I think there's a crisis of ineffectiveness in Center-Left institutions
They are too deliberative, and take excessive time including voices of every stakeholder. So you don't just go do the "obvious thing". You cater to trying to listen to every voice in an effort to be as inclusive as possible. Committee after committee and an obsession with process. You can spend years placating NIMBYs and people living with their own alternate reality.
Meanwhile real people are suffering from lack of action.
This level of ineffectiveness just enables authoritarianism ("at least they get something done") and gets people to seek the private industry for their solutions.
Another recent book along the same lines would be "Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress and How to Get It Back" by Marc Dunkelman:
"When he looked into the history, Dunkelman realized that progressives have long swung back and forth between two opposing impulses. One is what he calls Hamiltonianism: the desire to achieve progress by empowering government and institutions to tackle big problems at the direction of strong leaders (like Robert Moses) and informed experts. The other is what he calls Jeffersonianism: the desire to prevent unaccountable centralized authorities (also like Robert Moses) from abusing ordinary citizens by empowering them to fight back."
Wow, deregulation and austerity, what a fresh perspective on the economy!
This abundance "movement" has absolutely nothing new to offer, it is simply a rebranding of neoliberalism. It's easy to spot too, just look at who backs the movement: the same old establishment democrats and their wealthy donors. The same people who have entranched the democratic party into this technocratic blob of ineffectiveness and societal erosion. In particular, it is financially backed by, among others, Peter Thiel and Mark Andreessen. This should raise some red flags.
Also, I personally like winning. This abundance movement has exactly zero electoral hype. American voters don't care about it at all. Meanwhile, populist leftists like Mamdani are able to generate momentum for the left for the first time in decades. That Klein, Thompson and the billionaires behind them are so harshly criticizing them should raise additional red flags.
The writer of this article (Dave) publicly dislikes Derek Thompson and keeps criticizing Matt Ygelasis for his austerity fetish, along with praising Mamdani
"Frances Perkins was not just the architect of SSA: she also proposed and implemented many of the foundational labor and safety laws1 still relied upon by the American working class. We can also thank her for the 40-hour work week, minimum wage, unemployment compensation, worker’s compensation, workplace safety, abolition of child labor, direct federal aid to the states for unemployment relief, a revitalized federal employment service, and universal health insurance. Well, except the last. We are still working on the last. "
She got everything she wanted done as Labor Sec. Except for universal healthcare. And it was a great loss for everything living American every year since.
A local school system near me was facing some financial issues a number of years ago.
The superintendent noted that there were dozens and dozens of individual social programs that the school system managed. Many extending well beyond education and even testing the bounds of what might be called social work.
While they all (on the surface) operated on the idea that if students got these services they would be more effective in school ... it wasn't clear for most of them if that was even the case / being measured.
The superintendent noted that the only thing they could be sure of was that if they touched anyone of them, they were sure to be someone's baby and they'd face a backlash.
Personally, I'd like to see a more "fail fast" type system for a lot of social programs. Run it, see what happens ... then make the call if it goes any further. But that would mean people would have to start up programs fast, and shut them down fast. Both are not easy.
for as long as the left has not been about the working class and been about university educated white collar government workers this has been true though. It may have been true prior to that too i just dont have living memory to back it up. There is something about being removed from the reality of how the metaphorical sausage is made that turns the left from having some valid concerns but usually wrong ideas on how to address them into actively incomptent civilization destroyers. I would love to know why.
When you go back to The New Deal, its absolutely the case that the Dem coalition was much more effective at delivery. To some extent because FDR acted very aggressively with executive action.
My personal opinion is the working class, not the fancy educated types, need to run the Dem coalition. It would be far more effective in a number of ways... with broader appeal.
It’s a different coalition now though. The FDR Democrats were labor focused. Then the 60s happened. The New Left student movements reoriented away from labor and towards racial/gender/sexual equality, and Kennedy signed the Civil Rights Act. Southern whites opposed this and you had George Wallace pop up, splitting the Democrats, and then Nixon swooped in with the Southern Strategy. The Democrats needed a new coalition and they went with disadvantaged racial/gender/sexual groups instead of labor.
The transition didn’t really finish until Clinton and the New Democrats though. Campaign money and TV ads got to be really important in Presidential politics, and to get that money, Democrats had to appeal to rich people, so they got rid of most of the labor aspects of the platform. Clinton signed NAFTA and MFN for China. Now there were two pro-business parties that served different identity groups. Ironically the last gasp of labor was the billionaire Ross Perot in 92 and 96 who ran on an anti-NAFTA platform. The only way he could do this credibly was to use his own money to buy TV time.
It hasn't always been that way. The US political left did used to focus more on working-class issues. They only really lost the plot in the early 2000s when they started navel gazing on performative ideology and luxury beliefs, leading to an inversion in some of the voting blocks for the two major political parties.
SF, Dallas, and Houston all have Democratic leadership that could be described as center left? (For America. To an outsider, America has two conservative parties)
The unhoused are 'stakeholders' too actually, so I'd describe Cali's problem as listening too much to wealthy/powerful stakeholders, while ignoring those most impacted. Who can forget Newsom's camp-destroying photo-op and forced bussing the undesirables out of town to prevent people from seeing 'crime' aka 'poverty'.
These institutions are not log-jammed by accident. "You cater to trying to listen to every voice" Reader, they only listen to their friends and donors, this is the problem. These 'listening sessions' you are told are 'stopping progress' exist to placate legitimate concerns. Blaming unions is also fun, I heard that a lot back in Cali, no matter the issue, no matter the union, from the wealthiest people.
Politicians that seem to do almost nothing are preferred by the donor class.
Bog standard Democrats have more smoke for Zohran (the sincere housing and affordability guy) than they have for their 'Republican colleagues' in this era. That should tell you everything you need to know.
"This level of ineffectiveness just enables authoritarianism ("at least they get something done") and gets people to seek the private industry for their solutions."
EXACTLY. THIS IS INTENTIONAL. PUBLIC COST, PRIVATE PROFIT IS THE GOAL. A WELFARE STATE FOR BUSINESSES, NOT PEOPLE.
This is an interesting thought. I also wonder if Houston is "helped" by the fact that they're a blue city in a red state... that kind of ideological conflict of governance requires unique and localized solutions. Whereas SF is blue city in a blue state, so it creates a "too many cooks in the kitchen" situation.
I think it also just creates a lack of "urgency" problem. I live in a blue city in a red state. Constituents expect results because we can't rely on our state gov. Local officials know this. There's more competition from more progressive candidates too locally which is helpful in keeping liberal officials more focused on results instead of the game of politics.
Idk, I think it's different for every city. But I think the point I'm trying to make is that having some kind of political constraints in governance seems to typically be a good thing for the sake of getting some shit done.
Actually I think I'm just stating an obvious point now given the glaring ineffectiveness of our two party political system...
It probably does make it easier to make drastic changes as described to consolidate data sharing etc when they ultimate authority is likely the city/county instead of the state. The state level agencies will have their own policies, systems and goals/approaches that might not suite the individual cities so the programs remain separated and fragmented.
From time to time, we see response here that doing X is dumb because it is not a perfect solve. It's very common in discussions about solving pollution or energy use. Don't bother using EVs as we're still burning coal. Don't recycle because so much trash is everywhere else. These people are suggesting doing nothing until the perfect solve is available. Perfect will never happen. Instead make as many things better where you can while you can.
Nothing wrong with deliberation and listening to stakeholders. Great idea. The issue is the centre-left voters keep asking these institutions to take on more power, channel more funds and veto more projects [0]. I don't see how else they expect large centralised bodies to play out. I'm not sure if the US left even has a collective theory of how to fight institutional rot apart from stuffing institutions with leftists and assuming they do they right thing. Expecting good results from that strategy requires a certain naivete to the sort of people who seek power in government.
[0] Not just them, the centre right also seems to love the idea based on what I've read. Not the brightest crowd.
> Nothing wrong with deliberation and listening to stakeholders. Great idea.
True if you can identify the correct stakeholders and those stakeholders are aligned to the goal.
It becomes unhelpful when the list of stakeholders is so long and disconnected from the goal that listening to stakeholders becomes an endless cycle of meetings and talking about the problem instead of doing anything about it.
In my local experience, initiatives related to homelessness and drug addiction treatment attract a lot of people who like the idea of being involved because it advances their career or sounds good on their resume, but many of them are unqualified to be involved and think the role will involve a lot of delegation and deciding where to send money to other groups, not actually doing any of the work directly.
Basically, a lot of people who want to be in charge and claim leadership but who also don’t want to actually do the hard work.
My point is that I'm not sure we need more assistance. TBH we need better, more efficient assistance. We spend a lot on deliberation, not enough on delivery.
A lot of this is due to leadership gaps IMO. Center-left leaders (ie Schumer) look weak because they excessively triangulate every stakeholder. Instead leaders need to act as true leaders, which means being a touch less collaborative / trying to triangulate. And more focused on some top-down, cut through red-tape, have a vision, persuade people etc.
(Then, arguably if people saw the system working well, they might want to award it with more money.)
I think this piece makes a strong point — when there’s already a working model, just copy it instead of endlessly debating. The homelessness crisis is real, and doing nothing while watching it grow worse is the worst option. Of course there’s a chance it fails, but the bigger issue is that no one wants to take responsibility if it does. That lack of strong leadership is, in itself, part of the problem.
Then there's also the Williston / North Dakota oil boom model. I met tons of homeless people out there (I was one of them), many of which whom solved it through "one neat trick" of doing something like hitchiking to the oil fields, or to Seattle where literally anyone can get hired to work on a fish processing boat or facility and they give you "free" room and board and then ~$10k to go home with.
Everything except ending the ban on homeowners & landowners building market housing. (ofc they are taking bites out of this apple, especially very recently, but every step is fought tooth & nail by homeowners who prefer the status quo just fine)
I'm fully in the camp of just give people dollars and let them decide how to spend it rather than navigate a bureaucratic nanny state system like SNAP. But if you're only doing that well no shit it doesn't help. You have to actually put them in a stable house/apartment and get them set up with work. Or if they're homeless due to mental illness get them admitted.
>Or if they're homeless due to mental illness get them admitted.
Therein lies the problem. A large proportion of homeless fall into this category [*], and it's very hard to institutionalize people against their will. We like to think that most homeless are functional people who are simply down on their luck, and thus putting them in stable housing and getting them set up to work would solve their problems. But this is sadly not the case.
[*] This study [0] found that 80% of homeless people have some kind of mental illness, with 30% having severe mental illness. This is compounded by the fact that >50% have substance abuse problems.
Right. As I touched on elsewhere in the thread, our local jailers know all the homeless people in town because they show up regularly when their mental illnesses and/or substance abuse get them into trouble. The ordinary guy who wound up homeless due to a string of bad luck and just needs a place to sleep and a new job to get back on his feet is more a movie trope than reality. These are people with real problems who in many cases need regular supervision in something like a group home, if not outright institutionalization. And as you said, the latter is very hard to do now.
That seems like an unfair metric. Any program that helps homeless people significantly more than anywhere else in the USA is going to become the new capital of homeless people and their population will explode. It doesn't mean the people helped are worse off.
Right, but the taxpayers in that city are worse off. That's why any solutions need to be driven at least at the county level and preferably at the state level. Leaving it to individual cities creates all sorts of perverse incentives. (SF is somewhat unique in that they are their own county so for that area specifically, shifting programs from the city to county level wouldn't change anything.)
Taxpayers are pretty much always going to be worse off helping the homeless. Only a small fraction of the chronically homeless will become tax positive citizens in their lifetime.
Either you start off with the first principle that it's OK for wealth-transfer schemes to make tax payers 'worse off' via compelled charity, or I don't think you can get to the point of supporting generalized homeless relief programs. Maybe programs targeted at short-duration stuff to get people into jobs that are capable of doing them and a housing contract might work, but it'd have to be extremely well thought out and wouldn't benefit most chronic homeless.
The problem is not that lack of examples. Technically, all two hundred something countries could take example of the best one in every metric and just copy most of the stuff to make life better.
The problem is that politicians are afraid to do anything (outside of direct and indirect enrichment). No one can blame some John Doe, chief Busybody of the Busyarea, if he won't do something. Because that didn't happen, nothing to point finger at directly, except for "you don't do enough", which is generic enough to be used at anyone and so ineffective at everyone. But if he will do something and it is immediately painful to at at least some group, then he will be blamed and his opponent will do that with pleasure too.
That's 1% of the population. Maybe not a big deal to you.
There's only 13,000 city blocks in SF.
That's a homeless person every 2 blocks.
Kind of dangerous to be walking past people in all different states of desperation multiple times every trip everywhere you go, is another way to look at it.
Even if you end homelessness, you'll still be walking past people in all different states of desperation multiple times everywhere you go.
People looking like they have homes or acting like it won't stop this. It doesn't make people inherently dangerous.
Don't get me wrong, I think any percent of the population being homeless because of lack of options is a tragedy. (I don't really care if someone wishes to be so, and I think we should have appropriate living options for this). I understand that you can't really stop temporary homelessness - fires and urgent things happen - but that's something we can deal with as needed.
Is your argument that, because x% of the population is desperate, we shouldn't care or do anything about x%+y% being like that?
y% LIVES on the blocks - so the multiple on y is higher (higher probability you encounter them), and the desperation factor is also likely much higher.
Please note that someone giving you a quantitative context isn’t necessarily saying don’t care. But it’s important to be mindful of how people use words in the media to describe certain issues because it benefits them politically or financially.
The problem which sticks out to me is that homelessness can be addressed by providing housing, but that’s not an easy solution to provide in a country that gets 10s of millions of illegal immigrants. So why is someone talking so much about homelessness relative to other issues? Do they want the U.S. to provide a house for every illegal immigrant who crosses a border? If political officials in states struggling with homelessness really care about solving the problem, they would do what other states are doing, as mentioned in OP’s article.
Is it dangerous? I agree that people with means feel unsafe when encountering poverty but the "it is unsafe to ride the subway because there are poor people there" stuff doesn't appear to be proportionate with actual risk.
I think that one of the huge limitations of how we think about homelessness in the US is that we view it as a problem that non-homeless people encounter. This encourages a bunch of policies that make it easier for somebody to avoid ever having to see a homeless person but which do little to mitigate the suffering of a homeless person.
I don’t really think this holds the point you think it does.
While property crime is more likely to be committed by people the lower their income level is, the majority of all violent crime is committed by people who have homes.
In fact, the homeless are far more likely to be the victims of a violent crime than any other income demographic.
Furthermore, the unstable and dangerous people you see behaving erratically on the street are not necessarily sleeping there - and the homeless in the area probably feel much more unsafe about their presence than you do.
> it’s baseless to call homelessness a crises for the U.S
Sure, a quarter of a percent is not a big percent, but that sure is a lot of people. It is _more_ than the entire population of Alaska, Wyoming, or Vermont. It is near the population size of several other states.
An entire US state's worth of people are unable to find adequate housing and not just because they are off their meds. According to the 2024 Point-in-Time count, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated 22% of homeless are facing a severe mental illness. So nearly 4 out of 5 homeless are regular people who simply cannot secure permanent housing.
> So nearly 4 out of 5 homeless are regular people who simply cannot secure permanent housing.
How does it follow? Not having a severe mental illness makes one normal? It's as same as saying that not suffering from severe obesity makes you fit and healthy.
771K people isn't a small number. 0.23% isn't a small number when it comes to homelessness. This also doesn't consider people who are housed but are overcrowded or living in otherwise very poor environments.
You also ignore that it's a rapidly growing problem.
Comparing it to DUI numbers doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
A quarter of a percent still seems like a lot to me, even if it's not a "crisis."
But we can't do anything about it until we face up to the problem. Spending more money won't help. I'm somewhat familiar with the activity at our local jail, and a good part of it is homeless people rotating in and out. They get brought in because they were trespassing or shoplifting or something, the jail cleans them up and dries them out (they're usually on drugs, which they somehow manage to buy) and tries to get them back on their medications, they get released, and the cycle begins again. Most of them are mentally unstable, and perhaps they'd be somewhat functional if they could stay on their medication, but they don't, so they can't function in society for long.
We don't want to put them back in asylums, because some asylums really were hellholes, and I guess we don't trust ourselves not to let them be hellholes again. That seems awfully pessimistic; factories used to be pretty awful too, but we require them to be safe and clean now. Seems like we could do the same with asylums, but we won't even consider it. So we're left with letting them wander the streets, maybe bedding down at homeless shelters when they feel like it, using the jails as temporary asylums when they get in trouble, and throwing more money at the problem once in a while to soothe our guilt. It's sad.
Different US states have implemented useful measures for helping homeless people, but states which are struggling with their implementation have other issues as well. Border states in particular have illegal immigrants to contend with as well, so a housing-first policy for homelessness gets taken off the table right away. California has the means and resources for dealing with its homelessness problem, but the political will is murky.
I've always been surprised by the official homeless population count, but it turns out there's a lot more to it.
The department of HUD generates this ~771K figure from a "point-in-time" estimate, a single count from a single night performed in January. They literally have volunteers go out, count the number of homeless people they observe, and report their findings.
It's not hard to imagine why this is probably a significant undercount. There is likely a long tail of people that happened to be in a situation that night where they were not able to be counted (i.e. somewhere secluded, sleeping in a friend's private residence that night, etc).
Even if these numbers are correct, to my mind a "crisis" is still more characterized by the trend than the numbers in absolute. From the first link you provided, we saw a 39% increase in "people in families" experiencing homelessness, and 9% in individuals. A resource from the HUD itself suggests a 33% increase in homelessness from 2020-2024, 18% increase from 2023-2024. That is far apace of the population increase in general.
And even then, I would say many people would suggest that the change in visible homelessness they've experienced in the last 10 years would amount to "crisis" levels, at least relative to the past.
It's completely fair to argue that it is not in fact a crisis, but claiming that it is certainly not "baseless."
Whether it's homelessness, DUIs, or fentanyl deaths (only 75k per year!), measuring the impact of something by ignoring the blast radius is disingenuous. All who are touched are part of it. In the case of homelessness, it's a burden on emergency services, creates unsafe environments, impacts businesses, etc.
You would think that since DUI operators present a greater social problem, both in numbers and potential to cause harm, there would be all sorts of active campaigns against such an issue. But the present reality is that some issues have great political forces behind them, and the media takes care to paint such issues as “crises”. Maybe it is a crisis, for a certain locality, and that reflects on the governance of that place. But I don’t think it’s fair or accurate to say your local problem is a problem at large, even if that means you get less federal monies to deal with it. Maybe what that means is that people need to reflect on how their localities are spending their budget, or sorting their priorities.
How does Houston deal with those that can't be housed? Sure, 90% retention sounds nice for these people but California has limited housing/higher housing costs, in general, last I had read. The write-up even mentions rising housing costs or the Trump admin taking away their funding can crash the system, so unclear how easily this system could transfer to other cities. Sure, better communicating systems and a better hierarchy will lead to better outcomes for most orgs, but that's a pretty general statement about basically every org out there.
I also feel like this write-up sugar coats some of the actions Houston/Texas has been taking against non-compliance. Ticketing homeless people $200 for existing on the streets seems a bit counter intuitive - and Texas has been systematically shipping homeless and immigrants around the country (human trafficking) for political theater, so are they excluding that data? Probably.
I'm not an expert, but this write-up really comes off as one-sided since it's only talking about what's not working in California and ignoring some of the background stuff Texas is up to. Overall, do agree that better management and accountability would do other cities favors, but again, that's such an easy statement to make about any plan or org.
Higher housing costs in California are in some sense an artificial manufactured problem. California should mimic Texas by making it easier and cheaper to build more housing. Take approval power away from local governments, and give property owners and developers the right to build pretty much whatever they want wherever they want.
This is such a bad faith article, downtown Dallas is full of homeless and the cvs has everything locked up. If homelessness went down it's because they moved to CA.
We do need more accountability for non profits though.
I’ve been to more US states and cities than most Americans and every city I’ve been to has a severe homeless problem.
Whilst it’s true that europe does have homelessness too, and it has gotten worse in recent years, it is incomparable to America.
It doesn’t seem like a problem that can be fixed by some local policy or other. It’s a societal problem.
America also has stratospheric levels of inequality, a terrible healthcare system, and lacks a functional welfare state. I do not think this is a coincidence.
I’d much rather live somewhere more civilised, at the cost of higher taxation.
It always irks me to see Americans taunt Europeans on social media about their lack of very large tech companies, whilst the Europeans are perhaps too dignified to point out the consequences of America’s hypercapitalism (such as homelessness, crime, and trump) in return.
I’m a bit confused about this. I live and work in Houston, and it seems like the number of apparently homeless panhandlers I see (specifically in the med center / NRG) area seems approximately constant over the last decade.
Disclaimers- I don’t actually gather data. I don’t explore at night to see who is actually sleeping rough.
I do get report from panhandlers that they need $20 to stay at the shelter…
Zoning code != building codes. Zoning deals with the types of buildings/uses that can be built in an area not the requirements for safety like electrical or structural building codes.
It's definitely a mixed bag though, zoning keeps industrial uses away from residential which is good for pollution and noise reasons but it also restricts building dense housing in areas zoned single family.
I'm always dubious about explanations that don't account for the fact that the weather in many California towns are more pleasant and survivable year round compared to Texas. Or that locations like SF are quite space constrained when it comes to new housing so new projects generally have to displace some current use making the process harder.
It’s not quite true that we have no codes, but you wouldn’t come here and find some hell hole of mixed industrial and residential. Land prices really do dictate use.
You mean like the million dollar McMansions on the same block as a gas station, across the street from an office high rise? I think you’re over-estimating the effect of land prices.
What's the problem with gas station (provided it keeps mandatory distance from the buildings) or the office building near the residential ones? In fact, close offices are often cited as a pros for certain locations, people are even trying to rent as close as they can in some cities.
PS: I've lived the whole last year approximately 100m away from both gas station and large office complex. Neither bothered me at all, and it was a first floor.
Maybe inside the loop, but go to Channelview or Deer Park or Baytown or La Porte or League City or even Webster.
Go take a look around the Nasa Bypass and Gulf Freeway. You've got apartments, a Great Wolf Lodge, an oil pipeline holding station, and single family homes all right next to each other all right on top of the creek.
The parks I used to play at had active oil and gas wells right next to them. My neighborhood growing up had a big, straight greenbelt that bisected the neighborhood due to the abundance of buried gas lines in between.
>Too many and too restrictive building codes are bad, but no codes? Yikes
You're confusing zoning codes (what land can be used for what type of structure, e.g., industrial and residential) and building codes (the rules for safely constructing a building).
I lived in Houston for six months and I don’t understand anybody who would ever use it as a model for any city in any capacity unless they love endless interstate construction and taking 60-90 minutes to get anywhere. “Sprawling mess” doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Speaking as a born and raised Houstonian, that’s a completely delusional claim — and you’re believing it credulously because it fulfills a narrative that appeals to your preconceived notions.
This article is the spitting definition of drawing a bullseye around an arrow. Houston’s secret sauce of preventing mass encampments is a combo of sprawl and police brutality. There aren’t as many dense areas to congregate compared to CA, and there are more places to hide away or squat to avoid notice.
The bay area has sprawl and has been embracing police brutality on this issue, and homelessness is not improving here. If that worked, they would try it here.
The police in my city regularly go through and rip apart encampments and scatter everybody to the wind. It literally solves nothing.
I also find it pretty horrifying for someone to actively advocate for “police brutality.” By definition it is immoral and should not be desired. You can’t even be bothered to say “strong policing“ and pretend you don’t want law enforcement to abuse people who already have enough problems? You actively want them going out and hurting people? Please correct me if I’m wrong because it really comes across that way.
Does being born and raised in Houston make you an expert on homelessness? It's interesting you are so quick to rebuke the article with sweeping generalizations and zero data. Could it be because it does not appeal to your preconceived notions?
Houston was one of the first major cities to transfer chronically homeless individuals from encampments to one-bedroom apartments with almost zero friction (no intermediate shelters, no drug testing, no requirement to find a job). This was a highly successful program under Turner that had little to do with sprawl or police brutality.
Yes, it takes me 60 minutes to go 45 miles when I cross the extremes of the city. Oh noes! How far does the red line go in Boston and how long does that take?
I think the better question is general walkability.
The extremes is a pretty weird trip to do comparisons of since most people go from the outskirts into the centers to work and play and then go back to the outskirts.
The question becomes... once you get to your destination, can you get anywhere else without having to hop back into the car?
In cities like NY or Boston you can ride into town, hit a restaurant, go to the show, grab a few drinks then hit the clubs all without getting back into your car or just by taking short stints on readily available public transportation or taxis.
Can you have that same experience in Houston? I don't really know. Maybe. Where I'm from it's not concentrated like that so you go to your friends house... then you get in a car and go down to the bars... then you get in the car again to go to the arena for the show.
Everything's very dispersed. I personally like that much less.
Like Dallas that rounds up the homeless and puts them on busses to drop off in Houston?
"The success in Houston and Dallas came from building operational infrastructure to make encampments disappear permanently instead of temporarily."
This is 100% BS. I drive past tent encampments every day. All that happens is the city comes in and disrupts the encampments so they are clear for a couple of days, and then everyone just returns. They have even started placing signs at the intersections where the people from the closest encampment under the bridge pan handle that discourages "street charity".
If this is what is considered success, then it must be really bad elsewhere. At least on the west coast the homeless do not have to worry about the weather as much
Not really fair to compare the two geographic regions. Nobody wants to live on the streets in Dallas or Houston. It’s way too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. That said, living in Dallas I have seen the odd tent city pop up under some freeway overpasses but they don’t stick around very long so I guess the city does do something about it.
I remember a report about either SF or LA converting a parking lot to safe place for homeless and the mayor going on TV to show how proud they were this was a solution. I was flabbergasted. Because in no way would my SE coastal sensibilities regard this as any fucking solution to homelessness. It was literally a parking lot full of tents for the homeless.
Good article. Very convincing. Even if the housing bit cannot be solved (NIMBY-ism in California is very strong) the other solutions should help. And there's no reason homeless people in SF or LA should stay in the most expensive housing areas of a completely Democratically controlled state
Follow the money. Create a homelessness crisis, buy the cheap houses surrounding the tent cities and sell/rent them again for a bit/way more money when you fixed the crisis.
What the actual fuck? The homeless problem here in Dallas is at an all time high. I've been in and out of the Downtown proper for 20 years now.
Completely unbelievable premise and not worth reading.
Citation: I was recently homeless following a stint in jail on a bogus Felony charge, and still frequent some of the resources / areas where I got help. 24 Hour Club. Dallas Public Libraries.
Tarrant County has a very good homeless program. They throw them in jail. Then let them out to do meth, then put them back in. They were my company in Lon Evans.
Agree with you. Too bad this argument is using the wrong terminology.
To be acceptable to society, you either need to be willing to subjugate yourself for rent or be rich enough to own actual land. humans are no longer allowed a natural state.
I think there's a crisis of ineffectiveness in Center-Left institutions
They are too deliberative, and take excessive time including voices of every stakeholder. So you don't just go do the "obvious thing". You cater to trying to listen to every voice in an effort to be as inclusive as possible. Committee after committee and an obsession with process. You can spend years placating NIMBYs and people living with their own alternate reality.
Meanwhile real people are suffering from lack of action.
This level of ineffectiveness just enables authoritarianism ("at least they get something done") and gets people to seek the private industry for their solutions.
This is basically the entire theme of "Abundance" by Klein and Thompson, for those looking for a longer read on this.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_(Klein_and_Thompson_...
I don't think Dave associates himself with the abundance movement
Another recent book along the same lines would be "Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress and How to Get It Back" by Marc Dunkelman:
"When he looked into the history, Dunkelman realized that progressives have long swung back and forth between two opposing impulses. One is what he calls Hamiltonianism: the desire to achieve progress by empowering government and institutions to tackle big problems at the direction of strong leaders (like Robert Moses) and informed experts. The other is what he calls Jeffersonianism: the desire to prevent unaccountable centralized authorities (also like Robert Moses) from abusing ordinary citizens by empowering them to fight back."
-- https://www.niskanencenter.org/why-nothing-works-with-marc-d...
thank you, i'll grab this!
Wow, deregulation and austerity, what a fresh perspective on the economy!
This abundance "movement" has absolutely nothing new to offer, it is simply a rebranding of neoliberalism. It's easy to spot too, just look at who backs the movement: the same old establishment democrats and their wealthy donors. The same people who have entranched the democratic party into this technocratic blob of ineffectiveness and societal erosion. In particular, it is financially backed by, among others, Peter Thiel and Mark Andreessen. This should raise some red flags.
Also, I personally like winning. This abundance movement has exactly zero electoral hype. American voters don't care about it at all. Meanwhile, populist leftists like Mamdani are able to generate momentum for the left for the first time in decades. That Klein, Thompson and the billionaires behind them are so harshly criticizing them should raise additional red flags.
The writer of this article (Dave) publicly dislikes Derek Thompson and keeps criticizing Matt Ygelasis for his austerity fetish, along with praising Mamdani
Abundance is just https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Way neoliberalism with a new coat of paint. The answer to all questions is 'bust unions and environmental groups'. We've been here before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Alley
All the Reaganite conservative institutions (https://www.abundancedc.org/speakers) that are leery of fascism, but love business back this 'program'.
We need a new 'New Deal', that rebuilds what was broken during these last 90 years. We need the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Perkins of this era.
"Frances Perkins was not just the architect of SSA: she also proposed and implemented many of the foundational labor and safety laws1 still relied upon by the American working class. We can also thank her for the 40-hour work week, minimum wage, unemployment compensation, worker’s compensation, workplace safety, abolition of child labor, direct federal aid to the states for unemployment relief, a revitalized federal employment service, and universal health insurance. Well, except the last. We are still working on the last. "
She got everything she wanted done as Labor Sec. Except for universal healthcare. And it was a great loss for everything living American every year since.
Somebody hasn't read the book, just knee jerk reactions to it.
A local school system near me was facing some financial issues a number of years ago.
The superintendent noted that there were dozens and dozens of individual social programs that the school system managed. Many extending well beyond education and even testing the bounds of what might be called social work.
While they all (on the surface) operated on the idea that if students got these services they would be more effective in school ... it wasn't clear for most of them if that was even the case / being measured.
The superintendent noted that the only thing they could be sure of was that if they touched anyone of them, they were sure to be someone's baby and they'd face a backlash.
Personally, I'd like to see a more "fail fast" type system for a lot of social programs. Run it, see what happens ... then make the call if it goes any further. But that would mean people would have to start up programs fast, and shut them down fast. Both are not easy.
for as long as the left has not been about the working class and been about university educated white collar government workers this has been true though. It may have been true prior to that too i just dont have living memory to back it up. There is something about being removed from the reality of how the metaphorical sausage is made that turns the left from having some valid concerns but usually wrong ideas on how to address them into actively incomptent civilization destroyers. I would love to know why.
When you go back to The New Deal, its absolutely the case that the Dem coalition was much more effective at delivery. To some extent because FDR acted very aggressively with executive action.
My personal opinion is the working class, not the fancy educated types, need to run the Dem coalition. It would be far more effective in a number of ways... with broader appeal.
It’s a different coalition now though. The FDR Democrats were labor focused. Then the 60s happened. The New Left student movements reoriented away from labor and towards racial/gender/sexual equality, and Kennedy signed the Civil Rights Act. Southern whites opposed this and you had George Wallace pop up, splitting the Democrats, and then Nixon swooped in with the Southern Strategy. The Democrats needed a new coalition and they went with disadvantaged racial/gender/sexual groups instead of labor.
The transition didn’t really finish until Clinton and the New Democrats though. Campaign money and TV ads got to be really important in Presidential politics, and to get that money, Democrats had to appeal to rich people, so they got rid of most of the labor aspects of the platform. Clinton signed NAFTA and MFN for China. Now there were two pro-business parties that served different identity groups. Ironically the last gasp of labor was the billionaire Ross Perot in 92 and 96 who ran on an anti-NAFTA platform. The only way he could do this credibly was to use his own money to buy TV time.
It hasn't always been that way. The US political left did used to focus more on working-class issues. They only really lost the plot in the early 2000s when they started navel gazing on performative ideology and luxury beliefs, leading to an inversion in some of the voting blocks for the two major political parties.
SF, Dallas, and Houston all have Democratic leadership that could be described as center left? (For America. To an outsider, America has two conservative parties)
The unhoused are 'stakeholders' too actually, so I'd describe Cali's problem as listening too much to wealthy/powerful stakeholders, while ignoring those most impacted. Who can forget Newsom's camp-destroying photo-op and forced bussing the undesirables out of town to prevent people from seeing 'crime' aka 'poverty'.
These institutions are not log-jammed by accident. "You cater to trying to listen to every voice" Reader, they only listen to their friends and donors, this is the problem. These 'listening sessions' you are told are 'stopping progress' exist to placate legitimate concerns. Blaming unions is also fun, I heard that a lot back in Cali, no matter the issue, no matter the union, from the wealthiest people.
Politicians that seem to do almost nothing are preferred by the donor class. Bog standard Democrats have more smoke for Zohran (the sincere housing and affordability guy) than they have for their 'Republican colleagues' in this era. That should tell you everything you need to know.
"This level of ineffectiveness just enables authoritarianism ("at least they get something done") and gets people to seek the private industry for their solutions."
EXACTLY. THIS IS INTENTIONAL. PUBLIC COST, PRIVATE PROFIT IS THE GOAL. A WELFARE STATE FOR BUSINESSES, NOT PEOPLE.
This is an interesting thought. I also wonder if Houston is "helped" by the fact that they're a blue city in a red state... that kind of ideological conflict of governance requires unique and localized solutions. Whereas SF is blue city in a blue state, so it creates a "too many cooks in the kitchen" situation.
I think it also just creates a lack of "urgency" problem. I live in a blue city in a red state. Constituents expect results because we can't rely on our state gov. Local officials know this. There's more competition from more progressive candidates too locally which is helpful in keeping liberal officials more focused on results instead of the game of politics.
Idk, I think it's different for every city. But I think the point I'm trying to make is that having some kind of political constraints in governance seems to typically be a good thing for the sake of getting some shit done.
Actually I think I'm just stating an obvious point now given the glaring ineffectiveness of our two party political system...
The article itself makes this point more than once.
It probably does make it easier to make drastic changes as described to consolidate data sharing etc when they ultimate authority is likely the city/county instead of the state. The state level agencies will have their own policies, systems and goals/approaches that might not suite the individual cities so the programs remain separated and fragmented.
From time to time, we see response here that doing X is dumb because it is not a perfect solve. It's very common in discussions about solving pollution or energy use. Don't bother using EVs as we're still burning coal. Don't recycle because so much trash is everywhere else. These people are suggesting doing nothing until the perfect solve is available. Perfect will never happen. Instead make as many things better where you can while you can.
Nothing wrong with deliberation and listening to stakeholders. Great idea. The issue is the centre-left voters keep asking these institutions to take on more power, channel more funds and veto more projects [0]. I don't see how else they expect large centralised bodies to play out. I'm not sure if the US left even has a collective theory of how to fight institutional rot apart from stuffing institutions with leftists and assuming they do they right thing. Expecting good results from that strategy requires a certain naivete to the sort of people who seek power in government.
[0] Not just them, the centre right also seems to love the idea based on what I've read. Not the brightest crowd.
> Nothing wrong with deliberation and listening to stakeholders. Great idea.
True if you can identify the correct stakeholders and those stakeholders are aligned to the goal.
It becomes unhelpful when the list of stakeholders is so long and disconnected from the goal that listening to stakeholders becomes an endless cycle of meetings and talking about the problem instead of doing anything about it.
In my local experience, initiatives related to homelessness and drug addiction treatment attract a lot of people who like the idea of being involved because it advances their career or sounds good on their resume, but many of them are unqualified to be involved and think the role will involve a lot of delegation and deciding where to send money to other groups, not actually doing any of the work directly.
Basically, a lot of people who want to be in charge and claim leadership but who also don’t want to actually do the hard work.
Isn’t China even more centralized? They complete infrastructure projects in years not decades.
[..]
"Provide more assistance"
My point is that I'm not sure we need more assistance. TBH we need better, more efficient assistance. We spend a lot on deliberation, not enough on delivery.
A lot of this is due to leadership gaps IMO. Center-left leaders (ie Schumer) look weak because they excessively triangulate every stakeholder. Instead leaders need to act as true leaders, which means being a touch less collaborative / trying to triangulate. And more focused on some top-down, cut through red-tape, have a vision, persuade people etc.
(Then, arguably if people saw the system working well, they might want to award it with more money.)
I think this piece makes a strong point — when there’s already a working model, just copy it instead of endlessly debating. The homelessness crisis is real, and doing nothing while watching it grow worse is the worst option. Of course there’s a chance it fails, but the bigger issue is that no one wants to take responsibility if it does. That lack of strong leadership is, in itself, part of the problem.
> The homelessness crisis is real, and doing nothing while watching it grow worse is the worst option.
California isn't doing nothing.
They keep spending even more money and wondering why it's not working.
If it was a problem that could be solved by giving people money, they'd have solved it already.
Then there's also the Williston / North Dakota oil boom model. I met tons of homeless people out there (I was one of them), many of which whom solved it through "one neat trick" of doing something like hitchiking to the oil fields, or to Seattle where literally anyone can get hired to work on a fish processing boat or facility and they give you "free" room and board and then ~$10k to go home with.
That model clearly isn't working in SF where they spend >$100k per homeless person per year.
So, sure, maybe it works if people sign up for it and show they actually want to do something.
But it clearly doesn't work if you just hand it out and hope for the best.
> But it clearly doesn't work if you just hand it out and hope for the best.
I actually think if they did just give 100k to homeless people a year that it would actually solve itself.
The problem is they give 100k to grifters who say they'll do something about it.
Everything except ending the ban on homeowners & landowners building market housing. (ofc they are taking bites out of this apple, especially very recently, but every step is fought tooth & nail by homeowners who prefer the status quo just fine)
I'm fully in the camp of just give people dollars and let them decide how to spend it rather than navigate a bureaucratic nanny state system like SNAP. But if you're only doing that well no shit it doesn't help. You have to actually put them in a stable house/apartment and get them set up with work. Or if they're homeless due to mental illness get them admitted.
>Or if they're homeless due to mental illness get them admitted.
Therein lies the problem. A large proportion of homeless fall into this category [*], and it's very hard to institutionalize people against their will. We like to think that most homeless are functional people who are simply down on their luck, and thus putting them in stable housing and getting them set up to work would solve their problems. But this is sadly not the case.
[*] This study [0] found that 80% of homeless people have some kind of mental illness, with 30% having severe mental illness. This is compounded by the fact that >50% have substance abuse problems.
[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8423293/
Right. As I touched on elsewhere in the thread, our local jailers know all the homeless people in town because they show up regularly when their mental illnesses and/or substance abuse get them into trouble. The ordinary guy who wound up homeless due to a string of bad luck and just needs a place to sleep and a new job to get back on his feet is more a movie trope than reality. These are people with real problems who in many cases need regular supervision in something like a group home, if not outright institutionalization. And as you said, the latter is very hard to do now.
SF tried, didn't work. The homeless population increased, not offset by the people who got housed.
That seems like an unfair metric. Any program that helps homeless people significantly more than anywhere else in the USA is going to become the new capital of homeless people and their population will explode. It doesn't mean the people helped are worse off.
Right, but the taxpayers in that city are worse off. That's why any solutions need to be driven at least at the county level and preferably at the state level. Leaving it to individual cities creates all sorts of perverse incentives. (SF is somewhat unique in that they are their own county so for that area specifically, shifting programs from the city to county level wouldn't change anything.)
Taxpayers are pretty much always going to be worse off helping the homeless. Only a small fraction of the chronically homeless will become tax positive citizens in their lifetime.
Either you start off with the first principle that it's OK for wealth-transfer schemes to make tax payers 'worse off' via compelled charity, or I don't think you can get to the point of supporting generalized homeless relief programs. Maybe programs targeted at short-duration stuff to get people into jobs that are capable of doing them and a housing contract might work, but it'd have to be extremely well thought out and wouldn't benefit most chronic homeless.
My point is that it's a lot easier to share the tax burden at the state level rather than in individual cities.
The problem is not that lack of examples. Technically, all two hundred something countries could take example of the best one in every metric and just copy most of the stuff to make life better.
The problem is that politicians are afraid to do anything (outside of direct and indirect enrichment). No one can blame some John Doe, chief Busybody of the Busyarea, if he won't do something. Because that didn't happen, nothing to point finger at directly, except for "you don't do enough", which is generic enough to be used at anyone and so ineffective at everyone. But if he will do something and it is immediately painful to at at least some group, then he will be blamed and his opponent will do that with pleasure too.
I am not saying it’s okay that anyone should be homeless, but it’s baseless to call homelessness a crises for the U.S.
The homeless population accounts for 0.23% of the total U.S. population, or about ~771K people.
https://endhomelessness.org/state-of-homelessness/
For comparison, more people are getting DUI citations per year,
https://www.safehome.org/resources/dui-statistics/
There's 8300+ homeless people in San Francisco.
That's 1% of the population. Maybe not a big deal to you.
There's only 13,000 city blocks in SF.
That's a homeless person every 2 blocks.
Kind of dangerous to be walking past people in all different states of desperation multiple times every trip everywhere you go, is another way to look at it.
Even if you end homelessness, you'll still be walking past people in all different states of desperation multiple times everywhere you go.
People looking like they have homes or acting like it won't stop this. It doesn't make people inherently dangerous.
Don't get me wrong, I think any percent of the population being homeless because of lack of options is a tragedy. (I don't really care if someone wishes to be so, and I think we should have appropriate living options for this). I understand that you can't really stop temporary homelessness - fires and urgent things happen - but that's something we can deal with as needed.
Is your argument that, because x% of the population is desperate, we shouldn't care or do anything about x%+y% being like that?
y% LIVES on the blocks - so the multiple on y is higher (higher probability you encounter them), and the desperation factor is also likely much higher.
Please note that someone giving you a quantitative context isn’t necessarily saying don’t care. But it’s important to be mindful of how people use words in the media to describe certain issues because it benefits them politically or financially.
The problem which sticks out to me is that homelessness can be addressed by providing housing, but that’s not an easy solution to provide in a country that gets 10s of millions of illegal immigrants. So why is someone talking so much about homelessness relative to other issues? Do they want the U.S. to provide a house for every illegal immigrant who crosses a border? If political officials in states struggling with homelessness really care about solving the problem, they would do what other states are doing, as mentioned in OP’s article.
Is it dangerous? I agree that people with means feel unsafe when encountering poverty but the "it is unsafe to ride the subway because there are poor people there" stuff doesn't appear to be proportionate with actual risk.
I think that one of the huge limitations of how we think about homelessness in the US is that we view it as a problem that non-homeless people encounter. This encourages a bunch of policies that make it easier for somebody to avoid ever having to see a homeless person but which do little to mitigate the suffering of a homeless person.
People drugged out screaming on the street in SF are not necessarily homeless. Just that they may have rules about drugs in their room.
Is this an argument that a homeless person per block isn't a problem?
Or are you just what-about-ing?
Homeless people can be a problem independent of housed-drug addicts being a problem.
I don’t really think this holds the point you think it does.
While property crime is more likely to be committed by people the lower their income level is, the majority of all violent crime is committed by people who have homes.
In fact, the homeless are far more likely to be the victims of a violent crime than any other income demographic.
Furthermore, the unstable and dangerous people you see behaving erratically on the street are not necessarily sleeping there - and the homeless in the area probably feel much more unsafe about their presence than you do.
> majority of all violent crime is committed by people who have homes.
Gee, I wonder why, they make up 99% of the population.
How could they ever make up more than 50% of crime?
> I don’t really think this holds the point you think it does
> it’s baseless to call homelessness a crises for the U.S
Sure, a quarter of a percent is not a big percent, but that sure is a lot of people. It is _more_ than the entire population of Alaska, Wyoming, or Vermont. It is near the population size of several other states.
An entire US state's worth of people are unable to find adequate housing and not just because they are off their meds. According to the 2024 Point-in-Time count, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated 22% of homeless are facing a severe mental illness. So nearly 4 out of 5 homeless are regular people who simply cannot secure permanent housing.
That sure as hell sounds like a crisis to me.
> So nearly 4 out of 5 homeless are regular people who simply cannot secure permanent housing.
How does it follow? Not having a severe mental illness makes one normal? It's as same as saying that not suffering from severe obesity makes you fit and healthy.
771K people isn't a small number. 0.23% isn't a small number when it comes to homelessness. This also doesn't consider people who are housed but are overcrowded or living in otherwise very poor environments.
You also ignore that it's a rapidly growing problem.
Comparing it to DUI numbers doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Disagree that it’s a growing problem, there are lots of states dealing with it correctly. Look at the article, for example.
A quarter of a percent still seems like a lot to me, even if it's not a "crisis."
But we can't do anything about it until we face up to the problem. Spending more money won't help. I'm somewhat familiar with the activity at our local jail, and a good part of it is homeless people rotating in and out. They get brought in because they were trespassing or shoplifting or something, the jail cleans them up and dries them out (they're usually on drugs, which they somehow manage to buy) and tries to get them back on their medications, they get released, and the cycle begins again. Most of them are mentally unstable, and perhaps they'd be somewhat functional if they could stay on their medication, but they don't, so they can't function in society for long.
We don't want to put them back in asylums, because some asylums really were hellholes, and I guess we don't trust ourselves not to let them be hellholes again. That seems awfully pessimistic; factories used to be pretty awful too, but we require them to be safe and clean now. Seems like we could do the same with asylums, but we won't even consider it. So we're left with letting them wander the streets, maybe bedding down at homeless shelters when they feel like it, using the jails as temporary asylums when they get in trouble, and throwing more money at the problem once in a while to soothe our guilt. It's sad.
Different US states have implemented useful measures for helping homeless people, but states which are struggling with their implementation have other issues as well. Border states in particular have illegal immigrants to contend with as well, so a housing-first policy for homelessness gets taken off the table right away. California has the means and resources for dealing with its homelessness problem, but the political will is murky.
I've always been surprised by the official homeless population count, but it turns out there's a lot more to it.
The department of HUD generates this ~771K figure from a "point-in-time" estimate, a single count from a single night performed in January. They literally have volunteers go out, count the number of homeless people they observe, and report their findings.
It's not hard to imagine why this is probably a significant undercount. There is likely a long tail of people that happened to be in a situation that night where they were not able to be counted (i.e. somewhere secluded, sleeping in a friend's private residence that night, etc).
Even if these numbers are correct, to my mind a "crisis" is still more characterized by the trend than the numbers in absolute. From the first link you provided, we saw a 39% increase in "people in families" experiencing homelessness, and 9% in individuals. A resource from the HUD itself suggests a 33% increase in homelessness from 2020-2024, 18% increase from 2023-2024. That is far apace of the population increase in general.
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2024-...
And even then, I would say many people would suggest that the change in visible homelessness they've experienced in the last 10 years would amount to "crisis" levels, at least relative to the past.
It's completely fair to argue that it is not in fact a crisis, but claiming that it is certainly not "baseless."
Whether it's homelessness, DUIs, or fentanyl deaths (only 75k per year!), measuring the impact of something by ignoring the blast radius is disingenuous. All who are touched are part of it. In the case of homelessness, it's a burden on emergency services, creates unsafe environments, impacts businesses, etc.
I think the article points out some useful ways to deal with the problem at hand.
Why are you comparing amount of homeless people to DUI?
Scale of the issue relative to the risk, I think.
It's another public health issue that could also be receiving attention which causes harm to people.
What is supposed to be the relationship between those two things? Will you be comparing it to the number of ham sandwiches next?
You would think that since DUI operators present a greater social problem, both in numbers and potential to cause harm, there would be all sorts of active campaigns against such an issue. But the present reality is that some issues have great political forces behind them, and the media takes care to paint such issues as “crises”. Maybe it is a crisis, for a certain locality, and that reflects on the governance of that place. But I don’t think it’s fair or accurate to say your local problem is a problem at large, even if that means you get less federal monies to deal with it. Maybe what that means is that people need to reflect on how their localities are spending their budget, or sorting their priorities.
How does Houston deal with those that can't be housed? Sure, 90% retention sounds nice for these people but California has limited housing/higher housing costs, in general, last I had read. The write-up even mentions rising housing costs or the Trump admin taking away their funding can crash the system, so unclear how easily this system could transfer to other cities. Sure, better communicating systems and a better hierarchy will lead to better outcomes for most orgs, but that's a pretty general statement about basically every org out there.
I also feel like this write-up sugar coats some of the actions Houston/Texas has been taking against non-compliance. Ticketing homeless people $200 for existing on the streets seems a bit counter intuitive - and Texas has been systematically shipping homeless and immigrants around the country (human trafficking) for political theater, so are they excluding that data? Probably.
I'm not an expert, but this write-up really comes off as one-sided since it's only talking about what's not working in California and ignoring some of the background stuff Texas is up to. Overall, do agree that better management and accountability would do other cities favors, but again, that's such an easy statement to make about any plan or org.
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/city-of-hou...
Higher housing costs in California are in some sense an artificial manufactured problem. California should mimic Texas by making it easier and cheaper to build more housing. Take approval power away from local governments, and give property owners and developers the right to build pretty much whatever they want wherever they want.
Texas still has its own struggles.
"Tent cities" do still exist, regardless of what the article stated.
And under bridges is still a common gathering point.
But yes, to a way lesser degree than anything you'd find in CA.
This is such a bad faith article, downtown Dallas is full of homeless and the cvs has everything locked up. If homelessness went down it's because they moved to CA.
We do need more accountability for non profits though.
I’ve been to more US states and cities than most Americans and every city I’ve been to has a severe homeless problem.
Whilst it’s true that europe does have homelessness too, and it has gotten worse in recent years, it is incomparable to America.
It doesn’t seem like a problem that can be fixed by some local policy or other. It’s a societal problem.
America also has stratospheric levels of inequality, a terrible healthcare system, and lacks a functional welfare state. I do not think this is a coincidence.
I’d much rather live somewhere more civilised, at the cost of higher taxation.
It always irks me to see Americans taunt Europeans on social media about their lack of very large tech companies, whilst the Europeans are perhaps too dignified to point out the consequences of America’s hypercapitalism (such as homelessness, crime, and trump) in return.
What social media platforms do you use where Europeans are too dignified to point out the consequences of America’s hypercapitalism?
I’m a bit confused about this. I live and work in Houston, and it seems like the number of apparently homeless panhandlers I see (specifically in the med center / NRG) area seems approximately constant over the last decade.
Disclaimers- I don’t actually gather data. I don’t explore at night to see who is actually sleeping rough.
I do get report from panhandlers that they need $20 to stay at the shelter…
This helps too: https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/texas-transports-over-100000...
100 degree plus days in summer
Torrential rain
Hail storms
Hurricanes
flash floods
Houston is not a place to live outdoors.
Didn't some cities "solve" the problem by buying homeless people bus tickets so that they go to SF? That is a system that "works".
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/is-relocating-homeless-peo...
Don’t forget to donate for the excellent journalism.
> Houston has no zoning code
Too many and too restrictive building codes are bad, but no codes? Yikes.
Zoning code != building codes. Zoning deals with the types of buildings/uses that can be built in an area not the requirements for safety like electrical or structural building codes.
It's definitely a mixed bag though, zoning keeps industrial uses away from residential which is good for pollution and noise reasons but it also restricts building dense housing in areas zoned single family.
I'm always dubious about explanations that don't account for the fact that the weather in many California towns are more pleasant and survivable year round compared to Texas. Or that locations like SF are quite space constrained when it comes to new housing so new projects generally have to displace some current use making the process harder.
It’s not quite true that we have no codes, but you wouldn’t come here and find some hell hole of mixed industrial and residential. Land prices really do dictate use.
You mean like the million dollar McMansions on the same block as a gas station, across the street from an office high rise? I think you’re over-estimating the effect of land prices.
What's the problem with gas station (provided it keeps mandatory distance from the buildings) or the office building near the residential ones? In fact, close offices are often cited as a pros for certain locations, people are even trying to rent as close as they can in some cities.
PS: I've lived the whole last year approximately 100m away from both gas station and large office complex. Neither bothered me at all, and it was a first floor.
Maybe inside the loop, but go to Channelview or Deer Park or Baytown or La Porte or League City or even Webster.
Go take a look around the Nasa Bypass and Gulf Freeway. You've got apartments, a Great Wolf Lodge, an oil pipeline holding station, and single family homes all right next to each other all right on top of the creek.
The parks I used to play at had active oil and gas wells right next to them. My neighborhood growing up had a big, straight greenbelt that bisected the neighborhood due to the abundance of buried gas lines in between.
The loop will not save you
Have you been on Houston Avenue? It is an unwalkable hell hole.
It literally goes townhouses, lumber yard, liquor store, train track, townhouses, bail bonds, Chevy dealership with limited sidewalks.
>> Houston has no zoning code
>Too many and too restrictive building codes are bad, but no codes? Yikes
You're confusing zoning codes (what land can be used for what type of structure, e.g., industrial and residential) and building codes (the rules for safely constructing a building).
I lived in Houston for six months and I don’t understand anybody who would ever use it as a model for any city in any capacity unless they love endless interstate construction and taking 60-90 minutes to get anywhere. “Sprawling mess” doesn’t even begin to cover it.
> I don’t understand anybody who would ever use it as a model for any city in any capacity
They spent far less to basically completely solve their street homelessness problem compared to "model" cities like SF, so...
Speaking as a born and raised Houstonian, that’s a completely delusional claim — and you’re believing it credulously because it fulfills a narrative that appeals to your preconceived notions.
This article is the spitting definition of drawing a bullseye around an arrow. Houston’s secret sauce of preventing mass encampments is a combo of sprawl and police brutality. There aren’t as many dense areas to congregate compared to CA, and there are more places to hide away or squat to avoid notice.
Enjoy your flavoraid though.
The bay area has sprawl and has been embracing police brutality on this issue, and homelessness is not improving here. If that worked, they would try it here.
The police in my city regularly go through and rip apart encampments and scatter everybody to the wind. It literally solves nothing.
I also find it pretty horrifying for someone to actively advocate for “police brutality.” By definition it is immoral and should not be desired. You can’t even be bothered to say “strong policing“ and pretend you don’t want law enforcement to abuse people who already have enough problems? You actively want them going out and hurting people? Please correct me if I’m wrong because it really comes across that way.
Does being born and raised in Houston make you an expert on homelessness? It's interesting you are so quick to rebuke the article with sweeping generalizations and zero data. Could it be because it does not appeal to your preconceived notions?
Houston was one of the first major cities to transfer chronically homeless individuals from encampments to one-bedroom apartments with almost zero friction (no intermediate shelters, no drug testing, no requirement to find a job). This was a highly successful program under Turner that had little to do with sprawl or police brutality.
Yes, it takes me 60 minutes to go 45 miles when I cross the extremes of the city. Oh noes! How far does the red line go in Boston and how long does that take?
I think the better question is general walkability.
The extremes is a pretty weird trip to do comparisons of since most people go from the outskirts into the centers to work and play and then go back to the outskirts.
The question becomes... once you get to your destination, can you get anywhere else without having to hop back into the car?
In cities like NY or Boston you can ride into town, hit a restaurant, go to the show, grab a few drinks then hit the clubs all without getting back into your car or just by taking short stints on readily available public transportation or taxis.
Can you have that same experience in Houston? I don't really know. Maybe. Where I'm from it's not concentrated like that so you go to your friends house... then you get in a car and go down to the bars... then you get in the car again to go to the arena for the show.
Everything's very dispersed. I personally like that much less.
You can have that experience in Houston, but most of "Houston" isn't like that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fMTaNYYvwE
We cleaned up the crisis! Oh there's exposed wiring and cracked foundations and infestations everywhere? Dont worry! Out of sight, out of mind.
That's not what a zoning code does.
Meh, that's not a problem when you've been allowed to build in a flood zone.
Like Dallas that rounds up the homeless and puts them on busses to drop off in Houston?
"The success in Houston and Dallas came from building operational infrastructure to make encampments disappear permanently instead of temporarily."
This is 100% BS. I drive past tent encampments every day. All that happens is the city comes in and disrupts the encampments so they are clear for a couple of days, and then everyone just returns. They have even started placing signs at the intersections where the people from the closest encampment under the bridge pan handle that discourages "street charity".
If this is what is considered success, then it must be really bad elsewhere. At least on the west coast the homeless do not have to worry about the weather as much
> If this is what is considered success, then it must be really bad elsewhere
Yes, it is, lol...
Not really fair to compare the two geographic regions. Nobody wants to live on the streets in Dallas or Houston. It’s way too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. That said, living in Dallas I have seen the odd tent city pop up under some freeway overpasses but they don’t stick around very long so I guess the city does do something about it.
I remember a report about either SF or LA converting a parking lot to safe place for homeless and the mayor going on TV to show how proud they were this was a solution. I was flabbergasted. Because in no way would my SE coastal sensibilities regard this as any fucking solution to homelessness. It was literally a parking lot full of tents for the homeless.
Not sure the whole of California can take the advice from subsets of Texas, considering the state of the intersections in Austin.
The brushing-along still happens
Good article. Very convincing. Even if the housing bit cannot be solved (NIMBY-ism in California is very strong) the other solutions should help. And there's no reason homeless people in SF or LA should stay in the most expensive housing areas of a completely Democratically controlled state
Follow the money. Create a homelessness crisis, buy the cheap houses surrounding the tent cities and sell/rent them again for a bit/way more money when you fixed the crisis.
What the actual fuck? The homeless problem here in Dallas is at an all time high. I've been in and out of the Downtown proper for 20 years now.
Completely unbelievable premise and not worth reading.
Citation: I was recently homeless following a stint in jail on a bogus Felony charge, and still frequent some of the resources / areas where I got help. 24 Hour Club. Dallas Public Libraries.
Tarrant County has a very good homeless program. They throw them in jail. Then let them out to do meth, then put them back in. They were my company in Lon Evans.
[dead]
[dead]
Tents are homes! "Homeless" is just a slur used by rich people!
California needs better protection for homeowners, who are evicted from their homes!
Agree with you. Too bad this argument is using the wrong terminology.
To be acceptable to society, you either need to be willing to subjugate yourself for rent or be rich enough to own actual land. humans are no longer allowed a natural state.
Why downvotes? I am sorry my home does not have a bathroom! You have a bathroom, but your dog shits outside anyway! You are not any better!
Does it look like they are even trying to solve the problem?
Perhaps they're more waiting for the public to beg for permanent military presence. Create a problem for the solution you're looking to implement.
I have no idea about California, but I do know that's how it works in Sweden.