pic...](https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/little-rock-homeless-pick-up-
trash-payment-program)

~~~
trophycase
It's not like there's a shortage of work that society needs done, but that
capitalists won't be able to make money off of. I think this is a perfect
target for getting people on their feet.

~~~
someguydave
Who is going to pay the homeless to do unprofitable work?

~~~
Zarath
The same people that are paying 1bn to build unprofitable housing? (I have to
assume the housing is unprofitable or else it wouldn't be so difficult to
build it)

------
paul7986
Are some of the reasons its increasing there is because its always warm and it
offers the most money/help to the homeless?

A good amount there want to offer a universal basic income of what 1k to every
person. I guess you can live off of 1k a month in CA?

------
ravenstine
[redacted because what I wrote was stupid]

~~~
KirinDave
You're getting a terribly skewed sample if you're only informing yourself
based off homeless people who are visible on the street, in front of you.

~~~
ravenstine
Sure, there are also homeless people who live in cars and vans, motels,
shelters. More than most realize. There's families, veterans, etc. But they
don't make up the majority of people experiencing chronic homelessness.

~~~
adamsea
Evidence/stats?

~~~
KirinDave
I'm confused why the poster replied with a bunch of stats and then deleted the
post. I suppose because they didn't really support the argument and one at
least seemed to be misquoted?

------
sysbin
The United States is barbaric when it comes to social support systems.

I used to live in the States and I'm happy to now be in Canada for moral
reasons. I can only speculate from my experience (when I went through hard
times as a student working on my CS degree with unsupportive family "me being
lgbt and they being religious conservatives") and trying to navigate what was
available in my area while living in the USA.

I've come to the conclusion that religious ideology is to blame, as similar to
rising cost of homes & tuition, and not enough jobs for everyone (when you
consider most people have low skillsets); while considering not everyone can
become a programmer or whatever in-demand profession because most people just
don't have what it takes with age making it increasingly difficult to get into
a skilled field with health factoring into the equation.

I think homelessness is rarely the outcome of drug abuse. People aren't going
to drugs in a great life for no particular reason. In any case deciding to do
drugs with life then spiralling downhill to where they're homeless is just
ridiculous to assume is the cause. The idea that people do it to themselves is
nonsensical. We're living in a harder time than the 90s, 80s, 70s, for the
less privileged and the system needs to be revamped to get people into homes
that don't cost them anything if they cannot pay for it.

~~~
doublement
I agree with much of what you said but the religious ideology attribution is a
non-sequitur. The Bay Area and Los Angeles are pretty much the opposite of
hotbeds for piety, yet they have the most severe homelessness problems.

~~~
sysbin
I'm not from California but a lot of homeless people navigate to California
from elsewhere. Homelessness is on the rise in general. Religious ideology
creates thinking patterns of the blame is on the victim and not from the
system they reside in being unfavourable with the person's genetics &
environmental upbringing.

~~~
petethepig
> a lot of homeless people navigate to California from elsewhere

That’s a common misconception. According to this study [0] 70% of people who
were homeless in SF in 2019 lived in the city before they became homeless.

[0] [http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/FINAL-PIT-
Report-201...](http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/FINAL-PIT-
Report-2019-San-Francisco.pdf)

~~~
saltcured
I think this is a difficult topic to assess. The measures are subtle and hard
to define clearly for surveys and for our layman discussions. What thresholds
are there to define last residency? What duration or level of security must be
met for migrants to become local?

Does someone having an apartment or other arrangements for 1-18 months count
as being a local resident prior to their homelessness? I think local natives
see these immigrants differently than those who grow up here and fail to
thrive.

I don't think most people are imagining that SF or LA homeless are all
arriving on a hobo train from the 1930s. But, I think we do see a lot of
people who migrate to these regions, attempt to establish themselves, and
sometimes fail. More so than there are people migrating out of the regions and
then failing at their destination.

------
ilaksh
I suspect that housing is available, just too expensive.

~~~
Vaslo
If that were the case, shouldn’t supply/demand fix it? That is, available
housing would get cheaper if not being utilized, right?

~~~
takeda
Who said that those units aren't used? It's just that they cost is so high,
that bigger and bigger portion of the population can't afford it anymore.

It doesn't help that foreign investors also purchase the property and either
don't rent it (afraid it will reduce its value) or use it for AirB&B. That
causes the supply to go even lower and prices go higher.

------
genzoman
IMO at least some of the problem is the historical laxness with which
California has approached drugs. You have decades and decades of drug use
being de facto legal to the point where now you will not be arrested for
shooting heroin in front of a police officer. You could tax all the
billionaires out of the state and they still not afford the rehab expense for
all of the addicts in California. How many chances do you get at success? Why
not just start taking heroin so you get a free stay indoors, with free food at
a rehab resort?

~~~
trophycase
Why not do it then? And write a blog post and tell us all about how it goes.

------
mberning
"The bottom line: Per the Washington Post, California's homeless issue is
related to soaring housing costs, mental health and substance abuse issues and
"legal hurdles to getting people off the streets — all issues that could
complicate federal officials’ ideas to stage an intervention."

It would seem that in many cases mental health and substance abuse problems
are a more significant factor. People of sound mind typically do not find
themselves out on the streets long term because their rent went up.

~~~
TulliusCicero
Except, how long will they remain of sound mind and without substance abuse
once they're out on the street?

It's not destiny, of course, but it'd be naive to assume that becoming
homeless won't change the odds of someone developing a mental illness, or a
drug habit to attempt to cope.

~~~
chaostheory
Based on past data, our current homelessness programs are working for people
without mental or drug abuse issues. 80% of the homeless tend to recover
within several months, while only about 20% are chronically homeless.

IMO the current homeless problem stems from the shutdown of old mental
institutions by the Kennedy’s. There were good reasons for their crusade, such
as problems with abuse and neglect. The issue is that no solution or
alternative was given for shutting down the asylums which leads us to our
current predicament

------
boyadjian
This is not a housing crisis, there is enough houses built in California. This
is an overpopulation crisis : Simply too many people searching for a house.
Don't take the problem the reverse way.

~~~
bbddg
If there are enough houses how is it "overpopulation". It's clearly a failing
of the housing market. It's not able to efficiently allocate houses to people
that need them, it's designed to allocate houses only to people who can
maximize profit for land owners.

~~~
anoxor
Rent control means there isn't a true housing market when only a tiny fraction
of apartments are at market rate.

------
diogenescynic
Anyone think it’s not just the cost of housing driving this but largely driven
by meth and heroin and mental illness? The visibly homeless people I see on
the sides of the road in tents in California aren’t just becoming homeless due
to a rent increase—-their drug addiction and lack of treatment for mental
illness are the bigger issues. Lack of universal healthcare means if you’re
poor and mentally ill, you can easily end up on the street if you don’t have
family to care for you. Since Prop 47 passed, heroin and meth are basically
decriminalized and openly used on the streets in front of police. Likewise,
Prop 57 decriminalized theft up to $950/day so now we have an epidemic of car
break ins and theft from stores and no real police response. So I think the
people we see on the streets would have been in prison before prop 47 and 57
passed. We definitely need more public housing and to build more houses, but I
truly think meth and heroin are the elephant in the room that we aren’t
addressing. We just keep giving out needles and don’t even arrest the dealers.
It’s insanity.

~~~
jakemauer
Do you have evidence of the $950 figure? I read through prop 57 and it
concerns parole boards allowing non violent offenders to be released after
they fully complete their initial sentence for the primary crime. From
Wikipedia: “ Previously, prisoners were often required to serve extra time by
a sentence enhancement, such as those for repeated offenders.”

Additionally it allows for juvenile judges to have leeway in deciding if a
juvenile should be tried as an adult.

~~~
WillPostForFood
It was Prop 47, not 57. Classifies theft of up to $950 as Petty Theft.

[https://www.latimes.com/local/politics/la-me-ff-pol-
proposit...](https://www.latimes.com/local/politics/la-me-ff-pol-
proposition47-20141106-story.html)

[https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_47,_Reduced_P...](https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_47,_Reduced_Penalties_for_Some_Crimes_Initiative_\(2014\))

