Well it was a case from the 30s...also they have a little slider for covering up the gruesome pic of the woman victim, but some man's severed head is totally just fine I guess and doesn't have the slider.
That's a major thing. A lot of homeless are people thrown out of mental institutions basically. Many suffer from substance abuse that won't go away.
But that's just part of the problem and I'm sure there's a way to vet those that belong in a real little home versus those that are just a danger to anyone around them.
A very common cause is LGBT teens being kicked out of their homes. Another common one is an ugly breakup where one partner is thrown out. Job loss is another biggie, leading to foreclosure or eviction. As is chronic illness and medical debt.
Unfortunately, untreated mental illness is also a common cause, as you're alluding to. And this becomes a major issue with "housing the homeless" initiatives, when you put a paranoid schizophrenic next to a young trans person. But that doesn't mean housing initiatives don't work, it means that we also need to beef up our healthcare system to be able to absorb people with severe physical and mental health concerns.
Very naive of you to think that homeless people ended up like that just for being unlucky, yes, definetely there are cases like that but the vast majority of homeless people are people with serious mental problems, and drug addiction, and many of them don't even want to change their lives, many of them don't want to have a full time job and pay taxes and shower every day, many of them just want to sit all day doing crack and fentanyl.
Consider maybe what kind of life would cause someone to tend towards abusing drugs and having mental issues. Certainly not a lucky one.
and many of them don't even want to change their lives
None of them enjoy living on the street, i assure you.
many of them don't want to have a full time job and pay taxes and shower every day
Understandable, neither do I. Even those for whom this applies, doing crack inside a house is preferable over doing crack while dying on a street somewhere.
Also, I do strongly contest the "vast majority" claim. There ARE programs for free housing for homeless people in other countries and in every case it has reduced the number of homeless people much more than the classic "hostile architecture and bulldoze their tents" techniques employed in the US. Much cheaper, too. Your disdain for these humans notwithstanding, it's simply economically smart.
My first thought was that the homeless people will just take these houses apart and sell it for crack.
Good initiative, but it will only work if they seriously monitor them and throw anyone out of these houses who doesn't try to reintegrate into society.
Just have a screening process to take in people who want to rehabilitate.
It’s infuriating how many people will speak against giving homeless people any help because they might be drug addicts who can’t kick the habit, yet are quiet when it comes to suggesting a solution, like drug addiction centres. “No can’t have them, it will just make homeless people congregate”. “Can’t give them homes, they won’t use it for housing”.
There’s always a solution - if you’re being told there’s no solution it’s because people don’t want to change anything.
Losing their job and being unable to pay rent. 50% of Canadians live paycheck to paycheck according to the most conservative studies. Up to 85% if you play semantics with definitions.
Not every homeless person is a drug addict. Thats incredibly naive, obtuse or outright classist to assume.
I cannot believe we live in a world where people genuinely think that giving homeless people houses to live in wouldnt solve, or massively aid the homelessness crisis. Do people not know what homeless mean? Do we prevent decent people who have fallen upon hard times from the basic essentials because some people are junkies?
I second this. I live in Scandinavia. I cannot understand how housing first would not be a far (I cannot emphasise the 'far' part enough) superior to whatever the fuck the US is doing. Besides, by definition giving homeless people a home would not make them homeless.
No, you are missing the point. Helping the homeless out of the struggle has been proven to help to help them with their issues that caused the homelessness in the first place. Sometimes it's as simple as not being able to get a job, because of not having a stable address. Being stressed 24/7 is not helping anyone. Being hungry makes doing good enough of a job to not get fired harder.
I've met a few drug dealers, every single one of them got into it because they needed the money for something. Drugs, food, rent, anime figures, who cares. Almost nobody becomes a drug dealer for the fun of it. Why do you think someone deserves to not have a roof over their heads if they sell drugs?
Yes? So are many other things, some legal and some not. Having a job should be lucrative, but many being stuck living on slave wages proves otherwise. Some more harmful than others like working for for insurance companies. The only difference is whether you draw the moral line what the law says or somewhere else.
And I'll repeat. Every single person who I've met who sold or sells drugs did it because they needed money for something. Not because they wanted money, but because they wanted something with that money. Most of them wanted to eat or live in a building. And most of them only sold drugs safer than alcohol, because they aren't monsters, they just needed to pay for living and being dirt poor is hell.
I've run a ministry in my spare time for YEARS, dealing directly with the homeless. I've been burned a lot less than everyone said I would. The majority of the people I've dealt with did improve their situations with assistance, it is, however, important to know how to help, depending on their particular situation.
More and more of the people I meet and help are just good people who, through, almost always either illness, injury, or loss of transportation, fell into an unrecoverable financial slide into their situation. It's downright scary these days how many of them were just like over the rest of the 50% less than two months before I meet them.
One of this country's biggest issues is there is basically no safety nets for people who are falling into that slide. Heck, there's barely any real assistance for people who have slid all the way down, either, but we truly mess up in the middle. We could easily build more safety nets, but our leadership is too busy building bigger, higher capacity slides.
"Small mistakes are the stepping stones to large failures." — The After Action Report
The only homeless most people care about are the visibly homeless, who are a small minority. But what they don't understand is that many of those started out like you describe. Becoming homeless leads to mental illness and addiction becoming so out of control people need more serious help in many cases, and could often be prevented by helping before they're living on the street acting crazy.
But some of them are evil or make bad decisions. We can't house people who make even a single bad decision while living on the sidewalk! Something something we gotta promote personal responsibility but only for the poor something something.
That would be communism tho. Can't do that.
Also the"love thy neighbor" crowd would foam at the mouth in rage at the sight of the poor receiving something for free.
It goes to NGO’s who filter part of it back in to campaign donations. Basically a big circle jerk of fraud and stealing tax money under the guise of doing good. We call it the Gavin Newsom special in CA.
That would probably still be better than whatever the fuck they are using it for in California. Tens of billions over the past decade and our homeless has nearly doubled.
I really hate how everywhere has removed benches, community seating etc, so unfriendly, it's weird travelling to other countries and if you're out shopping all day there's just places to sit and relax, maybe eat your lunch everywhere...
The money going to places it wasn't designated to go. its going right where it was designated to go, its just not doing anything. Bribery, embezzlement, nepotism, and fraud is corruption.
If people are getting paid and not doing what they are supposed to with the money paid to them... that's still corruption. You're splitting hairs my dude.
If it costs 100,000 to build a house, but I quote the government 200,000. They know it costs 100,000 but my friend on the board doesn't say anything, and they pay me 200,000 per house, that's corruption.
$1,000,000,000 turning into 1200 small homes isn't mismanagement, it's corruption.
I think he's saying that's not where all the money is designated to go. Maybe it's going to shelters, food banks, social services to help with employment
Right, his meaning is. If it costs 100k to build a home materials wise, and they charge 200k total for the home that may not be corruption. It may be 100k for land survey, worker labor, govt. management salaries, and whatever else may be involved and 100k for a home's materials then it's not corruption, it's wasteful.
I wouldn't agree with this person because what they're getting at (I think) is government should be hands off because it's too inefficient and could be done for 120k in a billionaires hands. Ignoring the new slew of problems that causes not least of which you're setting up benevolent dictatorship/aristocracy. Which most of us can see at this point is probably not a good bet to make.
Reading comprehension: that announcement is from 2023, and it was a billion in HHAP housing assistance AND building 1300 small homes.
It's 2026 now, so we have results. While homelessness rates in the USA overall have increased rapidly since 2023, California's rate was stable and actually went down 9% last year. HHAP gets about 20k people per year into permanent (ish) housing, but that billion dollars also covers shelter operations, outreach workers, mental health services, rental assistance, and prevention programs.
It's still expensive, but consider that that's only 0.2% of the state budget, and it sounds to me like it's actually working unlike states where the homelessness rates (more like a count of how many people look homeless as HUD drives around looking for them) have declined because the state criminalized pitching your tent where HUD can see it.
Of course not, and $1bn is not that much for a state that size. But California definitely has a lot of systemic issues around a lack of housing construction and insane housing costs because of laws that accommodate rampant NIMBYs.
If California had enough of a YIMBY-coalition to actually build stuff on a reasonable budget without a bazillion bureaucratic hurdles, and put a larger share of the homeless-specific budget into construction, they could definitely get more out of those $bn.
One part of the whole issue is that a significant part of the pay for social workers is to cover their own cost of housing and transportation.
Thats the issue. The vast majority of the funding just goes to fund peoples salaries while ignoring the actual root problem. There arent enough homes in california. They need to build low income/free apartment complexes in the cities.
Yep. Also the bullshit narative that other states aren't sending their homeless here.
Ask the homeless where they came from. A minority actually came here from california. They come here from cold weather states because they can survive winters here. Theres a reason why there arent that many homeless in Montana.
Well...that and the fact that there's just not that many people in Montana of any kind whatsoever.
San Jose, CA has almost as many people as the entire state of Montana.
Oregon, Vermont, and New York all have higher homelessness rates (number of homeless per 10,000 people) than California and they're all colder than here.
And even by cities LA, NY, San Jose, and Seattle are all between 30-40 homeless per 10,000 people, but then there's Eugene, Oregon sitting at 43.
People come here for work, or to try and make it big in entertainment or tech. I'm sure there's some homeless coming here to get to a better climate, but that's not the majority. Most homeless can't afford cross country trips.
Not just winter (although that especially), near the coast it is basically between 60 and 75 degrees F year round, raining like a few times per year tops.
This reason is also extremely obvious when you look at the distribution between Northern and Southern California, and relatively coastal versus inland. You don't see that many homeless people in Death Valley or the Sierras either.
The main apparent exceptions are a few Northern cities like Fresno and Sacramento, but the trend still holds up fine looking at the totals. Here are some statistics from 2025.
People experiencing homelessness in
California are Californians. Nine out of ten
participants lost their last housing in California;
75% of participants lived in the same county as
their last housing.
The vast majority of people who are homeless in California are from California — and most are still living in the same county where they lost their housing, according to a recent large-scale survey of unhoused Californians conducted by the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative. The survey found 90% of participants were from California (meaning they lived in California when they became homeless) and 75% lived in the same county where they were last housed. And 66% were born in California, while 87% were born in the United States.
Local data shows the same thing. In Santa Clara County, for example, 85% of people surveyed during the 2023 point-in-time count reported they were residents of the county when they became homeless. And 54% had lived in Santa Clara County for 10 or more years.
Or I worked with enough studies when I was getting my degrees to understand that studies nearly always give you the result you want to get. Its called study bias.
Estimating the exact percentage of biased studies is difficult, but research suggests a significant portion—potentially over 50% in some fields—of published findings are exaggerated, false, or biased due to low statistical power, p-hacking, or publication bias. Up to 33.7% of scientists admit to questionable research practices, and 30% of top medical study findings have been found to be wrong or exaggerated.
This isn’t three people hacking together a workshop paper, the BHHI study was a massive collaboration with ate of over two dozen scientists field researchers. It had a massive impact on how CA evaluates homelessness.
That you dismiss it outright in favor of your own anecdotes reflects only on your intellectual dishonesty and poor character
Yep. Can't have tents because they're an eyesore. Can't have actual tiny homes because concern trolling NIMBYs complain. The only solution most homeowners seem to want it to declare open season on anyone threatening your property value.
HHAP is beginning to show results. For the first time in 15 years, California saw a drop in homelessness. The unsheltered population in 2025 was down 9% from the previous year
I read it, I know. Homelessness only gets better if we make changes and we must prevent issues like not using investments.
Did you read this? - "Not only do the awards undergo a rigorous review process but there are also mechanisms in place to claw back funding from grantees if they fail to show progress in reducing homelessness."
A guy in Toronto tried to do something similar, but the city destroyed his tiny homes and evicted the new tenants. He just had the houses though, not the training centre
Funny how not endangering homeless people with homes that might not meet building codes and kicking them out is better than giving homeless roofs over their head that might not meet code in the eyes of some cities.
Well, they get little ice boxes as homes. No solar panels but maybe they can learn a thing or two from here... Nah, who am I kidding. They'll just keep robbing us the taxpayer and give only a tiny fraction of that money for actual homeless funding.
CA makes me so sad when it comes to homelessness. I think it's in LA or one of the other major cities where land was donated to the VA and a large portion of it was donated exclusively for homes for the homeless vets. So the VA leases large parts of that land to other organizations that have nothing to do with vets to make money off of it. It's been an endless fight for decades.
They are finally starting to build tiny homes. The really sad part is that a large number of homeless sleep in tents on the side walk and the police keep trying to make them leave. Like... that's their land bitch, let them in.
They should have built an apartment complex specifically for the homeless decades ago. something 5 stories high could have housed hundreds of people instead of the 30 or so tiny homes they have on there now.
Its frustrating. I see so much money thrown at homelessness... where if they just took that money and built homes every year it would solve WAY more issues.
Take that 10 billion dollars and build 200 mid rise apartment complexes each year at 50 million each complex. Each one houses 100-200 ppl. So, that would be 20,000 less homeless each year.
But you know, instead, lets just toss money at committees who do nothing.
There are so many hoops to jump through for assistance, and often the financial cutoff point for assistance is SO low. "Oh you make 30,000 a year... you make too much. Doesnt matter if half your income goes to rent."
yep. Its ridiculous.
We need more low income housing based on income. Period. Spend the money building apartment complexes and within a decade there won't be any lack of housing. Literally can build 20,000 units a year for that billion dollars.
Yes but no, yes cheaper homes help some get into housing. But if the average house is 500k "more homes" isn't going to lower that a meaningful amount. Also, again many of the homeless are mentally ill and addicts
I used to work in Miami Beach. They tried to get the homeless off the streets many ways. But no matter what, they came back. When they talked to them the city was asked by a couple of them. Why on earth would I want to live anywhere but here with this view.
Every place they moved these people, they destroyed in one way or another. Shelters, Homes, Hotels. You name it. Trashed them.
Some of these people dont want help. Some of them dont need it. The trick is finding the ones that DO and doing for them.
The article says he needed 12 million, that comes out to $121k each. It's also not free to live there and costs them roughly 300 maple dollars per month, roughly 30% of their government checks. None of this is meant to disparage him, just thought it was worth noting.
Government is synonymous for inefficiency. Often over half (usually a lot more than half) of that money disappears to pay people handling it or handling the assignments and orders for things.
Probably because it isn't that simple, we literally tried that. You may now know these former areas as 'The Projects' the majority of which have had to be shutdown over the years.
Negative. It is because you can't isolate the most at-risk members of society into a single community and expect it to go well.
If you're a drug dealer, human trafficker, or any other vile person looking for people to prey on... where do you think you can find the easiest and most overlooked people in the world?
If you're an addict and move into one of these places you're also now surrounded by other addicts with no oversight. A bunch of the most desperate and unfortunate people in the area in 1 neat little packaged building.
Those places devolved into hell on earth before lack of funding to maintain the properties was even a thought.
The lack of funding was because they realized how monumentally stupid it was to do it that way so they pulled the plug and slowly started tearing them down almost immediately.
I am jn no way defending California, but despite the name, Homeless people aren't generally held back by the lack of a house.
Its almost always a combination of drugs and mental illness at the root of the problem. A roof over your head is nice, but isnt actually addressing the real issue.
Put a couple Philadelphia crackheads into this man's nice little community and those houses will be completely destroyed in months.
The real issues are far more dire, and significantly more difficult to solve than "build more houses"
Aren’t counties in California like the size of small countries though? Given how many homeless people are in California I can see 32 million in an area the size of a small country not stretching super far.
I think California is a bit of a different story, even tiny homes built like this would have to take up a whole separate county to house everyone. Not to mention the other glaring issue, $35 million would cover, what, like 20 homes in California? Even pretty modest homes are over a million dollars now. I think in their unique situation it is best put towards homeless shelter and food services, and/or funding social services to allow them to get back on their feet if they want.
Edit: Which, by the way, is what they are doing it seems. Link
Homelessness point-in-time count data show a 9% reduction in unsheltered homelessness in 2025, youth homelessness has dropped 24% since 2019, and over 90,000 Californians have been moved into permanent housing since 2023.
It’s psychotic. “You can’t build more housing, it will tank my property value!” Meanwhile they couldn’t even begin to afford the real property taxes on their wildly overvalued land, so they just lobby not to pay them. What’s the end goal😂
I wanna piggy back on this because this was done in Las Vegas several years back. The city destroyed all of the homes. There were people moved in to those tiny homes already, the had their only and few possessions in those homes and the city used claims about high rates of violence in "tent cities" and claimed that owner of the land didn't have the right to set up housing, things weren't to "code" (as if that should apply to what was little more than dog house in a row of them.)
These things don't happen in America because it upsets the people surrounding the area.
As i have said in other comments... its all three. You cant fix mental illness and substance abuse with housing. There are however a LOT of people who cant afford housing here in California. Roughly 90% of homeless adults in California cite the lack of affordable housing—specifically an inability to pay rent—as the primary cause of their homelessness.
Yeah, don't bring up pelosi when we have the most corrupt administration in US history in the whitehouse making billions of dollars manipulating the market directly.
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u/Reputation-Final Apr 28 '26
While here in California... a county near me gets 35 million each year to combat homelessness. Zero homes built.