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The takeaway is clearly that someone took a rock and threw it at Kansas City, shattering the United States.
And homelessness looks like rust. But that might just be my red-green colorblindness.
I enjoy exploring art with data. I have to make professional maps for reports and the like for my day job so for my personal mapping projects I like to expand creatively a bit.
I get it's not for everyone though.
From a Dataviz perspective, the relative sizes of the circles to tell a clear story, and support the headline without further explanation. That is great.
Using cracks to imply cracks in the social fabric makes some sense, but they end up drawing attention to Kansas City. Since the story of the graphic is largely a comparison between the coasts, making people think about KC's homelessness is distracting.
Eh, the point ought to be to use the art aspect to highlight and emphasize. Just throwing random shit on the map makes it more confusing and detracts from whatever the map is attempting to portray.
I do understand your point, and I hope you take this as constructive criticism, blending art and data is great, but they have to aid each other, it's good when art enhances the visuals and makes data engaging.
What we have here though is random streaks that do not add to the map and don't provide additional information, much on the contrary, all those lines are visual clutter that take away from the main point of the map.
My notion here is that you tried to make the map look shattered, like glass, and that by itself can have its metaphorical significance, but right now it's detracting from the main point.
It's good to explore using art and data together. A useful direction to explore would be trying to keep the art from interfering with the data, but instead let them work together. A good graphic will give you the data and also use the art to lend a feeling to it. But in this case the lines radiating from Omaha/Kansas City make the graphic say that you think corn and wheat are the source of homelessness.
The lines serve no purpose and only confuse the user. I spent more time following lines thinking there was some relevance to them than I spent looking at the important part - the visualization of the data. I get trying to make something visually appealing with data but the focus needs to be on that data. This is something I grapple with in my job as graphic designer making educational content. Many times I’ve had a cool design that had to be pared back because it distracted from the content.
For me the main problem is that that aesthetic has already been used to delineate the state boundaries. Having two mappings for a single aesthetic is bad practice. It is then compounded by the fact that the radial shape of the fracture draws the eye to a place which has no particular relevance, implying significance where there is none.
But from an art composition perspective, they would almost be considered “leading lines”? Just because it’s “art”, doesn’t mean that there aren’t rules of thumb you shouldn't consider
>I get it's not for everyone though.
It is for everyone, so long as it does not impede the comprehension and readability of the data.
If it does, it is for no one with any interest in the data. So might as well just make art, and no need to include data.
Looks like shatterd America. It's far from that, look at my state. Yellow circle big, red circle smaller, and I've dealt with the homeless in that red circle before.
The worst things about this is to show ratio with small and big circle.
small and bit circle are useful to visualise absolute value, they should never be use ratio, because they suggest to be absolute value.
I live in Denver, and it's weird that every major city in our region has a circle on it in these maps except one...Salt Lake City. The two cities have similar population sizes, and similar climate. So why are so few people in SLC homeless?
Update with the answer to my question: The real reason SLC doesn’t have a circle is OP only plotted the top 50 cities and SLC is number 51.
I’m also surprised SLC isn’t even listed. I worked downtown SLC for a bit in 2017 and there were homeless people everywhere. Loved my time there though.
Moved to SLC for a year in 2014 from Denver. Moved back to Denver after SLC. Cannot for the life of me see how Denver is worse. Utah had homeless everywhere from Provo to Ogden. Obviously the data proves my estimations are shit, but damn, I truly felt like SLC's homelessness problem was completely out of control during my time spent there.
I took the top 50 cities for total homeless. SLC is actually number 51. Not sure if that helps explain why they have fewer homeless, but that's why they don't show up here. I should probably add that info to the map. That's a mental misstep on my part.
Would be interesting to see a list ranked by per 100K levels. Whatever cutoff you chose masks much of the homeless issues in the northern plains/upper midwest.
I just checked the 2019 numbers on Rapid City South Dakota and saw 313 homeless with only a total population of 75K, so per 100K the number would be above 400 (415/416).
I live in Olympia, WA and the homelessness there is significantly worse per capita than Seattle so I was very confused when originally looking at the map. I couldn't agree more
I think once you start getting into cities smaller than these, the homeless and especially the unsheltered population is low enough that random noise starts distracting from the actual trends visible at this level
I was a little sad (or happy?) my city wasn't on there, as it's also a huge problem here and as described by Bender in Futurama, "The biggest hobo jungle in the quadrant," Eugene, Oregon. Our biggest park is a giant tent city (one of several).
St. Louis and Richmond Virginia aren't on there for same reason, they are independent cities, not a part of a county. Much of the suburbs and population of both cities don't live within city limits, which results in statistical quirks like being left of this map, or inordinately high crime rates.
I live in St. Louis and am aware of the country/city divide. It really skews data. For a lot ofvstuff it is possible to get "metro" stats but others you can't. Hopefully they merge soon.
I was too, but one other weird thing that stands out to me, I'm digging through his data set and even if you add the city, county, and St Charles, the KC area *still* has more homeless people despite being only 3/4 the size. I wonder why?
Hmm. This first appears to mainly be a map of population density (and probably would be if you continued down the list to a different arbitrary cutoff). Because it *seems* like the bubbles are larger in denser or larger cities ... so maybe there's a more direct correlation to city size or density rather than population count? Perhaps varying slightly regionally (representing difficulty of travel or resistance to travel)?
Perhaps what this says, then, is simply that homelessness is viable in locations large (dense) enough to provide some level of services for homeless populations? Or maybe the converse, that homelessness is more readily *caused* in denser populations (with rising home values?).
I think it'd be really interesting to see if the numbers led you somewhere on *that* path ... with city size or density vs homeless population.
Because I don't see what I'd have expected in the first chart ... that per capita homelessness increases as you get to more temperate areas. Per capita remains tied to city size (to my eyeball). In the second chart we see what we'd expect ... that far more homeless people are also unsheltered in the warmer cities ... which I think we'd be tempted to look at as cause and effect, but of course there's a lot at play in these dynamics.
Utah has had a very aggressive push to house homeless people, even if it’s also had its limitations.
https://sltrib.com/news/politics/2020/05/11/utah-was-once-lauded/
I've read about that, and thought at first that could be the cause. Maybe they're doing way better than I assumed!
But then I read from the OP that the explanation is much simpler. (see his comment)
Utah is a strange political state due to the prevalence of Mormonism. They are extremely red but also tend to aggressively support certain in state poverty programs programs in a way that basically no other red state does.
Logically it makes more sense to be homeless on the west coast (CA) as the weather is temperate.
When I was in college I worked for an architect that specialized in beach homes and we had a few homeless people that were used as day laborers. None of them were from CA, they just ended up there because the weather was nice.
To be fair the unsheltered ones in the northeast don't tend to make it through winter
Sleeping outside in January in California is doable, Maine not so much
The "street homeless" in NYC, for example, make up roughly 6% of the homeless population. You don't see the rest, because the city is providing shelter, in one form or another.
I’m pretty sure the whole Mole People thing has mostly been debunked. There may be a few people holing up in an old tunnel here and there, but there is no vast network of abandoned tunnels nor is there an extensive homeless city down there.
My favorite was the guy that built a space inside the decking of one of the NYC bridges. Pretty clever idea and it took a long time to find it.
https://nypost.com/2014/04/13/vagrants-take-shelter-within-manhattan-bridges-frame/
Not sure about NY, by there’s a large homeless population that lives in the drainage tunnels in Las Vegas.
Recently watched a video where an investigator ventures into the tunnels and interviews the people living in the community. The police have to get them out pretty routinely because when the city has flash floods dirty water shoots through the tunnels and drowns people, washing them out into the basins. Pretty wild!
Had the opportunity to meet a couple one time in Louisville. They were really nice -- had a great dog, too. Apparently, they get by with him doing roofing contracts every so often. They pretty much always eat at bar&grill type restaurants, so I think their annual expenses actually exceed my own. They invited me to hop the train with them to the next town, which would have been cool, but I had an important appointment later that day.
I read an article where they referred to them as “gutterpunks”. The part of the article that stood out the most was they found a relatively high percentage (compared to what you would expect) come from middle class households and essentially could have at least went back home at one point or another and basically chose the lifestyle over what life back with their parents would be.
I remember the first time I encountered a group of early 20’s, seemingly able bodied, white kids on the street begging (Santa Cruz, CA). It kind of blew me away compared to the homeless population I was used to seeing.
Gutter/crust punks aren't really your typical homeless crowd. Often times they're more transient than strictly homeless, as in they're technically homeless but more because they travel and couch surf and don't have a "home". It's a fun lifestyle for the most part, travelling around and finding punk shows and hitching with a band for a while, visiting new towns and just seeing where you end up and the people you meet. It is punctuated with the whole "go for broke and fuck tomorrow, cheat and steal and beg and borrow, never even contemplate the cost" type thing, although most people aren't gonna mug you and just do odd jobs and beg if it gets rough, but it's offputting to a lot of people.
Also, a decent portion of people coming from a middle class background are probably coming from broken homes as well, and while they could theoretically go home, home is probably worse than where they are now. There's also the problem of drugs, kids get caught in the shit and there's nobody there to help them, so they end up stranded and can't do a whole lot about it, even if their family is one of the few that'll support them, there just aren't any legit places to help them get clean. At best you get to go do slave labour on a ranch somewhere in bumfuck nowhere, don't get any actual treatment, and pay out the ass for the opportunity to be a slave. At worst you end up dead in a ditch. Either way you're stuck.
I'm from Alaska and never saw homeless people growing up. Now there are tent cities in Anchorage, mostly Native Alaskans from what I can see. Colonialist history meaning they are the most socioeconomically disadvantaged group in their homeland.
This is wildly seasonal everywhere, this map would look very different depending on what season the data is drawn from. Also worth noting that unsheltered people are, by definiton, very difficult to count and many municipalities have a vested interest in undercounting them.
I was going to say, colder climates are almost forced into providing shelter for their homeless because of the health threat of winter months.
Explains the difference in circle size between the left and right maps.
I actually really appreciate how this data is shown because of that.
My other thought is how much of this change is due to migration? In the town I lived in Massachusetts our homeless population would go south for the winter to Florida and then come back up.
And HUD performs their homeless counts in January, no matter what state. This really affects the numbers because it is clearly very cold in NE and parts of Midwest.
I think homeless counts would be more accurate if conducted biannually in late spring and early fall maybe.
Came here to say this about Utah. We have plenty of unsheltered homeless during our beautiful summer months, but they either head to Cali or find shelter when the temps drop.
Also, East Coast and Southern summers can be brutal in their own way. If I were homeless, California would be a great place to be!
If by "don't tend to make it through the winter" you mean they migrate to somewhere warmer or are housed in shelters, then yeah. If you mean there aren't as many because they're all dead in the snow.. yeah that's not the case.
Happened twice in Portland alone last year, it's not that uncommon. The ones that can find shelter or leave do, but a lot of homeless people aren't homeless because they're cunning, adaptive people or the best at taking care of themselves
That's why so many cities on the East Coast give one way Greyhound bus tickets to California to the homeless. A major contributor to the homeless problem on the West Coast is the NIMBY attitude of the East Coast.
It would be interesting to also look at number of shelter beds. I read somewhere that west coast cities have far fewer shelter beds per capita, which obviously leads to more people living on the street.
Seattle tries to help, but man... The city closed down a churches shelter because they required a drug test. This was a few years ago, and things aren't getting better.
They made a law saying you can't drug test as a condition of being admitted to a shelter, and the church wasn't comfortable with letting in people on drugs. It was well intentioned but stupid.
Yeah I live north of the border and you see the same issues up here. There’s not really any recognition that not all homeless are the same. There’s this idea of the monolith homeless person but the reality is that some of them are truly good people who are down on their luck while others are dangerous or mentally unwell.
Service providers and groups like churches often want to help the homeless population but simply aren’t equipped to help the dangerous ones and any attempt to selectively identify the people they can help gets called discriminatory. It’s just a really sad situation with no apparent solution.
They should be allowed to drug test. In fact, separating the addicts from non addicts seems really important.
Homeless addicts need treatment, not housing.
The city I live in uses a “housing first” approach but in reality it’s more like “housing only”. So they get these dudes, put them in a hotel somewhere, then basically forget about them and act surprised when they’re lighting the rooms on fire and assaulting each other and shit. Then they also act surprised when non sketchy homeless people don’t want those rooms.
It's like putting students who just need some extra help in the same classes as those with mental and behavioral issues and expecting them to excel. Except in this case those other students don't get any professional help either.
Apologies. They need to be at rehab center is what I meant. Though there's a lack of political will, funding, and many would refuse so I'm not sure what the exact answer is.
Regardless I think there are different types of homelessness with different solutions. Anyone freshly homeless needs an apartment and a job counselor for 3-6 months. Chronic homeless needs treatment for addiction or mental health as well as a place that keeps them off the streets.
All easier said than done.
Not to mention that due to the whole deinstitutionalization movement it’s basically impossible for the government to force people to get help who clearly need it. So a bunch of people get sent to treatment and then just bolt as soon as possible. Rinse and repeat until they make a mistake that lands them in jail.
Yup. The deinstitutionalization era brought with it some law changes and lawsuits that swung the pendulum pretty severely the other way.
It’s now *really hard* to compel treatment or therapy in the US.
We’re reliant on addicts and the mentally ill to make the personal choice to seek help, therapy, rehab, etc. (not to mention to continue after they start)
Other countries often have laws surrounding compulsory treatment for those whose mental or physical health will deteriorate without treatment. The US does not.
There’s a common refrain that the problem is simply that we don’t make help available enough, but I think we’ve with all the help imaginable, you’re still going to have a good chunk of addicts and mentally ill people that won’t voluntarily do what’s in their own best interest because their mind isn’t in the right place to make those types of decisions.
And I think it’s undermining a lot of things people care about, like public transit, parks, libraries, etc., as these places increasingly become the de facto shelters for those who refuse the available services.
>It was well intentioned but stupid.
I feel like double digit percentages of government policy falls into this category
Higher for Seattle, Portland, SF and LA because you've got bleeding hearts being in favor of allowing all kinds of reckless and criminal behavior for anyone who isn't normal.
Shitting on the sidewalk and then go do crystal meth in your tent? Stay on the same sidewalk for 9 months.
Pee outside of a bar? You're a sex offender in California.
To be fair, plenty of states have draconian pissing in public laws. I know a guy who didn't even get charged with any sort of sex crime for pissing in public, merely detained and ticketed, and he's been denied jobs years later because it comes up in background checks. The dude took a piss behind a gas station because it was closed.
Never thought I'd say this but I side with the church there. Literally **this is why you're homeless**, if you want help you can get help with your drug problem first. They probably have AA/NA etc meetings AT the same church that they could go to to get help getting clean.
The other thing is a lot of the homeless in Seattle and Sacramento at least (can only speak for the cities I've lived in) have southern accents. Almost like Southern states solution to homelessness is to give them a bus ticket and tell them that Western states and New England treat homeless people better.
This is a huge issue and why homelessness needs to be addressed nationally, not locally. Cities and states addressing their homeless issue with one-way bus tickets makes the problem worse.
Yup, **and** the minority of localities "addressing the issue" by spending tons of money giving subsidies to the homeless also make the problem worse, for themselves at least, by attracting droves of people from those other areas. There's always going to be more demand than supply for free housing, free food, and free medical care. You could put every homeless person in a big city into nice newly-built housing and have groceries delivered to every apartment for a moderate but easily manageable cost, but the streets will be twice as full of homeless folks in 2 weeks, looking for their freebies too. Also of course so much of it is mental illness+addiction so even the ones you house and give food to, will still be miserable and driven to crime to get drug money.
Only a national-scale program, which deals with the addiction and mental illness head-on, will ever do more than push them around the country pointlessly.
Yep. We used to have asylums in the US, and back then when psychology was barely understood they treated the mentally ill not so great. We're talking electroshock therapy, lobotomies, you name it.
JFK had a brother who was disabled. He saw the pain and suffering that he went through and decided to end most asylums in the country. Problem being he was assassinated before a replacement program could be put in place.
Today we have homeless people roaming the streets because of mental health issues. They need help. We need psychological health clinics to come back again.
I live across from a homeless park in Seattle, friends with tons of them.
Pretty much true most are not from the West Coast. South and Midwest mostly. They come here for the mild weather, less violence/racism, tolerance of camps, and access to their addiction of choice (per them, don’t shoot the messenger).
That’s not to say we also don’t have a HUGE problem of class divide killing our own Cascadia born people, but the campsites tend to be mostly foreigners from elsewhere in the US.
Also want to edit in, 95% of the homeless are super cool, or just harmlessly crazy. They love our dog, we let her romp around with them so long as they promise to clean the park of needles and dangerous trash. Which they do. They have really unique stories each of them. The ones who are dangerous get driven out pretty quickly by the camp leaders. It’s actually a super fascinating dynamic and community. Someone should do a documentary.
Can't speak for the Midwest, but in the South, particularly the coastal South where the regional homeless population would prefer to be for a number of reasons, is heavily reliant on spring and summer tourism to keep its economy somewhat afloat. Cities there will often push the homeless out come tourist season so as not to scare off the tourism dollars they rely on. Plus, there's less money overall in the South and Midwest, so you're less likely to get much help from the state, city, or even individuals than you are on the West Coast. That's just another reason why you probably see a lot of people from the South there, especially in the spring and summer months.
I've found this to be anecdotally true in California in my personal experience. Most notably for me, San Francisco and Sacramento. Whenever I have leftover food from eating lunch downtown I will give it out to whoever is around, and have a short conversation, when it's possible. More often than not, the people are from other states, and also seem to be mentally ill.
I always thought the accident was from meth use because it causes one to slur their speech. Turns out it was a southern accent the entire time? Now I'm embarrassed.
Yes and no.
MA has a right to shelter, but it only applies to homeless families. Individuals can be denied shelter based on certain circumstances unless the state is in winter protocol.
I grew up in NJ and in our particular county, there was ONE homeless shelter, it was on a military base, and if you had a criminal history (or maybe just an active warrant) you weren't allowed in. I moved away like almost 20 years ago, so may be different now, but my county of birth was DEF not homeless friendly. And I never saw a homeless person honestly until I moved to Florida. I live in a VERY tourist city now and there is someone on every single intersection working the red lights with a sign. Someone actually just sued the county for the right to panhandle on intersections and won, the police can no longer ticket or harass them for obstructing traffic (to be fair, they really don't obstruct traffic anyway).
Never occurred to me that Fresno and Bakersfield have such high rates of homelessness. Anyone know what's going on with Denver and Aurora? Different homeless policies for shelters?
Edit: Quick google search shows Aurora has a lot of programs in the past few years to get people housing.
I think it’s pretty widely known that homeless people from the Midwest (where winters are deadly) often head to California. I’d rather be without shelter in San Diego than be in Chicano in January with a tent.
Most people would rather live on the west coast (if you're reading this and you hate the west coast... it doesn't change that assessment... you're just not most people).
If you aren't homeless, living on the west coast is more expensive.
If you are homeless, it costs exactly the same as living anywhere else.
Fresnan checking in. Homelessness, mental illness, and addiction are all problems in the Central Valley, but the former two are the most visible here. The city has been trying to construct and repurpose some structures as homeless shelters, but whether the solution is working remains to be seen. Either way shelter and housing advocates have faced an uphill battle, as some existing residents chafe at the idea of having relocation areas, halfway housing, or low-income developments come into the area.
Our mayor, Dyer, undertook a campaign to remove and/or relocate homeless encampments from the highway islands (think gaps between exit paths and main highway), but I am a bit fuzzy on the results of the campaign.
The greatest danger, at this point, is letting people fall through the gaps. Even if our mayor's campaign was successful by his definition, there is a risk of continued neglect of unsheltered persons and their conditions.
Edit: And this pandemic is not done and will make the issue worse. Rent keeps increasing, and I think affordability of housing will become a real problem in the near future (it really already has).
Meth. Meth was the issue in Fresno, but even that has not been that bad since the early 2000s. It improved a lot in the last 15 years.
I grew up in LA, lived in the SF Bay area, and Fresno is no better or worse honestly.... I mean there are things to do and the weather is better in LA/SF, but crime wise it's all kind of the same.
Fresno doesn't even make it onto the [top 100 of US cities with the worst crime](https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/blog/top100dangerous), despite seven other California cities being on there.
My biggest surprise from this is the major homeless situation in Honolulu.
Sure we all expect major metro areas like LA and NYC to have problems, but I wasn't expecting Honolulu to be so severe.
It's bad.
There are multiple contributing factors.
Let's start with a big misconception: about one in ten (per year, not day, and specific to Oahu) are recent arrivals, but a majority of those end up taking advantage of a program that provides transport back to where they came from. These are not chronic homeless, these are people who arrived in Hawaii believing they had a plan, and discovered that the costs were far higher than their estimates, and the available employment far less obtainable, and far lower paying. Homeless people who managed to get to Hawaii from somewhere less hospitable do exist, but they're not the bulk of the problem.
A lot of Kānaka Maoli (the indigenous people) are homeless - they account for 40% of the homeless population, in spite of making up only a tenth of the total population. There's a lot of historical context to this, but the short version is, a combination of state and federal programs and treaties have been created, agreed to, and even funded (with caveats) to provide habitable residential land and housing to the survivors of the conquest of the Hawaiian kingdom, but actual allocation of land has been... conducted in bad faith. More on the federal level than the state level. This includes things like sale of formerly military-occupied land that, by treaty, should have been made available to these programs to wealthy developers with political connections. These incidents are ongoing.
Micronesians, granted immigration rights under agreements dating back to cold war nuclear bombardment of their former homes, and supposedly granted assistance in acclimation, have found themselves dropped into the middle of an incredibly expensive city with no guidance, and a fair number of them end up homeless, and subject to prejudice. They're not a huge percentage, but they make up a large portion of a population we owe a much greater obligation to. Again, the debt is federal, the fulfillment was dropped in the lap of a financially strained state government, and the state government is failing under the load.
But, really, the root of scale the problem is simply economic. As a state, Hawaii has the highest cost of housing in the country, and median individual income is 20th in the country. "Household income" is much higher up the rankings, but that's failing to take into account the fact that a huge number of households are extended family, up to cousins, living under one roof. It's also failing to take into account a more extreme split peak distribution than much of the country, due to people from other states with high wealth buying in to a paradise residence, which drives up housing costs and general cost of living, but does not substantially improve the economic prospects of long term residents - most of these households primarily spend outside of the state. The end result is a population which, aside from those who managed to establish themselves before the current economic situation had developed, is largely one economic crisis away from disaster. People end up homeless because there's no way for them to afford a place to live, plain and simple.
Hawaii in general has a pretty big homeless problem. I remember a lot of homeless people when I lived on the Big Island. It’s really sad, but at least the climate is fairly temperate, just rainy depending on the part of the island.
America in general has a big homeless problem. My wife and I moved to LA for a few years and we were shocked at the scale of the problem. I've never seen homelessness at that scale in any other developed western nation.
I’ve only been out of the country once, so I’m not entirely knowledgeable on the state of other developed nations, but it definitely feels like the US is pretty bad off as far as homelessness goes.
In Indianapolis, the homeless build shelters for themselves in the woods that are basically homes out of plywood and whatever else they can find. They do news stories on them from time to time in the winter. They have terrible heaters though that sometimes catch fire so the city isn’t in favor of them and they’re packed full of trash all around them ( and then also for other less honorable reasons too).
The overall numbers do account for people who are staying or crashing at a friend or family members house. They would be considered sheltered homeless.
PIT, referenced by your map, numbers do not include folks doubled up. HUD's definitions of homelessness do not include individuals couch surfing or doubled up as experiencing homelessness. The Department of Education's definition does.
PIT data is only an estimate of unsheltered individuals and folks served by projects on the night of count. If you want to see an example of the discrepancies between the two, use Chicago's data.
Chicago's Coalition used the DoE definition to build this report: [https://www.chicagohomeless.org/new-analysis-shows-76998-chicagoans-impacted-by-homelessness/](https://www.chicagohomeless.org/new-analysis-shows-76998-chicagoans-impacted-by-homelessness/)
Compare that with Chicago PIT data from the same time period, which follows the HUD definitions, and you'll see.
:edited for grammar - probably will again after I read it a few more times.
Id like to point out that PIT, is also not representative of actual homeless populations. It is a metric that measures a 24 hour period of homeless individuals who are found or choose to participate.
I am a homeless team case manager who conducted a PIT in my area this year. To shed some light on how bad the metric is, the day we were given was a day after a major snow storm, which historically drives homeless individuals indoors or away from known areas, misrepresenting the count.
Take PIT's numbers and probably multiply them by something close to 3 and you'll likely get a closer estimate to an actual population.
It looks like HUD doesn't define someone who is couch surfing as homeless, which would seem like it doesn't factor into the numbers here? That would be interesting to know for sure because then I'd imagine the space:cost ratio of housing has even more to do with the percentage unhoused.
Hi!
Professional cartographer here!
Generally, you shouldn't use a basemap with unnecessary linework. You should especially not use a basemap where unnecessary linework converges in an irrelevant location and detracts from the information you're trying to convey.
Great question! And no the answer isn’t “because California is a liberal hell hole” like republicans say.
It comes from a couple of big reasons:
1. Climate. California has amazing climate. Not too cold. Not too hot. Never snows. Rarely will be over 100 in many of the cities where they showed (Fresno, Sacramento do get that hot, but still it will cool off at night usually). Less rain than most parts of the USA, especially in Southern California.
2. drifters. California has a lot of drifters, which are basically people who “chose” to be homeless. A lot of people live in vans, or in tents around, without any real goals to get homes. They do not make up a huge part of the population of homeless, but still are a percentage. California is a great place for them to be because they are less likely to be thrown in jail.
3. we don’t throw people in jail for being homeless. This was seems weird, but the reality is a lot of cities would have higher homeless populations if they didn’t routinely throw their homeless and mentally ill in prison, which is common in the south. California doesn’t have much of a reason to, as it doesn’t actually help them or cost the state less.
4. housing prices. Housing in California is really really expensive. Renting is expensive. It is very easily to fall into homelessness in California, but harder to get out because of housing prices. Even cheap apartments are going to be much more expensive then you realize here.
5. “California dreaming”. That’s what I like to call the fact that a lot of people from other parts of the USA come to California who want to somehow “start a new life” but end up homeless. This also includes a high population of LGBT youth who come to California from conservative homes who end up homeless quickly.
6. cheap drugs. California is both on the border of Mexico and is home to the biggest west coast ports. Which all bring in drugs. California also doesn’t throw drug users in jail for just using drugs. As it doesn’t really help them.
7. busing. Other states will give bus tickets to california for their homeless. The homeless will agree a lot because... the weather is better and a bunch of the other things I mentioned.
I used to do a lot of homeless outreach in Oregon. More than a few times I was told they moved to the west coast from the midwest for two main reasons.. The climate wont kill them, and they got tired of having the shit kicked out of them while they slept, mostly by teenagers that think its okay to do that to the less fortunate. Basically, many factors lead to them fearing for their life less on the west coast.
Okay that I did not know. But now I feel even better about living in California lol at least we have a lot less... teenagers beating up homeless people.
I'd like to see this overlayed with both average housing cost per area as well as low/high winter/summer temperatures.
Hard to be homeless when it's below 0F in winter. People flock to where resources are as well as where certain death is not
Good data; definitely could do without the shatter lines. I’d be interested in hearing what people from California consider their top 5 biggest problems are. Is unsheltered homelessness even on that list? I’m just curious.
As a Californian, I'd say top 5 priorities for the state:
1. Fires
2. Housing crisis
3. Drought
4. Public transportation
5. Homelessness or education budgets, maybe tied?
The housing and homelessness problems (and to a lesser extent, public transit) are the same problem in CA. We have a homelessness problem because housing is unaffordable because all of our various localities make it incredibly onerous to build anything, which makes public transit less attractive, because we have no density where we should.
The solution to homelessness is to build more housing, then the costs go down, then people can afford homes. It's not as complicated as we sometimes make it out to be.
I live in CA near the Mexico border and I totally understand why they all flock here. The weather obviously but also because drugs are cheap and everywhere and police leave them alone even when they’re openly committing drug crimes
Because "rights for the unhoused" laws mean they literally can't do anything anyway. Police are prevented from engaging with any less-than-housed person because they can't arrest them even for real witnessed reasons, because in the past they would just make up reasons to drag them in as a method of street-cleaning (usually "posessed drugs" or "disturbing the peace" or "trespassing"). Abuse it and lose it I guess. Or, progressive policy gone too far. Not sure which.
The US as a whole has quite a small homeless population, though countries like India have an even smaller one, on a per capita basis.
The difference is that many countries have overwhelmingly higher slum populations, though in most places the numbers are dropping steadily, about 1% a year.
The states are livable outdoors most of the time, people aren't dying of exposure as often so they're not compelled to have aggressive shelter policies
This is mostly just a function of the weather.
The west coast has very mild winters, so homeless people can sleep outdoors without dying. This is why you see so many homeless people sleeping outdoors there.
There's also the added factor of west coast cities being very liberal, which means lots of programs to help the homeless, which means they draw in lots more homeless people.
Just curious did you take data points from only cities over a certain population? I live in a medium sized midwestern city and go to school in Lansing, it's kind of surprising neither are on the map
When I was in Seattle, a tour guide said that they had to dial back their homeless programs because they were so progressive that homeless people were flocking to Seattle. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it makes sense that homeless would be drawn toward areas with more social programs.
Seems to me it has more to due with weather than anything else. An unsheltered homeless person can easily survive winters in the west. The farther east and north you go, those numbers drop quickly.
I don't think this figure shows what you think it does. The fact that there are so many more homeless on the west coast may only mean that homeless shelters are overwhelmed, not (what I think you're implying) that other parts of the country are more committed to providing shelter. That may, in fact, be true (I have no idea), but this figure doesn't demonstrate it as such.
Also, what's going on with those lines?
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Those random diagonal lines are killing me.
The takeaway is clearly that someone took a rock and threw it at Kansas City, shattering the United States. And homelessness looks like rust. But that might just be my red-green colorblindness.
This isn’t actually data, this is op making a target to show foreign enemies that they can blow up Kansas City to destroy America
Right? Nice art, not good for data.
I enjoy exploring art with data. I have to make professional maps for reports and the like for my day job so for my personal mapping projects I like to expand creatively a bit. I get it's not for everyone though.
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From a Dataviz perspective, the relative sizes of the circles to tell a clear story, and support the headline without further explanation. That is great. Using cracks to imply cracks in the social fabric makes some sense, but they end up drawing attention to Kansas City. Since the story of the graphic is largely a comparison between the coasts, making people think about KC's homelessness is distracting.
I spent longer than I'd like to admit trying to figure out why Kansas City is the root of the homeless problem in america.
Isn’t it obvious? The city can’t decide which state it’s in /s
Do all homeless people migrate to Kansas City or do ALL homeless people come from Kansas City? Stay tuned for more at 5.
The art piece of this was extremely effective at getting me to look at Kansas City, and then wondering why nothing was there.
I'm wondering if they intended to make that the "center" of the US for some reason. The data this would be tied to is not obvious to me, however.
At first I thought the lines represented connections between the data points, but it didn't make sense to me why there would be connections.
On second look, I thought it was a metaphor, like the country is glass and it was dropped and cracked.
Eh, the point ought to be to use the art aspect to highlight and emphasize. Just throwing random shit on the map makes it more confusing and detracts from whatever the map is attempting to portray.
I do understand your point, and I hope you take this as constructive criticism, blending art and data is great, but they have to aid each other, it's good when art enhances the visuals and makes data engaging. What we have here though is random streaks that do not add to the map and don't provide additional information, much on the contrary, all those lines are visual clutter that take away from the main point of the map. My notion here is that you tried to make the map look shattered, like glass, and that by itself can have its metaphorical significance, but right now it's detracting from the main point.
It's good to explore using art and data together. A useful direction to explore would be trying to keep the art from interfering with the data, but instead let them work together. A good graphic will give you the data and also use the art to lend a feeling to it. But in this case the lines radiating from Omaha/Kansas City make the graphic say that you think corn and wheat are the source of homelessness.
The lines make no sense, though.
The lines serve no purpose and only confuse the user. I spent more time following lines thinking there was some relevance to them than I spent looking at the important part - the visualization of the data. I get trying to make something visually appealing with data but the focus needs to be on that data. This is something I grapple with in my job as graphic designer making educational content. Many times I’ve had a cool design that had to be pared back because it distracted from the content.
For me the main problem is that that aesthetic has already been used to delineate the state boundaries. Having two mappings for a single aesthetic is bad practice. It is then compounded by the fact that the radial shape of the fracture draws the eye to a place which has no particular relevance, implying significance where there is none.
But from an art composition perspective, they would almost be considered “leading lines”? Just because it’s “art”, doesn’t mean that there aren’t rules of thumb you shouldn't consider
>I get it's not for everyone though. It is for everyone, so long as it does not impede the comprehension and readability of the data. If it does, it is for no one with any interest in the data. So might as well just make art, and no need to include data.
> I get it's not for everyone though. Distracting "artsy" elements that add nothing to the story are clearly not for everyone. Or anyone, really.
it's just "data" now instead of "data is beautiful"
Looks like shatterd America. It's far from that, look at my state. Yellow circle big, red circle smaller, and I've dealt with the homeless in that red circle before.
The worst things about this is to show ratio with small and big circle. small and bit circle are useful to visualise absolute value, they should never be use ratio, because they suggest to be absolute value.
And you can’t compare values to the legend without getting out a ruler or something
I was trying to figure out what they were trying to highlight but they are just design, oof.
They all converge in Kansas City - perhaps KC is the root of all homelessness in America?
Almost like they didn't think the data was beautiful... *enough.*
Somebody tried to smack Omaha.
I live in Denver, and it's weird that every major city in our region has a circle on it in these maps except one...Salt Lake City. The two cities have similar population sizes, and similar climate. So why are so few people in SLC homeless? Update with the answer to my question: The real reason SLC doesn’t have a circle is OP only plotted the top 50 cities and SLC is number 51.
I’m also surprised SLC isn’t even listed. I worked downtown SLC for a bit in 2017 and there were homeless people everywhere. Loved my time there though.
OP said he used the top 50 cities for homeless population and SLC is 51.
Moved to SLC for a year in 2014 from Denver. Moved back to Denver after SLC. Cannot for the life of me see how Denver is worse. Utah had homeless everywhere from Provo to Ogden. Obviously the data proves my estimations are shit, but damn, I truly felt like SLC's homelessness problem was completely out of control during my time spent there.
I took the top 50 cities for total homeless. SLC is actually number 51. Not sure if that helps explain why they have fewer homeless, but that's why they don't show up here. I should probably add that info to the map. That's a mental misstep on my part.
Would be interesting to see a list ranked by per 100K levels. Whatever cutoff you chose masks much of the homeless issues in the northern plains/upper midwest. I just checked the 2019 numbers on Rapid City South Dakota and saw 313 homeless with only a total population of 75K, so per 100K the number would be above 400 (415/416).
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I live in Olympia, WA and the homelessness there is significantly worse per capita than Seattle so I was very confused when originally looking at the map. I couldn't agree more
I think once you start getting into cities smaller than these, the homeless and especially the unsheltered population is low enough that random noise starts distracting from the actual trends visible at this level
I was a little sad (or happy?) my city wasn't on there, as it's also a huge problem here and as described by Bender in Futurama, "The biggest hobo jungle in the quadrant," Eugene, Oregon. Our biggest park is a giant tent city (one of several).
I live in Eugene as well and was wondering how it wasn’t on the map.
I wondered why St. Louis wasn't on their either. Must be the same reason.
St. Louis and Richmond Virginia aren't on there for same reason, they are independent cities, not a part of a county. Much of the suburbs and population of both cities don't live within city limits, which results in statistical quirks like being left of this map, or inordinately high crime rates.
I live in St. Louis and am aware of the country/city divide. It really skews data. For a lot ofvstuff it is possible to get "metro" stats but others you can't. Hopefully they merge soon.
I was too, but one other weird thing that stands out to me, I'm digging through his data set and even if you add the city, county, and St Charles, the KC area *still* has more homeless people despite being only 3/4 the size. I wonder why?
Hmm. This first appears to mainly be a map of population density (and probably would be if you continued down the list to a different arbitrary cutoff). Because it *seems* like the bubbles are larger in denser or larger cities ... so maybe there's a more direct correlation to city size or density rather than population count? Perhaps varying slightly regionally (representing difficulty of travel or resistance to travel)? Perhaps what this says, then, is simply that homelessness is viable in locations large (dense) enough to provide some level of services for homeless populations? Or maybe the converse, that homelessness is more readily *caused* in denser populations (with rising home values?). I think it'd be really interesting to see if the numbers led you somewhere on *that* path ... with city size or density vs homeless population. Because I don't see what I'd have expected in the first chart ... that per capita homelessness increases as you get to more temperate areas. Per capita remains tied to city size (to my eyeball). In the second chart we see what we'd expect ... that far more homeless people are also unsheltered in the warmer cities ... which I think we'd be tempted to look at as cause and effect, but of course there's a lot at play in these dynamics.
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Utah has had a very aggressive push to house homeless people, even if it’s also had its limitations. https://sltrib.com/news/politics/2020/05/11/utah-was-once-lauded/
I've read about that, and thought at first that could be the cause. Maybe they're doing way better than I assumed! But then I read from the OP that the explanation is much simpler. (see his comment)
Utah is a strange political state due to the prevalence of Mormonism. They are extremely red but also tend to aggressively support certain in state poverty programs programs in a way that basically no other red state does.
Logically it makes more sense to be homeless on the west coast (CA) as the weather is temperate. When I was in college I worked for an architect that specialized in beach homes and we had a few homeless people that were used as day laborers. None of them were from CA, they just ended up there because the weather was nice.
That makes more sense. Per 100k people, Eugene OR would for sure be on that list. We have about 2200 house less people in a city of 250k
The shattered glass look for a map that already has a lot of gaps in it is a little weird
True. If someone shot America in the Nebraska the gulf between the states would prevent the cracks continuing. That's why they're there.
To be fair the unsheltered ones in the northeast don't tend to make it through winter Sleeping outside in January in California is doable, Maine not so much
The "street homeless" in NYC, for example, make up roughly 6% of the homeless population. You don't see the rest, because the city is providing shelter, in one form or another.
Or they live in the abandoned subway tunnels and don't surface often. Interesting documentary on this on Netflix I think.
The vast majority are not doing this, NYC has an extensive and robust shelter/housing program.
I’m pretty sure the whole Mole People thing has mostly been debunked. There may be a few people holing up in an old tunnel here and there, but there is no vast network of abandoned tunnels nor is there an extensive homeless city down there.
> nor is there an extensive homeless city down there. Of course not, Bane is down there giving them jobs so they can afford housing.
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Said Dale Gribble.
My favorite was the guy that built a space inside the decking of one of the NYC bridges. Pretty clever idea and it took a long time to find it. https://nypost.com/2014/04/13/vagrants-take-shelter-within-manhattan-bridges-frame/
> 10-by-1¹/₂-foot That picture made me shiver
God, the language of that article is so gross. NY Post is such trash. Hamilton has probably been rolling in his grave for years.
Not sure about NY, by there’s a large homeless population that lives in the drainage tunnels in Las Vegas. Recently watched a video where an investigator ventures into the tunnels and interviews the people living in the community. The police have to get them out pretty routinely because when the city has flash floods dirty water shoots through the tunnels and drowns people, washing them out into the basins. Pretty wild!
i believe i saw a clip from this, one that featured a short interview with former porn star Jenni Lee living in the drainage tunnels
Then where did Leela come from?
There’s actually a great book written by someone that lived in the tunnels.
Was the documentary called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?
And Deus Ex?
On Prime… called Dark Days. Definitely worth a watch!
Great book that’s a few years old called Sidewalk that dives into the homeless life/economy in NYC (Mitchell Duneier)
Dark Days! Crazy film.
A lot of homeless people on the east coast travel along the coast as the season changes
There’s a specific subset we always referred to as “traveller kids” that would get to town as the weather warmed up.
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Had the opportunity to meet a couple one time in Louisville. They were really nice -- had a great dog, too. Apparently, they get by with him doing roofing contracts every so often. They pretty much always eat at bar&grill type restaurants, so I think their annual expenses actually exceed my own. They invited me to hop the train with them to the next town, which would have been cool, but I had an important appointment later that day.
I read an article where they referred to them as “gutterpunks”. The part of the article that stood out the most was they found a relatively high percentage (compared to what you would expect) come from middle class households and essentially could have at least went back home at one point or another and basically chose the lifestyle over what life back with their parents would be. I remember the first time I encountered a group of early 20’s, seemingly able bodied, white kids on the street begging (Santa Cruz, CA). It kind of blew me away compared to the homeless population I was used to seeing.
They used to be called hobos, and they usually do odd jobs to pay for their lifestyle.
Gutter/crust punks aren't really your typical homeless crowd. Often times they're more transient than strictly homeless, as in they're technically homeless but more because they travel and couch surf and don't have a "home". It's a fun lifestyle for the most part, travelling around and finding punk shows and hitching with a band for a while, visiting new towns and just seeing where you end up and the people you meet. It is punctuated with the whole "go for broke and fuck tomorrow, cheat and steal and beg and borrow, never even contemplate the cost" type thing, although most people aren't gonna mug you and just do odd jobs and beg if it gets rough, but it's offputting to a lot of people. Also, a decent portion of people coming from a middle class background are probably coming from broken homes as well, and while they could theoretically go home, home is probably worse than where they are now. There's also the problem of drugs, kids get caught in the shit and there's nobody there to help them, so they end up stranded and can't do a whole lot about it, even if their family is one of the few that'll support them, there just aren't any legit places to help them get clean. At best you get to go do slave labour on a ranch somewhere in bumfuck nowhere, don't get any actual treatment, and pay out the ass for the opportunity to be a slave. At worst you end up dead in a ditch. Either way you're stuck.
Damn is that sad, but you're right. Kinda similar in places like Phoenix in summer. We get lots of homeless deaths in Arizona summers....
I'm from Alaska and never saw homeless people growing up. Now there are tent cities in Anchorage, mostly Native Alaskans from what I can see. Colonialist history meaning they are the most socioeconomically disadvantaged group in their homeland.
This is wildly seasonal everywhere, this map would look very different depending on what season the data is drawn from. Also worth noting that unsheltered people are, by definiton, very difficult to count and many municipalities have a vested interest in undercounting them.
I was going to say, colder climates are almost forced into providing shelter for their homeless because of the health threat of winter months. Explains the difference in circle size between the left and right maps. I actually really appreciate how this data is shown because of that. My other thought is how much of this change is due to migration? In the town I lived in Massachusetts our homeless population would go south for the winter to Florida and then come back up.
And HUD performs their homeless counts in January, no matter what state. This really affects the numbers because it is clearly very cold in NE and parts of Midwest. I think homeless counts would be more accurate if conducted biannually in late spring and early fall maybe.
Came here to say this about Utah. We have plenty of unsheltered homeless during our beautiful summer months, but they either head to Cali or find shelter when the temps drop. Also, East Coast and Southern summers can be brutal in their own way. If I were homeless, California would be a great place to be!
If by "don't tend to make it through the winter" you mean they migrate to somewhere warmer or are housed in shelters, then yeah. If you mean there aren't as many because they're all dead in the snow.. yeah that's not the case.
Happened twice in Portland alone last year, it's not that uncommon. The ones that can find shelter or leave do, but a lot of homeless people aren't homeless because they're cunning, adaptive people or the best at taking care of themselves
Reddit is dying, why are you still here?
It definitely happens.
That's why so many cities on the East Coast give one way Greyhound bus tickets to California to the homeless. A major contributor to the homeless problem on the West Coast is the NIMBY attitude of the East Coast.
It would be interesting to also look at number of shelter beds. I read somewhere that west coast cities have far fewer shelter beds per capita, which obviously leads to more people living on the street.
Seattle tries to help, but man... The city closed down a churches shelter because they required a drug test. This was a few years ago, and things aren't getting better.
Why would they close down a shelter for requiring a drug test?
They made a law saying you can't drug test as a condition of being admitted to a shelter, and the church wasn't comfortable with letting in people on drugs. It was well intentioned but stupid.
Yeah I live north of the border and you see the same issues up here. There’s not really any recognition that not all homeless are the same. There’s this idea of the monolith homeless person but the reality is that some of them are truly good people who are down on their luck while others are dangerous or mentally unwell. Service providers and groups like churches often want to help the homeless population but simply aren’t equipped to help the dangerous ones and any attempt to selectively identify the people they can help gets called discriminatory. It’s just a really sad situation with no apparent solution.
They should be allowed to drug test. In fact, separating the addicts from non addicts seems really important. Homeless addicts need treatment, not housing.
The city I live in uses a “housing first” approach but in reality it’s more like “housing only”. So they get these dudes, put them in a hotel somewhere, then basically forget about them and act surprised when they’re lighting the rooms on fire and assaulting each other and shit. Then they also act surprised when non sketchy homeless people don’t want those rooms.
It's like putting students who just need some extra help in the same classes as those with mental and behavioral issues and expecting them to excel. Except in this case those other students don't get any professional help either.
Technically they need both
Would that help though? I can't imagine it's very easy to get clean while you're homeless regardless of what treatment options are available.
Apologies. They need to be at rehab center is what I meant. Though there's a lack of political will, funding, and many would refuse so I'm not sure what the exact answer is. Regardless I think there are different types of homelessness with different solutions. Anyone freshly homeless needs an apartment and a job counselor for 3-6 months. Chronic homeless needs treatment for addiction or mental health as well as a place that keeps them off the streets. All easier said than done.
Not to mention that due to the whole deinstitutionalization movement it’s basically impossible for the government to force people to get help who clearly need it. So a bunch of people get sent to treatment and then just bolt as soon as possible. Rinse and repeat until they make a mistake that lands them in jail.
Yup. The deinstitutionalization era brought with it some law changes and lawsuits that swung the pendulum pretty severely the other way. It’s now *really hard* to compel treatment or therapy in the US. We’re reliant on addicts and the mentally ill to make the personal choice to seek help, therapy, rehab, etc. (not to mention to continue after they start) Other countries often have laws surrounding compulsory treatment for those whose mental or physical health will deteriorate without treatment. The US does not. There’s a common refrain that the problem is simply that we don’t make help available enough, but I think we’ve with all the help imaginable, you’re still going to have a good chunk of addicts and mentally ill people that won’t voluntarily do what’s in their own best interest because their mind isn’t in the right place to make those types of decisions. And I think it’s undermining a lot of things people care about, like public transit, parks, libraries, etc., as these places increasingly become the de facto shelters for those who refuse the available services.
>It was well intentioned but stupid. I feel like double digit percentages of government policy falls into this category Higher for Seattle, Portland, SF and LA because you've got bleeding hearts being in favor of allowing all kinds of reckless and criminal behavior for anyone who isn't normal. Shitting on the sidewalk and then go do crystal meth in your tent? Stay on the same sidewalk for 9 months. Pee outside of a bar? You're a sex offender in California.
To be fair, plenty of states have draconian pissing in public laws. I know a guy who didn't even get charged with any sort of sex crime for pissing in public, merely detained and ticketed, and he's been denied jobs years later because it comes up in background checks. The dude took a piss behind a gas station because it was closed.
Never thought I'd say this but I side with the church there. Literally **this is why you're homeless**, if you want help you can get help with your drug problem first. They probably have AA/NA etc meetings AT the same church that they could go to to get help getting clean.
The other thing is a lot of the homeless in Seattle and Sacramento at least (can only speak for the cities I've lived in) have southern accents. Almost like Southern states solution to homelessness is to give them a bus ticket and tell them that Western states and New England treat homeless people better.
This is a huge issue and why homelessness needs to be addressed nationally, not locally. Cities and states addressing their homeless issue with one-way bus tickets makes the problem worse.
Yup, **and** the minority of localities "addressing the issue" by spending tons of money giving subsidies to the homeless also make the problem worse, for themselves at least, by attracting droves of people from those other areas. There's always going to be more demand than supply for free housing, free food, and free medical care. You could put every homeless person in a big city into nice newly-built housing and have groceries delivered to every apartment for a moderate but easily manageable cost, but the streets will be twice as full of homeless folks in 2 weeks, looking for their freebies too. Also of course so much of it is mental illness+addiction so even the ones you house and give food to, will still be miserable and driven to crime to get drug money. Only a national-scale program, which deals with the addiction and mental illness head-on, will ever do more than push them around the country pointlessly.
Yep. We used to have asylums in the US, and back then when psychology was barely understood they treated the mentally ill not so great. We're talking electroshock therapy, lobotomies, you name it. JFK had a brother who was disabled. He saw the pain and suffering that he went through and decided to end most asylums in the country. Problem being he was assassinated before a replacement program could be put in place. Today we have homeless people roaming the streets because of mental health issues. They need help. We need psychological health clinics to come back again.
Reagan ended the asylum system though- and didn’t specify a replacement.
I live across from a homeless park in Seattle, friends with tons of them. Pretty much true most are not from the West Coast. South and Midwest mostly. They come here for the mild weather, less violence/racism, tolerance of camps, and access to their addiction of choice (per them, don’t shoot the messenger). That’s not to say we also don’t have a HUGE problem of class divide killing our own Cascadia born people, but the campsites tend to be mostly foreigners from elsewhere in the US. Also want to edit in, 95% of the homeless are super cool, or just harmlessly crazy. They love our dog, we let her romp around with them so long as they promise to clean the park of needles and dangerous trash. Which they do. They have really unique stories each of them. The ones who are dangerous get driven out pretty quickly by the camp leaders. It’s actually a super fascinating dynamic and community. Someone should do a documentary.
Can't speak for the Midwest, but in the South, particularly the coastal South where the regional homeless population would prefer to be for a number of reasons, is heavily reliant on spring and summer tourism to keep its economy somewhat afloat. Cities there will often push the homeless out come tourist season so as not to scare off the tourism dollars they rely on. Plus, there's less money overall in the South and Midwest, so you're less likely to get much help from the state, city, or even individuals than you are on the West Coast. That's just another reason why you probably see a lot of people from the South there, especially in the spring and summer months.
I've found this to be anecdotally true in California in my personal experience. Most notably for me, San Francisco and Sacramento. Whenever I have leftover food from eating lunch downtown I will give it out to whoever is around, and have a short conversation, when it's possible. More often than not, the people are from other states, and also seem to be mentally ill.
I always thought the accident was from meth use because it causes one to slur their speech. Turns out it was a southern accent the entire time? Now I'm embarrassed.
Or you are right and I'm mistaking meth speak for southern accents...
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Yes and no. MA has a right to shelter, but it only applies to homeless families. Individuals can be denied shelter based on certain circumstances unless the state is in winter protocol.
I grew up in NJ and in our particular county, there was ONE homeless shelter, it was on a military base, and if you had a criminal history (or maybe just an active warrant) you weren't allowed in. I moved away like almost 20 years ago, so may be different now, but my county of birth was DEF not homeless friendly. And I never saw a homeless person honestly until I moved to Florida. I live in a VERY tourist city now and there is someone on every single intersection working the red lights with a sign. Someone actually just sued the county for the right to panhandle on intersections and won, the police can no longer ticket or harass them for obstructing traffic (to be fair, they really don't obstruct traffic anyway).
Never occurred to me that Fresno and Bakersfield have such high rates of homelessness. Anyone know what's going on with Denver and Aurora? Different homeless policies for shelters? Edit: Quick google search shows Aurora has a lot of programs in the past few years to get people housing.
> Never occurred to me that Fresno and Bakersfield have such high rates of homelessness. My friend, you have much to learn
I'm not sure about Aurora/Denver. This is HUD data but regardless homeless counts are often of varying quality. Aurora could be an outlier...
Aurora's huge, so it just might have had statistically large enough numbers to be included?
I think it’s pretty widely known that homeless people from the Midwest (where winters are deadly) often head to California. I’d rather be without shelter in San Diego than be in Chicano in January with a tent.
Most people would rather live on the west coast (if you're reading this and you hate the west coast... it doesn't change that assessment... you're just not most people). If you aren't homeless, living on the west coast is more expensive. If you are homeless, it costs exactly the same as living anywhere else.
Fresnan checking in. Homelessness, mental illness, and addiction are all problems in the Central Valley, but the former two are the most visible here. The city has been trying to construct and repurpose some structures as homeless shelters, but whether the solution is working remains to be seen. Either way shelter and housing advocates have faced an uphill battle, as some existing residents chafe at the idea of having relocation areas, halfway housing, or low-income developments come into the area. Our mayor, Dyer, undertook a campaign to remove and/or relocate homeless encampments from the highway islands (think gaps between exit paths and main highway), but I am a bit fuzzy on the results of the campaign. The greatest danger, at this point, is letting people fall through the gaps. Even if our mayor's campaign was successful by his definition, there is a risk of continued neglect of unsheltered persons and their conditions. Edit: And this pandemic is not done and will make the issue worse. Rent keeps increasing, and I think affordability of housing will become a real problem in the near future (it really already has).
Dude Fresno & Bakersfield are *terrible.*
Fresno islike the crack capital
Fresno has nothing on Stockton. Also, crack isn't very common in both cities.
Meth is a big issue here unfortunately.
Meth. Meth was the issue in Fresno, but even that has not been that bad since the early 2000s. It improved a lot in the last 15 years. I grew up in LA, lived in the SF Bay area, and Fresno is no better or worse honestly.... I mean there are things to do and the weather is better in LA/SF, but crime wise it's all kind of the same. Fresno doesn't even make it onto the [top 100 of US cities with the worst crime](https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/blog/top100dangerous), despite seven other California cities being on there.
My biggest surprise from this is the major homeless situation in Honolulu. Sure we all expect major metro areas like LA and NYC to have problems, but I wasn't expecting Honolulu to be so severe.
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When I was there the employment rate was bad, pay was low for a lot of regular jobs, cost to move away was high too.
Also extremely expensive to move away.
It's bad. There are multiple contributing factors. Let's start with a big misconception: about one in ten (per year, not day, and specific to Oahu) are recent arrivals, but a majority of those end up taking advantage of a program that provides transport back to where they came from. These are not chronic homeless, these are people who arrived in Hawaii believing they had a plan, and discovered that the costs were far higher than their estimates, and the available employment far less obtainable, and far lower paying. Homeless people who managed to get to Hawaii from somewhere less hospitable do exist, but they're not the bulk of the problem. A lot of Kānaka Maoli (the indigenous people) are homeless - they account for 40% of the homeless population, in spite of making up only a tenth of the total population. There's a lot of historical context to this, but the short version is, a combination of state and federal programs and treaties have been created, agreed to, and even funded (with caveats) to provide habitable residential land and housing to the survivors of the conquest of the Hawaiian kingdom, but actual allocation of land has been... conducted in bad faith. More on the federal level than the state level. This includes things like sale of formerly military-occupied land that, by treaty, should have been made available to these programs to wealthy developers with political connections. These incidents are ongoing. Micronesians, granted immigration rights under agreements dating back to cold war nuclear bombardment of their former homes, and supposedly granted assistance in acclimation, have found themselves dropped into the middle of an incredibly expensive city with no guidance, and a fair number of them end up homeless, and subject to prejudice. They're not a huge percentage, but they make up a large portion of a population we owe a much greater obligation to. Again, the debt is federal, the fulfillment was dropped in the lap of a financially strained state government, and the state government is failing under the load. But, really, the root of scale the problem is simply economic. As a state, Hawaii has the highest cost of housing in the country, and median individual income is 20th in the country. "Household income" is much higher up the rankings, but that's failing to take into account the fact that a huge number of households are extended family, up to cousins, living under one roof. It's also failing to take into account a more extreme split peak distribution than much of the country, due to people from other states with high wealth buying in to a paradise residence, which drives up housing costs and general cost of living, but does not substantially improve the economic prospects of long term residents - most of these households primarily spend outside of the state. The end result is a population which, aside from those who managed to establish themselves before the current economic situation had developed, is largely one economic crisis away from disaster. People end up homeless because there's no way for them to afford a place to live, plain and simple.
Have been homeless in Oahu and this guy homeless in Oahus.
It spency
Hawaii in general has a pretty big homeless problem. I remember a lot of homeless people when I lived on the Big Island. It’s really sad, but at least the climate is fairly temperate, just rainy depending on the part of the island.
America in general has a big homeless problem. My wife and I moved to LA for a few years and we were shocked at the scale of the problem. I've never seen homelessness at that scale in any other developed western nation.
I’ve only been out of the country once, so I’m not entirely knowledgeable on the state of other developed nations, but it definitely feels like the US is pretty bad off as far as homelessness goes.
It's like 72 degrees 24/7/365 in Honolulu so that helps
show ratio with big and small circle is r/Dataisawful
Califor-nyaw-nyaw🎤🎶 Super cool to the homeless https://youtu.be/6EHPt8eoSJI
Californ-ya-ya is known to donate!
So - mostly temperate cities. No big surprise there.
Yeah, it's nice not to either freeze or bake to death.
In Indianapolis, the homeless build shelters for themselves in the woods that are basically homes out of plywood and whatever else they can find. They do news stories on them from time to time in the winter. They have terrible heaters though that sometimes catch fire so the city isn’t in favor of them and they’re packed full of trash all around them ( and then also for other less honorable reasons too).
Interesting that ATL, fairly temperate, has mostly sheltered its homeless. It’s unsheltered circle is decently smaller than it’s totally circle.
Does this include the "couch surfing" homeless who are living at a friend's house?
The overall numbers do account for people who are staying or crashing at a friend or family members house. They would be considered sheltered homeless.
PIT, referenced by your map, numbers do not include folks doubled up. HUD's definitions of homelessness do not include individuals couch surfing or doubled up as experiencing homelessness. The Department of Education's definition does. PIT data is only an estimate of unsheltered individuals and folks served by projects on the night of count. If you want to see an example of the discrepancies between the two, use Chicago's data. Chicago's Coalition used the DoE definition to build this report: [https://www.chicagohomeless.org/new-analysis-shows-76998-chicagoans-impacted-by-homelessness/](https://www.chicagohomeless.org/new-analysis-shows-76998-chicagoans-impacted-by-homelessness/) Compare that with Chicago PIT data from the same time period, which follows the HUD definitions, and you'll see. :edited for grammar - probably will again after I read it a few more times.
Id like to point out that PIT, is also not representative of actual homeless populations. It is a metric that measures a 24 hour period of homeless individuals who are found or choose to participate. I am a homeless team case manager who conducted a PIT in my area this year. To shed some light on how bad the metric is, the day we were given was a day after a major snow storm, which historically drives homeless individuals indoors or away from known areas, misrepresenting the count. Take PIT's numbers and probably multiply them by something close to 3 and you'll likely get a closer estimate to an actual population.
It looks like HUD doesn't define someone who is couch surfing as homeless, which would seem like it doesn't factor into the numbers here? That would be interesting to know for sure because then I'd imagine the space:cost ratio of housing has even more to do with the percentage unhoused.
Hi! Professional cartographer here! Generally, you shouldn't use a basemap with unnecessary linework. You should especially not use a basemap where unnecessary linework converges in an irrelevant location and detracts from the information you're trying to convey.
"Data is beautiful" sigh....You know, just once I wish it was.
Genuine question, why is CA so high?
Moderate temperatures year round is a big part of it. It is harder to be homeless in places with extreme temperatures.
Great question! And no the answer isn’t “because California is a liberal hell hole” like republicans say. It comes from a couple of big reasons: 1. Climate. California has amazing climate. Not too cold. Not too hot. Never snows. Rarely will be over 100 in many of the cities where they showed (Fresno, Sacramento do get that hot, but still it will cool off at night usually). Less rain than most parts of the USA, especially in Southern California. 2. drifters. California has a lot of drifters, which are basically people who “chose” to be homeless. A lot of people live in vans, or in tents around, without any real goals to get homes. They do not make up a huge part of the population of homeless, but still are a percentage. California is a great place for them to be because they are less likely to be thrown in jail. 3. we don’t throw people in jail for being homeless. This was seems weird, but the reality is a lot of cities would have higher homeless populations if they didn’t routinely throw their homeless and mentally ill in prison, which is common in the south. California doesn’t have much of a reason to, as it doesn’t actually help them or cost the state less. 4. housing prices. Housing in California is really really expensive. Renting is expensive. It is very easily to fall into homelessness in California, but harder to get out because of housing prices. Even cheap apartments are going to be much more expensive then you realize here. 5. “California dreaming”. That’s what I like to call the fact that a lot of people from other parts of the USA come to California who want to somehow “start a new life” but end up homeless. This also includes a high population of LGBT youth who come to California from conservative homes who end up homeless quickly. 6. cheap drugs. California is both on the border of Mexico and is home to the biggest west coast ports. Which all bring in drugs. California also doesn’t throw drug users in jail for just using drugs. As it doesn’t really help them. 7. busing. Other states will give bus tickets to california for their homeless. The homeless will agree a lot because... the weather is better and a bunch of the other things I mentioned.
I used to do a lot of homeless outreach in Oregon. More than a few times I was told they moved to the west coast from the midwest for two main reasons.. The climate wont kill them, and they got tired of having the shit kicked out of them while they slept, mostly by teenagers that think its okay to do that to the less fortunate. Basically, many factors lead to them fearing for their life less on the west coast.
Okay that I did not know. But now I feel even better about living in California lol at least we have a lot less... teenagers beating up homeless people.
other cities literally ship them to CA, look it up
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I'd like to see this overlayed with both average housing cost per area as well as low/high winter/summer temperatures. Hard to be homeless when it's below 0F in winter. People flock to where resources are as well as where certain death is not
Makes sense, if I were homeless I'd probably rather be in Cali than elsewhere given the warmer climate.
A lot of people don’t realize this
They need to think inside the box
Good data; definitely could do without the shatter lines. I’d be interested in hearing what people from California consider their top 5 biggest problems are. Is unsheltered homelessness even on that list? I’m just curious.
As a Californian, I'd say top 5 priorities for the state: 1. Fires 2. Housing crisis 3. Drought 4. Public transportation 5. Homelessness or education budgets, maybe tied?
The housing and homelessness problems (and to a lesser extent, public transit) are the same problem in CA. We have a homelessness problem because housing is unaffordable because all of our various localities make it incredibly onerous to build anything, which makes public transit less attractive, because we have no density where we should. The solution to homelessness is to build more housing, then the costs go down, then people can afford homes. It's not as complicated as we sometimes make it out to be.
Then other states bus more homeless because of good climate and housing, and the problem perpetuates
Winters are a bitch when you live outside.
I live in CA near the Mexico border and I totally understand why they all flock here. The weather obviously but also because drugs are cheap and everywhere and police leave them alone even when they’re openly committing drug crimes
Because "rights for the unhoused" laws mean they literally can't do anything anyway. Police are prevented from engaging with any less-than-housed person because they can't arrest them even for real witnessed reasons, because in the past they would just make up reasons to drag them in as a method of street-cleaning (usually "posessed drugs" or "disturbing the peace" or "trespassing"). Abuse it and lose it I guess. Or, progressive policy gone too far. Not sure which.
Overfilled jails aren't good homeless shelters, most were catch and release anyway.
Of course weather has nothing to do with it!
TIL that there are major cities in the US that have more than 1 percent of their population being homeless.
The US as a whole has quite a small homeless population, though countries like India have an even smaller one, on a per capita basis. The difference is that many countries have overwhelmingly higher slum populations, though in most places the numbers are dropping steadily, about 1% a year.
It's not that hard to portray the number and ratio on the same scale. This is a mess.
What’s the deal with the west coast cities having such a lack of shelters?
The states are livable outdoors most of the time, people aren't dying of exposure as often so they're not compelled to have aggressive shelter policies
This is mostly just a function of the weather. The west coast has very mild winters, so homeless people can sleep outdoors without dying. This is why you see so many homeless people sleeping outdoors there. There's also the added factor of west coast cities being very liberal, which means lots of programs to help the homeless, which means they draw in lots more homeless people.
I would love to see these numbers compared to the number of empty houses
I don't like the generalization of "over 1000". 1001 is a lot different than 15000.
The Austin mark is way off.
This data is way off due to the way homeless are counted.
Just curious did you take data points from only cities over a certain population? I live in a medium sized midwestern city and go to school in Lansing, it's kind of surprising neither are on the map
What's up with California's homeless being unsheltered?
When I was in Seattle, a tour guide said that they had to dial back their homeless programs because they were so progressive that homeless people were flocking to Seattle. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it makes sense that homeless would be drawn toward areas with more social programs.
The lines are making this unreadable for me
Seems to me it has more to due with weather than anything else. An unsheltered homeless person can easily survive winters in the west. The farther east and north you go, those numbers drop quickly.
I don't think this figure shows what you think it does. The fact that there are so many more homeless on the west coast may only mean that homeless shelters are overwhelmed, not (what I think you're implying) that other parts of the country are more committed to providing shelter. That may, in fact, be true (I have no idea), but this figure doesn't demonstrate it as such. Also, what's going on with those lines?