Building housing can address the housing-prices problem, but the homeless problem is actually a drug problem, which is actually a mental health problem, which is actually a deep social problem.
If this was true, you would expect to see high rates of homelessness correlate with high rates of drug and alcohol use, no? It seems like in the US, states with high rates of overdose deaths [0] don't seem to have correspondingly high rates of homelessness [1], but do have much cheaper housing [2]. It's obviously a contributor, but I really don't think it's a silver bullet - you could 'solve' drug addiction today and you'd still have a homelessness crisis.
Obviously both are problems - but I think there are many people who would remain housed in spite of their addictions if housing was, on the whole, much cheaper.
Isn’t it possible that if you’re ODing in the middle of a city someone will notice you, vs you ODing in your trailer all alone?
How do you expect addicts and mentally ill people that can’t hold a job to hold housing? How do you reinsert them into the society?
I think it would be easier to create incentives for people to find work, support and housing in cheaper areas so they can get on their feet. It’s unrealistic in todays reality to expect new affordable housing in the most expensive cities in the country.
I also want to live cheap in SF or manhattan, unfortunately it’s not possible. So if I want that, I have to go to a Kansas, central Florida, etc. what is lacking in those places is accessibility, support and how to get there.
If that’s expected of me as a rational solution, should also be an option for a homeless person. What I cannot expect of a homeless person is for them to make it there and find something to do, secure a house, etc.
How much housing would you have to build in NYC, SF, Oakland, Seattle, Portland, Boston for it to be affordable? Doesn’t make sense to expect “housing” to pop up at levels that bring rent down from 4k to welfare levels in todays reality. We can talk about utopia all you want, but it’s not happening.
I suspect some confounding variables there. States with high homeless and drug use are more likely to have better ability to respond to a crisis like overdose no? It's likely that states with cheaper housing, such as the state I live in, have less options for drug addiction treatment and overdose response.
I don't know, I am just a skeptical person when it comes to making decisive causal inference from statistical data. That is very difficult.
It's both! There is a subset of homeless who are addicted to drugs and a subset that isn't. It is oversimplifying to reduce homelessness to a drug problem. Lower housing prices would help most homeless (and everyone else who pays for housing).
As far as I am aware this is mostly BS and numerous analyses have found that housing prices have far more of an effect than drug use. This podcast episode covers the common arguments about homelessness, drug abuse, and mental illness. Feel free to check the sources and see if everything adds up.
Most homelessness is not drug addicts who can't live in society. The vast majority of homeless people are those who can't afford a house, usually due to draconian and unfair zoning restrictions artificially limiting supply and pushing prices past what people can afford.
The people who are drugged out and can't live in society peacefully are more visible, but they are by far the minority.
But it is the drugged out visible long term homeless that this article is about and the problem everyone wants to solve. It is also the problem that hasn't been solved at all. In my city (LA) we have successful programs for the person who lost his job and then his apartment and ended up sleeping in his car.
Grouping the majority of homeless, who are short term, with the people living in tents on the sidewalk, smoking meth freely, is a rhetorical trick
The thing is there is little political interest in the "quiet" homeless problem. When people talk about the homeless they're referring to the drugged out people who can't live in society peacefully. They don't care about the homeless they don't see.
It's also a problem with the housing system. Discrimination against people who have a rental debt is leveraged as a business practice, and is horribly abused.
There's an unregulated credit bureau where apartment buildings report rental debts to enforce collection. If you have a record in that database, you can't get housing at most residential apartment buildings. This, of course, puts way too much power in the hands of apartment building owners and management companies.
They can set ridiculous terms in their leases, inflate prices, and otherwise do as they please. If you disagree, your only option is court. If you can't afford that, your only option is to comply. If you can't afford to comply, you're out of luck. Your next housing is likely to be an extended stay hotel for two or three times a typical rental for much shoddier housing without any kind of rental protection or eviction protection.
It's not just people on drugs or with mental health issues who are homeless. Those are the _visible_ homeless. The ones on the street without jobs. Not the person in a cubicle nearby who never tells you about their housing problem out of fear that it will negatively affect their professional prospects.
You’re right. Most homeless people, about 80%, do not have mental issues. These people tend to fully recover within 6-12 months. Unfortunately, the chronically homeless all have mental issues.
You can't solve fentanyl with just housing, but you can't solve it (or some other addiction, or mental illness) at all when you're living in a tent by the overpass, and no human being is willing to make eye contact with you, either.
Googling causes of the recent homeless boom, you’ll see housing costs pushing people over the brink from transitory housing to no housing is the major factor[1]
Even building luxury housing removes pressure from the lower end of the market, as if there’s no luxury housing people buy up distressed properties. It’s musical chairs and those who can’t afford the fixed number of chairs end up on the street.
74% of homeless people aren't addicted to drugs. And homelessness is merely the most extreme form of housing insecurity which affects 12% of all Americans. It's not actually a drug problem, it's a housing problem.
... and mental health and the actual desire to move in under a roof.
Ithaca, NY is struggling with a large homeless colony. Ithaca has built enough new housing in the last few years that the skyline is transformed, there are cranes in the air like I've rarely seen in a city in the US. Ithaca also has robust public services, shelters, etc.
For the most part homeless people in Ithaca could get into a shelter and then get into some kind of permanent housing with public assistance but most of the people in "the Jungle" won't go through the process to get that for various reasons. This is a different situation from out west where public services are completely overwhelmed.
I haven't seen any data showing if people became addicted to drugs first and then became homeless due to that or if it was the other way around. I can totally see people becoming homeless first and then getting addicted to drugs because being homeless sucks. Again, haven't seen any data to show which way happens more often but the data showing rates of homelessness are lower in areas with lower housing costs is pretty telling.
You can't solve fentanyl with housing.