Is there really a problem with homelessness in the US?

Great Debates
101

[QUOTE=Magiver]
I know frugal. I don’t see it around me. I know people who make $15K and I know people who are probably millionairs. **I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people who smoke 2 packs of cigarrets a day tell me they can’t afford health insurance. **
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I can’t tell you how many non-smokers can’t afford insurance, either.

So for the umteenth time, financial planning is a valid way to reduce the number of homeless people. What is the debate here?
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Again…*by far * the largest number of homeless people are those who cannot, for whatever reason, earn enough money to “plan” for anything. Minimum wage doesn’t have a cushion for saving.

102

[QUOTE=Evil Captor]
Guys. good capitalist theory requires a 4-5 percent unemployment rate in the best of times, so companies can hire new workers when they need them. So this guff about unemployment insurance is bullshit. “Everybody should want to keep their job” indeed. Unemployment is BUILT INTO THE FRIGGING SYSTEM, PEOPLE!

It’s only fair that those who are benefiting from the system should compensate those who are harmed by it.
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Without getting off topic too much (too late, I know, second time I’m doing this), I like to know where you get this “good capitalist” theory from.

From Say’s Law, we extrapolate that full employment is theoretically possible, because Supply and Demand are interrelated and are a function of each other. That is, along each curve, there is a point of full employment for supply and demand (iitc, that sounds right for now).

Keynesian Economics posits that the market can be at equilibrium with unemployment. It goes on to say something about the government making up the short fall.

To reconcile these two theories, economists say that there is a state of natural unemployment, which is 4-5% of the total labor force. These are the people who: don’t want to work; are unemployable; are in transition. Since the economy is constantly fluctuating, growing, and contracting, and even more important, correcting, there will be states of unemployment.

103

As an aside to this debate;I wonderwhat the % of Latino’s are homeless. There are many Latinos in my area and do not know of any that are homeless. The one’s I know have families and send money to their relatives in Mexico.
They work fo minimum wage or less. Perhaps we could learn from them?

Monavis

104

This hasn’t been addressed, and ISTM to be part of the problem with discussions like this -

In what sense is it a “myth” to say that “homeless people are mentally ill or substance abusers” if, at least 65% of the time, they are mentally ill or substance abusers?

If this is true, then two thirds of the time homelessness is not an economic issue.

Regards,
Shodan

105

In NYC (the housing politics & economics of which I’m most familiar), there was once a reasonably deep array of cheap rental space, including space rented by the week or even the night, and people with impairments of various sorts were heavliy numbered among those who used them.

Meanwhile, psychiatric institutionalization was once more geared towards long-term or permanent lockup/warehousing.

By the 1980s, the cheap housing had been decimated, whereas psych institutionalization had moved towards more of a revolving-door pattern. As a consequence, the populations most vulnerable to losing housing or being unable to scratch together first month’s last month’s and damage deposit in order to acquire it in the first place were more often homeless, and this vulnerable population included a lot of the folks of more limited capacity.

Revolving-door psych institutionalizations meant that, for many folks, having a rental apartment or room in January would give way to being incarcerated in a psychiatric institution in May, and released to homelessness in August, to manage to find housing by November only to be institutionalized again the following September. (Yeah, when you’re locked up in a looney bin you don’t generally get the opportunity to pay your rent, and I bet you can figure out what happens to your job if you happen to have been an employed schizzy or manicdep at the time)
Being crazy and/or drunk, per se, isn’t what caused the boom in homelessness in the latter years of the 20th century, insofar as homelessness moved from being pretty much a nonissue to being a very noticeable phenomenon. A factor, yes. But not in isolation from economic issues (of which housing policy is a relevant component), and really stupid implementations of what were actually good & progressive ideas about forced psychiatric treatment were another major component.

106

!,4 million homeless are children. 40% are veterans. A minimum wage job wont get them off the streets. To survive and build up money on min wage is nearly impossible.
Now we got them so demonized that teens are out beating them for fun.
Stats I read say 11million Americans are vulnerable to homelessness in the future,
In most major cities y,you cant afford an apartment on min wage , Health care is a luxury they can not afford.

107

Do you have a reliable cite for this? Especially the 1.4 million children.

Regards,
Shodan

108

Shodan, good point in Post #104. I feel like a bit of an idiot for having missed it the first time 'round. :smack: But, yeah, that’s a large part of what I had in mind when I said I don’t buy into the “it’s their own fault, so f*** 'em” mentality. Which is not to say, I should point out, that I feel the homeless have NO responsibilty for their situation. But it does suggest that facile solutions, like mandatory financial planning classes in high school, aren’t going to do much to solve the problem.

109

[QUOTE=Shodan]
In what sense is it a “myth” to say that “homeless people are mentally ill or substance abusers” if, at least 65% of the time, they are mentally ill or substance abusers?
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Nitpick: 25% mentally ill, 40% substance abusers, 15% both means that a total 50% are mentally ill, substance abusers, or both, given that there’s a 15% overlap.

110

Health insurance costs money (unless you’re one of the rapidly-shrinking percentage of workers with a completely employer-funded health plan), usually a lot of money. Fire insurance and home insurance cost money. Putting aside six months’ salary costs money. Even birth control costs money.

How are low-income workers whose paychecks barely cover their basic living costs of housing, food, transportation, clothing, and other necessities supposed to come up with all those insurance payments and savings as well? I’m not talking about Magiver’s feckless fools who spend hundreds of dollars a month on luxuries while complaining they can’t afford to save; I’m talking about people who actually do spend all their earnings just making ends meet on basic necessities.

None of the common causes of homelessness that you listed can be “reasonably avoided through planning” without money. So obviously, planning by itself is not a viable solution.

111

[QUOTE=PBear42]
it does suggest that facile solutions, like mandatory financial planning classes in high school, aren’t going to do much to solve the problem.
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Not to mention that there are rich and politically well-connected people (for instance, at credit card companies) who profit hugely from people living beyond their means. There would be quite a bit of political resistance to such a program, if it were actually effective. I’m not too sure how effective it could be, either- courses in school promoting abstinence from alcohol, drugs, and premarital sex don’t seem to have made those go away.

112

[QUOTE=Anne Neville]
Not to mention that there are rich and politically well-connected people (for instance, at credit card companies) who profit hugely from people living beyond their means. There would be quite a bit of political resistance to such a program, if it were actually effective. I’m not too sure how effective it could be, either- courses in school promoting abstinence from alcohol, drugs, and premarital sex don’t seem to have made those go away.
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Sadly, we have become a thing culture, we seem to value people on what they have, not the fact that they deserve respect and love just because they are born.

A noun is a person ,place or thing and as I see it first we should help people it makes our life better as well as theirs,then we would take care of the ecology, things would be last, and least important

I drive through a subdivision and in one block I can see enough discards to fill a garbage truck( and then some). It has come to the point that our ecomomy is based on people buying things. I often wonder why we do not send a lot of the perfectly good thing we discard to countried who have nothing.

Monavis

113

[QUOTE=Anne Neville]
Not to mention that there are rich and politically well-connected people (for instance, at credit card companies) who profit hugely from people living beyond their means. There would be quite a bit of political resistance to such a program, if it were actually effective. I’m not too sure how effective it could be, either- courses in school promoting abstinence from alcohol, drugs, and premarital sex don’t seem to have made those go away.
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I watched a TV show once(I think it was on Oprah) there was a woman living in her Mercedes car, she and her husband had once earned well over $200,000.00 per year. There was a man who earned $25,000.oo and owned a boat, and a house trailer. his house was paid, he used the trailer and boat for taking his children on vacations. He bought most of his things second hand and even had a savings account…go figure!

Monavis

114

[QUOTE=PBear42]
What I’d love to know is whether America is unique in this regard. A few months ago, I tried googling this question and came up dry. So, how about it non-American Dopers. Do you have this problem? If so, to what degree? If not, why not? Or, perhaps I should say, how not?
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There are homeless people in Sydney where I currenly sleep, and also in the UK where I used to sleep. They are generally people with mental health and / or substance abuse problems, who at one time would have been in institutions. Funding to these institutions has been dramatically cut since the early 1990s.

When I visited San Francisco in 2002 I was shocked at the number of people holding empty coffee cups out for coins. They were found on pratically every street corner in the city. The problem appeared to be far worse than in Australia or the UK. In fact I didn’t notice that many people begging in L.A. either.

115

[QUOTE=Gorsnak]
Nitpick: 25% mentally ill, 40% substance abusers, 15% both means that a total 50% are mentally ill, substance abusers, or both, given that there’s a 15% overlap.
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That might be true, or they might be splitting the homeless up into four classes - substance abusers, mentally ill, both, and other. I picked 65% because it is pretty close to other estimates I have seen (no cite) of two-thirds being addicts or schizophrenic.

Given that they gave the figures as an attempt to refute what they called a “myth”, I suspect they are not as precise as one would wish. Even 50% is enough to demonstrate that mental illness and/or substance abuse is a primary cause of homelessness.

I think AHunter3 raises some interesting points, but I was under the impression that de-institutionalization started in the sixties. So also (IIRCT) striking down laws against vagrancy and such-like. The crack epidemic also peaked in the 80s - possibly being a crack addict is worse than being an alcoholic in terms of homelessness.

It would be interesting to see some hard figures about actual levels of homelessness historically so we could see when (and if) it got worse. Did it really increase in the 80s, or simply media attention to it? Has it gotten worse since then?

If it were primarily due to the housing market, one would expect it to continually increase thru out the 90s and into the twenty-first century.

Regards,
Shodan

116

Not intending to revive the debate, but there’s an interesting article on the subject in today’s SF Chronicle.

BTW, I read the study summary the same as Shodan, though admittedly Gorsnak’s reading could be the correct one.

117

[QUOTE=Magiver]
I opted out of COBRA because it was cheaper to insure privately. I have $7M insurance with a $1750 deductable. This costs less than half of the COBRA payments and I have better catastrophic as well as remedial insurance. In the event of a small medical problem ($12,000) I’m paying less than when I was “fully insured” with an HMO from my last company. These aren’t numbers I made up because I had to pay the bills from a minor operation.
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Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone on earth were as smart, competent, and put-together as you are?

I work for an org that does low-income housing and see these issues first-hand. Yeah, there are some residents I want to beat over the head with a clue-by-four but those people are few and far between.

Here are the big problems I see in my day-to-day work life:

  1. And #1 with a bullet: Women with children abandoned by the fathers of those children. Sometimes the father is in jail. Sometimes he’s disappeared. Most likely he’s working for cash under the table for a cousin and the state agencies can’t touch his money because it officially doesn’t exist. The counterargument always seems to be “Well, she could work more”, but $8/hr x 60 hours/week - $550 rent - $1200 daycare/babysitter for a 6 and 8 year old = $170 a month. Gross. Better hope her brakes don’t give out as she’s rushing from one job to the other, eh?

  2. Refugees. That’s a whole 'nother ball of wax, but I will say that refugees are very good at living 10 people to a 2BR apartment. Illegally, of course. And when the property management company kicks them out they are supposed to…what, rely on the generosity of family and friends still in the camps?

  3. The elderly. In a rural area like mine the elderly were likely farmers in their prime and … well, someone more in the know can post details if he or she pleases, but agricultural workers weren’t (aren’t?) required (allowed?) to pay into the Social Security system as regular workers did (do?). Some farmers made out - open land is going for a pretty penny these days - but lots of these people lost everything during the farm crisis in the 1980s. $445 in SS payments doesn’t do much when rent for a 1BR in rural areas is $450.

  4. We won’t rent to people with felonies, so that guy who just did a year for possession with intent to sell and is trying to stay clean* is shit out of luck. No one else in town will rent to him, either. And what are the chances someone’s going to give him a job with a record?

  5. The waiting list for a Section 8 voucher is three years. So even if you somehow manage to find an apartment that your wages cover, market rent in this area for a 2BR is $550. That’s a lot of money to shell out on rent if you have two kids and are trying to make it on an $8/hour job (going rate for most work I see in the paper ranges between minimum and $10). And three years is a long time to wait for a piece of paper that SOME property management companies will accept. And did you know that the rules recently changed? Low-income people who are trying to better themselves by attending university are no longer elgible for either Section 8 or other low-income housing options. Now ain’t that just a kick in the pants?

  6. Mental problems. Not just mental illness, either. You know the guy you sat next to in shop class in 9th grade? Nice guy without the brains god gave a goat? Yeah, him. Or remember the girl who hit her head in that car wreck and hasn’t been “right” since? Yeah, her.

  7. Rural. I’m not really sure how to explain this and properly get my point across. Community is important here. People want to be buried in the cemetery of the church in which they were christened. They don’t want to pick up and move away from their friends. The “city” (all 70,000 residents of it) is too big and too fast and too far away. Sure, groceries are cheaper there and there are more services and more jobs, but it costs a lot of money to move and this is home.

See, the problem isn’t just “homelessness”, and it’s not just “welfare”, and it’s not just “lazy”, and it’s not just “stupid”, and it’s not just “bad choices”. There is simply not enough affordable, accesible housing to go around, and too many people fall through the cracks.

Some days I wish that were I Empress of the Word for a day I’d decree that our government spend as much money on social programs as we do on defense.

More often, though, I think I’d decree that our government spend absolutely nothing on social programs. Not one thin dime. No corporate tax breaks, no unemployment, no tax write-offs - hell, no taxes!, no food shelves, no public funding for any education whatsoever, no cops or firefighters, no military…

Sounds like Somalia, doesn’t it?
*Well, that’s what HE says, at least.

118

[QUOTE=Blue Willow Plate]
Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone on earth were as smart, competent, and put-together as you are?

I work for an org that does low-income housing and see these issues first-hand. Yeah, there are some residents I want to beat over the head with a clue-by-four but those people are few and far between.

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“I want to beat over the head with a clue-by-four” is the best phraseology I’ve seen in a long time. I’m going to have to remember it.

Your observations serve as a reminder that homelessness is a multi-faceted problem that suffers from serious debate. There is no single solution because it’s not a single problem. The best I can offer is Ross Perot’s mantra: Education, Education, Education.

If everyone were the product of depression era parents the world would be a better place for it. I wish the wisdom of my parents could be bestowed on the general populace because it would eliminate a huge junk of the problem at hand. A day doesn’t go by I’m not thankful for the privilege of the childhood I had.

The real question is how do you circumvent dysfunctional parents? Society is only as good as the citizens who support it.

119

[QUOTE=Magiver]
“I want to beat over the head with a clue-by-four” is the best phraseology I’ve seen in a long time. I’m going to have to remember it.
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I prefer “that god gave a goat” myself, but to each his own. :wink:

“…suffers from LACK of serious debate.”, I think you meant. But it doesn’t. The problem is that the people working at ground zero, those in HRA, private/public charities, shelters, prison-to-work programs - those in social justice positions - butt heads with the people with the pursestrings. There’s plenty of debate. When push comes to shove, though, those programs that help keep people housed get cut.

A statement with which I utterly agree, but to put it as plainly as possible some people are dumb and they need a place to live, too.

120

[QUOTE=Blue Willow Plate]
Some days I wish that were I Empress of the Word for a day I’d decree that our government spend as much money on social programs as we do on defense.
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You mean as opposed to spending a lot more on social programs as is now the case? :smiley:

Regards,
Shodan