Homelessness [split from Leadville and Salida Ranger Districts]

[Morgana]

Am I missing something, or are we arguing about statistics and making big-picture conclusions based on two randomly cherry-picked job announcements, out of a field that probably contains thousands of jobs, without any real sense of what the field involves, and zero knowledge of salaries or expectations for comparable jobs in other fields?

These may be some of the most beautifully crafted Titanic deck chairs I have ever seen, but that does not mean they will float.

Everybody already knows that the ratio between executive salaries and line-staff salaries is absurdly inflated.

Anyone who thinks that this problem does not extend to the nonprofit sector, or that people in the nonprofit sector are all idealists who've taken a vow of poverty, should take a closer look at reality.

These jobs probably recruit from a broad candidate pool, and thus must be competitive nationally not just locally, so local salary statistics are not too meaningful.

More importantly, in this entire long thread, I have not seen ONE SINGLE PIECE OF EVIDENCE that any person in any of these jobs has done anything to sabotage them. You can play with statistics all you want, but the post that started this line of conversation made an ugly accusation that no-one has done anything to back up. "Moral hazard" is a clever sounding phrase, but if everyone did everything they were tempted to do, then we'd be living in Mad Max land, not USA 2023.

No doubt there is wrongdoing in this field as in every other. Whether that takes the form of sabotage (unlikely imo; there are a lot better ways to skim much more money out of this thing), and whether it makes up 50% or .05% of the problem, none of us here know. A couple random job ads don't shed much light on this. Easy to make dramatic accusations against people you don't know; harder to try to understand the problem, and even harder to try to fix it.


[mod edit: some content deleted at the request of the author- tx2]

 

[mpruet]

^^^^^
It’s not statistics so much as trying to emphasize that locality has much to do with the cost of living, and that the cost of living has much too do with what salaries are needed to attract the level of employee required.

In my working years I was a software developer for a major corporation located in the San Francisco Bay Area. While many of my co-workers lived in the Bay Area, I was initially recruited from the Dallas area. I had a good salary, but it was comparable to what a software developer would be earning in the Dallas area.

I frequently made trips to the Bay Area to work with my co-workers and realized that the costs in San Jose were much higher than in Dallas. At one point I was put under some pressure to work in San Jose and I quickly realized that I couldn’t afford to live there without a 50% increase in income. Otherwise I’d have to live in the Central Valley some 100 miles away.

Another point. The house I grew up in was recently up for sell. It is a 15 room solid brick house, three stories with balcony and huge pillars. The price was $350,000. In places like those in Orange County it would have been above $10,000,000. The only difference is location, and location changes both the cost of living and earnings. I’m including a picture.

This is one of the reasons that I’m personally opposed to a national minimum salary. I believe that the minimum salary should be based on the local cost of living.

 

[Frood]

Nevermind. Was asking a question that didn't matter and I looked up myself. Please delete this post. Sorry!

 

[Morgana]

^^^ Cost-of-living statistics would definitely be more relevant than income statistics (though we're still faced with the problem of making large generalizations based on two job announcements and no sense of executive salaries in comparable fields).

Some resources for cost-of-living figures are Numbeo, Niche, CNN Money, Forbes, bestplaces.net, mylifeelsewhere.com, and nerdwallet.com. I don't know how reliable any of these are; some are crowdsourced. I do know (based on way too much time spent comparing sticks-and-bricks rental averages in different locations) that you can get very different results for the same place depending on which source you consult -- one of the many dangers of placing too much weight on any one statistic.

 

[RonDean]

Morgana has made the best point. Where is the evidence that Homeless Admins are guilty of anything, regardless of income level? Two different subjects are being discussed. I happen to think many professions and individuals are absurdly wealthy and others are left to struggle in an unfair system. This is not evidence that any of them are any less than hard-working people who are deeply concerned about our social needs. All the talk about income levels and medium income fails to address some basic facts.

As this might relate to poverty and homelessness, see: https://confrontingpoverty.org/pove...ty-higher-in-the-u-s-than-in-other-countries/

"Regardless of how poverty is measured, the United States is at the high end when it comes to poverty and inequality. Whether we look at children’s rates of poverty, poverty among working age adults, or poverty among single parent families, the story is the same. The U.S. has far and away the highest rates of poverty in the developed world. In addition, the extent of U.S. income and wealth inequality also tends to be extreme when compared to other industrialized countries."

How can this be in what we too often call "The Richest Country in the World?" Huge wealth in the hands of statistically few tends to make the average or medium income much higher without actually budging the needle for those on the lower end of the scale. Toss in all the issues with building economical housing balanced against real estate as an investment and we have a perfect storm that leads to homelessness, regardless of all the other factors that also drive this problem.

We spend far too much time blaming the rich for being winners and the poor for being losers without addressing why the system is designed to produce winners and losers in the first place. Although other countries have their share of problems, many do a better job than the US.

 

[dhuff]

The median salary for someone with a Masters in the US, is $83k. https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2023/data-on-display/education-pays.htm

For all Master's degrees ? I believe it. But that would incl things like a Masters in English Literature, Fine Arts, etc... But that wasn't my point. You can't get a job like the ones we're discussing with an MFA.

 

[dhuff]

... we too often call "The Richest Country in the World?"

A "quote"misattributed to author John Steinbeck still rings true for me here... “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

 

[islanderxx]

Your numbers are wrong. Santa Ana has an average income of $94,914.

https://www.point2homes.com/US/Neig...an household income sits at $77,283 per year.

According to the U.S. Census for 2022, the median household income is $84,210, which could mean the husband and wife work. But the average salary is $55,743, which is more in line with what we are talking about. What is the incentive to eliminate the homeless who are getting paid $250K annually?

 

[WanderingRose]

Geez, islanderxx, maybe let it go?

 

[islanderxx]

What city is this?

I am not naming a city because I'm not accusing any city running the homelessness program of being unethical. But I can't help but wonder how San Francisco was able to remove all the homeless in downtown San Francisco in a few days before the APEC Summit. The homeless are now back on the streets in San Francisco. What would happen to the Director of the Homeless salary if the homeless did not return? If San Francisco was able to move the homeless out, they should be able to stop them from moving back in.

 

[user 22017]

I am not naming a city because I'm not accusing any city running the homelessness program of being unethical. But I can't help but wonder how San Francisco was able to remove all the homeless in downtown San Francisco in a few days before the APEC Summit. The homeless are now back on the streets in San Francisco. What would happen to the Director of the Homeless salary if the homeless did not return? If San Francisco was able to move the homeless out, they should be able to stop them from moving back in.

They just shuffled ppl around for the conference. They do the same thing for the Super Bowl. They put many of them in jails (for minor drug offenses) and increased the number of beds in the shelters. Guessing they packed them in like sardines. For those who didn't want to move into a shelter, they moved them at least 12 blocks from the conference.

You could have looked that up, islander

Here is what I believe is a big part of the problem:

The lack of government housing was done on purpose in the '80's and 90's. HUD stopped building many new units and were busy tearing down units that were too close to newly gentrified areas. We have a shortage of affordable housing. Especially in wealthy areas.

Insufficient housing​

In a 2022 book titled “Homelessness is a Housing Problem,” Clayton Page Aldern (a policy analyst and data scientist in Seattle) and Gregg Colburn (an assistant professor of real estate at the University of Washington’s College of Built Environments) studied per capita homelessness rates across the country along with what possible factors might be influencing the rates and found that high rates of homelessness are caused by shortages of affordable housing, not by mental illness, drug addiction, or poverty.[67][68]

They found that mental illness, drug addiction, and the use of those who live in poverty occur nationwide, but not all places have equally expensive housing costs.[67]: 1  One example cited is that two states with high rates of opioid addiction, Arkansas and West Virginia, both have low per capita rates of homelessness, because of low housing prices.[67]: 1  [68]: 1  With respect to poverty, the city of Detroit is one of the poorest cities, yet Detroit's per capita homelessness rate is 20% of that of West Coast cities like Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego.[67]: 1  [68]: 1 

From Wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_San_Francisco_Bay_Area

 

[rruff]

More importantly, in this entire long thread, I have not seen ONE SINGLE PIECE OF EVIDENCE that any person in any of these jobs has done anything to sabotage them.

It's an unimportant distraction even if they did.

The bottom line is that it's in every city's interest to kick the homeless somewhere else. So long as it's left up to local jurisdictions with local funding, this will be the case.

 

[rruff]

One example cited is that two states with high rates of opioid addiction, Arkansas and West Virginia, both have low per capita rates of homelessness, because of low housing prices.[67]: 1  [68]: 1  With respect to poverty, the city of Detroit is one of the poorest cities, yet Detroit's per capita homelessness rate is 20% of that of West Coast cities like Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego.[67]

Major logic fail, there...

 

[user 22017]

Major logic fail, there...

Makes sense to me. If housing is cheaper, fewer become homeless.

 

[WanderingRose]

I am not naming a city because I'm not accusing any city running the homelessness program of being unethical. But I can't help but wonder how San Francisco was able to remove all the homeless in downtown San Francisco in a few days before the APEC Summit. The homeless are now back on the streets in San Francisco. What would happen to the Director of the Homeless salary if the homeless did not return? If San Francisco was able to move the homeless out, they should be able to stop them from moving back in.

How temporarily clearing the streets of San Francisco figures in here, I’m not sure.

It would be logical that city administrators who successfully dealt with their homeless population would then not lose their jobs until the homeless again became a problem.

Nor that any city would pay someone a (fictitious/highly inflated) salary who produced no results.

City administrators don’t operate in a vacuum.

This would be an ongoing issue, requiring ongoing attention.

 

[Morgana]

It's an unimportant distraction even if they did.

The bottom line is that it's in every city's interest to kick the homeless somewhere else. So long as it's left up to local jurisdictions with local funding, this will be the case.

There's no single explanation, or solution, to a complex problem like this.
You can put forward your own idea without dismissing other ideas.

 

[Morgana]

n your example the median would be 5.

Oh xit, you're right.

Now I'm not sure if it was "just" a bad example or if my whole idea (that median values aren't that meaningful in this context) was wrong. I can't come up with a better argument so best to assume the whole idea was wrong. Cue Roseanne Roseannadanna saying "Never mind!"

I checked to see if the mods can label that somehow. Whatever they do (or don't) is fine with me.

Thanks!

 

[RonDean]

There's no single explanation, or solution, to a complex problem like this.
You can put forward your own idea without dismissing other ideas.

Exactly!
None of us say high housing costs and low income are the ONLY reasons for homelessness. All this talk of average and medium income makes no sense to me. I doubt if many (any?) of the homeless we are talking about are in that income category. A survey done by University of Cal said the average Cal income of the homeless BEFORE they lost traditional shelter was $960 per month. When the SF AVERAGE apt rental is almost $3000, I think the best solution is to go somewhere else as quickly as possible.

Most of us that do move a lot would give that a big DUH! But other urban areas aren't a lot better. Cities do have services for the poor and homeless while most rural areas have comparatively few to none. There is also the issue of where there might be more jobs that could work for a currently homeless person. If you need or want some kind of help, where would you go?

Addicted to drugs? Sure, that's a problem! What is the solution? I never have been drug addicted, but I understand it difficult and usually needs some kind of help to get out of. I doubt if you'll find that in Podunk, Iowa.

Mental illness? Again... what is the solution that the individual and/or society could take? It's not like the US has mental hospitals willing to take in homeless ppl just for the asking. And if their illness makes them less likely to ask, what then?

Etc... Etc... Etc... for the whole list of things that cause homelessness.

If we at least addressed the affordable housing issue, that would take that off the table and we could then move on to the next problem. As far as islanderxx's posts... Nonsense.

 

[tx2sturgis]

I know little of statistics and expressions, and median values and averages can be manipulated and
re-arranged.

But what I DO know is that sometimes each of us might make a small error, and realize after the edit window has closed that we need to fix something.

So at the poster's request an error was removed and then a following post correcting that error was removed.

This action does not change the conversational flow but I wanted to be totally transparent about it.

Thanks everyone.

Please continue.

 

[maki2]

The true financial cost to build and maintain “affordable” housing and to have staff responsible for overseeing such programs is very high. The word “affordable” is simply not accurate. It is financially subsidized housing.