
Homeless model: New York's hidden homeless - yitchelle
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34574818
======
johnkpush
A friend of mine was in a similar situation as Reay. He had no addictions, and
no psychological problems, but ended up homeless.

He used his remaining 2k to purchase a 1 year membership at Chelsea Piers
sports club. It turned out to be the smartest way he could have used that
money. Chelsea Piers is an enormous facility with 20 showers, locker room,
huge lounge area with Wifi and couches. He hung out there for most of the day,
worked out, learned php, took some freelance web development gigs, got enough
experience and knowledge to eventually move on to a full time programming job.
In a few months he saved enough money for an apartment in Queens.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Where did your friend sleep?

~~~
johnkpush
On the street most of the time, and occasionally he'd crash at a friend's
house. He'd lock his valuable possessions (laptop, etc) in the locker room.

------
sofaofthedamned
I remember hearing on the radio about the UK Government, many years ago doing
a census of all the homeless in the UK.

They had somebody on the radio who worked with the homeless who was tasked to
do it in her area. Her instructions were only to count those on _public_
property - i.e, if they were in a shop doorway or a car park they didn't
count.

Funnily enough the count showed a large decrease in the number of homeless,
congratulations all round etc etc.

~~~
dazc
I've been homeless. Counting people in shop doorways,etc would be a poor
measure anyway.

And, someone 'who worked with the homeless' would be unlikely to spot the
majority of people who were homeless.

It's not something you go around advertising unless you're in a certain
outlying subset.

To my mind, in the UK at least, many of the 'people who work with the
homeless' are often part of the problem.

~~~
noja
> many of the 'people who work with the homeless' are often part of the
> problem.

How so?

~~~
dazc
They spend much of their time and budget helping people with problems that can
not be easily solved. For instance, someone with a dependence on alcohol or
drugs gets priority over someone who doesn't.

A lot of homeless people could have their lives turned around with a timely
and cost effective intervention but they are often ignored at the expense of
those who are deemed to be 'more vulnerable'.

I was helped by a total stranger who offered me a place to stay. Within a few
weeks I was working, back on my feet and paying taxes.

Many of the people I saw drinking in the park every day 4 years ago are still
there, with the well meaning support of the local homeless charity.

When I asked for help I was told there was nothing they could do for me.

I'm not saying people with drug and drink issues shouldn't be helped. They
should but not under the limited remit and resources of the homelessness
agencies.

~~~
logfromblammo
That sounds to me like using the "longest job first" scheduling algorithm in
your OS--very inefficient, and certainly not fair.

If every homeless person had an estimate attached for the amount of effort
required to return them to mainstream society, you have made the problem of
allocating caseworkers to people analogous to CPU resources for a process. An
automated algorithm could make the perfectly rational decision to prioritize
someone who just needs to find some affordable housing quickly over someone
who needs a few weeks in rehab, a psych counselor, vocational retraining,
lifestyle interventions, etc.

Select a fair algorithm, and you get a fair allocation of limited resources,
without having to "nice" any process so far down that it never actually gets
to execute.

~~~
Mz
I think it is far worse than that.

I have chronic health problems and was abused as a child. Here are a few of my
opinions:

A very high percentage of people in "helping" professions have a deep need to
be needed. It strongly inclines them to want to help you in a way that keeps
you in need of a crutch and subtly but actively discourages or prevents you
from ever standing on your own two feet.

Many programs have such unhealthy paradigms, you are better off avoiding them
if at all possible.

The way we define services has a tendency to entrench the problem.

I am currently homeless and have had a college class on homelessness and
public policy and generally read a fair amount over the years about things
like the origin of American welfare. I am gradually resolving my very
challenging personal problems -- getting healthier, paying down debt, earning
more money -- and I run a website aimed at helping homeless people keep their
freedom, dignity and agency in the face of a really broken system of
assistance.

------
DanielBMarkham
We need to come up some better language for people who could afford a house in
another town, but prefer to live in the open in order to be in some particular
geographic spot. "Homeless" is much too broad. Are you homeless if you prefer
"high-profile but low-profit" jobs, as this man did? Well sure, but being
homeless does not always mean that conditions outside of your control have
left you with no place to live, which is the way it's commonly used. Sometimes
you make choices to do things you want.

There was a great story a while back about some guys who came to YC and were
living in their car -- they thought that everybody just did it that way. They
managed to save, get funded, and graduate YC. They all probably have nice
places to live now because they made some choices earlier. Not my thing, and
they probably wouldn't make those choices again, but at the time it all worked
out for them.

People talk about self-driving cars as being the thing that destroys
traditional car ownership, but I'm not so sure. If electricity is cheap enough
to be almost free, and cars can take themselves from place-to-place without
needing any attention, I imagine there would be a lot of folks -- myself
included -- who would consider owning a "room that goes places" instead of a
traditional home/apartment. Are those people homeless also? Nyah, the word
just doesn't work everywhere we try to use it. Need some other term.

~~~
forgetsusername
> _about some guys who came to YC and were living in their car_

Outliers, likely in many ways. Young, talented people, wealthy enough to own a
car and smart enough to get into and through YC. They probably had family and
a home life to return to if they failed. I agree, that isn't "homeless". You
can't point at such examples as the model for most people on the streets,
though.

------
Kurtz79
Curiously I was reading an article about the state of homelessness in NY this
morning on the NYT, which is interesting in its own right.

Further reading:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/nyregion/despite-vow-
mayor...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/nyregion/despite-vow-mayor-de-
blasio-struggles-to-stop-surge-in-
homelessness.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-
Hidden&module=inside-nyt-region&region=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-
region&_r=0)

------
PythonicAlpha
That are just shocking pictures to me. Well educated (as it seams) and hard
working people, that can not afford at least a small regular spot of living.

With the last big real estate deal in NY, the problem will be rising.

The federal poverty line does not consider the greed of investment companies.
It also does not help, to count the number of breads you can (theoretically)
buy.

Lets face it: Human labor is losing it's value. The reason plainly is, that
more and more interest has to be drawn for the "investors". Somebody has to
pay the bill for the parties held in the financial districts and for the
money, the governments squander on the banks.

In the high-payed tech sector, this effect is not so much felt currently, but
this will change in the future, when the low-income sector is so much bleed-ed
out, that the interest for the big investors has to come from elsewhere.

~~~
amykhar
But isn't most people's response to high rent in NY to commute from NJ and not
live on a roof? I can't help but think that this man's choice to live on a
roof isn't the one that most people would make.

~~~
baobabaobab
He didn't have a stable enough income to always maintain a gym membership. I
doubt a daily commute and rent would be cheaper.

------
gloves
In this particular case, having read the article, it didn't seem as if the man
in question really minded the lifestyle of homelessness.

There is a perception that to be without a static home is a terrible, terrible
thing, but really, I can imagine for someone who appears to have his life
together in many other ways (and free from other issues that plight the
homeless community such as addictions) - then it could possibly be quite a
liberating lifestyle.

I can of course see the other side of the equation where it would also be a
prison - having to lie about his home for embarrassment etc. But in this very
specific example, he seems to have got on with it and made the most of the
situation

~~~
yummyfajitas
I've significant amounts of time living without a static home. In 2014, the
longest time I spent in one place was 2-3 months at one particular low end
hotel, not really by choice (prepping and recovering from spine surgery).
Significant chunks of my time were spent living in shared housing - 8-12 bunk
beds to a room, no real privacy, shared baths. In the west, if such a living
space were filled with crazy drug addicts, it would be called a homeless
shelter.

When a westerner has this experience in Asia it's called "backpacking" rather
than "homelessness", and most folks will object strongly if I were to describe
myself as homeless. Perhaps we should come up with a similar term to describe
it when folks do it in the west and similarly compartmentalize their
experiences.

~~~
lagadu
When people say "homeless" they generally refer to something akin to "not
having a place with a roof to sleep in and don't have a choice to have one".
If you are staying at a hotel or if you have a home you can go back to abroad
you're not considered homeless in that sense.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Who said I had a home abroad? And the hotel was just my longest stay, mostly
for medical reasons. My primary accommodation was youth hostels and PGs, which
are (materially) more or less homeless shelters.

(Of course they are much higher status. Is this discussion really just about
status?)

The premise of gloves' comment (which I'm accepting for the purpose of my
comment) is that the person described in the article is also homeless by
choice. He certainly seems functional enough to get and hold a job at Chipotle
and rent a flat in distant Brooklyn if he wants.

The suggestion is that - much like me - his lifestyle is a choice. Just like
you want to compartmentalize my experience with a different label, maybe we
should do the same with him and similarly situated folks.

~~~
pjc50
It's at least partly about status. But in the UK one of the possible outcomes
of the housing system is a family being accomodated by the council in B&B or
hotel accomodation on a "temporary" basis. This is for the very sensible
reason that having children sleep on the streets or in homeless shelters is
especially bad for their safety and future development. But it can still
produce some very weird outcomes, especially when extended for weeks or
months.

------
jzwinck
"We live in a city with 1.5m people living below the poverty line - that means
we have 1.5m people at risk of being homeless."

Not exactly. First, the poverty line is federal and does not move with the ebb
and flow of NYC life. Second, a lot of homeless in NYC are that way by choice
rather than by direct inability to get a room somewhere. Sometimes this is due
to mental issues which are not caused by low income. Third, there are people
who make money but spend it all, ending up paying taxes above the poverty line
but actually having zero or negative savings. Plenty of people in NYC are in
that category.

~~~
buro9
> Second, a lot of homeless in NYC are that way by choice rather than by
> direct inability to get a room somewhere. Sometimes this is due to mental
> issues which are not caused by low income.

I've been homeless, so perhaps you'll forgive me for being biased against
thinking like that.

I would never class mental illness as a choice, or of poor decisions whilst
someone is suffering mental illness as a choice.

It sounds to me a lot like victim blaming. That a person may "choose" to be
homeless because they have mental illness... isn't that more like a lack of
compassion by fellow citizens to help support those who are suffering from
mental illness?

Would it be different if it were a physical illness? That man is homeless
because he chose to be due to having a broken leg. That sounds ridiculous, and
frankly that's how your statement sounds to me.

I "chose" to be homeless. Sure, my choice. I could've stayed in a violent and
sexually abusive environment and living in poverty. But instead it was my
"choice" to sleep on the streets to escape it.

I didn't even choose hostels - I voluntarily declined a bed to sleep in -
because when you've come from a shared sleeping environment in which you were
not safe and feared physical abuse nightly, then you may understand my
reticence to enter a shared sleeping environment with strangers, some of whom
as you pointed out may have mental illness.

Perhaps this is all just a mental construct to make you feel better about
yourself. If you are able to imagine that these people took responsibility for
themselves and this was a free choice, you are able to absolve yourself of any
individual part of the responsibility to show compassion and empathy towards
fellow humans.

If all we've got to offer people as a society, is a "choice" to sleep without
shelter, without warmth, without safety... I'm not really seeing how anyone
can say that people "choose" this.

Edit: Whilst this issue has attention:
[http://crackandcider.com/](http://crackandcider.com/) I'd urge anyone doing
secret santa's, or just feeling flush to go there, and buy things for homeless
people. They're good people, taking no profit but covering costs, and just
giving this stuff to people who need it.

~~~
sokoloff
I'm moved by your story, but wonder what would you propose as a workable
alternative for someone in your position?

It seems like the requirement that you not share sleeping space makes your
situation a very difficult one to address, no? No-cost private hotel rooms
seems financially a non-starter.

~~~
buro9
I read about a scheme in the USA, where they had built single-room
accommodation on the edge of some town. These were small huts, no larger than
a shed, and held a very small studio/bedsit setup. These were standalone
units, basically sheds/huts.

The huts were cheap, and being self-contained they were good tools to help
someone re-enter the world of housing, of taking care of housing, of cooking
for oneself and cleaning, etc. Training grounds for all the skills you need to
survive when you finally get somewhere larger, but also large enough not to
give you shelter, security.

They had other things, like a central place to go and socialise, to get used
to humans again, and counsellors and support people... but the key thing is a
very small space that is yours.

That would be enough... a shed.

It need not be permanent, just enough to lift someone from the very lowest
point in their life to a point fractionally above that.

In effect I did this too. For shelter from snow over Winter I would trespass
onto building sites after they had closed and would sleep in the site office.
It was shelter, there was generally a heater and a kettle. I could make a bed,
I would leave the place tidy. But most of all, it was safe and I always felt
confident I would survive the night (something I wasn't sure of the times I
lay shivering violently under bushes in Manchester).

Little steps, lots of support, understanding. Just giving someone an apartment
isn't the answer, it's about supporting people, to help them re-integrate. A
home isn't a magic bullet for people not ready to live in one.

~~~
planfaster
The way I see it (my background is Austrian economics), the poor and the
homeless are people who cannot afford to live in a city. City-living isn't a
right, it's for those who can afford it. No one is owed anything for not
having enough money to live in a city.

That means in general I am against helping the poor and the homeless stay in
the city, since the point of city is to be a wealth-creation center, not a
welfare experiment.

You say you have been homeless. I'd like to ask you what you think of my idea:
instead of giving the homeless shelter in the city, and having them drain
resources from people who produce wealth, meanwhile not producing anything,
why not give them a cheap house in a small farmland with some chicken or
turkey, rabbits, a vegetable garden, etc?

That way we solve many problems. 1. the poor are now productive, they produce
their own food instead and don't need to drain other people's resources to
have food and shelter; 2. they are far from the city, which won't encourage
laziness by sending people a message that they can't try and game the system
by getting help while still living in the city as a non-producer; 3. it will
teach these poor people good work ethics and how work is necessary for
everyone to survive, and that they can't just rely on the fact that other
people work.

I'd say that besides the farm life, they should have good public libraries
nearby in case they want to learn something in order to be able to later join
the city life again, this time as a productive member.

Am I being inhumane for trying to make producers out of every human being, and
for thinking even the disabled can help pick fruit from bushes or wash them or
otherwise contribute in a communal farm setting? Would you be for a program to
send the poor and the homeless to farms and basically instate a rule where you
can't live in a place you can't afford?

~~~
buro9
> You say you have been homeless. I'd like to ask you what you think of my
> idea: instead of giving the homeless shelter in the city, and having them
> drain resources from people who produce wealth, meanwhile not producing
> anything, why not give them a cheap house in a small farmland with some
> chicken or turkey, rabbits, a vegetable garden, etc?

I have been homeless, it's not something I just say.

I disagree with your entire post. It's based on this false assumption, "the
point of city is to be a wealth-creation center, not a welfare experiment".

Definition of a city:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City) "A
city is a large and permanent human settlement.[1][2] Although there is no
agreement on how a city is distinguished from a town in general English
language meanings, many cities have a particular administrative, legal, or
historical status based on local law."

Nothing in there mentioned wealth, or welfare. Remove that personal
bias/motive from your proposal and your proposal very quickly falls apart.

That is before one would progress to the more offensive part of your argument:
That those with money and wealth have more right to live in a city than those
without. That those who work in lower paid industries have less of a right
than those in higher paid industries.

It seems horribly convenient as a concept, that you could put the poor and
homeless on buses and drive them out of your sight.

~~~
DickingAround
I would like to see the idea of a city as 'wealth creating' proven. It does
seem much more complex an establishment.

That said, if people don't own land in the city and can't afford to rent some
then they should not have a 'right' to use other's land there. Land ownership
is a pretty basic part of society and I'd be hesitant to give everyone
'rights' to land in a city.

Those are the easy arguments to make. Let me also make a hard and unpopular
one: Spreading our resources to people who won't provide ROI is a waste. In
defending this, let me first claim broad experience here; I've let homeless
people I barely know stay in my house and given them my keys for weeks. I have
given out loans without paperwork. I've hung out with a lot of segments of
society from prison inmates to college students from small towns. Just
anecdotally, I think the ones who can provide real value are already finding
their way through the system. For example, owning a computer and occasionally
an internet connection is pretty much the only capital investment for getting
a median-income job programming. I've lost count of how many poor people won't
even try. Is that their fault? The fault of their upbringing? The fault of
their genetics? It doesn't matter. If we throw our value away on them no one
will get anywhere. Even putting aside questions of morality and property
rights, if this was a communist dictatorship, the optimal choice is to play
favorites with those that produce good value. And naturally we do invest in
the ones that can generate value. One day that might not be true, but it still
is today. Just last week I read about Ortega using Zara to turn himself from
rags to richest person in the world. That's incredible upward mobility. There
is more opportunity today than ever before. We just have to accept that
opportunity != reality for everyone, ourselves included. I have limits. I know
I won't reach the that level because I'm not good enough. But I'm good enough
to admit I don't want to bring down those that can.

------
throwaway13337
While food, clothing, tech, even a lot of services have gone way down as a
portion of median income, housing has gone disproportionally up. The only
thing to compare it to is healthcare costs.

Various government intervention that collude together to make this happen -
mortgage interest tax deduction, building ordinances for areas, housing bubble
bailouts. That is, it's mostly artificial.

Innovation in this area seems prime, therefore. This could mean forcing the
rules to bend, or by allowing ways to opt out of housing all together as the
man described in this article does.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
The basic issue is that food, clothing, and technology are treated as consumer
goods, if sometimes durable consumer goods. Housing is treated as an
investment asset, _and the economy currently runs on asset bubbles_.

Housing won't become affordable until we shift the growth-engine of the
economy back to sustainable, wage-driven consumption.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Housing is only an investment asset in certain disfunctional housing markets
(e.g., NYC, SF). The problem in these markets is that it's _illegal to sell
only housing_ \- you can usually only sell housing + weird quasi-property
rights (rent control/stabilization, landlord isn't allowed to easily get rid
of tenants, etc).

In a market of renters who have leases that don't need to be renewed except
via mutual consent of both parties, housing is very strictly a consumer good -
you are buying X months of housing at a specific location for $Y.

Houston has a very functional housing market. Their secrets? No exclusionary
zoning, no NIMBYs (Houston issued 64k housing permits in 2014, California
issued 83k), no rent control, just build what people want and then sell it
under mutually agreeable terms.

~~~
lhopki01
Yet ask people where they would prefer to live and more want to live in New
York than Houston. A city is more than just a sprawl of houses. Much of the
attraction of cities comes from other things.

~~~
logfromblammo
I'd rather live in Houston than New York.

Of course, I'd also rather live in a paper bag at the bottom of a wet ditch
than to be subjected to the local culture, politics, and economy of _some_
cities. (Looking at you, DC sprawl.)

You just can't effectively reduce the personal appeal of cities to a single
input variable. But in this case, the ratio of living expenses (incl. housing)
to median salaries in the usual suspects roundup of job titles provides a
clear advantage to Houston.

Public transportation tips toward New York. Compatibility with local culture
tips toward New York. Local politics tips toward New York. Pleasantness of the
weather barely tips toward Houston. Non-homogeneity of the populace is a wash.
Lower crime rate goes to New York. Availability of tasty food is a wash.
Public politeness goes to Houston. Lighter tax burden goes to Houston, big
time. On public education, I don't even know.

You can attach an a la carte dollar value to each of the attributes of a city,
and sum them up to get a rough desirability value. That's essentially the
answer to the question "How much extra would I be willing to pay to live in
this new place instead of where I live now?"

You can establish a base value by adding differences in salary and expenses.
Then you assign a value to all the subjective things, like being able to buy
corn on the cob from a street vendor, or being able to escape the urban sprawl
for weekends and vacations. How much is it worth to you to have the option to
not drive a car, or to easily find a parking space when you do? How much would
someone have to pay you to have neighbors that freak out when they see a
dandelion on _your_ lawn? How much would you have to be paid to put up with
heavy pollution, or a torturous commute? Add it all up, and the highest-valued
city is where you would probably be happiest.

Depending on your preferences, the presence or lack of zoning _might_ be a
single factor that could cause you to prefer one city over another, but
probably only to the extent that it affects your monthly housing expenses.

------
jlebrech
If I couldn't afford both an apartment and office i'd get something like this
[http://www.podtime.co.uk/](http://www.podtime.co.uk/)

That's assuming I was doing IT work which required having a business address.

~~~
DarkTree
According to the FAQs, the pod's internal temperature matches that of its
surroundings. So, unfortunately it will still be brutal in the winter, albeit
better than exposed directly to the elements.

But more importantly, where do you put this thing? If you were living in NYC
without an apartment, I can't imagine you could just plop this down in the
middle of Central Park.

~~~
jlebrech
in an office

------
amyjess
Reading this, I'm reminded of the Google employee who lives in his van.

------
cubancigar11
"I never wanted my problem to be someone else's by asking for charity or
living on someone's couch for free," he said.

Brave. Men don't get anything for free anyway.

~~~
toothbrush
> _Brave. Men don 't get anything for free anyway._

Do you mean that male humans don't get anything for free, or do you mean that
as in people? Because in certain societies ( _ahem_ large swathes of Europe)
there are social safety nets in place to prevent precisely this type of thing
from happening. Lose your job? You get a percentage of your old salary for a
fixed number of months to allow you to transition to a new job.

But i'm not quite sure what you are trying to imply.

~~~
aurelianito
I think that he is trying to imply that society imposes men the burden to
endure things. We cannot complain nor show suffering. If we do so, we are
discriminated.

I see this behavoiur a lot.

~~~
PavlovsCat
There is no way I can get away with it on HN, but in my mind, I call it
Neoliberal Personality Disorder (not because it _is_ a personality disorder, I
mean it as a pun on Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which in turn is a
placeholder for itself plus related disorders). A set of soundbites and
rationalizations that lead people to talk and behave (about and towards not
directly present people) _as if_ they were devoid of empathy, while
considering the _expression_ of suffering (especially suffering they are made
in some way made indirectly and partially responsible for), as an affront in
itself, and the only problem to be solved (or ignored). Certain ideas are so
deeply ingrained that they don't even need to be articulated or _seriously_
defended, and poking under the facade is met with aggression or silence (or
flowery explanations of why it's pointless to communicate, shallow non-
communication etc., which are the same thing in effect).

The problem isn't that corporations, political parties, fan clubs etc. aren't
fully developed people, how could they, they're groups of people; it's that
they in some weird way sometimes tend to "think" they are, and think their
lack of empathy and unwillingness to self-criticize is strength, just like a
damaged person might. How those then train and filter people reflects that,
which creates feedback. Also note that I don't mean to say that "all
corporations are X" or "all neoliberals think Y" \- calling corporations or
capitalism sociopathic is overused anyway, I know, but I really think there is
_something_ there, and just like personality disorders and related traits in
humans, it's not black and white but rather on a spectrum.

Put differently and rephrasing what many people said before in the last 100
years, it's the pathology of a "system", not (just) that of the people in it.
Though I wonder how long it takes to rub off, and where the lines blur, how it
affects language which in turn affects thought and our ability to even see it.
Take it as food for thought more than a claim, and sorry for rambling.

~~~
gerbilly
> it's the pathology of a "system", not (just) that of the people in it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_violence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_violence)

------
20150327ASG
Capitalism is not a victim-less crime.

~~~
maratd
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need?

