9 ms·

I'm genuinely curious about even a hypothetical more detailed example of how some group would go about preserving a problem like homelessness, even unintentiona

I'm genuinely curious about even a hypothetical more detailed example of how some group would go about preserving a problem like homelessness, even unintentionally. I can't wrap my mind about how it would actually happen beyond simplistic sayings. I live in Portland, OR where we have a large homeless problem and I continually hear that the groups being given money to help are incentivized to keep homelessness high for their own purposes. Like, obviously people who are paid like to keep getting paid but how would they go about making this happen when their job is the opposite?

treis 2mo ago
You start by fixing the problem of people sleeping on benches and in tents. Then you go to those in cars, then those crashing on a couch, then those living 8 to a house, then families with small places, and so on. What the problem is keeps expanding until the resources allocated to it are spent.
- jerlam 2mo ago
  Often, the homeless programs provide aid to the homeless with food and clothing and health care, not necessarily to make them not homeless. It is much harder and expensive for homeless programs to create shelters or homes. It is also difficult if not illegal to force people into housing.
- MyHonestOpinon 2mo ago
  In your example, (it seem to me that) is not that the problems is expanding (getting worst) but it is reaching (helping) more people.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  But they're not even doing that. It's not the case that tents and benches have been solved and the definition expanded. There are still people sleeping on benches and in tents - more than ever before.
SoftTalker 2mo ago
In the homelessness example, it's not so much that the programs and groups want to justify their continued existence (though that might be happening too). It's that the programs themselves incentivize more of the problem. When they give things to homeless people, such as food, shelter, clothes, social services, even needles and a "safe place" to get high in some cases, and often with few or no conditions, they make being homeless more tolerable. Word gets around, and people who could not feasibly be homeless where they are are drawn to Portland because they will get more support there.
- cwmoore 2mo ago
  Jail time is a sure spiral into unemployment and homelessness, privations, and more jailtime.
- tikhonj 2mo ago
  None of those things make homelessness appealing in any absolute sense. Like, if people had a (reasonable-to-them) path to getting a home, the vast majority would go for it even if there were a bunch of services available. The real answer is that the electorate is vehemently opposed to providing paths like that if those paths feel even remotely like "unfair handouts". Votes hate that idea even if it would be empirically cheaper. We collectively preserve the problem of homelessness because we feel like people who can't/won't work deserve to be unhappy, because we believe that we need the threat of homelessness to coerce people into working, because we believe people on drugs/etc are undisciplined and immoral, because... well, you get the idea.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  I don't think many people are being homeless by choice no matter how comfortable it is. Perhaps it makes more of them choose homelessness over suicide but I don't think it's making anyone choose homelessness over homefulness. You know what does though? Making it really hard to get a home. That makes more people homeless. I hope that's obvious.
  - Ferret7446 2mo ago
    Quite a few are homeless by choice. There are shelters available but they choose not to go because the shelters ban drugs. So they choose drugs over shelter.
Tangurena2 2mo ago
> would go about preserving a problem like homelessness My state chose to outlaw homelessness [0] and to make it illegal for cities & counties to offer places to lawfully camp unless the campsites are basically enough to be KOA Campgrounds. Actually solving homelessness is politically unacceptable, therefore it will be criminalized & preserved. Notes: 0 - The crime is "unlawful camping".
- MyHonestOpinon 2mo ago
  "KOA stands for Kampgrounds of America, the world's largest system of privately owned and franchised campgrounds"
- LorenPechtel 2mo ago
  That's just pushing the problem around. You aren't doing anything about the actual cause.
Swizec 2mo ago
> how some group would go about preserving a problem like homelessness, even unintentionally Simplistic version: San Francisco spends roughly $100,000/year on each homeless person. In services, salaries for people working on it, rent for office buildings etc. I am willing to bet many of these people would not be homeless if we just gave them $100,000/year without all the middle bureaucracy layers.
- RugnirViking 2mo ago
  But the idea that that is intentionally done is the leap, right? In my model of the world, it's very easy to believe how overlapping & duplicate programmes, middleman corruption, and ineffective programs can cause this without meaning to, rather than some deliberate attempt to engineer the morass of beuracracy.
  - Swizec 2mo ago
    I didn't say it was intentional, it's the result of millions of little decisions that all make total sense in isolation.
- reverius42 2mo ago
  How many of the homeless people in SF are from other parts of the US and are given one-way bus tickets to SF by their own hometowns? Because just giving them money could only possibly make that problem worse. (Yes, this is a real thing that happens, though I'm not sure the extent. See https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/20/bussed-out-america-moves-homeless-people-country-study https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/... )
  - reverius42 2mo ago
    Not sure why I'm downvoted for asking a question based on reporting from a reputable source.
- tikhonj 2mo ago
  The biggest obstacle to that is the electorate. People (voters!) would go wild. Anything the NGOs do, however shady, won't compare to that. We had a successful campaign to recall a progressive prosecutor over less.
nostrademons 2mo ago
All you have to do is promote policies that make the problem more palatable but don't actually solve it. Treatments instead of cures. As long as the problem needs treatment, the organizations dedicated to treating it will still be around, but as soon as it is no longer a problem at all, those organizations will cease to exist and everyone working on it needs a new job. For homelessness, it's things like shelters, free meals, needle exchanges, etc. Make the life of the homeless easier without actually getting them into permanent housing. The actual solution to eliminate homelessness is to build more housing, along with financial arrangements to incentivize ownership and make it possible. For taxes, it's accountants and tax preparation software like TurboTax or H&R block. The actual solution is to make the tax code simple enough that anyone can understand it and then withhold the appropriate amount so that nobody even needs to file. The big tax preparers have repeatedly lobbied against this. For medicine, it's lots of prescription medication that you have to be on for life to "manage" your condition, as well as recurrent doctor's visits to diagnose and treat it. The actual solution for the vast majority of conditions that kill Americans today is diet, exercise, fiber, reduce stress, stop smoking, and wear your seatbelt. Modern medicine is also very adept at solving acute problems like broken bones, bacterial infections, appendicitis, etc. But once you've got a chronic condition of indeterminate source (many of which are actually solved by the advice above), you're in the system and can expect to pay through the nose for no solution. For many construction projects (like say CAHSR), it's performing endless studies about how to build the project without actually building it. Some level of design is necessary for successful outcomes, but many agencies go around in circles with proposals and reports and environmental impact studies and voter referendums without actually having anyone actually pick up a shovel and start moving dirt.
- ChadNauseam 2mo ago
  > For homelessness, it's things like shelters, free meals, needle exchanges, etc. Make the life of the homeless easier without actually getting them into permanent housing. The actual solution to eliminate homelessness is to build more housing, along with financial arrangements to incentivize ownership and make it possible. I love the idea of building more housing, but I think a lot of homeless people have an income of literally 0, so wouldn't they be homeless regardless of how cheap housing is? > For many construction projects (like say CAHSR), it's performing endless studies about how to build the project without actually building it. Some level of design is necessary for successful outcomes, but many agencies go around in circles with proposals and reports and environmental impact studies and voter referendums without actually having anyone actually pick up a shovel and start moving dirt. Environmental impact studies are required by federal law for projects receiving federal funding. It's not CAHSR's fault that they have to be done. You then have to go through the process of acquiring land along the track, which you probably should do before people start moving dirt (it's going to be pretty embarrassing if your track has a hole in the middle where someone refused to sell their house).
im3w1l 2mo ago
I think you could solve homelessness really simple by allowing something like a favela. It will be an eyesore so pick an area out of sight of rich people. Then split it into like idk 200sqft plots. Give everyone enough corrugated steel to build a primitive shelter. Have like a central sanitation place with a shitton of toilets and showers.
- wqaatwt 2mo ago
  [dead]

treis 2mo ago

You start by fixing the problem of people sleeping on benches and in tents. Then you go to those in cars, then those crashing on a couch, then those living 8 to a house, then families with small places, and so on. What the problem is keeps expanding until the resources allocated to it are spent.

jerlam 2mo ago
Often, the homeless programs provide aid to the homeless with food and clothing and health care, not necessarily to make them not homeless. It is much harder and expensive for homeless programs to create shelters or homes. It is also difficult if not illegal to force people into housing.
MyHonestOpinon 2mo ago
In your example, (it seem to me that) is not that the problems is expanding (getting worst) but it is reaching (helping) more people.
inigyou 2mo ago
But they're not even doing that. It's not the case that tents and benches have been solved and the definition expanded. There are still people sleeping on benches and in tents - more than ever before.

SoftTalker 2mo ago

In the homelessness example, it's not so much that the programs and groups want to justify their continued existence (though that might be happening too). It's that the programs themselves incentivize more of the problem. When they give things to homeless people, such as food, shelter, clothes, social services, even needles and a "safe place" to get high in some cases, and often with few or no conditions, they make being homeless more tolerable. Word gets around, and people who could not feasibly be homeless where they are are drawn to Portland because they will get more support there.

cwmoore 2mo ago
Jail time is a sure spiral into unemployment and homelessness, privations, and more jailtime.
tikhonj 2mo ago
None of those things make homelessness appealing in any absolute sense. Like, if people had a (reasonable-to-them) path to getting a home, the vast majority would go for it even if there were a bunch of services available. The real answer is that the electorate is vehemently opposed to providing paths like that if those paths feel even remotely like "unfair handouts". Votes hate that idea even if it would be empirically cheaper. We collectively preserve the problem of homelessness because we feel like people who can't/won't work deserve to be unhappy, because we believe that we need the threat of homelessness to coerce people into working, because we believe people on drugs/etc are undisciplined and immoral, because... well, you get the idea.
inigyou 2mo ago
I don't think many people are being homeless by choice no matter how comfortable it is. Perhaps it makes more of them choose homelessness over suicide but I don't think it's making anyone choose homelessness over homefulness. You know what does though? Making it really hard to get a home. That makes more people homeless. I hope that's obvious.
- Ferret7446 2mo ago
  Quite a few are homeless by choice. There are shelters available but they choose not to go because the shelters ban drugs. So they choose drugs over shelter.

Tangurena2 2mo ago

> would go about preserving a problem like homelessness My state chose to outlaw homelessness [0] and to make it illegal for cities & counties to offer places to lawfully camp unless the campsites are basically enough to be KOA Campgrounds. Actually solving homelessness is politically unacceptable, therefore it will be criminalized & preserved. Notes: 0 - The crime is "unlawful camping".

MyHonestOpinon 2mo ago
"KOA stands for Kampgrounds of America, the world's largest system of privately owned and franchised campgrounds"
LorenPechtel 2mo ago
That's just pushing the problem around. You aren't doing anything about the actual cause.

Swizec 2mo ago

> how some group would go about preserving a problem like homelessness, even unintentionally Simplistic version: San Francisco spends roughly $100,000/year on each homeless person. In services, salaries for people working on it, rent for office buildings etc. I am willing to bet many of these people would not be homeless if we just gave them $100,000/year without all the middle bureaucracy layers.

RugnirViking 2mo ago
But the idea that that is intentionally done is the leap, right? In my model of the world, it's very easy to believe how overlapping & duplicate programmes, middleman corruption, and ineffective programs can cause this without meaning to, rather than some deliberate attempt to engineer the morass of beuracracy.
- Swizec 2mo ago
  I didn't say it was intentional, it's the result of millions of little decisions that all make total sense in isolation.
reverius42 2mo ago
How many of the homeless people in SF are from other parts of the US and are given one-way bus tickets to SF by their own hometowns? Because just giving them money could only possibly make that problem worse. (Yes, this is a real thing that happens, though I'm not sure the extent. See https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/20/bussed-out-america-moves-homeless-people-country-study https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/... )
- reverius42 2mo ago
  Not sure why I'm downvoted for asking a question based on reporting from a reputable source.
tikhonj 2mo ago
The biggest obstacle to that is the electorate. People (voters!) would go wild. Anything the NGOs do, however shady, won't compare to that. We had a successful campaign to recall a progressive prosecutor over less.

nostrademons 2mo ago

All you have to do is promote policies that make the problem more palatable but don't actually solve it. Treatments instead of cures. As long as the problem needs treatment, the organizations dedicated to treating it will still be around, but as soon as it is no longer a problem at all, those organizations will cease to exist and everyone working on it needs a new job. For homelessness, it's things like shelters, free meals, needle exchanges, etc. Make the life of the homeless easier without actually getting them into permanent housing. The actual solution to eliminate homelessness is to build more housing, along with financial arrangements to incentivize ownership and make it possible. For taxes, it's accountants and tax preparation software like TurboTax or H&R block. The actual solution is to make the tax code simple enough that anyone can understand it and then withhold the appropriate amount so that nobody even needs to file. The big tax preparers have repeatedly lobbied against this. For medicine, it's lots of prescription medication that you have to be on for life to "manage" your condition, as well as recurrent doctor's visits to diagnose and treat it. The actual solution for the vast majority of conditions that kill Americans today is diet, exercise, fiber, reduce stress, stop smoking, and wear your seatbelt. Modern medicine is also very adept at solving acute problems like broken bones, bacterial infections, appendicitis, etc. But once you've got a chronic condition of indeterminate source (many of which are actually solved by the advice above), you're in the system and can expect to pay through the nose for no solution. For many construction projects (like say CAHSR), it's performing endless studies about how to build the project without actually building it. Some level of design is necessary for successful outcomes, but many agencies go around in circles with proposals and reports and environmental impact studies and voter referendums without actually having anyone actually pick up a shovel and start moving dirt.

ChadNauseam 2mo ago
> For homelessness, it's things like shelters, free meals, needle exchanges, etc. Make the life of the homeless easier without actually getting them into permanent housing. The actual solution to eliminate homelessness is to build more housing, along with financial arrangements to incentivize ownership and make it possible. I love the idea of building more housing, but I think a lot of homeless people have an income of literally 0, so wouldn't they be homeless regardless of how cheap housing is? > For many construction projects (like say CAHSR), it's performing endless studies about how to build the project without actually building it. Some level of design is necessary for successful outcomes, but many agencies go around in circles with proposals and reports and environmental impact studies and voter referendums without actually having anyone actually pick up a shovel and start moving dirt. Environmental impact studies are required by federal law for projects receiving federal funding. It's not CAHSR's fault that they have to be done. You then have to go through the process of acquiring land along the track, which you probably should do before people start moving dirt (it's going to be pretty embarrassing if your track has a hole in the middle where someone refused to sell their house).

im3w1l 2mo ago

I think you could solve homelessness really simple by allowing something like a favela. It will be an eyesore so pick an area out of sight of rich people. Then split it into like idk 200sqft plots. Give everyone enough corrugated steel to build a primitive shelter. Have like a central sanitation place with a shitton of toilets and showers.

wqaatwt 2mo ago
[dead]