How much would housing have to fall, for a homeless person to get themselves a 1br? 75%? Are there really people on the streets because they had a spare $1000 a month, but couldn't find anything, so they said screw it I'll shoot up heroine from a tent instead?
A home Depot shed isn't crazy. Just need a communal bathroom area and honestly that's about what most houses were like for most people just a century ago.
I think it’s fine but having sufficient separation from other sheds is hard because a lot of people are smoking and cooking meth/lith so fires are happening a lot.
We have a natural experiment going on just 50 miles to the south, in San Jose. New mayor Matt Mahan won by promising "pragmatic" solutions to homelessness, including building very cheap housing for them, and putting them to work cleaning up the city
Compared to homelessness, a park of refurbished naval cargo containers with common bathrooms/kitchens would be livable, plus steel containers are really hard to destroy.
Look at it this way, there are definitely people homeless because it's not possible to afford somewhere to live on the wages they can earn. It's also really hard to keep a job when you're living out of your car. People in a situation like that often give up, or experience depression that they try to self-medicate using addictive substances.
Who decides to be homeless instead of getting a room in Tracy CA and driving?
Or just renting a room in Tracy CA for $500 and working any menial job in town?
There are two distinct sets of homeless people: the ones passing through a homeless phase (many car-inhabitants in this group; shower at the gym; they work); and those with substance and/or (usually ‘and’) mental health issues (the ones you see everywhere in SF).
The first group gets through it, finds a job or a $20 greyhound fare to somewhere they have family, or where they can afford a home on what they can earn. The second group is stuck.
Treating these as though they are a homogenous group is super pointless. For one thing, the systems in place do support the first category and make it possible for them to escape homelessness. The second group — I’ll just say this: it’s not uncommon for Hollywood celebrities, who have access to infinite money and the most people who care intensely about them to help them get into rehab, to have massive substance and MH problems, and to OD or die by suicide. If they can’t even be helped, what amount of money and skilled intervention will cure every meth addict on the SF streets plus the new ones who arrive every day? (Without violating their civil rights by forcing them to get treatment)
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