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The average homeless person in the US cost tax payers around $40,000 [1]. In 2015 SF had a homeless population of 7539 [2]. Meaning they're spending on average

The average homeless person in the US cost tax payers around $40,000 [1]. In 2015 SF had a homeless population of 7539 [2]. Meaning they're spending on average of about $32000 per homeless person, $8000 less than the national average. From 2013 to 2015 San Francisco experienced a 2% increase in the total number of homeless, while the nation as a whole saw a 5.2% decrease. Sounds like it's a problem you can't underspend your way out of. [1] http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/mar/12/shaun-donovan/hud-secretary-says-homeless-person-costs-taxpayers/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/mar/... [2] https://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Francisco%20Homeless%20Count%20%20Report_0.pdf https://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Fran...

ok_craig 10y ago
Maybe SF spends its money more smartly. People complain about the homeless problem in SF but never seem to stop to think that perhaps we have more homeless because there is less incentive to not be homeless in SF. NYC has lower homelessness because the winters are shit and the police are hostile. In SF, the weather is great and police let you shit in the street without much of a confrontation. Is there seriously any question why the rate is higher here? The homeless are treated pretty decently. SF has more homeless because it generally treats them better than the rest of the US, not worse.
- marcusgarvey 10y ago
  >SF has more homeless because it generally treats them better than the rest of the US, not worse. Thinking of the way Giuliani criminalized homelessness in NYC, you may be right. http://mobile.nytimes.com/1999/11/20/nyregion/in-wake-of-attack-giuliani-cracks-down-on-homeless.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/1999/11/20/nyregion/in-wake-of-att...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- Spooky23 10y ago
  NYC has lower homelessness because it spends a ridiculous amount of money on the problem and has more public housing units than anywhere. People who claim to be homeless get priority for placement. Right now, so much focus is on this problem that backlogs for section 8 and other housing are dropping in the broader region because clients are moving to NYC.
  - cloudjacker 10y ago
    Nyc doesnt have less homelessness than sf. Numerically, statistically, per capita, any way you want to slice it. Hit me up about a recent source. Sf has visible encampments in prime living areas which greatly skews perceptions. I fell for it to.
    - fredsted 10y ago
      Why not just post a source here?
      - cloudjacker 10y ago
        On mobile, on vacation, don't have link
    - BinaryIdiot 10y ago
      > Numerically, statistically, per capita, any way you want to slice it. Per capita SF might beat NYC (couldn't find good sources and honestly I'm a little tired at the moment) but "Numerically" and "any way you want to slice it" NYC wins hands down. In 2015 it was estimated that San Francisco had 7,539 [1]. NYC, on the other hand, had 60,456 in 2016 [2]. I couldn't find many sources that differed much than these figures I found even though they're about a year separated. [1] https://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Francisco%20Homeless%20Count%20%20Report_0.pdf https://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Fran... [2] http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/basic-facts-about-homelessness-new-york-city/ http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/basic-facts-about-hom...
    - Spooky23 10y ago
- esaym 10y ago
  I guess I'll chime in here. I normally don't talk about homelessness as I had a distant cousin (grandpa's sister's son) that loved to be homeless. So my opinion will be quite negative/biased. But yes you are right about SF. This cousin of mine would regularly leave his family and travel around the US hitchhiking for one or two years at a time. He spent most of his time in Cali, not sure which city. He said it was great to go there for the winter as at that time senior citizens (he was not a senior but he would pass based on looks) could get free public transit tickets. So after a long day of panhandling or drinking, he'd get on a nice warm bus for a night and sleep. He seemed to be part of some kind of "homeless elite". There was nothing wrong with him physically or mentally (other than severe stubbornness) and it was the same with this group of friends he would regularly meet up with. They would all be in Cali for the winter. They'd bum money on the street pulling in $100+ a day and spend it on alcohol where him and his buddies would sit around in an alley socializing over how everyone is stupid. After winter they'd all disperse to Chicago or the east cost (not sure about NY). He'd randomly run into his buddies throughout out the Spring and Summer months in other cities as well. He talked favorably of Cali and the east cost. There were some overpasses in Texas on I10 and I35 that he mentioned were also where the cool guys hung out at, can't remember were exactly. But he didn't really like Texas much. In Austin he would be quickly arrested for "vagrancy". This would happen in San Antonio too, but before the cops would haul him off he would call my grandparents about 20 miles away to come pick him up. I stayed off and on at my grandparent's house while going to college for 4 years. I had the pleasure of rooming with him many times. When he would show up, my grandma would wash his bag of cloths, but it would stain the inside of the washer black, so she'd have to wash 'em a few more times and then eventually wash the washer by hand. His first shower hot off the streets was also a doozy too. The walls would be caked with globs of this white jelly type stuff. I can only assume it was from massive amounts of built up dead skin that washed off. But it would glob up in the drain, and along with his long uncut hair, clog everything up. It was totally gag-tastic cleaning it out. The last few times he came around, I was too annoyed to deal with him again so I convinced the pastor at a local small church to let me sleep in their gym at night for a week(even though there was a mouse and scorpion problem there, I didn't care). He was a cool guy, had some hilarious stories and you could hold a conversation with him for hours. He once told me he didn't learn how to read until he was 28. Said he taught himself. I asked what motivated him to do that and he said he wanted to be able to read the captions next to women in porno mags. Both my grandparents and his mother dumped a lot of cash into him but nothing helped. He would always get mad at something a leave again. One of the more memorable times, he was living with his mother for a bit (I think the cops grabbed him in Dallas and his mother was close to there) but he got mad at her for some reason and started to leave again. She gave him her car, some cash, stuffed the car with clothes, food and a TV. He drove off in it but it broke down about 10 miles down the road. He just left it there and hitchhiked to Dallas where he stayed for a month or so before getting picked up again. He died about a year ago actually. Probably 55. He spend his last few years living in some low incoming housing (for free) near Dallas. His last year was spent with him having various hoses hanging out from his abdomen. He would have to go to the hospital for the doctors to drain fluids out of him from failing organs. He didn't seem to mind though, he thought the hoses were stupid and kept drinking until the end. Hard to say how much he cost society (from a government perspective). He seemed to pay his way most of his life. Only the last few years did he get any kind of government assistance. Heck of a guy, but dang.
- nadezhda18 10y ago
  Winters do not keep homeless people away from big cities. They just hide in warmer places like metro or underpasses. I live in Montreal, Canada, which is even more up north than NYC. That's what our homeless guys are doing when it's freezing outside.
  - cbr 10y ago
    I see 1.8/100k in Montreal [1] vs 8.0/100k in SF [2]. [1] http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/results-of-montreals-homeless-census-released http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/results-of-montre... [2] http://sfmayor.org/sites/default/files/FileCenter/Documents/455-SanFrancisco_HomelessReport_2015_FINAL.PDF http://sfmayor.org/sites/default/files/FileCenter/Documents/...
    - nadezhda18 10y ago
      I am not sure I understand where you took your numbers from. Regardless, you compare apples to oranges. I believe it is HIGHLY incorrect to compare the number of homeless people from cities located in DIFFERENT countries. Comparing to the US, Canada has much stronger social policies including financial aid and free health care that lead to a smaller number of people sleeping on the streets who ended up there because of financial troubles and losing their home/livelihood. Quebec province is even better in this sense. In Montreal specifically, our hobos are mostly drunks and young people who had troubles at home. Here are the numbers of people experiencing homeless state on a given night: Canada: 35,000 / 35,749,600 = 9.8/10k [0] USA: 56,4708 / 320,090,857 = 17.64/10k [1] [0] - http://www.homelesshub.ca/blog/infographic-homelessness-canada-numbers http://www.homelesshub.ca/blog/infographic-homelessness-cana... [1] - http://www.endhomelessness.org/library/entry/SOH2016 http://www.endhomelessness.org/library/entry/SOH2016 (edited new line breaks)
      - cbr 10y ago
        I am not sure I understand where you took your numbers from. The links I listed give 3,016 homeless people for Montreal and 6,686 for SF. Dividing by their populations, you get the per-capita rates I gave. I believe it is HIGHLY incorrect to compare the number of homeless people from cities located in DIFFERENT countries. Yes, I'm sure country has an effect, and we can't count the entire SF vs Montreal difference as being due to weather. Similarly, different cities have different institutions and are otherwise, so figuring out the effect of weather is pretty hard.
- rsync 10y ago
  "Is there seriously any question why the rate is higher here? The homeless are treated pretty decently. SF has more homeless because it generally treats them better than the rest of the US, not worse." No, there is not a seriously any question. It's (relatively) warm in San Francisco, year round, and social mores are (relatively) welcoming to aberrant behavior. These people exist and they're not going to disappear, therefore they have to go somewhere. There is actually a quite nice A/B test already in place in the United States. Minneapolis/St. Paul is culturally almost as liberal and progressive as northern california and have an extensive social services and support network for all manner of social circumstances. Also it's literally deadly to be homeless for 2-4 months of the year. In all of my years living in downtown Minneapolis (and other years living in suburban twin cities) I witnessed a very, very low level of homelessness.
  - jdietrich 10y ago
    It's worth noting that homelessness =/= rough sleeping. For every person you see sleeping on the streets, there are several who are squatting, living in vans, crashing on couches etc. Hidden homelessness is much more difficult to identify, so the headline statistics on homelessness rates can be misleading.
- GunboatDiplomat 10y ago
  >police let you shit in the street without much of a confrontation. Is that really a positive?
  - sidlls 10y ago
    Depends on the perspective. I've had family who rolled their eyes when I'd tell them about seeing homeless people just walk up to trees and start pissing or drop their trousers and shit in trash cans, by bushes, on the sidewalk, etc. Invariably the ones who visit marvel at my relatively tame descriptions afterward. I'm sure the homeless find it quite a positive that they can relieve themselves without much interference, while I find it a net negative.
- cloudjacker 10y ago
  That awkward moment when you find out NYC has greater homelessness
Camillo 10y ago
Read your own sources more carefully. The $40k figure was for homeless people with mental illnesses in NYC (a more expensive subset of homeless, and a more expensive city than most). The figures given by Mangano later in the article have no citation. More importantly, you are comparing all the services consumed by mentally ill homeless people in NYC with the homeless budget of the city of SF alone. Look at table 17 in the study [1]. Here is where those $40k came from: $12,520 NY State Office of Mental Health $11,596 Medicaid (inpatient) $2,613 Medicaid (outpatient) $6,229 NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation $4,658 NYC Department of Homeless Services $1,822 US Department of Veteran Affairs $645 Department of corrections (city) $368 Department of corrections (state) Of these, only $11,532 came from the city. [1] http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1067&context=spp_papers http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1067...
- quinnchr 10y ago
  Funding source isn't really relevant. NYC has a guaranteed right to shelter [1], they'd be providing the same services regardless of state funding. [1] https://www.marketplace.org/2015/09/30/wealth-poverty/behind-new-yorks-right-shelter-policy https://www.marketplace.org/2015/09/30/wealth-poverty/behind...
  - johncolanduoni 10y ago
    Perhaps, but the focus on a specific, more expensive set of homeless people sure is.
  - traek 10y ago
    Yes, but it's misleading to compare city+state spending in NYC to solely city spending in SF, and conclude that SF is underspending on the homeless. To be a fair comparison, we'd also have to include what the state of California spends on the homeless.
    - quinnchr 10y ago
      True, but as far as I know California has never funded homeless programs at the state level. The only thing listed in the 2015 budget is: "Housing Support Program — The Budget contains $35 million General Fund for CalWORKs Housing Support Program services, an increase of $15 million, which provides additional support to CalWORKs families for whom homelessness is a barrier to self‐sufficiency." Which leaves medicaid spending, which according to my previous source only 20% of the homeless population in SF receive. Assuming medicaid pays the same amount poer person as in NYC that would bring the per capita homeless expenditure to about $35000.
pmoriarty 10y ago
"From 2013 to 2015 San Francisco experienced a 2% increase in the total number of homeless, while the nation as a whole saw a 5.2% decrease." When I see a change in some hot button statistic, I always ask why. Why are these homeless numbers decreasing? Are the homeless people finding homes or are they dying? Or maybe they're moving or being moved somewhere else. I heard there was once a plan to round up all the homeless people in San Francisco and ship them off to Treasure Island. Would that have solved the "problem" or would it just be a case of "out of sight, out of mind"? I've also been told that a lot of homeless people in NYC, for instance, just die in the brutal winters -- especially if they're forced outdoors by police, everpresent locked and unwelcoming doors, and horrific shelters. Similar questions should be asked about why homeless numbers are rising in SF.
- ktRolster 10y ago
  Those changes look small enough that they could be natural variance.
- e7c6ht6iad 10y ago
  In the US - unemployment is down, incomes are up, it's easier at the margin to afford a place to live. In SF - great economy doesn't help people on the margin when there is not enough housing.
rayiner 10y ago
$32k per homeless person is underspending?!
- FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
  Consider this. We spend roughly 2x that figure on incarcerating individuals. I'm not going to even touch why a great number of those people are in jail for nothing more than selling dime bags of pot or being unable to pay for tickets. However, don't you find it somewhat interesting that we're spending more per capita and in total on criminals than we are on more or less law abiding citizens?
  - lostlogin 10y ago
    I agree with you but would add one thing. The money isn't spent on prisoners, it's spent on private corporations. The actual cost of having a prisoner is likely much less, or the corporations wouldn't exist.
    - FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
      First, I agree with part of your sentiment. Not only is it financially and socially against the interest of citizens to allow private corporations to be jailors, it is also morally and ethically repugnant t choose organizations which maximize profits instead of those that maximize rehabilitation and minimizes recidivism. I've had personal experience in this area. Although I've never been to prison, I spent a week in a county jail for a charge that I was innocent of and ultimately acquitted. In that short span, I witnessed just how broken the system is. Using the word justice to describe this system a tragic joke. The "justice" you receive is in direct relation to how much you spend on your legal defense. To me, it's a joke and a modern form of double speak. It's more accurate to call this system the societal stablizization system It blows my mind that people have faith in this system when people who have to rely on woefully under-resourced public defenders go to jail. The prosecution coerces you to take a "deal", which is usually sanctioned by the defender. If you elect to seek a fair trial in court, they take this deal off the table and retaliate by seeking the maximum possible sentence. It should not surprise you that when many prosecutors run for office, one of the things they tout is the number of years they have gotten people sentenced to. How can people accept widespread disparity in sentences for the same crime when the system has the word justice in it? As a prisoner, many know that you are a source of virtually free labor. This is troublesome on its own, but when you are a source of free labor for private capital...we have a very precise term for that arrangement. This is also counterproductive because it takes away from prisoners a nest egg that they can use while to house, feed, eat, and clothe themselves while they go and look for one of those mythical jobs out there for ex-cons. If one doesn't have a place to sleep, food to eat, etc.. you literally have to make a decision to either go hungry and sleep on the street or you focus on base survival and take what you need. It doesn't stop there because not only are you a prisoner, you are also a captive consumer to outside contractors/monopolists. The most notorious parasitic vulture out there is none other than Bob Barker. If you guessed that he sells travel sizes of the most basic toothpaste for $6, then the price is right! I'm not even going to go into the antiquated, exploitative system for making phone calls. However, private prisons only house like 8% of the incarcerated. I'm not sure if you're trying to distinguish between private prisons or not, but any organization usually needs a vendor. And, boy, prison vendors sure have the taxpayer's best interest at heart. The fingerprint scanning machines are about 2x the size of those massive 4 foot tall copier/fax/scanners you would see from the 90's. I understand that it has to have a high degree of precision, but it baffles all reason when they spend at the minimum $6000 for a behemoth machine (that needs regular maintenence over time, which costs) while I own a phone that I paid $300 for that can scan all 10 fingers and it fits in my pocket. I've already written too much, but the most despicable part was the prison's enforced racial segregation. I had heard a little bit about it before, but I wasn't prepared to travel back in time to the Jim Crow era where you are really only allowed to interact with people of your own race. That means, you have to take a shower with your race, watch tv with your race, eat with them, etc. So, instead of teaching or encouraging prisoners to get along with people different from them (the type of thing you need to do in the real world in the US), you are inculcated and degraded into an ignorant and antiquated relic from a mostly bygone era. I just wasn't ready to hear someeone say literally "Alright, you blacks over her. Mexicans, Hispanics, latinos or whatever over here. White people, you stay here As a victim of crime, I understand the desire to see the assailant punished severely. But at the end of the day, you have to ask yourself would you rather that person experience at least just as much pain and loss as you did or would you rather have a system that focuses on prevention and rehabilitation so that society overall is safer and no one else has to go through your experience as a victim. EDIT: This is anecdotal, so it may not apply to your area, but prison guards are some of the dimmest employees I've ever come across. 16 yr old drug dealing high school dropouts were categorically more articulate and could calculate basic math like 10x better. They make $43,000 on average and face the same amount of danger as a teenager working the overnight shift at a gas station. It's sad that most of the public's interaction with officers, etc happens with patrol level police officers instead of people like detectives, administrators, and the like.
ocschwar 10y ago
> From 2013 to 2015 San Francisco experienced a 2% increase in the total number of homeless, while the nation as a whole saw a 5.2% decrease. Greyhound. No, really. San Francisco's homeless problem is the nation's problem.
- hiphipjorge 10y ago
  I've always heard about this, but have never actually seen any prove. Any sources for this? Genuinely curious.
joesmo 10y ago
$40k a year is a living wage. Even $32k is a decent living wage (yes, even in the bay area). To me, these figures sound like we're too unimaginative as a society in figuring out better systems of distributing this money. I know people in the bay area living on a lot less and getting by ok. If we actually gave the homeless money instead of making them jump through hoops like zoo animals for the smallest of concessions, a bed here, some food stamps there, we could potentially start making a dent in this problem and giving people real chances. It's been demonstrated over and over again that this is something that can work. Why not give it a shot and start helping people find affordable government housing instead of perpetually squandering the money in the inefficient ways we have been doing?
- rayiner 10y ago
  There are two kinds of homeless people. Most people who are ever homeless get back on their feet relatively quickly, and are not homeless again. They are cheap for the system to handle, and cash payments would do the trick. But most homeless people are the chronic homeless. They're likely outside the range on the bell curve of people who can take care of themselves. Cash payments won't help them--the government has to take over in a more interventionist role.
  - joesmo 10y ago
    So you're saying that there are no homeless people that can take care of themselves but can't get back on their feet quickly. Seems unlikely.
  - lukeschlather 10y ago
    > But most homeless people are the chronic homeless. That's wildly inaccurate. Chronic homeless account for less than a fifth of the homeless population. * https://www.usich.gov/goals/chronic https://www.usich.gov/goals/chronic * Look at "Key findings": https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/2015-AHAR-Part-1.pdf https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/2015-AHAR-P...
    - Asooka 10y ago
whywastemoney 10y ago
It costs more to support a homeless person than many of my friends make annually. What the actual fuck. Why do we support these drains on society?
abysmallyideal 10y ago
So they made a "profitable business" out of homeless people. Get real, people want convenience and that convenience means paying someone else to address the issue.
muzz 10y ago
By dividing that way, the more people are helped the worse the number looks. I.e., if the $241M helped 99.99% of people become un-homeless, then it the math would work out to $241M per homeless person since there is only 1 homeless person left.

ok_craig 10y ago

Maybe SF spends its money more smartly. People complain about the homeless problem in SF but never seem to stop to think that perhaps we have more homeless because there is less incentive to not be homeless in SF. NYC has lower homelessness because the winters are shit and the police are hostile. In SF, the weather is great and police let you shit in the street without much of a confrontation. Is there seriously any question why the rate is higher here? The homeless are treated pretty decently. SF has more homeless because it generally treats them better than the rest of the US, not worse.

marcusgarvey 10y ago
>SF has more homeless because it generally treats them better than the rest of the US, not worse. Thinking of the way Giuliani criminalized homelessness in NYC, you may be right. http://mobile.nytimes.com/1999/11/20/nyregion/in-wake-of-attack-giuliani-cracks-down-on-homeless.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/1999/11/20/nyregion/in-wake-of-att...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
Spooky23 10y ago
NYC has lower homelessness because it spends a ridiculous amount of money on the problem and has more public housing units than anywhere. People who claim to be homeless get priority for placement. Right now, so much focus is on this problem that backlogs for section 8 and other housing are dropping in the broader region because clients are moving to NYC.
- cloudjacker 10y ago
  Nyc doesnt have less homelessness than sf. Numerically, statistically, per capita, any way you want to slice it. Hit me up about a recent source. Sf has visible encampments in prime living areas which greatly skews perceptions. I fell for it to.
  - fredsted 10y ago
    Why not just post a source here?
    - cloudjacker 10y ago
      On mobile, on vacation, don't have link
  - BinaryIdiot 10y ago
    > Numerically, statistically, per capita, any way you want to slice it. Per capita SF might beat NYC (couldn't find good sources and honestly I'm a little tired at the moment) but "Numerically" and "any way you want to slice it" NYC wins hands down. In 2015 it was estimated that San Francisco had 7,539 [1]. NYC, on the other hand, had 60,456 in 2016 [2]. I couldn't find many sources that differed much than these figures I found even though they're about a year separated. [1] https://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Francisco%20Homeless%20Count%20%20Report_0.pdf https://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Fran... [2] http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/basic-facts-about-homelessness-new-york-city/ http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/basic-facts-about-hom...
  - Spooky23 10y ago
esaym 10y ago
I guess I'll chime in here. I normally don't talk about homelessness as I had a distant cousin (grandpa's sister's son) that loved to be homeless. So my opinion will be quite negative/biased. But yes you are right about SF. This cousin of mine would regularly leave his family and travel around the US hitchhiking for one or two years at a time. He spent most of his time in Cali, not sure which city. He said it was great to go there for the winter as at that time senior citizens (he was not a senior but he would pass based on looks) could get free public transit tickets. So after a long day of panhandling or drinking, he'd get on a nice warm bus for a night and sleep. He seemed to be part of some kind of "homeless elite". There was nothing wrong with him physically or mentally (other than severe stubbornness) and it was the same with this group of friends he would regularly meet up with. They would all be in Cali for the winter. They'd bum money on the street pulling in $100+ a day and spend it on alcohol where him and his buddies would sit around in an alley socializing over how everyone is stupid. After winter they'd all disperse to Chicago or the east cost (not sure about NY). He'd randomly run into his buddies throughout out the Spring and Summer months in other cities as well. He talked favorably of Cali and the east cost. There were some overpasses in Texas on I10 and I35 that he mentioned were also where the cool guys hung out at, can't remember were exactly. But he didn't really like Texas much. In Austin he would be quickly arrested for "vagrancy". This would happen in San Antonio too, but before the cops would haul him off he would call my grandparents about 20 miles away to come pick him up. I stayed off and on at my grandparent's house while going to college for 4 years. I had the pleasure of rooming with him many times. When he would show up, my grandma would wash his bag of cloths, but it would stain the inside of the washer black, so she'd have to wash 'em a few more times and then eventually wash the washer by hand. His first shower hot off the streets was also a doozy too. The walls would be caked with globs of this white jelly type stuff. I can only assume it was from massive amounts of built up dead skin that washed off. But it would glob up in the drain, and along with his long uncut hair, clog everything up. It was totally gag-tastic cleaning it out. The last few times he came around, I was too annoyed to deal with him again so I convinced the pastor at a local small church to let me sleep in their gym at night for a week(even though there was a mouse and scorpion problem there, I didn't care). He was a cool guy, had some hilarious stories and you could hold a conversation with him for hours. He once told me he didn't learn how to read until he was 28. Said he taught himself. I asked what motivated him to do that and he said he wanted to be able to read the captions next to women in porno mags. Both my grandparents and his mother dumped a lot of cash into him but nothing helped. He would always get mad at something a leave again. One of the more memorable times, he was living with his mother for a bit (I think the cops grabbed him in Dallas and his mother was close to there) but he got mad at her for some reason and started to leave again. She gave him her car, some cash, stuffed the car with clothes, food and a TV. He drove off in it but it broke down about 10 miles down the road. He just left it there and hitchhiked to Dallas where he stayed for a month or so before getting picked up again. He died about a year ago actually. Probably 55. He spend his last few years living in some low incoming housing (for free) near Dallas. His last year was spent with him having various hoses hanging out from his abdomen. He would have to go to the hospital for the doctors to drain fluids out of him from failing organs. He didn't seem to mind though, he thought the hoses were stupid and kept drinking until the end. Hard to say how much he cost society (from a government perspective). He seemed to pay his way most of his life. Only the last few years did he get any kind of government assistance. Heck of a guy, but dang.
nadezhda18 10y ago
Winters do not keep homeless people away from big cities. They just hide in warmer places like metro or underpasses. I live in Montreal, Canada, which is even more up north than NYC. That's what our homeless guys are doing when it's freezing outside.
- cbr 10y ago
  I see 1.8/100k in Montreal [1] vs 8.0/100k in SF [2]. [1] http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/results-of-montreals-homeless-census-released http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/results-of-montre... [2] http://sfmayor.org/sites/default/files/FileCenter/Documents/455-SanFrancisco_HomelessReport_2015_FINAL.PDF http://sfmayor.org/sites/default/files/FileCenter/Documents/...
  - nadezhda18 10y ago
    I am not sure I understand where you took your numbers from. Regardless, you compare apples to oranges. I believe it is HIGHLY incorrect to compare the number of homeless people from cities located in DIFFERENT countries. Comparing to the US, Canada has much stronger social policies including financial aid and free health care that lead to a smaller number of people sleeping on the streets who ended up there because of financial troubles and losing their home/livelihood. Quebec province is even better in this sense. In Montreal specifically, our hobos are mostly drunks and young people who had troubles at home. Here are the numbers of people experiencing homeless state on a given night: Canada: 35,000 / 35,749,600 = 9.8/10k [0] USA: 56,4708 / 320,090,857 = 17.64/10k [1] [0] - http://www.homelesshub.ca/blog/infographic-homelessness-canada-numbers http://www.homelesshub.ca/blog/infographic-homelessness-cana... [1] - http://www.endhomelessness.org/library/entry/SOH2016 http://www.endhomelessness.org/library/entry/SOH2016 (edited new line breaks)
    - cbr 10y ago
      I am not sure I understand where you took your numbers from. The links I listed give 3,016 homeless people for Montreal and 6,686 for SF. Dividing by their populations, you get the per-capita rates I gave. I believe it is HIGHLY incorrect to compare the number of homeless people from cities located in DIFFERENT countries. Yes, I'm sure country has an effect, and we can't count the entire SF vs Montreal difference as being due to weather. Similarly, different cities have different institutions and are otherwise, so figuring out the effect of weather is pretty hard.
rsync 10y ago
"Is there seriously any question why the rate is higher here? The homeless are treated pretty decently. SF has more homeless because it generally treats them better than the rest of the US, not worse." No, there is not a seriously any question. It's (relatively) warm in San Francisco, year round, and social mores are (relatively) welcoming to aberrant behavior. These people exist and they're not going to disappear, therefore they have to go somewhere. There is actually a quite nice A/B test already in place in the United States. Minneapolis/St. Paul is culturally almost as liberal and progressive as northern california and have an extensive social services and support network for all manner of social circumstances. Also it's literally deadly to be homeless for 2-4 months of the year. In all of my years living in downtown Minneapolis (and other years living in suburban twin cities) I witnessed a very, very low level of homelessness.
- jdietrich 10y ago
  It's worth noting that homelessness =/= rough sleeping. For every person you see sleeping on the streets, there are several who are squatting, living in vans, crashing on couches etc. Hidden homelessness is much more difficult to identify, so the headline statistics on homelessness rates can be misleading.
GunboatDiplomat 10y ago
>police let you shit in the street without much of a confrontation. Is that really a positive?
- sidlls 10y ago
  Depends on the perspective. I've had family who rolled their eyes when I'd tell them about seeing homeless people just walk up to trees and start pissing or drop their trousers and shit in trash cans, by bushes, on the sidewalk, etc. Invariably the ones who visit marvel at my relatively tame descriptions afterward. I'm sure the homeless find it quite a positive that they can relieve themselves without much interference, while I find it a net negative.
cloudjacker 10y ago
That awkward moment when you find out NYC has greater homelessness

Camillo 10y ago

Read your own sources more carefully. The $40k figure was for homeless people with mental illnesses in NYC (a more expensive subset of homeless, and a more expensive city than most). The figures given by Mangano later in the article have no citation. More importantly, you are comparing all the services consumed by mentally ill homeless people in NYC with the homeless budget of the city of SF alone. Look at table 17 in the study [1]. Here is where those $40k came from: $12,520 NY State Office of Mental Health $11,596 Medicaid (inpatient) $2,613 Medicaid (outpatient) $6,229 NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation $4,658 NYC Department of Homeless Services $1,822 US Department of Veteran Affairs $645 Department of corrections (city) $368 Department of corrections (state) Of these, only $11,532 came from the city. [1] http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1067&context=spp_papers http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1067...

quinnchr 10y ago
Funding source isn't really relevant. NYC has a guaranteed right to shelter [1], they'd be providing the same services regardless of state funding. [1] https://www.marketplace.org/2015/09/30/wealth-poverty/behind-new-yorks-right-shelter-policy https://www.marketplace.org/2015/09/30/wealth-poverty/behind...
- johncolanduoni 10y ago
  Perhaps, but the focus on a specific, more expensive set of homeless people sure is.
- traek 10y ago
  Yes, but it's misleading to compare city+state spending in NYC to solely city spending in SF, and conclude that SF is underspending on the homeless. To be a fair comparison, we'd also have to include what the state of California spends on the homeless.
  - quinnchr 10y ago
    True, but as far as I know California has never funded homeless programs at the state level. The only thing listed in the 2015 budget is: "Housing Support Program — The Budget contains $35 million General Fund for CalWORKs Housing Support Program services, an increase of $15 million, which provides additional support to CalWORKs families for whom homelessness is a barrier to self‐sufficiency." Which leaves medicaid spending, which according to my previous source only 20% of the homeless population in SF receive. Assuming medicaid pays the same amount poer person as in NYC that would bring the per capita homeless expenditure to about $35000.

pmoriarty 10y ago

"From 2013 to 2015 San Francisco experienced a 2% increase in the total number of homeless, while the nation as a whole saw a 5.2% decrease." When I see a change in some hot button statistic, I always ask why. Why are these homeless numbers decreasing? Are the homeless people finding homes or are they dying? Or maybe they're moving or being moved somewhere else. I heard there was once a plan to round up all the homeless people in San Francisco and ship them off to Treasure Island. Would that have solved the "problem" or would it just be a case of "out of sight, out of mind"? I've also been told that a lot of homeless people in NYC, for instance, just die in the brutal winters -- especially if they're forced outdoors by police, everpresent locked and unwelcoming doors, and horrific shelters. Similar questions should be asked about why homeless numbers are rising in SF.

ktRolster 10y ago
Those changes look small enough that they could be natural variance.
e7c6ht6iad 10y ago
In the US - unemployment is down, incomes are up, it's easier at the margin to afford a place to live. In SF - great economy doesn't help people on the margin when there is not enough housing.

rayiner 10y ago

$32k per homeless person is underspending?!

FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
Consider this. We spend roughly 2x that figure on incarcerating individuals. I'm not going to even touch why a great number of those people are in jail for nothing more than selling dime bags of pot or being unable to pay for tickets. However, don't you find it somewhat interesting that we're spending more per capita and in total on criminals than we are on more or less law abiding citizens?
- lostlogin 10y ago
  I agree with you but would add one thing. The money isn't spent on prisoners, it's spent on private corporations. The actual cost of having a prisoner is likely much less, or the corporations wouldn't exist.
  - FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
    First, I agree with part of your sentiment. Not only is it financially and socially against the interest of citizens to allow private corporations to be jailors, it is also morally and ethically repugnant t choose organizations which maximize profits instead of those that maximize rehabilitation and minimizes recidivism. I've had personal experience in this area. Although I've never been to prison, I spent a week in a county jail for a charge that I was innocent of and ultimately acquitted. In that short span, I witnessed just how broken the system is. Using the word justice to describe this system a tragic joke. The "justice" you receive is in direct relation to how much you spend on your legal defense. To me, it's a joke and a modern form of double speak. It's more accurate to call this system the societal stablizization system It blows my mind that people have faith in this system when people who have to rely on woefully under-resourced public defenders go to jail. The prosecution coerces you to take a "deal", which is usually sanctioned by the defender. If you elect to seek a fair trial in court, they take this deal off the table and retaliate by seeking the maximum possible sentence. It should not surprise you that when many prosecutors run for office, one of the things they tout is the number of years they have gotten people sentenced to. How can people accept widespread disparity in sentences for the same crime when the system has the word justice in it? As a prisoner, many know that you are a source of virtually free labor. This is troublesome on its own, but when you are a source of free labor for private capital...we have a very precise term for that arrangement. This is also counterproductive because it takes away from prisoners a nest egg that they can use while to house, feed, eat, and clothe themselves while they go and look for one of those mythical jobs out there for ex-cons. If one doesn't have a place to sleep, food to eat, etc.. you literally have to make a decision to either go hungry and sleep on the street or you focus on base survival and take what you need. It doesn't stop there because not only are you a prisoner, you are also a captive consumer to outside contractors/monopolists. The most notorious parasitic vulture out there is none other than Bob Barker. If you guessed that he sells travel sizes of the most basic toothpaste for $6, then the price is right! I'm not even going to go into the antiquated, exploitative system for making phone calls. However, private prisons only house like 8% of the incarcerated. I'm not sure if you're trying to distinguish between private prisons or not, but any organization usually needs a vendor. And, boy, prison vendors sure have the taxpayer's best interest at heart. The fingerprint scanning machines are about 2x the size of those massive 4 foot tall copier/fax/scanners you would see from the 90's. I understand that it has to have a high degree of precision, but it baffles all reason when they spend at the minimum $6000 for a behemoth machine (that needs regular maintenence over time, which costs) while I own a phone that I paid $300 for that can scan all 10 fingers and it fits in my pocket. I've already written too much, but the most despicable part was the prison's enforced racial segregation. I had heard a little bit about it before, but I wasn't prepared to travel back in time to the Jim Crow era where you are really only allowed to interact with people of your own race. That means, you have to take a shower with your race, watch tv with your race, eat with them, etc. So, instead of teaching or encouraging prisoners to get along with people different from them (the type of thing you need to do in the real world in the US), you are inculcated and degraded into an ignorant and antiquated relic from a mostly bygone era. I just wasn't ready to hear someeone say literally "Alright, you blacks over her. Mexicans, Hispanics, latinos or whatever over here. White people, you stay here As a victim of crime, I understand the desire to see the assailant punished severely. But at the end of the day, you have to ask yourself would you rather that person experience at least just as much pain and loss as you did or would you rather have a system that focuses on prevention and rehabilitation so that society overall is safer and no one else has to go through your experience as a victim. EDIT: This is anecdotal, so it may not apply to your area, but prison guards are some of the dimmest employees I've ever come across. 16 yr old drug dealing high school dropouts were categorically more articulate and could calculate basic math like 10x better. They make $43,000 on average and face the same amount of danger as a teenager working the overnight shift at a gas station. It's sad that most of the public's interaction with officers, etc happens with patrol level police officers instead of people like detectives, administrators, and the like.

ocschwar 10y ago

> From 2013 to 2015 San Francisco experienced a 2% increase in the total number of homeless, while the nation as a whole saw a 5.2% decrease. Greyhound. No, really. San Francisco's homeless problem is the nation's problem.

hiphipjorge 10y ago
I've always heard about this, but have never actually seen any prove. Any sources for this? Genuinely curious.

joesmo 10y ago

$40k a year is a living wage. Even $32k is a decent living wage (yes, even in the bay area). To me, these figures sound like we're too unimaginative as a society in figuring out better systems of distributing this money. I know people in the bay area living on a lot less and getting by ok. If we actually gave the homeless money instead of making them jump through hoops like zoo animals for the smallest of concessions, a bed here, some food stamps there, we could potentially start making a dent in this problem and giving people real chances. It's been demonstrated over and over again that this is something that can work. Why not give it a shot and start helping people find affordable government housing instead of perpetually squandering the money in the inefficient ways we have been doing?

rayiner 10y ago
There are two kinds of homeless people. Most people who are ever homeless get back on their feet relatively quickly, and are not homeless again. They are cheap for the system to handle, and cash payments would do the trick. But most homeless people are the chronic homeless. They're likely outside the range on the bell curve of people who can take care of themselves. Cash payments won't help them--the government has to take over in a more interventionist role.
- joesmo 10y ago
  So you're saying that there are no homeless people that can take care of themselves but can't get back on their feet quickly. Seems unlikely.
- lukeschlather 10y ago
  > But most homeless people are the chronic homeless. That's wildly inaccurate. Chronic homeless account for less than a fifth of the homeless population. * https://www.usich.gov/goals/chronic https://www.usich.gov/goals/chronic * Look at "Key findings": https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/2015-AHAR-Part-1.pdf https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/2015-AHAR-P...
  - Asooka 10y ago

whywastemoney 10y ago

It costs more to support a homeless person than many of my friends make annually. What the actual fuck. Why do we support these drains on society?

abysmallyideal 10y ago

So they made a "profitable business" out of homeless people. Get real, people want convenience and that convenience means paying someone else to address the issue.

muzz 10y ago

By dividing that way, the more people are helped the worse the number looks. I.e., if the $241M helped 99.99% of people become un-homeless, then it the math would work out to $241M per homeless person since there is only 1 homeless person left.