Are high rents really the root cause of homelessness in places like Tenderloin or the Skid Row? Mental health, drug abuse, etc. seem more likely culprits.
Just because I can't afford a mansion in Beverly Hills, I don't choose to be homeless on someone's doorstep. I live more modestly somewhere else more affordable.
One of the most depressing moments I've experienced was when I was still in school and we did a charity thing for a month where we'd go to the local homeless shelter and help out with various tasks and interact with the homeless people who would come by the shelter.
The reason it was depressing wasn't what you'd expect, I had expected to feel sorry for them but in turned out that the vast vast majority of them were perfectly happy to be homeless they had no want for a better life, they just wanted handouts and felt entitled to them, it was really a strange experience that stuck with me.
Not a single one of those people asked to be born. Many of them still haven't decided whether their birth was even a good thing, and a few have decided it wasn't. Some are considering suicide (and you often wouldn't know by talking to them). What should we do with people like this?
I've been close to the edge in the past, a few different turns of luck and I could have easily been on the street. Fighting off thoughts of self-imposed euthanasia was one of several Bad Things I went through.
At any point during my worst struggles I would have happily checked myself into a competently run mental facility for long term, inpatient care. There is no such place.
Folks in these situations, without intervention, end up either dead or on the streets. Once they realize they can actually continue existing without being trapped in a constantly uncomfortable dystopia, they might find they are able to smile when offered a free meal, and relax into the generosity of others for a few minutes. After they've spent countless hours fearing for their safety and exposed without shelter while getting dirty looks from hordes of strangers, I think that's probably a little bit okay.
I don't believe so, over that month I spent many hours talking to them and heard many times that they would rather be homeless than live a regular Joe life. I imagine that kind of freedom could be somewhat satisfying.
>heard many times that they would rather be homeless than live a regular Joe life
I suspect a lot of that is just pride. It's very common for people to say that they'd rather be doing what they're doing than something else, even when that's not the case.
I’ve had several similar interactions with the homeless as well. They would prefer to eek by on the outskirts of society than have to follow society’s restrictions. I’m sure part of this is mental illness, but the gutter punk street kids who turn it into a lifestyle are the kind who make you lose sympathy for them. You can’t help people who don’t want help.
I have seen people develop mental issues because they became homeless with the stress that incurs, and also due to or exacerbated by the alcoholism and drug abuse that affects a lot of homeless people, often only after they become homeless.
As for moving some place else: if you're for some reason financially in ruins, that option might not be really available to you. You cannot buy a home with bad credit, and landlords will more often than not check your credit scores and not take you on as a renter. Just moving to a cheaper area won't help.
Granted, you need the mental and physical capacity to earn money from the get go to even have a chance.
I have seen people who had bad injuries, others who were extremely grief-stricken after losing a loved one, who at first could not hold a job. Once they recovered, they'd been homeless for "too long" (even if it had been just a few months) to get back into society, essentially, with nobody wanting to hire the "tramp" and nobody wanting to rent to that "tramp"; and you will only find a place if you're employed, and you'll only find employment if you have an address.
To reinforce this with my own life experience, I lived in Houston for five years, and it was possible for me to buy a two bedroom condo in the core urban area for 100k. There were run down neighborhoods in some of the more industrial areas where you could buy a house for less than that, in some cases as low as 30-40k for run down housing. These neighborhoods had transit access and basic public services. There was essentially zero homelessness.
Those neighborhoods aren’t glamorous, and I’m not trying to idealize them. People got out when they could. Crime was not extreme but it was higher than the rest of the city.
But it turns out that even most people with mental problems could find a way to live with a roof over their head when the cost may be in the low hundreds per month. And just having a home makes the rest of the problems you’re struggling with a lot easier to tackle.
Houston isn’t a beautiful city, I moved there not because I wanted to but when the recession hit because it was the only place I had a job offer. But it gets an unfair bad wrap. It turned out to be quite a nice place to live, with tons of diversity and arts and culture, and the best food scene you can imagine.
It’s not the unregulated Wild West that people like to pretend it is, but in general the building codes are very simple and predictable, and for whatever reason the culture there is strongly anti-nimby (relative to the rest of the US). An extremely common pattern while I lived there was for old bungalows from the 1930’s to be bought up, demolished, and replaced by two modern townhomes.
People complained that they really liked the bungalows and that the townhomes weren’t as pretty. That was probably true. But the people buying those homes were ordinary folks, teachers and firefighters and mechanics and whatnot who could afford to raise a family in the nicer more walkable parts of the city without praying for a public housing assistance lottery or anything like that.
It’s bittersweet, but Houston being willing to let the cute old neighborhoods incrementally turns over into denser more modern neighborhoods is what made it a place that anyone could afford to live, and I think not coinicidentally there was a huge culture of entrepreneurship and loads of opportunity and upward mobility in the local economy.
Yes because it makes fixing the homeless issue prohibitively expensive both for public and private funds. San Francisco spends 20k a year per homeless person: they must waste most of what they do but it is clear that the two most expensive things for a homeless person is housing and health. Health is a national issue but housing is a local one.
Tenderloin / Skid Row may be special cases where people with mental issues are most concentrated, but in LA it’s not hard to look around many areas (like Santa Monica) and see smaller homeless encampments in parks or people living out of their vehicles, etc.
In Los Angeles or the Bay Area the more affordable places get gentrified (Boyle Heights) and then the people living there who were just getting by financially may have nowhere to go, depending on their living and work circumstances, and the price of renting in other areas (which can be extreme).
Just because I can't afford a mansion in Beverly Hills, I don't choose to be homeless on someone's doorstep. I live more modestly somewhere else more affordable.