51 ms·

Despite money and effort, homelessness in SF as bad as ever

177 points by rafaelc 9y ago

randyrand 9y ago
Want to solve 90% of homelessness? Fund an infinite supply of government make-work jobs with included housing, legal drugs, and okay pay. Model the make-work towns off of coal towns of old. On cheap land so housing is cheap. Have a minimum age of 30 to prevent kids/teens/young adults from moving to these towns and being employed at these subsidized (read: un-profitable for the government) jobs.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  If an infinite supply of jobs deals with only 90% of the problem, does this imply that any finite supply deals with 0% of the problem? Also, if you want make work jobs modeled on coal towns on cheap land, maybe we could have them in coal country, digging not-coal out of ground. Then we could deal with the death of coal mining as well as 90% of homelessness, using that infinite supply of not-jobs.
- zanny 9y ago
  I'm sure that more than 10% of the homeless are under 30. Some random stats I looked up on google - 650k recorded homeless in a study in 2014, 130k were children, and another study says the mode age ranges from 21-23. It isn't just people who fall through the cracks when they lose their jobs, its also those who never could get a start to begin with.
  - randyrand 9y ago
    Make the minimum age 25 then. A minimum age may not even be necessary, but we should have some incentive to not be in these make-work towns. But we don't want the incentive too high that the homeless don't want to go to them. The promise of these towns for the homeless should be legal drugs, guaranteed income, and something to do.
perfectstorm 9y ago
I started getting off at Powell station and I can attest to this article. I've commuted to NYC stations for over 4yrs and even though i've seen my share of homelessness inside the NYC subway stations, it's nowhere as bad as SF BART station (Powell). Every day I see some weird stuff going on (it's at a point where it's no longer weird to me).
- bradleyjg 9y ago
  I don't know when you lived in NYC, but it has certainly gotten worse in the last few years. I'm tempted to date it from the start of the de Blasio administration but I couldn't swear to it.
  - throwaway91111 9y ago
    How do the homeless survive the winter?
    - dmoy 9y ago
      Some can find shelter. Sometimes open vent grates on the ground provide heat (until they start putting spikes on those). Sometimes you can make fire someplace. Sometimes you have to migrate away. Or, you freeze to death...
    - sp332 9y ago
      Well if you die of a drug overdose, cancer, heart disease, assault, car accidents, or suicide, the cold weather can't get you. http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2016/03/at-least-212-homeless-people-died-in-fy-2015-report-shows-032657 http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2016... http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2017/01/homeless-deaths-in-new-york-city-increased-in-2016-108761 http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2017...
    - bradleyjg 9y ago
      In addition to what others have said, NYC is legally mandated to, and mostly does, provide sufficient shelter beds. Some homeless people for a mix of reasons, some quite rational, avoid these shelters. However on the coldest nights of the year they are an option even for people that would usually rather avoid them. A similar story applies for Rikers Island (jail) or the public hospital system.
notadoc 9y ago
SF, Seattle, Portland... What is it with the trendy west coast cities in particular that struggle with vast homelessness? The cost of housing and living in the west coast states has increased astronomically over the years and continues to do so, is it that simple?
- dsl 9y ago
  Because the middle of the country has zero tolerance for homeless once they start to become a burden, and bus them to the west coast. Nevada finally settled a SF lawsuit a year or two ago because they shut down a metal health facility and gave them all bus tickets to California. Combine that with the moderate climates (read: you aren't sleeping in 4 foot of snow) and we just end up with an uneven distribution.
  - throwaway91111 9y ago
    Yea, you can see this in Denver. I just moved to sf and it's like night and day. The emphasis in denver is entirely in clearing homeless camps, not in attempting to find somewhere that can handle their needs. It was pretty eye opening to see people shooting up on the street at 10am in front of cops in SF.
- Danihan 9y ago
  No winter die-offs / pressure to leave because of the cold.
- jedberg 9y ago
  You can live outside year round. It gets kinda tough in the winter, but at least you won't freeze to death. Also super homeless friendly rules and laws. For example, in the city of Berkeley, you are required to have the front door of your commercial establishment set back from the street and covered, and the police won't remove homeless people while your business is closed. In other words, you must provide covered shelter each night to the homeless if you own a business there.
- yardie 9y ago
  Moderate weather that won't kill you. A tax base that can finance some social services. And increasing housing costs. It's a mix of all of the above.
homelessinsf 9y ago
I know: add more money!
ThrustVectoring 9y ago
A huge, unmentioned part of the problem is that SF has settled on housing policies that makes low-end housing unavailable or unaffordable. The people who can only afford to live in a single-room occupancy aren't going to magically disappear when you restrict the number of SROs available. They're going to go onto the street. Yes, it's bad that someone can only afford a 60 square foot room to live in. The solution isn't to make it illegal to let out a 60 square foot room to them, or to force market-rate housing to subsidize a few lucky winners.
- throwasehasdwi 9y ago
  Yeah homeless people are not the same people that could afford any type of home most of the time. They're overwhelmingly people with mental and/or drug issues that prevent them from holding a job. Much more likely is that SF has many factors that make it a nice place to be homeless so these people migrate to it.
  - cassieramen 9y ago
    I disagree. I think there are certainly people who need mental health/drug counseling but for those that seek it is has to be impossible to get on your feet. I can see a spiral where you seek help, get better, but then you can't afford a place to live. You can't find a job since you don't have an address or you do find a job but can't save fast enough to afford an apartment. So, you go back to living on the streets and you slide back down.
    - ameister14 9y ago
      Do you actually see this spiral personally or do you envision it?
  - xenadu02 9y ago
    > They're overwhelmingly people with mental and/or drug issues that prevent them from holding a job Citation needed. Homeless people with drug problems or mental illness are the most likely to be visibly homeless, acting out, and/or harassing people so perhaps confirmation bias makes you believe they represent the majority? In reality a minority of homeless people (~35%) have drug, alcohol, or metal problems. The majority of homeless people are depressed and ashamed of being homeless and trying desperately to get off the streets. They lose their job or get evicted and don't have any family they can turn to, causing a downward spiral. Even if you have the money to rent an apartment you're fighting people who can pre-pay a year's worth of rent (thanks to large signing bonuses). I don't know the breakdown but it is undeniable that some portion of the homeless in the Bay Area are homeless as a direct result of housing being so unaffordable. >Much more likely is that SF has many factors that make it a nice place to be homeless so these people migrate to it. That's wrong; 70%+ were residents of SF when they became homeless. Only 10% are from outside California and most of them said they came here on promise of a job, to find family, etc.
ransom1538 9y ago
Being homeless in SF is awesome: 0) Free muni passes, 1) great social & free housing programs - some even have stipends & phone service 2) a few decent shelters, 3) close by methadone clinics, 4) friendly 420 doctors (police don't arrest for 420), 5) tons of crack/meth on eddy street, 6) great places to pan (market), 7) weather is amazing (no hot days, no snow), 8) huge! public parks. 9) super friendly locals 10) a pretty liberal police department SF hilariously always takes the wrong approach to things. If you want a city full of homeless, make it awesome. This would definitely be my plan G.
- jonknee 9y ago
  > SF hilariously always takes the wrong approach to things Compassion isn't hilariously wrong
  - WalterSear 9y ago
    $250,000,000 a year for an industry that is at least partially responsible for importing 1 in 5 of San Francisco's homeless from the rest of the state and country and dumping them on the streets isn't compassion - it's trafficking in human misery. I'll post my source (a SF gov census) later today, when I'm not on my phone.
    - djrogers 9y ago
      http://sfist.com/2017/06/26/2017_san_francisco_homeless_census.php http://sfist.com/2017/06/26/2017_san_francisco_homeless_cens... It's more than 1 in 5, in fact it's almost 1/3rd of the homeless that have 'moved' to SF.
      - WalterSear 9y ago
        That may be closer to the current number of 'non-resident' homeless. The figure I had for that is 23% - 1 in 4 - from 2015. 1 in 5 is the number of homeless (from the same survey) whose first place of residence in San Francisco was a homeless shelter. It's buried under figure 16 in this survey: http://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Francisco%20Homeless%20Count%20%20Report.pdf http://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Franc... So 1 in 4 ( or 1 in 3) people are coming here directly to use the services. The 1 in 5 figure is significant because it strongly suggests that homeless nonprofits are actively seeking referrals from other parts of the state and country. We know that in some cases people are literally being sent here: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/10/nevada-settles-busing-homeless-lawsuit-san-francisco http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/10/nevada-settles-busin... Yes, that was found to be illegal and some wrists were slapped. I find it hard to conceive that this is the only homeless bussing program - there's no other conceivable way that so many of them are arriving, and immediately finding places in homeless shelters that typically have waiting lists, and definitely have plenty of underserved former tenants. Ultimately, the organizations involved have no incentive to stop referrals from other parts of the country. The more people they serve, the more money they can ask for from the city, and the more 'successful' they are as a non-profit business. And just as serving more people is in their interests, so is dumping the most troubled, and consequently, most costly onto the streets in order to serving another round of newcomers. Once they've outstayed their welcome, or become too costly, they are shunted onto the streets. And the worse the crisis gets, the more money they can ask for from the city. I'm not suggesting that this is some kind of intentional human trafficking. I am sure that (almost) everyone involved is doing so because, in a small minded way, they think that they are improving the world. However, the end result is a travesty. My thesis is that our current environment is is the result non-profits being run in a capitalist business environment, with a capitalist, MBA-style mindset. Eventually, the business model achieves stasis with it's environment, which, in this case, involves letting the city be a dumping ground for human tragedy, and letting the city's tax payers pay $250 million dollars a year for the privilege. The crisis is the side effect of this expanding bureaucracy achieving homeostasis and justifying its existence.
stupidcar 9y ago
I'm willing to bet that this will not get better. It's going to get worse. Much, much worse. As mass employment disappears, you're going to have millions of people become destitute across the country, and many rural, semi-rural and suburban settlements will simply no longer be viable. Some families will return to subsistence farming, but many others will flee to the larger cities. The current homeless camps will expand into large slums and shanty towns, while gated communities connect into upper class enclaves. When you see in Powell Station will be the general situation across all US cities in twenty years.
- uhhfcuvv 9y ago
  Did you just finish playing Fallout or something? Geez dude.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- djrogers 9y ago
  This has been feared with every technological advancement for a couple of centuries now, from textile automation in the late 1700s to the 'robots' in the 80s and more. The thing is, it has yet to come true - not even close. Most of the jobs being done by the people reading this weren't even invented when they were born...
  - SerpentJoe 9y ago
    That's fair, but on the other hand, none of those other waves of automation have empowered machines to do knowledge work, the last refuge of human productivity. That's the barrel our generation is staring down.
hkmurakami 9y ago
Are there reports on the manner in which the funds are being used by the various organizations whose mission it is to reduce/end homelessness and and analysis on the effectiveness of each of the avenues and levers they are using?
uhhfcuvv 9y ago
> gave them all bus tickets to California. Source? By the way, did you vote Trump?
- ocschwar 9y ago
  http://www.sfexaminer.com/sf-reaches-400k-settlement-proposal-in-nevada-patient-dumping-case/ http://www.sfexaminer.com/sf-reaches-400k-settlement-proposa... It's a thing.
  - uhhfcuvv 9y ago
    Why doesn't the federal government fix this somehow?
- dang 9y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14648249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14648249 and marked it off-topic.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
narrator 9y ago
I interviewed a few homeless for a project for this social justice class I took as an undergrad requirement. Bought em' a meal and asked them to tell me their life stories. Yes there was drinking, drugs and mental health issues, but there was also this sort of resignation where once they'd got used to sleeping and defecating in the street and they knew where they could get food and maybe some cheap liquor they kind of stopped caring about improving their lives. They didn't want to move into a shelter with dangerous people who would steal their meager posessions or attack them. They had basically accepted they had failed at life and had come to terms with an existence of scraping along the bottom of city existence. I think the main thing that attracts them to San Francisco is the nice climate, progressive politics that doesn't persecute them and that they can walk to services, walk to begging spots, walk to the liquor store, and walk to where they sleep. Notice how there are no homeless up at the top of hills in S.F?
- matt_wulfeck 9y ago
  > They had basically accepted they had failed at life and had come to terms with an existence of scraping along the bottom of city existence. At that point they have a job, it's working at being homeless full time.
  - ben_jones 9y ago
    Was this comment actually downvoted? It is important to recognize that survival is a full time endeavor to many people and will directly impact their ability to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps".
  - harlanji 9y ago
    It's true, the less money you have the more time you have to spend on the basics. As much as I love laundry and housekeeping services, if I'm not making income they're gone and there's 4 hours a week I now have to spend to be clean. No credit card? No Amazon Prime delivery, needs more time to go to the market +1hr/day. No money for quality restaurant food? Time to start going to farmers' markets and learning to cook, +2hr/day... etc. Car service? LOL. No cash to load Clipper? Hours of travel time. Medical care? I pity the fool.
ProfessorLayton 9y ago
I can't help but wonder if 275M would be better spent by the city if they created a facility somewhere - anywhere - that is cheaper than the SF Bay. I'm not saying ship the poor away and make them someone else's problem. I mean caring for people in a more cost-effective manner, and in a way that isn't just treating the symptoms. There are 6,686 homeless people in SF [1]. With a budget in the hundreds of millions, it is conceivable that all of these people can be housed and treated in an inland community in perpetuity. Many homeless suffer from mental disorders that require treatment, not just housing and food. [1]http://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Francisco%20Homeless%20Count%20%20Report_0.pdf http://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Franc...
- djrogers 9y ago
  Just a minor nitpick - your numbers appear to be several years out of date, as of January 2017 it's 7,499. [1]http://sfist.com/2017/06/26/2017_san_francisco_homeless_census.php http://sfist.com/2017/06/26/2017_san_francisco_homeless_cens...
  - ameister14 9y ago
    Wow. The city has allocated over $36,000 per homeless person to deal with this and it hasn't improved at all? That's actually amazing.
- ben_jones 9y ago
  I see this opinion brought up a lot but what would the logistics be? You can't just cut or move the full 275M immediately because surely some of those funds are absolutely crucial, i.e. keeping the lights on at shelters or funding hospitals who otherwise would foot large bills.
  - toast0 9y ago
    I don't think the logistics should be too hard, once you have some idea of how to do this in an ethical manner; start with a pilot program that addresses maybe 100 homeless individuals, see if it works, and if so, slowly increase the number of participants, while decreasing the scope of the current measures. In the end, even if providing services at another location is effective, you need to provide some services directly in the community anyway; and I don't think the proportion is predictable, you would need to try and see what works.
cjlars 9y ago
One success story in homelessness has been Utah's Housing First program [1]. Is there any effort to do something similar here? At first glance it appears very affordable. Rents in the city center appear to be about $5 per square foot per month judging from a quick perusal of craigslist listings. So to give all 7500 homeless in the city a 100 sq foot efficiency would have plausible annual expenses of about $45 million -- a small fraction of the $300M plus mentioned in the parent article. Obviously there are many problematic details, such as there are almost no appropriate apartments currently available, but ultra-small units do exist [2] and seem to be a favorable alternative to sleeping on the street. [1] http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic-homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic... [2] http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/truly-tiny-4-apartments-under-100-square-feet-213282 http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/truly-tiny-4-apartments-unde...
- trangi 9y ago
  Real estate prices (buying) in the city range from $400 to $1000 a sq ft. That's probably a better estimate, as you'd have to create new spaces. Taking the average of that range, you get $700 * 100 * 7500 = $525M. I'm all for just setting the more salvageable homeless up in a 900 sq ft condo, and subsidizing it for them (i.e. free), then let them sell it in 3+ years. They can pay back the subsidies, and take the equity and move elsewhere. There would be other requirements as well (attending substance abuse programs, staying out of jail, etc)
  - cjlars 9y ago
    You're calculating the cash flow of an all-cash financing scenario, but not the real cost. Since the buildings are durable you need to amortize their benefit over the life of the structures. Using the standard depreciation schedule on the $525M gives only $18M per year + maintenance & tax -- close to the figure derived from rents.
- kevinburke 9y ago
  Yes - there's more information here: https://medium.com/@hungkienluu/so-what-is-supportive-housing-442c64b2ebe4?source=twitterShare-186cdcdeb186-1497760654 https://medium.com/@hungkienluu/so-what-is-supportive-housin...
com2kid 9y ago
Looking online, it seems like there are around 7000 homeless in SF. 300 million is over 42k per person per year. Housing is certainly the problem. If there was a glut of housing, the city could just hand out 30k per person, save a lot of money, and the homeless could just rent a place. With the remainder of the money, people could get back on their feet. Give people back hope.
- throwaway54654 9y ago
  >city could just hand out 30k per person, save a lot of money, and the homeless could just rent a place. Have you ever tried heroin?
  - tkxxx7 9y ago
    i'm sure it's easier to get off heroin when you're already off the streets
- oh_sigh 9y ago
  Crack and meth prices would skyrocket, and people wouldn't use the money to get an apartment.
anovikov 9y ago
That sounds so obvious - these funds have to be used to deter people from becoming homeless or squeeze them out of city if they became so - but they seem to be used to make life of bums more comfortable, obviously you have more and more of them. I guess experience of Belarus in eliminating bums should serve as example. There are no bums in Belarus. Why? You aren't supposed to ask, they won't tell you. People are happy, and the government is doing its job. Everyone knows that wandering in the street dressed and smelling like a bum is a bad idea and won't last for long.
- bjl 9y ago
  > There are no bums in Belarus. Why? You aren't supposed to ask, they won't tell you. It sounds like you're advocating for killing homeless people.
  - pound 9y ago
    Of course there are no killings. Mostly they were moved to small/half abandoned villages out of sight. When society on all levels is really not-welcoming to homeless that may force some people to try much harder not to end-up as bum on the streets.
    - bjl 9y ago
      > Mostly they were moved to small/half abandoned villages out of sight. That's not a whole lot better.
      - pound 9y ago
        That's against their will, but I'm not sure that letting someone to defecate in the middle of the streets is any good either
      - stanmancan 9y ago
        Homeless people don't defecate on the streets; alcoholics, drug addicts and mentally ill people do. Those people need help, not to be sent off so they're out of sight.
godot 9y ago
I hold what could be an unpopular opinion and what some might call irrelevant, but I think a big factor here is tech. To preface what I'm about to state, I work in tech myself and I know many of you are, and I'm not blaming tech from an outsider point of view. There is a disproportionate amount of companies starting or moving into SF over even just the past 5 years. Before, if you're starting a tech company, it could be equally common to start it in the peninsula (maybe even more so), say Palo Alto or Mountain View and the like. Nowadays, the default choice is SF and that's majority of the cases by far. I think collectively, the whole environment is pushing towards building SF into the New York of the west, except instead of banks and the financial industry filling up the town, it's tech companies. I'm not saying it's the agenda of anyone in specific (in government or otherwise) to build out SF that way, I'm saying it's what we're all collectively doing, whether intentional for some of us or simply riding the waves for others. SF is a city that used to support many industries. Tech is obviously the one industry that is almost the top earner overall (or might even be the absolute top earner by industry). It seems like an obvious factor (and a big one) that's driving anyone not in tech away. In some cases, at the lowest end of the income spectrum, they might not have anywhere to be driven away to other than to the streets. Another anecdotal point is that recent popular article about how <$105k is considered low income in SF. If this is indeed a factor, one of the things we collectively as part of the tech industry can do, is to intentionally spread ourselves away from SF, into other areas of the bay area. I get it that people want to live in the bay area for its climate and all the conveniences. There's no reason why there can't be tech companies HQ'ing in East Bay, for example. (and I'm not talking about just Oakland, but everywhere from San Leandro down to Fremont, or further east like Pleaston, Livermore, Walnut Creek, etc.)
- ak4g 9y ago
  I don't even think that's particularly controversial. The concentration of tech startups in SF has been devastating for the city, and has distorted every aspect of early-stage tech startups for years. And frankly, YC bears a rather large proportion of the blame for this.
  - godot 9y ago
    I wouldn't be so quick to blame YC. YC actually encourages founders to be smart about their funding money and not spend a premium just to HQ in SF if at all possible. Problem is a lot of founders just feel so inclined to work in SF.
cartercole 9y ago
Houston has a homeless problem too... I dont know what we can do. Im thinkign about starting some volunteer work program
hockeybias 9y ago
My wife and I moved to the Midwest 23 years ago because the homelessness and - less importantly - the traffic (in SF) were getting bad back then (relative to the previous ten years). One of the changes at that time was having to pay a homeless person to 'watch our car for us' when we went to get a bite or see a band south of market. Awfully sad scenario and well-documented in this article.
carsongross 9y ago
Despite?
pessimizer 9y ago
I wonder what the editorial reasoning is behind publishing a story spurred by a recent homeless count, and omitting the number of homeless counted. Instead, we get numbers about how expensive programs are, how many needles have been cleaned up, and how many complaints made about the homeless on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis with a map, with a special highlight of human excrement complaints. If I were cynical, I'd say that this is an anti-homeless piece with the summary: "Our spending is going up 10% a year, and homelessness is barely going down (take our word for it.)" My cynical take on why the number of homeless was omitted: it's 7,499. $275MM/7,499 = $36,700 for each homeless person. This is obviously more than enough to house every homeless person directly, but the money is being drained away by subcontractors and salaries. Instead, the paper is implying that more money isn't the answer, policing is (notably not implying that spending be reduced, either.) Shifting emphasis to more policing of the poor will create a material benefit for the people who've decided to live in a gated community but forgot to put up a gate, while maintaining spending will keep up the flow of money that is going to a network of graft that results in little material gain for the supposed object of that spending.
- CamperBob2 9y ago
  This is obviously more than enough to house every homeless person directly ... at which point you will have a lot more than 7,499 of them.
- gozur88 9y ago
  San Francisco took this thinking to its logical conclusion years ago. "We're spending tens of thousands on services for homeless people. Why don't we just give them the money and let them buy what they need?" So the city got rid of the "subcontractors" and started handing out cash. The homeless people (as a group - I'm sure there were exceptions) pretty much treated the assistance as extra money for booze and drugs. Also, you can imagine what happened when homeless people living in other cities learned about cash benefits. Gavin Newsom rose to prominence by changing the system back to what it had been before cash assistance. So we're back to having bureaucrats administering services, because it turns out a whole lot of homeless people are homeless for reasons that go beyond bad luck.
dmode 9y ago
I have come to the realization that SF's homeless problems cannot be solved. It is simply because this is probably the only city in America that is willing to not unleash the police on homeless population and tries to take care of them. After all they are citizens of this country as well. In my suburban city in the Bay Area, homeless people are not tolerated in any of the neighborhoods. In a way I applaud that SF is doing something to help poor and mentally ill folks, but the price is degradation of quality of life for everyone else.
- posguy 9y ago
  The Bay area is royally fucked by zoning, full stop. You can drive around suburbs like the one you reside in and see the (high priced) slum, where taller & larger buildings have effectively been banned. Dezoning California so appropriate development can take place would allow for much of that homeless population that your police dept. chases into SF to actually be housed and perhaps take an active role in society. Housing First should be our priority, not chasing the poorest members of our society out of the ghettos that surround the average city in the US.
- corysama 9y ago
  I see SF cops interacting with the homeless regularly. And, what I've personally seen has been overwhelmingly positive. I see friendly conversations on street corners. I see cops checking up on people who in especially bad shape. Lately, I've several times seen cops driving by sidewalk-sitters where both yell back and forth to each other. It looks angry if you don't pay close attention. All parties are smiling.
  - jshevek 9y ago
    This is absolutely wonderful to hear. Constant harrasment by angry police officers (as I've seen in other locales) can be very damaging to the psyche if those who already have so much to deal with.
romanovcode 9y ago
What I've learned in Germany is that many homeless are homeless by choice.
davidf18 9y ago
The high cost of housing and commercial real estate in SF, NYC, Boston, DC, LA, London, ....all have the same underlying cause which was fixed in Japan by the Japanese federal government. It is a market inefficiency caused by zoning density restrictions and overuse of historic landmark status which creates a politically induced artificial scarcity in housing (scarcity = rising prices). These "rent-seeking" restrictions are a regressive tax transferring income from renters to wealthy landlords including Donald Trump. It is wrong, and Japan has fixed the problem removing zoning density restrictions at the local level. The result, in 2014 there were 140,000 homes built in Tokyo compared with about 90,000 for all of California and 20,000 in NYC. Economist David Ricardo wrote about this phenomenon of "rent-seeking" about 200 years ago related to the Corn Laws. Corn Laws taxed the import of all grains which benefited not farmers but landowners. Ricardo joined Parliament and managed to overturn the "rent-seeking" law. The solution is a federal law in the US following the example of Japan.
- ademars94 9y ago
  Care to elaborate on this a little more? I’d like to learn about it.
  - omot 9y ago
    It's a simple math of demand and supply. Density restrictions keep supply in check it keeps it constant, but demand grows exponentially over time, due to immigration and population growth. Thus price grows astronomically high. If you remove restrictions and with the right technology you could create housing that keeps up with the demand growth. SF homelessness is really about incompetence of city politicians, bureaucracy, and the lack of good talent in public service. Why would I want to work for the city to make it a better place when companies inside my city or just further down to the south pays me 3x or 4x what they're offering.
    - posguy 9y ago
      Dezoning most American cities would be quite a good thing. We massively subsidize parking thanks to our zoning requiring parking minimums (such that buildings are only able to rent parking for low $0.xx/sqft a month, versus $x/sqft a month for housing in the same building), and we also block or kneecap larger buildings by restricting their size and the number of units within them. These restrictions (nearly all carried out as zoning) could easily be removed and allow a wave of development to occur, lowering housing costs and keeping many people from ending up homeless in the first place.
curtis 9y ago
It seems unlikely to me that the homelessness problem in SF has anything at all to do with high housing prices. It's certainly not software engineers living on the streets, and I'd bet that even the people that work at Starbucks in SF have homes, even if they're crappy apartments shared with roommates outside the city.
- opportune 9y ago
  How do you get a job at Starbucks starting as a homeless person though? It could be a hill too high to climb out of, not only purely economically, but socially. For example, how do you convince an employer or prospective roommate to give you a chance when you're a homeless alcoholic without an address?
  - ygaf 9y ago
    The thing is, it's not just giving someone a chance, it's giving someone a chance at the expense of someone else. It's simple to hire the optimal person, it's impossible to decide who should get to be employed in the grand scheme of things.
- flubert 9y ago
  Doesn't it seem likely though that if your landlord only has a $50/mo mortgage, it would be more likely that even really poor people could afford the rent. 1,333 sqft - $69/mo https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/88335003_zpid/1000-18000_price/4-66_mp/globalrelevanceex_sort/42.445311,-83.140841,42.389931,-83.275938_rect/12_zm/ https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/88335003_zpid/1000-180... 870 sq.ft., $49/mo https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/88467667_zpid/1000-18000_price/4-66_mp/globalrelevanceex_sort/42.464056,-82.901545,42.408692,-83.036642_rect/12_zm/ https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/88467667_zpid/1000-180... 966 sqft, $25/mo https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/88361634_zpid/1000-18000_price/4-66_mp/globalrelevanceex_sort/42.465069,-83.047972,42.409706,-83.183069_rect/12_zm/ https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/88361634_zpid/1000-180... 992 sqft, $40/mo https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/88206127_zpid/1000-18000_price/4-66_mp/globalrelevanceex_sort/42.388536,-83.07106,42.333106,-83.202553_rect/12_zm/ https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/88206127_zpid/1000-180...
jakelarkin 9y ago
I've seen estimates that it costs up to $80k/year in the Bay Area to give a homeless person housing and treat their underlying mental illness, substance addiction and other health issues. So for 8,000 homeless we're taking about $700million per year liability. You can't solve homelessness in the Bay Area by throwing money at the problem. The underlying issue is the cost of housing, health care and law enforcement or how those things are applied - all are deep political issues. My own running list of root problems that underly the homeless epidemic in California: - zoning. we have technology to build inexpensive micro-apartments, theres just no cost-effective way to gain approval for tens thousands of them convenient to health care facilities and economic opportunities. - building codes. to build cheap micro-apartments, they need to be prefabricated. building codes enforce customized busy work for individual plumbers, electricians, inspectors and other contractors on each installation. The systems resists pre-fabrication which would be safer and much cheaper overall. - local attitudes about state power. police use of force. crimes of poverty aren't often prosecuted. City attorneys/prosecutors are highly disincentivized to tackle quality of life crimes. cost of jury trials. - high cost and poor state of prisons - lack of police headcount, expense of police salaries/benefits. - high cost of health care & related labor. regulatory capture by licensed professionals, hospital companies, drug/equipment companies. cost of healthcare liability insurance. - lack of regional coordination between low-cost and high-cost areas within the state - lack of state-wide mental health and drug abuse treatment policy - lack of money for preventative care and early intervention for new homeless - don't tackle problems till its far too late and more costly / impossible to fix
sattoshi 9y ago
I read a comment here that there is slightly less than 7000 homeless people there. I ask not why they are homeless, but why are they there rather than in a cheaper area?
- ArlenBales 9y ago
  Cheaper? They're homeless, the cost of living in SF doesn't mean much if you have no money and live on the streets. As the article mentioned, homeless like SF because of how much the city spends on them: > The city spent $275 million on homelessness and supportive housing in the fiscal year that ends Friday, up from $241 million the year before. Starting Saturday, that annual spending is projected to hit an eye-popping $305 million. Also the moderate climate, and there's so much wealth it's excellent for panhandling.
  - sattoshi 9y ago
    It means a LOT actually. The 20$ a nice stranger gives won't even feed you for a day in some places. Compare it with a more rural area where you could survive on it for a week. In terrible conditions but not starving.
wankerrific 9y ago
I'm not sure how the homelessness issue in SF has any relationship to housing costs. The root cause was losing a lot of funding for mental health services during the Gov. Reagan years. But go ahead with your strawman.
- davidf18 9y ago
  Homelessness comes from high cost of housing. It is emotionally convenient to blame other causes, but there is still mental health support in cities through federally funded community health centers.
  - ZanyProgrammer 9y ago
    Housing definitely helps the working class and mentally healthy people who are trying to work themselves out of homelessness. I fail to see how the housing crisis will help severely mentally ill people with addiction issues, schizophrenia, etc. Such people need long term hospitalization. The de-institutionalization of mental health care was exacerbated by, but did not originate with Reagan. Personally I think it has to do with an over correction against the abuses of early/mid 20th century psychiatry, and the mania for freedom from the 60s onward. A lot of mental health professionals, even in liberal west coast cities, sound downright libertarian when describing patient freedom. The freedom to die in prison or on the streets if you ask me.
  - ZanyProgrammer 9y ago
    Interestingly the YIMBY scene is dominated by techies in the Bay.
- adrianmonk 9y ago
  There are basically two types of homeless people. Those who are healthy enough to work but cannot keep up with expenses and those who have serious enough issues that they can't support themselves. The first type can be helped by better job opportunities and cheaper housing. All the cheap housing in the world cannot help the latter group because they can't function in society even if you make it that much easier. We do need a federal (or at least statewide) solution for the latter group, though, because with local control it's too easy to for the "solution" to be giving the homeless person a free bus ticket out of town.
khana 9y ago
Raise the rent!
alexandercrohde 9y ago
I really don't buy the "cost of living" explanation. Are we suggesting that these homeless people can't afford $1800 a month per rent, but are somehow going to get a more reasonable $1000/month apartment? Exactly what job are you going to get if you smell, are missing teeth, have an alcohol problem, don't own clean clothes, and potentially have mental health issues? I think we need to think outside the box on this one.
- glangdale 9y ago
  You seem to think that you wake up one day and you are a stereotypical 'high visibility homeless person'. Plenty of homeless people are struggling on the edge of normality (especially women) and are sleeping in cars, looking relatively clean and well-behaved. Aside from the hard-core mentally ill, a lot of people might be relatively easily intercepted before they wind up looking/acting like the person you describe.
pmarreck 9y ago
Perhaps San Francisco can be a perfect test case for UBI: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/finland-universal-basic-income-lower-stress-better-motivation-work-wages-salary-a7800741.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/finland-univ...
- pizza 9y ago
  It's already a hotbed of basic income for the rich: VCs earn huge capital gains :p
redm 9y ago
I used to live in SF near a camp at 10th and mission. I saw the homeless daily; it's very sad to see and people just walk around them. I moved out of SF because it is so damn expensive and I didn't have to be there. $275 million is a lot of money. Instead of trying to help the homeless survive in SF, why not help them relocate somewhere more affordable. There's lots of space in the country and almost all of them are cheaper than SF. 275 million goes a very long way to help people resettle and their quality of life would surely go up. Disclosure: To be clear, I did just what I'm suggesting: I relocated due to the high cost to somewhere more affordable for me. I've met many others over the years that have as well.
- xienze 9y ago
  Giving the homeless a one-way ticket to the city of their choice is a very effective homeless removal strategy that a lot of cities employ. Guess where a lot of homeless people choose to go. SF would literally be paying to ship the Horne less away to a city that will simply ship them back.
Mz 9y ago
A few factors here: First, housing in SF is insane. I have seen lots of articles about how bad it is and that $50k or even $100k is considered "low income" in these parts. Second, the weather in the Bay Area is very homeless-friendly. If you need to sleep outside year-round, it is best to be someplace where you will neither die from the heat in summer nor from the freezing cold in winter. Third, homelessness is on the rise nationwide. Homeless people can relocate relatively easily due to not having to give notice at their apartment and having lost most or all of their material possessions. So, the odds are good that some people are simply coming out here for the weather. Fourth, big cities like SF tend to have more services for the homeless. There are meal kitchens and the like. If you are completely destitute, you go to where you can get free meals and other services. I know because that is exactly why I went to downtown San Diego for six months as a homeless person. I left and went elsewhere when I was no longer outright destitute and did not need access to things like soup kitchens to have any hope of surviving. So, I think if you want to solve homelessness in SF, you need to work on homelessness across the nation.
- StephanTLavavej 9y ago
  > Third, homelessness is on the rise nationwide. That's incorrect according to "The 2016 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress" at https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/2016-AHAR-Part-1.pdf https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/2016-AHAR-P... . Page 8 has a graph of all homeless people, which has been on a downward trend from 2007 to 2016.
  - Mz 9y ago
    Thank you for the source. I will look at it some more when I have time. But on initial skim, it is a count for a single night in January from which they extrapolate for the whole year. Furthermore, it outright states that actual unsheltered people has risen by 2%. What has gone down is people in the shelter system. I have been seeing a lot of articles about the rise in evictions, among other things, and I left downtown San Diego when I did in part because homeless services were suffering distress and were less and less useful to me because they were overwhelmed. But I will dig into this and see if I can come up with a more nuanced and accurate means to convey my point. We have a very serious housing crisis on our hands. People who are homeless per se are merely the tip of the iceberg.
Shivetya 9y ago
How in the hell did they blow through three hundred million dollars in one year on this? According to figures they have to provide the Federal government for assistance this is for a population of approximately 7500. Seven thousand five hundred. Utah took a decade but slashed their numbers by making sure the homeless had an apartment and phone. For the amount of money SF is spending they could buy them homes. The real crime here is the wasteful spending. They are burning close to 40k per person. People harp about wasteful spending on incarceration need to start looking here. So how is that for even a third of this they cannot house the thousand that still need a bed each night? That number should have been taken care of in the first few months. Sorry for the hyperbole but if we want an example of a government needing a expose on waste and bureaucracy this is an ideal candidate. Hard numbers as provided by the city.[1]. 7,499: 2017 total homeless population 7,539: 2015 total homeless population (The number was 6,436 in 2013, and 6,455 in 2011.) 5,518: 2017 single homeless adults 5,342: 2015 single homeless adults 1,363: 2017 unaccompanied homeless youth 1,567: 2015 unaccompanied homeless youth 1,100: 2017 approximate waiting list for shelter bed 900: 2016 approximate waiting list for shelter bed [1]http://sfist.com/2017/06/26/2017_san_francisco_homeless_census.php http://sfist.com/2017/06/26/2017_san_francisco_homeless_cens...
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  They couldn't buy them a home in California. Utah didn't slash homelessness, they slashed chronic homelessness. They still have about 14000 homeless as of 2015. http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic-homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic... https://jobs.utah.gov/housing/scso/documents/homelessness2015.pdf https://jobs.utah.gov/housing/scso/documents/homelessness201... The 2016 Utah report doesn't have the same graph showing the homeless population in state over the decade (it did not show a slashing of the homeless population in 2015 just a slight downward trend) but it does show the cost for housing a homeless person across the country - it's roughly 40,000-50,000 per year almost everywhere they surveyed. https://jobs.utah.gov/housing/scso/documents/homelessness2016.pdf https://jobs.utah.gov/housing/scso/documents/homelessness201...
pfarnsworth 9y ago
$300M/year on homelessness for 7500 people! That's utterly unbelievable, that's >$3000/month/homeless person. Where is the money going??
treeseat 9y ago
This is nuts. $275M and no results? Seriously? The city really needs to rethink this. The homeless in SF are disgusting. Why does the city dump so much money into them? Is it really worth the amount spent per person? Why not spend that money on improving public schools, the efficiency of public transit, and things that useful members of the society would actually benefit from?
- pvnick 9y ago
  > The homeless in SF are disgusting. Why don't you tell us how you really feel?
LarryMade2 9y ago
All the maps illustrate is an increase in complaints not necessarily an increase in homelessness on a similar scale.
hcwctw 9y ago
Having a property or house should be our natural birthright, period. Once you die this property or house should be released and made available in a system where you can move to another/better place when it's available. But, as it is now you don't even get a square inch. Everything is owned by government, landlords, businesses etc.. The result is that once a man starts to earn a little money, it all flows back to the owners. Earning enough to buy and really own a property yourself is only for the lucky few. Even after 20 or 30 years of hard work you can end up in the streets if you lose your job. And if you are unlucky enough having a (mental) illness, your chance to succeed is near zero. Homeless are a product of the system we live in. And the best way to describe this system is a pyramid game. In the end there will be a few owning (and controlling) almost everything. It is sad to see that democracy totally fails to address this problem.. Maybe even more sad is that most children are not properly educated, especially when it comes to the system we live in and homelessness. I learned in primary school that homeless people are just lazy, and being on the streets was their own punishment. It would be a miracle if a new generation really understands the problem and can solve it politically by changing the system we live in.
- toomanybeersies 9y ago
  How does that work for people who don't live in the same place all their life? Do you release your property and get given property in a new city when you move?
  - hcwctw 9y ago
    The system I propose does not exist yet and needs to be designed properly, just as we design a software system. It should of course be flexible enough to allow for people moving to another place. As the situation with property and ownership is now, it is random chaos. Even a rudimentary design has never been made. A financially successful billionaire (who says not by criminal act) can buy and own thousands of houses forever, and the income from that will grow tremendously, which allows him/her/progeny to buy even more property. This is just insane, how can this ever scale for the benefit of all people considering the greed we all have built in?
- 9y ago
prewett 9y ago
I think it was Deming who said "your system is set up perfectly to produce the results you are getting." SF has: - a mild climate (attractive if you don't have shelter) - our society has no place for mentally ill. They may not ever be able to live life by themselves. - a $250 million of subsidies for being homeless, apparently - a culture of spending money on the symptoms rather than solving the problem. For instance, a number of comments here suggest paying for them to live in a house/apartment somewhere. Now you're stuck paying their rent forever, because the underlying problem of they aren't making enough money to live is still there. Plus, if I'm homeless, now SF looks like a good place to move, because they'll pay for my apartment! - a culture of permissiveness. Why do homeless people get to act with different standards? If a "homed" person defecated on their neighbor's sidewalk they would call the police, but it's okay for the homeless to do it? If a "homed" person throws liquids at you, it's probably grounds for charging them with assault. But it's okay for homeless people? - persistent lack of housing, which means that some people who might not be homeless can't afford housing. Combined with the above, there isn't much incentive to move to a place they could afford. I think the attitude of entitlement by some of the homeless (see rsj_hn's comment, for instance) suggests that SF's structure is enabling homelessness, rather than caring for the homeless.
bmson 9y ago
Why are people
bmson 9y ago
Why is no one talking about healthcare? I work in the tenderloin and it seems that quality of life would increase dramatically if they would get mental health and medication, seems pretty obvious to me. How about spending all of those millions on free healthcare for the bottom 5% ?

177 points by rafaelc 9y ago

Want to solve 90% of homelessness? Fund an infinite supply of government make-work jobs with included housing, legal drugs, and okay pay. Model the make-work towns off of coal towns of old. On cheap land so housing is cheap. Have a minimum age of 30 to prevent kids/teens/young adults from moving to these towns and being employed at these subsidized (read: un-profitable for the government) jobs.

dragonwriter 9y ago
If an infinite supply of jobs deals with only 90% of the problem, does this imply that any finite supply deals with 0% of the problem? Also, if you want make work jobs modeled on coal towns on cheap land, maybe we could have them in coal country, digging not-coal out of ground. Then we could deal with the death of coal mining as well as 90% of homelessness, using that infinite supply of not-jobs.
zanny 9y ago
I'm sure that more than 10% of the homeless are under 30. Some random stats I looked up on google - 650k recorded homeless in a study in 2014, 130k were children, and another study says the mode age ranges from 21-23. It isn't just people who fall through the cracks when they lose their jobs, its also those who never could get a start to begin with.
- randyrand 9y ago
  Make the minimum age 25 then. A minimum age may not even be necessary, but we should have some incentive to not be in these make-work towns. But we don't want the incentive too high that the homeless don't want to go to them. The promise of these towns for the homeless should be legal drugs, guaranteed income, and something to do.

perfectstorm 9y ago

I started getting off at Powell station and I can attest to this article. I've commuted to NYC stations for over 4yrs and even though i've seen my share of homelessness inside the NYC subway stations, it's nowhere as bad as SF BART station (Powell). Every day I see some weird stuff going on (it's at a point where it's no longer weird to me).

bradleyjg 9y ago
I don't know when you lived in NYC, but it has certainly gotten worse in the last few years. I'm tempted to date it from the start of the de Blasio administration but I couldn't swear to it.
- throwaway91111 9y ago
  How do the homeless survive the winter?
  - dmoy 9y ago
    Some can find shelter. Sometimes open vent grates on the ground provide heat (until they start putting spikes on those). Sometimes you can make fire someplace. Sometimes you have to migrate away. Or, you freeze to death...
  - sp332 9y ago
    Well if you die of a drug overdose, cancer, heart disease, assault, car accidents, or suicide, the cold weather can't get you. http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2016/03/at-least-212-homeless-people-died-in-fy-2015-report-shows-032657 http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2016... http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2017/01/homeless-deaths-in-new-york-city-increased-in-2016-108761 http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2017...
  - bradleyjg 9y ago
    In addition to what others have said, NYC is legally mandated to, and mostly does, provide sufficient shelter beds. Some homeless people for a mix of reasons, some quite rational, avoid these shelters. However on the coldest nights of the year they are an option even for people that would usually rather avoid them. A similar story applies for Rikers Island (jail) or the public hospital system.

notadoc 9y ago

SF, Seattle, Portland... What is it with the trendy west coast cities in particular that struggle with vast homelessness? The cost of housing and living in the west coast states has increased astronomically over the years and continues to do so, is it that simple?

dsl 9y ago
Because the middle of the country has zero tolerance for homeless once they start to become a burden, and bus them to the west coast. Nevada finally settled a SF lawsuit a year or two ago because they shut down a metal health facility and gave them all bus tickets to California. Combine that with the moderate climates (read: you aren't sleeping in 4 foot of snow) and we just end up with an uneven distribution.
- throwaway91111 9y ago
  Yea, you can see this in Denver. I just moved to sf and it's like night and day. The emphasis in denver is entirely in clearing homeless camps, not in attempting to find somewhere that can handle their needs. It was pretty eye opening to see people shooting up on the street at 10am in front of cops in SF.
Danihan 9y ago
No winter die-offs / pressure to leave because of the cold.
jedberg 9y ago
You can live outside year round. It gets kinda tough in the winter, but at least you won't freeze to death. Also super homeless friendly rules and laws. For example, in the city of Berkeley, you are required to have the front door of your commercial establishment set back from the street and covered, and the police won't remove homeless people while your business is closed. In other words, you must provide covered shelter each night to the homeless if you own a business there.
yardie 9y ago
Moderate weather that won't kill you. A tax base that can finance some social services. And increasing housing costs. It's a mix of all of the above.

homelessinsf 9y ago

I know: add more money!

ThrustVectoring 9y ago

A huge, unmentioned part of the problem is that SF has settled on housing policies that makes low-end housing unavailable or unaffordable. The people who can only afford to live in a single-room occupancy aren't going to magically disappear when you restrict the number of SROs available. They're going to go onto the street. Yes, it's bad that someone can only afford a 60 square foot room to live in. The solution isn't to make it illegal to let out a 60 square foot room to them, or to force market-rate housing to subsidize a few lucky winners.

throwasehasdwi 9y ago
Yeah homeless people are not the same people that could afford any type of home most of the time. They're overwhelmingly people with mental and/or drug issues that prevent them from holding a job. Much more likely is that SF has many factors that make it a nice place to be homeless so these people migrate to it.
- cassieramen 9y ago
  I disagree. I think there are certainly people who need mental health/drug counseling but for those that seek it is has to be impossible to get on your feet. I can see a spiral where you seek help, get better, but then you can't afford a place to live. You can't find a job since you don't have an address or you do find a job but can't save fast enough to afford an apartment. So, you go back to living on the streets and you slide back down.
  - ameister14 9y ago
    Do you actually see this spiral personally or do you envision it?
- xenadu02 9y ago
  > They're overwhelmingly people with mental and/or drug issues that prevent them from holding a job Citation needed. Homeless people with drug problems or mental illness are the most likely to be visibly homeless, acting out, and/or harassing people so perhaps confirmation bias makes you believe they represent the majority? In reality a minority of homeless people (~35%) have drug, alcohol, or metal problems. The majority of homeless people are depressed and ashamed of being homeless and trying desperately to get off the streets. They lose their job or get evicted and don't have any family they can turn to, causing a downward spiral. Even if you have the money to rent an apartment you're fighting people who can pre-pay a year's worth of rent (thanks to large signing bonuses). I don't know the breakdown but it is undeniable that some portion of the homeless in the Bay Area are homeless as a direct result of housing being so unaffordable. >Much more likely is that SF has many factors that make it a nice place to be homeless so these people migrate to it. That's wrong; 70%+ were residents of SF when they became homeless. Only 10% are from outside California and most of them said they came here on promise of a job, to find family, etc.

ransom1538 9y ago

Being homeless in SF is awesome: 0) Free muni passes, 1) great social & free housing programs - some even have stipends & phone service 2) a few decent shelters, 3) close by methadone clinics, 4) friendly 420 doctors (police don't arrest for 420), 5) tons of crack/meth on eddy street, 6) great places to pan (market), 7) weather is amazing (no hot days, no snow), 8) huge! public parks. 9) super friendly locals 10) a pretty liberal police department SF hilariously always takes the wrong approach to things. If you want a city full of homeless, make it awesome. This would definitely be my plan G.

jonknee 9y ago
> SF hilariously always takes the wrong approach to things Compassion isn't hilariously wrong
- WalterSear 9y ago
  $250,000,000 a year for an industry that is at least partially responsible for importing 1 in 5 of San Francisco's homeless from the rest of the state and country and dumping them on the streets isn't compassion - it's trafficking in human misery. I'll post my source (a SF gov census) later today, when I'm not on my phone.
  - djrogers 9y ago
    http://sfist.com/2017/06/26/2017_san_francisco_homeless_census.php http://sfist.com/2017/06/26/2017_san_francisco_homeless_cens... It's more than 1 in 5, in fact it's almost 1/3rd of the homeless that have 'moved' to SF.
    - WalterSear 9y ago
      That may be closer to the current number of 'non-resident' homeless. The figure I had for that is 23% - 1 in 4 - from 2015. 1 in 5 is the number of homeless (from the same survey) whose first place of residence in San Francisco was a homeless shelter. It's buried under figure 16 in this survey: http://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Francisco%20Homeless%20Count%20%20Report.pdf http://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Franc... So 1 in 4 ( or 1 in 3) people are coming here directly to use the services. The 1 in 5 figure is significant because it strongly suggests that homeless nonprofits are actively seeking referrals from other parts of the state and country. We know that in some cases people are literally being sent here: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/10/nevada-settles-busing-homeless-lawsuit-san-francisco http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/10/nevada-settles-busin... Yes, that was found to be illegal and some wrists were slapped. I find it hard to conceive that this is the only homeless bussing program - there's no other conceivable way that so many of them are arriving, and immediately finding places in homeless shelters that typically have waiting lists, and definitely have plenty of underserved former tenants. Ultimately, the organizations involved have no incentive to stop referrals from other parts of the country. The more people they serve, the more money they can ask for from the city, and the more 'successful' they are as a non-profit business. And just as serving more people is in their interests, so is dumping the most troubled, and consequently, most costly onto the streets in order to serving another round of newcomers. Once they've outstayed their welcome, or become too costly, they are shunted onto the streets. And the worse the crisis gets, the more money they can ask for from the city. I'm not suggesting that this is some kind of intentional human trafficking. I am sure that (almost) everyone involved is doing so because, in a small minded way, they think that they are improving the world. However, the end result is a travesty. My thesis is that our current environment is is the result non-profits being run in a capitalist business environment, with a capitalist, MBA-style mindset. Eventually, the business model achieves stasis with it's environment, which, in this case, involves letting the city be a dumping ground for human tragedy, and letting the city's tax payers pay $250 million dollars a year for the privilege. The crisis is the side effect of this expanding bureaucracy achieving homeostasis and justifying its existence.

stupidcar 9y ago

I'm willing to bet that this will not get better. It's going to get worse. Much, much worse. As mass employment disappears, you're going to have millions of people become destitute across the country, and many rural, semi-rural and suburban settlements will simply no longer be viable. Some families will return to subsistence farming, but many others will flee to the larger cities. The current homeless camps will expand into large slums and shanty towns, while gated communities connect into upper class enclaves. When you see in Powell Station will be the general situation across all US cities in twenty years.

uhhfcuvv 9y ago
Did you just finish playing Fallout or something? Geez dude.
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djrogers 9y ago
This has been feared with every technological advancement for a couple of centuries now, from textile automation in the late 1700s to the 'robots' in the 80s and more. The thing is, it has yet to come true - not even close. Most of the jobs being done by the people reading this weren't even invented when they were born...
- SerpentJoe 9y ago
  That's fair, but on the other hand, none of those other waves of automation have empowered machines to do knowledge work, the last refuge of human productivity. That's the barrel our generation is staring down.

hkmurakami 9y ago

Are there reports on the manner in which the funds are being used by the various organizations whose mission it is to reduce/end homelessness and and analysis on the effectiveness of each of the avenues and levers they are using?

uhhfcuvv 9y ago

> gave them all bus tickets to California. Source? By the way, did you vote Trump?

ocschwar 9y ago
http://www.sfexaminer.com/sf-reaches-400k-settlement-proposal-in-nevada-patient-dumping-case/ http://www.sfexaminer.com/sf-reaches-400k-settlement-proposa... It's a thing.
- uhhfcuvv 9y ago
  Why doesn't the federal government fix this somehow?
dang 9y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14648249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14648249 and marked it off-topic.
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narrator 9y ago

I interviewed a few homeless for a project for this social justice class I took as an undergrad requirement. Bought em' a meal and asked them to tell me their life stories. Yes there was drinking, drugs and mental health issues, but there was also this sort of resignation where once they'd got used to sleeping and defecating in the street and they knew where they could get food and maybe some cheap liquor they kind of stopped caring about improving their lives. They didn't want to move into a shelter with dangerous people who would steal their meager posessions or attack them. They had basically accepted they had failed at life and had come to terms with an existence of scraping along the bottom of city existence. I think the main thing that attracts them to San Francisco is the nice climate, progressive politics that doesn't persecute them and that they can walk to services, walk to begging spots, walk to the liquor store, and walk to where they sleep. Notice how there are no homeless up at the top of hills in S.F?

matt_wulfeck 9y ago
> They had basically accepted they had failed at life and had come to terms with an existence of scraping along the bottom of city existence. At that point they have a job, it's working at being homeless full time.
- ben_jones 9y ago
  Was this comment actually downvoted? It is important to recognize that survival is a full time endeavor to many people and will directly impact their ability to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps".
- harlanji 9y ago
  It's true, the less money you have the more time you have to spend on the basics. As much as I love laundry and housekeeping services, if I'm not making income they're gone and there's 4 hours a week I now have to spend to be clean. No credit card? No Amazon Prime delivery, needs more time to go to the market +1hr/day. No money for quality restaurant food? Time to start going to farmers' markets and learning to cook, +2hr/day... etc. Car service? LOL. No cash to load Clipper? Hours of travel time. Medical care? I pity the fool.

ProfessorLayton 9y ago

I can't help but wonder if 275M would be better spent by the city if they created a facility somewhere - anywhere - that is cheaper than the SF Bay. I'm not saying ship the poor away and make them someone else's problem. I mean caring for people in a more cost-effective manner, and in a way that isn't just treating the symptoms. There are 6,686 homeless people in SF [1]. With a budget in the hundreds of millions, it is conceivable that all of these people can be housed and treated in an inland community in perpetuity. Many homeless suffer from mental disorders that require treatment, not just housing and food. [1]http://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Francisco%20Homeless%20Count%20%20Report_0.pdf http://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Franc...

djrogers 9y ago
Just a minor nitpick - your numbers appear to be several years out of date, as of January 2017 it's 7,499. [1]http://sfist.com/2017/06/26/2017_san_francisco_homeless_census.php http://sfist.com/2017/06/26/2017_san_francisco_homeless_cens...
- ameister14 9y ago
  Wow. The city has allocated over $36,000 per homeless person to deal with this and it hasn't improved at all? That's actually amazing.
ben_jones 9y ago
I see this opinion brought up a lot but what would the logistics be? You can't just cut or move the full 275M immediately because surely some of those funds are absolutely crucial, i.e. keeping the lights on at shelters or funding hospitals who otherwise would foot large bills.
- toast0 9y ago
  I don't think the logistics should be too hard, once you have some idea of how to do this in an ethical manner; start with a pilot program that addresses maybe 100 homeless individuals, see if it works, and if so, slowly increase the number of participants, while decreasing the scope of the current measures. In the end, even if providing services at another location is effective, you need to provide some services directly in the community anyway; and I don't think the proportion is predictable, you would need to try and see what works.

cjlars 9y ago

One success story in homelessness has been Utah's Housing First program [1]. Is there any effort to do something similar here? At first glance it appears very affordable. Rents in the city center appear to be about $5 per square foot per month judging from a quick perusal of craigslist listings. So to give all 7500 homeless in the city a 100 sq foot efficiency would have plausible annual expenses of about $45 million -- a small fraction of the $300M plus mentioned in the parent article. Obviously there are many problematic details, such as there are almost no appropriate apartments currently available, but ultra-small units do exist [2] and seem to be a favorable alternative to sleeping on the street. [1] http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic-homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic... [2] http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/truly-tiny-4-apartments-under-100-square-feet-213282 http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/truly-tiny-4-apartments-unde...

trangi 9y ago
Real estate prices (buying) in the city range from $400 to $1000 a sq ft. That's probably a better estimate, as you'd have to create new spaces. Taking the average of that range, you get $700 * 100 * 7500 = $525M. I'm all for just setting the more salvageable homeless up in a 900 sq ft condo, and subsidizing it for them (i.e. free), then let them sell it in 3+ years. They can pay back the subsidies, and take the equity and move elsewhere. There would be other requirements as well (attending substance abuse programs, staying out of jail, etc)
- cjlars 9y ago
  You're calculating the cash flow of an all-cash financing scenario, but not the real cost. Since the buildings are durable you need to amortize their benefit over the life of the structures. Using the standard depreciation schedule on the $525M gives only $18M per year + maintenance & tax -- close to the figure derived from rents.
kevinburke 9y ago
Yes - there's more information here: https://medium.com/@hungkienluu/so-what-is-supportive-housing-442c64b2ebe4?source=twitterShare-186cdcdeb186-1497760654 https://medium.com/@hungkienluu/so-what-is-supportive-housin...

com2kid 9y ago

Looking online, it seems like there are around 7000 homeless in SF. 300 million is over 42k per person per year. Housing is certainly the problem. If there was a glut of housing, the city could just hand out 30k per person, save a lot of money, and the homeless could just rent a place. With the remainder of the money, people could get back on their feet. Give people back hope.

throwaway54654 9y ago
>city could just hand out 30k per person, save a lot of money, and the homeless could just rent a place. Have you ever tried heroin?
- tkxxx7 9y ago
  i'm sure it's easier to get off heroin when you're already off the streets
oh_sigh 9y ago
Crack and meth prices would skyrocket, and people wouldn't use the money to get an apartment.

anovikov 9y ago

That sounds so obvious - these funds have to be used to deter people from becoming homeless or squeeze them out of city if they became so - but they seem to be used to make life of bums more comfortable, obviously you have more and more of them. I guess experience of Belarus in eliminating bums should serve as example. There are no bums in Belarus. Why? You aren't supposed to ask, they won't tell you. People are happy, and the government is doing its job. Everyone knows that wandering in the street dressed and smelling like a bum is a bad idea and won't last for long.

bjl 9y ago
> There are no bums in Belarus. Why? You aren't supposed to ask, they won't tell you. It sounds like you're advocating for killing homeless people.
- pound 9y ago
  Of course there are no killings. Mostly they were moved to small/half abandoned villages out of sight. When society on all levels is really not-welcoming to homeless that may force some people to try much harder not to end-up as bum on the streets.
  - bjl 9y ago
    > Mostly they were moved to small/half abandoned villages out of sight. That's not a whole lot better.
    - pound 9y ago
      That's against their will, but I'm not sure that letting someone to defecate in the middle of the streets is any good either
    - stanmancan 9y ago
      Homeless people don't defecate on the streets; alcoholics, drug addicts and mentally ill people do. Those people need help, not to be sent off so they're out of sight.

godot 9y ago

I hold what could be an unpopular opinion and what some might call irrelevant, but I think a big factor here is tech. To preface what I'm about to state, I work in tech myself and I know many of you are, and I'm not blaming tech from an outsider point of view. There is a disproportionate amount of companies starting or moving into SF over even just the past 5 years. Before, if you're starting a tech company, it could be equally common to start it in the peninsula (maybe even more so), say Palo Alto or Mountain View and the like. Nowadays, the default choice is SF and that's majority of the cases by far. I think collectively, the whole environment is pushing towards building SF into the New York of the west, except instead of banks and the financial industry filling up the town, it's tech companies. I'm not saying it's the agenda of anyone in specific (in government or otherwise) to build out SF that way, I'm saying it's what we're all collectively doing, whether intentional for some of us or simply riding the waves for others. SF is a city that used to support many industries. Tech is obviously the one industry that is almost the top earner overall (or might even be the absolute top earner by industry). It seems like an obvious factor (and a big one) that's driving anyone not in tech away. In some cases, at the lowest end of the income spectrum, they might not have anywhere to be driven away to other than to the streets. Another anecdotal point is that recent popular article about how <$105k is considered low income in SF. If this is indeed a factor, one of the things we collectively as part of the tech industry can do, is to intentionally spread ourselves away from SF, into other areas of the bay area. I get it that people want to live in the bay area for its climate and all the conveniences. There's no reason why there can't be tech companies HQ'ing in East Bay, for example. (and I'm not talking about just Oakland, but everywhere from San Leandro down to Fremont, or further east like Pleaston, Livermore, Walnut Creek, etc.)

ak4g 9y ago
I don't even think that's particularly controversial. The concentration of tech startups in SF has been devastating for the city, and has distorted every aspect of early-stage tech startups for years. And frankly, YC bears a rather large proportion of the blame for this.
- godot 9y ago
  I wouldn't be so quick to blame YC. YC actually encourages founders to be smart about their funding money and not spend a premium just to HQ in SF if at all possible. Problem is a lot of founders just feel so inclined to work in SF.

cartercole 9y ago

Houston has a homeless problem too... I dont know what we can do. Im thinkign about starting some volunteer work program

hockeybias 9y ago

My wife and I moved to the Midwest 23 years ago because the homelessness and - less importantly - the traffic (in SF) were getting bad back then (relative to the previous ten years). One of the changes at that time was having to pay a homeless person to 'watch our car for us' when we went to get a bite or see a band south of market. Awfully sad scenario and well-documented in this article.

carsongross 9y ago

Despite?

pessimizer 9y ago

I wonder what the editorial reasoning is behind publishing a story spurred by a recent homeless count, and omitting the number of homeless counted. Instead, we get numbers about how expensive programs are, how many needles have been cleaned up, and how many complaints made about the homeless on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis with a map, with a special highlight of human excrement complaints. If I were cynical, I'd say that this is an anti-homeless piece with the summary: "Our spending is going up 10% a year, and homelessness is barely going down (take our word for it.)" My cynical take on why the number of homeless was omitted: it's 7,499. $275MM/7,499 = $36,700 for each homeless person. This is obviously more than enough to house every homeless person directly, but the money is being drained away by subcontractors and salaries. Instead, the paper is implying that more money isn't the answer, policing is (notably not implying that spending be reduced, either.) Shifting emphasis to more policing of the poor will create a material benefit for the people who've decided to live in a gated community but forgot to put up a gate, while maintaining spending will keep up the flow of money that is going to a network of graft that results in little material gain for the supposed object of that spending.

CamperBob2 9y ago
This is obviously more than enough to house every homeless person directly ... at which point you will have a lot more than 7,499 of them.
gozur88 9y ago
San Francisco took this thinking to its logical conclusion years ago. "We're spending tens of thousands on services for homeless people. Why don't we just give them the money and let them buy what they need?" So the city got rid of the "subcontractors" and started handing out cash. The homeless people (as a group - I'm sure there were exceptions) pretty much treated the assistance as extra money for booze and drugs. Also, you can imagine what happened when homeless people living in other cities learned about cash benefits. Gavin Newsom rose to prominence by changing the system back to what it had been before cash assistance. So we're back to having bureaucrats administering services, because it turns out a whole lot of homeless people are homeless for reasons that go beyond bad luck.

dmode 9y ago

I have come to the realization that SF's homeless problems cannot be solved. It is simply because this is probably the only city in America that is willing to not unleash the police on homeless population and tries to take care of them. After all they are citizens of this country as well. In my suburban city in the Bay Area, homeless people are not tolerated in any of the neighborhoods. In a way I applaud that SF is doing something to help poor and mentally ill folks, but the price is degradation of quality of life for everyone else.

posguy 9y ago
The Bay area is royally fucked by zoning, full stop. You can drive around suburbs like the one you reside in and see the (high priced) slum, where taller & larger buildings have effectively been banned. Dezoning California so appropriate development can take place would allow for much of that homeless population that your police dept. chases into SF to actually be housed and perhaps take an active role in society. Housing First should be our priority, not chasing the poorest members of our society out of the ghettos that surround the average city in the US.
corysama 9y ago
I see SF cops interacting with the homeless regularly. And, what I've personally seen has been overwhelmingly positive. I see friendly conversations on street corners. I see cops checking up on people who in especially bad shape. Lately, I've several times seen cops driving by sidewalk-sitters where both yell back and forth to each other. It looks angry if you don't pay close attention. All parties are smiling.
- jshevek 9y ago
  This is absolutely wonderful to hear. Constant harrasment by angry police officers (as I've seen in other locales) can be very damaging to the psyche if those who already have so much to deal with.

romanovcode 9y ago

What I've learned in Germany is that many homeless are homeless by choice.

davidf18 9y ago

The high cost of housing and commercial real estate in SF, NYC, Boston, DC, LA, London, ....all have the same underlying cause which was fixed in Japan by the Japanese federal government. It is a market inefficiency caused by zoning density restrictions and overuse of historic landmark status which creates a politically induced artificial scarcity in housing (scarcity = rising prices). These "rent-seeking" restrictions are a regressive tax transferring income from renters to wealthy landlords including Donald Trump. It is wrong, and Japan has fixed the problem removing zoning density restrictions at the local level. The result, in 2014 there were 140,000 homes built in Tokyo compared with about 90,000 for all of California and 20,000 in NYC. Economist David Ricardo wrote about this phenomenon of "rent-seeking" about 200 years ago related to the Corn Laws. Corn Laws taxed the import of all grains which benefited not farmers but landowners. Ricardo joined Parliament and managed to overturn the "rent-seeking" law. The solution is a federal law in the US following the example of Japan.

ademars94 9y ago
Care to elaborate on this a little more? I’d like to learn about it.
- omot 9y ago
  It's a simple math of demand and supply. Density restrictions keep supply in check it keeps it constant, but demand grows exponentially over time, due to immigration and population growth. Thus price grows astronomically high. If you remove restrictions and with the right technology you could create housing that keeps up with the demand growth. SF homelessness is really about incompetence of city politicians, bureaucracy, and the lack of good talent in public service. Why would I want to work for the city to make it a better place when companies inside my city or just further down to the south pays me 3x or 4x what they're offering.
  - posguy 9y ago
    Dezoning most American cities would be quite a good thing. We massively subsidize parking thanks to our zoning requiring parking minimums (such that buildings are only able to rent parking for low $0.xx/sqft a month, versus $x/sqft a month for housing in the same building), and we also block or kneecap larger buildings by restricting their size and the number of units within them. These restrictions (nearly all carried out as zoning) could easily be removed and allow a wave of development to occur, lowering housing costs and keeping many people from ending up homeless in the first place.

curtis 9y ago

It seems unlikely to me that the homelessness problem in SF has anything at all to do with high housing prices. It's certainly not software engineers living on the streets, and I'd bet that even the people that work at Starbucks in SF have homes, even if they're crappy apartments shared with roommates outside the city.

opportune 9y ago
How do you get a job at Starbucks starting as a homeless person though? It could be a hill too high to climb out of, not only purely economically, but socially. For example, how do you convince an employer or prospective roommate to give you a chance when you're a homeless alcoholic without an address?
- ygaf 9y ago
  The thing is, it's not just giving someone a chance, it's giving someone a chance at the expense of someone else. It's simple to hire the optimal person, it's impossible to decide who should get to be employed in the grand scheme of things.
flubert 9y ago
Doesn't it seem likely though that if your landlord only has a $50/mo mortgage, it would be more likely that even really poor people could afford the rent. 1,333 sqft - $69/mo https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/88335003_zpid/1000-18000_price/4-66_mp/globalrelevanceex_sort/42.445311,-83.140841,42.389931,-83.275938_rect/12_zm/ https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/88335003_zpid/1000-180... 870 sq.ft., $49/mo https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/88467667_zpid/1000-18000_price/4-66_mp/globalrelevanceex_sort/42.464056,-82.901545,42.408692,-83.036642_rect/12_zm/ https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/88467667_zpid/1000-180... 966 sqft, $25/mo https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/88361634_zpid/1000-18000_price/4-66_mp/globalrelevanceex_sort/42.465069,-83.047972,42.409706,-83.183069_rect/12_zm/ https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/88361634_zpid/1000-180... 992 sqft, $40/mo https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/88206127_zpid/1000-18000_price/4-66_mp/globalrelevanceex_sort/42.388536,-83.07106,42.333106,-83.202553_rect/12_zm/ https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/88206127_zpid/1000-180...

jakelarkin 9y ago

I've seen estimates that it costs up to $80k/year in the Bay Area to give a homeless person housing and treat their underlying mental illness, substance addiction and other health issues. So for 8,000 homeless we're taking about $700million per year liability. You can't solve homelessness in the Bay Area by throwing money at the problem. The underlying issue is the cost of housing, health care and law enforcement or how those things are applied - all are deep political issues. My own running list of root problems that underly the homeless epidemic in California: - zoning. we have technology to build inexpensive micro-apartments, theres just no cost-effective way to gain approval for tens thousands of them convenient to health care facilities and economic opportunities. - building codes. to build cheap micro-apartments, they need to be prefabricated. building codes enforce customized busy work for individual plumbers, electricians, inspectors and other contractors on each installation. The systems resists pre-fabrication which would be safer and much cheaper overall. - local attitudes about state power. police use of force. crimes of poverty aren't often prosecuted. City attorneys/prosecutors are highly disincentivized to tackle quality of life crimes. cost of jury trials. - high cost and poor state of prisons - lack of police headcount, expense of police salaries/benefits. - high cost of health care & related labor. regulatory capture by licensed professionals, hospital companies, drug/equipment companies. cost of healthcare liability insurance. - lack of regional coordination between low-cost and high-cost areas within the state - lack of state-wide mental health and drug abuse treatment policy - lack of money for preventative care and early intervention for new homeless - don't tackle problems till its far too late and more costly / impossible to fix

sattoshi 9y ago

I read a comment here that there is slightly less than 7000 homeless people there. I ask not why they are homeless, but why are they there rather than in a cheaper area?

ArlenBales 9y ago
Cheaper? They're homeless, the cost of living in SF doesn't mean much if you have no money and live on the streets. As the article mentioned, homeless like SF because of how much the city spends on them: > The city spent $275 million on homelessness and supportive housing in the fiscal year that ends Friday, up from $241 million the year before. Starting Saturday, that annual spending is projected to hit an eye-popping $305 million. Also the moderate climate, and there's so much wealth it's excellent for panhandling.
- sattoshi 9y ago
  It means a LOT actually. The 20$ a nice stranger gives won't even feed you for a day in some places. Compare it with a more rural area where you could survive on it for a week. In terrible conditions but not starving.

wankerrific 9y ago

I'm not sure how the homelessness issue in SF has any relationship to housing costs. The root cause was losing a lot of funding for mental health services during the Gov. Reagan years. But go ahead with your strawman.

davidf18 9y ago
Homelessness comes from high cost of housing. It is emotionally convenient to blame other causes, but there is still mental health support in cities through federally funded community health centers.
- ZanyProgrammer 9y ago
  Housing definitely helps the working class and mentally healthy people who are trying to work themselves out of homelessness. I fail to see how the housing crisis will help severely mentally ill people with addiction issues, schizophrenia, etc. Such people need long term hospitalization. The de-institutionalization of mental health care was exacerbated by, but did not originate with Reagan. Personally I think it has to do with an over correction against the abuses of early/mid 20th century psychiatry, and the mania for freedom from the 60s onward. A lot of mental health professionals, even in liberal west coast cities, sound downright libertarian when describing patient freedom. The freedom to die in prison or on the streets if you ask me.
- ZanyProgrammer 9y ago
  Interestingly the YIMBY scene is dominated by techies in the Bay.
adrianmonk 9y ago
There are basically two types of homeless people. Those who are healthy enough to work but cannot keep up with expenses and those who have serious enough issues that they can't support themselves. The first type can be helped by better job opportunities and cheaper housing. All the cheap housing in the world cannot help the latter group because they can't function in society even if you make it that much easier. We do need a federal (or at least statewide) solution for the latter group, though, because with local control it's too easy to for the "solution" to be giving the homeless person a free bus ticket out of town.

khana 9y ago

Raise the rent!

alexandercrohde 9y ago

I really don't buy the "cost of living" explanation. Are we suggesting that these homeless people can't afford $1800 a month per rent, but are somehow going to get a more reasonable $1000/month apartment? Exactly what job are you going to get if you smell, are missing teeth, have an alcohol problem, don't own clean clothes, and potentially have mental health issues? I think we need to think outside the box on this one.

glangdale 9y ago
You seem to think that you wake up one day and you are a stereotypical 'high visibility homeless person'. Plenty of homeless people are struggling on the edge of normality (especially women) and are sleeping in cars, looking relatively clean and well-behaved. Aside from the hard-core mentally ill, a lot of people might be relatively easily intercepted before they wind up looking/acting like the person you describe.

pmarreck 9y ago

Perhaps San Francisco can be a perfect test case for UBI: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/finland-universal-basic-income-lower-stress-better-motivation-work-wages-salary-a7800741.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/finland-univ...

pizza 9y ago
It's already a hotbed of basic income for the rich: VCs earn huge capital gains :p

redm 9y ago

I used to live in SF near a camp at 10th and mission. I saw the homeless daily; it's very sad to see and people just walk around them. I moved out of SF because it is so damn expensive and I didn't have to be there. $275 million is a lot of money. Instead of trying to help the homeless survive in SF, why not help them relocate somewhere more affordable. There's lots of space in the country and almost all of them are cheaper than SF. 275 million goes a very long way to help people resettle and their quality of life would surely go up. Disclosure: To be clear, I did just what I'm suggesting: I relocated due to the high cost to somewhere more affordable for me. I've met many others over the years that have as well.

xienze 9y ago
Giving the homeless a one-way ticket to the city of their choice is a very effective homeless removal strategy that a lot of cities employ. Guess where a lot of homeless people choose to go. SF would literally be paying to ship the Horne less away to a city that will simply ship them back.

Mz 9y ago

A few factors here: First, housing in SF is insane. I have seen lots of articles about how bad it is and that $50k or even $100k is considered "low income" in these parts. Second, the weather in the Bay Area is very homeless-friendly. If you need to sleep outside year-round, it is best to be someplace where you will neither die from the heat in summer nor from the freezing cold in winter. Third, homelessness is on the rise nationwide. Homeless people can relocate relatively easily due to not having to give notice at their apartment and having lost most or all of their material possessions. So, the odds are good that some people are simply coming out here for the weather. Fourth, big cities like SF tend to have more services for the homeless. There are meal kitchens and the like. If you are completely destitute, you go to where you can get free meals and other services. I know because that is exactly why I went to downtown San Diego for six months as a homeless person. I left and went elsewhere when I was no longer outright destitute and did not need access to things like soup kitchens to have any hope of surviving. So, I think if you want to solve homelessness in SF, you need to work on homelessness across the nation.

StephanTLavavej 9y ago
> Third, homelessness is on the rise nationwide. That's incorrect according to "The 2016 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress" at https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/2016-AHAR-Part-1.pdf https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/2016-AHAR-P... . Page 8 has a graph of all homeless people, which has been on a downward trend from 2007 to 2016.
- Mz 9y ago
  Thank you for the source. I will look at it some more when I have time. But on initial skim, it is a count for a single night in January from which they extrapolate for the whole year. Furthermore, it outright states that actual unsheltered people has risen by 2%. What has gone down is people in the shelter system. I have been seeing a lot of articles about the rise in evictions, among other things, and I left downtown San Diego when I did in part because homeless services were suffering distress and were less and less useful to me because they were overwhelmed. But I will dig into this and see if I can come up with a more nuanced and accurate means to convey my point. We have a very serious housing crisis on our hands. People who are homeless per se are merely the tip of the iceberg.

Shivetya 9y ago

How in the hell did they blow through three hundred million dollars in one year on this? According to figures they have to provide the Federal government for assistance this is for a population of approximately 7500. Seven thousand five hundred. Utah took a decade but slashed their numbers by making sure the homeless had an apartment and phone. For the amount of money SF is spending they could buy them homes. The real crime here is the wasteful spending. They are burning close to 40k per person. People harp about wasteful spending on incarceration need to start looking here. So how is that for even a third of this they cannot house the thousand that still need a bed each night? That number should have been taken care of in the first few months. Sorry for the hyperbole but if we want an example of a government needing a expose on waste and bureaucracy this is an ideal candidate. Hard numbers as provided by the city.[1]. 7,499: 2017 total homeless population 7,539: 2015 total homeless population (The number was 6,436 in 2013, and 6,455 in 2011.) 5,518: 2017 single homeless adults 5,342: 2015 single homeless adults 1,363: 2017 unaccompanied homeless youth 1,567: 2015 unaccompanied homeless youth 1,100: 2017 approximate waiting list for shelter bed 900: 2016 approximate waiting list for shelter bed [1]http://sfist.com/2017/06/26/2017_san_francisco_homeless_census.php http://sfist.com/2017/06/26/2017_san_francisco_homeless_cens...

stevenwoo 9y ago
They couldn't buy them a home in California. Utah didn't slash homelessness, they slashed chronic homelessness. They still have about 14000 homeless as of 2015. http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic-homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic... https://jobs.utah.gov/housing/scso/documents/homelessness2015.pdf https://jobs.utah.gov/housing/scso/documents/homelessness201... The 2016 Utah report doesn't have the same graph showing the homeless population in state over the decade (it did not show a slashing of the homeless population in 2015 just a slight downward trend) but it does show the cost for housing a homeless person across the country - it's roughly 40,000-50,000 per year almost everywhere they surveyed. https://jobs.utah.gov/housing/scso/documents/homelessness2016.pdf https://jobs.utah.gov/housing/scso/documents/homelessness201...

pfarnsworth 9y ago

$300M/year on homelessness for 7500 people! That's utterly unbelievable, that's >$3000/month/homeless person. Where is the money going??

treeseat 9y ago

This is nuts. $275M and no results? Seriously? The city really needs to rethink this. The homeless in SF are disgusting. Why does the city dump so much money into them? Is it really worth the amount spent per person? Why not spend that money on improving public schools, the efficiency of public transit, and things that useful members of the society would actually benefit from?

pvnick 9y ago
> The homeless in SF are disgusting. Why don't you tell us how you really feel?

LarryMade2 9y ago

All the maps illustrate is an increase in complaints not necessarily an increase in homelessness on a similar scale.

hcwctw 9y ago

Having a property or house should be our natural birthright, period. Once you die this property or house should be released and made available in a system where you can move to another/better place when it's available. But, as it is now you don't even get a square inch. Everything is owned by government, landlords, businesses etc.. The result is that once a man starts to earn a little money, it all flows back to the owners. Earning enough to buy and really own a property yourself is only for the lucky few. Even after 20 or 30 years of hard work you can end up in the streets if you lose your job. And if you are unlucky enough having a (mental) illness, your chance to succeed is near zero. Homeless are a product of the system we live in. And the best way to describe this system is a pyramid game. In the end there will be a few owning (and controlling) almost everything. It is sad to see that democracy totally fails to address this problem.. Maybe even more sad is that most children are not properly educated, especially when it comes to the system we live in and homelessness. I learned in primary school that homeless people are just lazy, and being on the streets was their own punishment. It would be a miracle if a new generation really understands the problem and can solve it politically by changing the system we live in.

toomanybeersies 9y ago
How does that work for people who don't live in the same place all their life? Do you release your property and get given property in a new city when you move?
- hcwctw 9y ago
  The system I propose does not exist yet and needs to be designed properly, just as we design a software system. It should of course be flexible enough to allow for people moving to another place. As the situation with property and ownership is now, it is random chaos. Even a rudimentary design has never been made. A financially successful billionaire (who says not by criminal act) can buy and own thousands of houses forever, and the income from that will grow tremendously, which allows him/her/progeny to buy even more property. This is just insane, how can this ever scale for the benefit of all people considering the greed we all have built in?
9y ago

prewett 9y ago

I think it was Deming who said "your system is set up perfectly to produce the results you are getting." SF has: - a mild climate (attractive if you don't have shelter) - our society has no place for mentally ill. They may not ever be able to live life by themselves. - a $250 million of subsidies for being homeless, apparently - a culture of spending money on the symptoms rather than solving the problem. For instance, a number of comments here suggest paying for them to live in a house/apartment somewhere. Now you're stuck paying their rent forever, because the underlying problem of they aren't making enough money to live is still there. Plus, if I'm homeless, now SF looks like a good place to move, because they'll pay for my apartment! - a culture of permissiveness. Why do homeless people get to act with different standards? If a "homed" person defecated on their neighbor's sidewalk they would call the police, but it's okay for the homeless to do it? If a "homed" person throws liquids at you, it's probably grounds for charging them with assault. But it's okay for homeless people? - persistent lack of housing, which means that some people who might not be homeless can't afford housing. Combined with the above, there isn't much incentive to move to a place they could afford. I think the attitude of entitlement by some of the homeless (see rsj_hn's comment, for instance) suggests that SF's structure is enabling homelessness, rather than caring for the homeless.

bmson 9y ago

Why are people

bmson 9y ago

Why is no one talking about healthcare? I work in the tenderloin and it seems that quality of life would increase dramatically if they would get mental health and medication, seems pretty obvious to me. How about spending all of those millions on free healthcare for the bottom 5% ?