[robswc]

This is one of the core problems and I don't think people want to admit it "can't be solved."

When I was naive, out on my own after 18 I found a low-income/income-restricted apartment complex and thought I got a steal. It was $1k a month for a 2 bed when everywhere else was closer to $1.5k.

I soon realized I would _never_ live in a low income place if I could help it. Someone was killed in our building. Fights in the parking lot every other day. People leaving trash in the hall ways. People smoking 24/7. Of course, maybe only 25% of the people were "problematic" but that was more than enough to make you feel totally uncomfortable in your own home. The last straw was potheads causing a fire alarm at 3 AM and having to evacuate into the cold night in a panic.

Some people are simply selfish and will not be able to live close to/with others without causing problems. _Most_ people do not want to live next to them.

[novok]

There are two kinds of 'low income.' There is a working-class neighborhood where people are not rich; life is hard, and stuff is a bit run down, but people are normal. Employed-ish, don't start fights and are respectful. The sense of community and friendliness might even be better than a 'normal' place because you need community to survive. Living in these places is fine. Then there is the kind of 'low income' you describe, which is a very different kind of place and people.

When people talk about this topic, people get into big debates about it because they are thinking of 2 very different kinds of low-income places.

[tripletao]

The comment you replied to said "income-restricted", so they probably mean a building covered by government programs that give preferential tax, planning, or other treatment to developers who commit to below-market rent, with tenancy restricted to households meeting income limits.

These are common in large American cities. The problem tenants are a minority, but the landlord lacks the usual incentive to address them since the building will always be full, since it's below-market. The landlord may also be a social benefit organization that's politically disinclined to evict.

Non-market housing tends to go badly in the USA, including programs closely resembling those that have succeeded in other countries. The reasons for that are complex, though I strongly suspect that the weak mental health system (many of the worst problem tenants would be institutionalized elsewhere) contributes.

[autobodie]

>I don't think people want to admit it "can't be solved".

The fact that many countries have solved it seems to indicate that you are wrong.

[hector126]

My understanding is that countries who have "solved" homelessness either -

• Societally and culturally produce so few individuals who would behave the way America's most problematic homeless do that direct 1on1 intervention is feasible. There are school districts in the US where the truancy rate exceeds 70%. There are other countries where this is not the case. Switzerland and Norway come to mind.

• Involuntarily commit or arrest individuals who are mentally unfit to function in normal society. Institutionalization, basically. China and Russia come to mind.

If there was a silver bullet which was politically acceptable to "solve" America's homeless problem I ensure you, folks in California would have tried it.

[johnnyanmac]

1. Yes, it's cultural and we keep encouraging people to be selfish. Our influencers, the media, this push of "make it in your own" despite no one in history truly being self made. And if we're being frank, prejudice is still alive and well which underfunded certain kinds of areas. We don't want to help those people. And we have 50 mini countries to balance this between.

2. Almost. They don't use for profit prisons who are incentivized to punish. Other countries actually focus on minimizing recidivism. But America keeps falling for "Hard on Crime". Again, that selfishness: "I would never do that, that person deserves to suffer".

>If there was a silver bullet which was politically acceptable to "solve" America's homeless problem I ensure you, folks in California would have tried it.

I agree. But politically people treat reformation as "free handouts". With that attitude nothing will change.

[Clubber]

>But America keeps falling for "Hard on Crime". Again, that selfishness: "I would never do that, that person deserves to suffer".

We really need to repeal the 93 crime bill. We have the most incarcerated population in the world by both ratio and total numbers. Way too many offenses are felonies and once people get marked by the system, they will most likely never excel in society, much less get by.

[Aunche]

> Involuntarily commit or arrest individuals who are mentally unfit to function in normal society.

Finland, the poster child for housing first, does this as well.

[monero-xmr]

Students graduate high school in Finland and are ecstatic if they can get a job at a restaurant. I have a lot of family there…

[PieTime]

And what happens if they don’t find a job? Do they become homeless? I know a few Americans who moved to Finland. They accepted lower wages for a better quality of life.

[monero-xmr]

At a certain point after decades of low wages, the “quality of life” you speak of has been eroded severely. But hey, at least there aren’t any rich people around.

[Yeul]

There is homelessness and then there is America with people using drugs in broad daylight and setting up tents on the side walk...

[PaulDavisThe1st]

California, like most of the USA, contains a very broad spectrum of political opinion. There are plenty of conservative right wing folk there, it just so happens that the current state of things there leads to them not holding huge amounts of power at the level of the state legislature or governor's office.

This is marked contrast to, for example, most European countries (particularly the two you've mentioned) where the number of people who simply do not see a role for non-carceral government action (i.e. the first solution you've described) is quite small.

Combine that with a referendum process, and you've got a situation in which there are lots of things that could theoretically be tried but will not be, even in California.

[robswc]

The problem isn't "solved." The problem is you have to deal with it in a way that most/everyone would be OK with and vote for. I don't think we can do that in the US.

We could "solve" the problem like Singapore or China (some of these 'many countries'), and simply throw everyone in jail for petty crimes. In fact, IIRC Singapore is one of the safest places on earth. I'm sure SF (and California, and the country at large) would probably take issue with a sudden step up in policing.

[JimDabell]

> We could "solve" the problem like Singapore or China (some of these 'many countries'), and simply throw everyone in jail for petty crimes

The incarceration rate of the USA is 541/100k:

https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/united-states-america

The incarceration rate of Singapore is 164/100k:

https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/singapore

The homelessness rate in the USA is 19.5/10k. The homelessness rate in Singapore is 1.9/10k.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_ho...

Singapore doesn’t have a homelessness problem because they build as much public housing as possible, sell it to citizens at a massively subsidised rate, and follow up with schemes to rent to people who fall through the system for practically nothing.

If you want to reduce homelessness, you need to build a large volume of housing. San Francisco is doing the exact opposite and getting the exact opposite results.

[robswc]

Do the math on the execution rate. You do _not_ want to be a criminal in Singapore. You especially do not want to be a criminal involved with drugs (which is the highest % offense of prisoners in the US).

> Singapore doesn’t have a homelessness problem because they build as much public housing as possible, sell it to citizens at a massively subsidised rate, and follow up with schemes to rent to people who fall through the system for practically nothing.

How policed are these public housing projects? I wouldn't have a problem living near or even in a place like that if there weren't criminals running around.

The problem I was referencing was the problem of trying to get the general populace to live with antisocial types. I don't think that can be "solved" in the US anytime soon.

> If you want to reduce homelessness, you need to build a large volume of housing. San Francisco is doing the exact opposite and getting the exact opposite results.

Sure. I just don't see that happening in the US without it turning into a dump. I didn't even live in a homeless shelter. I lived in an income restricted place. It was a magnet for criminals and non-criminals are punished for it.

[JimDabell]

> Do the math on the execution rate. You do _not_ want to be a criminal in Singapore.

In 2023, Singapore executed 5 people, which is less than one in a million:

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/policy/internatio...

You basically have to bring drugs into the country to be executed. So as long as you don’t do that, this statistic doesn’t affect you at all.

> How policed are these public housing projects? I wouldn't have a problem living near or even in a place like that if there weren't criminals running around.

Three quarters of Singaporeans live in these places, and there is no significant police presence. There doesn’t have to be because the crime rate is so low. Criminals aren’t running around.

> Sure. I just don't see that happening in the US without it turning into a dump. I didn't even live in a homeless shelter. I lived in an income restricted place. It was a magnet for criminals and non-criminals are punished for it.

I think you read “public housing” and interpreted it as something like you have in America, with high crime and poverty. That’s a misinterpretation. This is the type of place most people live in Singapore. They are nice places to live, they are just massively subsidised by the government.

[wahnfrieden]

Why are people always championing Singapore as a paragon of free markets while nearly all its residents live in government provided housing

[novok]

You don't have to compare Singapore or other places. Just comparing the USA to other English countries shows stark differences. The UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and NZ have way less of the bad kind of "low income", better incarceration rates, homeless and more than the USA. And in many ways, people are poorer in those countries than the USA too. It's not money, it's political will and organization.

[mkl]

*English-speaking

Part of the UK is English, but none of the rest are.

[atoav]

You are mentally on a wrong track there. If imprisonment solved your problem, it would already be solved. The US has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world (see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarce...). Fifth place versus Singapore on 105th. The US incarcerates 3.5 times more of it's population than Singapore.

If you have the money to imprison the homeless you could use that very same money to just build more affordable housing and that would give you more in terms of results per dollar spent.

But that doesn't jive well with the American idea of having to morally punish unwanted behavior, instead of just helping people.

Jailing homeless people is like jailing people who break a leg: Nobody plans to break a leg, so jailing people who do won't reduce the number of people who do. The only thing criminalization of such involuntary traits achieves is to reduce visibility and pushing people to hide it.

[robswc]

> The US incarcerates 3.5 times more of it's population than Singapore.

And Singapore executes ~3.5 times more of it's population than the US. Singapore is a heavily policed state. They still cane people there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_in_Singapore

There is a _huge_ difference between how crime is handled in the US and how it is handled in Singapore.

> If you have the money to imprison the homeless you could use that very same money to just build more affordable housing and that would give you more in terms of results per dollar spent.

I'm not talking about the homeless. The people I lived next to had homes (that were unfortunately adjacent to mine). They would constantly commit crime and face 0 repercussions for it. I knew of someone in the building that was on their 5th DUI somehow. They were still driving, still causing problems nearly every week.

[atoav]

In 2024 Singapore executed 9 people, that is a rate of 0.149 per 100k of their population.

The rate of people shot by police in the US is 0.34 per 100k of its population. Who needs capital punishment when you shoot people your police doesn't like even before they have been found guilty?

And your anecdotal evidence is not really valuable in the discussion at hand. Somebody else can say the opposite, I for example live in a country where crime is treated differently and we have less violent crime. You can leave your doors unlocked in a major city, despite living in a red light district with its own share of homeless, drug addicts and mentally ill.

[panick21_]

Singapore might execute more people, but now go and compare how many people get killed by the state. I always think its hilarious how people argue about execution when the police kills astronomically more people to the point where actual executions are a statistically insignificant.

> They were still driving, still causing problems nearly every week.

That's what you get when you build a car dependent society. You can't actually prevent people from driving because people can't practically live without driving.

[BurningFrog]

Caning is very cost effective!

Costs almost nothing compared to prisons, and has a comparable deterrence effect.

[johnnyanmac]

We don't actually execute that many people in the US, so this was an instant fail on the sniff test:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Singap...

540 ish executions in 35 years. 50 executions last decade. I don't think these are the statistics that make me thing Singapore is a kill happy country.

>m not talking about the homeless. The people I lived next to had homes (that were unfortunately adjacent to mine). They would constantly commit crime and face 0

Anecdotes are just that. I've been in a nice neighborhood. I don't think people are naturally evil.

[Agentus]

—— If you have the money to imprison the homeless you could use that very same money to just build more affordable housing and that would give you more in terms of results per dollar spent. But that doesn't jive well with the American idea of having to morally punish unwanted behavior, instead of just helping people. Jailing homeless people is like jailing people who break a leg: —- Forgive me if i misinterpret you. But i think theirs three relevant perspectives here whereof two and a half disagree with your points that americans dont punish people down on their luck.

first perspective is the common american sympathetic or not to homeless and their perspective on penal code. then 2nd, theres reactive use and enforcement of code, which is the main punishment for homelessness. and third is the figurative cognitive behavior modifiers but instead of being therapists they are american rulers who want subjects to behave in a certain manner ( more on that at the end).

first perspective is divided into two camps i think. empathetic yes lets not punish homelessness, lets help them out. they seem to have more influence in liberal states. then theres the “lazy bum” castigators, like trump said or would say. no sympathy, get a job types.

2nd perspective matters more because homelessness in-effect criminalized if police enforce laws and the laws are sufficient to cause more than a minor inconvenience to the homeless. Most states technically have all types of laws to put homeless people in jail, but in certain states and certain contexts do homelessness get more aggressively targeted and thus punished. its in the form of no body wants to deal with homeless people where they hang out at (nimbyism) so they have police remove them however the police are instructed and allowed to do, which might be making and enforcing laws incidentally target behavior homeless are more likely to do but everyone does like loitering.

3rd perspective is more conjecture but is based on academic documented equivalent cases in french and british colonies (found in david graebers writings) and extrapolated to say that people who make the laws in america must think like cognitive behaviorists specifically to wielding the threat of homelessness as a tool to modify the populations behavior to their agendas. this is conjecture but not unreasonable, and its substantiated.

But places in America do penalize homelessness if not intentionally implicitly. examples include hostile archtecture, no sitting rules in transportation hubs, sleep police in new york, and consequences for being, acting, or appearing homeless in various municipalities which sometimes results in jail.

[zozbot234]

People get jailed/locked up when they are a physical danger to those around them. The reason jails are the way they are is not so much to punish the inmates but far more relevantly, to protect them from one another. As it turns out, unfortunately, much of the supposed problem with the really long term homeless is that, rightly or wrongly, they are perceived as a physical threat to others. So, even assuming the best possible intentions on your part, whatever place you put the homeless is going to look a lot like jail.

[Qwertious]

>no sympathy, get a job types.

This was a valid perspective in the 1960s - jobs grew on trees, most people who didn't have a job just didn't want a job. Some people built that perspective in the 1960s, and then never updated it despite jobs no longer growing on trees.

[seanmcdirmid]

> But that doesn't jive well with the American idea of having to morally punish unwanted behavior, instead of just helping people.

I advocate a Singapore-style justice system then thanks to atoav's revelation that they do much better on crime than we do with punishments like caning and execution for most hard drug offenses.

[reportingsjr]

> We could "solve" the problem like Singapore or China (some of these 'many countries'), and simply throw everyone in jail for petty crimes.

This clearly isn’t true, as the US has a per capita prison population four to five times that of China & Singapore! We jail far, far more people than they do.

[carlosjobim]

Why do you count "per capita" when it should be counted "per crime"? Per capita means nothing for this argument.

[Aunche]

You're right, but progressives treat crime statistics as dog whistles for racism, which to be fair isn't uncommon. However, you can make a very similar "woke" argument. Much of crime is caused by centuries of systemic racism that Singapore and China never experienced, so you can't do an apple to apple comparison between incarcerations per capita.

Overall, Singapore and China are significantly more willing to sacrifice freedom in exchange for security. There is more surveillance and no trial by jury, for example.

[_DeadFred_]

US Police have qualified immunity, protecting them from their actions against the people, Singapore's Police don't. Who's sacrificing their morals in exchange for security?

[robswc]

It could simply be that more people in China and Singapore are afraid to commit crimes. Their prison sentences and punishments are much worse. In 2022, they executed 11 people, the US executed 18. The US has a ~50x larger population.

I'm not even saying the solution is more/harsher policing. I'm saying it is a solution that seemingly works.

[johnnyanmac]

It could also be that they didn't governmental distribute drugs to their population with the purpose of mass arresting for petty crimes. So half their criminal population aren't just in for smoking pit.

[11101010001100]

This is speculation, the parent replied with statistics.

[sightbroke]

As far as I can tell, the bottom line is king in the US.

So the way I figure, you spend money on imprisoning (though private prisons make more money and can sell non-violent labor).

Or spend money on housing and social workers and maybe a good chunk of this individuals rejoin the workforce and pay taxes.

Or you spend money on cleaning up after, paying for medical emergencies, and increased private security costs.

The option selected is either the one that the invisible hand found to be the most efficient or a better option was not sold well enough.

[Aunche]

If the bottom line were actually king, we'd have a VAT, LVT, functional public transit, and sensible zoning laws among other things. Hell, even a fully socialized healthcare system would be more economically efficient than the public-private Frankenstein we have today.

A common meme on both sides of the political aisle is that public spending that they don't like is motivated by someone else's profit, but that's never the why the spending happens. I'd like the government to give me a million bucks to dig a hole in my backyard, but that's not going to happen unless if the voters agree to it.

[throwawaymaths]

if you think prison privatization is the problem... you should see state run prisons. while studies show that private prisons are "statistically" worse (lots of problems with the statistics, e.g. commingling criminal incarceration contracts with migrant incarceration contracts), the difference is marginal, at best.

[johnnyanmac]

The incentive structure is the bigger issue here, not necessarily prisoner treatment (though yes, we can address that too). A state wants to minimize prisons. A profit run prison wants to keep getting prisoners.

[throwawaymaths]

state run prisons and prison guard unions also have this problem. and these orgs are known to have successfully put legislative pressure on laws that will increase incarceration rates

[Agentus]

You don’t have to even go to more authoritarian places to see the “solved” phenomenon. Many conservative states have harsher sentences or are more proactive in enforcement of petty crimes to “solve” undesirable/nonconformist behavior. Also solve is a funny word to describe dealing with people who ultimately dont want to conform to arbitrary restrictions on behavior.

Humans naturally evolved in a hunter gathering setting, yet certain governing “civilizing” forces had the audacity to eliminate that as possible lifestyle, and then label people who defy that restriction on lifestyle choice as problemmatic.

[cheriot]

I don't see a pattern of conservative states solving drugs or violent crime.

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/place-based-...

https://americaninequality.substack.com/p/violent-crime-and-...

[Agentus]

yeah the pattern is indiscernible because i was talking about petty crimes and related behavior (specifically homelessness) that have a lower per capita rate. violence isnt petty and i assume many drugs offenses arent considered petty. a quick google has validating statistics, although i cant find sources better than business insider at the moment. homeless population per capita by state and homelessness criminalization by state.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> Humans naturally evolved in a hunter gathering setting

Frequently asserted, but not really well substantiated. Plenty of new (or previously) ignored archeological and anthropological evidence that humans moved back and forth fairly seamlessly between hunting, gathering and cultivating in many differents part of the world.

You sound like the kind of person who would have somehow managed to read "The Dawn of Everything" by Graeber & Wengrow, but apparently either did not or for some reason disagree with one of their fundamental conclusions.

[Agentus]

yup, in the process of reading Wengrow

[yibg]

The US seems to be a text book case of treating the symptom rather than the cause (and not just in terms of homelessness either). Culturally we:

- Seem to tolerate high income inequality or even see it as a good thing.

- Value "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" and devalue social safety nets and other avenues of providing opportunity to the masses

- Have given up on higher crime rates, lower education, poorer health care and health outcomes compared to other wealthy nations

Instead of trying to prevent homelessness in the first place, we try to tackle it once it's already there, then throw up our hands and say it's not possible to deal with.

[willywanker]

>Seem to tolerate high income inequality or even see it as a good thing.

A free society will by definition be unequal; people have different priorities and abilities, and wealth acquisition isn't a zero sum game. If anything, instead of vilifying billionaires, take a look at the unelected but taxpayer funded and vastly bloated bureaucracies in every country around the world. The shocking revelations of USAID spending billions upon billions to interfere in other countries is example enough.

Prisons are the most equal places in the world in terms of living standards and options available to prisoners; nobody sees them as ideal.

Now lack of upward class mobility - that's a separate problem area to focus on.

[kjkjadksj]

It is hard to imagine a nation without this sort of thing to some degree without a total police state. These are issues with poor living in apartments in Europe too you know; a tragedy of the commons situation as the community shoulders the burden of those of it that have vice or mental illness that the government authority doesn’t effectively treat because this class is invisible in local mass media.

[Agentus]

yeah, ive heard not having a home was illegal of sorts in the Soviet Union, meaning eviction was illegal or something equivolent.

I know what you mean by police state, but i wonder why america doesn’t consider themselves a police state, with such a large prison population and all the innocuous behaviors that can land you in legal trouble. i guess americans get indoctrinated in a certain way of thinking, where their subset of freedoms which they can mostly practice, makes them think they are free but ignore all the numerous other penalized behaviors. for example: i cant possess cocaine regardless if it wont be consumed as a drug, cant drink in public, cant lay down in public, cant sleep in public(ny), etc etc. a lot of intermediary stuff gets penalized because its the only way to control some tangentially related detrimental behavior, or its penalized for making people feel odd (nudity).

but more on point: america polices property taxes. Any property owned gets taxed automatically. this creates a forced work state to accumulate money to pay Uncle Sam. Failure to comply with this system and you get policed or pushed around as a homeless. David Graeber talks about Madagascar colonies set up with a similar system (underline) intentionally(/u) to produce a productive populace. similarly he mentions ways monarchies created rules and systems to force markets and force productivity elsewhere. I think homelessness circumstances is by design, and this free nonpolice state we call america is actually an artificial created police state. we can choose different governing setups that have different features emergent and by design. Its what Mao attempted to do, its what the French and British monarch did. But i see the coercive force in all the government setups even the ones that claim to be free.

[_DeadFred_]

America is a Police state. Qualifiers: 1. Surveillance state. The amount of surveillance information our police now purchase from private companies would make the old Soviets drule. 2. Separate rules for the Police with qualified immunity protections. Singapore doesn't give it's Police qualified immunity protections unless serving warrants. There are two different rules of law in the US, those that apply to the normies, and those that apply to law enforcement. 3. Mass incarceration. 4. Making so much illegal that 'selective enforcement' can be used as a tool of coercion. Just coming up on the Police radar (even if you are someone that reported something) leads to a significantly higher chance of incarceration in the US.

[wavemode]

Which countries have solved it, and how? I'm genuinely curious.

[BurningFrog]

If we believe the stories of old, even this country used to have this solved.

[FuriouslyAdrift]

It all started to change with O'Connor v. Donaldson. Prior to that, a person could be committed for basically life for just about anything...

Reference: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

[vondur]

I think outrage from that movie and the conditions of the Asylums around that time period was why many of the public asylums were shuttered.

[WarOnPrivacy]

During the late 19th to early 20th century, asylums were launched all over the US. They were commonly public-private partnerships but tended to be spearheaded by altruistic individuals. They were genuinely positive places and were constantly lauded by the public/press/pols.

The focus on humane care was universal. The methods sometimes suffered from incomplete understanding but that improved over time.

From 1930s to 1960s, the responsible individuals died off and no one replaced them. The p/p/p quit caring. Locations transitioned to gov-only. The public/press weren't interested so neither were pols. The quality of care steeply fell off as budgets (read 'efficiency') were prioritized over everything.

By the 1970s, asylums were associated with hellholes for mostly good reasons. By the 1980s most were shuttered. The public justification was the inhumane conditions (typically true). The motivating reason was to recapture the remaining funds that were spent on them. There was little/no interest in funding replacements.

FF to today. Florida has 5 state criminal mental health institutions. Their long history is that patients and staff die there with some regularity. After that came out in a news series, reporters lost access and that's where that's at.

    source: 10y genealogy research & 25y caring for mi spouse. 
    Also: 10y supporting developmentally disabled care facilities (public/private) that are still spearheaded by caring, invested individuals. They are models of what is possible.

[johnnyanmac]

>This is one of the core problems and I don't think people want to admit it "can't be solved."

It certainly can be solved. The real think is people in power don't want to solve it, and the voters don't want to invest in solving it. Admitting your own folly and vainness is much more difficult than dismissing it as an "impossible problem".

>Some people are simply selfish and will not be able to live close to/with others without causing problems. _Most_ people do not want to live next to them.

And those people do not get the help they need. Again, and investment no one cares to put in. Better to sweep it under the rug and try to rely on the security of higher income areas to deal with it than taking preventative measures.