The vast majority of homeless are people "couch surfing" or "crashing with a friend for a bit." The guy on the corner screaming and smoking meth is NOT a representative homeless person - it's a second issue that doesn't really have a word. Vagrant maybe - either way it's not really separate in "the discourse."
Some small % of the people sleeping in their car to save up a security deposit will turn into that guy, but those people are in that position from housing costs. This is a housing cost issue, with an end result that's a public mental health/safety consequence.
You can arrest the guy (and I think you should, hot take for HN) for jerking off, but that won't solve the problem. The problem is that there's no fucking housing and it's illegal to build more. The vacant unit numbers you see thrown around are totally made up - they count houses in places like the Catskills and Kansas etc, not housing in SF/NY/Miami
Arresting that guy will help solve the vagrant problem. It won't solve the homelessness problem, and that's definitely a hugely important point. Most people who become the vagrant type of homeless have serious underlying mental illness or got seriously deep into drugs though, and they're in a state where they are not going to voluntarily accept help. A guy down on his luck is unlikely to turn into this disruptive stereotype even if he does unfortunately end up on the street longer term, while there are vagrants who came from wealthy families and are on the street entirely by "choice" (which I put in quotes because they are seriously ill).
I heard a talk recently from a couple social workers that run programs for addressing homelessness in New York. There are 100 or so homeless people that are well known to services in NYC because they have repeatedly refused offers for help, and these people have stayed on the streets for years while an entire homeless populations' worth of people has been successfully helped back onto their feet (of course with a never-ending flow that keeps the overall population at high numbers). Occasionally one of the vagrants ends up in the news for attacking someone, but short of that they will be left on the streets, which is really a lose/lose.
> a never-ending flow that keeps the overall population at high numbers
I think of high housing prices as a "homelessness producing machine" that can generate more people without homes faster than the government or non-profits can help people out.
Lower housing prices mean lower flows, which makes it easier to get a handle on things, like the Texas article discusses.
Right, that group of 100 is a burden on society and are likely not able to consent to their current situation, to treatment, or to basically anything besides eventually getting run over. I'm sorry if it's mean, but we have a duty to the millions that walk through their shit, needles, and piss every day.
The group we should have more compassion for is the working class who's fucked by our housing policy. Those Boomers retiring with big housing payouts are living on the suffering of the single mother staying at her friends house, of the guy living in an RV so he can afford insulin, etc.
Almost two decades ago I started dating this Chinese girl who had relatively recently come over from mainland, yet in the space of 5 years after arriving managed to leave an abusive home situation, find work as a medical interpreter ( and thereby secure her own work visa to stay in this country) and save up a down payment for a modest house.
She told me at the time, which I thought was some sort of amusing misunderstanding about language, that I was "homeless boy" - because I lived in an _apartment_. And thus that she needed to help me get into a house (hint hint) so that I could stop being homeless and be a "man."
I had never heard the word homeless used this way before, but as the years went by I began to understand that it was not a mistake at all but a very particular attitude about what constitutes being settled down and stable in one's life and that I, despite whatever other qualities I had that appealed to her, was unacceptably immature and reckless in this department.
Much later on I discovered that for various reasons, there's a certain generation of Chinese immigrants that as a cohort correspond roughly to our late gen Xers/early millenials, who broadly seem to share this point of view.
> The guy on the corner screaming and smoking meth is NOT a representative homeless person - it's a second issue that doesn't really have a word.
In general, those are mentally ill people who aren't getting proper treatment. They don't have family members willing or able to support them, so they slip through the cracks in our social systems.
To me, it's cruel to treat these people like criminals, so I fundamentally disagree that they should be arrested.
Not true, at least in California. The state-run facilities are completely full, and they turn people away even when there's serious mental health issues.
Noah's article has many broad generalizations that don't hold water.
For example, Missippi's has a low cost of living and quality of life (cheaper for people to house mentally ill family members) [0]. California involuntarily imports homeless people from other states, which would lead to other states having less homeless and California having more.
Poor mental healthcare could mean that people that need better quality care leave for states with good quality care.
It's odd how much people resist the notion that "fewer people can afford a good as it becomes more expensive" with housing. It's like the Twilight Zone of economics where supply and demand no longer apply.
It's hard data but his rhetorical device of saying homelessness is 100% related to housing is hardly interesting. How practical is it to write off 20-30% of a cause?
There are houses everywhere that are below market rates. They may not be glamorous but they are homes.
No doubt we have problems. The accessibility, safety, and energy efficiency gains are a positive.
I found the article intellectually lazy and I must be in a real foul mood to even be commenting.
> his rhetorical device of saying homelessness is 100% related to housing
It's right there at the very beginning of the article: "Even if drugs, mental illness, etc. do exacerbate homelessness to some extent"
No one is saying it's not a complex problem with many things going on, but a lot of people refuse to acknowledge that the price of housing is a primary driver of homelessness.
And a pretty interesting article on efforts to get people out of homelessness in Texas: https://calmatters.org/housing/2023/06/california-houston-ho...