Homeless people are attracted to places with nice year round weather. SF provides that.
They are also attracted to places where they are tolerated or accepted. The people of SF are very tolerant of the homeless. As one of the commenters here says: "I bring cash, you run out after just a block or two." Sounds like a great place to be homeless.
As for root causes, homelessness is mostly caused by drug addiction and mental illness. According the the National Coalition for the Homeless:
"A 2008 survey by
the United States Conference of Mayors asked 25 cities for their top three causes of homelessness.
Substance abuse was the single largest cause of homelessness for single adults (reported by 68% of cities).
Substance abuse was also mentioned by 12% of cities as one of the top three causes of homelessness for
families. According to Didenko and Pankratz (2007), two-thirds of homeless people report that drugs
and/or alcohol were a major reason for their becoming homeless."
As for mental illness, according to a research summary compiled by the Treatment Advocacy Center:
"Approximately one-third of the total homeless population includes individuals with serious, untreated mental illnesses"
More affordable housing will not offer relief to the homeless because their state is largely caused by addiction and mental illness, not by high housing prices.
70%+ of homeless people in SF were previously housed in SF. Yes they are attracted to SF but it's in the same way that you and I may be attracted to the city. They came for the weather, the jobs, the culture, and they got left behind.
You're right about drug abuse and mental illness, but neither of those should leave someone to a life on the streets. Treatment is the answer for people with mental health issues or addictions.
“Homlessness” is a much broader concept than the yelling szizophric on the street with that weird “missing hair syndrome” on his head that a lot of them have.
It covers things like eviction, family unit disruption, etc.
Yeah sure 70% of homeless fall into “previously housed here and fell on hard times.”
While sad and should be addressed it is not the homelessness that is greatly affecting quality of life. It is the small fraction of chronically sick, chronically insane and chronically addicted that are literally dying on the streets in front of people.
Thank you for pointing this out. It's far to common to hear that the increase in homelessness is the result of out-of-town transients invading from afar and then settling here.
They may have previously been housed in SF, but they lost their shelter for one reason or another - likely drugs or mental illness, given statistics - and stayed in SF for the reasons I gave.
That number is self-reported and ostensibly includes crashing on someone's couch for a month before getting kicked out. (IIRC, the head of Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing admitted as much recently on Michael Krasny's Forum show.) Plus, most forms of public assistance require being a California or San Francisco resident. The legal definition and logic of residency doesn't translate easily into non-lawyer speak, so like with many such things there are common myths about meeting residency requirements, such as having lived in a place for at least 1 year, etc.[1] And it doesn't matter that the legal requirements are rarely enforced, people needing assistance will often follow a script.
If you know anything about how evictions work in this city, like the fact that Ellis Act evictions require a _ridiculous_ amount of compensation (think at least $20-$30k), it's obvious the real problem with homelessness in the city is drugs and mental health and the fact that, for whatever reasons, homeless from around the Bay Area, California, and Western U.S. inflate our numbers.
My mother is part of a jobs program that pays her to tend to some disabled people in public housing[2]. That is, she's intimately familiar with many assistance programs from the perspective of both beneficiary and provider. In San Francisco, if you live on the streets but are willing to enter treatment (for mental health or drugs), it's _very_ easy to be housed. It's actually a source of resentment because plenty of people who could really use public housing, but who otherwise work their butts off to stay off the streets, can't get it in favor of people who can get housing (plus cash benefits) merely by stopping drugs.
Drug and mental health issues are legitimate problems that people need and deserve help overcoming (often in perpetuity), and I don't have a problem funding programs to help those people. But IMO using the housing crisis to explain street homelessness is self-serving and counter-productive rhetoric by people effected by high rents, who have every incentive to link the two problems considering that the city actually puts resources into addressing homelessness. The cost of housing no doubt plays a part at the margins (e.g. by taking extremely low-end housing off the market that once upon a time might have been more tolerant of drug addicted and mentally ill tenants causing trouble and missing rent), but based on the facts on the ground I can't see how it's even close to being the primary cause of the magnitude of the problem today.
[1] It doesn't help that during the 1990s many states, including California, tried to make many of those myths the law, but SCOTUS shot them down (I think because of the Privileges & Immunities Clause). Still, Republican pundits today still push for hard requirements like 1 year of residency, having had a job, etc. This lends the myths credibility and keeps them circulating.
[2] Disabled in a very technical, legal sense. Every one of her "clients" is at least as physically capable as others of similar age. Most disabled in these programs are people who, because of psychiatric or cognitive issues, simply have trouble taking care of themselves or mastering life skills more generally, even if in conversation they seem perfectly normal and intelligent. The public housing they live in would deteriorate into garbage dumps and drug dens if people didn't come in and clean up after them and tamp down on bad behavior Involving police or social workers would be far too expensive, and such blatant exercise of authority would drive these people back out onto the streets. IOW, you literally need to _pay_ these people to stay off the street. Humans are... complex....
Speaking as someone with multiple addicts in his immediate family (some with 40+ year addiction histories), I promise you that treatment is rarely the "answer". Most addicts don't want to go to treatment. They want to maximize their draw from society and minimize their effort to get that draw so that they can continue to use drugs as much as possible.
> I promise you that treatment is rarely the "answer". Most addicts don't want to go to treatment.
Most addicts don't want to go to treatment because treatment doesn't work - mostly it gets people to focus on their failures and feel bad about themselves. Someone responded to my previous quip about AA's miserable success rate with...
I'd say 12-step is closer to "takes credit for the
~10-15% of people who'd beat their addictions anyways".
My girlfriend was doing fine with her addictions. The main factor was that I did not approve, and she liked me more than the drugs. She's spent the last two years getting 'treated' by the mental health professionals, who have reversed cause (self-medicating) and effect ('mental illness').
Some months ago her treatment provider did a genetic test, and decided she'd benefit from Vitamin B-9 - grains fortified with folic acid doesn't work for poor methylators. It's too bad the treatment providers don't start with healthy diets and supplements for all their patients.
Maybe that's the best we can accomplish -- grant them some of what they want so they are otherwise prevented from harming society and the ripple effects of a black market supply chain are eliminated.
So do you have evidence that most SF homeless are immigrants?
Many people have psychological problems, and/or dependence on various psychoactive drugs. And perhaps they do correlate with homelessness. But correlation does not prove causation. Maybe it's just that homelessness makes it all worse.
By the city's 2017 San Francisco Homeless Count &
Survey, most either were already homeless when then arrived in the city (31%) or became homeless after being here less than 10 years (another 31%, see page 22).
The claim is that homeless (and borderline homeless) people are already attracted to San Francisco, and that making it more attractive isn't going to solve the problem while there are near-unlimited reserves of more homeless people in the rest of the country.
All cities attract homeless people to a greater or lesser extent. It's easier to blend in and live off the system's detritus in a large city than in a rural area or small town, if you don't have any friends or family willing to support you.
Let's be clear, you're arguing against data by waving your hands. Then using your "they're not from here" assertion to justify the city not dealing with the problem. Then suggesting that the Federal government should do this without talking about how that could possibly happen.
I'm pointing out that the demand for housing in any city is elastic; if you house the current 6,000 homeless without addressing the systemic problems, more arrive to take their place and you're back where you started.
Rich European countries which have solved this problem don't do it by putting all the homeless in Paris or Berlin. They're distributed throughout urban, suburban, and rural areas of the country, which is what we need to do.
It sounds like you haven't really gotten to know many homeless people. If you did, you'd realize that what they typically need is not a job but something more like basic income - food and shelter, which can be more easily provided in a place that's not the most expensive city in America.
If you want to see what cheap housing and food without economic opportunity go to rural West Virginia. It doesn't work well. The first steps you describe need to be followed by incorporating people back into the economy.
The natural tendency of a competitive (capitalist) economy is to exclude a subset of people. The "economy" is the cause of homelessness, not the solution. The solution has to come from outside the economy.
My meaning was outside the capitalist system of exchanging services for goods. Many, many people need goods and have no meaningful services to exchange. The idea that we need to cram all of these people in the most dense and expensive centers of capitalist activity is ludicrous and harmful.
I'm not sure how one defines "already homeless" before arrival. Maybe something like "had been homeless before". But maybe they were hoping to do better in SF. But even so, from a sister post,[0] I get that 71% became homeless after moving to SF. So yes, it's arguable that ~30% of SF homeless are immigrants. I guess that they like the weather too.
Still, deportation doesn't seem like a viable option.
> I'm not sure how one defines "already homeless" before arrival.
Shipping homeless and/or mentally ill to other locations is a thing that's been done by a number of jurisdictions, more than once over an extended period of time with San Francisco as the destination.
"According to Didenko and Pankratz (2007), two-thirds of homeless people report that drugs and/or alcohol were a major reason for their becoming homeless."
It's true that mental illness and substance abuse are major drivers of homelessness, but lack of affordable housing can be the final straw for someone on the brink of homelessness
I've known long term renters who've lived in the same apartment for years and been forced out by landlords trying to capitalize on rising rents. If you are getting by on low income, or have a moderate or severe but treated mental illness (even like ptsd for vets), and lose your home, that can be the start of a slippery slope that can lead to homelessness. Affordable housing would provide a safety net to catch people falling down this slope
Homeless people are attracted to places with nice year round weather. SF provides that.
They are also attracted to places where they are tolerated or accepted. The people of SF are very tolerant of the homeless. As one of the commenters here says: "I bring cash, you run out after just a block or two." Sounds like a great place to be homeless.
As for root causes, homelessness is mostly caused by drug addiction and mental illness. According the the National Coalition for the Homeless:
"A 2008 survey by the United States Conference of Mayors asked 25 cities for their top three causes of homelessness. Substance abuse was the single largest cause of homelessness for single adults (reported by 68% of cities).
Substance abuse was also mentioned by 12% of cities as one of the top three causes of homelessness for families. According to Didenko and Pankratz (2007), two-thirds of homeless people report that drugs and/or alcohol were a major reason for their becoming homeless."
As for mental illness, according to a research summary compiled by the Treatment Advocacy Center:
"Approximately one-third of the total homeless population includes individuals with serious, untreated mental illnesses"
More affordable housing will not offer relief to the homeless because their state is largely caused by addiction and mental illness, not by high housing prices.