benzible
a day ago
Reportedly killed by their son, who had struggled with addiction: https://people.com/rob-reiner-wife-michele-were-killed-by-so...
> In a 2016 interview with PEOPLE, Nick spoke about his years-long struggle with drug addiction, which began in his early teens and eventually left him living on the streets. He said he cycled in and out of rehab beginning around age 15, but as his addiction escalated, he drifted farther from home and spent significant stretches homeless in multiple states.
Rob Reiner directed a movie from a semi-autobiographical script his son co-wrote a few years ago. Hard to imagine many things worse than going through the pain of having a kid who seemed lost, getting him back, and then whatever must have been going on more recently that apparently led to this.
lab14
16 hours ago
(tangent) for those of us who had close experiences with addiction in our families, it's so obvious why "give them money" or "give them homes to live in" isn't a solution to homelesness. A close family member owned 3 properties and still was living in the streets by choice because of his addiction which evolved into a full blown paranoid schizophrenia. He almost lost it all but he was forcefully commited into a mental institution and rehab saved his life.
amanaplanacanal
15 hours ago
Just realize your personal experience isn't generalizable. Surveys I've seen report that about a third of homeless have drug problems, which means that the other two thirds may very well benefit from "give them homes to live in".
benzible
14 hours ago
UCSF published a comprehensive study of homelessness in California in 2023 [1]. A few relevant points:
The ~1/3 substance use figure holds up (31% regular meth use, 24% report current substance-related problems). But the study found roughly equal proportions whose drug use decreased, stayed the same, or increased during homelessness. Many explicitly reported using to cope with being homeless, not the reverse.
On whether money helps: 89% cited housing costs as the primary barrier to exiting homelessness. When asked what would have prevented homelessness, 90% said a Housing Choice Voucher, 82% said a one-time $5-10K payment. Median income in the 6 months before homelessness was $960/month.
The severe-mental-illness-plus-addiction cases like the family member mentioned exist in the data, but the study suggests they're the minority. 75% of participants lost housing in the same county they're now homeless in. 90% lost their last housing in California. These are mostly Californians who got priced out.
[1] https://homelessness.ucsf.edu/sites/default/files/2023-06/CA...
theologic
10 hours ago
There is very good research to indicate that when housing costs a lot, versus geos where housing costs a little, homelessness clearly is lower. while this is not causation, the correlation is extremely clear. I think that Gregg Colburn, The University of Washington has done a good job arguing for this correlation and it's difficult to argue against it. What's nice about his research is it's not reliant on self-reported surveys to dig out these trends.
So, if somebody is inside of the house, we definitely want to try to keep them inside of the house. I also agree with your contention that when somebody hits the streets, they actually turn the drugs. And I believe the evidence points toward the ideas of this being a system That doesn't have a reverse gear on the car. If you keep somebody in the house, they won't go homeless. But if you give homeless a house or lodging, it doesn't return them back to the original function.
But one of the really interesting facts to me, which is in the study that you linked, but also in the other studies that I've red covering the same type of survey data, is almost never highlighted.
When you actually dig into the survey data, what you find out is that there is a radical problem with under employment. So let's do that math on the median monthly household income. I do understand it is a medium number, but it will give us a starting point to think about at least 50% of the individuals that are homeless.
Your study reports a median monthly household income of 960 dollars in the six months before homelessness. If that entire amount came from a single worker earning around the California statewide minimum wage at that time (about 14–15 dollars per hour in 2021–2022, ignoring higher local ordinances), that would correspond to roughly:
- 960 dollars ÷ 14 dollars/hour ≈ 69 hours per month, or about 16 hours per week. - 960 dollars ÷ 15 dollars/hour ≈ 64 hours per month, or about 15 hours per week.
For leaseholders at 1,400 dollars per month, the same rough calculation gives:
- 1,400 dollars ÷ 14 dollars/hour ≈ 100 hours per month ≈ 23 hours per week. - 1,400 dollars ÷ 15 dollars/hour ≈ 93 hours per month ≈ 21–22 hours per week.
We need to solve the job issue. If thoughtful analysis is done on this, it may actually turn out to be that the lack of lodging is a secondary issue, It may be the root issue is the inability for a sub-segment of our population to a stable 40 hour a week job that is the real Core problem.
jameslk
7 hours ago
> We need to solve the job issue. If thoughtful analysis is done on this, it may actually turn out to be that the lack of lodging is a secondary issue, It may be the root issue is the inability for a sub-segment of our population to a stable 40 hour a week job that is the real Core problem.
It seems like a stretch to assume this is a jobs issue. You could make the same argument that it’s a lack of working enough hours. I’m not saying it’s either, simply that hours worked is not proof alone that the problem is the lack of jobs.
That said, housing prices continue to outpace household income [0], which should be a lot easier to explain as a cause for the problem that many cannot afford housing where they were able to before. Especially in California where there’s a greater incentive to hold on to a house and extract rent from it due to prop 13, and infamous amounts of attempts to constrain housing supply through regulations and lawsuits.
0. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1MH1V (Real Median Household Income vs Median Sales Price of Houses Sold)
Supermancho
12 hours ago
Didn't work out well for the river camp in Santa Ana, CA 8 years ago (or so) that had to be bulldozed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bhy3zI3wvAo
The vast majority (that accepted accommodation) destroyed the spaces and eventually fled back to the streets. It is generally not productive to simply rehome all the homeless en mass. There are first order drug abuse and mental illness issues that cannot be ignored.
earlyreturns
14 hours ago
As with any survey or most research really, it’s the sample the determines the finding. Homelessness is not easy to define precisely. Drug addiction, setting aside the fact that surveys are self reported, is a bit more cut and dried but from your response it’s not clear if alcohol is included, or drug history. Like if someone did some bad shrooms or had a bad acid trip and wound up homeless would that person be in the 2/3rds?
hattmall
4 hours ago
What would a bad trip that makes you homeless look like? Like you burnt your house down or something.
The number of people that became homeless due to a bad trip may be non-zero but it had to be really close. That's just not a realistic scenario.
lostmsu
an hour ago
You were renting and had a job, then had a bad trip that crushed your intelligence/mental health, causing you to get laid off and evicted.
mbauman
15 hours ago
> "by choice because of"
Goodness, that doesn't look like a choice to me.
belviewreview
7 hours ago
So you claim to know for certain that it virtually never happens that someone winds up homeless for financial reasons, like their rent got raised or they lost their job and couldn't find one that paid enough for the prevailing rents.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to explain how you determined this. Did you for instance survey homeless people in a number of US cities? Or perhaps you used some other method.
mistrial9
15 hours ago
sorry for your situation but that description is inconsistent without medical insight
perhaps more importantly, ascribing legal treatment for a class of people ("homeless") based on this particular case is also unwise, at the least
UltraSane
11 hours ago
100 years ago people like Rob Reiner's drug addict son would probably have been in an insane asylum.
arevno
9 hours ago
100 years ago people like Rob Reiner's drug addict son's dealer would probably have been hanging from a tree.
note: this is not commentary on drug legalization, just commentary that "community efforts" were more involved in addressing negative social externalities than they are now - for better or for worse.
hattmall
4 hours ago
Not likely at all, most likely the drugs wouldn't have even been illegal, but an addict would certainly have been housed and institutionalized. More than half of mental patients were alcoholics and addicts.
RunSet
10 hours ago
Even 60 years ago that would probably have been the case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanterman%E2%80%93Petris%E2%80...
enduser
a day ago
So far AFAIK this claim isn’t repeated by any reputable publishers. E.g. Associated Press and LA Times both published 2.5 hours after PEOPLE and did not make this claim.
benzible
a day ago
Here's another independent report: https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/rob-rei...
Also, People is credible for this type of reporting. They're owned by a major company, IAC, and they don't have a history of reckless reporting or shady practices like catch-and-kill a la the National Enquirer. They likely just have sources that other news outlets don't.
TMWNN
a day ago
>they don't have a history of reckless reporting or shady practices like catch-and-kill a la the National Enquirer
TIL that the 'National Enquirer' was the most reliable news source during the O. J. Simpson murder trial. According to a Harvard law professor who gave the media an overall failing grade, the 'Enquirer' was the only publication that thoroughly followed every rumor and talked to every witness. <https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/6n1kz5/til_th...>
pge
17 hours ago
The Enquirer also broke the John Edwards (vice-presidential candidate) affair story well before mainstream media picked it up. That doesn't make up for the reckless and sometimes completely nutso stories they print, but it is a reminder that they aren't always wrong.
sigwinch
17 hours ago
That’s going a little far, I think. The Enquirer was mentioned during jury selection and not for facts. When the defense wanted to leak a story, they went to the New Yorker.
philistine
18 hours ago
That was an eternity ago. They’re no longer worth anything in terms of reputation.
Fricken
18 hours ago
They were never worth anything in terms of reputation, hence the "TIL"
netsharc
20 hours ago
Speaking of media, I found it really useless that before the names were published, the majority of news articles just said "78 and 68 year old persons found dead [RIP] at Rob Reiner's home", but I had to search for his and his wife's age to correlate that it's him and his wife. I think only 1 news article said, "authorities have not said the names, but those are the ages of Rob Reiner and his wife".
philistine
14 hours ago
It's because they don't want to be wrong, while at the same time having to rush to publish because if they want clicks they need to be first. So they publish only what the cops initially tell them, even before they had time to inquire that the couple killed were indeed the residents.
That's a telltale sign of a news organization that doesn't have access to backroom sources.
oneeyedpigeon
19 hours ago
I've always found it weird that the police cannot name them, but they can give out clues, even clues that are, to all intents and purposes, naming them.
byronic
18 hours ago
In the interest of preserving anonymity, let's call him Rob R. No, er, wait, let's do R Reiner. There, that should do it
harambae
9 hours ago
Lol reminds me of that partially redacted document about the Titan submarine that imploded.
There was like "submarine expert number 2, name redacted" and in expert 2's testimony he said something like "you may recall from my film, Titanic, that..." and I mean it could be anyone or maybe is definitely James Cameron
KingMob
2 hours ago
Lots of people worked on that film, and no doubt Cameron likes to hire fellow deep sea enthusiasts. It could be anybody! /s
philistine
14 hours ago
That's not what was happening there. They weren't hiding the identity, it's that they had not positively identified the victims. The cops talked to journalists very fast.
rafram
11 hours ago
They hadn't positively identified them, but they knew exactly how old they were?
It seems much more likely that they had identified them, but they hadn't gone through the full set of procedures (notifying family members, etc.) that are required before officially releasing names.
netsharc
8 hours ago
If that's the case, that's really just dumb side-skirting of compliance rules, how much difference does it make for a yet-notified family member to read "Persons aged [dad's age] and [mom's age] found dead at residence of [their last name]" compared to "Mr. and Mrs. [their last name] found dead."?
In any case, tragically, their daughter lived across the street and found them.
schmuckonwheels
15 hours ago
In a remarkable coincidence, the Reiners' son has just been booked on suspicion of murder:
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/director-rob-re...
Maybe the cops were reading People in between scarfing down donuts and chain-smoking Marlboros.
nephihaha
21 hours ago
The claim is that there was no sign of forced entry, implying whoever did it was already in the home.