Axulus
Veteran Member
Seattle does not seem to be making any progress with homelessness, despite spending ~$1 billion per year on the problem (in the Seattle metro area). ("That’s nearly $100,000 for every homeless man, woman, and child in King County, yet the crisis seems only to have deepened, with more addiction, more crime, and more tent encampments in residential neighborhoods."). The number of homeless has increased in Seattle over the past 5 years.
63% of the homeless in the city refuse shelter in the city when offered. 39.5% say they refuse because there are "too many rules" in the shelters and 32.6% say they refuse because they shelters are "too crowded."
This leaves thousands of people living on the streets and in tent cities. Seattle allows these tent cities to persist in public parks. Additionally, Seattle takes a lax enforcement approach to crimes committed by the homeless, including littering, public drug use, public disturbances and misdemeanor property damage, often dropping the cases or simply not writing any citation in the first place.
As a result, there are many public areas in Seattle that the public can not enter due to being crowded with homeless people, and the places are often left filthy due to lack of trash clean up and rampant drug use (needles all over the place).
Some have cited the high and rising rents in Seattle as the primary driver for homelessness, but the evidence for this is scarce.
"According to King County’s point-in-time study, only 6 percent of homeless people surveyed cited “could not afford rent increase” as the precipitating cause of their situation, pointing instead to a wide range of other problems—domestic violence, incarceration, mental illness, family conflict, medical conditions, breakups, eviction, addiction, and job loss—as bigger factors. Further, while the Zillow study did find correlation between rising rents and homelessness in four major markets—Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, D.C.—it also found that homelessness decreased despite rising rents in Houston, Tampa, Chicago, Phoenix, St. Louis, San Diego, Portland, Detroit, Baltimore, Atlanta, Charlotte, and Riverside. Rent increases are a real burden for the working poor, but the evidence suggests that higher rents alone don’t push people onto the streets.
Even in a pricey city like Seattle, most working- and middle-class residents respond to economic incentives in logical ways: relocating to less expensive neighborhoods, downsizing to smaller apartments, taking in roommates, moving in with family, or leaving the city altogether. King County is home to more than 1 million residents earning below the median income, and 99 percent of them manage to find a place to live and pay the rent on time."
And the amount of spending on medical and mental health services should be sufficient:
"Seattle and King County currently spend nearly $460 million a year on addiction and mental-health services, plus another $119 million a year on medical services specifically for the homeless"
On the other hand, Houston has taken a different tactic:
"In Houston, local leaders have reduced homelessness by 60 percent through a combination of providing services and enforcing a zero-tolerance policy for street camping, panhandling, trespassing, and property crimes."
Also, in Houston:
"While I was mayor, Houston led the nation in reducing homelessness between 2011 and 2015, the direct result of adopting a comprehensive regional plan that embraced best practices, while requiring an unprecedented level of collaboration between stakeholders. When we started we knew our overall population was about 10,000, with roughly 2,500 chronically homeless. The first and most important step was understanding who they were. And that highlights a crucial factor. We talk about “the homeless,” when in fact these are individuals with names and needs.
We surveyed the men and women on our streets to find out who had physical, mental or addiction problems, who was a veteran, who had been in jail. We tracked how many emergency room visits they’d had and for what. We asked how long they had been homeless, but also when they had last worked and whether they had resources such as VA benefits or Social Security.
Then we estimated how much we were spending to not solve the problem. We calculated a cost of $103 million in public resources annually (police, EMS, street/park cleanup, emergency room costs, etc.) on just the chronically homeless! Adding in the costs of shelters for the short-term homeless and the services — from meals to showers to case managed apartments — provided by the nonprofits was staggering. We didn’t attempt to calculate impacts on property values or lost business in areas of high concentration.
When we knew who we were serving and how much we were spending, I convened significant stakeholders — government, providers and funders — and offered a plan."
It seems like Houston's approach is far more successful.
https://www.city-journal.org/seattle-homelessness
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.co...essness-solutions-houston-20171020-story.html
63% of the homeless in the city refuse shelter in the city when offered. 39.5% say they refuse because there are "too many rules" in the shelters and 32.6% say they refuse because they shelters are "too crowded."
This leaves thousands of people living on the streets and in tent cities. Seattle allows these tent cities to persist in public parks. Additionally, Seattle takes a lax enforcement approach to crimes committed by the homeless, including littering, public drug use, public disturbances and misdemeanor property damage, often dropping the cases or simply not writing any citation in the first place.
As a result, there are many public areas in Seattle that the public can not enter due to being crowded with homeless people, and the places are often left filthy due to lack of trash clean up and rampant drug use (needles all over the place).
Some have cited the high and rising rents in Seattle as the primary driver for homelessness, but the evidence for this is scarce.
"According to King County’s point-in-time study, only 6 percent of homeless people surveyed cited “could not afford rent increase” as the precipitating cause of their situation, pointing instead to a wide range of other problems—domestic violence, incarceration, mental illness, family conflict, medical conditions, breakups, eviction, addiction, and job loss—as bigger factors. Further, while the Zillow study did find correlation between rising rents and homelessness in four major markets—Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, D.C.—it also found that homelessness decreased despite rising rents in Houston, Tampa, Chicago, Phoenix, St. Louis, San Diego, Portland, Detroit, Baltimore, Atlanta, Charlotte, and Riverside. Rent increases are a real burden for the working poor, but the evidence suggests that higher rents alone don’t push people onto the streets.
Even in a pricey city like Seattle, most working- and middle-class residents respond to economic incentives in logical ways: relocating to less expensive neighborhoods, downsizing to smaller apartments, taking in roommates, moving in with family, or leaving the city altogether. King County is home to more than 1 million residents earning below the median income, and 99 percent of them manage to find a place to live and pay the rent on time."
And the amount of spending on medical and mental health services should be sufficient:
"Seattle and King County currently spend nearly $460 million a year on addiction and mental-health services, plus another $119 million a year on medical services specifically for the homeless"
On the other hand, Houston has taken a different tactic:
"In Houston, local leaders have reduced homelessness by 60 percent through a combination of providing services and enforcing a zero-tolerance policy for street camping, panhandling, trespassing, and property crimes."
Also, in Houston:
"While I was mayor, Houston led the nation in reducing homelessness between 2011 and 2015, the direct result of adopting a comprehensive regional plan that embraced best practices, while requiring an unprecedented level of collaboration between stakeholders. When we started we knew our overall population was about 10,000, with roughly 2,500 chronically homeless. The first and most important step was understanding who they were. And that highlights a crucial factor. We talk about “the homeless,” when in fact these are individuals with names and needs.
We surveyed the men and women on our streets to find out who had physical, mental or addiction problems, who was a veteran, who had been in jail. We tracked how many emergency room visits they’d had and for what. We asked how long they had been homeless, but also when they had last worked and whether they had resources such as VA benefits or Social Security.
Then we estimated how much we were spending to not solve the problem. We calculated a cost of $103 million in public resources annually (police, EMS, street/park cleanup, emergency room costs, etc.) on just the chronically homeless! Adding in the costs of shelters for the short-term homeless and the services — from meals to showers to case managed apartments — provided by the nonprofits was staggering. We didn’t attempt to calculate impacts on property values or lost business in areas of high concentration.
When we knew who we were serving and how much we were spending, I convened significant stakeholders — government, providers and funders — and offered a plan."
It seems like Houston's approach is far more successful.
https://www.city-journal.org/seattle-homelessness
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.co...essness-solutions-houston-20171020-story.html
