
NYC offering to pay homeless a year’s worth of rent if they leave town - SQL2219
http://nypost.com/2017/09/29/city-offering-to-pay-homeless-a-years-worth-of-rent-if-they-leave-town/
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g13g32qgqgv
I can imagine situations where such a program would be a global net positive.
For example, if the victim of homelessness is working homeless, and has family
in another city they want to get back to, but do not have the means to secure
an apartment in the other city. I doubt they are offering to toss money like
this to vagrants.

The optics are awful, but I can think of situations where a program like this
comes from a good place and accomplishes some good. Maybe not as much good as
building 10x as many new skyscrapers for housing, but some good.

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trapperkeeper74
Doesn’t address the problem by shifting externalities elsewhere and reinforces
prejudices. Maybe instead of arrogant “quick fixes” it’s worth considering,
lower TCO permanent solutions like micro apartments, real and integrated drug,
health and mental healthcare coverage coordinated with social workers would
address the major sources of costs (ie social services, emergency rooms and
justice system).

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slededit
Most homeless are temporarily homeless, and such assistance would be a huge
help to get them back on their feet. It is very difficult to pull yourself
back up when you don't even have a secure place to sleep. Let alone shower or
keep clean clothes. Homeless shelters help a little, but you end up needing to
wait in line much of the day to get a spot making it real hard to go looking
for jobs.

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xcavier
Under rug swept...

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tylerhou
... or this could be a program with the same goals as Utah's wildly successful
housing first program ([http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-
chronic...](http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic-
homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how)), but it's just too expensive to house
homeless people in the city itself.

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StanislavPetrov
As someone who pays taxes in New York City, I'd much rather see my tax dollars
go towards paying the rent of the homeless than 99% of the other things the
city does with our money.

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dawnerd
And they’ll all end up in San fran, Portland, Seattle, or la.

And if they end up in Portland the city won’t do anything other than move
their camps around.

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ideonexus
I've been thinking we should have a Federal program that helps people in small
towns relocate into urban areas or suburban areas at the outskirts of cities.
I think letting sparsely populated rural areas depopulate would save us
billions on infrastructure since it costs far more per person to run and
maintain miles of road out to nowhere rather than short roads to apartments,
townhouses, and neighborhoods. As a city dweller, I would gladly exchange the
massive federal infrastructure costs that incentivise rural life for the much
more consolidated stress this would put on my local infrastructure.

The irony of my proposal is that, while it is in a sense the converse of what
NY is doing, I guarantee you it would draw vastly more outrage. The costs of
sheltering the 60,000 homeless in NY is nothing compared to the costs of
subsidizing rural America to the tune of trillions of dollars. The former is
considered a debatable charity, while the latter is never questioned.

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tylerhou
>subsidizing rural America to the tune of trillions of dollars

I'm not sure where you're getting that number from. Here's a federal budget
breakdown for FY2016 [1]:

    
    
      Non-discretionary spending:
      Social Security: $910 billion
      Medicare: $588 billion
      Medicaid: $368 billion
      Other: $563 billion
      Interest payments: $241 billion
      
      Discretionary spending:
      Defense: $584 billion
      Non-defense: $600 billion
    

Spending on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, interest payments, and
defense would not decrease if rural citizens moved to the city. Thus those
subsidies aren't solely for rural America, so I won't include them in your
"trillions of dollars" claim unless you want to make the claim that the
government is subsidizing both rural and non-rural citizens to the tune of
trillions of dollars, which nobody would doubt.

The rest of the budget adds up to $1,163 billion dollars. Even if you made the
wild assumption that all that money went straight into the pockets of rural
Americans, it's hardly _trillions_ of dollars.

(Note that I'm ignoring state budgets. But I think the trillions of dollars
assertion is so absurd that I'm not going to waste the time to look up those
stats as well.)

[1]
[https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/images/pubs...](https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/images/pubs-
images/52xxx/52408-Land-Budget_Overall.png).

~~~
ideonexus
The problem is that you can't look up those stats. They don't exist. I'm not
talking about Federal Budget alone or roads alone. I'm talking about Federal
Taxes, State Taxes, and Local Taxes as they apply to roads, electric lines,
sewage, bridges, community centers, and the myriad other projects that go into
supporting a healthy community.

There is a well established flow of taxes from urban areas to rural areas. We
frame it as a progressive flow of taxes from high-income to low-income, but
much of that low-income is tied to geography. I think the reaction to my post
reinforces this. Comments in support of NY's export of low-income citizens out
of the city have been up-voted. But, as I predicted, observing that rural
Americans are consuming more public services than they pay for has drawn
outrage. It's easy to call homeless people a problem, but people get angry
when you point out how reliant they are on the government for their rural
lifestyle.

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Veratyr
> The problem is that you can't look up those stats. They don't exist.

Yes you can. You can obtain just about every budget online, whether it be
state, federal or local. The person you're replying to showed you the federal
budget which you seem to have conveniently ignored:
[https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/images/pubs...](https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/images/pubs-
images/52xxx/52408-Land-Budget_Overall.png)

You can see on that chart that the chunk which might apply to "roads, electric
lines, sewage, bridges, community centers [...]" is the "Nondefense" chunk,
which is $600b, or about 15% of the total federal budget.

I can't be bothered listing the budget for every state in the country but
they're there. As for local budgets, they're going to apply to the local area.

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kapauldo
This is such a Republican solution. They think they're just lazy.

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sctb
Please don't post information-free partisan flamebait like this.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

