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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 beca

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
    These statistics are a snake pit. New York City is unique in that they have a court mandated obligation to provide accommodation. The advocacy people use a factor of the shelter population to calculate the total population, which may or may not be accurate. I'm not trying to minimize the problem. The fact is those encampments are all over and people is indicative that functioning people can't get placement in SFO. You can't just say "NYPD are jerks" and call it a day like the previous commenter.
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

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
  These statistics are a snake pit. New York City is unique in that they have a court mandated obligation to provide accommodation. The advocacy people use a factor of the shelter population to calculate the total population, which may or may not be accurate. I'm not trying to minimize the problem. The fact is those encampments are all over and people is indicative that functioning people can't get placement in SFO. You can't just say "NYPD are jerks" and call it a day like the previous commenter.

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