How sketchy and pervasive is your city's visible transient/drug addict situation?

[dktshb]

Anecdotally it seems better in SF and I think there are some statistics to back it up. Hopefully Gavin's EO helps. Making it less hospitable to be unhoused/homeless in CA is going in the right direction. I do believe to some extent the worst elements are making their way here perceiving that they will have an easier time here being an absolute drain on civilization and society.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by destroycreate

I know Canada has an extreme affordable housing situation (my understanding even worse than the US right now?) coupled with relatively low wages vs. the States, so that might also be driving more people to the streets?

The consensus view appears to be that the Canadian housing crisis (which existed to some degree before our recent intake of millions of new people) has led to a lot of cheap housing (like SROs) previously occupied by the down and out, being converted to other forms of housing that are out of reach for them.

And of course the drugs today are more potent than ever.

[hauntedheadnc]

Well, I can tell you that heroin is pretty much impossible to get here in this area. It's all fentanyl. And increasingly, fentanyl is getting edged out by xylazine.

Generally speaking, around here if you see someone looking drawn and crusty it's meth. If they look like they're actively decaying it's xylazine.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Acajack

The consensus view appears to be that the Canadian housing crisis (which existed to some degree before our recent intake of millions of new people) has led to a lot of cheap housing (like SROs) previously occupied by the down and out, being converted to other forms of housing that are out of reach for them.

I can confirm. I eliminated no less than three SRO buildings in the downtown core of my hometown, one is now demolished, the other vacant and I'm likely demolishing it, and the third one is vacant but I'll likely turn it into an off-campus college dorm (so permanently unavailable to the style of tenant who used to live in there).

In a very rare move though, I'll likely create a new SRO out of a two-story duplex (two 4br apts so 8 rooms, just enough to NOT be a RBQ-jurisdiction Public Building according to the laws) that I would like to eventually demolish (>10k sq ft lot zoned for a 9-story tower) and the easiest way to achieve that is to let it turn to shit for the time being.

That almost never happens though: existing SROs vanish, very few new ones ever appear. It's a quasi-totally-one-way phenomenon.

All fellow real estate operators that I know are also trying to eliminate any SROs they still have in their portfolios. With the housing crisis the way it is, good tenants are super easy to find, tenants pay (you have them by the balls), so there's no interest in enduring the hassle of managing SROs when you can instead have much easier types of real estate there. It is a general trend everywhere and it does play a role in the homelessness levels.

[mhays]

Another thing Seattle is doing (actually Washington): Requiring cities to allow SROs again, anywhere that allows six-unit buildings. (That's a lot of area...the State also passed a law allowing six units on most SFR lots in bigger cities, with four units allowed in most other SFR areas.) Each unit needs its own bathroom but kitchens can be shared. The law also requires that local codes go easy on parking (not required near transit), and to consider the SRO units as only partial units in density calcs. New legislation.

Local AHJs still need to pass land use code updates to make this happen. But they'll be popular. Seattle had a loophole that allowed these for a few years, often under the "Apodment" brand, and thousands were built. Hell, here's their website...they alone have a bunch of these buildings from that brief period.

[ssiguy]

In Vancouver and Toronto the situation is horrid but even many mid-sized and small cities now. Every park in every city in the country is now awash with tents and the streets around them are littered with needles. Under Trudeau our standard of living has collapsed. Since Trudeau took power in 2015, the situation has gotten exponentially worse and yet he continues to let in students/temporary workers/ refugees/immigrants at an alarming rate. Currently, Canada is the fastest growing country in the WORLD outside Central Africa at a numbing 3.2%/year.

[destroycreate]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

In Vancouver and Toronto the situation is horrid but even many mid-sized and small cities now. Every park in every city in the country is now awash with tents and the streets around them are littered with needles. Under Trudeau our standard of living has collapsed. Since Trudeau took power in 2015, the situation has gotten exponentially worse and yet he continues to let in students/temporary workers/ refugees/immigrants at an alarming rate. Currently, Canada is the fastest growing country in the WORLD outside Central Africa at a numbing 3.2%/year.

Unreal. I'm not necessarily anti-immigration, but it does sound like from the many Canadians I've chatted with his government has taken the mentality of "open the floodgates", and it's not exactly highly-skilled workers en masse that are coming. It's going to take a lot of time for people to get acclimated and integrated, and my understanding is that well paid jobs are already incredibly difficult to come by in Canada, so it's mostly service sector jobs?

[llamaorama]

I had a job as the IT guy at a manufacturing plant in Houston.

The shop floor labor was mostly a mix of refugees or people who were down and out in life having been released from prison or otherwise having issues. That was the only way they could find people to do that kind of work (assemble things from sheet metal in a hot dusty environment with 12 hour shifts).

I can confirm from knowing some of the managers on the floor and a couple of people who worked on the floor and spoke English, that there was a whole thing involving groups of individuals living in rental housing close by and taking the bus. Down the street there was a lot of really decrepit housing, like someone takes three mobile homes from the 1980s and puts them on a lot and then puts a fence around it and three mailboxes on a post.

BUT

You know that Houston has relatively few homeless people on the streets for a city of it's size. I firmly believe the honest answer is that has nothing to do with the generosity of the city government there or any kind of progressive policy.

I think the real answer is just that the kind of person who would be homeless in San Francisco is probably banging out parts that place and then going home and smashing a 6 pack of beer on the porch of their trailer in East Houston.

Coastal cities have neither low-rent housing or nor the jobs of last resort type of employment that cheaper cities have.

[downtownpdx]

Originally Posted by llamaorama

I had a job as the IT guy at a manufacturing plant in Houston.

The shop floor labor was mostly a mix of refugees or people who were down and out in life having been released from prison or otherwise having issues. That was the only way they could find people to do that kind of work (assemble things from sheet metal in a hot dusty environment with 12 hour shifts).

I can confirm from knowing some of the managers on the floor and a couple of people who worked on the floor and spoke English, that there was a whole thing involving groups of individuals living in rental housing close by and taking the bus. Down the street there was a lot of really decrepit housing, like someone takes three mobile homes from the 1980s and puts them on a lot and then puts a fence around it and three mailboxes on a post.

BUT

You know that Houston has relatively few homeless people on the streets for a city of it's size. I firmly believe the honest answer is that has nothing to do with the generosity of the city government there or any kind of progressive policy.

I think the real answer is just that the kind of person who would be homeless in San Francisco is probably banging out parts that place and then going home and smashing a 6 pack of beer on the porch of their trailer in East Houston.

Coastal cities have neither low-rent housing or nor the jobs of last resort type of employment that cheaper cities have.

Yeah I read something recently about Houston tackling its homeless problem around 15 or 20 years ago. The article basically made it sound like local govt was simply going to camps and offering people homes/apts, that simple. This was at a time when the housing market was much more affordable and Texas wasn’t booming like it is now, so it was easier to pull this off. But who knows how it all plays out in the long run, so many homeless don’t have the capacity to maintain a residence due to various mental health, addiction issues… maybe someone local knows if there were long term subsidies in this program.

[craigs]

LA sees first double-digit decrease in street homelessness in at least 9 years

Josh Haskell, Michelle Fisher
KABC
June 28, 2024

Homelessness in the city of Los Angeles is down for the first time in six years, and this year is the first time the city has seen a double-digit decrease in street homelessness in nearly a decade.

The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, a joint powers agency of the city and county of L.A., announced the numbers from the Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count during a Friday morning news conference, detailing data that was gathered during an annual point-in-time survey conducted by hundreds of volunteers all across the region from Jan. 24- 26.

Top results from 2024 homeless count for city of Los Angeles

• Homelessness in L.A. is down for the first time in six years. There were 45,252 unhoused individuals in the city in 2024 compared to 46,260 in 2023, a drop of 2.2%
• Unsheltered homelessness decreased by approximately 10.7% - that's the first double-digit decrease in at least nine years, according to the city.
• 38% decrease in makeshift shelters
• Shelter count increased by 17.7%

. . . .

[AviationGuy]

Originally Posted by austlar1

It is strangely less visible here in Austin. Just a few years ago large numbers of homeless and tent encampments were to be found underneath all the overhead freeways throughout the city and also in parks and trails closer to the center. There have always been homeless encampments on vacant land (wooded areas especially) within about a 6 mile radius from the center of town. I suspect none of that has changed much, but the visible homeless population and a lot of the squalor associated with it has disappeared from view to a large extent. You'll still see a stray tent or three set up at various places around town, especially around highways 290 and 183 on the NE and North side of town, but the numbers have declined greatly. Even the large numbers of homeless on the sidewalks around the ARCH resource center have diminished to just a few dozen at any one time. There are still a lot of presumably homeless sign flyers at major intersections. That's been the case for at least two decades, so I don't really factor that into my assessment of local homeless situation. Things seemed to improve after the old city manager, who largely ignored the issue, was fired, and a former mayor (Kirk Watson) returned to office. Austin's mayor has little real power, but he is clearly not interested in coddling the homeless population. I think a large number of homeless have been housed in motels throughout the region, and supposedly a lot of homeless are utilizing the large state run encampment located somewhere on the SE side of town. I don't know how many have recieved housing in motels, and I am doubtful that the state run encampment is actually that well utilized. Since there is so much hard core drug addiction and/or mental illness in the homeless population, it seems doubtful that long term housing in motels will work for these people. I'm really at a loss to explain the decline in visible homelessness here in Austin, but I have to admit it's a huge and welcome improvement.

I noticed the same during my last visit (I left Austin in January). Several years ago, it was horrible. Just like you said. Just about every underpass was tent cities and piles of garbage everywhere, including adjacent to the Arboretum, which I understand was losing business. A 55+ apartment community was having trouble with leasing because people didn't want to live a block from the mess. The area around Ben White and Westgate/Menchaca was bad before any other area. Downtown businesses were really suffering. We even had some tents set up right in my neighborhood, about 50 ft from homes. I agree the homeless seem to have found other places. I noticed trails leading into the woods in several areas, like a long Braker between Mopac and 183. You could always tell, because there would be a bunch of shopping carts and trash at the entrances.

From everything I read, Austin still has a huge problem, but it isn't as visible, I would agree.

I live in Cypress now, a Houston suburb of about 250,000. In six months, I've never seen any tents anywhere, and have seen maybe a couple of transients on street corners. E.g., the intersection of 290 and Barker-Cypress. My guess is that the population and law enforcement in Cypress would never tolerate what has happened in Austin. It's even unusual to see any litter here, and the medians are all landscaped and maintained. In Austin the medians were trashed out anywhere they were close to a tent city, and there was no budget allocated to cleaning up all the trash. There are things I miss about not living in Austin, but I'm loving how much cleaner this place is.

[AviationGuy]

Originally Posted by downtownpdx

Yeah I read something recently about Houston tackling its homeless problem around 15 or 20 years ago. The article basically made it sound like local govt was simply going to camps and offering people homes/apts, that simple. This was at a time when the housing market was much more affordable and Texas wasn’t booming like it is now, so it was easier to pull this off. But who knows how it all plays out in the long run, so many homeless don’t have the capacity to maintain a residence due to various mental health, addiction issues… maybe someone local knows if there were long term subsidies in this program.

I've seen a few tents here and there in Houston, including along the bayou near downtown (under bridges), but I haven't seen a huge number like in other cities. There have been recent articles about how Houston has handled things, and people in Austin have been asking their city council why they don't use Houston's model (I don't know what the model is, though).

My understanding is that there a particular area of downtown Houston that is pretty bad in this respect, but I don't know exactly where.

I'm surprised Phoenix hasn't been mentioned. There was a lot of national news about a huge tent city next to downtown Phoenix.