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It's even more complicated than that. You also have to be a resident of wherever you move to in order to receive assistance. Plus, you have to have someone locally vouch for you. The last time I was homeless, some of the subsidized housing wouldn't even allow me to apply to them because I had a driver's license with an out of county address. I needed to have a driver's license with an address in the county of which I was applying. In order to obtain a license in the county of which I was applying, I had to have proof of residency. I had to have proof I lived there. I couldn't get that since I was homeless. Someone had to break the rules in order to get me off the streets, but that is rare to happen. Most of these places are stickler for the rules.
Plus, if you gather your stuff together and leave town, where are you supposed to go? Just pick a random town on a map? Then, when you get there, you're homeless there as well. You don't know where anything is. Any connections you had in the old place is gone. You are just as unlikely to be hired in this town as the last town. One of the things you have to put on an application is your address. If you don't put one down then your application is incomplete and it goes in the trash or gets kicked out of a computer inbox.
You are correct. The deconstruction of the nuclear family was kicked up a notch in the 70's ( Latch key kids) As divorce was not popular before 1965. It does not mean that it is not warranted however, physical abuse, cheating, child abuse is NEVER ok, it was more accepted but still stigmatized in the early 70's.
However the end of "Mom" staying home and making sure the kids were ok is something of the past. Inflation and cost has made it where both parents need to work or they cannot afford the mortgage, car payments, groceries, ect…
Not to mention that some parents move away from home and do not have extended family members to fill in as a caregivers to the kids that do not require 50% of ones check for daycare.
I could really go and on but I think you get the jist..Sad all the way around.
Yup. Not to mention that extended family is probably a nicer place to grow up than a nuclear family.
One could assume a trickle-down effect - that people who move ito new houses leave a lower-price dwelling unoccupied. But we all know that trickle-down is flim-flam.
It actually is NOT complete flim flam.
It certainly works the opposite way.
I've seen my apartment building, which used to have college students in it, be replaced by working professionals in the 11 years I've lived here. Housing that used to be affordable to young people with lower incomes is no longer affordable. Those with more money are outbidding those with less money for the same apartments--due to lack of housing supply.
It DOES work the other way as well. When there's a glut of housing, lower income people can afford the rent. That never happens in California because we have underbuilt housing for the last 40 years (and economists from across the political spectrum agree with that).
But the thing about homelessness is, that for most homeless people it is a SYMPTOM of a lot of other personal problems they have, not their core issue.
Maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the homeless population is somewhat functional (i.e. can hold down a job, etc.) but somehow got stuck in a bad rut.
The remainder have typically have one or more of the following:
--Drug/alcohol addiction
--Mental illness
Last edited by mysticaltyger; 03-08-2020 at 12:24 AM..
The housing issue is tangential to homelessness, and is in itself a serious issue in California.
Where the rubber meets the road, though, is definitely lax policing, poor mental health, and...let’s face it, the climate. If you were living on the streets, I think you’d agree that you’d rather do it in a mild climate like coastal California than almost anywhere else in the US. The other, more politically connected issues only exacerbate that one underlying fact.
Agreed. My sister moved to CA from NYC and was like "Wow, in NYC NOBODY is homeless unless they have to be, but here in CA, the mild climate and lax policing enables this whole homeless subculture".
Seems Dr Drew is advocating for new laws to increase the governments ability to take conservatorship of mentally ill and drug addicted people.
Alrighty then.
Then what? Where do you put them? Where does the funding come from to house, feed and provide healthcare for them?
States began closing asylums in the 50’s because they had become political embarrassments and lack of funding.
Dr Drew cited the $950 threshold for felony theft. He either does not know or chose to ignore most states have increased the threshold for felony theft in keeping with inflation. Texas increased it’s threshold to $1500 in 1995 and then again to $2500 in 2015.
There is no question, California had ignored public substance abuse. Damn if you do/ damn if you don’t.
Again, where exactly are you going to put tens of thousands of people, once arrested? They will be free within a day. Rinse/ repeat.
Honestly, a lot of these people are using our healthcare systems anyway. And they're using the emergency room, the most expensive health care there is.
My friend is a psychiatrist for the indigent. Homeless people with mental health issues are their biggest clients. They basically get them stabilized, and after a week or 2 in the psych unit, they have to discharge them back to the streets because they can't hold them indefinitely. Yeah, that's a great use of taxpayer money.
Basically, we need a new form of asylum (and we now have it. It's called "supportive housing"). Whatever the shortcomings of the old places were, letting these people live on the streets was NOT an improvement, and in many/most cases, our current way of dealing with it does NOT save money because the money just gets spent on: housing them in jais & psych units, emergency room visits, & ambulance rides.
Housing the homeless will require a long term strategy, and it does require a shift in the way we spend public money, but will not necessarily have to mean we spend more money.
Yes, agree, land in itself cost a whole lot in high demand areas.
I also do not blame anyone for not wanting public housing around them, I sure as hell do not. If they want to live in my area, by all means, jump through the hoops I did in life to afford to do so.
I live in an urban area.
I am all for supportive housing, where the homeless people are essentially supervised by social workers, etc.
You know why? Because they live in my neighborhood anyway...in tents on the street, where they essentially do as they please.
Career wise, some people need to be in certain areas.
But also these cities cant operate without folks with 9-5 jobs.
The problem is how we built our cities. We got so caught up in the idea of the car we got carried away.
The homeless are not people with "careers".
The biggest problem with housing affordability in places like Los Angeles is NIMBY-ism and the overly strict zoning rules that go with it. Economists from across the political spectrum agree with this. If you build single family housing the NIMBYs scream. "Oh, no! Sprawl!" If you build high density, the NIMBYs scream. "We don't want to be the next Manhattan!". Lots of hyperbole. Lots of hand wringing about the homeless and the lack of affordable housing. But most do not walk the talk.
Add to that:
--It's practically impossible to institutionalize mentally ill people.
--Lax enforcement in liberal cities on the West Coast, partly due to court decisions (this never gets talked about).
--The fact that the lack of a place to live is a symptom of a bunch of other problems.
--The working homeless should be encouraged/helped to move to places where housing is cheaper.
Last edited by mysticaltyger; 03-08-2020 at 12:26 AM..
The biggest problem with housing affordability in places like Los Angeles is NIMBY-ism and the overly strict zoning rules that go with it. Economists from across the political spectrum agree with this. If you build single family housing the NIMBYs scream. "Oh, no! Sprawl!" If you build high density, they NIMBYs scream. "We don't want to be the next Manhattan!". Lots of hyperbole. Lots of hand wringing about the homeless and the lack of affordable housing. But most do not walk the talk.
Add to that:
--It's practically impossible to institutionalize mentally ill people.
--Lax enforcement in liberal cities on the West Coast, partly due to court decisions (this never gets talked about).
--The fact that the lack of a place to live is a symptom of a bunch of other problems.
--The working homeless should be encouraged/helped to move to places where housing is cheaper.
Yup. It’s expensive to build in California, and with Prop 13, cities are kind of disinterested in making residential zoning a priority. The YIMBY movement is a thing there. It’s good, but that’s at the opposite end of actually curbing homelessness in California.
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