Here’s a question I don’t know the answer to. If there was a program offering a basic income to homeless people, enough to pay for housing+food+clothes+etc in a cheaper area of the US without having to find work, but to receive the money you have to actually move there and get housed—would most homeless people accept the offer and move? I ask because it seems like such a program could be pretty cheap. Or would most of them prefer to stay in cities even at the cost of being homeless? If so, what would be the main reasons?
My understanding is that most homeless people are ‘local’ to the area. That is, the majority were already residents of a city before becoming homeless and for a variety of common sense reasons would not want to leave. They know the physical and social geography of their area. They have family or other deep ties. They know which shelters are open at which times, which areas to avoid, where to get dinner on a Thursday. Where it’s relatively safe to sleep outside, etc.
Promising a person that if they move they’ll be provided for means they lose whatever social network they have and requires trust that such a promise will be fulfilled and they won’t be stranded in a worse situation.
That understanding is based on a handful of evenings volunteering at a local homeless shelter, conversations with a friend who is heavily involved in the non-profit world of homelessness, and a layman’s interest in housing policy.
Yeah, I see. Thinking more about this, they’d be right to mistrust this kind of offer. It feels like the only real solution is the hard one: making sure there’s enough low-income housing in cities.
There’s some UC San Francisco research to back up this view. California has the nation’s biggest homeless population mainly due to unaffordable housing, not migration from elsewhere for a nicer climate.
Relatively healthy people do occasionally become homeless due to misfortune, but they usually don’t stay homeless. It could be someone from the lower class living paycheck to paycheck who has a surprise expense they’re not insured for and can’t make rent. It could be a battered woman and her children escaping domestic abuse. They get services, they get back on their feet, they get housed. Ideally, the social safety nets would work faster and better than they do in practice, but the system basically works out for them.
The persistently homeless are a different story. They’re often mentally ill and/or addicted to drugs. They don’t have the will or capacity to take advantage of the available services. In the past, such people were often institutionalized. These institutions often didn’t act in their best interests, but it at least kept them off the streets so they couldn’t harass the rest of us. Your proposal probably wouldn’t help for them.
Probably depends on the specifics. Access to employment and services is a fair one; if you have a job and significant medical needs (and being homeless tends to give you significant medical needs), then moving to somewhere that doesn’t provide them is unhelpful. Similarly, just because you have the money, there needs to be a certain degree of work for a community to support something like a grocery store to spend it at. Moving to Alaska for example is likely to sharply increase what food actually costs if you aren’t up to homesteading.
And a lot of the ‘cheaper parts of the US’ (like Alaska) have climate-related challenges to maintaining a safe home, food, etc. Additionally, they might not be on the grid. Their water may be poisoned due to local pollution. Old mines might make the ground unsafe to inhabit. City land may actually be cheaper to establish affordable housing on when you add up all the costs of trying to provide good power, water, sanitation, and ensure the house doesn’t just fall into a sinkhole at some point. Not everywhere is inhabitable without work that you might not be able to do.
That said, there’s people it’d be great for, and ‘just give people houses’ is a very solid approach. If you think you can pull it off, I’d certainly go for it. Even if it didn’t work for everyone, imagine how much help it would be if it worked for even 10% of people, and you’re only paying for the ones it does help.
Here’s a question I don’t know the answer to. If there was a program offering a basic income to homeless people, enough to pay for housing+food+clothes+etc in a cheaper area of the US without having to find work, but to receive the money you have to actually move there and get housed—would most homeless people accept the offer and move? I ask because it seems like such a program could be pretty cheap. Or would most of them prefer to stay in cities even at the cost of being homeless? If so, what would be the main reasons?
My understanding is that most homeless people are ‘local’ to the area. That is, the majority were already residents of a city before becoming homeless and for a variety of common sense reasons would not want to leave. They know the physical and social geography of their area. They have family or other deep ties. They know which shelters are open at which times, which areas to avoid, where to get dinner on a Thursday. Where it’s relatively safe to sleep outside, etc.
Promising a person that if they move they’ll be provided for means they lose whatever social network they have and requires trust that such a promise will be fulfilled and they won’t be stranded in a worse situation.
That understanding is based on a handful of evenings volunteering at a local homeless shelter, conversations with a friend who is heavily involved in the non-profit world of homelessness, and a layman’s interest in housing policy.
Yeah, I see. Thinking more about this, they’d be right to mistrust this kind of offer. It feels like the only real solution is the hard one: making sure there’s enough low-income housing in cities.
There’s some UC San Francisco research to back up this view. California has the nation’s biggest homeless population mainly due to unaffordable housing, not migration from elsewhere for a nicer climate.
Relatively healthy people do occasionally become homeless due to misfortune, but they usually don’t stay homeless. It could be someone from the lower class living paycheck to paycheck who has a surprise expense they’re not insured for and can’t make rent. It could be a battered woman and her children escaping domestic abuse. They get services, they get back on their feet, they get housed. Ideally, the social safety nets would work faster and better than they do in practice, but the system basically works out for them.
The persistently homeless are a different story. They’re often mentally ill and/or addicted to drugs. They don’t have the will or capacity to take advantage of the available services. In the past, such people were often institutionalized. These institutions often didn’t act in their best interests, but it at least kept them off the streets so they couldn’t harass the rest of us. Your proposal probably wouldn’t help for them.
Probably depends on the specifics. Access to employment and services is a fair one; if you have a job and significant medical needs (and being homeless tends to give you significant medical needs), then moving to somewhere that doesn’t provide them is unhelpful. Similarly, just because you have the money, there needs to be a certain degree of work for a community to support something like a grocery store to spend it at. Moving to Alaska for example is likely to sharply increase what food actually costs if you aren’t up to homesteading.
And a lot of the ‘cheaper parts of the US’ (like Alaska) have climate-related challenges to maintaining a safe home, food, etc. Additionally, they might not be on the grid. Their water may be poisoned due to local pollution. Old mines might make the ground unsafe to inhabit. City land may actually be cheaper to establish affordable housing on when you add up all the costs of trying to provide good power, water, sanitation, and ensure the house doesn’t just fall into a sinkhole at some point. Not everywhere is inhabitable without work that you might not be able to do.
That said, there’s people it’d be great for, and ‘just give people houses’ is a very solid approach. If you think you can pull it off, I’d certainly go for it. Even if it didn’t work for everyone, imagine how much help it would be if it worked for even 10% of people, and you’re only paying for the ones it does help.