4 ms·

SFGov's latest annual budget has $305 million for homeless programs but this doesn't include lots of homeless related spending, mostly medical but also police,

SFGov's latest annual budget has $305 million for homeless programs but this doesn't include lots of homeless related spending, mostly medical but also police, fire, cleaning, etc. There are also lots of non-profit, religious and private orgs spending on homeless plus costs borne by local residents and businesses. I bet homelessness costs SF close to $1 billion a year. And the problem is not getting much better. In fact increased spending over past 5 years has been associated with even more homeless and problems. http://www.sfchronicle.com/aboutsfgate/article/Despite-money-and-work-homelessness-in-SF-as-bad-11242946.php http://www.sfchronicle.com/aboutsfgate/article/Despite-money...

mikeyouse 9y ago
> In fact increased spending over past 5 years has been associated with even more homeless and problems. I think your causation line is drawn the wrong way there.. Housing prices in San Francisco have dramatically increased in the past 5 years, which leads to more people being at risk of homelessness. Of course money and services will need to increase to accommodate the newly displaced.
- wahern 9y ago
  Because of rent control, the _vast_ majority of renters are effectively immunized from increases in housing costs. The number of yearly evictions attributable to tear-downs or move-ins is miniscule. When you hear that evictions have "doubled", the absolute numbers are still in the single or double digits, in a city of over 800,000 people. And most of those are otherwise legitimate reasons, like failure to pay rent. The city has something like 20,000+ "homeless", most of whom are housed and only homeless in a legal sense, for purposes of state and federal aid. Development isn't causing the homeless problem... no way, no how.[1] At most it makes it more costly to address the problem, because it increases the cost of government funded housing projects; but it doesn't appreciably contribute to the growth. And don't forget, people are free to move _out_ of the area. I grew up in trailer parks for much of my childhood. For the amount of subsidies people are afforded in California, compared to living on the streets you could live an infinitely better life outside the city in a trailer park--much nicer than the trailers I grew up in rural Florida and Alabama. So a large part of the problem is mobility and a willingness to move. That implicates complex social and psychological issues, but it diminishes the culpability and relevance of housing prices. I support rent control wholeheartedly, but too many supposedly "progressive" people in this town have a penchant for looking a gift horse in the mouth. Nowhere in the country do tenants enjoy such incredible benefits. Newcomers look at the insane rents and just assume it creates homelessness, but things look completely different on the other side of 10 or 20 years. [1] A recent study purported to show that a majority of street homeless were evicted tenants. But they did this by asking tenants whether whether they had previously rented in the city. Somebody who moves here, rents a place for 2 months before being evicted for failure to pay, would count, even though they were for all intents and purposes they were immigrants. And of course it assumes they're telling the whole truth--such as not conflating sleeping on somebody's couch with being a renter. The lack of detail and substance in that survey was very conspicuous, especially the fact that it would be nearly impossible to square with eviction board statistics.
  - mjevans 9y ago
    Ironically the need for such a larger transit infrastructure is the lack of very-high-rise building and trying to maintain 'character' in neighborhoods that should now have near lumber limit MDUs. Building a stronger transit system, such as this article is talking about, does allow a city to spread further out, but both such a system to enable lower housing density and commutes or more housing units (lessening the need to commute) are plagued by NIMBYs in many (most/all?) metropolitan areas (at least all the ones I've heard out outside of Texas / "the south").
    - wahern 9y ago
      Personally, I'd like to see the city exploring an expansion of rent control in exchange for improved developers' rights, including automatic approvals and increased density. Currently only buildings built before circa 1979 are rent controlled; anything built after is exempt. This creates an obvious dilemma for a city and community which evolved and adapted to the economic tradeoffs of rent control. What if developers opted into rent control after an initial 20-30 year payback period? It would be easy to create property instruments that ensure a property became rent-controlled after a certain period.[1] Part of the reason (certainly not the whole reason) NIMBY politics is so powerful in the city in the face of such gargantuan supply-demand imbalance is because homeowners have been able to conscript renters into their fight against development on the premise that development diminishes the rent control stock. I think something like 70% of households in this city rent, which means the underlying self-interests at play are nothing like those in suburban municipalities. Dangle the stick of _more_ rent controlled stock in front of the population, and we might see a huge shift in opinion. [1] I believe there's a state law which prevents San Francisco from expanding rent control. But I bet that a quasi-voluntary system might either pass muster under the law, or at least be an easier sell to Sacramento in exchange for loosening the restriction.

mikeyouse 9y ago

> In fact increased spending over past 5 years has been associated with even more homeless and problems. I think your causation line is drawn the wrong way there.. Housing prices in San Francisco have dramatically increased in the past 5 years, which leads to more people being at risk of homelessness. Of course money and services will need to increase to accommodate the newly displaced.

wahern 9y ago
Because of rent control, the _vast_ majority of renters are effectively immunized from increases in housing costs. The number of yearly evictions attributable to tear-downs or move-ins is miniscule. When you hear that evictions have "doubled", the absolute numbers are still in the single or double digits, in a city of over 800,000 people. And most of those are otherwise legitimate reasons, like failure to pay rent. The city has something like 20,000+ "homeless", most of whom are housed and only homeless in a legal sense, for purposes of state and federal aid. Development isn't causing the homeless problem... no way, no how.[1] At most it makes it more costly to address the problem, because it increases the cost of government funded housing projects; but it doesn't appreciably contribute to the growth. And don't forget, people are free to move _out_ of the area. I grew up in trailer parks for much of my childhood. For the amount of subsidies people are afforded in California, compared to living on the streets you could live an infinitely better life outside the city in a trailer park--much nicer than the trailers I grew up in rural Florida and Alabama. So a large part of the problem is mobility and a willingness to move. That implicates complex social and psychological issues, but it diminishes the culpability and relevance of housing prices. I support rent control wholeheartedly, but too many supposedly "progressive" people in this town have a penchant for looking a gift horse in the mouth. Nowhere in the country do tenants enjoy such incredible benefits. Newcomers look at the insane rents and just assume it creates homelessness, but things look completely different on the other side of 10 or 20 years. [1] A recent study purported to show that a majority of street homeless were evicted tenants. But they did this by asking tenants whether whether they had previously rented in the city. Somebody who moves here, rents a place for 2 months before being evicted for failure to pay, would count, even though they were for all intents and purposes they were immigrants. And of course it assumes they're telling the whole truth--such as not conflating sleeping on somebody's couch with being a renter. The lack of detail and substance in that survey was very conspicuous, especially the fact that it would be nearly impossible to square with eviction board statistics.
- mjevans 9y ago
  Ironically the need for such a larger transit infrastructure is the lack of very-high-rise building and trying to maintain 'character' in neighborhoods that should now have near lumber limit MDUs. Building a stronger transit system, such as this article is talking about, does allow a city to spread further out, but both such a system to enable lower housing density and commutes or more housing units (lessening the need to commute) are plagued by NIMBYs in many (most/all?) metropolitan areas (at least all the ones I've heard out outside of Texas / "the south").
  - wahern 9y ago
    Personally, I'd like to see the city exploring an expansion of rent control in exchange for improved developers' rights, including automatic approvals and increased density. Currently only buildings built before circa 1979 are rent controlled; anything built after is exempt. This creates an obvious dilemma for a city and community which evolved and adapted to the economic tradeoffs of rent control. What if developers opted into rent control after an initial 20-30 year payback period? It would be easy to create property instruments that ensure a property became rent-controlled after a certain period.[1] Part of the reason (certainly not the whole reason) NIMBY politics is so powerful in the city in the face of such gargantuan supply-demand imbalance is because homeowners have been able to conscript renters into their fight against development on the premise that development diminishes the rent control stock. I think something like 70% of households in this city rent, which means the underlying self-interests at play are nothing like those in suburban municipalities. Dangle the stick of _more_ rent controlled stock in front of the population, and we might see a huge shift in opinion. [1] I believe there's a state law which prevents San Francisco from expanding rent control. But I bet that a quasi-voluntary system might either pass muster under the law, or at least be an easier sell to Sacramento in exchange for loosening the restriction.