Scott Alexander makes a similar point in his post Too Much Dark Money in Almonds, arguing that the main reason why people do not donate much more money to politics and charity is because there is a public goods problem and lack of a coordinating mechanism: “People just can’t coordinate. If everyone who cared about homelessness donated $100 to the problem, homelessness would be solved. Nobody does this, because they know that nobody else is going to do it, and their $100 is just going to feel like a tiny drop in the ocean that doesn’t change anything.”
I don’t think Scott is talking about the bay area in that quote, is he?
(ETA: also if his estimate is per year then I think it’s similar to the report you quoted, which estimates $700M/year to provide shelter to all of the homeless at a cost of ~$25k/person/year, so that seems like another plausible source of discrepancy.)
Over the whole US, the initial capital costs would still be much higher than $100/person, I think, but annualized makes more sense. (See this article which gives a similar annualized figure over the whole US.) I added a clarification to my comment.
But if $100/person/year is low enough that most people would prefer to have everyone just pay that to solve homelessness, it becomes a bigger puzzle why people don’t just vote that into policy.
Scott Alexander makes a similar point in his post Too Much Dark Money in Almonds, arguing that the main reason why people do not donate much more money to politics and charity is because there is a public goods problem and lack of a coordinating mechanism: “People just can’t coordinate. If everyone who cared about homelessness donated $100 to the problem, homelessness would be solved. Nobody does this, because they know that nobody else is going to do it, and their $100 is just going to feel like a tiny drop in the ocean that doesn’t change anything.”
Off by an order of magnitude. (ETA: Unless Scott meant “annually”.) Sources: 1 2
I don’t think Scott is talking about the bay area in that quote, is he?
(ETA: also if his estimate is per year then I think it’s similar to the report you quoted, which estimates $700M/year to provide shelter to all of the homeless at a cost of ~$25k/person/year, so that seems like another plausible source of discrepancy.)
Over the whole US, the initial capital costs would still be much higher than $100/person, I think, but annualized makes more sense. (See this article which gives a similar annualized figure over the whole US.) I added a clarification to my comment.
But if $100/person/year is low enough that most people would prefer to have everyone just pay that to solve homelessness, it becomes a bigger puzzle why people don’t just vote that into policy.