The main difference between rich people and poor people is that rich people have more money. 

That’s it, really. Those with wealth are just as likely to form addictions, get divorces and engage in behaviors we deem responsible for poverty. They simply have more resources to fall back on. People without that cushion often land violently, land on the streets. Perhaps they should be extra careful since they’re in a more precarious position, but human beings are human beings: flawed. 

In the same ridiculously simple sense, homeless people are in that condition because they don’t have homes. A lot of actions and circumstances may have contributed to that situation, but the home part is the piece of the equation we can actually change. The Housing First initiative has proven thus far that it’s good policy to simply provide homes to people who have none. It makes sense in both human and economic terms. But it’s unpopular in the U.S. because it falls under the “free lunch” rubric, despite having its roots in the second Bush Administration. Further complicating matters is the shortage of urban housing in general.

In a smart Aeon essay, Susie Cagle looks at the movement, which has notably taken root in the conservative bastion of Utah, a state which has reduced homelessness by more than 90% in just ten years. An excerpt:

A new optimistic ideology has taken hold in a few US cities – a philosophy that seeks not just to directly address homelessness, but to solve it. During the past quarter-century, the so-called Housing First doctrine has trickled up from social workers to academics and finally to government. And it is working. On the whole, homelessness is finally trending down.

The Housing First philosophy was first piloted in Los Angeles in 1988 by the social worker Tanya Tull, and later tested and codified by the psychiatrist Sam Tsemberis of New York University. It is predicated on a radical and deeply un-American notion that housing is a right. Instead of first demanding that they get jobs and enroll in treatment programmes, or that they live in a shelter before they can apply for their own apartments, government and aid groups simply give the homeless homes.

Homelessness has always been more a crisis of empathy and imagination than one of sheer economics. Governments spend millions each year on shelters, health care and other forms of triage for the homeless, but simply giving people homes turns out to be far cheaper, according to research from the University of Washington in 2009. Preventing a fire always requires less water than extinguishing it once it’s burning.

By all accounts, Housing First is an unusually good policy. It is economical and achievable.•

I haven’t been to San Francisco in a few years, but most reports describe it as a burgeoning tech nightmare, with a gigantic income disparity and Google employees being separated from the general population by private buses and the like. From “The Dark Side of Startup City,” by Susie Cagle at the Grist:

“A Lyft car idling at every stoplight, a smartphone in every hand — and an eviction on every block.

Few cities have seen as much disruption as San Francisco has over the last 10 years. Once a hotbed of progressive political activism and engagement, the city is being remade in the image of the booming tech industry, headquartered in Silicon Valley to the south.

Rents in some of San Francisco’s most desirable neighborhoods have doubled in a year. Apartment construction has exploded in order to absorb the new residents. The city is developing so rapidly that Google’s streetview photos from 2011 are already well outdated.

The local government has embraced the disruption. Longtime residents, meanwhile, talk about fleeing or saving their city as though a hurricane is coming. But the hurricane has landed “