[chrissnell]

Homelessness in the US is not a housing issue. Simply walk through a typical homeless encampment or walk through the Financial District of San Francisco and it will be clear as day: it is a drugs and mental illness issue, and ultimately, a family issue. Good families will take care of their mentally ill members and get them the care that they need. If you don't have a family, it's easy to end up out in the street on drugs. Nobody wants to talk about families, though.

[UncleEntity]

I’m going to have to disagree here.

I travel to many off the beaten path neighborhoods (mostly) all over the west coast and the homeless encampments I see in places like LA and the Bay Area are just people who can’t afford housing but have cars and RVs to live in.

Kind of annoying because the places where 20 years ago you could park a truck are full of urban campers. Last week I was driving around in Fremont, a couple miles from where I grew up, and every square foot of road around the place I was delivering to was occupied by people living on the streets. When I last lived there in the 80s Fremont was just your average boring suburban hell where there’s no way they wouldn’t have cleared out these encampments. Pretty sure that’s where they had a bunch of signs basically saying “no camping” which they obviously don’t bother enforcing.

[DoreenMichele]

There has been a substantial increase in households of 1 to 3 people and not a concommitent increase in housing appropriate for such a household size.

Everything I have studied suggests that, yes, homelessness is directly related to a lack of affordable housing.

[Dig1t]

So you're saying that if there were homes available to purchase in San Francisco for 200k, that the drug addicts and mentally ill people wandering the street would all be gone?

Until very recently, there were condos and houses available in that exact price range in downtown Austin. Yet ask anyone who lives there, there are and were tons of homeless everywhere you went in the city.

There are other cities that are way more affordable than SF, with the same homelessness problem. The thing they share in common with SF are the "compassionate" policing policies.

[DoreenMichele]

No, I'm saying it's a complicated confluence of factors, it's not just a San Francisco problem and we need to address our affordable housing deficit nationwide if we really want a few key areas inundated with homeless "crazies" to be able to successfully wrangle their problems at the local level and stop being held responsible for the failures of decades-long and nationwide policies.

[SamoyedFurFluff]

Being homeless can cause mental illness and addiction, as they are illnesses that occur to vulnerable people in tenuous living circumstances such as homelessness.

[atlasunshrugged]

It's an all of the above issue, but housing prices surely have a role. Why do cities in the midwest and South have lower rates of homelessness? I don't think of Detroit as a paragon of "good families" but they have relatively lower rates of homelessness. Not to say I disagree with you overall, I think the U.S. often lacks strong family and community networks, but even with family there is a stronger push for independence here than I've seen in Europe where I lived for a few years. It's often quite positive -- people go and build startups, they move to new cities for work, older people stay active and remain in their houses... but it flips in the same way that you also have those same independent elderly people who end up in nursing homes far from family and family with kids away from parents who could be built in babysitters/childcare.

https://www.slowboring.com/p/homelessness-housing

[nebula8804]

>Why do cities in the midwest and South have lower rates of homelessness?

These are stereotypes but in the midwest you either are driven/make the trip to California or your freeze to death in the winter.

In the south, you either are driven/make the trip to california or you are eventually shot or locked up.

[rhino369]

There is some truth to weather. But also those areas are less likely to get queasy about cracking down on vagabonds. Police will hassle beggars in nice areas to keep respectable folks safe.

On the coasts that is now considered horrible tyranny. So you gotta deal with the downsides of that.

[atlasunshrugged]

That feels logical but I'm not sure it's true. Ex. freezing to death in winter - anecdotal but I visit my folks often and there are plenty of homeless people in Reno NV where you could absolutely freeze if you're exposed to the elements for too long.

[throwaway173738]

My spouse told me a story once about when she was living in her car in North Dakota and there was a winter storm and all she had was a blanket someone gave her. Long story short if you don’t have anything you can easily freeze to death in your sleep there.

[maxwell]

And the East Coast?

[wing-_-nuts]

> Nobody wants to talk about families, though.

That's because abusive families are one of the primary drivers of substance abuse and mental illness.

[confidantlake]

You can't force a mentally ill family member to get the care they need if they don't want to.

[chrissnell]

You're 100% wrong about this. My mother is a mentally ill drug addict who has been homeless. We forced her into care when it was clear that she could no longer take care of herself. It took help from Adult Protective Services and lots of attempts before they were finally able to make it happen. She would hide from them when they showed up. Finally, she got kicked out of the place she was living and APS saw the conditions and committed her.

[b112]

You can't force a mentally ill family member to get the care they need if they don't want to.

Your most certainly can, if you can prove to a judge that they are mentally ill, and unable to make decisions for themselves.

[SkyPuncher]

My wife works in mental health.

What you describe is technically possible, but extremely rare. Even when someone is involuntarily admitted, the stay is typically capped.

Generally, as long as an individual isn't harming other people, "the system" doesn't have a reason to pursue a judgement. Many of these people are isolated from family/support systems or have nobody to actually care or advocate for them.

Further, many of them have complex cases. While treatment may be effective temporarily, it's hard to sustain the level of care after an admission.

[rhino369]

The standard is very hard to meet. These mentally ill drug addicts homeless people usually don’t qualify.

[tiahura]

Are you paying?

Back in the day the police would beat the crap out of the lowlifes and drop them off outside of town.

And then the liberal guilt peddlers made noise and the men got weak.

[loeg]

West Virginia has very high rates of poverty and drug addiction, but much lower rates of homelessness. Of course homelessness is a housing issue.

[Schroedingersat]

Huh. I wonder how they might have become mentally ill, what could have been done about it and why they might have turned to drugs.

Must just be some essential part of their character. /s