XPost: talk.politics.guns, alt.politics.usa, talk.politics.misc   
   XPost: sac.politics   
   From: kingjohnnyforpresident@gmail.com   
      
   In article    
   governor.swill@gmail.com wrote:   
   >   
      
   BULLSHIT!  They can't afford housing because they spend all   
   their fucking money on drugs, alcohol and drug whores!   
      
   The government and do-gooders keep giving them food, clothes and   
   MORE MONEY!   
      
   What do they do with that money?  They spend all the fucking   
   money on drugs, alcohol and drug whores!   
      
   SAN DIEGO — Ask just about anyone for their thoughts on what   
   causes homelessness, and you will likely hear drug addiction,   
   mental illness, alcoholism and poverty.   
      
   A pair of researchers, however, looked at those issues across   
   the country and found they occur everywhere. What does vary   
   greatly around the country, they found, was the availability of   
   affordable housing.   
      
   In their University of California Press book “Homelessness is a   
   Housing Problem,” authors Clayton Page Aldern and Gregg Colburn   
   looked at various contributing issues of homelessness, including   
   mental illness and addiction, and the per capita rate of   
   homelessness around the country. By looking at the rate of   
   homeless per 1,000 people, they found communities with the   
   highest housing costs had some of the highest rates of   
   homelessness, something that might be overlooked when looking at   
   just the overall raw number of homeless people.   
      
   As an example, the 2019 count of people in shelters and on the   
   street found a homeless population of 56,000 in Los Angeles   
   County; 11,200 in King County, Wash.; 9,700 in Santa Clara   
   County, Calif.; and 4,000 in Multnomah County, Ore. The homeless   
   populations became similar when looking at per capita rates,   
   with Los Angeles having six homeless people for every 1,000   
   residents and the other three, smaller counties having five   
   homeless people for every 1,000.   
      
   What they had in common was a lack of affordable housing.   
      
   San Diego County had about 2.5 homeless people for every 1,000   
   residents, which was about the average per capita rate in the   
   2019 count. Aldern pointed out that the San Diego number would   
   be greater if it included just the metropolitan area rather than   
   the entire county.   
      
   Aldern, a data scientist and policy analyst in Seattle, and   
   Colburn, an assistant professor of real estate at the University   
   of Washington’s College of Built Environments, said they are not   
   suggesting that mental illness, addictions and other issues are   
   not contributing factors to homelessness.   
      
   “That’s certainly not the point of the book,” Colburn said. “But   
   I firmly believe that we can’t treat our way out of this   
   problem. You could fix all the addiction in San Diego right now   
   and you’d still have a problem with homelessness because there   
   just aren’t places for people to go who have lower levels of   
   income.”   
      
   Lisa Jones, executive vice president of strategic initiatives at   
   the San Diego Housing Commission, said she has not read the book   
   but does see a connection between housing and homelessness.   
      
   “High-cost rental markets that far outstrip area median incomes   
   — and push renters into paying more than 50% of their income   
   toward rent — certainly are a significant contributing factor to   
   making households at high risk of experiencing homelessness,”   
   she wrote in an email.   
      
   “When households do experience homelessness, those factors make   
   it even harder for them to exit homelessness by renting in the   
   private rental market,” Jones continued. “We also know that the   
   longer a household experiences homelessness, the more likely   
   other key quality-of-life factors will be affected, such as   
   physical and mental well-being.   
      
   “We need to continue to strive to build a homelessness response   
   system that has a diverse spectrum of resources to meet a   
   household’s unique needs,” she concluded. “At the same time, we   
   need to continue to support the efforts of policy makers at   
   local, state and national levels to increase affordable housing   
   development and rental assistance opportunities, streamline   
   application processes, and reduce construction costs to increase   
   production.”   
      
   In San Diego, nonprofits and local government agencies have made   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)