[rayiner]

> You can't help the homeless if the workers who help them can't afford to live near the people they're trying to help.

It’s certainly true that some fraction of non-profit work is hands-on social work, and yes, those people do need to live near the people they serve. But I think it’s fair to say that non-profits should think really hard about who really needs to live in NYC/SF/etc. versus the degree to which they’re just subsidizing the lifestyle choices of college-educated white workers who could do the same work from somewhere else.

> Can you elaborate on how UBI would help? Homelessness in high-opportunity low-housing-supply regions is not a problem of individuals not having enough cash, and neither is the inability of non-profit workers to live in these places.

Let’s not overstate the “opportunities” available in places like SF and NYC. Lower income people live there because there are a lot of service jobs for unskilled workers. But it’s not like those people are going to be able to work their way up from the mail room at Facebook or JP Morgan. What you have is a situation where these workers have to be in SF or NYC because that’s where the service jobs are, and where landlord can capture a big fraction of the rent that the government might subsidize.

UBI addresses that problem by decoupling wages from location. Someone receiving UBI can move from SF to Bakersfield. That increases their standard of living while limiting the cost to the government relative to trying to support that person in SF of NYC. 1 in 12 people in SF broke their leases during pandemic. Imagine what would happen if the government told everyone tomorrow they they’d get $1,000 per month guaranteed, which they could draw upon either in SF or in Des Moines. It would have the double effect of reducing the demand for housing in places like SF and NYC, and enabling that demand to be diverted to places where building new supply might be much easier.

[jordonwii]

> Lower income people live there because there are a lot of service jobs for unskilled workers

> What you have is a situation where these workers have to be in SF or NYC because that’s where the service jobs are

Well, yes, I intentionally was including everyone, not just people working six-figure office jobs: everyone else also benefits significantly from living in a place with a large and growing job market. Growth in high-paying white-collar jobs generally leads to even faster growth in the wages and number of less-skilled jobs in the same place.

Historically, there is also a wage premium for unskilled workers in larger metros - today much of that surplus flows to landlords instead, thanks again to under-building of housing in those areas. Even in SF, wages for the lowest-income workers have grown slightly faster than CoL over the last ~decade (thanks in part to the effect of rent-control for long-time tenants).

> Someone receiving UBI can move from SF to Bakersfield.

This is true iff UBI is generous enough that many of the people who work those service jobs would choose to live on it without being employed - at $1000/month, I suspect that would not be very many. If people want to be employed, living near the much larger and growing job market of the Bay Area would remain much more attractive than living in Bakersfield. The fundamental issue would be unchanged AFAICT.