West Coast baby
this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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Same with homelessness. The last city I lived in offered free housing with 3 meals a day for the homeless, as in they got their own little tiny house basically that was actually kinda nice. But tons of homeless weren't interested. They just stayed on the street. I'm curious how just making dense apartment style buildings would just fix the problem.
Often, those programs failing is because of having strings attached that people don't like.
However, ask yourself this: why do people become homeless in the first place? Does it have anything to do with the price of housing?
Similarly I've heard they are not always nice/safe places to stay and belongings are often stolen.
I'm not sure about the extra strings attached on that program but you're probably right, there was probably something in there that was deterring some of them. It was still surprising to me to see so much disinterest in the program.
As for why there are homeless... in my experience, no it's usually not the price of housing. It usually has to do with drugs or mental illness. Now i'm absolutely no expert so the price of housing may be the main reason by a long shot but in my limited experience with people i've known and met that were homeless (which is admittedly and obviously a tiny number compared to all the homeless in this country), the large majority of them were put in that situation cause they were super addicted to drugs so that's where all the money went and they couldn't hold a job, or they had big time mental issues.
Given the same drug addiction, are you equally likely to become homeless somewhere with really cheap housing vs somewhere with really expensive housing?
I would imagine less expensive obviously. But I would have also thought the same if the housing was free and that wasn't the case! lol
Housing price is highly correlated with homelessness. In fact, homelessness rates across geographic areas are much more closely correlated to local housing costs than to local substance abuse rates, mental health problem rates, poverty rates, social safety nets, etc.
Whereas if you were right, you'd expect homeless rates to correlate better with local substance abuse rates.
Which is to say: if you ask yourself why one person in San Francisco is homeless and another isn't, the answer is probably losing a job or drug abuse. If you ask yourself why someone in SF is homeless but someone in Huntington West Virginia isn't, the better answer is access to cheap housing in WV.