The picture looks like evidence there is something very weird going on that is not reflected in the numbers or arguments provided. There are homeless encampments in many countries around the world, but very rarely 20 min walk from anyone’s office.
Yeah, I liked the post overall, but the rest of it seemed entirely unrelated to the picture and the claim that this is a success story for economics. I was expecting it to come back and explain the connection, but it seemed to never do.
The intended takeaway was “availability heuristic can deceive you; growth is real and important; if you just look out the window you might miss it.” There are some polls (which I can’t find after a minute of searching, unfortunately) showing how most Britons perceive extreme poverty to be increasing, which is just wrong. (At least, definitely wrong before COVID, maybe COVID was a shock for this metric)
Okay. As someone living in a major city where street homelessness has mostly been solved, it doesn’t manage to convey that message to me. Even if there’s been more growth than the sight of those people might suggest, the growth clearly hasn’t benefited them as much as it has benefited homeless people in places that seem to have better policy.
My cached answer is “Bay area zoning”, but I honestly haven’t looked into it in great depth. There’s a 3-tent encampment literally 20 seconds from the office where I’m at right now in downtown Berkeley.
I think overregulation of land is indeed responsible for high rents and many other problems, but it’s not the main factor in homelessness. Many Western cities with high rents still have much fewer homeless than the Bay Area. There are counterexamples in the other direction too: Moscow in the 90s had a lot of questionably legal construction and a lot of homeless.
Maybe the Bay Area homelessness situation is caused by US society being unwilling to house and feed the homeless in cheaper areas? That might be a simpler explanation, but I don’t know enough.
The picture looks like evidence there is something very weird going on that is not reflected in the numbers or arguments provided. There are homeless encampments in many countries around the world, but very rarely 20 min walk from anyone’s office.
Yeah, I liked the post overall, but the rest of it seemed entirely unrelated to the picture and the claim that this is a success story for economics. I was expecting it to come back and explain the connection, but it seemed to never do.
The intended takeaway was “availability heuristic can deceive you; growth is real and important; if you just look out the window you might miss it.” There are some polls (which I can’t find after a minute of searching, unfortunately) showing how most Britons perceive extreme poverty to be increasing, which is just wrong. (At least, definitely wrong before COVID, maybe COVID was a shock for this metric)
Okay. As someone living in a major city where street homelessness has mostly been solved, it doesn’t manage to convey that message to me. Even if there’s been more growth than the sight of those people might suggest, the growth clearly hasn’t benefited them as much as it has benefited homeless people in places that seem to have better policy.
Thanks. I added a bit to the transition between the encampment photo and the charts. Hopefully the intended message is clearer now.
Cool, it is! :)
My cached answer is “Bay area zoning”, but I honestly haven’t looked into it in great depth. There’s a 3-tent encampment literally 20 seconds from the office where I’m at right now in downtown Berkeley.
I think overregulation of land is indeed responsible for high rents and many other problems, but it’s not the main factor in homelessness. Many Western cities with high rents still have much fewer homeless than the Bay Area. There are counterexamples in the other direction too: Moscow in the 90s had a lot of questionably legal construction and a lot of homeless.
Maybe the Bay Area homelessness situation is caused by US society being unwilling to house and feed the homeless in cheaper areas? That might be a simpler explanation, but I don’t know enough.