It's more or less the same in NYC. DHS budget is about $2.2 billion to serve 90K people in shelters, and that doesn't count all of the service spending from agencies not directly responsible for housing and feeding them.
Part of the problem is that if you actually just do the most efficient thing, giving people money to go find housing and food (and I understand some won't be able to manage that and need help) then you end up poking a hole in the idea of how our society works. Why should someone grind away barely surviving when they could become homeless and get UBI instead? Now you need to pay UBI for way more than just 90k people.
Not that I think we shouldn't try to solve the problem, shouldn't work towards UBI, etc. Just saying the shortest path from status quo to the ideal will break the system.
> Part of the problem is that if you actually just do the most efficient thing, giving people money to go find housing and food (and I understand some won't be able to manage that and need help) then you end up poking a hole in the idea of how our society works.
This is a cultural thing that is harder to change - but it does not result in this.
I live in Finland and the only reason someone is actually homeless here is because they refuse to take the aid that's given to them.
I can assure you, that no one who doesn't have severe mental issues WANT to live on social wellfare.
In the US, the homeless commonly refused aid too. Mark Laita, who runs the large yt channel where he talks to the homeless, has spoken at length about this.
Because of policies mandating to stop using drugs, follow a specific religion or give up their possessions and live in bunks without private spaces or storage for personal items.
Mark is intimately aware of those programs and the hurdles they can create, he works directly with many of them. However he has repeatedly had people who come to him begging for help, and then they do nothing to actually realize that help. Even the most basic "Be outside your motel room I bought you at 11am to get in the car I will send that will take you to the counselor I'll pay for" and then they ghost it.
At the end of the day, they would in fact rather live on the street doing dope rather than live in a (paid for) motel room (or even apartment) and work a job.
A lot of Americans think they want to sit around doing nothing all day, but having done that on medical leave, and observed other people, my remark is, people hate ennui.
And most people can't get enough stimulation just from social media or TV, so given infinite leisure time, a lot of them are going to go stir-crazy and want to do _something_.
Look at all the elderly people who are constantly craving _some_ stimulus in their lives.
People think that the natural state of others if given no challenge in their lives is indolence, but having met a number of people looking for social safety nets, most of them just want the ability to get out of the pit they're in...and even the ones who think they want to just not care forever, everyone I've ever met who ended up in situations like that, had to find _something_ to stimulate themselves, sometimes including developing crippling addictions to feel _something_ for a moment.
I don’t know how many people that is. Understanding the quantity would be very useful for shaping policy.
I do think in the US there could be much more multi-generational trauma from our cold heartless system. Honestly some people are owed a lifetime of relaxation.
I think some studies have refuted this and found that most often if you house people they become productive. But those are very small studies and I am skeptical they could scale that well or persevere long-term, it will just bother too many others who are not benefiting from it, and people will find ways to manipulate the system and steal from it. But UBI is inevitable, we will have to figure it out or watch our civilization fail.
> it will just bother too many others who are not benefiting from it
The bit this comment misses is that the people who are not getting anything from it would be the people who pay for it. You can’t create such a strong incentive for failure and not expect failure to increase.
The thing that frustrates me about that is that the people who pay for it will get something from it. They get cleaner, safer streets. This leads to more sustainable street-level businesses (because there's more foot traffic), which leads to more choice and better prices. Overall it's just a higher quality of living.
Now, as a well-off person who can afford to (perhaps sometimes grudgingly) pay more taxes, it's not hard for me to see that. But I can see how it might be difficult for someone who is barely scraping by to adopt my perspective.
The basis of your premise is correct. If people are sufficiently deprived, some non-trivial portion of them will become highly anti-social, often violent, often criminal, and otherwise just disruptive to society. Even if it’s entirely their own fault for ending up that way. But you’re missing a couple of things.
Firstly, if you reward people for failing, you’re incentivising more people to fail. So the problem isn’t that a poorly conceived welfare program wouldn’t manage the anti-social aspect of society properly, it’s that it would create more of it.
Secondly, the people in the middle who pay for everything have a choice about how to manage this problem. They can take the big social safety net approach like an idealised Scandinavian system. Or they can take the heavy handed law and order approach, like say Singapore or Saudi Arabia or even Japan, which are some of the safest places in the world.
So yes, managing depravation at the bottom has a benefit for society. But the threat of “give us money or we’ll just rob you all the time and otherwise ruin society as much as possible” isn’t specifically a good argument for the type of policy you’re advocating.
> Or they can take the heavy handed law and order approach, like say Singapore or Saudi Arabia or even Japan, which are some of the safest places in the world.
I feel like you are conflating two things here that are not related. These places can take the heavy handed law and order approach they have because they are some of the safest places in the world. Unsurprisingly, at least in Japan, it’s nearly impossible to not have some form of housing if you want it. Even the lowest convenience store job will give you enough income to pay for the rent on a one-room apartment.
This just seems like a completely insane take to me. Every country that manages to combine a hard on crime approach with an actually effective police force has incredibly low crime rates.
Singapore is the most expensive city in the world, has no minimum wage, and doesn’t have a universal welfare program. It also routinely hands out prison time and caning (which is rather gruesome if you weren’t familiar with it) as punishments for crimes as minor as graffiti. That combined with an effective police force, a very high police to resident ratio, very low corruption, and there’s no question at all why their country is so clean and safe.
> Every country that manages to combine a hard on crime approach with an actually effective police force has incredibly low crime rates.
You have a source for that? And a theory that shows what is cause and which is effect?
Anyway, crime is fairly low here in Norway too but we definitely do not have Singaporean style punishments. So even if 'hard on crime' works there appear to be other methods.
> You have a source for that? And a theory that shows what is cause and which is effect?
Out of the top 10 lowest crime countries in the world, you have two micro states, Armenia (which has its own unique problems), and 7 rich countries that are either overtly authoritarian and very hard on crime, or are far more authoritarian than most westerners would be comfortable with (especially with regards to their justice system) and also very hard on crime (those being UAE, Qatar, Taiwan, Oman, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore).
What is the cause and effect? If people think they are likely to be caught for committing a crime, and that the punishment will likely be severe, then they are less likely to commit crime. This is simply common sense.
> Anyway, crime is fairly low here in Norway too but we definitely do not have Singaporean style punishments. So even if 'hard on crime' works there appear to be other methods.
I’ll just directly quote my parent comment.
> the people in the middle who pay for everything have a choice about how to manage this problem. They can take the big social safety net approach like an idealised Scandinavian system. Or they can take the heavy handed law and order approach
Though I will add that the social safety net approach seems to only work in rather limited circumstances. I doubt Singapore for instance would be able to implement such an approach, even if they wanted to.
I have a pet theory which says wealth and political stability over long periods of time and cultural homogeneity together lead to lower crime rates and this doesn't indicate anything about how law-abiding these countries citizens are or how big their social safety net is. And those countries still remain higher crime rate than countries who are both hard on crime, have an effective police force and have citizens who believe someone is watching them and will severely punish them even when they are out of the FOV of a CCTV camera (God in Islam. Christianity doesn't count, you won't be punished cause Jesus died for your sins).
Cultural, religious and ethnic homogeny are all obviously very beneficial for social stability, and I think the homogeny of Scandinavia is one of the main reasons that its social approach to managing crime has been so successful up until now. With the other major difference being that involuntary institutionalisation is rather high in those countries, where a lot of the anglo-sphere has instead opted to just release those people to live on the streets. These are however massively controversial ideas to a lot of people.
Singapore also proves that you can establish an incredibly high level of social stability without that homogeny though (and even with massive inequality), as the composition of cultural, religious and ethnic diversity they have has been a source of instability and violent confrontation for nearly every other country in the region.
I haven't seen anybody in this thread suggesting that there are only two variables involved in managing crime rates. This discussion is about two different general approaches to the problem, each of which have their own complex set of variable to manage.
It's your suggestion that the low-crime jurisdictions that take the "hard on crime" approach can do so because they are just naturally low-crime jurisdictions and they have the luxury of being able to implement any policy they want that I consider to be rather insane, and completely in conflict with all of the data on the topic.
> The thing that frustrates me about that is that the people who pay for it will get something from it. They get cleaner, safer streets.
At what price? What alternatives exist to them?
As I have gotten older I have slowly been getting tired of supporting people who not only do not pull their weight, but also whine and demand even more from those of us paying for the services they receive. Not only they are not grateful for receiving social services that their taxes are unable to fund, they also have the stones to blame those of us paying for everything for all their problems.
I think we already allocate enough money to solve the problem. Spending more will likely just reinforce the industrial homelessness complex. We need to change how the money is spent.
But also, clearly what we spend money on isn’t fixing the problems. The homeless know that better than we do. They’re right to complain.
The government cleans the streets regularly, so relocating unclean people into places the city doesn't clean isn't going to make the city any cleaner. You probably haven't had much experience being around people who can't take of themselves and haven't got anyone caring for them. Whatever properties they inhabit will become blighted and swarms of insects like cockroaches will infest everything nearby.
You'd first need to help them live with dignity. For the genuinely homeless the only social environment that's equipped to care for them are mental hospitals. Secondly you'd have to recalibrate your expectations for what productivity means. A person who isn't functional enough to to work with a manager to help a corporation achieve its goals, can still make meaningful contributions to society. Even if it's simply by helping their own self and then telling their story. Like the stories of the people with encephalitis lethargica who came back to life by taking the drug l-dopa. It didn't exactly help them rejoin the workforce, but it brought hope to humanity.
You don’t have to house the people in very desireable locations. If becoming homeless means that you instead get relegated to a massive concrete block, most productive members of society would do their hardest to leave as soon as possible. Those that don’t (for a variety of reasons) are at least off the streets.
That situation would be significantly better then a temporary bunk in a warehouse which is the best case scenario given all the problems with way homeless people are provided with shelter in the US.
In SF at least it is the same problem; charities (housing associations, homeless shelters, etc) tasked with reducing the problem don't effectively solve it as it would mean those organisations would get less funding.
Fixing the problem and "fixing" the way you feel about the problem aren't the same thing.
Never watched Fox News, so I'll take your word for it.
I live in SF and consider myself fairly left-leaning. I see individual homeless people. I see large encampments. I see drug-addicted people on the street screaming at and being aggressive with people, or at best mumbling nonsense to themselves. We spend $57k per homeless person per year, and the problem does not seem to be getting better.
I don't see how we can blame Republicans for SF's failure to house people, when Democrats and progressives dominate city politics. I'm not going to accuse our leadership of intentionally spending more to do less, lest some "undeserving" person gets a free handout, because I don't think that's what's happening.
Maybe instead of sliding down the path to Godwin's Law and making weak rebuttals, you actually explain how Republicans are at fault for SF's homeless problems?
What would I rebut? I never blamed SF on Republicans. The other poster did. I was implying there is a strong 'US Christian' attitude to be more outraged by accidentally helping someone that doesn't need it, that outweighs being 'Christian' and helping those that do need help. I'm not sure Christians are even glossing over this anymore. And this does lead to more bureaucracy to ensure this doesn't happen, and that is done by the legislatures when they create the organizations.
Then the other guy brought up "SF". A single word argument as if that was a 'rebuttal'. His 'rebuttal' was actually three words, "SF", "New York".
What are they implying by their one word argument?
I say something about Christians/Republican's, they just respond "SF". As if "SF" is in itself an entire argument against anything liberal or progressive and hence why we need to return to 'Old Testament' Bible values. "SF" is just another dog whistle for them, that we shouldn't be 'soft' on people.
You are bringing up actual problems. But what Republicans 'hear', is 'be more harsh on people'. Don't solve those problems, put them in jail.
And that despite Godwin's Law, this seemed very much in line with how Republicans argue (debate, market), they repeat the same short slogans over and over again. For so many years people have over used calling each other 'Nazi', that now we can't make any comparisons or someone brings up 'Godwin'. When there are actual real parallels that we should be pointing out.
So. My error is maybe lumping all Republicans in as Evangelical Christians.
I guess the problem is you listed a lot of different problems, and they all combine into something bad. But the article was about each individual program/organization trying to maintain itself. So I'd say this is one of those 'multi-polar' problems where each organization is trying their best, but they solve for a local minimum that is not optimal.
Is it really a single program spending $57K per person? Or is that number from adding up a number of programs? And it is all these different organizations, each solving part of the problem in-efficiently. And never solving the root problem, because that is out of the scope of any one program.
And, even if someone just handed me $57K in cash, could I afford to live in SF?
Isn't SF somewhat landlocked? hard to expand housing? And isn't housing somewhat geared towards the rich that skew right? Is it really progressives trying to keep away housing?
This is a bit all over place.
We could talk details about:
1. real world SF problems,
2. or how Republican Marketing techniques really do follow the Nasi playbook Goodwin or not,
3. or how organizations in general get stuck in some local minimum of bad incentives.
There is no one rebuttal to this thread. It is complex, and Republicans boil it down to a slogan, that is exactly what that nasi quote says to do.
Yes. Guess that is the problem. You try to cover the host of issues brought up, then you look scatter brained. One side just throws a lot of BS out there, it takes energy to try and respond, and the responder looks confused.
