Kevin Drum

Matt Yglesias linked to an old piece of his about homelessness today, and that reminded me of a conversation I had a few days ago. I was telling a friend that homelessness is mainly a reflection of high housing costs, which is why Los Angeles has such a high homeless rate. OK, he said, but what about Irvine? Housing is expensive in Irvine too.

And that's true. But income is also high in Irvine, and it's average rent as a share of average income that's the real driver of homelessness. Here's a chart from a paper written by a team of researchers a couple of years ago:

Needless to say, there are lots of things that affect the homelessness rate. The cost of rent is only part of the story, which is why LA and Irvine are both off the trendline a bit.¹ Nevertheless, the trend is clear: As rent goes up as a percent of income, homelessness goes up. When it passes 32%, homelessness goes up really fast. This is the state of affairs in lots of big cities.

So what's the answer? To a certain extent, there isn't one in the short term. As long as housing costs are high, you're going to be stuck with lots of homeless people. And as we all know, the most common view of homelessness is (a) we should build more shelter (b) somewhere else.

Oddly, though, there is a partial answer, but it's one that's largely ignored. It's called Housing First, and it has two parts. The first part, which everyone understands, is to build permanent housing. The second part, which gets a lot less attention, is to skip all the rules to qualify for this housing. Just let people in, regardless of whether they have drinking problems, or drug problems, or need mental health treatment. Just let them in.²

You see, it turns out that a big part of the problem with getting the homeless into homes is that many of them would rather be in a tent on the street than in an apartment with lots of rules. So skip the rules. Surprisingly, to many people, this doesn't cause a lot of problems.

Another thing is to stop whining about the cost of cheap housing. It's true, for example, that the cost of a trailer or a tiny home or a plexiglass dome is fairly modest, running maybe $10-20,000 apiece. But you have to put it somewhere, and an acre of land in central Los Angeles will run you $5-10 million. Then add in the fact that you need some security, and maybe showers and food depending on your goals, and you're up to $500,000 per shelter. That's outrageous! Maybe, but that's how things are in a big city.

Based on my (limited) experience, I'm all in favor of this. The problem, as always, is that no matter what kind of shelter you're talking about, no one wants a bunch of homeless near their neighborhood. And there's no way to finesse this. All it takes is one person to start a lawsuit and you'll chew up years of time. This is by far the most fundamental problem facing projects to build housing for the homeless, and no one seems to have a serious answer to it. I certainly don't.

¹There's also politics involved. Irvine, for example, has been accused for years of picking up its homeless and dumping them in nearby Santa Ana. This is something that smallish cities can do but bigger cities can't.

²Obviously this doesn't account for everyone. Some homeless people, especially those with families, very much want a normal apartment while they try to get back on their feet. Not only are they willing to follow rules, they prefer a place where everyone else follows some rules too.

At the other end of the spectrum, some people will resist assistance no matter what. That's a very tough nut to crack.

Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through July 17. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through July 16. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

I don't get it. Why is President Biden willing to go medieval on Facebook over vaccine disinformation, but isn't even willing to mention Fox News, a far more influential purveyor of vaccine falsehoods?

Priorities, people.

I just got an email asking me something about state taxes in California and Texas. The link was to an article behind a paywall, but I can pretty well guess what the issue was: Are taxes in Texas really lower than they are in California?

The simple answer is yes. Texas has no state income tax and raises far less tax revenue per capita than California. But before you get too excited about that, it's worth taking a look at just who it is that pays lower taxes in Texas:

As you can see, for 80% of its residents, the tax rate in Texas is higher or about the same as it is in California. This is because the California income tax is quite low for most residents, while sales and property taxes are higher in Texas. When you put it all together, you're better off in California unless you're in the affluent top 20%. Then you're better off in Texas.

And you're really better off if you're in the top 1%, where California taxes run to about 12% compared to 3% for Texas.

Anyway, that's the story. Yes, the total tax take in Texas is far less than in California. But that's solely because Texas has very low rates on the rich. As usual in red states, the Texas model is low taxes (on the rich) and low services (for everyone else).

The Los Angeles Times draws my attention to a new study that looks at how traffic cops treat white and Black drivers during routine stops. That is, how do they speak to them? With respect? Friendliness? Or with threatening tones?

One thing I learned from this study is that the pattern of stress and intonation in language is called prosody. The other thing I learned is that officer prosody is judged to be less friendly toward Black men than it is toward white men:¹

When I see studies with results like this, I have two reactions. The first is the obvious one: that this is yet another example of how Black people are treated that's entirely invisible to white people.

But the other is that I'm surprised the difference is so small. In Study 1A, which was the primary study, the difference on a scale of 1-6 was only 0.2, or about 4%. The combined result of all three studies was only slightly higher. When you consider that Black men tend to be both younger and have lower incomes compared to white men, the racial difference here is probably quite small.

In other words, this is yet another example of trying to keep two things in mind at one time. First, Black people are treated worse than white people. Second, this gap is getting smaller and better over time. Both things are true.

¹You can read the study if you want the whole, exhausting explanation, but basically the researchers got hold of hundreds of bodycam videos of traffic stops. Then they cut out segments of each stop and blurred out the driver's comments so that only the police speech was left. Then they had people score the police speech.

About half of all states—almost all of them Republican—cut off extended unemployment benefits in June. Nearly all blue states, by contrast, are keeping the extended benefits in place until they expire in September.

In theory, cutting off the benefits early should motivate people to go out and get a job. But does it? The Wall Street Journal took a look at the state-by-state change in the unemployment rate in June and came up with this:

What does this mean? Unemployment went up in the red states, but it hardly seems likely that the imminent cutoff of UI benefits would cause a bunch of working folks to abruptly quit their jobs.

More likely, I think, is that in the red states a lot of people suddenly started looking for jobs, which makes them officially part of the workforce. However, they haven't found new jobs yet, so they contribute to the official unemployment rate going up. In the blue states, workers are still waiting. And since they aren't actively looking for jobs, they aren't counted as unemployed.

That's my guess, anyway. We won't know for sure until a few months have passed. But no one should be surprised if cutting off UI benefits pushes people to get back in the workforce and start looking for jobs. It may or may not be good policy to force people into jobs fast, fast, fast, but it makes sense that cutting off benefits would have that effect. Employers, naturally, are thrilled.

Here's something I haven't seen for a while: Hopper hiding behind the drapes. It's possible she was looking for her lizard, which she brought into the house yesterday but which then mysteriously disappeared after the humans came home. What do you suppose happened to it?

We continued to spend our little hearts out in June:

I did my part, in ways both large and small, and apparently all the rest of you did too. The June number for retail spending was once again about $60 billion higher than the pre-pandemic trend.

This is mostly thanks to the very generous (yes!) rescue packages that were passed, the first one almost immediately after the pandemic began and the final one in January. The result has been surprisingly limited economic pain and lots of personal savings, which are now being spent down. This should get us safely through the end of the year, by which time the economy should be in plenty good enough shape to stand on its own.

POSTSCRIPT: It's worth being clear about this. The US really did respond to the pandemic well in an economic sense, far better than most European countries. We have spent more than $5 trillion, a huge sum, and it prevented a vast amount of pain and suffering. Not all of it. Nothing could do that. But a lot.

Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through July 15. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.