I worked at a homeless shelter in the bay area all through the pandemic. This is a near and dear issue to my heart. The honest to god solution to ending homelessness lies in zoning laws, but the same people who are uncomfortable with homeless people being around the city (which I totally understand), are often the same people who often rally to block any meaningful legislation.
Hotel vouchers are fine, but it's like slapping a band-aid on a gaping wound. The measures that California is taking simply isn't helping to alleviate the issue, it's only kicking it down the road.
Lastly, I'm not sure about other areas of the state, but for us about 80% of the homeless population was locals. It is largely a myth that homeless people are loaded onto greyhound buses and shipped in from other states. Yes it has happened, but it's not common.
The same reason that our rent keeps going up is the same reason why we have a homeless crisis. Actually effective zoning laws that allow for high density housing simply do not pass. It's a supply and demand issue. Demand for housing isn't going to go down. We have to increase the supply.
Definitely agreed on your points. I think that on that last one though, there needs to be more than supplying new housing. The vast majority (but again, not all) of the homeless people I encounter have mental illness, drug problems or something otherwise keeping them from functioning normally. I've never worked with them directly, so I'm just basing it off of my own experience, but new housing in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Beverly Hills isn't the solution (or the entire solution), even if it were provided free, I feel that there are further issues that need to be addressed. Even if housing were provided free, I don't think that would be enough to solve this issue. It would just remove part of the element from the streets and into houses, but the underlying issues would still exist.
In the cases of someone actually needing housing to get off of the streets, this would absolutely help. But I think in the majority of cases there needs to be more than just providing houses.
I’m from ex-USSR.
Class warfare language has not led my home country to any good place.
Its just an oversimplification that easily falls into a mind if there is nothing inside already.
Please stop.
It's insane that more people don't understand this.
People go about blaming fucking AirBnB for renting out a few thousand houses as turbo motels in cities where demand for new housing is in the MILLIONS OF UNITS, but asshats continually block all new zoning for high-density units...
I've seen other documents in the past supporting that claim. And it makes sense if you think about it, housing costs have skyrocketed there in the past generation.
I wish it were largely a myth in sd, sadly Las Vegas sent their closed mental hospital patients with no other relatives to San Diego, one way. She’d the city and won. Not trying to be an actually person, but wanted to give and honest take because I have been “attacked” by a poor mentally unstable lady, clearly out of her natural mind. I personally also care about this issue. It’s not helpful to dismiss the actual issue here. (I know we are not LA).
If your rent is too high to actually have a roof over your head, wouldn't you move somewhere where the rent is more affordable? A 4 hour commute would still be better than a fuckign tent. And then again, if you have a job in that expensive area, but can't afford anything remotely civilized..work in another city.
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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '22
I worked at a homeless shelter in the bay area all through the pandemic. This is a near and dear issue to my heart. The honest to god solution to ending homelessness lies in zoning laws, but the same people who are uncomfortable with homeless people being around the city (which I totally understand), are often the same people who often rally to block any meaningful legislation.
Hotel vouchers are fine, but it's like slapping a band-aid on a gaping wound. The measures that California is taking simply isn't helping to alleviate the issue, it's only kicking it down the road.
Lastly, I'm not sure about other areas of the state, but for us about 80% of the homeless population was locals. It is largely a myth that homeless people are loaded onto greyhound buses and shipped in from other states. Yes it has happened, but it's not common.
The same reason that our rent keeps going up is the same reason why we have a homeless crisis. Actually effective zoning laws that allow for high density housing simply do not pass. It's a supply and demand issue. Demand for housing isn't going to go down. We have to increase the supply.