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They can be "strongly advised" and their camps broken up. They will desire the homeless district of their own accord. See your bolded statement above.
I manage rental property. The section 8 vouchers do exist, there are tenants who use them long-term, and in my case at least they were/are always single mothers. Landlords do have the choice not to accept them, but there are many who do because, hey, the payment arrives promptly.
My point is that in just about every homeless encampment you see, they are predominantly single men. In days of yore, these men found themselves renting a cheap room in a former hotel, (which by then was a run down and obsolete hotel). Unfortunately, many of these cheap rooms and former obsolete hotels have disappeared, particularly in downtowns undergoing gentrification.
Yes there are section 8 vouchers, that part is true. In January 2018 45,000 people in Sac County applied for one and 7,000 were selected and placed on a waiting list 1-3 year waiting list. But they aren't available to be handed out to just any random family who asks for one. The 'solution' the Federal Government came up with for homeless families are rapid rehousing vouchers, which are time limited and as of a year ago only one apartment complex, in North Highlands was accepting them and they didn't have openings. And while they passed a law that landlords can't refuse to rent to someone with a voucher, I'm sure that as an apartment manager you know that there are at dozens of way to turn people away without getting in trouble.
And no, you can't strong arm or intimidate people to go to your "homeless district".
Yes there are section 8 vouchers, that part is true. In January 2018 45,000 people in Sac County applied for one and 7,000 were selected and placed on a waiting list 1-3 year waiting list. But they aren't available to be handed out to just any random family who asks for one. The 'solution' the Federal Government came up with for homeless families are rapid rehousing vouchers, which are time limited and as of a year ago only one apartment complex, in North Highlands was accepting them and they didn't have openings. And while they passed a law that landlords can't refuse to rent to someone with a voucher, I'm sure that as an apartment manager you know that there are at dozens of way to turn people away without getting in trouble.
And no, you can't strong arm or intimidate people to go to your "homeless district".
Ok so the section 8 housing voucher system is broken as well? Or demand just far outweighs the supply?
The generally more visible and more intrusive homeless that negatively impact our communities are mostly males as Nick says - why can't we strong arm them into some sort of centralized facility and triage them for the kind of help they need? I know the resources aren't immediately there but I'm sort of with Nick on this -- I'm at a loss of what else we can do with this particular group of homeless other than wait for wburg's long-term solutions of building more housing for everyone. That's going to take decades though. I want to feel more confident taking my kids to the parks and river and enjoy public amenities that I pay for and not have to deal with garbage heaps and drug paraphernalia and human waste and shady-ass characters that have set up shop in all these places.
As Nick said I'd be happy to pay into a tax that prioritizes housing for families and single mothers and those down on their luck that just fell through the cracks with a plan that actually takes action to - "strong arm" if you will - the drug addicted and mentally unstable and criminal element that refuses or is unable to participate in civilized society for whatever reason into a facility that deals with them.
Yes there are section 8 vouchers, that part is true. In January 2018 45,000 people in Sac County applied for one and 7,000 were selected and placed on a waiting list 1-3 year waiting list. But they aren't available to be handed out to just any random family who asks for one. The 'solution' the Federal Government came up with for homeless families are rapid rehousing vouchers, which are time limited and as of a year ago only one apartment complex, in North Highlands was accepting them and they didn't have openings. And while they passed a law that landlords can't refuse to rent to someone with a voucher, I'm sure that as an apartment manager you know that there are at dozens of way to turn people away without getting in trouble.
And yet, you hardly see any women or children homeless, with the notable exception of older "bag ladies". They remain men. Something isn't adding up in your assertion. The point is, that destitute women and children qualify for AFDC, food stamps and a host of other programs that destitute men do not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 2sleepy
And no, you can't strong arm or intimidate people to go to your "homeless district".
So vagrancy has become a civil right. And at that point, many people just say "F*ck it, we are moving out to the exurbs where there is none of this (or at least much less of this)....."
Ok so the section 8 housing voucher system is broken as well? Or demand just far outweighs the supply?
The generally more visible and more intrusive homeless that negatively impact our communities are mostly males as Nick says - why can't we strong arm them into some sort of centralized facility and triage them for the kind of help they need? I know the resources aren't immediately there but I'm sort of with Nick on this -- I'm at a loss of what else we can do with this particular group of homeless other than wait for wburg's long-term solutions of building more housing for everyone. That's going to take decades though. I want to feel more confident taking my kids to the parks and river and enjoy public amenities that I pay for and not have to deal with garbage heaps and drug paraphernalia and human waste and shady-ass characters that have set up shop in all these places.
As Nick said I'd be happy to pay into a tax that prioritizes housing for families and single mothers and those down on their luck that just fell through the cracks with a plan that actually takes action to - "strong arm" if you will - the drug addicted and mentally unstable and criminal element that refuses or is unable to participate in civilized society for whatever reason into a facility that deals with them.
I think they should construct big tents for the homeless singles, they might not want to stay in them but at least we could offer them a bed which would give the Police the authority to stop the proliferation of tent cities on our sidewalks and riverbanks. But given the wording of the court order you can't place them 50 miles away, they would have to be within reasonable proximity to where the homeless are currently sleeping.
And yes section 8 is a mess. These rapid rehousing vouchers are a good idea in concept, they were designed for families who are temporarily unemployed and homeless but have a path back to employment and will be able to make rent payments within the next year or so. But most of the homeless families have more complex problems, i.e. they are single parent families and there's probably little hope of the single parent being able to secure employment, or they have evictions on their record, or the bread winner has a felony record and can only find temp work. I would not want to rent an apartment to someone who has a record of evictions and there is only a promise that the rent will be paid by HUD for 6 months, would you? A homeless guy in Sac spent a year trying to get one, SRHA gave him a list of things he had to do, i.e. substance abuse treatment, and he complied with everything. He got the rapid rehousing voucher and applied for 60 different apartments and got turned down 60 times, eventually the voucher expired and AFAIK he's still on the street.
Wburg's solution is the only real long term one but it will never happen as long as people protest and file lawsuits over every low income housing project that is proposed. I think we would have better luck building housing on the Extended Stay model. Families live in those now, at least in the areas where rent in those hotels hasn't risen to $1800 a month like they have in Sac County.
They aren't in residential areas so that should shut up the NIMBY protesters. They are studio units with a kitchen, and bathroom and usually an area with a sofa and TV. They have wi-fi and a desk. Help the residents get whatever social services they are entitled to and then have them pay 30% of their SSI or VA check toward the rent. If they have no income they can perform a certain number of hours working at the facility; gardening, cleaning, maybe even watching after the kids of employed residents. I've always felt that people need to have a little skin in the game to have self respect. These units could work for people with kids too. Kids do not need their own bedrooms, until I was 6 my parents had a one bedroom house, my brother and I slept in the dining room and somehow survived)
And yet, you hardly see any women or children homeless, with the notable exception of older "bag ladies". They remain men. Something isn't adding up in your assertion. The point is, that destitute women and children qualify for AFDC, food stamps and a host of other programs that destitute men do not.
So vagrancy has become a civil right. And at that point, many people just say "F*ck it, we are moving out to the exurbs where there is none of this (or at least much less of this)....."
I see homeless families every day, most of them live in their car. AFDC is limited to 4 years, after that the only money they get is for the child which is a few hundred a month and yes they get SNAP benefits but I don't know about all these other programs. By the way, there are single parent families in which the father is the only parent and he is eligible for the same benefit as mothers are.
It was the Supreme Court who let a lower court finding stand, and that order is that unless you can provide a bed, people have a right to sleep in public places. I am not on the Supreme Court, so don't blame me for it. It came about because for decades no one has done anything about homelessness, they just ignored it until now when they are forced to find a solution. And this is not a new problem.
My husband used to work in San Francisco in the 90's and he had to pay homeless people to pick up the feces left in the doorway during the night by other homeless people. Reno used to have very few homeless on the streets; they mostly stayed in cheap motels- some with rent as low as $300-$400 a month. Developers bought the land, tore down the motels and constructed a few ugly statues where the motels were. Now they are begging the City to give them 20 million dollars and tax breaks to finish their 'project', as a result there are almost no cheap hotels and far more visible homeless in the City.
"AFDC" was abolished in 1997, it was replaced by the much more limited program TANF (Temporary Aid for Needy Families) and it obviously is only available for those with children (men or women) and, as the name implies, it's far more limited in what it provides and the length of time it lasts--a legacy of the 1990s dissolution of the social safety net. Food stamps are also available to both men and women, although because of laws passed to punish drug offenders, those with drug convictions are often ineligible to receive food stamps. Housing Choice Vouchers (AKA "section 8") are available to both men and women, the problem is that you have to be able to find a landlord willing to accept the voucher, and that's becoming increasingly difficult as rents go so high that the rent a landlord can expect to receive from a tenant is higher than they'll get from the voucher, even if the apartment is in poor condition. So the waiting list for HCVs is multiple years, and there are lots of folks on the street on that waiting list, and even if they get the voucher, there's no guarantee that you can find a landlord willing to accept it. Plus, if you have evictions on your record (and often people become unhoused because they were evicted) landlords are going to be much less likely to accept a tenant. So just saying "section 8 exists so nobody should be on the street" is a really, really inaccurate statement, in addition to claiming that people should apply for a government program that hasn't existed for a quarter of a century! Also, a significant percentage of the unhoused are women--depending on the state, between 20 and 40 percent. So it's equally disingenuous to declare that women on the streets don't exist or are a small and ignorable percentage, because they most definitely do exist in large numbers.
2sleepy, whether or not it's in a residential area has nothing to do with opposition: the lawsuits to stop the homeless program in a hotel in the River District was nowhere near any residential neighborhoods, they were filed by a real estate developer (who wants to eventually build luxury condos next door someday) and the business association (who don't want any more social services or programs of any kind in the River District, ever, under any circumstances.) The idea that only neighbors ever complain about things is patently false--a lot of the resistance to social programs, affordable housing etcetera comes from businesses and developers who own a lot of real estate and are a lot more concerned with property values than individual homeowners.
So those factors kind of throw a wrench in NickB's plans to "concentrate" unhoused people in some sort of "camp" where work will set them free. Because that's really what he's talking about--if people have to be forced inside, and not allowed to leave, it's not a "compassionate" anything, it's a prison, and restricting people's freedom of movement without due process isn't compassion, it's slavery.
Speaking of which, not being able to force people into these, well, "concentration camps" doesn't mean that living on the street is a protected civil right, it's because there are not enough shelter beds to hold all the people who need them, not by a wide margin. So, theoretically, if we built enough public housing and shelter beds and tiny homes and safe-ground campsites and SRO hotels, etcetera, that had enough capacity for the folks on the streets, then and only then do cities have the right to clear campgrounds, write tickets for public sleeping, etcetera. But if those spaces existed in significant quantity, most of the people currently unhoused would move into those spaces; the other big illusion here is the idea that everyone on the streets wants to be there. There are perhaps a small percentage that do, but if you offer safe, acceptable housing to most of the unhoused, they're going to want to take it, which means that the problem gets much, much smaller and easier to solve if you provide enough housing. That requires massive investments in things like social housing, and it's bad news for big nationwide rental firms and real estate developers that depend on housing scarcity to keep their prices high, but that's how you solve this problem, by addressing the root cause. The remaining folks on the street are a much, much smaller group. It is less satisfying to people who fantasize about being kapos, but that's okay by me.
2sleepy, whether or not it's in a residential area has nothing to do with opposition: the lawsuits to stop the homeless program in a hotel in the River District was nowhere near any residential neighborhoods, they were filed by a real estate developer (who wants to eventually build luxury condos next door someday) and the business association (who don't want any more social services or programs of any kind in the River District, ever, under any circumstances.) The idea that only neighbors ever complain about things is patently false--a lot of the resistance to social programs, affordable housing etcetera comes from businesses and developers who own a lot of real estate and are a lot more concerned with property values than individual homeowners.
You are 100% correct about that By the way, California removed the SNAP ban for people with drug convictions in 2015 or 2016; and that same law also precluded people with drug convictions from getting TANF as well. When a parent times out for TANF (4 years in California) or is undocumented, they can still receive what is called 'child only benefits', but it's far less than what would have been received if the parent was eligible. Nevada retained a modified restriction on TANF and SNAP for people with drug convictions, they are now eligible if they provide proof of completing a drug program.
"AFDC" was abolished in 1997, it was replaced by the much more limited program TANF (Temporary Aid for Needy Families) and it obviously is only available for those with children (men or women) and, as the name implies, it's far more limited in what it provides and the length of time it lasts--a legacy of the 1990s dissolution of the social safety net. Food stamps are also available to both men and women, although because of laws passed to punish drug offenders, those with drug convictions are often ineligible to receive food stamps. Housing Choice Vouchers (AKA "section 8") are available to both men and women, the problem is that you have to be able to find a landlord willing to accept the voucher, and that's becoming increasingly difficult as rents go so high that the rent a landlord can expect to receive from a tenant is higher than they'll get from the voucher, even if the apartment is in poor condition. So the waiting list for HCVs is multiple years, and there are lots of folks on the street on that waiting list, and even if they get the voucher, there's no guarantee that you can find a landlord willing to accept it. Plus, if you have evictions on your record (and often people become unhoused because they were evicted) landlords are going to be much less likely to accept a tenant. So just saying "section 8 exists so nobody should be on the street" is a really, really inaccurate statement, in addition to claiming that people should apply for a government program that hasn't existed for a quarter of a century! Also, a significant percentage of the unhoused are women--depending on the state, between 20 and 40 percent. So it's equally disingenuous to declare that women on the streets don't exist or are a small and ignorable percentage, because they most definitely do exist in large numbers.
Sigh. The predominant demographic of homeless is single men. If we could cut that problem down to size, other much less frequent situations would be less daunting. And the facts remain - women and children get priority for assistance programs of ANY kind, whatever they have been named or renamed, in the line ahead of men when it comes to help.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wburg
2sleepy, whether or not it's in a residential area has nothing to do with opposition: the lawsuits to stop the homeless program in a hotel in the River District was nowhere near any residential neighborhoods, they were filed by a real estate developer (who wants to eventually build luxury condos next door someday) and the business association (who don't want any more social services or programs of any kind in the River District, ever, under any circumstances.) The idea that only neighbors ever complain about things is patently false--a lot of the resistance to social programs, affordable housing etcetera comes from businesses and developers who own a lot of real estate and are a lot more concerned with property values than individual homeowners.
And here, I must repeat myself, since you ignore this:
Well gee whiz, given what The Powers That Be plan for "The River District", from new office buildings and new condos to a new light rail line, why are you surprised that property owners and investors hope to cash in?
As I posted before, the kibosh ought to be put on gentrification attempts there, and that area ought to be set aside as a zone to compassionately help the homeless, since so many are already there, industrial neighbors won't complain like residential ones would, and homeless services, both government and charitable, are already concentrated there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wburg
So those factors kind of throw a wrench in NickB's plans to "concentrate" unhoused people in some sort of "camp" where work will set them free. Because that's really what he's talking about--if people have to be forced inside, and not allowed to leave, it's not a "compassionate" anything, it's a prison, and restricting people's freedom of movement without due process isn't compassion, it's slavery.
Speaking of which, not being able to force people into these, well, "concentration camps" doesn't mean that living on the street is a protected civil right, it's because there are not enough shelter beds to hold all the people who need them, not by a wide margin. So, theoretically, if we built enough public housing and shelter beds and tiny homes and safe-ground campsites and SRO hotels, etcetera, that had enough capacity for the folks on the streets, then and only then do cities have the right to clear campgrounds, write tickets for public sleeping, etcetera. But if those spaces existed in significant quantity, most of the people currently unhoused would move into those spaces; the other big illusion here is the idea that everyone on the streets wants to be there. There are perhaps a small percentage that do, but if you offer safe, acceptable housing to most of the unhoused, they're going to want to take it, which means that the problem gets much, much smaller and easier to solve if you provide enough housing. That requires massive investments in things like social housing, and it's bad news for big nationwide rental firms and real estate developers that depend on housing scarcity to keep their prices high, but that's how you solve this problem, by addressing the root cause. The remaining folks on the street are a much, much smaller group. It is less satisfying to people who fantasize about being kapos, but that's okay by me.
It says so much about you that you jump to those kinds of conclusions. I suggested putting enough of the cheap housing for marginal single men in the River District, and that the rest of the County might jump at funding that, so they would not have to deal with homeless camps by those marginal single men in their neighborhoods, as those marginal single men would definitely prefer four walls and a roof over their heads in the River District. Especially since the services to help those people, both government and charitable, are in that very area.
And whenever any developer wants to build anything, "hindrances to development" like you get in the way.
It says so much about you that you jump to those kinds of conclusions. I suggested putting enough of the cheap housing for marginal single men in the River District, and that the rest of the County might jump at funding that, so they would not have to deal with homeless camps by those marginal single men in their neighborhoods, as those marginal single men would definitely prefer four walls and a roof over their heads in the River District. Especially since the services to help those people, both government and charitable, are in that very area.
And whenever any developer wants to build anything, "hindrances to development" like you get in the way.
Well I guess we will have to put you in charge because you must have some tremendous power to make all of that happen, huh? By any chance, did you read this?
Quote:
"In a statement, Bercut LLC said in part: "... it is our intent to develop workforce housing with a environmentally conscious, low carbon footprint walkable project enhancing the water front and providing a pleasing gateway entrance to the City of Sacramento as seen from Highway 5 entering and leaving the City. We want to attract investment money to the Sacramento region and provide economic development to the area. This is the River District, not the homeless district." https://www.kcra.com/article/high-en...ject/34168766#
Well I guess we will have to put you in charge because you must have some tremendous power to make all of that happen, huh?
The point is, these people have to go *somewhere*. And I make the case, for a host of reasons, that "The River District" as it stands now, is the best place for them. And this is why attempts to gentrify it will either (1) fail, or (2) if they do succeed, move the problem into someone else's residential and/or commercial area.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 2sleepy
By any chance, did you read this?
"In a statement, Bercut LLC said in part: "... it is our intent to develop workforce housing with a environmentally conscious, low carbon footprint walkable project enhancing the water front and providing a pleasing gateway entrance to the City of Sacramento as seen from Highway 5 entering and leaving the City. We want to attract investment money to the Sacramento region and provide economic development to the area. This is the River District, not the homeless district." https://www.kcra.com/article/high-en...ject/34168766#
And yes, that is the problem: There in fact NEEDS to be a "Social Services District", call it whatever you will, a place which is surrounded by industry, and, at least for now, away from existing neighborhoods. Especially when the government and charitable services are already located in it!
Last edited by NickB1967; 04-16-2021 at 02:21 PM..
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By the way, California removed the SNAP ban for people with drug convictions in 2015 or 2016; and that same law also precluded people with drug convictions from getting TANF as well. When a parent times out for TANF (4 years in California) or is undocumented, they can still receive what is called 'child only benefits', but it's far less than what would have been received if the parent was eligible. Nevada retained a modified restriction on TANF and SNAP for people with drug convictions, they are now eligible if they provide proof of completing a drug program.
