EAllusion wrote:Markk -
I think you keep missing Gadianton's point. A 23% spike requires a causal explanation for why that number of people became homeless when they weren't before. The city as a whole didn't grow that fast. Your own links strongly suggest the main driver in the recent change is changes in housing prices. You contend that it is something else. In your defense, I'd say that while 23% sounds like a lot, in absolute numbers, it's only about 10k people in a city of millions. It is possible that a worsening drug epidemic, etc. could cause cause a spike on that order. But you do nothing to establish it.
I sincerely doubt there was that much of a change in the number of people exiting the foster care system to produce the change.
Of course
you very easily understand the point. I held off responding to you but I see now that for whatever reasons, Markk will not be following this point any time soon. In his latest post he asserts again, as if I don't get it, "I'm pointing out that it's lot's of factors, not just rent!". I realize there are lots of factors, and that a large number of people in our society are one or two paychecks away from being homeless. I also realize that once homeless, getting a job without an address and getting new accommodations without references or stable income is extremely difficult. However, it's also true that many folks on this lowest rung are only "stable" insofar as they have exactly the housing that they currently have, and if they had to go out and find a new place, even while currently being housed, it would be difficult. What Mark seems especially resistant to accepting is that many on this lowest rung are irresponsible, using drugs, but yet still able to manage paying the rent for their current housing. Their situation is volatile and a change from virtually any facet of their life will put them on the street. Well, suddenly, 23% more of these volatile situations explode. Why? Why in 2016 and not in 2015 or 2014? THAT is the first question we are trying to answer, one that Markk seems especially determined to avoid.
I even tried to draw an analogy between housing supply and the supply of something simple like a fan, and he ignored everything I said and turned it around, "Hey do you have any idea what homeless people are like when it's hot! you ain't seen nothin' yet!"
Let's return to the heat wave in SoCal back in 2006. There were many factors that explained why my family suffered that week and I nearly had a medical crisis on my hands. One might argue that the biggest problem was that I was personally unprepared. It's a bad habit of mine. I owned a single small fan, and even prior to the heat wave, I'd been nagged at to get more fans and I'd put it off. Well, the really bad day came and there was not a single fan I could get within hundreds of miles-- not even online for next day delivery.
What then, is the most direct factor that caused my problem? I apparently wasn't alone in my psychological inability to be prepared. No doubt, thousands of others also faced empty shelves. Is our first priority, then, to get life counseling for myself and all these thousands of others to be more prepared in life such that we already have our fans and don't need to raid the shelves at the last minute when the next heat wave comes? Or is it to re-stock the shelves?
The answer is to restock the shelves first, and then work on being more prepared, which is a far more difficult and long term problem to solve. It's fascinating that Markk, who has this huge vested interest in getting the homeless out from his face, is so dead set on painting the problem as one that's impossible to fix. If I were Markk, I'd first explore the low-hanging fruit. I'd say, "hey, this article that I blindly believe is accurate in reporting 28% increase in homelessness also says that the main contribution to the
crisis (the INCREASE from previous years, when people were also lazy and drug addicts etc) is rent hikes, and I should at least give that the benefit of the doubt, because if this is correct, then that means the quickest path to getting the homeless out from my face is to return them to their situation from 2015."
Yes, it's understood that it's tough to undo what's been done. Had a family member gone to the hospital prior to me procuring more fans, the fans would be a hollow victory. Getting people into stable housing after losing their housing isn't trivial, but it's less non-trivial than fixing their life problems that put them at risk in the first place -- it's by far, the quickest path to getting them out of Markk's face so he doesn't have to see them. Instead of first at least entertaining what his own articles said about the planned solution, he's demanding a war on drugs and so on, and it's really hard to believe he isn't just venting, rather than really being serious.
And there is some serious irony in a major blindspot he has. His profession is to fix up crappy areas of town. He complains that he found some hideaway with 14k needles and all kinds of other horrible things. He had to personally clean all that out. Somehow, he doesn't put it together that here was a crappy place, a dark spot in the city-scape where perhaps a dozen or so homeless people were doing their dark deeds out from his view. Now that he has cleaned all that out, there is one less dark corner for them to do their thing in, so where do they go?
The homeless are all up in Markk's face in part because that's where he himself is literally putting them.
I'm not saying that Markk should change his profession or not cleanup the town. But let's be reasonable here, and entertain the point the LA Times article made in the article Markk himself cited. If people lose their dark corners they'll continue to do what they'd been doing in the light.