• softwaredoug 19 hours ago
    I think there's a crisis of ineffectiveness in Center-Left institutions

    They are too deliberative, and take excessive time including voices of every stakeholder. So you don't just go do the "obvious thing". You cater to trying to listen to every voice in an effort to be as inclusive as possible. Committee after committee and an obsession with process. You can spend years placating NIMBYs and people living with their own alternate reality.

    Meanwhile real people are suffering from lack of action.

    This level of ineffectiveness just enables authoritarianism ("at least they get something done") and gets people to seek the private industry for their solutions.

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    • thewebguyd 6 hours ago
      Those on the left also quite often suffer from letting perfect be the enemy of good. I've had a few friends over the years who would seem to prefer nothing be done rather than make incremental progress. I.e., how people will be critical of a carbon tax to help reduce emissions simply because it's not good enough, even if its a step in the right direction. We've seen it with health care as well. It's "medicare for all or bust."

      I appreciate the sentiment of wanting the right/perfect solution, but the perfect solution doesn't happen all at once. Often times a compromise is needed in order to help people right now, not hypothetically in the future. Sometimes that means you end up being less inclusive, but so be it if shit gets done.

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      • kridsdale1 5 hours ago
        This is something that Barack Obama used to complain about. Incremental progress is progress.
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        • fakedang 4 hours ago
          Talking from personal experience, it applies also. Perfectionists like me are often deadlocked into not releasing something until it's perfectly executed, caters to every use case, takes every edge case into account, etc. My late cofounder spent (too much) time training me otherwise, that small incremental changes will compound into larger ones in a big enough timescale, and that it's more effective to simply get started than deliberate ages over it.
      • dyauspitr 1 hour ago
        Definitely. Right now they’re “cancelling” Bill Burr because he went and did a show in Saudi Arabia. One of the left’s staunchest allies for years and one of the few males on the left that young boys can actually identify with and he’s in the trashcan for doing a show with the Saudis. It’s bonkers.
    • lkey 18 hours ago
      SF, Dallas, and Houston all have Democratic leadership that could be described as center left? (For America. To an outsider, America has two conservative parties)

      The unhoused are 'stakeholders' too actually, so I'd describe Cali's problem as listening too much to wealthy/powerful stakeholders, while ignoring those most impacted. Who can forget Newsom's camp-destroying photo-op and forced bussing the undesirables out of town to prevent people from seeing 'crime' aka 'poverty'.

      These institutions are not log-jammed by accident. "You cater to trying to listen to every voice" Reader, they only listen to their friends and donors, this is the problem. These 'listening sessions' you are told are 'stopping progress' exist to placate legitimate concerns. Blaming unions is also fun, I heard that a lot back in Cali, no matter the issue, no matter the union, from the wealthiest people.

      Politicians that seem to do almost nothing are preferred by the donor class. Bog standard Democrats have more smoke for Zohran (the sincere housing and affordability guy) than they have for their 'Republican colleagues' in this era. That should tell you everything you need to know.

      "This level of ineffectiveness just enables authoritarianism ("at least they get something done") and gets people to seek the private industry for their solutions."

      EXACTLY. THIS IS INTENTIONAL. PUBLIC COST, PRIVATE PROFIT IS THE GOAL. A WELFARE STATE FOR BUSINESSES, NOT PEOPLE.

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      • queenkjuul 4 hours ago
        100%. Class solidarity is extremely strong amongst the wealthy.
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        • pyuser583 3 hours ago
          Then why are the wealthy supporting left candidates, while working class supporting Trump.

          This is a really toxic dynamic, and I don’t understand it.

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          • Fade_Dance 2 hours ago
            That's what the previous poster was getting at - moderate left cantidates are not bad for the wealthy. Very status quo.

            As for the working class, they don't feel represented, and the strongman shift is a predictable and toxic dynamic.

          • solid_fuel 47 minutes ago
            Because Trump, for all the problems and crimes, represents _action_. I hate what he has done to this country and the government, this administration is nothing but cronyism and self-enrichment the whole way down. But, it does show a different standard of action.

            The wealthy are supporting candidates who offer lip service to leftist policies and then do nothing to cut through basic red tape and court challenges. The "leftist" candidates that the rich support run on building more housing, and then let the rezoning take 15 years in committee.

            Here, in Seattle, Bruce Harrell would be a perfect example. He ran on transit, policing reform, and housing, and in the time he has been in office he has accomplished - nothing. No majors action has been attempted, and even minor reforms have been stuck in endless committees for this whole time. But he was happy to intervene to move a major transit station to a place less convenient for commuters and more convenient for his donors.

            The next candidate the democrats put up for president is probably going to be pretty uninspiring, and talk a lot about a return to norms. But that's exactly what is wrong with the party.

            The next Democrat that runs for president should be promising massive reform - if Kash Patel can fire an FBI agent for having a pride flag on their desk 3 years ago then the next guy running the FBI should be firing any agent that has ever used a slur or received a substantiated complaint about use of force or violating civil rights. If Trump can yank funding from cities for no reason, then the next Democrat in office should be cutting funding from any city with a housing shortage that doesn't enact zoning reform.

            In short - wealthy donors love Democrats who talk big but wring their hands about using the power they are given. Because that keeps the system exactly the way the wealthy want it.

          • UltraSane 1 hour ago
            A huge amount of support for Trump is due to racism.
    • Voloskaya 19 hours ago
      This is basically the entire theme of "Abundance" by Klein and Thompson, for those looking for a longer read on this.

      [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_(Klein_and_Thompson_...

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      • rufus_foreman 18 hours ago
        Another recent book along the same lines would be "Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress and How to Get It Back" by Marc Dunkelman:

        "When he looked into the history, Dunkelman realized that progressives have long swung back and forth between two opposing impulses. One is what he calls Hamiltonianism: the desire to achieve progress by empowering government and institutions to tackle big problems at the direction of strong leaders (like Robert Moses) and informed experts. The other is what he calls Jeffersonianism: the desire to prevent unaccountable centralized authorities (also like Robert Moses) from abusing ordinary citizens by empowering them to fight back."

        -- https://www.niskanencenter.org/why-nothing-works-with-marc-d...

      • spiritplumber 19 hours ago
        thank you, i'll grab this!
      • thrance 14 hours ago
        Wow, deregulation and austerity, what a fresh perspective on the economy!

        This abundance "movement" has absolutely nothing new to offer, it is simply a rebranding of neoliberalism. It's easy to spot too, just look at who backs the movement: the same old establishment democrats and their wealthy donors. The same people who have entranched the democratic party into this technocratic blob of ineffectiveness and societal erosion. In particular, it is financially backed by, among others, Peter Thiel and Mark Andreessen. This should raise some red flags.

        Also, I personally like winning. This abundance movement has exactly zero electoral hype. American voters don't care about it at all. Meanwhile, populist leftists like Mamdani are able to generate momentum for the left for the first time in decades. That Klein, Thompson and the billionaires behind them are so harshly criticizing them should raise additional red flags.

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        • austhrow743 10 hours ago
          How do you get “austerity” from a movement arguing that far more things should be built?
        • Voloskaya 12 hours ago
          Your argument boils down to "people already said some things like this in the past" (ok, and?) and "some people I don't like agree with part of it", which is very weak and doesn't address anything in substance.

          You know, you can still want to be able to build housing without having to wait 1 year for permitting or not want to live in a place where making a basic train track is basically impossible because of the number of stakeholders that have to come to a consensus and still vote for Mamdani. You are allowed to have non black and white opinions.

          You can even have 1% of the things you think are good in common with Peter Thiel, and that won't immediately turn you into a far right psychopath.

          You can even, hear me out, be for less regulation on specific areas where there has been a massive lack of supply but not for "deregulating the economy" in it's entirety!

        • RetiredRichard 13 hours ago
          The writer of this article (Dave) publicly dislikes Derek Thompson and keeps criticizing Matt Ygelasis for his austerity fetish, along with praising Mamdani
      • lkey 17 hours ago
        Abundance is just https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Way neoliberalism with a new coat of paint. The answer to all questions is 'bust unions and environmental groups'. We've been here before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Alley

        All the Reaganite conservative institutions (https://www.abundancedc.org/speakers) that are leery of fascism, but love business back this 'program'.

        We need a new 'New Deal', that rebuilds what was broken during these last 90 years. We need the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Perkins of this era.

        "Frances Perkins was not just the architect of SSA: she also proposed and implemented many of the foundational labor and safety laws1 still relied upon by the American working class. We can also thank her for the 40-hour work week, minimum wage, unemployment compensation, worker’s compensation, workplace safety, abolition of child labor, direct federal aid to the states for unemployment relief, a revitalized federal employment service, and universal health insurance. Well, except the last. We are still working on the last. "

        She got everything she wanted done as Labor Sec. Except for universal healthcare. And it was a great loss for everything living American every year since.

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        • bryanlarsen 16 hours ago
          Somebody hasn't read the book, just knee jerk reactions to it.
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          • lkey 5 hours ago
            I proudly have not given Klein my money. I have spent many hours discussing it with several of my politically inclined friends who did read and enjoy it. (We went over the Klein chapters primarily, Thompson didn't impress anyone enough to warrant discussion)

            What I did prior to that conversation was looked at who was funding it and advocating for it, and as a result dismissed it as a pseudo-progressive astro-turfing operation funded by oil and tech billionaires. Nothing I've seen since has changed my opinion.

            It exists to provide enough progressive hopium to diffuse actual grass-roots movements before they can get off the ground, and to eventually act as a spoiler org against candidates that actually want to build genuine public goods.

            Klein is the perfect vessel for this, because there's a real chance he believes he's not selling snake oil, all evidence to the contrary. Such a frustrating man.

        • specialist 9 hours ago
          Is this guilt by association? eg The roster of that Abundance Festival?

          I've read the book. Ditto the criticisms. Heard the interviews.

          My "abundance" take away is a rejection of neoliberalism, austerity, Hayek, etc. That it's akin to Green New Deal, Build Back Better, etc.

          Am I wrong?

          We need 3.5m (?) new homes, mass transit, upgraded grid, 4Tw (?) of additional renewable energy generation (plus their batteries).

          Right?

          I don't care how it gets done. I don't care what labels (pejoratives) are used. I don't care who profits.

          I just demand it gets done, sooner than later.

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          • lkey 5 hours ago
            You could call it guilt by association, sure! But critically, the funders and speakers and membership that build a movement give life and shape to what that movement becomes. Not caring about 'means' only 'ends' or who profits strikes me as appallingly naive. You tell me, can these people build the houses you so desire?

            From this page https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/who-is-behind-the-growin...: compare your words: "take away is a rejection of neoliberalism"

            to the following descriptions: "Mercatus Center, but without the libertarian brand that limits that think tank’s outreach to the left." "The group is currently headed by Julius Krein, the founder of pro-Trump publications The Journal Of American Greatness and its successor, American Affairs"

            "gone so far as to posit that AI is the only possible solution to climate change and that it should be powered even by fossil fuel sources." "PI is a subsidiary of the The Third Way Foundation, and it proudly proclaims itself as the “intellectual birthplace of the New Democrat and ‘Third Way’ movements.”

            "Chamber of Progress also used to be funded by Sam Bankman-Fried’s notorious FTX, Blockchain.com, Zillow, Twitter, and the investment firm behind WeWork, SoftBank. The group has launched a “Abundance & Affordability” project, is listed among Inclusive Abundance’s “Abundance Landscape,” and its employees are vocal in their support of the agenda."

            "Manhattan employs conservative provocateur and Ron DeSantis ally Chris Rufo—the progenitor of the debate over “Critical Race Theory”"

            "Stand Together’s Chairman and CEO, Brian Hooks, is also the President of the Charles Koch Foundation and previously served as the executive director and COO of the Mercatus Center"

            one of the most prominent groups opposing the Obama administration’s two key domestic policy goals: health care reform and cap and trade

            The philanthropy has funded “pension reform” work by right wing groups, school privatization efforts, Bari Weiss’ anti-woke university, the Niskanen Center, and sponsored both the 2024 abundance conference and the 2025 conference.

            Do I need to go on? These people will decide what "Abundance 'progressiveism'" actually looks like if it continues forward.

            They are not hiding the fact they are actually conservatives with new labels. They will republican even more if they are given voting positions.

            Do you think these people are on your side? Its all oil and techoncratic billionaires top to bottom.

      • RetiredRichard 13 hours ago
        I don't think Dave associates himself with the abundance movement
    • snapplebobapple 19 hours ago
      for as long as the left has not been about the working class and been about university educated white collar government workers this has been true though. It may have been true prior to that too i just dont have living memory to back it up. There is something about being removed from the reality of how the metaphorical sausage is made that turns the left from having some valid concerns but usually wrong ideas on how to address them into actively incomptent civilization destroyers. I would love to know why.
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      • softwaredoug 18 hours ago
        When you go back to The New Deal, its absolutely the case that the Dem coalition was much more effective at delivery. To some extent because FDR acted very aggressively with executive action.

        My personal opinion is the working class, not the fancy educated types, need to run the Dem coalition. It would be far more effective in a number of ways... with broader appeal.

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        • potato3732842 9 hours ago
          >My personal opinion is the working class, not the fancy educated types, need to run the Dem coalition

          They need to run the goddamn country.

          Whether it's liberal white women with their whole foods and Starbucks or conservative men with their 100k pickup trucks the morals and political whims of "people rich enough to not get fairly instantly screwed if they make bad decisions" have been a disaster for this country.

        • cameldrv 18 hours ago
          It’s a different coalition now though. The FDR Democrats were labor focused. Then the 60s happened. The New Left student movements reoriented away from labor and towards racial/gender/sexual equality, and Kennedy signed the Civil Rights Act. Southern whites opposed this and you had George Wallace pop up, splitting the Democrats, and then Nixon swooped in with the Southern Strategy. The Democrats needed a new coalition and they went with disadvantaged racial/gender/sexual groups instead of labor.

          The transition didn’t really finish until Clinton and the New Democrats though. Campaign money and TV ads got to be really important in Presidential politics, and to get that money, Democrats had to appeal to rich people, so they got rid of most of the labor aspects of the platform. Clinton signed NAFTA and MFN for China. Now there were two pro-business parties that served different identity groups. Ironically the last gasp of labor was the billionaire Ross Perot in 92 and 96 who ran on an anti-NAFTA platform. The only way he could do this credibly was to use his own money to buy TV time.

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          • mrguyorama 9 hours ago
            Kennedy did not sign the Civil Rights Act, Kennedy was dead. He wanted it, but it never got any support until after his assassination. It was LBJ who got bipartisan support for the bill. After it passed and LBJ used federal powers to force southern states to stop being so racist, many senators blamed the democrats, explicitly switched to the republican party, and the south has been anti-democrat since.

            The democrats did not leave their labor base. The Democrats have never stopped pushing labor rights and unions and similar.

            The voters who were pissed with being forced to desegregate left the democrat party. Turns out there were a lot of people who thought it was more important to be able to be racist than unionized.

            I don't know why you believe billionaire Ross Perot, Texas businessman and prominent supporter of the war on drugs, who told Larry King that we should "cut medicare and social security for those who """don't need it""" " is "pro labor" ffs. He's the same kind of "we should run the country like a business" populist as Reagan and Trump, and just as wrong. He was literally a big supporter of Reagan as Reagan dismantled Unions and union rights!

            NAFTA did not send your job to China, business executives did. Business executives like Ross Perot, who made his money selling computing services to the US government, and didn't really do much else before or since.

            Even if NAFTA had been completely blocked, average Americans would still have been screwed from Reagan's changes to the country. Underpaid workers in other countries are not getting all the money, surely you recognize that right? The money never even leaves the country.

        • mrguyorama 11 hours ago
          The FDR admin had 90% support in the House and Senate. He wasn't authoritarian, he was operating with the clearest mandate America had until Reagan (not that I agree with the mandate Reagan was handed and followed through on)

          The reason he was able to threaten the Supreme Court with packing is that it was a credible threat.

          The working class abandoned democrats, not the other way around, when LBJ decided that the Civil Rights Act was a good thing, and got bipartisan support for it. Several prominent (terrible human beings) Dixiecrats screamed about "Democrat authoritarianism" for (checks notes) forcing southern states to stop being racist as fuck, and the south has been thoroughly republican voters since. Don't worry though, Strom Thurmund insists he wasn't a racist, he is just against being forced to allow black people to get the same legal treatment as white people.

          A bunch of racists aren't willing to support welfare and public investment if black people get it. How do you form a coalition between them and black people?

          These same assholes want to go back to the 50s because it was very good for white male americans, and they do not care about the rest.

          FDR had this support because Americans rallied behind the New Deal because 1 out of every 5 Americans was jobless. That's the pain it took before America was willing to do socialism-lite.

          If you want democrat policy, you need to elect them. Simple as.

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          • scarmig 8 hours ago
            > The working class abandoned democrats, not the other way around, when LBJ decided that the Civil Rights Act was a good thing, and got bipartisan support for it.

            Odd, that the working class stayed with the Democrats for half a century after your claimed divergence.

            It is true that progressive politics played a major role in the shift in the 2010s. But neither is that equivalent to the CRA, nor does it answer the question of why the working class reoriented around stupid bullshit. That latter, deeper issue has to do with the governing and professional classes of the US, which have shifted toward symbolic and procedural issues over broad material wellbeing, mostly because symbolic shit doesn't adversely affect professional classes' pocketbooks that much.

          • Amezarak 8 hours ago
            > The FDR admin had 90% support in the House and Senate.

            FDR directly embedded his staff in Congress and told them what they were going to do, and vigorously attacked anyone who got in the way of his agenda by any means necessary, including using the FBI and IRS against them, denying them federal funds, etc. He also was very effective at bullying the press - look at what went on with radio licenses. He even (via the Black Committee and FCC) conducted mass surveillance on his political enemies.

            FDR did have a lot of support in Congress but brutally punishing people is what made him effective. He was certainly one of the most authoritarian Presidents in American history and we should probably thank our lucky stars he was a good one.

          • bsder 9 hours ago
            > These same assholes want to go back to the 50s because it was very good for white male americans

            I really want to know when this was because all the men (white or not) who worked the mills and the mines in my memory were effectively functional alcoholics because life sucked so much.

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            • thewebguyd 6 hours ago
              Its anemoia - nostalgia for a time you didn't live through.

              They don't want the actual 50s, they want an illusion of what they saw on TV shows depicting white, wealthy, suburbia.

      • nradov 17 hours ago
        It hasn't always been that way. The US political left did used to focus more on working-class issues. They only really lost the plot in the early 2000s when they started navel gazing on performative ideology and luxury beliefs, leading to an inversion in some of the voting blocks for the two major political parties.
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        • pyuser583 3 hours ago
          It’s universities. I’ve seen this myself - universities are the heart and souls of the American left. It used to be the labor hall.
        • thewebguyd 6 hours ago
          More importantly what that did was split the working class. Even in this very thread there's people referring to the "working class" as if they also aren't in it.

          If you aren't a billionaire capital owner, you are working class. If your primary income comes from a job, you are working class.

          If we want solidarity again we need to dispel the notion of working class meaning poor, blue collar workers. We've been pitted against ourselves, our divide shouldn't be left v. right it should be ALL working class against the ultra-rich.

    • matula 19 hours ago
      This is an interesting thought. I also wonder if Houston is "helped" by the fact that they're a blue city in a red state... that kind of ideological conflict of governance requires unique and localized solutions. Whereas SF is blue city in a blue state, so it creates a "too many cooks in the kitchen" situation.
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      • cootsnuck 18 hours ago
        I think it also just creates a lack of "urgency" problem. I live in a blue city in a red state. Constituents expect results because we can't rely on our state gov. Local officials know this. There's more competition from more progressive candidates too locally which is helpful in keeping liberal officials more focused on results instead of the game of politics.

        Idk, I think it's different for every city. But I think the point I'm trying to make is that having some kind of political constraints in governance seems to typically be a good thing for the sake of getting some shit done.

        Actually I think I'm just stating an obvious point now given the glaring ineffectiveness of our two party political system...

      • rtkwe 16 hours ago
        It probably does make it easier to make drastic changes as described to consolidate data sharing etc when they ultimate authority is likely the city/county instead of the state. The state level agencies will have their own policies, systems and goals/approaches that might not suite the individual cities so the programs remain separated and fragmented.
      • mjd 12 hours ago
        The article itself makes this point more than once.
    • duxup 13 hours ago
      A local school system near me was facing some financial issues a number of years ago.

      The superintendent noted that there were dozens and dozens of individual social programs that the school system managed. Many extending well beyond education and even testing the bounds of what might be called social work.

      While they all (on the surface) operated on the idea that if students got these services they would be more effective in school ... it wasn't clear for most of them if that was even the case / being measured.

      The superintendent noted that the only thing they could be sure of was that if they touched anyone of them, they were sure to be someone's baby and they'd face a backlash.

      Personally, I'd like to see a more "fail fast" type system for a lot of social programs. Run it, see what happens ... then make the call if it goes any further. But that would mean people would have to start up programs fast, and shut them down fast. Both are not easy.

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      • testing22321 8 hours ago
        > Personally, I'd like to see a more "fail fast" type system for a lot of social programs. Run it, see what happens ... then make the call if it goes any further. But that would mean people would have to start up programs fast, and shut them down fast. Both are not easy.

        My partner does exactly this with healthcare in BC. They spin up a project to trial, say, allowing nurses to prescribe methadone directly, or even for patients just to get it directly. They measure costs, patient outcomes, etc etc. After a set time get patient, doctor and nurse feedback.

        Looks good? Great, roll it out to the whole province and hurry up about it.

        They’re running 50+ of them continuously. Constant improvement is awesome.

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        • Fade_Dance 1 hour ago
          Things like this is what DOGE should have been. What a wasted opportunity.
      • potato3732842 9 hours ago
        >it wasn't clear for most of them if that was even the case / being measured.

        If the programs were doing what they claimed they'd be measuring that and using the numbers as further justification. The fact that they're not speaks volumes.

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        • duxup 5 hours ago
          Most of these programs are funded by government organizations so any measurement rules come form there, if there are any. It's less a choice than it is something (like much of the program) dictated.
    • dylan604 14 hours ago
      From time to time, we see response here that doing X is dumb because it is not a perfect solve. It's very common in discussions about solving pollution or energy use. Don't bother using EVs as we're still burning coal. Don't recycle because so much trash is everywhere else. These people are suggesting doing nothing until the perfect solve is available. Perfect will never happen. Instead make as many things better where you can while you can.
    • roenxi 18 hours ago
      Nothing wrong with deliberation and listening to stakeholders. Great idea. The issue is the centre-left voters keep asking these institutions to take on more power, channel more funds and veto more projects [0]. I don't see how else they expect large centralised bodies to play out. I'm not sure if the US left even has a collective theory of how to fight institutional rot apart from stuffing institutions with leftists and assuming they do they right thing. Expecting good results from that strategy requires a certain naivete to the sort of people who seek power in government.

      [0] Not just them, the centre right also seems to love the idea based on what I've read. Not the brightest crowd.

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      • Aurornis 18 hours ago
        > Nothing wrong with deliberation and listening to stakeholders. Great idea.

        True if you can identify the correct stakeholders and those stakeholders are aligned to the goal.

        It becomes unhelpful when the list of stakeholders is so long and disconnected from the goal that listening to stakeholders becomes an endless cycle of meetings and talking about the problem instead of doing anything about it.

        In my local experience, initiatives related to homelessness and drug addiction treatment attract a lot of people who like the idea of being involved because it advances their career or sounds good on their resume, but many of them are unqualified to be involved and think the role will involve a lot of delegation and deciding where to send money to other groups, not actually doing any of the work directly.

        Basically, a lot of people who want to be in charge and claim leadership but who also don’t want to actually do the hard work.

      • Yossarrian22 18 hours ago
        Isn’t China even more centralized? They complete infrastructure projects in years not decades.
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        • roenxi 9 hours ago
          I dunno, is it? In what sense are you comparing the centralisation of the two countries?

          The US is pretty centralised. Around 40% of its spending is via the government and of the balance a lot of the decision making is controlled by the government.

        • Fade_Dance 1 hour ago
          China isn't centralized when it comes to boots on the ground policy implementation. The regional governments are extremely important. They direct subsidies and issue loans and have massive balance sheets and their own banks, they decide production capacity and things like factory output targets, they even decide which industries they specialize in, like EVs vs solar panels, etc.

          Of course there is a framework from the CCP, and if red lines are crossed the big stick comes out and people are made an example of, but the regionals run the society. Including things like the social safety net. That's all regional and it's different between different regions.

          There's a fairly large gap between how China works internally and how the west sees China.

          For a more concrete example, the recent Third Plenum planning session was the typical communist style decade long roadmap with loud bullet points and achievement targets. Then there is a multi-month-long gap, all of the politicians go home, they work out how to achieve the goals between themselves, and they present their plans for approval. It's actually not as top down as you would think.

          As you may sense, there is a sort of competition at play. If the committee is looking to consolidate key sectors like electric vehicles and increase industrial profits, the leaders who implement this guidance the best that get the acclaim. Likewise, if the central government is doing something like de-risking the regional banks, you so not want to be the region with the problems. Good luck in your career and climbing the ladder if so...

          This power play dynamic is also strategically used to play different factions against themselves in a multifaceted way that is sometimes obvious but often has quiet subterfuge, in typical Chinese fashion.

    • Braxton1980 11 hours ago
      The cities in Texas are run by Democrats
    • queenkjuul 4 hours ago
      I think the center-left deliberately prefers not to get things done. Centrists are usually people treated well by the status quo and would rather find any excuse to keep things the way they are than acquiesce to the left or meaningfully challenge the right
    • Herring 19 hours ago
      [..]
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      • softwaredoug 19 hours ago
        "Provide more assistance"

        My point is that I'm not sure we need more assistance. TBH we need better, more efficient assistance. We spend a lot on deliberation, not enough on delivery.

        A lot of this is due to leadership gaps IMO. Center-left leaders (ie Schumer) look weak because they excessively triangulate every stakeholder. Instead leaders need to act as true leaders, which means being a touch less collaborative / trying to triangulate. And more focused on some top-down, cut through red-tape, have a vision, persuade people etc.

        (Then, arguably if people saw the system working well, they might want to award it with more money.)

  • Tiktaalik 9 hours ago
    Interesting article though it curiously deemphasizes what is likely the most significant reason for the differences in outcomes, which is that housing is more cheap and abundant in Houston/Dallas stemming from being easier and cheaper to build. (Yes this is mentioned, but it doesn't end up in the 5 point conclusion list).

    This passage for example. Houston can only achieve permanent placement if it actually has homes to place people in. SF is just rearranging deck chairs on the titanic because it has no where to put people and they're in and out of shelters. (Vancouver has the same issue)

    > Houston houses people first, then closes encampment sites permanently. San Francisco deploys enforcement first, achieves temporary displacement, and watches areas refill. Houston tracks every person from intake through permanent placement. San Francisco can’t determine if anyone is being permanently housed at all.

    Beyond better outcomes around creating new affordable housing if Houston and Dallas are also doing a also better job at keeping rents low and maintaining existing affordable housing that will also prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place.

    A recent study in Vancouver found that one of the most significant single causes of homelessness (20%) was people simply running out of money and being evicted. The direct cause of this is high rents. So any city that is building more housing in general, and not demolishing existing affordable rental is going to be doing a better job in this category at reducing homelessness.

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    • potato3732842 9 hours ago
      Exactly.

      There's a lot less homeless when you aren't constantly lubricating the "miss one paycheck -> living in car -> seriously homelss" slope.

    • infamouscow 7 hours ago
      Texas cities don't just stumble into better homelessness outcomes because they build more houses—though, yes, their zoning laws are less suffocating than California's bureaucratic strangulations, letting developers churn out homes while keeping rents from spiraling into the stratosphere.

      The real engine here isn't just policy, it's the stubborn, unapologetic religious underpinnings of Texas. Those churches you see in Austin, from non-denominational barns to Catholic sanctuaries, are the sinew of a community that doesn't bend to the fickle winds of election cycles. The faithful don't wait for a ballot to act—they feed, clothe, and stabilize the downtrodden with a doggedness that shames the state's tepid, vote-chasing programs. Why? Because they answer to a higher power than city hall, and their time horizon isn't the next electoral race. Contrast this with the secular cathedrals of the blue coasts, where government is God and every solution is a press release, not a commitment. SF's "enforcement-first" shuffle—clear an encampment, watch it refill—betrays a system that worships process over results.

      Texas' edge lies in cheap homes plus a culture that scorns the state's monopoly on virtue. The religious don't just build safety nets, they weave them into the social fabric, outlasting the transient schemes of politicians.

      [-]
      • saghm 3 hours ago
        So if I'm understanding correctly, your argument is that more homes and lower housing prices wouldn't solve the issue of people not being able to find homes they can afford without people being religious as well? Or is it that only religious people would be willing to build more homes at cheaper prices?
      • DangitBobby 7 hours ago
        There are churches in California.
        [-]
        • gamblor956 5 hours ago
          There are more churches in California than their are in Texas. We just don't brag about it as much because religion isn't a costume in California like it is in red states.
        • infamouscow 6 hours ago
          Saying California has churches is like saying a desert has cacti—it's true, but it misses the point.

          Texas' religious density, from Austin's sprawling non-denominational hubs to its Catholic and Protestant strongholds, isn’t just a headcount of steeples, it's a cultural force that outmuscles the state’s flimsy, election-timed gestures.

          These communities don't just exist—they act, relentlessly, weaving safety nets that endure beyond the next ballot. California's churches, where they stand, are drowned out by a secular dogma that kneels to bureaucracy over human need. If they were enough, San Francisco wouldn't be playing whack-a-mole with encampments while Houston houses people and moves on.

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          • pyuser583 3 hours ago
            California has more churches - but not more practitioners.

            San Francisco has four Orthodox Christian cathedrals. Many big cities only have a single Orthodox Church, much less a cathedral. San Francisco also has a many Catholic Churches - most with an ethnic component, not to mention Buddhist and cultural associations.

            Most of these are due to extreme diversity, not religiosity.

            Diversity isn’t an absolute good.

            Having 200 churches, each with 50 members, does not make you more religious than a city with two megachurches, each with 20,000 members.

      • Tiktaalik 6 hours ago
        nah this is nonsense.

        News flash: churches exist even in the left coast.

        One of the biggest non profit organizations that helps people in Vancouver's DTES is Union Gospel Mission and the Salvation Army.

        Nonetheless severe poverty has persisted in this city my entire life. The churches hand out food and run some shelters but it's a band aid.

        The solution would start with housing, but the government refuses to spend the money to build it. So the status quo persists, with non-profits, many of them religious, step into the void just to keep people alive.

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        • thewebguyd 6 hours ago
          > The solution would start with housing

          This is the answer. Housing cannot be both an investment and broadly affordable. Our society needs to choose.

          Honestly its time to rip the bandaid off here with housing. Build, build, build. Fuck the NIMBYs, use eminent domain and buy them out. Build up, not out, and start driving prices down.

          We need to stop making real estate an investment vehicle and an endlessly appreciating asset. "Line must go up" is fine for the stock market and a company's profit, it need not apply to a basic human need.

  • poppobit 19 hours ago
    I think this piece makes a strong point — when there’s already a working model, just copy it instead of endlessly debating. The homelessness crisis is real, and doing nothing while watching it grow worse is the worst option. Of course there’s a chance it fails, but the bigger issue is that no one wants to take responsibility if it does. That lack of strong leadership is, in itself, part of the problem.
    [-]
    • onlyrealcuzzo 19 hours ago
      > The homelessness crisis is real, and doing nothing while watching it grow worse is the worst option.

      California isn't doing nothing.

      They keep spending even more money and wondering why it's not working.

      If it was a problem that could be solved by giving people money, they'd have solved it already.

      [-]
      • mothballed 18 hours ago
        Then there's also the Williston / North Dakota oil boom model. I met tons of homeless people out there (I was one of them), many of which whom solved it through "one neat trick" of doing something like hitchiking to the oil fields, or to Seattle where literally anyone can get hired to work on a fish processing boat or facility and they give you "free" room and board and then ~$10k to go home with.
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        • onlyrealcuzzo 18 hours ago
          That model clearly isn't working in SF where they spend >$100k per homeless person per year.

          So, sure, maybe it works if people sign up for it and show they actually want to do something.

          But it clearly doesn't work if you just hand it out and hope for the best.

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          • bsder 9 hours ago
            > That model clearly isn't working in SF where they spend >$100k per homeless person per year.

            That borders on irrelevant when 33% of your homeless population qualify as having a traumatic brain injury, etc. Hospital stays are about $5K per day--if a homeless person hits the hospitals for 20 days in a year you've already spent more than $100K.

            After Saint Reagan (hack ... spit) "closed the institutions", there was supposed to be something better. That never happened. So, now you have the mentally ill cycling between the streets, the emergency rooms, and the prisons.

            You can't fix homelessness without first fixing healthcare. Otherwise you're just rearranging the deck chairs.

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            • scarmig 7 hours ago
              > After Saint Reagan (hack ... spit) "closed the institutions", there was supposed to be something better. That never happened. So, now you have the mentally ill cycling between the streets, the emergency rooms, and the prisons.

              The Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, which made it possible to close the institutions, was almost unanimously passed in the Assembly and the Senate, in an unholy union of civil libertarian do-gooders and budget cutting conservatives. In fact, the lone dissenter in either legislature was a law-and-order Republican.

              And it's not like Democrats have been shut out of the government of California ever since.

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              • bsder 7 hours ago
                The funding for the original institutions came from the Community Mental Health Act (CMHCA).

                The funding for the alternatives was also slated to come from the federal government: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Health_Systems_Act_of_1...

                But Reagan and a Republican controlled Senate killed it. Because funding was supposed to magically "trickle down" from thin air.

                And, through it all, the mental health facilities were always chronically underfunded.

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                • scarmig 6 hours ago
                  The emptying of institutions in California happened long before that, in the late 60s and through the 70s; it became very hard to commit anyone, which justified further cuts.

                  If you pass a bill that destroys mental health systems for the sake of civil libertarian concerns, "its issues weren't magically fixed through half a century later, which was totally unforeseeable" is not a good excuse.

          • SolarNet 15 hours ago
            > But it clearly doesn't work if you just hand it out and hope for the best.

            I actually think if they did just give 100k to homeless people a year that it would actually solve itself.

            The problem is they give 100k to grifters who say they'll do something about it.

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            • brewdad 9 hours ago
              The causes of homelessness are plentiful. Some, perhaps a majority I don't know any exact figures, would be helped by simply giving them money. Others are suffering from mental health crises and/or drug addictions that must be dealt with first before they can have any hope of taking care of themselves when given the money to support themselves.

              This is where good faith opinions can differ. Do these folks still deserve freedom/autonomy or can we force them into rehab or mental heath treatments? If the only crime they have committed is not having a bed to sleep in, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with taking away their freedoms. I'm closer than I was five years ago but I'm not universally there yet.

      • appreciatorBus 19 hours ago
        Everything except ending the ban on homeowners & landowners building market housing. (ofc they are taking bites out of this apple, especially very recently, but every step is fought tooth & nail by homeowners who prefer the status quo just fine)
      • Spivak 19 hours ago
        I'm fully in the camp of just give people dollars and let them decide how to spend it rather than navigate a bureaucratic nanny state system like SNAP. But if you're only doing that well no shit it doesn't help. You have to actually put them in a stable house/apartment and get them set up with work. Or if they're homeless due to mental illness get them admitted.
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        • MontyCarloHall 18 hours ago
          >Or if they're homeless due to mental illness get them admitted.

          Therein lies the problem. A large proportion of homeless fall into this category [*], and it's very hard to institutionalize people against their will. We like to think that most homeless are functional people who are simply down on their luck, and thus putting them in stable housing and getting them set up to work would solve their problems. But this is sadly not the case.

          [*] This study [0] found that 80% of homeless people have some kind of mental illness, with 30% having severe mental illness. This is compounded by the fact that >50% have substance abuse problems.

          [0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8423293/

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          • HankStallone 18 hours ago
            Right. As I touched on elsewhere in the thread, our local jailers know all the homeless people in town because they show up regularly when their mental illnesses and/or substance abuse get them into trouble. The ordinary guy who wound up homeless due to a string of bad luck and just needs a place to sleep and a new job to get back on his feet is more a movie trope than reality. These are people with real problems who in many cases need regular supervision in something like a group home, if not outright institutionalization. And as you said, the latter is very hard to do now.
        • onlyrealcuzzo 18 hours ago
          SF tried, didn't work. The homeless population increased, not offset by the people who got housed.
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          • mothballed 18 hours ago
            That seems like an unfair metric. Any program that helps homeless people significantly more than anywhere else in the USA is going to become the new capital of homeless people and their population will explode. It doesn't mean the people helped are worse off.
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            • nradov 15 hours ago
              Right, but the taxpayers in that city are worse off. That's why any solutions need to be driven at least at the county level and preferably at the state level. Leaving it to individual cities creates all sorts of perverse incentives. (SF is somewhat unique in that they are their own county so for that area specifically, shifting programs from the city to county level wouldn't change anything.)
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              • mothballed 15 hours ago
                Taxpayers are pretty much always going to be worse off helping the homeless. Only a small fraction of the chronically homeless will become tax positive citizens in their lifetime.

                Either you start off with the first principle that it's OK for wealth-transfer schemes to make tax payers 'worse off' via compelled charity, or I don't think you can get to the point of supporting generalized homeless relief programs. Maybe programs targeted at short-duration stuff to get people into jobs that are capable of doing them and a housing contract might work, but it'd have to be extremely well thought out and wouldn't benefit most chronic homeless.

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                • nradov 15 hours ago
                  My point is that it's a lot easier to share the tax burden at the state level rather than in individual cities.
            • creer 11 hours ago
              I mean, San Francisco could spend that money housing their homeless in random cities spread around the country - investing in these cities and avoiding encouraging influx to a single spot... Possibly even cities with jobs, and funding corresponding service and construction jobs in these cities. Except of course for the NIMBY problem - I laugh at how that would be received in the cities I know about.
          • nobody9999 11 hours ago
            >SF tried, didn't work. The homeless population increased, not offset by the people who got housed.

            IIRC, For decades, the homeless "relief" programs run by states like Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and others pretty much ended at bus tickets to San Francisco for the homeless (whether they wanted to go or not) and that's it.

            Is it any wonder the population of homeless in SF grew?

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    • Yizahi 17 hours ago
      The problem is not that lack of examples. Technically, all two hundred something countries could take example of the best one in every metric and just copy most of the stuff to make life better.

      The problem is that politicians are afraid to do anything (outside of direct and indirect enrichment). No one can blame some John Doe, chief Busybody of the Busyarea, if he won't do something. Because that didn't happen, nothing to point finger at directly, except for "you don't do enough", which is generic enough to be used at anyone and so ineffective at everyone. But if he will do something and it is immediately painful to at at least some group, then he will be blamed and his opponent will do that with pleasure too.

    • stonogo 10 hours ago
      That point would be strong, but this article doesn't make that point, or any other points I can tell. It does really weird things like comparing the annual cost of housing one Texan person to building an entire Californian housing unit, changes which definition of "homelessness" it uses (sometimes mid-sentence), ignores Houston's extremely police-oriented approach to the topic (police can cite you for trespassing if you're at a bus stop and don't produce ID), pretends the Texas cities aren't sweeping encampments (they are, right now, on Nance Street), and just generally plays fast-and-loose with the facts in Texas.
    • nis0s 19 hours ago
      I am not saying it’s okay that anyone should be homeless, but it’s baseless to call homelessness a crises for the U.S.

      The homeless population accounts for 0.23% of the total U.S. population, or about ~771K people.

      https://endhomelessness.org/state-of-homelessness/

      For comparison, more people are getting DUI citations per year,

      https://www.safehome.org/resources/dui-statistics/

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      • sethammons 19 hours ago
        > it’s baseless to call homelessness a crises for the U.S

        Sure, a quarter of a percent is not a big percent, but that sure is a lot of people. It is _more_ than the entire population of Alaska, Wyoming, or Vermont. It is near the population size of several other states.

        An entire US state's worth of people are unable to find adequate housing and not just because they are off their meds. According to the 2024 Point-in-Time count, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated 22% of homeless are facing a severe mental illness. So nearly 4 out of 5 homeless are regular people who simply cannot secure permanent housing.

        That sure as hell sounds like a crisis to me.

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        • pandaman 15 hours ago
          > So nearly 4 out of 5 homeless are regular people who simply cannot secure permanent housing.

          How does it follow? Not having a severe mental illness makes one normal? It's as same as saying that not suffering from severe obesity makes you fit and healthy.

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          • sethammons 2 hours ago
            Obesity is an excess of something. If we flip it, you can say that "too skinny is a problem" and there is a difference between someone someone with an eating disorder that makes them avoid food vs those who simply don't eat enough.

            The unhoused has those people with a housing disorder, aka mental illness, and those who, simply, don't "house" enough.

            Why don't they house enough? Many reasons. But nearly 4 out of 5 are not ticking the severe mental illness part. So there is less water in the argument that homelessness is caused by mental illnesses which is the leading reason I hear when people talk about homelessness. So, they aren't "mental," they are "normal."

      • onlyrealcuzzo 19 hours ago
        There's 8300+ homeless people in San Francisco.

        That's 1% of the population. Maybe not a big deal to you.

        There's only 13,000 city blocks in SF.

        That's a homeless person every 2 blocks.

        Kind of dangerous to be walking past people in all different states of desperation multiple times every trip everywhere you go, is another way to look at it.

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        • Broken_Hippo 19 hours ago
          Even if you end homelessness, you'll still be walking past people in all different states of desperation multiple times everywhere you go.

          People looking like they have homes or acting like it won't stop this. It doesn't make people inherently dangerous.

          Don't get me wrong, I think any percent of the population being homeless because of lack of options is a tragedy. (I don't really care if someone wishes to be so, and I think we should have appropriate living options for this). I understand that you can't really stop temporary homelessness - fires and urgent things happen - but that's something we can deal with as needed.

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          • onlyrealcuzzo 18 hours ago
            Is your argument that, because x% of the population is desperate, we shouldn't care or do anything about x%+y% being like that?

            y% LIVES on the blocks - so the multiple on y is higher (higher probability you encounter them), and the desperation factor is also likely much higher.

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            • nis0s 18 hours ago
              Please note that someone giving you a quantitative context isn’t necessarily saying don’t care. But it’s important to be mindful of how people use words in the media to describe certain issues because it benefits them politically or financially.

              The problem which sticks out to me is that homelessness can be addressed by providing housing, but that’s not an easy solution to provide in a country that gets 10s of millions of illegal immigrants. So why is someone talking so much about homelessness relative to other issues? Do they want the U.S. to provide a house for every illegal immigrant who crosses a border? If political officials in states struggling with homelessness really care about solving the problem, they would do what other states are doing, as mentioned in OP’s article.

        • UncleMeat 17 hours ago
          Is it dangerous? I agree that people with means feel unsafe when encountering poverty but the "it is unsafe to ride the subway because there are poor people there" stuff doesn't appear to be proportionate with actual risk.

          I think that one of the huge limitations of how we think about homelessness in the US is that we view it as a problem that non-homeless people encounter. This encourages a bunch of policies that make it easier for somebody to avoid ever having to see a homeless person but which do little to mitigate the suffering of a homeless person.

        • sroussey 19 hours ago
          People drugged out screaming on the street in SF are not necessarily homeless. Just that they may have rules about drugs in their room.
          [-]
          • onlyrealcuzzo 18 hours ago
            Is this an argument that a homeless person per block isn't a problem?

            Or are you just what-about-ing?

            Homeless people can be a problem independent of housed-drug addicts being a problem.

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            • ThrowMeAway1618 11 hours ago
              Yeah! A big problem. We should just Brian Kilmeade[0] them all, right?

              They're a burden on society and should be removed. But why stop there? The bottom 20% of school kids are just going to end up being a burden on society too! Prison costs something like $50k/inmate/annum. So let's inject them too!

              But why wait for the kids? We know who is popping out all those burden-on-society babies. Sterilize them. Then we can use them as "comfort women" for our brave, selfless Immigration Enforcement heroes!

              USA! USA! USA!

              [0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fox-news-involuntary-letha...

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              • ThrowMeAway1618 7 hours ago
                I'm getting a little worried about you HNers.

                Granted, this is pretty obvious satire, but upvoting it?

                If you did, is it because you support murdering poor and disadvantaged people?

                I hope not. But some folks around here make me wonder.

                Maybe I'll just stop, as I certainly don't want to encourage murderous pieces of shit.

        • devmor 19 hours ago
          I don’t really think this holds the point you think it does.

          While property crime is more likely to be committed by people the lower their income level is, the majority of all violent crime is committed by people who have homes.

          In fact, the homeless are far more likely to be the victims of a violent crime than any other income demographic.

          Furthermore, the unstable and dangerous people you see behaving erratically on the street are not necessarily sleeping there - and the homeless in the area probably feel much more unsafe about their presence than you do.

          [-]
          • onlyrealcuzzo 18 hours ago
            > majority of all violent crime is committed by people who have homes.

            Gee, I wonder why, they make up 99% of the population.

            How could they ever make up more than 50% of crime?

            > I don’t really think this holds the point you think it does

            [-]
            • devmor 7 hours ago
              No, you just missed the point I made.

              Which is that if you’re scared of being assaulted by someone you should be scared of everyone around you at all times. Someone’s housing status does not make them any more likely to attack you.

              Being scared of homeless people hurting you is like being scared of flying in a plane when you drive a car every day.

      • 0_____0 19 hours ago
        771K people isn't a small number. 0.23% isn't a small number when it comes to homelessness. This also doesn't consider people who are housed but are overcrowded or living in otherwise very poor environments.

        You also ignore that it's a rapidly growing problem.

        Comparing it to DUI numbers doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

        [-]
        • nis0s 19 hours ago
          Disagree that it’s a growing problem, there are lots of states dealing with it correctly. Look at the article, for example.
          [-]
          • brewdad 9 hours ago
            And there are plenty of states that put their homeless on a bus to some other state to deal with.

            That's not doing anything about the root causes.

      • HankStallone 18 hours ago
        A quarter of a percent still seems like a lot to me, even if it's not a "crisis."

        But we can't do anything about it until we face up to the problem. Spending more money won't help. I'm somewhat familiar with the activity at our local jail, and a good part of it is homeless people rotating in and out. They get brought in because they were trespassing or shoplifting or something, the jail cleans them up and dries them out (they're usually on drugs, which they somehow manage to buy) and tries to get them back on their medications, they get released, and the cycle begins again. Most of them are mentally unstable, and perhaps they'd be somewhat functional if they could stay on their medication, but they don't, so they can't function in society for long.

        We don't want to put them back in asylums, because some asylums really were hellholes, and I guess we don't trust ourselves not to let them be hellholes again. That seems awfully pessimistic; factories used to be pretty awful too, but we require them to be safe and clean now. Seems like we could do the same with asylums, but we won't even consider it. So we're left with letting them wander the streets, maybe bedding down at homeless shelters when they feel like it, using the jails as temporary asylums when they get in trouble, and throwing more money at the problem once in a while to soothe our guilt. It's sad.

        [-]
        • nis0s 18 hours ago
          Different US states have implemented useful measures for helping homeless people, but states which are struggling with their implementation have other issues as well. Border states in particular have illegal immigrants to contend with as well, so a housing-first policy for homelessness gets taken off the table right away. California has the means and resources for dealing with its homelessness problem, but the political will is murky.
      • captainclam 18 hours ago
        I've always been surprised by the official homeless population count, but it turns out there's a lot more to it.

        The department of HUD generates this ~771K figure from a "point-in-time" estimate, a single count from a single night performed in January. They literally have volunteers go out, count the number of homeless people they observe, and report their findings.

        It's not hard to imagine why this is probably a significant undercount. There is likely a long tail of people that happened to be in a situation that night where they were not able to be counted (i.e. somewhere secluded, sleeping in a friend's private residence that night, etc).

        Even if these numbers are correct, to my mind a "crisis" is still more characterized by the trend than the numbers in absolute. From the first link you provided, we saw a 39% increase in "people in families" experiencing homelessness, and 9% in individuals. A resource from the HUD itself suggests a 33% increase in homelessness from 2020-2024, 18% increase from 2023-2024. That is far apace of the population increase in general.

        https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2024-...

        And even then, I would say many people would suggest that the change in visible homelessness they've experienced in the last 10 years would amount to "crisis" levels, at least relative to the past.

        It's completely fair to argue that it is not in fact a crisis, but claiming that it is certainly not "baseless."

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        • saghm 3 hours ago
          It's kind of wild that they pick maybe the coldest month of the year to do this. You'd think that would be when people are most likely to try to find some sort way of avoiding direct exposure to the open air even if it's extremely short term.
      • bdcravens 19 hours ago
        Whether it's homelessness, DUIs, or fentanyl deaths (only 75k per year!), measuring the impact of something by ignoring the blast radius is disingenuous. All who are touched are part of it. In the case of homelessness, it's a burden on emergency services, creates unsafe environments, impacts businesses, etc.
        [-]
        • nis0s 19 hours ago
          I think the article points out some useful ways to deal with the problem at hand.
      • watwut 19 hours ago
        Why are you comparing amount of homeless people to DUI?
        [-]
        • superxpro12 19 hours ago
          Scale of the issue relative to the risk, I think.
        • harpiaharpyja 19 hours ago
          It's another public health issue that could also be receiving attention which causes harm to people.
      • pessimizer 19 hours ago
        What is supposed to be the relationship between those two things? Will you be comparing it to the number of ham sandwiches next?
        [-]
        • nis0s 19 hours ago
          You would think that since DUI operators present a greater social problem, both in numbers and potential to cause harm, there would be all sorts of active campaigns against such an issue. But the present reality is that some issues have great political forces behind them, and the media takes care to paint such issues as “crises”. Maybe it is a crisis, for a certain locality, and that reflects on the governance of that place. But I don’t think it’s fair or accurate to say your local problem is a problem at large, even if that means you get less federal monies to deal with it. Maybe what that means is that people need to reflect on how their localities are spending their budget, or sorting their priorities.
    • jsbisviewtiful 16 hours ago
      How does Houston deal with those that can't be housed? Sure, 90% retention sounds nice for these people but California has limited housing/higher housing costs, in general, last I had read. The write-up even mentions rising housing costs or the Trump admin taking away their funding can crash the system, so unclear how easily this system could transfer to other cities. Sure, better communicating systems and a better hierarchy will lead to better outcomes for most orgs, but that's a pretty general statement about basically every org out there.

      I also feel like this write-up sugar coats some of the actions Houston/Texas has been taking against non-compliance. Ticketing homeless people $200 for existing on the streets seems a bit counter intuitive - and Texas has been systematically shipping homeless and immigrants around the country (human trafficking) for political theater, so are they excluding that data? Probably.

      I'm not an expert, but this write-up really comes off as one-sided since it's only talking about what's not working in California and ignoring some of the background stuff Texas is up to. Overall, do agree that better management and accountability would do other cities favors, but again, that's such an easy statement to make about any plan or org.

      https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/city-of-hou...

      [-]
      • nradov 15 hours ago
        Higher housing costs in California are in some sense an artificial manufactured problem. California should mimic Texas by making it easier and cheaper to build more housing. Take approval power away from local governments, and give property owners and developers the right to build pretty much whatever they want wherever they want.
  • nerdsniper 6 hours ago
    Houston has an absolutely massive amount of homelessness. It just also has tons of “null space” for them to exist invisibly. No one here walks or bikes so no one sees it only because they aren’t looking. Homelessness becomes a much bigger problem for society when homeless people cant find any space to be away from the public.
  • estearum 19 hours ago
    This helps too: https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/texas-transports-over-100000...
    [-]
    • Psillisp 18 hours ago
      100 degree plus days in summer

      Torrential rain

      Hail storms

      Hurricanes

      flash floods

      Houston is not a place to live outdoors.

      [-]
      • selimthegrim 9 hours ago
        Never stopped anyone in New Orleans or Miami.
      • brewdad 8 hours ago
        Doesn't justify herding people up like cattle. Most of the US would be a miserable place to live at least 3-4 months out of the year.
  • alberth 19 hours ago
    Texas still has its own struggles.

    "Tent cities" do still exist, regardless of what the article stated.

    And under bridges is still a common gathering point.

    But yes, to a way lesser degree than anything you'd find in CA.

    [-]
    • beardedwizard 19 hours ago
      This is such a bad faith article, downtown Dallas is full of homeless and the cvs has everything locked up. If homelessness went down it's because they moved to CA.

      We do need more accountability for non profits though.

      [-]
      • subharmonicon 4 hours ago
        Hotels in Dallas for at least 15 years have disuaded people from walking even a few blocks downtown because they equate all the homelessness with crime.

        I found this funny because by far the biggest danger I have seen there are endless electric scooters littering the sidewalks.

      • CSSer 8 hours ago
        Agreed, but just so no one latches onto what I think you meant as a joke, the overwhelming majority of homeless people in California are native Californians.
      • rhubarbtree 18 hours ago
        I’ve been to more US states and cities than most Americans and every city I’ve been to has a severe homeless problem.

        Whilst it’s true that europe does have homelessness too, and it has gotten worse in recent years, it is incomparable to America.

        It doesn’t seem like a problem that can be fixed by some local policy or other. It’s a societal problem.

        America also has stratospheric levels of inequality, a terrible healthcare system, and lacks a functional welfare state. I do not think this is a coincidence.

        I’d much rather live somewhere more civilised, at the cost of higher taxation.

        It always irks me to see Americans taunt Europeans on social media about their lack of very large tech companies, whilst the Europeans are perhaps too dignified to point out the consequences of America’s hypercapitalism (such as homelessness, crime, and trump) in return.

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        • bz_bz_bz 17 hours ago
          What social media platforms do you use where Europeans are too dignified to point out the consequences of America’s hypercapitalism?
  • otikik 19 hours ago
    Didn't some cities "solve" the problem by buying homeless people bus tickets so that they go to SF? That is a system that "works".
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  • ckemere 13 hours ago
    I’m a bit confused about this. I live and work in Houston, and it seems like the number of apparently homeless panhandlers I see (specifically in the med center / NRG) area seems approximately constant over the last decade.

    Disclaimers- I don’t actually gather data. I don’t explore at night to see who is actually sleeping rough.

    I do get report from panhandlers that they need $20 to stay at the shelter…

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    • refulgentis 11 hours ago
      Article comes across as complete slop, if written by a human hand. Articles thesis is "build working systems" and "who knows if we're getting rid of the homeless people and drug users or just moving them around"[1] and top comment here is "committees are annoying."

      [1] true! what's the next thought from there? :)

  • dylan604 19 hours ago
    Like Dallas that rounds up the homeless and puts them on busses to drop off in Houston?

    "The success in Houston and Dallas came from building operational infrastructure to make encampments disappear permanently instead of temporarily."

    This is 100% BS. I drive past tent encampments every day. All that happens is the city comes in and disrupts the encampments so they are clear for a couple of days, and then everyone just returns. They have even started placing signs at the intersections where the people from the closest encampment under the bridge pan handle that discourages "street charity".

    If this is what is considered success, then it must be really bad elsewhere. At least on the west coast the homeless do not have to worry about the weather as much

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    • aprilthird2021 19 hours ago
      > If this is what is considered success, then it must be really bad elsewhere

      Yes, it is, lol...

  • josefresco 19 hours ago
    > Houston has no zoning code

    Too many and too restrictive building codes are bad, but no codes? Yikes.

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    • rtkwe 19 hours ago
      Zoning code != building codes. Zoning deals with the types of buildings/uses that can be built in an area not the requirements for safety like electrical or structural building codes.

      It's definitely a mixed bag though, zoning keeps industrial uses away from residential which is good for pollution and noise reasons but it also restricts building dense housing in areas zoned single family.

      I'm always dubious about explanations that don't account for the fact that the weather in many California towns are more pleasant and survivable year round compared to Texas. Or that locations like SF are quite space constrained when it comes to new housing so new projects generally have to displace some current use making the process harder.

    • akgoel 19 hours ago
      It’s not quite true that we have no codes, but you wouldn’t come here and find some hell hole of mixed industrial and residential. Land prices really do dictate use.
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      • staticautomatic 19 hours ago
        You mean like the million dollar McMansions on the same block as a gas station, across the street from an office high rise? I think you’re over-estimating the effect of land prices.
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        • Yizahi 17 hours ago
          What's the problem with gas station (provided it keeps mandatory distance from the buildings) or the office building near the residential ones? In fact, close offices are often cited as a pros for certain locations, people are even trying to rent as close as they can in some cities.

          PS: I've lived the whole last year approximately 100m away from both gas station and large office complex. Neither bothered me at all, and it was a first floor.

      • vel0city 18 hours ago
        Maybe inside the loop, but go to Channelview or Deer Park or Baytown or La Porte or League City or even Webster.

        Go take a look around the Nasa Bypass and Gulf Freeway. You've got apartments, a Great Wolf Lodge, an oil pipeline holding station, and single family homes all right next to each other all right on top of the creek.

        The parks I used to play at had active oil and gas wells right next to them. My neighborhood growing up had a big, straight greenbelt that bisected the neighborhood due to the abundance of buried gas lines in between.

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        • Psillisp 18 hours ago
          The loop will not save you
      • Psillisp 18 hours ago
        Have you been on Houston Avenue? It is an unwalkable hell hole.

        It literally goes townhouses, lumber yard, liquor store, train track, townhouses, bail bonds, Chevy dealership with limited sidewalks.

    • jotux 19 hours ago
      >> Houston has no zoning code

      >Too many and too restrictive building codes are bad, but no codes? Yikes

      You're confusing zoning codes (what land can be used for what type of structure, e.g., industrial and residential) and building codes (the rules for safely constructing a building).

    • digianarchist 5 hours ago
      California has passed SB79 which is a minor step forward. The opposition it received was pretty high for such a limited Bill.

      I don't have a huge amount of faith CA will get housing costs under control but doing so is clearly one of the prerequisites to get a handle on the homelessness crisis.

      https://cayimby.org/legislation/sb-79/

    • BolexNOLA 19 hours ago
      I lived in Houston for six months and I don’t understand anybody who would ever use it as a model for any city in any capacity unless they love endless interstate construction and taking 60-90 minutes to get anywhere. “Sprawling mess” doesn’t even begin to cover it.
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      • bob1029 2 hours ago
        The sprawling mess of Houston has ostensibly contributed to its very low housing costs. A lot of the other problems in the area begin to melt away when everything is ridiculously affordable.

        The golden path is to live in the Houston area while working remotely. This helps you to avoid the worst aspect of the region while maximizing the best aspects.

        A million dollars buys you an incredible length of runway in the Houston market. You could buy a very high end home in the woodlands in cash, put a Porsche in the garage, and still have enough to go for a decade before you had to find a source of income again.

      • aprilthird2021 19 hours ago
        > I don’t understand anybody who would ever use it as a model for any city in any capacity

        They spent far less to basically completely solve their street homelessness problem compared to "model" cities like SF, so...

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        • wswope 18 hours ago
          Speaking as a born and raised Houstonian, that’s a completely delusional claim — and you’re believing it credulously because it fulfills a narrative that appeals to your preconceived notions.

          This article is the spitting definition of drawing a bullseye around an arrow. Houston’s secret sauce of preventing mass encampments is a combo of sprawl and police brutality. There aren’t as many dense areas to congregate compared to CA, and there are more places to hide away or squat to avoid notice.

          Enjoy your flavoraid though.

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          • array_key_first 7 hours ago
            It's a somewhat similar story in Dallas.

            We have less homelessness because we put up signs saying "don't feed the homeless" (yes, real, and yes, real traffic signs) and put spikes under bridges. Oh and then the police here can basically do whatever they want.

          • BolexNOLA 15 hours ago
            The police in my city regularly go through and rip apart encampments and scatter everybody to the wind. It literally solves nothing.

            I also find it pretty horrifying for someone to actively advocate for “police brutality.” By definition it is immoral and should not be desired. You can’t even be bothered to say “strong policing“ and pretend you don’t want law enforcement to abuse people who already have enough problems? You actively want them going out and hurting people? Please correct me if I’m wrong because it really comes across that way.

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            • selimthegrim 9 hours ago
              It was so much worse than that. Michael Hecht needs to answer for a lot of things.
          • aprilthird2021 16 hours ago
            The bay area has sprawl and has been embracing police brutality on this issue, and homelessness is not improving here. If that worked, they would try it here.
          • bz_bz_bz 18 hours ago
            Does being born and raised in Houston make you an expert on homelessness? It's interesting you are so quick to rebuke the article with sweeping generalizations and zero data. Could it be because it does not appeal to your preconceived notions?

            Houston was one of the first major cities to transfer chronically homeless individuals from encampments to one-bedroom apartments with almost zero friction (no intermediate shelters, no drug testing, no requirement to find a job). This was a highly successful program under Turner that had little to do with sprawl or police brutality.

      • akgoel 19 hours ago
        Yes, it takes me 60 minutes to go 45 miles when I cross the extremes of the city. Oh noes! How far does the red line go in Boston and how long does that take?
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        • codyb 19 hours ago
          I think the better question is general walkability.

          The extremes is a pretty weird trip to do comparisons of since most people go from the outskirts into the centers to work and play and then go back to the outskirts.

          The question becomes... once you get to your destination, can you get anywhere else without having to hop back into the car?

          In cities like NY or Boston you can ride into town, hit a restaurant, go to the show, grab a few drinks then hit the clubs all without getting back into your car or just by taking short stints on readily available public transportation or taxis.

          Can you have that same experience in Houston? I don't really know. Maybe. Where I'm from it's not concentrated like that so you go to your friends house... then you get in a car and go down to the bars... then you get in the car again to go to the arena for the show.

          Everything's very dispersed. I personally like that much less.

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    • superxpro12 19 hours ago
      [flagged]
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      • knowaveragejoe 19 hours ago
        That's not what a zoning code does.
      • dylan604 19 hours ago
        Meh, that's not a problem when you've been allowed to build in a flood zone.
  • chaoticmass 18 hours ago
    Not really fair to compare the two geographic regions. Nobody wants to live on the streets in Dallas or Houston. It’s way too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. That said, living in Dallas I have seen the odd tent city pop up under some freeway overpasses but they don’t stick around very long so I guess the city does do something about it.
  • gamblor956 5 hours ago
    Texas' official policy on homelessness and drug users for at least a decade was to buy them a bus ticket to California. Gov Rick Perry bragged about it in a presidential debate. His successor bragged about it in a gubernatorial debate.

    When the LA Times tried to survey the homeless population two years ago, fewer than 25% of the homeless in Hollywood were from California and none of them were locals. Want to guess the #1 state of residence for LA's homeless (Hint: it's Texas.)

    But this article is right: once LA started buying the non-local homeless bus tickets back to their real home cities, things started getting better in LA. It's now part of our current mayor's homeless strategy to convince people to go back home.

    Also: California defines homelessness differently (more broadly) than most states. Using the California definition, Texas, North Dakota, Florida, New York, and Oklahoma all have almost as many homeless. But when those states redefine homelessness to mean something narrower, of course they're going to look better. If California were to limit the "homeless" population to just Californians who became homeless (meaning that they owned, rented, or otherwise had housing before losing it), it would have fewer homeless than Texas.

  • yardie 19 hours ago
    I remember a report about either SF or LA converting a parking lot to safe place for homeless and the mayor going on TV to show how proud they were this was a solution. I was flabbergasted. Because in no way would my SE coastal sensibilities regard this as any fucking solution to homelessness. It was literally a parking lot full of tents for the homeless.
  • bravetraveler 19 hours ago
    Not sure the whole of California can take the advice from subsets of Texas, considering the state of the intersections in Austin.

    The brushing-along still happens

  • aprilthird2021 19 hours ago
    Good article. Very convincing. Even if the housing bit cannot be solved (NIMBY-ism in California is very strong) the other solutions should help. And there's no reason homeless people in SF or LA should stay in the most expensive housing areas of a completely Democratically controlled state
  • 6stringmerc 18 hours ago
    What the actual fuck? The homeless problem here in Dallas is at an all time high. I've been in and out of the Downtown proper for 20 years now.

    Completely unbelievable premise and not worth reading.

    Citation: I was recently homeless following a stint in jail on a bogus Felony charge, and still frequent some of the resources / areas where I got help. 24 Hour Club. Dallas Public Libraries.

    Tarrant County has a very good homeless program. They throw them in jail. Then let them out to do meth, then put them back in. They were my company in Lon Evans.

  • j3th9n 19 hours ago
    Follow the money. Create a homelessness crisis, buy the cheap houses surrounding the tent cities and sell/rent them again for a bit/way more money when you fixed the crisis.
  • premiumLootBox 18 hours ago
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  • temptemptemp111 19 hours ago
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  • okkdrjfhfn 19 hours ago
    [flagged]
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    • Psillisp 18 hours ago
      Agree with you. Too bad this argument is using the wrong terminology.

      To be acceptable to society, you either need to be willing to subjugate yourself for rent or be rich enough to own actual land. humans are no longer allowed a natural state.

    • okkdrjfhfn 18 hours ago
      [flagged]
  • codr7 15 hours ago
    Does it look like they are even trying to solve the problem?

    Perhaps they're more waiting for the public to beg for permanent military presence. Create a problem for the solution you're looking to implement.

    I have no idea about California, but I do know that's how it works in Sweden.