@“Cardinal Fang” , it’s a new problem because the 26 year old city law against living in your vehicle was recently rescinded due to a lawsuit claiming the law was discriminatory to the disabled because shelters couldn’t accommodate their disabilities. The courts decided the law was too vague. So the police are no longer able to charge such squatters.
Based on reporting and interviews, these people just like living in the most expensive part of the city for free. They have no desire to live in other housing when they can have oceanfront property, endangering the residents who saved for years to be able to buy their homes and who pay high property taxes for the privilege. Yes, rents are very high in California but so are rents in any highly desirable area like Manhattan and Boston among others. Those in vans are definitely not young working adults who can’t afford rent. They are people who have discovered that they can live anywhere they want and do anything they want without normal social care and considerations. There is affordable housing in the greater county area, but far from the beach.
The city is putting together a new law but a small contingent will challenge it too. The city is also considering setting up additional overnight parking locations with access to sanitary facilities and counseling, but the people that @Coralbrook described will not go there because they are not interested in getting support; they’re satisfied with their current lifestyle. San Diego keeps trying to offer help (large tents for the homeless, storage facilities so they can safely store their belongings while seeking jobs and services, homeless family subsidized housing, meals and health services for humans and pets, etc.). But getting help to those who don’t want it and won’t accept it but can’t legally be moved from wherever they choose to place themselves is extraordinary difficult. And available funding only goes so far.
Some communities have set up private security teams to control the street homeless. Our little beach community has started a campaign to take back the streets from those sleeping all over the parks and sidewalks by turning up in force and walking the street and letting business owners know they have support.
@TatinG – that’s a solution, for sure, if in fact the homeless are attracted to these cities because of lax anti drug laws. But then, the residents of these cities need to face the fact of higher taxes to pay for more jails, police, prisons, etc., that will be needed as result.
@“Cardinal Fang”
The homeless can’t afford “affordable housing” - they have nothing (at least that’s the expectation considering their circumstances). I think you really mean “free housing”.
Taxpayers are already subsidizing affordable housing and an additional $200 billion + a year on other welfare benefits - and the unfortunate reality is that if we had to help those who are truly in need, it would cost less than half that.
People don’t want to acknowledge it for fear of being labeled cruel or inhumane, but human nature is what it is - there are people in this world who will take advantage of the system if they can.
Lock up mentally ill people who are not drug addicts in locked psychiatric facilities.
For people who are homeless because they can’t afford housing, “counsel” them and direct them to the place that offers cheap housing and abundant jobs for low-skill, marginal employees.
OK, prisons exist, although most people nowadays don’t think that sending addicts there is a good use of our money. But the locked psychiatric facilities don’t exist and even if they did it would be illegal to send people there in most circumstances, and the not-in-my-backyard areas that offer cheap housing and abundant jobs for low-skill workers also do not exist.
I understand the appeal of the lock them up or ship them out “solution.” We don’t want to see the homeless. But it’s not a solution.
My son is marginally employable. He has found it tough to find jobs, but after months-long job searches he has found low skill, low pay part-time jobs. He would not have been able to afford housing in the SF Bay Area on the wages he was paid. Plenty of people who want to work are even less employable than he is. What are these people supposed to do? Suppose my son didn’t have his parents? Where should he have been shipped off?
That’s not necessarily true for the people who live in RVs on the streets of Mountain View CA, or in their cars else where in the Bay Area. Many have jobs! There are people who work at Google and sleep in their cars. There are adjunct professors who sleep in their cars; some of their students sleep in their cars too.
It is unlikely the excrement left on public streets or the inhabitation of public parks is due to Google employees, adjunct professors, or college students. While all those people may technically qualify as homeless, it does not appear they are responsible for the degradation of common space.
There are homeless people who can’t work, because of behavioural or mental problems, but are not so ill that they need psychiatric confinement.
It’s a tough problem.
I don’t think there is any one solution.
I do think there are ways to whittle away at the size of the problem though.
Help the ones that can be helped.
Be firm with the ones abusing the system by choice - they are taking up resources that could go to the truly needy.
Tough problems often require tough solutions.
If it was easy to do we’d already have done it.
This article talks about homeless people living in RVs in San Diego. A program for the homeless has set up parking lots for people living in their vehicles, including one lot that allows RVs. The people who park their RVs in the lot have jobs, but the jobs don’t pay enough for the people to get housing.
The article says that rooms for rent in the San Diego area start at $800/month. The minimum wage in California is $11/hour, and it’s quite difficult to find a minimum wage job that offers 40 hours a week. So say a person works 25 hours a week at the minimum wage; they make $1100 a month (which will vary month to month, because minimum wage jobs usually have varying schedules). That’s not enough to pay for an $800 room; the landlord is going to rent it to someone who has a more reliable income.
The point is, in coastal California, being earnestly willing to work, and working the best job you can find, is not going to be a guarantee that you can afford housing. It just isn’t, no matter how much you fulminate about laziness. I know what it’s like for a low skilled person to look for a job here, because my son has done it. If you’re a low skilled employed person, your situation is always going to be precarious, and you’ll always be one tiny piece of bad luck away from homelessness.
that is true, Cardinal, so the best solution for such people might be to leave Coastal California, lovely though it is. Sane people move all the time for better or more affordable living conditions. When enough low-paid workers leave, demand for such workers and their limited supply will indeed push up low wages. All of which is good, but completely irrelevant to the vast majority of the homeless sleeping in the parks and the beaches, who lack the mental stability to maintain their own sanitation, much less employment. Starbucks could offer $30/hour, and it wouldn’t solve your park problem.
“OK, prisons exist, although most people nowadays don’t think that sending addicts there is a good use of our money. But the locked psychiatric facilities don’t exist and even if they did it would be illegal to send people there in most circumstances, and the not-in-my-backyard areas that offer cheap housing and abundant jobs for low-skill workers also do not exist.”
Psychiatric facilities would at least have doctors who are supposed to know the problems. What is the alternative, leave them on the streets. Put them in housing of some sort and expect them to function on their own? Prisons probably shouldn’t be the end place for drug addicts but neither should the streets. I have no problem having half way houses or treatment facilities but they are (or should be) breaking the law. Jail is where they would stay if they chose not to be treated not the streets.
As for your second post. I agree. These areas are gentrification at it’s finest. It’s not neighborhoods that are gentrified it’s entire cities. I live in Ohio and I would be homeless in most of these areas. Here, I live a modest but quite nice life. We have the same issues here but just on a MUCH smaller scale. Recently in Cincinnati they demanded a tent city shut down and offered everyone a spot in the shelter. There was a court fight over it and in my opinion luckily the city won. It’s not that the city doesn’t have a place for these people they just wanted to keep their spot overlooking the Ohio river.
If you listen to people in Mountain View, which just voted to throw out the RV and car dwellers, the working homeless are responsible for the degradation of common space. The cities around Mountain View had already done thrown out vehicle dwellers.
I frequently ride my bike past rows of RVs and cars that people live in. It appears that the residents are doing their best, but there’s no doubt the dilapidated vehicles are unsightly. I suppose the people who live in dwellings near there think the vehicles are degrading the public space.
The vehicularly housed in Mountain View are not like the squatters in beach towns. Nobody is parking along the train tracks because they like the scenic view. They set up there because they can’t find space elsewhere.
Of course, making it a police / jail / prison problem will make it more expensive on your tax dollars, as well as reduce the attention that police / jail / prison can give to more dangerous crime problems. Also, the last war on drugs brought things like aggressive asset forfeiture without needing a conviction with it.
We have many homeless from all over that like our mild climate but can’t afford housing and other costs. People come to our state with one way plane tickets or cancel their return ticket because it’s so pretty—then find out it’s super expensive.
Some folks also are unemployable due to hidden chronic medical conditions. Our D would be homeless if we weren’t paying 100% of her bills all her life. Due to chronic health issues, she has never had a full-time job. She does have a college degree and no mental health issues.
@“Cardinal Fang”
Google employees or adjunct professors sleeping in their cars or living in an RV temporarily is not what we’ve been talking about. We’re talking about the increase of homeless encampments in major cities, and the drifters out on the streets suffering frigid temperatures and extreme heat. Yes… technically you’re right - the definition of “homeless” is “the state of having no home” - but this thread wasn’t started to discuss the growing crisis of adjunct professors sleeping in their cars. Don’t move the goalposts.
There are two different issues with two different potential solutions. One is homelessness of those who don’t earn enough to afford rent. The other relates to drug addicts, drunks, and the mentally ill.
As for the Bay Area and Seattle, the tech companies should be encouraged to expand into areas where housing is lower cost. Then their employees wouldn’t be living in RVs on the street. The pressure on housing costs would lessen.
Not entire cities, but entire regions. The area from San Francisco to San Jose, a strip fifty miles long bounded on two sides by the bay and on one side by mountains, lacks affordable housing. There is no city in that entire area where the median house price is much less than a million bucks. In East Palo Alto, long considered a blighted area, the median house price is $983,680 according to Zillow, and these houses are closer to shacks than mansions.
We need to build more housing at all price levels here. I’m hoping that people who currently own houses will realize that their children can’t live here, and act to relax zoning and building regulations.
My son now lives in Michigan. He rents a lovely one bedroom apartment in a historic neighborhood for $550/month. To someone who lives in the Bay Area, this is incomprehensibly cheap, but a resident told me that prices have gone up recently and she’s worried that people are being priced out. (And I’m thinking, $550/month? Buy two and keep one in the freezer.)
I’m not pretending I have all the answers, but the last thing we want to do is put more drug dealers and users in prison. I hope we’ve learned by now that it doesn’t solve anything. And obviously this is a huge problem and I wouldn’t want it in my area. And I know there are people out there who are homeless by choice - just do some googling. But I’m sure many of us, and some have shared, love people who without family and friend support could be living on the streets.
And please, no need to degrade addicts. You can believe drug addiction and alcoholism are always a choice, but i personally find it offensive.
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