Why were the ratios not representative of actual homeless demographics? Most homeless people are biological men by an overwhelming majority.
Maybe transgendered people and women seek more help? Or the people conducting this study were biased themselves? As a result, I don’t think the results universally say something about homelessness.
Homeless parents are almost always women with very few exceptions. Now, in my personal opinion, "underrepresented populations" in this kind of environment refers to people who are at greater immediate risk while homeless, which obviously include women & genderqueer people, as well as those who are young+single parents or are disabled.
Find and read the actual full report for more details though.
Do you know why they did this? Transgenderism or being a woman is an orthogonal concept to homelessness. Whatever demographic you're in, if you are homeless, you are suffering and I assume are exposed to the same gender neutral dangers that arise from being homeless.
What exactly is the greater danger that would need such prioritization?
e.g. if there are subpopulations whose experience differs a lot, you want to have those populations overrepresented in your study to reduce variance of study.
This is basic statistics.
From my experience being a homeless youth 20 years ago, LGBTQ individuals make up a large share of homeless youth, I would guess more than 50% at the time.
There may be less gay or lesbian homeless youth these days, but transgender youth may have grown.
The targeted populations were primarily homeless for economic reasons, so the point of the experiment was to demonstrate that the simplest/most efficient solution was just to give them some money.
Do you have a citation for this?
That "responses" is a link to the actual report.
1. The program was 120 people. 80 did an initial survey, 80 did a final survey, and there was an overlap is 60 who did both surveys. The survey was offered to all participants.
So, this is not a random / representative sample.
2. The program also included counseling sessions.
So, there's the potential for different results for money without counseling, or counseling without money.
3. I don't see any comparison to a control group.
For example, it's well known that homelessness is usually transitory. Without a control group, there's nothing to identify what was caused by the program vs being caused by the usual course of things.
Contains significantly more information and exact statistics.
“The research team did not initially receive a complete participant contact list and the CBO staff led in facilitating recruitment, resulting in a sample that does not represent all DCT+ participants. The limited sample size further limits the representativeness and generalizability of findings. The evaluation sample of 63 participants represents only 54% of the total 117 program participants. Therefore, the study population may not adequately represent the broader DCT+ experience. Additionally, participants who completed both initial and exit surveys may differ systematically from those who did not, potentially skewing results toward more positive outcomes among individuals who remained engaged throughout the evaluation period.”
that's a pretty big (and likely untrue) claim
It says nothing about what happened 5 years after the participants stopped getting the money.
And I'll remind you that giving money to people directly instead of creating complex government programs is exactly what Reagan wanted in the 1960s when a lot of the programs started--so must be a suspect idea
Something that balanced empowering participants and protecting their privacy, while also protecting them from financial abuse.
It is exceptionally difficult to move people from a life of crime and addiction back into society, though. And I have insane respect for the people that do it full time. I've worked in that space and it's a world of absolute unending chaos.
But we don't live in an evidence-based world, we live in one shaped by power dynamics. We have the blueprint for collective prosperity, but we choose extraction. In the US, this has gone so far that Christianity has been twisted into a prosperity gospel, a heresy that serves as a moral shield for raw capitalism. It allows the system to pretend that business interests are actually virtues.
The world is in a mess because we ignore the mechanics of the systems we build. Be it capitalism, feudalism, or authoritarian communism, they all fail the same way, they lead to elite overproduction (Turchin).
When you funnel all resources to the very top, you create too many aspiring elites with no productive role to play. They inevitably turn on the system and each other. These systems are mathematically destined to collapse. Ostrom polycentric governance is one of the few ways out.
I know, right? She did all that just so she could give her social workers the feedback they wanted to hear! Those liberals are so dastardly!
The self reports might be totally true, but the study isn't as good as it might be.
There is a kind of people that function by finding edge-cases, questioning the results and posing uneasy questions when presented with a situation. Some might call them "haters", or nit-pickers, but I think their way of thinking is useful to make sure we're not just being fed feel-good make-believe.
It's not good enough to prove that the solution to the problem works for one side. It could create a problem elsewhere, and easily a bigger problem than you had before.
It's definitely not a good enough answer to give people $1k and essentially ask them: did you like getting $1k?
That's not what happened. This is what they did:
> Oregon’s results confirm what we saw in New York: When you cover the real cost of shared housing directly for two years — and pair it with support — young people stay housed
That's very light on details.
I would hope we can assume with a non-trivial sample size that you will find at least some success cases.
That should not surprise anyone. It matters: how often did it pay off (not answered), how much did it pay off (housed after is a start, for how long, what other improvements would be good to know), was it worth it (presumably we could've given them $10M per month and got similar results, which clearly would not have been worth it), and how can you prove it doesn't create a worse problem elsewhere (the hard part).
People like to just assume that if you give people money there's no hidden side effects elsewhere. Giving money is good. Plain and simple. There can't be any bad involved. Well, there can.
Because, imo, that's the headline result - 94% is a great success rate.
