[lilboiluvr69]

Last time I visited Toronto I was shocked by the amount of not just homeless people but loud and disruptive or mentally ill homeless people. I remember hearing a blood curdling scream coming from a crowd. I ran over to look, it was just this homeless man screaming at the top of his lungs as people walked past him.

My friend told me it didn't used to be this bad (we've known each other for years and he used to complain about how many homeless people there were in American cities when he visited me), but the population, at least from his perspective, seems to have surged in recent years. At the time he blamed COVID, which I am sure had an effect, but I had no idea how bad affordable housing had gotten in that country (although maybe I should have noticed since he always gripes about making STEM money and not being able to afford to live alone in Toronto).

I remember something he said once that has really stuck with me. Last time I visited he told me the homeless used to be the fringes of society that fells through the social safety net. But now in Toronto they seem to be a class all their own.

[abduhl]

Relevant to this: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/international-student-cap-i...

“Canada is on track to host around 900,000 international students this year, Miller said in an interview that aired Saturday on CBC's The House. That's more than at any point in Canada's history and roughly triple the number of students who entered the country a decade ago.”

There is a perverse incentive to attend what amount to for-profit scams in Canada owing to their immigration policies giving preference to folks with Canadian degrees.

[TheRealPomax]

Sounds like someone's not been paying attention to how the international student game works. If you think luring international students by for-profit academia is a Canada thing, you have some learning to do.

Also the idea that Canada can retain folks with a Canadian degree is hilarious: the location factor for backwater rural Washington is higher than the location factor for Vancouver or Toronto: you think those students are gonna stay in Canada after they graduate instead of moving South and getting paid twice the amount for the same position? Because if you do, that's another bit where you have some learning to do.

[abduhl]

You are unfamiliar with the Canadian international student game. For reference, the Unites States has roughly the same number of international students as Canada (~1 million) at 10x the population. This large number has created an industry of “strip mall” for-profit colleges that award degrees which provide a preferred path to citizenship because Canada’s immigration system offers additional points for having a Canadian degree (technically any degree but a Canadian degree is automatically qualified while foreign degrees are not). These people are often not looking to get an education and then get a job in America - they are often trying to immigrate and the cost of attending the Canadian college is just part of the paperwork for them.

America’s immigration system, in contrast, is generally merit-blind. You do not get extra points for a degree and so there is no incentive to pursue a qualified American degree. The US path for an international student seeking citizenship is based on work after the degree: sponsorship by an employer. The Canadian path for an international student IS the degree.

See also https://macleans.ca/longforms/fraud-canada-education-interna... and https://www.politicstoday.news/politics-today/ottawa-signals... in case you care to do some learning of your own.

[hungryforcodes]

...or back to their original countries with the prestige of a foreign degree.

[dghlsakjg]

Just a note: STEM money in Canada is significantly less than STEM money in the US, especially factoring in exchange rates.

[mjr00]

Yeah. Here in Vancouver you need 250k+ yearly household income to afford a very average detached single-family house (3 bed, 1 floor) anywhere in the metro area. A typical senior engineer salary here, for a local company, is $200k/year on the high end. AWS/MS might pay a bit more but not significantly.

The larger houses in "nice" neighborhoods are going for 4/5 million, so they're not getting purchased by anyone in the working class, by which I mean anyone who relies on regular employment income to live.

[glouwbug]

Vancouver's 90 percentile before tax income is 99k age 25-34 and 142k for age 35-44.

https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/dp-pd/dv...

[mabbo]

It's lower, yes, but in Toronto and Vancouver it has definitely improved in the last decade.

Amazon opened big offices in both cities (bias: I was one of the early Amazon people in Toronto) and quickly grew by outbidding other employers on good developers. Then other companies opened offices to do the same to Amazon. Now there's a pretty big dev economy.

[glitchc]

Top end is not the same as average. Not everyone can work at FAANG and no one else in the sector pays like FAANG. What's healthy is a top end that can afford 90% of housing and a median that can afford 50%. Instead we have a top end that can afford 50% and a median that can barely afford 10%. That's what's out of whack.

[mitthrowaway2]

It's still substantially lower. I know some talented devs who got offers from Amazon within the past couple years, and Amazon's internal HR rules placed a strict comp ceiling on their offer that could be doubled if they'd agree to work from Seattle rather than Vancouver. Same developer, same role, and a very short distance to move. So they moved.

[mabbo]

And yet... the Vancouver and Toronto offices are still pretty big- thousands of devs. And not just for visa reasons.

Canadians want to be in Canada. That's why I moved back from Seattle, knowing it would affect my comp badly.

[nimos]

Taxes are a pretty big difference too. Even though the California top federal + state isn't that far off of Ontario the income bands are much wider. At 300k USD(410 CAD) you'll have about an extra 21k USD take home in California. Then sales taxes are 13% in Ontario vs 7-10% in Cali(local taxes).

[one_level_deep2]

For the Californian, you also need to factor in the $10-15k in health insurance costs. That cuts pretty deeply into the $21k surplus.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/184955/us-national-healt...

[pseg134]

The company pays 100% of my premiums and I’ve had the same thing at other places.

[xienze]

Right. I think a lot of foreigners are completely oblivious to how little people with good jobs have to pay for insurance premiums and max out of pockets. Everyone seems to think it’s nothing but $100K bills for having a paper cut.

[dghlsakjg]

Some people with good jobs have that. The huge majority of Americans don’t, and average out of pocket healthcare costs are around $1600 yearly per person.

Before I moved to Canada I never had a company that covered all my deductibles and only one that covered my entire premium. That kind of benefit is extremely rare. It is truly a privilege of the rich to not have to think about the cost of health care in America.

Meanwhile in Canada I can go to any doctor in the province and know that I will never see a bill, and never be told that my insurance won’t cover the cost, and never have to argue on the phone about whether a procedure ordered by a doctor was necessary. It doesn’t matter if I am employed by Facebook, unemployed, or taking a few months of paternity leave.

Foreigners don’t think that everybody goes bankrupt for a few stitches. They think it’s a travesty that anybody is in that position.

[one_level_deep2]

That is very rare, you should consider yourself lucky. I work for a 100,000+ person software company and my [health + dental + HSA] is over $10k to cover my family of 4.

[gedy]

You are correct, but I don't think we can ignore the massive drug abuse problem, that has progressively gotten worse over the past 50 years, and especially 20.

[tmnvix]

I would argue that the rise in drug abuse is a consequence of societal issues - not the cause.

In my experience many people use drugs. Those that abuse drugs almost always had existing problems prior (mental health, destitution, a sense of hopelessness, etc).

[gedy]

I disagree, based on people in my life who weren't disadvantaged by society. Drugs rot people, similar to alcohol.

[TheRealPomax]

Generally you don't solve homelessness with affordable housing. We might call it "homelessness" but that's just the bullshit word we use based on the symptom, it's actually destitution, and the help they need extends so far beyond just getting them their own place that that part is actually the easiest problem to solve compared to all the other parts that also need solving.

The fact that Toronto and Vancouver haven't even set up container apartments in several places around the city is all the proof you need that folks don't care, which means they shouldn't be given a choice on whether or not to solve the problem. This should get mandated with fines for the city itself if it doesn't help the people who can't help themselves because the system's been designed to prevent them from getting help.

[verteu]

I disagree that the root problem is "destitution" rather than affordable housing.

I haven't seen much good research on the best way to solve homelessness, but most cross-city analyses suggest that high rent (and low housing density) is the main determinant of homelessness rates: https://sci-hub.ee/10.1111/1467-9906.00168

Note that "extreme poverty," "low-wage jobs," and welfare recipients were not significant factors.

A second study claims the "the availability of low income housing and of mental health care are the strongest predictors. Relatively modest investments in improving availability of these services would provide considerable payoff in reducing homelessness": https://sci-hub.ee/10.2307/800641

A third study I can't find now concluded that 25th-percentile-rent (rather than median rent) was the most significant factor (ie, availability of affordable housing).

[TheRealPomax]

That sounds like confusing the cause for the solution: there's a very big difference between "why someone became homeless" (i.e. no affordable housing) and helping "who they are now that they've been living on the street". You don't magically get those folks back on their feet purely by getting them housing, even if getting them housing is a critical step. There are so many more steps that are now necessary.

[verteu]

It's more cost-efficient and effective long-term to prevent people from falling into homelessness. And affordable housing is widely viewed as a major root cause. [1]

Yes, people on the streets should be helped. But if 4 people fall into homelessness for every 1 person place in permanent supportive housing (this is the ratio in SF [2]), we will never "solve homelessness."

[1] https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-sector/our-insigh...

[2] https://hsh.sfgov.org/about/research-and-reports/pit-hic/#20...

[reducesuffering]

> Generally you don't solve homelessness with affordable housing.

I think in some part, you do. I think a significant portion of homeless became that way through the stress and despair of affording $2k+ rents on a meager income, dealing with the lack of hope by turning to alcohol and possible other drugs, leading to a downward spiral where they end up on the street, abusing drugs for years, and eventually turning into the destitution you see.

[TheRealPomax]

you don't solve what homelessness actually is just with (almost always temporary) housing, you just get people off the street, which is a necessary step one in a multi step process, because just getting them off the street and then going "k, now make it work yourself" would be about as effective as not getting them off the street.

[hungryforcodes]

Though technically container apparments would be "affordable housing" -- which I think might be one part of the solution.

[mjr00]

> This should get mandated with fines for the city itself if it doesn't help the people who can't help themselves because the system's been designed to prevent them from getting help.

The problem is that "help" means different things to different people.

For years, the general view was that addicts in Canada got help via safe injection sites, first responders trained in administering naxolone, free housing available, and no real consequences for petty crime. Keeping them out of jail and making sure they had housing and clean drugs was seen as helping them.

It's only been in the past ~2 years, now that it's spiraled out of control during COVID, that some are redefining "help" to mean forced rehabilitation and/or institutionalization and keeping them off the streets if they commit crime. But there's no consensus on this.