Posts tagged UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative
Minimum Wage Laws Increase Homelessness, New Study Finds
July 20, 2023 // Separate research, however, suggests California’s own policies have exacerbated its homelessness epidemic, including a new paper written by University of California economist Seth J. Hill titled “ Minimum Wages and Homelessness ” published last month. Utilizing data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and other sources, Hill examined 100 cities from 2006-2019 to determine the relationship between wage floors and homelessness. The findings are bleak. “Merging administrative data from HUD to state and local minimum wage laws suggests that minimum wages induce increases in homeless counts,” Hill writes. “When cities raise their minimum wage by 10%, relative homeless counts increase by three to four percent.” This is why even left-leaning publications such as the New York Times, until relatively recently, conceded that using minimum wage laws to combat poverty was an “old, honorable — and fundamentally flawed” idea because it would “price working poor people out of the job market.” That minimum wage hikes increase unemployment was once hardly a debatable subject among economists, and even today a scouring of the literature shows that a “clear preponderance” of the scientific research shows a job-killing impact.