Housing first
They’re the homeless, right? So they need housing, right? Only problem is that “homeless,” once a relatively descriptive term, has become only the tip of the iceberg of the problems of the “homeless” – now often referred to by the woke with the euphemism “unhoused.” That makes the problem seem far more simple than it is and far more soluble. But mental illness, substance abuse, and criminal activity of many kinds are a lot more difficult to deal with, and to a large degree they are the drivers of homelessness today.
Therefore, I don’t see how the solution called “housing first” could even have looked good on paper. Maybe it appealed because it didn’t cast blame; the problem and the solution would reside outside the messy realm of personal responsibility or personal flaws. And a “housing first” approach does make one aspect of the problem less visible by getting at least many of the homeless off the streets, and makes the city look less like the slums of Calcutta.
Only problem is, that’s probably all it does [emphasis mine]:
One resident threatens a security guard with a Taser. Another menaces a tenant with a “big kitchen knife.” Serious mental illness either goes untreated or is not treated effectively. One “savvy and resourceful” resident uses her apartment to fence stolen retail goods to fund her heroin habit. Not only is drug use normalized, causing a wave of overdoses; drug dealing in the building is also common. The local police precinct considers the building a “hot spot.” Those few residents who don’t use drugs report feeling socially isolated. Meantime, the program promotes “communal use,” so as to reduce the risk of fatal overdoses.
At the end of the article, readers learn that 16 inhabitants of the building died, mainly of suspected overdoses, in just the first eight months of this year. With 305 apartments for the formerly homeless in the building, this represents a death rate of about 5 percent, though the actual rate is probably higher because apartments were not filled until partway through that time …
The program’s high death rate owes to several factors. Private apartments are more accommodating to drug use than congregate-style shelters. They also provide addicts more time and funds to get high—a problem that researchers have elsewhere called the “check effect.”
Most importantly, this Housing First program, like many nationwide, gives preferential treatment to those addicted to drugs and alcohol. Those who stay sober and are trying to get their life together are left on the street, while those who can show they are abusing drugs get a brand-new private apartment. To say that this sends the wrong message to the homeless is an understatement.
It seems like the program “works” by rewarding those homeless people with the worst behavior, allowing them to go to the front of the housing line. These are perverse incentives.
With or without failed housing efforts, attrition by death (mostly drug ODs) is the unspoken blue city method of addressing homelessness. Morgue space is easier to manage than public space.
Meanwhile, for those who can afford the very best in tent dwellings,
L.A. Built a Licensed Tent City for Its Homeless – At Cost of $44K Per Tent
Each housing program has its nuanced details. Although there is something to be said for a policy of unlimited fentanyl and free shelter, this particular “death with dignity” program shall not be spoken of as such.
Some vagrants belong in jail, some belong in asylums, some are people having (quite severe) spot trouble in their lives, and some are people who fail catastrophically at life. The people having spot trouble will get back on their feet, especially if they have someone to counsel them in regard to the conduits maintained by public and private agencies to getting back on their feet. The rest would benefit from being more capable human beings, but that’s not something you can give to someone.
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You have a discrete settlement composed of tract developments exceeding 1,000 persons per square mile and in which the total population is about 400,000. Identify the most impecunious census block groups, block groups which collectively encompass about 80,000 persons (which will generally be found only in core cities); adjust the boundaries of the zone every 10 years in accordance with census data.
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Within this zone, have special land use regulations which allow fairly free development of the lower rungs of the housing market ladder – philanthropic emergency shelters, commercial flop houses, boarding houses, and apartments with shared kitchens.
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Set priorities with your building codes, relaxing lower priority requirements in this zone.
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Allow municipalities and school districts which intersect with this zone to lay and collect value added taxes they wouldn’t ordinarily have the authority to impose, while at the same time limiting their franchise to collect property taxes in the zone, requiring a levy rate of 0% per $ of assessed valuation in most of the zone and 1/2 the regular rate in the rest.
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Liquidate public housing projects, provide for a staged abolition of rent control, and institute procedures which allow for rapid eviction of deadbeats and vandals.
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Transfer responsibility for police services to county government, ending the use of municipal police in metropolitan counties bar in discrete small towns on the exurban periphery of the county. Expand manpower, deploy manpower optimally, encourage them to be proactive and use best practices, and encourage them to enforce the laws on loitering, harassment, disorderly conduct, public drunkenness, and possession of street drugs.
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Memo to county and state government: don’t cheap out on jail berths, prison berths, or asylum berths. Police the population you have, not the population New Hampshire has.
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Have emergency shelters and community food cupboards run by private philanthropies. The contribution of the government should be extra patrols in the vicinity of these places for order maintenance in and around them.
The border policy is a clear sign that the government doesn’t want to “solve” these problems or make things appreciably better in the country. The regime exists to perpetuate its own existence and extend its reach and hold on power. That means creating ever more problems for the government to deal with. In earlier decades there was debate about why we weren’t like Sweden and whether we should become like Sweden. Those days are far in the past. Our leaders have put us on a very different path.
allowing them to go to the front of the housing line.
It is a form of payoff – the naming of the ‘winners’ in the inversion of the idea of civilization. Law-abiding citizens are essentially the livestock of the ruling class, easily taxed for the gratification of those deserving ‘winners’, and for the hiring of legions of fonctionnaires to support the always-expanding corps de government – who of course vote ‘right’ at election time, to keep the baksheesh coming.
Law-abiding citizens are essentially the livestock of the ruling class, easily taxed for the gratification of those deserving ‘winners’,
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Bingo.
Neo wrote:
Sure, perhaps it is the reach for euphemism, but the basic fact is that “housing first” is a massive grifting operation. I suspect at the bottom of it all, all attempts to help the homeless are just grifts of varying and increasing degrees. Calling it whatever you wish to call it doesn’t change anything.
Tagging on to Insufficiently Sensitive….
There is now a homelessness-industrial complex administered by people, mostly Dem voters, whose paychecks depend upon a homelessness problem, the bigger the better.
If you think the system isn’t working, look more closely at who it might be working for.
BTW, that’s my clumsy inversion of an old leftie aphorism:
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If you think the system is working, ask someone who isn’t.
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Interesting how things change when the left is in power.
Abraxas has the right of it. Serious societal problems are far too useful in advancing the Left’s agenda. They know exactly what they’re doing and they’re doing it with malice aforethought.
The welfare social worker industrial complex perpetuates this for its own personal benefit and psychological wellbeing. After all, they are the people who care so it must be right and good.
Yancy Ward; Paul in Boston; et al:
Yes, it’s a grifting industry and all that. I think that’s an obvious fact that been described many times. The point I was trying to make, however, was I don’t think “housing first” has any more profit in it for the social worker profession than the other “solutions” do. So, why this particular approach?
Abraxas:
Our “leaders” do not lead. They dictate, they intend the ruin of America. We are the sheeple that hesitate to say, “No mas”.
It does have more money in it, Neo- that is my point. You now have connected real estate people taking in the grift, too. There is a reason all this homeless housing costs so much, because it is all a fraud.
I have some relations who’ve worked with the homeless for over twenty years. Their view is that the homeless are not capable of being “homed”.
They managed to get a facility built. It has a resident manager–taking turns. Locked doors between men’s and women’s quarters. Timers on the showers.
You can’t just put these folks in a home and expect things to go well.
The folks wouldn’t be homeless if they had social credit, which is to say there are no friends or family who will take them in, not after last time. This is some baggage which goes with them and expresses itself in any new situation.
The very few who are down on their luck are in the system, such as it is, briefly and then are back on their feet. One program which fits most of these folks is welfare.
The more clients, the more social workers are needed. The more hours they can bill. I knew a couple–who were honest and did good work–and not all of them have a full-time job out into the future. And if they work themselves out of a job….
There was story the other day about how some agency in California was spending something like $40k for a damned tent for homeless people. A tent you can actually buy on Amazon for about $100-200. The homeless housing is a similar fraud, but at 2 magnitudes more expensive.
Yancey Ward:
Of course it has money in it – I already said that. But other “solutions” also have money connected with them. I’ve never seen a comparison of who gets what from which solution. Are you suggesting that “housing first” advocates get some sort of kickback from the people who make the housing – which, as far as I know, might even be in old hotels and the like? I don’t see why social scientists would give a hoot if real estate people get money. The social workers and social scientists get money from any of the solutions.
Nor, by the way, do social workers make much money, as far as I know. At least, it didn’t used to be that way.
neo,
“So, why this particular approach?”
My guess is it’s a combination of funding and true believers. The big players involved know it’s a grift and are involved to skim what they can. They are far less concerned with the effectiveness of any solution attempted and much more concerned with how much a solution allows them to skim and appropriate to their skimming compatriots. So, some NGO or GO is set-up and the money starts flowing. Staff are hired. Some of the staff actually believe the crux of the problem is a lack of housing, so proposals are created to house the unhoused.
The grifters at the top almost certainly know it will be a disaster, but by the time the gods of the copybook headings arrive to prove this, the graft is grifted and the pockets are lined.
Two and a half years after starting his “Anti Racist Center” with millions in donations from Jack Dorsey and other philanthropists; Ibram X Kendi is laying off staff and there’s an inquiry into where all the money went. Sadly (and surprisingly), racism was not able to be cured before funds dried up: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careers/following-layoffs-boston-university-announces-inquiry-into-ibram-kendi-s-antiracist-center/ar-AA1h121I
See also BLM and that organization’s leaders’ spending habits prior to IRS auditors getting curious.
The answer to “why this particular approach” is, the approach is secondary. Or tertiary. The funding and distribution of funds are all that matter. In the process of creating an organization as a front to launder the money want ads have to be placed and some unfortunate, earnest applicants apply and are hired. Those poor fools actually try to solve the problem using the cloud cuckoo land philosophies the grifters spout and disaster ensues.
Neo:
“So, why this particular approach?”
Optics. Literally. You can’t see those in housing or rehab, only hear about them once in a while. Meanwhile, you have a monument to your accomplishment.
Not the solution. Back in ’80s, Wayne Minor Project rehabbed some cheap apartment buildings for low income/homeless. Less that three years and the place was urine soaked and feces laden with walls sprayed and ripped up. That’s forty years ago, now you have it in the streets for the same reason – show, not effect.
You cannot instill appreciation and ethics in people with gifts and your monument to self will decay in front of you.
Seattle has a program like this – housing for active alcoholics and addicts.
The problem they solved is that these people were passing out on the street; 911 would be called, and the drunk would taken to the ER at County expense. For some, this happened multiple times per month.
It’s cheaper to give them a free apartment than it is to pay $20k/month in ER bills.
Of course, the case is most likely to be a hodge-podge of drivers, each of us seeing the driver that meshes with our particular interests as being the most prominent.
Neo,
It has far more money in it than what was previously being funded for the homeless/person.
You are niggling over what they are calling it rather than focusing on the vast increase in the demand for funds housing first requires and is starting to get, at least in California. I don’t think I can make this easier to understand. The proponents aren’t trying to not blame the homeless by using a euphemism- they are using a euphemism to hide the increased costs.
Yancey ward:
Nothing I have said indicates I don’t understand. Nor am I “niggling” or thinking the whole thing is about euphemisms. I was merely looking for details of why this approach is so much more financially rewarding for social scientists or social workers. I certainly understand that building small homes or larger apartment buildings would be lucrative for those in the building trades.
Saw this happen in a small town in HI. Rich dude built a couple dozen ‘tiny houses’ for ‘homeless’. Drug dealing, burglary, prostitution, etc got so bad within a few months they were torn down, idea abandon. ‘Homeless’ returned to their tents in big city beach parks.
@neo:why this approach is so much more financially rewarding for social scientists or social workers
Individually perhaps they won’t make more money but there can be many more of them on the payrolls of governments and NGOs, all of whom are a locked-in constituency for the party that expanded their programs.
But they are not necessarily the ones primarily rewarded. It’s the people who run the organizations that administer the programs, the vendors they buy goods and services from, etc. as well as whoever builds or rents the facilities being used for the housing.
In addition “housing first” programs are rarely limited to housing, they also form part of holistic programs that fund medical care, behavioral health services, employment, education, etc for homeless people. Which expands the web of people who profit from these programs. Homeless people rarely have just homelessness wrong with them…
@neo: For example, one of the larger financial beneficiaries of housing programs is health insurance companies. The vast majority of homeless qualify for Medicaid or Medicare and so that housing money is being pumped through health insurance providers according to this 2021 article:
I suspect Yancey’s largely right here, but that the ratio of stupidity and organizational incompetence to malevolent grifting is higher than he allows.
I certainly understand that building small homes or larger apartment buildings would be lucrative for those in the building trades.
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Just to re-iterate, the vagrant population do not benefit from apartments or ‘small homes’ and we do not benefit from providing them one. They are, by and large, not the sort of people with the presence of mind to take care of an apartment or a home. They do benefit from berths protected from the elements and we benefit in terms of public order and hygiene from them not sleeping rough. A berth can be in a jail cell, a prison cell, an asylum, a halfway house, an emergency shelter, or a flop house.
@neo: For example, one of the larger financial beneficiaries of housing programs is health insurance companies. The vast majority of homeless qualify for Medicaid or Medicare and so that housing money is being pumped through health insurance providers according to this 2021 article:
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If they qualify for public medical insurance, it doesn’t have to be stewed through the housing expenditure line in the state budget.
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NB, if they qualify for Medicare, they’re either elderly or disabled and have a sufficient work history to have qualified for it and to have qualified for Social Security. If they’re in the vagrant population, that’s just bizarre and they should probably be in some sort of institutional care.
Homeless people rarely have just homelessness wrong with them…
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A great many people in shelters are just going through a bad patch and will be back on their feet in a few months. It’s the rest that are an intractable issue.
@Art Deco:If they qualify for public medical insurance, it doesn’t have to be stewed through the housing expenditure line in the state budget.
However it happens to be budgeted no doubt varies from state to state; the fact is that health insurance companies are getting paid by state governments to provide housing and other services to the homeless. Anyone who has worked for one in the past ten years can tell you about it and there are many more articles you can find besides the one I linked to, it’s in a lot of states beside California.
NB, if they qualify for Medicare, they’re either elderly or disabled and have a sufficient work history to have qualified for it and to have qualified for Social Security.
This is the popular perception, and true for most people, but there are two-year-olds in Medicare. Everyone on SSDI is allowed to enroll in Medicare, and you don’t have to be 65 or have ever worked. As SSA explains:
These people who are on Medicare but never worked are of course disproportionately expensive and will be on Medicare their whole lives, not just after retirement. (But Medicare would still hemorrhage money even if everyone on it had worked.)
…the program “works” by rewarding those homeless people with the worst behavior.”
It also collects them in one place or area away from the general population.
Which is what prisons are for.
I read somewhere that the average time a homeless person who is just someone down on their luck remains homeless is about three months. People who are just down on their luck don’t want to live on the streets. They’re sane enough to want the comfort of ghosting. And they aren’t so drug-addled such that they no longer care.
The majority of “homeless” are mentally ill and addicts. Once up on a time, the mentally ill could be hospitalized. We had a vast network of state hospitals for housing and trreating them. But then came “deinstitutionalization” — the idea that drugs would cure them and that long term hospitalization was “cruel.” On top of that, they cannot be involuntarily hospitalized unless they’re considered a “danger to themselves and others.” That bar is really high: essentially, they have to have actually tried to kill themselves or someone else. Sleeping on the street, risking dying of exposure, is not considered being a danger to one’s self.
We’ve also become this society of “if that’s what someone wants, they came do it.” So now, no matter how destructive someone’s behavior is, it’s their choice.
This is the popular perception, and true for most people, but there are two-year-olds in Medicare. Everyone on SSDI is allowed to enroll in Medicare, and you don’t have to be 65 or have ever worked
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No, you have to have a disability adjudication and a sufficient work history to qualify for Social Security Disability. The program for those who have an insufficient work history is Supplemental Security Income.
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Medicare also finances dialysis patients, but they’re not a big constituency.
There are so many good insights about the “unhoused” issue here, both in your original article as well as the comments.
Many dream of a life unfettered by restrictions and accompanied by boundless resources. The American Dream can be reduced to that formula and applied to whatever political hucksters are selling to enrich themselves.
Some of us are aware that the unfettered life is both undesirable and unattainable and see through the hucksterism. Most of the unhoused have layers of trouble not curable by free everything. Cramming them together in a high rise with other troubled souls magnifies problems for those who would really benefit by a boost toward self care.
Thanks for your insights, everyone.
@Art Deco:No, you have to have a disability adjudication and a sufficient work history to qualify for Social Security Disability.
I just quoted SSA saying literally the opposite. Pretty sure they’re the ones who know:
It’s understandable you’d not know that, there’s so much propaganda and misconceptions about how these programs work. Including, of course, what can count as a “disability” which is surprisingly expansive.
Medicare also finances dialysis patients, but they’re not a big constituency.
It’s not the number of people, it’s how much they spend. Every health insurance company has a team trying to figure out how to get people off of their insurance and on to Medicare who are in dialysis and the paperwork moves at glacial speeds.
I just quoted SSA saying literally the opposite.
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To qualify under the circumstances you quoted you (1) have to be the juvenile dependent of someone awarded Disability, and (2) qualify as Disabled yourself, and (3) enter your notionally adult years as Disabled. The number of people who meet all of these criteria is currently 107,000 (around 1% of all Disability beneficiaries) and they receive a tad over $600 a month in benefits on average. This is not a population segment of much social significance. About 0.2% of the population in general are vagrants, so I imagine you can locate a few who are benefits of this minor component of the Disability Insurance program.
Dear ones–when will you learn? Housing whether it be cheap or expensive benefits primarily one group–the developer! Habitat for Humanity has now become just a front for large developers. A money-making, government-funded construction plan for thousands of cheap units across this country.
Now, I ask you–who the heck do you think is going to get put into those small units? How about our newly arrived non-citizens? There are thousands of those “clients” to serve. Here in our small town which is run by the fem/nazis and the R cowards who try to assuage the situation, large swaths of great agricultural land are being used to develop housing for those who “need housing”. Well, let me tell you about our future residents we have three distinct categories:
1. upper middle class who have just moved in from CA, Minnesota,Oregon etc. because their former states are disasters. I can assure you they do not want to live in one bedroom 800 sq ft condos staring into their neighbor’s front room from less than 20 feet away, for the rest of their lives. Is our dearly little town planning on building larger more expensive housing for this group? Not in this lifetime–the communists running our city want every human being to be absolutely equal.
The second group of new arrivals in our town are the young techies or college grads who want to live in the mountains. I promise you they want a little more besides high speed internet service to their 800 sq foot condo.
The next group we have showing up under the cover of nighttime are folks with very limited English language skills. After all it was only several years ago that our city council declared this a “Sanctuary City”. Now tell me–what do you think they are going to feel about an 800sq ft condo with limited rent requirements and a free right to work pass?
You see the deceit here? The developers want these government monies to build that type of housing–as much of it as a space can hold. Yeah baby, they are in partnership with Habitat for Humanity, the Catholic Church charity and whatever other “noble” group that will front them. The basic fact is that we are giving up some of the finest agricultural land in this country in order to pack in illegal immigrants.
The last I heard the three elements essential for human survival are:
FIRST–WATER. WATER. WATER. WATER
SECOND–FOOD. FOOD. FOOD. FOOD.
Third–shelter.
Tell me again why we are taking in hundreds of thousands of &*^% (people) from warmer countries with more water and better growing conditions, so that we can build houses for them on our AGRICULTURAL LANDS?
Don’t Americans need water and food?
Here you go. Read it and weep: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#inbox/WhctKKZGdHxXBDVjkMZCgkTjtxrZZDbvxndWFxKfwvkqsKJtwzXSZlQcLhHGLmCkKnhhwfB
richf:
Prisons are not just for “housing” people away from the general population – they are also for locking them in and guarding them so they can’t get out. The people in “housing first” programs are free to go where they want and do what they want. They are not sleeping on the street, but that’s hardly analogous to a prison. It’s analogous to having a free or very low-cost apartment.
@Art Deco:To qualify under the circumstances you quoted …
It’s ok not to know everything. What you said was false, take the L, move on… These people I’m talking about are the topic of this thread, they are already outliers in many ways, they are disproportionately responsible for all kinds of costs on society ESPECIALLY government programs like Medicare and you cannot define them away just to avoid admitting you didn’t know something.
they receive a tad over $600 a month in benefits on average.
“Average” is not the same as “typical”. Lots of these people are extremely expensive. If they didn’t exist the average would be substantially lower. When we’re talking about the homeless we are already talking about people who are statistical outliers and the “average” is simply irrelevant.
This is not a population segment of much social significance.
They are of huge FINANCIAL significance, especially the dual eligibles.
I imagine you can locate a few who are benefits of this minor component
But they draw a hugely disproportionate share of health care dollars. Which is an excuse for why money is being thrown at them through health insurance. Which is why we’re talking about them at all. We know there’s only a tiny percentage of homeless people, but they impose huge and outsize costs on society.
You have a great opportunity here to learn some of the facts that you’re missing which help explain why homelessness is such a screwed up issue.
People enrolled in both Medicare and Medicaid comprise 17% of Medicare beneficiaries in traditional Medicare and 14% of Medicaid enrollees, but much higher shares of spending (33% of traditional Medicare spending and 32% of Medicaid spending).
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People enrolled in both Medicare and Medicaid are called, colloquially, ‘nursing home residents’.
But they draw a hugely disproportionate share of health care dollars.
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You’re talking about 107,000 people.
@Art Deco:People enrolled in both Medicare and Medicaid are called, colloquially, ‘nursing home residents’.
40% of duals are under age 65 and about 90% of them are not in long-term or institutional care.
Snark and stereotypes don’t cover up a lack of information…. Other people though, assuming anyone else has been following, have probably learned some things they didn’t know and can follow the links I posted and then do some learning on their own.