Los Angeles is Using AI To Predict Who Might Become Homeless … – Slashdot

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Exactly! Nobody in the world has ever been homeless because their landlord raised the rent 300% because “market rates” and there definitely aren’t companies that have bought the majority of available homes and then colluded to decide what market rates should be. It’s clearly people who came to this country with the express intention of living in the street.
Nobody in the world has ever been homeless because their landlord raised the rent 300% because “market rates”
You use scare quotes like that isn’t a thing but what is 2.5% going to 7.5%? Because mortgage rates used to be at 2.5% but now they are 7.5+% (and climbing) so if you have a mortgage repricing, like an ARM or just living in Canada, it’s easy to see a place having rent jumping that much purely based on “market rates” over the last few years causing the mortgage payment for the landlord to spike.
Hi we think you’re addicted to drugs or mentally ill. Can we make you not addicted to drugs or mentally ill?
“Here, have some money so you stop taking drugs.”
I rode the bus to work for about a month and one of the homeless guys I met had a bunch of toes amputated because he ironically lost them while working. When his insurance ran out he got switched on to Medi-Cal, which wouldn’t pay for his prescription, but it would pay for something inferior that he got hooked on.
California would like for it to cover more medications, but the feds wouldn’t, so it doesn’t. If they would leave us alone to run our own health care program this story would be a lot less common,
Sure you can. Maybe you could give them a reason to not be, i.e. somehow make their life not suck enough that even the prospect of a figment of imagination of some enjoyment, knowing that death is right behind it, doesn’t sound better than this fucked up life.

somehow make their life not suck
Do tell. What is the secret to happiness?
Maybe the engineer went the simple route and just mailed prisoners who were due for parole.
Hi, we think you’re behind on your rent we’d like to pay it for you?
ClippyGPT [reddit.com]
Well, things usually spiral out of control.
Take something simple – say, a parking ticket. You accumulate a few of them – you cannot pay it, of course, you’re barely putting food on the table. Then boom, on day, your car is impounded. And thus, the spiral begins.
Without your car, you barely make it to work – and you get fired. You really can’t pay your tickets now, and you still can barely feed yourself, but now you can’t make rent. You get kicked out onto the streets, where basically you still can’t feed yo

Someone is going to come along and kick our ass eventually. That is, if we don’t just fucking suicide out all by ourselves.
The pathetic irony of this statement, is those taking their own lives in alarming numbers are those who currently stand or have stood to defend a once great nation.
We don’t even protect our own, who sacrifice everything to protect our own.
We have plenty of rednecks in the South who are already armed and waiting for some someone to show up on the coast so they can shoot them. What we don’t have is young folks with the yearning to learn, innovate and improve what we still do have. The ones that do get a chance are so poisoned by the education system that we just keep doing the same shit.

Tim McVeigh and his ilk are from the ‘militia’ movement. So they’re domestic terrorists; fuck them and fuck any traitorous sympathizers or apologists or enable
When was the last time US soldiers defended the nation? Answer, WWII. Then there were Japanese forces off the coast of California.
Everything since then has been a proxy war in a foreign country.

When was the last time US soldiers defended the nation? Answer, WWII. Then there were Japanese forces off the coast of California.
Everything since then has been a proxy war in a foreign country.
We can quibble about the people who deployed to Afghanistan, but the F-15 and F-16 drivers who scrambled on Sept 11, 2001 were “defending the nation” in a very direct, rather than indirect sense. In the case of the F-16 drivers, they were unarmed and planning to ram if UAL93 had made it to DC.
I’d also say the Navy and Air Force guys in the Florida Straits in October 1962 were as well. Maj. Rudolph Anderson was KIA October 27 and awarded the Air Force Cross. He left behind three children.
I’d rather people like you were rounded up in such fashion. Anyone who clearly cares so much about their fellow humans and their rights deserves a nice vacation. We can even use your home to help house the homeless while you’re gone.
Get rid of our shittiest people and house the homeless at the same time. Now that’s what I call a win-win plan.

I disagree with him and with you but neither of you should be punished for your speech.
That sort of thinking is sure to get you canceled in today’s society.
Do you have direct evidence of this, or are you merely echoing a talking head?
/. just ran a story on how AI completely and utterly fails to predict crime:
https://yro.slashdot.org/story… [slashdot.org]
How is this any different?

How is this any different?
You can’t really reliably predict if someone is gonna knock over a 7-11, but things like long term unemployment / developing a substance abuse problem / falling behind on the rent, are pretty reliable indications that someone is likely to end up homeless.
The example you gave is just guilt by association. Cops have been playing that game since way before computers played any part in it.
How are you going to get all that highly confidential data? Arrest data are public. Once someone is arrested on a serious drug offense, it doesn’t take AI to know that he/she is going to lose their house. Other than police records, nothing you list is easy to get. And it shouldn’t be easy to get without a warrant.

“if we give everyone UBI how do we ensure shit still gets done and we don’t all starve,”
As long as there’s work that needs to be done, there are people who will be wiling to do the work for the right salary. And since UBI alone likely won’t be enough to cover the cost of goods and services once the increased labor costs get passed along, you’ll need to have a job, too.
Ultimately, UBI is slightly better than being broke for the unemployed, and just a glorified scheme to create inflation for those of us who do work. It’s a scheme that keeps being proposed by people who don’t understand the con
Our economic system is premised on the notion that there absolutely must be a large pool of losers to support the small pool of winners. If a large enough number of losers rise to the almost-winner level, then the base requirements for survival are raised so the almost-winner level becomes the new loser level.
The homelessness AI predicts the danger of homelessness based on a specific person’s access of public service (based on the fine summary). So if you spent 3 weeks in the hospital (or presumably jail) and used a food bank a week after you were released, it seems likely that you will have trouble paying rent and are therefore in danger of homelessness. With the low number of variables, it seems more like BCS than AI. But if three Regexs in a trench coat keep people off the street, I’m in favor of it.
The crim

How is this any different?
Probability of someone becoming homeless / becoming a criminal -> can be calculated
Day and location where the person will set up a tent / commit a crime -> cannot be predicted
Because the social services collect enough data about people to make these determinations. When you apply for medical coverage you are asked about your tax filing status, income, expenses, who else lives in your home, and a whole host of other data. Similar for SNAP but there they want to know all about your student status instead of your tax household. They want to know far more for TANF. They have a ton of data to figure you out with.
It’s not like future crime police are tracking you down before you commit a murder, but a good way to make an educated guess and reach out to those that likely need help. Prevention is almost always less expensive than the cure. It won’t be 100% effective, but it’s a good place to start.
Chicago.
The minimum wage was elevated.
The price of EVERYTHING ELSE went up.
No, one single item didn’t go up enough to consume the raise.
But, altogether, the spend out for a regular person is now HIGHER than it was BEFORE the raise.
Seattle was the poster child for a $15 minimum wage. When it looked like the new city law was going to pass, rents went up in anticipation of the tenants upcoming liquidity.
How much did LA spend on this AI program? Then, if they took that money and instead spent it on a rent-assistance program, how many fewer homeless people would there be?
I’m just wondering what the ‘AI’ does… it seems like a simple ranking algorithm is all that is required.
LA doesn’t give a shit.
Nor does California.
All they care about is how much money they can skim off into their politicians’ pockets.
If millions of people die from neglect, they could not possibly care less.
They’ll just lie about how it’s someone ELSE’S fault.
How about just treating mental illness before they become homeless.
We still won’t do jack shit about you losing your home, but we can tell you with pinpoint accuracy when you’re going to, ain’t that something!
Why don’t they put the resources into helping existing homeless rather than potential? Did they do a cost-benefit analysis saying prevention is cheaper?
It seems like basic math would be predictive. If you have access to wage, headcount, and address data you can kind of readily calculate who is paying too high a percentage of income in rent/mortgage. Add in any sort of medical debt collections data, and voila! you get a pretty accurate picture of who is headed for eviction soon, no AI required.
It seems the AI charlatans are trying to sell their wares into all sorts of places to monetize replacement of common sense with a black box that comes with a hefty
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