patrick.net

I'm looking at what is pertinent.

It is true that Reagan closed the mental hospitals for the mentally ill.

Depending on how people are categorized, empirically I would say that a small percentage of the homeless are truly mentally ill.

The overarching problem is public transfers to people for becoming remaining homeless and the high cost of housing caused by building restrictions.

The overarching problem is public transfers to people for becoming remaining homeless

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What are you referring to here?

All I can speak for is the several homeless people that I know; and they have one thing in common: They all made choices that made them homeless, even after being warned what they were doing.

indigenous says

It is true that Reagan closed the mental hospitals for the mentally ill

It stared long before that, on October 31, 1963, when JFK signed his last piece of legislation, The Community Mental Health Act--it was not part of the Great Society of LBJ, but it fit right into the context of the thinking at the time that the federal government could solve every problem. Here's the rest of the story (I'm glad I finally committed it to a Word document so I could just cut and paste it I've used it so many times):

It was an effort to do penance for the lobotomy his father had performed on his mentally ill next younger sister Rosemary in 1941 and was the greatest shame to the Kennedy family according to Kate Larson, author of Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter. It took the running of mental hospitals out of the hands of the states and turned it over to the federal government and we know how that always works out. It's ironic the word "Community" is in the name because community control has nothing to do with it. There were "snake pits" and "bedlams" for sure, but where were severely mentally ill people going to be better off, inside or outside of an asylum, a place of protection by definition? There were supposed to be community centers for the mentally ill to reside in and receive treatment and medication, but that never happened except for a few poorly run halfway houses. The courts did their part in the 70's by ruling that a person can't be admitted for observation against their will. Over the next 50 years our cities filled up with the mentally ill homeless and today the police are by default their first encounter with authority. It's estimated that today over 10% of inmates are mentally ill when it was around 1% 50 years ago. The other ingredient that makes it even worse is the drug culture which came along in the late 60's and only exacerbates mental illness. Like the police have said over and over, they didn't sign up to be mental health experts, but apparently the desires of the larger public has placed that responsibility on them whether they wanted it or were prepared for it or not, for better or worse.

Tents are really cheap?

You want to fix homelessness?

1.) end the corruption. This is done entirely by removing government funding. The private organizations in Los Angeles...the Weingart foundation, the midnight mission, etc, do the heavy lifting. The govt sponsored groups like Crooked Danny Bakewells brotherhood crusade is all about profiting Danny himself. The SRO groups...well yeah they get homeless off the street. They also line their own pockets by hooking the homeless people up with state disability and then promptly introduce them to the local drug dealer, receiving a cash payment from the dealer in the process. The private groups do a great job on their own. Dump the govt money. If you wanna know why I say lefty bleeding hearts are dummies, this is why.

2.) allow cops to make arrests when people break the law. Eventually some find their way into treatment.

3. Remove homeless encampments wherever they pop up. There's no constitutional right to make your house on a sidewalk. It's an epidemic on the overpasses along the 110 fwy and absolutely digusting and unsafe for the people living in their neighborhoods. It's proof positive that the LA Times is run by evil shitheads with a politics agenda. Any other city, this situation would be front page news until the politicians were begging for mercy.

rando says

Kinda rambling, but you get the picture.

Far from rambling - you hit the nail on the head. The CRA made housing unaffordable, and Obama and ZIRP propped it back up.

Make america affordable again!

Entitlemented says

The CRA made housing unaffordable

Do you mean this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act

indigenous says

#housing

I think rising rents are the primary driver of homelessness at the moment.

Homelessness is not a binary condition. There are people who have a large buffer, medium buffer, small buffer and no buffer. The smaller the buffer the more likely to push someone over the edge into homelessness.

Rent has been the single largest game changer. The place I rented in Oakland until 2011 for 1040/month is now going for 2100, as just one anecdote. And it's not just a matter of relocating. You're talking about people with possibly trashed credit and nothing to cover first, last and deposit. They have neither the cash to move nor the credit to compete with other renters.

As housing becomes increasingly a tightrope, people will simply fall off. If we hit a recession, which I expect we will within the next three years, the homeless population will likely explode.