3 ms·
The sad part about the blog post is that it does identify a big homelessness problem, but does so in a way that is callous and doesn't really help. I spend a c
by hibikir 11y ago
The sad part about the blog post is that it does identify a big homelessness problem, but does so in a way that is callous and doesn't really help.
I spend a couple of weeks in SF this month, and was shocked at the level of homelessness that we find even in very well off districts. This is not something that is common in the big cities of the world. The city is OK with tents everywhere, but that's not really that good for the people that are now homeless either: Living on a tent on the street will not help their mental health, their self esteem, or their chances of getting out of that hole.
I don't think the problem is really the fault of the tech people moving in, and I sure don't blame the homeless themselves. The problem, once again, falls into the people that want to keep the city the way it was, and to avoid building, when the city faces other pressures that are unavoidable. San Francisco MUST build.
Until people change their mind, we'll see both more gentrification and more homelessness, until the city reaches a point where the combination of prices and homelessness makes the city life into a dystopia: Maximum inequality, brought in by policies trying, but failing, to make the city be inclusive. I sure hope San Francisco voters change their mind before it gets to that.
- danbolt 11y agoI think your second paragraph makes a really good point. If you live in a tent where the world around you expects you to be in a house and make enough money, the mental stress is going to be huge. I'm not claiming to know much about homelessness or poverty, but I'm pretty sure I'd become a less productive developer if I was stuck living on the fringe.
- Eric_WVGG 11y agoOne of the (many) things that Keller — and many of the folks here who sound like newcomers to SF — don’t get is that the homeless population is not a new thing in San Francisco. It was just like this during the 1990’s, and some say it goes all the way back to when Reagan shut down California mental health services in the 70’s.
- Animats 11y agoSF didn't have a large visible homeless population until about 1985. There used to be a lot of SRO (Single Room Occupancy) hotels in SF, in the Tenderloin and SOMA. That's where the poor people lived. There are still SRO hotels, but fewer, and many are owned by nonprofits now. The areas containing those hotels are being gentrified. Many of them were in the Tenderloin near Market, across from what's now Twitter HQ. Others were on 6th St, which has stubbornly resisted gentrification for decades. Now there are construction cranes at work there. The problem with housing the homeless in SF is where to build housing. SF is built out; you have to tear something down to build anything. There are some housing projects, but they tend to house families with kids, and they don't want large numbers of single druggies dumped on them. Any ideas?
- AndrewUnmuted 11y ago> I spend a couple of weeks in SF this month, and was shocked at the level of homelessness that we find even in very well off districts. This is not something that is common in the big cities of the world. I've lived in many places but my home is (and always will be) New York City. What you wrote here does not reflect my experience at all. When I moved into a non-gentrified part of Brooklyn, and then watched it gentrify in front of my eyes, it was only after this whole endeavor concluded that I began to see homeless people on my streets. There's a lot of loot that upper-middle class transplants from Ohio are willing to shell out of their nice, warm winter jackets.