So if you give people money they'll endeavor to tell you precisely what they think you want to hear. I would be much more impressed if this wasn't based solely on self-reported results.
We already know just based on the limited amount from the annual payment to all residents of Alaska from their state wide oil and mineral fund over the past 40 some odd years, there are a lot of studies - off top of my head some study found people who were unemployed were in aggregate slightly more likely to get work, because the money enabled them to look farther for jobs instead of just surviving, it also increased demand for goods and services provided by other Alaskans. Here's one of many that breaks things down from economist point of view
https://home.uchicago.edu/~j1s/Jones_Alaska_2022.pdf
> “Just one year after completing (the program), I’m in my own place, halfway through a business degree, focused on building a stable, secure foundation for my daughter and myself, and working toward becoming a nonprofit leader who supports her community.”
I know, right? She did all that just so she could give her social workers the feedback they wanted to hear! Those liberals are so dastardly!
I don't think the parent is even saying that, their point is pretty reasonable: having some objective measure for before and after in any study is more reliable than self-reporting, especially when the subject might be incentivized to lie.
The self reports might be totally true, but the study isn't as good as it might be.
I don't think that's what GP is saying. This report would be more believable and more objective if it would have other types of metrics than just self-reporting ones.
There is a kind of people that function by finding edge-cases, questioning the results and posing uneasy questions when presented with a situation. Some might call them "haters", or nit-pickers, but I think their way of thinking is useful to make sure we're not just being fed feel-good make-believe.
A lot of existing social assistance is wildly inefficient as it is. With proper calibration of expectations, I think most people would be thrilled to see even 1/3 of the target population meaningfully helped. The rest of cash giveaway is not "waste" in that scenario, it's the cost of helping the ones that do end up homed, working, and paying taxes... which then contribute back to lowering the net cost of the "waste".
If you pay people $1k to kill snakes, you'll end up with a lot of dead snakes, but you'll also end up with more snakes.
It's not good enough to prove that the solution to the problem works for one side. It could create a problem elsewhere, and easily a bigger problem than you had before.
It's definitely not a good enough answer to give people $1k and essentially ask them: did you like getting $1k?
That's not what happened. This is what they did:
> Oregon’s results confirm what we saw in New York: When you cover the real cost of shared housing directly for two years — and pair it with support — young people stay housed
That's very light on details.
I would hope we can assume with a non-trivial sample size that you will find at least some success cases.
That should not surprise anyone. It matters: how often did it pay off (not answered), how much did it pay off (housed after is a start, for how long, what other improvements would be good to know), was it worth it (presumably we could've given them $10M per month and got similar results, which clearly would not have been worth it), and how can you prove it doesn't create a worse problem elsewhere (the hard part).
People like to just assume that if you give people money there's no hidden side effects elsewhere. Giving money is good. Plain and simple. There can't be any bad involved. Well, there can.
yes. This is a good data point, but a follow-on study is needed to see the regression rate and whether such aid is needed continuously or if doing so for a period of time is sufficient. Likely would depend on the reasons why they became homeless in the first place.