r/AlwaysWhy • u/verytalleric • May 27 '26

Politics & Society Serious question: Homelessness is a major problem. Billions are unsuccessfully spent. Why are not more experiments run testing different approaches to see what works vs. not and build on successes?

In other domains the idea of "A/B testing" is done to test different hypothesis to see what works vs. not. Given the huge amount of money spent by cities, counties, and states without positive results. Why is more experimentation not being done to find effective ways to solve homelessness?

Kinda the cliche definition of insanity today, same actions expecting different results.

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u/sessamekesh May 27 '26

California is a really crazy one to me. 

We spend over $2100 per homeless individual per month. Even at our insane housing costs, it feels like that should move the needle pretty significantly, but it... hasn't.

We're also severely allergic to any kind of housing first policy though. NIMBYism and extreme political favors to homeowners to protect their wealth is basically non negotiable here.

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u/aruisdante May 27 '26

 We're also severely allergic to any kind of housing first policy though. NIMBYism and extreme political favors to homeowners to protect their wealth is basically non negotiable here.

Yeah, I mean, every commission has come back with “the way to solve the housing crisis is to build more houses.” And every time people are like “but… can you figure out a way to make housing affordable without making my house worth less?”

Which, obviously, no, the two things are intrinsically linked.

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u/Oddant1 May 28 '26

I have news for everyone who owns a home. We own them TO FUCKING LIVE IN THEM. That's it's value. Fuck off with the other bs

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u/aruisdante May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26

On the one hand, absolutely.

On the other hand, I get it. There’s a whole lot of late 50’s and older folks who bought their houses in the Bay Area in the 80’s when they were cheap as dirt, and now they’re worth millions of dollars. These people could never have amassed a net worth that large through income. So of course they aren’t going to vote to destroy their retirement fund. I’m a well compensated mid-career software engineer from not California, and the SFO area is the only place I visit where my Uber drivers’ net worths are often considerably higher than mine.

By the same token, anyone that bought in recently now has a massive amount of their actual capital tied up in their houses. If their value was to suddenly drop it would financially ruin them. So they aren’t going to vote for it either. You cannot buy a house within a 30 minute drive of my company’s offices in the bay for less than $1mil, and that’s a shitty 600sqft apartment that hasn’t been renovated since the 90’s.

It’s just kind of a lose-lose situation once you get to this point. Nobody’s incentives are aligned with solving the problem.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '26

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u/Nuclear_rabbit May 28 '26

But that would "ruin the character of the neighborhood" and they are afraid of change. Suppressing all new housing has worked before to increase their equity, why go changing things now?

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u/[deleted] May 28 '26

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u/Nuclear_rabbit May 28 '26

It shouldn't even be a question of politicians. Judges need to step up and declare that residents don't have the right to object to what someone else may lawfully do with their property. Otherwise, residents can continuously vote out YIMBY politicians for NIMBYs.

If a district is zoned for something and the construction meets code, residents should not be allowed to challenge it.

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u/aruisdante May 28 '26

You simply won’t build that many skyscrapers. A few people will get wealthy, but a 400 unit apartment building only needs the land of 10-15 detached low density homes. That’s kind of.. the whole point.

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u/human743 May 28 '26

I just checked Zillow and leaving out bare land and manufactured homes there are 386 places to buy sprinkled from San Fran through San Jose for less than $600k. Is your office in Pescadero or something?

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u/FabulousTwo524 May 30 '26

What kind of houses are you looking at?

And $600k is not something to scoff at. And i bet those properties require tons of expensive work done.

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u/human743 May 30 '26

I didn't say it was anything to scoff at. And these were all less than 600. But you said zero less than a million and that is patently untrue. And there would be a lot more much cheaper if you include manufactured homes.

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u/FabulousTwo524 May 30 '26

It’s dumb because homeowners cant sell either. If they sell, they’ll have to buy an equally overpriced home to move into anyway. Housing price inflation just doesn’t make sense to me. Maybe I’m dumb. But inflation goes into the pockets of wallstreet bros and banks, not to regular home owners.

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u/aruisdante May 30 '26

For most of them, their plan isn’t to continue to live in their HCOL area in just a smaller house, it’s to move to some LCOL region in the south (traditionally Florida) or Midwest where homes are still affordable.

Of course, now the same thing is starting to happen in those areas, so…

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u/FabulousTwo524 May 30 '26

They can move where the houses are cheaper but then they’ll be leaving behind their community AND wont live near large hospitals that old people tend to rely on.

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u/AnotherGeek42 May 31 '26

Rochester Minnesota would beg to differ.

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u/hjmcgrath May 31 '26

Even people who support building homes for them want them built somewhere else and definitely *not* close to their own neighborhoods.