jsjohns2

It always strikes me how much commonality exists across different software engineering disciplines—not to mention across fields outside of engineering (e.g., how double-entry bookkeeping mirrors immutable design principles, or how federalism resembles class-based OOP).

Great to see an attempt at describing this phenomenon. A great start to what will surely be an awesome resource.

> In arbitration, this doesn't work. It's a vastly more even playing field for consumers, who tend to have less money than the companies they're suing and less downside in the case outcome (money damages versus e.g. having been sexually harassed).

I dunno, not my personal experience. I took a large bank to arbitration over a low value credit reporting dispute. Offered to "settle" several times for nothing more than a fix to my credit report, which would have cost the bank $0.

The bank refused and so we went all the way to a final judgement.

The arbitration dragged out over 16 months. 4 days of hearings in which multiple attorneys and witnesses were present on the bank's side. Numerous conference calls, 800 emails, 250 pages of legal briefs, 1000+ pages of exhibits, discovery, etc. I would not be surprised if the total outlay eclipsed half a million for them.

Lest anyone come away from this thinking that arbitration is good for the consumer, this story only has a happy ending because the business chose to settle.

I also took a corporation to arbitration. A Big 4 bank destroyed my credit over a billing mistake that was their fault, relating to a credit card account with a $230 balance. Despite seeking nothing more than to have my credit fixed, the bank refused to settle. I contacted upwards of 100 attorneys with no luck, so decided to self-represent.

16 months, 25 hours under oath, and over 2,000 hours later, I "won" a judgement forcing the bank to fix my credit -- but no monetary recovery at all.

I suspect that there is a strong non-linear effect, i.e., introducing novel drugs into a state with very cheap housing does not move the needle that much on homelessness (WV) but is catastrophic when done in a city with expensive housing (LA).

We should address the housing problem. We should also address the drug problem.

Jake, I get the argument. Fifty years of bad housing policy have yielded high housing prices today, high housing prices leads to homelessness, and homelessness leads to drug abuse. Fixing housing policy now will lead to lower housing prices, homelessness, and drug abuse in the future.

So we should fix housing policy. Ok.

That seems very reasonable and logical, except that no one seems to know how to actually make housing policy changes happen. You write a (interesting and informative) blog post about Proposition HHH, Matt Yglesias writes a blog post about 1950s boarding houses, PhDs at Zillow churn out peer-reviewed papers, and LA voters even throw $1,200,000,000 at Proposition HHH -- and yet the problem gets worse and worse.

You write that the "homelessness problem is intractable without zoning reform". Well, what if zoning reform is also intractable?

Focusing exclusively on fixing housing policy, which appears to be intractable for the foreseeable future, is a mistake. We should be focusing on drug abuse as well, which is a very serious problem in LA.

Comparing the number of available beds with the number of unsheltered homeless people does not disprove parent's argument that there is a bed for everyone who wants a bed.

A better question would be -- what the average shelter utilization?

Comparing LA and WV is like comparing apples and oranges. At least those are both fruits.

Those locales differ on much more than just housing costs.

If you are naïve enough to think that we will simply build our way out of the homelessness crisis, I encourage you to book a flight to Los Angeles and strike up a conversation with any first responder. They will all tell you the same story -- the homeless are nearly all on Methamphetamine and/or Fentanyl.

Yes, rent prices have increased over the last decade. But the affordability, purity, availability, and use of those very destructive drugs have also increased over the same time period.

The chart that I would be interested in seeing is are those elements plotted against homelessness rate. I suspect that the correlation coefficient between per-capita meth use and homelessness rate would be ~1.

> I’m not sure what you are getting at?

There is one general characterization of a homeless person who has severe mental illness or is in the throes of addiction. There is another of a person who is simply down on his luck. He sleeps in his car on a side street at night, showers at the local YMCA, and takes the bus to his minimum wage job. If housing was cheaper, or if government assistance better, then he could afford a small apartment.

I agree that the latter exist and I think you would agree that the former exists. The data suggests that the majority of the population falls into the latter camp.

What I'm getting at is -- we should treat the data with more skepticism. It doesn't match what I see with my own eyes. Something is off. Either my eyes are grossly deceiving me or it's just wrong. Yes, I'm more likely to overestimate the number in the former camp than underestimate -- but it's just overwhelming. The ratio seems like it's 100:1 not 7:3 or something. They can't be that good at blending into society.

> Being in a tent doesn’t mean someone is mentally ill or using hard drugs.

My intuition is that there is a very tight correlation between the two. It seems almost tautological to me that someone who chooses* to live in filth in a tent on a median or under an overpass is mentally ill. Maybe I'm wrong.

* "Chooses", not in the sense that they should pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get a job, but in the sense that -- why don't they put up their tent in a cleaner less densely populated part of town and take a free bus ride into town?

If this isn’t a problem in need of an immediate solution, then what is? Those people need help today, not if/when LA figures out how to fix fifty years of housing stock mismanagement. I would be surprised if the old woman in the sand is alive in five years.

And what about the vagrant trying to break into my apartment complex last week? The other one with a sharp object who got arrested in my neighbor’s backyard a couple of weeks ago? The young guy in my old neighborhood who was stabbed to death in his backyard by a different vagrant? The man passed out snoring right outside my girlfriend’s front doorstep?