As someone who is nearing 2,000 days of two stints of homelessness since 2017, I can offer feedback that such an amount would help to alleviate basic survival pressures.
But, money will not solve any root cause issues. I've been unhoused and out of work for so long that any recovery back to a normal life has become exceedingly unlikely. I don't drink alcohol, I don't smoke, nor do I do illicit drugs nor prescriptions. My mental state -- stressed in survival mode -- is very much situational, yet there are underlying factors that have led to a state of permanent dysfunction and reluctance to rebuild.
In addition to food stamps, I've survived on help from lifelong/long term friends and strangers (incl'g from kind souls on hn, on a few occasions, even). One kind stranger at the local coffee shop even tried gifting me
a new MBP/M2/24GB/1TB a few months ago, but my focus is gone and I was unhoused, still being criminally targeted, so I returned the laptop in like new condition to him a week later. (The side reports regarding systemic/criminal abuse against at-risk folks is a separate but related matter.)
These initiatives matter, of course. I'd gladly make use of such money. But, IMO, more important is to focus on root causes at the relevant time -- i.e. in public school settings when unchecked peer abuse occurs, as one example. Such abuse can grow into an irreparable state of dysfunction and life breakdown.
I was functionally homeless for 9 years. Food stamps in America are inconvenient as they aren't accepted everywhere, come with strings attached as to purposes, are a way for others to other their users, require onerous paperwork and blasé treatment like a criminal, and are most often insufficient, especially in big cities and Southern states.
Direct cash aid is little-to-nonexistent because of the cynical and discriminatory presumptions "people should work (even if they're disabled)" and "they'll just buy booze and drugs with it".
I am permanently traumatized by many sounds, including tires crunching on pavement, vehicles passing by, loud boom boom music from trucks, and the presence of cell phone cameras in public.
I am also traumatized by any presence of strangers when my bicycle has broken down, and due to T and H, I cannot be in quiet areas. I was diagnosed with a physical disability but couldnt follow thru on appointments for an untreatable condition while homeless.
I have persistent suicidal ideation. The stress has become enormous lately and today has been absolutely awful. I am shaking and angry, and become particularly stressed during rainfall.
I am outside of a closed starbucks attempting a hack repair on my bicycle brake, awaiting a time to commute without rain.
The long term effects of homelessless have taken a tremendous toll on my mental health and has put me in a state of constant stress and anxiety. I have deteriorated mentally over the years, especially lately. I wouldn't wish this on anyone.
> in public school settings when unchecked peer abuse occurs, as one example. Such abuse can grow into an irreparable state of dysfunction and life breakdown.
Just guessing but probably there is a reason why he mentioned that.
Can someone consider giving this person a leg up? It's true that my communication abilities and long term relations helped fill stop gaps over the years.
> still being criminally targeted, so I returned the laptop in like new condition to him a week later. (The side reports regarding systemic/criminal abuse against at-risk folks is a separate but related matter.)
Many "progressives" like to claim that punishing criminals is counterproductive, and the real solution to address crime is to fix the poverty, the "root cause". In reality, the opposite is true: crime is one of the major root causes that prevents honest people from improving their financial situation.
What do you mean? Crime does not happen in a vacuum. The idea that people steal because it’s fun or commit fraud because they enjoy seeing their victims suffer is not supported by any sort of rigorous sociological or criminological understanding of social deviance. If you want to fix crime, you need to fix the social ills that cause people to turn to crime to begin with. Of course crime prevents people from improving their financial situation, nobody denies that, but the crime itself is not the cause.
When Nayib Bukele ignored the "experts" and locked up nearly 2% of El Salvador's population, not only did the homicide rate fall off a cliff—economic growth also increased. (Bukele also worked hard to woo foreign investors, without which this would not have been possible; but those investors only felt confident in investing due to the decrease in crime.)
> In effectively all societies, the vast majority of serious crimes are committed by a tiny sliver of the population who offend again and again.
I agree hence removing that 2% of murderers caused the homicide rate to drop dramatically and not just by 2%. The fact that we are even talking about homicide though is a complete detraction from the original post that is showing how giving people money helps them improve their lives and not rely on crime to sustain themselves. Are you not understanding that the majority of crime that exists in a society is petty crime that doesn’t cause any serious physical harm to others or society at large? Why do you lump murderers into this category?
> the original post that is showing how giving people money helps them improve their lives
To be clear, I'm not arguing against this claim.
> Are you not understanding that the majority of crime that exists in a society is petty crime that doesn’t cause any serious physical harm to others or society at large?
What do you mean by "petty crime?" If it's something like driving 75mph on a 65mph highway, then yes that shouldn't generally merit a harsh legal response. But petty theft, shoplifting, minor vandalism, small-scale drug dealing, school bullying etc make life miserable for people who can't afford to live far away from it. The first-order effects are bad enough, but the countless second-order effects (reduced economic investment, lower consumer spending, having to live in fear every day, can't take the bus to work, etc) are absolutely devastating. And yes, even in the poorest communities, where people are the most desperate, the vast majority still follow the law and don't resort to victimizing others.
Nobody should be surprised that removing an entire portion of the population would cause the homicide rate to fall the same way nobody would be surprised that there is less rainfall on a day that has less cloud coverage. This isn’t really addressing my point at all. The point is that crime happens because of a set of conditions. You cannot expect crime to be reduced if you remove the “criminals” without addressing the conditions that made them criminals in the first place. Homicide is not a good example here, a better example would be things like petty crime, vandalism, etc.
> Nobody should be surprised that removing an entire portion of the population would cause the homicide rate to fall the same way nobody would be surprised that there is less rainfall on a day that has less cloud coverage.
If the homicide rate had fallen by only 2%, I would not have considered it notable. In effectively all societies, the vast majority of serious crimes are committed by a tiny sliver of the population who offend again and again. Deal with that sliver, and everyone else can breathe free.
Someone is going to impose their rules on the rest of us. The only choice we have is who that someone is. "Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made."
(And yes, not every society has had to go as far as Bukele to acheive prosperity, freedom, and peace. All crooked timber is crooked in its own way, and different populations need different solutions but the basic principle is the same everywhere.)
> The idea that people steal because it’s fun or commit fraud because they enjoy seeing their victims suffer is not supported by any sort of rigorous sociological or criminological understanding of social deviance
There's been a spate of carjackings after enforcement went down recently where the objective of the teens as young as 13 and 12 stealing cars if to have fun rides and to show off to their friends.
> “Some of them don’t have the whole criminal mindset; like they’ll do stupid things,” one officer explained, speaking anonymously, “Like they’ll steal a car around the corner and then stop at a 7-11, say ‘Hey, I want something to drink,’ —but [they] stole the car right there.”
> So, the high percentage of youth apprehended for carjacking is likely due to their risky behavior. Yet, the question remains. What is it that motivates kids to carjack?
> One answer is as old as human adolescence. Stealing a car to joyride is a cheap thrill.
> For Thrills
> Most of the carjackings are “not done for any motive except just having fun,” said one sergeant, speaking at a public safety walk.
> “I mean they’re not stealing cars to sell parts, they’re just stealing cars to steal cars,” the officer added. Most cars, he pointed, are taken from one part of the city and later found parked in another quadrant.
....
>A 2023 article in “The Annual Review of Criminology” points out that this is not new. Seventy years ago, the majority of motor vehicle thefts reported each year were the work of young males, stated the study, “many of whom did it for thrills.”
> The teen and several accomplices had pulled an Uber driver out of his vehicle and drove away in it. A police pursuit followed, the teens jumped out after driving into a dead-end street, and fled on foot. Shawn “was trying to scramble back into the house,” McGilly recalled. Police arrested the teenager and carted him away.
> Overnight, McGilly researched restorative justice. He was torn. On one hand, he was upset over his foster child’s arrest. On the other, Shawn might finally suffer the consequences of his illegal actions. It could be a new beginning, McGilly hoped.
> The next morning, McGilly got a phone call from the public defender. The teen was being released; all charges dropped, the lawyer said.
> Shawn told his friends how nothing happened after his arrest, McGilly said. Worse, he introduced other kids living in the house, one as young as 13, to the world of carjacking, which his contemporaries refer to as “free cars.”
> “Kids take other kids for joy rides in stolen vehicles, which they call ‘free cars,’ then graduate to teaching them how to carjack. When they got caught, nothing serious happened. So it exploded,” McGilly said. “We’ve had twice as many carjackings in 2023 as last year, and it’s just because more and more kids were being introduced to it.”
And this isn't just a victimless crime, several victis have died, including a doctor that was run over by his own car that a carjacker was stealing.
It doesn't need to be either or, you know. Or even those answers at all. Or a mix.
Question is: where can you start to make positive and effective changes? The answer almost certainly includes education and preventing people from falling into poverty. You can fight and deter crime at the same time. You probably need all of those, but I'm pretty sure fighting crime alone isn't very effective.
I agree! But even with the best education and social support, a small minority will still turn to victimizing others, and no progress is possible until they are neutralized.
I think getting it down to a small minority would already be great progress!
Not sure getting it down to zero is the right or primary goal though. It sounds like an excellent way to require ever larger budgets and fund some pork machine.
Let's first get it down, then worry about going to zero. Has anyone ever managed zero? At what cost?
> I think getting it down to a small minority would already be great progress!
We've already reached that point! Crime follows a power law distribution, a tiny sliver of the population is responsible for the vast majority of crime. (The size of the sliver varies, in some places it is 0.1% while in others it reaches 2%, but the vast majority are law-abiding always.)
There is already plenty of evidence of how poverty cripples cognitive capabilities and prevents long-term planning. Getting a leg up and slightly more financial security gives people a longer time horizon to plan forward. Well-off people who try living "in poverty" for short period don't experience the stress like people living in actual poverty and stress and can't understand how bad it is.
The first path out of poverty is giving people some money without strings attached.
Basically, the key factor here appears to not only be money, but an assigned “Miracle Friend” who has recurring check-ins with the individual. The grantees of the funding were all individuals who kept up recurring checkins for some period of time (without being disclosed that this would result in receiving any money).
Google says avg American makes ~$60k/yr and spends ~$600/yr on drinking. 2% of 60k is 1200. So they'd need to be spending as much on weed/cigs/hard drugs as they do on alcohol.
The average is a really misleading statistic here, because alcohol and drug use seem to follow a power law distribution.
The top X% of drinkers drink orders of magnitude more than the average. They skew the average much, much higher than what people think of as how much the "average person" drinks.
According to this news article [1], the "average person" drinks (73.85 + 15.28 + 6.25 + 2.17 + 0.63 + 0.14 + 0.02) / 10 = 9.834 drinks per week!
But the fifth decile (the middle of the distribution) drinks only 0.14 drinks per week --- less than one per month!
I appreciate your analysis but I think the average is too lossy of a statistic to make a good argument here.
I don't disagree, but my response was directed to someone who was commenting on the average American. Didn't seem reasonable to interpret them differently just to build a more convincing answer.
Average person means median usually. Average expense could be either. HN guidelines say respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says.[1]
if you have $50 and it wont make a difference in getting what you actually need, then fast food and fast thrills are what it will be spent on
if you have $750 or some other threshold, you can try to make a difference to get out of it
its like “give a man a fish” versus “sign up for fishing classes, get books, equipment and train so you’ll never have to be in the situation ever again”
I wonder - I only get a couple generics that literally cost less than $1 to get from my local pharmacy for some reason, but I wonder how much I'm paying in healthcare premiums (particularly employer premiums) that go towards drugs - it's probably much greater than 2% of my income indeed. Wegovy is like $1500/month and selling like gangbusters as an example.
For the recreational stuff, I'd rather make/grow my own, so in one sense they're free, but in the actual sense, they're probably quite expensive once you factor in the equipment; just like any other hobby I suppose. Hell, keeping hives to get honey to make into mead is quite the long way around.
Also need to factor in that since the $750 is a recurring gift that could stop at any time, recipients are incentivized to report that the $750 is spent in good ways.
It is relative easy/simple to calculate this with 'some' accuracy.
If you ask someone how much they smoke per day, (that's pretty consistent) and they respond "2 packs of X brand", then you know the brand, you know the price x365 you can estimate the cost. If you point blank ask me "how much do you spend on pizzas every year", I can't just pull a number out of a hat. I will do the math: €20 per pizza x 1 per month = approx 240.
Are you underestimating how much people lie, even to themselves?
Esp here. “Hey; want to be part of a study where we give you free money to see if it helps you out?”… “Ok, now how much of that money did you use on things that were harmful to you?” You could perform that study with anyone and you’re going to get BS answers and estimations.
I bet that average homeless person does too. 2% seems ridiculously low. $15 a month total on drugs? That only makes sense for someone who does no opioids, no stimulants, and just smokes 1 pack of cigs and has a single beer across an entire month.
The top federal income tax rate was 91 percent in 1950 and 1951, and between 1954 and 1959. In 1952 and 1953, the top federal income tax rate was 92 percent. (USA)
We need to go back to this. Wealth inequality is damaging society far more than ever. From Onlyfans to Bitcoins Scams, social media platforms has only exacerbated the issue. Will the pendulum swing back to morality and just cause away from lawlessness and perversion? Is there a singular root cause for this behavior? Gen Z maybe the last hope.
No, we don't need to go back to this because it simply doesn't work.
In my country, the top rate of 50% sets in around 70K of income. The top rate is hated so much that it actively curtails people's ambitions. People feel its pointless to level up beyond this point. They won't fight to reach bonus targets because the bonus is cut in half. If they continue to grow in income, many consider working a day less per week, as supplemental income becomes largely useless.
A 92% tax rate, at whatever threshold you set it, means anything you do beyond that point has no point at all.
Further, for organizations to richly reward top leaders, which whilst not popular is very much needed, how do you figure they pay them a high net income? Just do up the gross costs by a factor 10?
Finally, surely you realize true wealth doesn't come from labor?
>The top federal income tax rate was 91 percent in 1950 and 1951, and between 1954 and 1959. In 1952 and 1953, the top federal income tax rate was 92 percent. (USA)
>We need to go back to this.
There were so many deductions and tax breaks back then that, to a first approximation, no one paid anywhere close to that. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 removed most of those deductions as part of the collapsing of tax brackets.
California could lower their income tax rate if they stopped subsidizing older homeowners via prop 13. There are people that pay like $1,000 a year (in property tax) living in million dollar homes.
Wealth inequality is not being caused or exacerbated by Onlyfans and Bitcoin scams or "lack of morality", whatever that means.
Corporate and high income taxes have been slashed. This has been going on for decades, but the prior president and congress gave the wealthiest Americans and corporations a two trillion dollar tax cut - a forty percent reduction in corporate taxes - and this was after one trillion dollars in Paycheck Protection Program "loans", most of which were 'forgiven' and a myriad of other pandemic programs - as well as a wholesale gutting of regulations.
In 1940 if you made $200,000 ($4M today) you were taxed at ninety percent to help out with the war effort because there was a long history of the wealthiest being expected to help out in times of societal emergency. The NY Times claims the Great Recession and COVID were the first exceptions but I'd say it's been going on since Vietnam or so. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/19/opinion/rich-billionaires...
> you were taxed at ninety percent to help out with the war effort because there was a long history of the wealthiest being expected to help out in times of societal emergency.
Never heard it phrased this way before but I like it. Those that can help more should help more. In fact, most people take pride when they can (over) contribute.
If somebody has a medical emergency on the sidewalk, the doctor walking by would be expected/assumed to help more than Nancy the software engineer.
Nobody would call you insane for expecting the doctor help more because they are more capable.
The rich were willing to accept the taxes at the time because of fear of communism (there was a strong communist movement in the U.S., and they had seen the communists expropriate (a.k.a. strip people of) private property in Russia in 1917 & China (after the revolution) at the time.
This is also partly why post-war Europe introduced generous social programs - as a way to prevent people from being seduced into communism.
Woah, had no idea it was that high. And that's in a decade that is considered one of the best in US history (if you were the "right" demographic of course).
Any idea what the top tax bracket was that had that rate? Wonder what it would be now adjusted for inflation.
The headline as written should surprise no-one. Anyone receiving free money would probably have their life improved along some dimension, even if it just means they're not doing as many dangerous things to get money to buy more drugs. The implicit assumption seems to be that giving homeless people money to improve their lives is inherently a moral good.
Unlike many homeless advocates, I don't think it is a given that taking money by force from productive hardworking people and giving it to mentally ill drug addicts is inherently moral or good for long term societal stability.
I think a lot of productive hardworking people's money has been spent on propaganda whose sole intention is to ensure that people equate homeless people to "mentally ill drug addicts" rather than, say, "private equity real estate buyup refugees"
How many homeless people do you interact with daily? Because I'm forced to interact with many of them on a daily basis to simply go about my life in the Bay Area. And almost all of them, with very very few exceptions are both mentally ill and drug addicts. I used to think like you, but being forced to deal with them in real life on a daily basis has a way of killing preconceived convenient notions.
A large percentage of the homeless population is just living on the margins, waiting and hoping for their prospects to improve. They may be living in a car, on half on the street and half on someone's couch, waiting for job applications that could give them a livable wage to come back, and so on. About half [1] of the homeless adult population of working age is employed for at least part of the year!
Like you, I have lived in areas experiencing a lot of homelessness. I've stepped over sleeping people and drug needles because there was no other way to get to work or where I needed to go. On the other hand, I think that combining this with the statistical facts gives us a picture of the true size of the problem. The mentally ill and addicts are the visible part of an iceberg of Americans slowly being priced out of affordable housing and access to healthcare.
I would say more than one on average daily, and these are just the ten percent of homeless people I see that will say hello and interact with me rather than simply go about their own business
The reality is that you don't actually KNOW most homeless people or even know they are homeless, because they are living out of their car and still have a job. The majority of homeless people are simply priced out of homes, not having their entire lives fall apart in a crisis. They are people who were barely making ends meet for a decade, but as rent inexorably rises a couple percent every year and their basic job's hourly rate doesn't, they eventually just run out of options.
The people you are interacting with are not typical. The study I’ve seen shows about one third with untreated mental health issues, and one third with drug problems. I would assume a large overlap in those two groups.
The folks without those two problems just aren’t the ones in your face every day.
They're not homeless because they were mentally ill drug addicts. They're mentally ill drug addicts because they're homeless.
People without a stable living condition experience severe stress and mental illness as a result. People without necessities to live turn to drugs to alleviate the pain and suffering they experience.
This study is one example of how giving money to people to alleviate their conditions can improve their lives and enable them to further engage in self improvement.
You are arguing you would rather treat them worse. Cruelty for the sake of it... because anything else would be 'undeserving burdens' on the 'honest working class folk'. If helping one group hurts another (in your mind), of course that's how you would think. Powers that be conditioned you to think (falsely) it's a zero sum game.
People that have mental health issues need help they are not getting on the streets, there just isn't enough to go around.
Addiction is a weird one for me. people call it a disease, your brain undergoes physical changes. disease is a loosy-goosy word I've come to learn (psychological disorders count as diseases apparently?). Addiction doesn't have to start with 'a choice (on the user's part)', but commonly does - which is why I comprehend that some people blame the user for their addiction.
But the core reason people turn to stuff on the streets is: the streets suck. Get people off the streets... suddenly their outlook improves. Funny that!
And yes, the reduced crime/asset rate probably is worth $X coming from taxes spend on this. That's an easy calculation - human live /comfort should be priced fairly high.
Weird, I do. I live within a minute's walk of three separate encampments of homeless people, most of whom seem reasonably sane when I talk to them, and if they have drug problems they certainly aren't more apparent than those of my coworkers on average
I don't believe you for a second because you dont need to sniff out if homeless people are sane. You can just see them shooting up in broad daylight. You can just look on the ground and see syringes ontop of the mountain of trash.
I think you're doing more to illustrate the degree to which your perspective is more a product of bias and emotion than mine through your focus and prose than I possibly could through argumentation
Can you state the location of one of these encampments? If it is within a short distance of San Francisco, I will have someone visit it in the new year and provide someone there with $500 (picked randomly as the kth person met, k generated by random.org) if they meet this criterion of being reasonably sane.
I'm waiting for a direct action org organized by a friend to receive 501c3 status, so it'll have to be after that. But I am curious to see where these people who are sane are on the streets. The objective is to identify those who can be self-sustaining in time. For the moment, I want to see if that is feasible.
From my experience here in San Francisco, many people have more money and resources than I have had at various times in my life. $500 would have sustained me in North Carolina a long time. I will see what decisions they make and see how feasible this operation is.
Just to be clear: You would like me to give you relatively precise geographic information about where I live in a thread full of people who are spouting angry dehumanizing language for the vague promise of giving a random person money based on an ill-conceived lottery system that also permits a single subjective judgment by you to disqualify them from receiving it?
It's all right if you don't want to. I can also remove the random system if you'd like. Happy to just go have a look and report back here if it's in SF.
Is there a feature that lets you disable replies to your comment? I find it hilarious that the person arguing that their egregiously dehumanizing stereotypes of the homeless are simply objective reality rather than biased and that I must be lying has done so if so
It would be really, really harmful to allow people to make posts and disable replies. Insulation from disagreement is a mindkiller and will destroy the health of a community.
I can see their favorite hangout from my window right now. My girlfriend stands next to them at the bus stop she uses to get to her job working for the state helping homeless people.
How about GTFO of here with your presumptive bullshit.
What would the point of a propaganda campaign like that be?
What evil organization is paying on the backend to make sure homeless people do not receive money?
Argue in good faith. People are skeptical that their money should go to people that have not earned it. That is the reality of the argument. It isn’t a conspiracy that many people equate homeless to drug addiction, it’s fact. It is also fact that homelessness isn’t always the guy sleeping in the street, but the single mom sleeping on a friend’s couch for as long as possible.
This is just another “it’s really easy to spend other people’s money” issue.
First of all, we don't have to propose an imaginary conspiracy to acknowledge the reality of how we came to think about drugs the way we do: it is documented that the intent of the controlled substances act was to justify criminalizing the political opponents of the Nixon administration. But the downstream effects of this, aside from making medical care much more difficult to access, has been a large amount of money funneled into propaganda that blames drugs for a wide swath of society's ills while also needing to claim that the act of using the drugs was a personal moral failing, in order to justify the carceral approach we have taken to violations of this law. The "evil organization" that puts out a lot of this stuff is only loosely affiliated, usually local law enforcement orgs, though usually federally funded to some degree, the motivations for scaremongering in this way are obvious enough that no conspiracy is necessary there either: they benefit from the fear of the poor, the homeless, and the drug-addicted in a direct, financial way. By now many of them are staffed entirely by people who have grown up in this propaganda-filled environment.
Scapegoating the poor as depraved criminals is a time-honored way of muddying the waters about economic issues that need resolving, and while doing so openly has fallen out of fashion, most people alive today have consumed enough fearmongering and misinformation about drugs that tying drug usage to issues of poverty is an easy way to launder that kind of messaging, and so that kind of messaging is pervasive. So pervasive that you don't even believe that it comes from anywhere, just that it's the obvious truth. In reality, there are tons of high-functioning drug addicts, and the high-functioning part has far more to do with affluence than what drugs they use, just like homelessness, in turn, has more to do with the housing market than it does with drugs. This would seem obvious to me, but what is "obvious" is not a function of some objective universal reality, and only really comments on the subjective context of any given person claiming "obviousness", including both what they've experienced, and what they've been told
When the incentives are strong enough, no conspiracy is necessary, especially when the tricks being used are old and battle-tested ones.
Also, as far as spending other people's money goes, I'd much rather governments be spending mine on mitigating the housing crisis and its downstream effects on individuals than funding law enforcement to harass and make life difficult for society's most downtrodden. Police receive outsized budgets to "clean up" homeless encampments and endlessly violate people's privacy, autonomy, and often bodily integrity in the name of an endless draconian crackdown on the contraband that you would have me suppose is responsible for the existence of the homeless. Even an inefficient approach like funneling some of that money directly to individuals stuck in poverty traps seems a lot more likely to actually make a dent in the problem, rather than constantly exacerbating it. I bet it would be cheaper, too
Read the article, or read the recent UCSF study on homelessness[0]. The data suggest that mental illness and drug addiction are both symptoms of, or exacerbated by, homelessness, not causes of it.
Please don’t argue with me about this here without citing the available data.
The article is not based on a random sample of homeless people. If you read the article, and ideally the article linked within, you'll notice that both the control and treatment groups are from a set of people who have been able to maintain ongoing relationships with 'buddies', in person or on the phone.
The linked study claims to be based on a representative sample of homeless people, but the sampling approaches detailed on page 14 don't give me confidence that this is true. This part is particularly problematic: "This process
continued with participants referring us to members
of their communities who then referred us to others."
The final weighted sample might be representative based on some demographic criteria (e.g. ethnicity, age) but weighting it to achieve that doesn't magically make it representative of the overall homeless population in other respects.
I worked directly with unhoused people in San Francisco as a direct service provider for 2 years, and I promise you, what is more insulting is when people refuse to accept the findings of the large, long-term empirical studies on this subject.
So you're a beneficiary of the homeless industrial complex. Sorry but I'm not interested in anything you have to say as it's impossible for you to be objective given the amounts of money flushed through these programs.
Pull up on the drama a bit. It’s not insulting, you’re going very far out of your way to be insulted. And also, I deal with the homeless population every day too and disagree with you. Stop pretending like everyone who disagrees with you doesn’t have experience with the homeless population. If anything, that’s what is insulting.
“It may not be earth-shattering that providing money is going to help meet basic needs, but I do think it dispels this myth that people will use money for illicit purposes,” Henwood said. “We weren’t finding that in the study.”
> taking money by force from productive hardworking people and giving it to mentally ill drug addicts
Taxing is not immoral, and it's not just given to mentally ill drug addicts. That's a bad and wrong frame. You almost make it sound like you would cheer when it is given to the mentally ill non-users, or to mentally healthy addicts.
But that's not really your point, is it? Just say: "I don't want to pay taxes." The implication of course is: you don't care about the state, and the help it offers others. Usually that principle lasts until you get in trouble, or can do a profit from government funds.
The fact that you call all homeless people "mentally ill drug addicts" is very telling. Do some basic research. I hope you find some empathy in your heart.
I don't need to research, I deal with them on a daily basis just to go about my day because in my town they are everywhere. The fact that you are ready to simply dismiss someones lived experience based on a few flawed studies tells me everything I need to know about your agenda.
What do you suppose their "agenda" is, other than encouraging you not to be condescendingly dismissive of a whole group based on your limited sample size?
But why is it OK if you dismiss someone's lived experience AND a few studies in favor of what is only your lived experience?
Given the demographics of the site and people's explicitly stated experiences, it seems plenty of the people disagreeing have had experiences similar to yours.
Thankfully, your limited life experience is not a total and accurate picture of reality, and we can collect actual, rigorous statistics on this kind of thing that don't depend on people without empathy judging from afar.
Why would you even ask a question like this? It’s clear that our society has issues that stem from people’s inability to navigate our complicated modern world. Your “why not just let them suffer” provocation adds nothing productive to this discussion.
The other reply to my comment proves that my question wasn't a provocation, but a successful intuition of some people's beliefs in this thread.
Further, the US' lack of universal healthcare shows that it's a societally acceptable stance to not give aid to ill people just because they are ill. I'm not trying to provoke anyone, I'm trying to clarify their belief within a set of beliefs that are socially acceptable.
The other reply mentions that cash is not a good way to help such people, not that they shouldn't be helped. Are you sure you're not reading things into people's replies?
A politically tenable portion of the USA seems to be of the opinion that tax funds should not be used to help ill people just because they are ill, cash or not. This is not an extreme political opinion, nor something that is unreasonable to ask someone whether they believe.
> This is not an extreme political opinion, nor something that is unreasonable to ask someone whether they believe.
Why are you asking if this is something they believe if by your own admission it’s a position that is widely held? Again, how is your question not a provocation? And why am I still entertaining it?
During covid in Australia, we just put the homeless in hotels. It didn't cost much in comparison to the other government spending around that time and homelessness was largely eliminated. Then we got over the pandemic and tossed people out onto the street. Homelessness for some is a choice by society. Especially in the west.
Lots of "solutions" to homelessness are possible if you're willing to take away their rights, which is what happened to them (and many others) during the pandemic.
Failing to appreciate egoistic cooperation is a peculiar mainstay of our culture. Both the fixed ideas of cooperation for the greater good, and radical self-reliance are put on a pedestal, and often pursued to the point of irrationality.
Why ask those people how they ended up this way, and help strategically based on each person's individual needs, while allowing them to feel useful by contributing back to society, when we can just throw money at them. It's easier to throw money at them. I'm sure this will work great, and not become another outlet for corruption.
Of course it did. The question or debate is not if unconditional money helps, but if it's better than alternatives which may be cheaper, such as food credits. Even middle class people would benefit, like $750 to buy groceries. Inflation obviously will erode some of this new purchasing power.
A lot of the debate is very sincerely arguing that it doesn't actually help, so making it clear that it really actually does is important to shut down some of the ignorance:
“It may not be earth-shattering that providing money is going to help meet basic needs, but I do think it dispels this myth that people will use money for illicit purposes,” Henwood said. “We weren’t finding that in the study.”
The government is very good at giving people money. It's less good at adjudicating whether people require that money. Replacing every government assistance program with direct, unconditional cash transfers would almost certainly be cheaper than the bureaucracy that must be maintained to ensure only "deserving" people get assistance.
I'm very much in favor of UBI. Replacing literally "every government assistance program" has me worried though. I think for most folks this will work well. I do wonder about people with special needs though for whom that won't be sufficient. Might it be physical or mental disabilities, it can get more expensive quickly.
I broadly agree with you, I favor UBI for similar reasons, though I'd maybe frame it less as "very good vs. less good", vs. just acknowledging the enormous overhead costs of means-testing, to say nothing of the consequences when bureaucracy turns corrupt or Kafka-esque.
But devil's advocate: is there any reason the same outcome couldn't be accomplished with a negative income tax instead, leveraging a bureaucratic infrastructure which already exists and isn't going anywhere?
I don't really care how it's delivered, as long as it's a regular payment throughout the year that people can depend on.
(US specific) The monthly advanced child tax credit, effectively a negative tax, lifted hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty for the short time it existed. Building that into a permanent, regular, universal cash transfer is not mechanically difficult but is intractable politically.
That's a good point. It was famously the preferred policy of Milton Friedman (presumably as a cheaper alternative to the welfare state, back when the Overton window was still more FDR than Reagan). A negative income tax might need to be paid out weekly or monthly to make a meaningful difference to the homeless and the working poor (to say nothing of access to banking services; as long as we're waving policy magic wands, let's add postal banking to the mix.)
Of course, I feel obliged to bring up the Georgist objection: that either negative tax or UBI would need to contend with the problem of ground rents, lest landlords simply jack up the rent by the $X additional income that they know for a fact that everyone has.
Fun aside: Thomas Paine, the author of "Common Sense", made one of the earliest proposals for a citizen's dividend [0] (funded by ground rents), but going the other direction: a one-time lump sum during young adulthood, as a means to bootstrap a homestead or small business.
The point is not that it helped, the point is that they used it to exit homelessness. This is important because of the pervasive and empirically incorrect assertion that people do not have housing because they simply choose not to.
"Food credits" are an expensive and paternalistic Big Government approach to the problem. Is the idea that poor people don't know they need to buy food? Or that the government knows what you should be eating better than you do? SNAP spends something like $0.15 of every dollar on administrative and has complicated rules.
better and cheaper than the $750 going to drugs or alcohol?
>Big Government
Food credits or $750, you realize it's still coming from taxpayers either way? If someone is homeless it means that they already failed and need help. There is no way it cannot be paternalistic. The question is what is the best solution.
Sometimes people have bad luck and typically people have a better understanding of what would help them the most than someone in a government office who has never met them before.
I am happy for Las Angeles to perform a widespread trial of this kind of initiative. Attract people to Southern California that might be homeless elsewhere, help them get on their feet via $750/person/month, then they will get off the subsidy and contribute back to the community!
If it works I will encourage a similar system in my hometown. If it does not work then I'm glad we did a trial run first.
Note: I'm paywalled from reading the article, how many people did they give the money to and how long was it?
This is a hilariously naive and silly take because SF did exactly this and continues to do so. Spoiler alert, they have massively exacerbated their homeless problems and very few are being reintegrated back into society.
San Francisco also refuses to enforce basic rule of law and has hamstringed its police department, so this doesn't surprise me. Crime rates are through the roof, and a housing crisis has been ongoing for years because of restrictive zoning. I don't think it's fair to assume that basic income for homeless folks is the cause of SF's devolution into a hellhole. There are a lot of other confounding factors.
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. SF absolutely does already give out monthly grants. It hasn’t seemed to move the needle in reducing homelessness, but maybe it make things less dire for those who get it? I guess the question is what’s the goal of the money…
"Exacerbated" via causation or correlation? I'm genuinely asking. I'm ignorant here and need sources. Given the growing US homelessness crisis, how much better off would SF be having done nothing?
Money is good, but how about only 750 of them US Dollars?
I have been going through the exercise of "what if I became homeless?" and where/under what conditions would I live, where, what support I could be getting, etc.
$750 or even €500 would give me an 'amazing life' in certain places in Europe.
One could even buy a crappy/rotting minivan and convert it to a 'small home', as long as it is in a warm country (can't make it on the seldom -20 C of the Nordics).
The problems will begin when someone is around 70 yo and even if by that age he/she would be healthy, at 70 health challenges will definitely come up.
Why is paying into a social safety net considered “free money” but usury is not? Why is it that when rich people as for money it’s a “loan” but when poor people ask for money it’s a “handout”. Free money is never free, money isn’t even real. You live in a society and if you want people to be there for you when you are down, you have a duty to return the favour.
This is true, in the Philip K. Dick conception of reality ("Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away"), so maybe something we all shouldn't get worked up about?
If we stop believing in our duty to return the favor, what happens? Or if we stop believing that there is such a thing as society? If we stop believing in usury, does it exist?
why are you assuming I’m “worked up”? I was simply asking some questions and just because I disagree with the original commenter’s characterisation doesn’t mean I’m necessarily upset. In fact, quite the opposite, I’m curious why so many people blindly accept things as “real” when they are only “real” insofar as we make it so.
I agree about having a duty to each other, I guess I'd describe giving money to the poor as an investment to benefit all of us (and clearly the amount paid into the social safety net can be bigger for the rich, who can spare it). But that is a more nebulous payback than loaning money to the rich, who can and will pay it back directly?
"Those who got the stipend were less likely to be unsheltered after six months and able to meet more of their basic needs than a control group that got no money, and half as likely as the control group to have an episode of being unsheltered."
I guess you’re right as another comment mention headline… I did not got it right: I assumed we’re talking about the articled, not only the title. May you point out why your original comment is about the headline and not the topic itself? Me and my English skills will be grateful.
monsecchris wrote "If that’s the best they can say about $750 a month, it sounds like a terrible investment."
Good point that there is no explicit reference to the headline. And yet it was completely clear to me, at first glance, that this was about the headline.
There is a reference. "THAT" refers to the headline's criteria ("improved"). The headline is the closest thing to this "that" - rather than some other part of the article. It's still slim because really the rest of the article is not much further (Good luck LLMs). What clinches it is "that" reference matches logically:
Logically: First this was also my immediate reaction to the headline: it is content-free. "$750/m no questions asked" would improve anyone's life. "improve" is not a useful way to judge this experiment. The headline is absurd. Second: I expected that the study looked at more than that - but only so far - more "hoped" than expected. Third: Then "If THAT's the best they can say" makes sense. It's a quip (short, sarcastic, funny, sadly true) and a realistic one, at the bar that the article editorial crew picked. We often see studies that boast ... but show very marginal results. Is THAT really the best the study got? In fact no, the study measured more (arguably - it's far from bullet proof because of dumb self reporting [did you buy drugs with this? how about with other money?]). They have more of a claim to success. But either the editors were stupid in writing their headline, OR - quite possible - they were sarcastic. Indeed people are aware that it's going to be easy to dismiss the study "It may not be earth-shattering that providing money is going to help meet basic needs" says one of the people involved.
So anyway, "that" was a weak reference. But it had a strong logical match to the headline.
"Those who got the stipend were less likely to be unsheltered after six months and able to meet more of their basic needs than a control group that got no money, and half as likely as the control group to have an episode of being unsheltered."
So, it seems like it helped get most people back on their feet and into a place where they can live independently without financial support.
I had a bout or two of homelessness when I was younger.
A $750 windfall (or equiv at the time period) would have definitely been a huge help at getting past those initial hurdles.
Like with the old adage of the $20 boots that last a year vs the $150 boots that last a life time, yet you have a person with only $30 of disposable income at any one time. Poor guy's spent $600 on boots.
yea, no doubt if you are down on your luck someone handing you $750/month would improve your circumstances in the short run - but it sounds like perhaps you made changes in your life, such that you are no longer homeless - great - but would you, or anyone else not feeling the desperation of being hungry or unsheltered be more, or less, likely to try and improve your circumstances if you were getting a cash handout every month so the adverse affects weren't so bad?
Its a serious question - isn't there some benefit to society when people feel the pain of bad circumstances or decisions and then feel motivated to do something about it?
Up to and including homelessness? Objectively no. Homelessness significantly prevents both productive economic activity and maintaining other basic necessities, or even seeking help from others. Weighed against what appears to be a purely philosophically-derived assumption that negative reward signals are not only necessary to motivate useful action but have no diminishing returns, I think the proposition that a home makes a lot of the activities one needs to do to "get ahead" in life more physically feasible has a lot more evidence in its favor
> a home makes a lot of the activities one needs to do to "get ahead" in life more physically feasible
100%
Basic hygiene, a place to store your belongings and clothes, an area to prepare yourself and look good for the day. A location to use a computer or do paperwork or other managerial tasks. The ability to store food and participate in bulk purchases for savings. A place to rest and relax and consume media or enjoy a hobby. A solid place to sleep, every night, in your perferred area and with your perferred pillows and bedding. A place to store a vehicle. A place to bring friends and family and entertain. Cooking the food you want and eating at the schedule that works best for you. A place to organize your external life and showcase your own personality. A familiar place to develop habits and routine.
I don't see how there is any question. People who are homeless not only lack all of these and more, but some suffer additional stress, anxiety, and embarassment about acquiring these basic things every day.
did it actually get them back on their feet? i.e. to the point where they no longer needed the free money? or did it improve their lives by being able to purchase/consume $750 more of goods and services?
Almost anyones life would be improved by a free $750/month, wether or not it makes any lasting change versus simply making them dependent on another government program is the real question.
not if it leads to even more people living on the streets or in shelters - the media was ripe with stories that if we just stopped criminalizing drug use, it would lead to more people seeking help and overdoses would go down - it had the opposite affect - more overdoses, more drug users etc.
But, money will not solve any root cause issues. I've been unhoused and out of work for so long that any recovery back to a normal life has become exceedingly unlikely. I don't drink alcohol, I don't smoke, nor do I do illicit drugs nor prescriptions. My mental state -- stressed in survival mode -- is very much situational, yet there are underlying factors that have led to a state of permanent dysfunction and reluctance to rebuild.
In addition to food stamps, I've survived on help from lifelong/long term friends and strangers (incl'g from kind souls on hn, on a few occasions, even). One kind stranger at the local coffee shop even tried gifting me a new MBP/M2/24GB/1TB a few months ago, but my focus is gone and I was unhoused, still being criminally targeted, so I returned the laptop in like new condition to him a week later. (The side reports regarding systemic/criminal abuse against at-risk folks is a separate but related matter.)
These initiatives matter, of course. I'd gladly make use of such money. But, IMO, more important is to focus on root causes at the relevant time -- i.e. in public school settings when unchecked peer abuse occurs, as one example. Such abuse can grow into an irreparable state of dysfunction and life breakdown.
hth