5 ms·

This is a product of SF being extremely welcoming and supportive of the homeless and the poor. It's interesting to me how so many people confuse the absence of

by beaner 9y ago

This is a product of SF being extremely welcoming and supportive of the homeless and the poor. It's interesting to me how so many people confuse the absence of poverty/crime/homelessness with a system that has solved it. NYC has less of these things because it has undergone extreme gentrification and has politics and police which treat the homeless much worse. This is the opposite of what most people consider to be a real solution, yet NYC is praised for it. It is praised for the ends, not the means. SF actually employs more of the policies people claim that they want to see, and as a result, it welcomes more homeless, and as a result, has more homeless, and as a result, it is demonized. It's so backwards.

adventured 9y ago
New York City has homeless shelter capacity for 60,000 or more people every night. It puts San Francisco to shame in that regard. The reason tens of thousands of homeless people aren't all in the street, is because they have such vast shelter capacity. San Francisco can't manage to handle 3,000 to 4,000 people without permanent shelter (~6,600 total homeless), despite its immense affluence as a city. It's a failure of priorities.
- cheeseblubber 9y ago
  I think you need to account for the fact that SF has a population of ~860,000 where as NY has a population of ~8,500,000. You also have to account for the weather in SF vs NY. Not defending either city just trying to put the numbers in to perspective
  - adventured 9y ago
    I was accounting for that. NYC manages to provide shelter space for 10x the number of homeless persons as there are total in SF, while having 10x the population of SF. I'd argue that it's easier for a smaller affluent city of 860k to solve a problem of roughly 3,000 +/- homeless people (their problem isn't the 6k overall figure, it's a smaller subset of that), than it is to deal with 10x that homeless figure at 10x the city size. Human problems like that get more difficult with scale rather than easier. I'm not sure how SF weather plays in to providing shelter space for the homeless as a problem. It should be easier and cheaper for SF to do it, as SF requires both less air conditioning in the warm months and less heating in the cold months. Of course, this is also where SF's terrible zoning laws show up as usual.
    - maccam94 9y ago
      The weather effect isn't about the cost of the shelter space. There is less incentive to put up with shelter rules (or risks, as the case may be) when the homeless can sleep outdoors somewhat comfortably year-round.
    - francisofascii 9y ago
      Anecdotally I can tell you shelters begin to fill up when it snows or gets extremely cold. This weekend NYC is looking at lows in the teens. SF, lows in the mid 40s.
tmh79 9y ago
New York State law also mandates that cities must provide shelter beds for their homeless population, so there is enough shelter space for their homeless population, there is no such law in SF/CA.
- jdietrich 9y ago
  A significant proportion of the rough sleeper population are not easily housed. They may have significant mental health issues that do not warrant involuntary hospitalisation, but cause them to be extremely disruptive or unwilling to be housed. They may have unmanaged substance abuse problems, particularly alcohol dependency. Trauma and PTSD often play a significant role. Sometimes, they're just antisocial assholes. Most of these people can eventually be housed, but it often takes years of intensive support and dozens of false starts. Homelessness exists in a complex relationship with many other personal and social problems. The provision of shelters is only one element of the solution. If you aim for a complete and rapid elimination of visible rough sleeping, you'll inevitably end up persecuting rough sleepers or bussing them off to somewhere else. There is a great deal that can be done to reduce rough sleeping and much of it isn't being done, but there's no magic wand.
  - icantdrive55 9y ago
    How do you know? The hubris on this site can be stifling some days. Give them a place to sleep, relieve themselfs, and shower. That's all most of them want.
    - jdietrich 9y ago
      >How do you know? I've worked in housing advice and have been personally involved in rehousing homeless people. A member of my immediate family is a director of a housing association and has run several supported housing facilities. It'd be fantastic if homelessness was as simple as "give people homes", but it isn't. Housing is part of the problem - a very large part in some areas - but chronic rough sleepers have very complex needs. If you don't believe me, go out and talk to some rough sleepers. Ask them about their life stories. Ask them about the people they've met on the streets. You'll find some people who have had a bad run of luck and just need somewhere to stay, but you'll also find people who are highly dysfunctional and need intensive support to rebuild their lives.
hueving 9y ago
Having lots of homeless people on the streets is the opposite of solving the homeless problem. SF should be demonized.
- michaelt 9y ago
  What beaner is saying is: If City A orders cops to hassle rough sleepers and panhandlers, closes homeless shelters and offers the homeless bus tickets to other cities; while City B doesn't do those things; then City B will have more homeless people on the streets despite the fact their policies are kinder, more charitable and more humane towards the homeless.
  - ForRealsies 9y ago
    Are there statistics on Homeless -> Employed figures?
- skj 9y ago
  Only if you frame the problem as "I see homeless people".
  - hueving 9y ago
    And your framing is "homelessness isn't a problem" I assume then? Because that's San Francisco's policy.
notyourday 9y ago
San Francisco is a perfect illustration of a liberal ethos : "Let me step over a homeless person on my way to a party where I can pontificate with my compassionate friends about the homelessness over a glass of Aubert"
bronos 9y ago
I've yet to meet a person in SF who wants these policies towards the homeless. Compassion is reducing the friction to life, somehow creating $500/month apartments with no credit checks and month to month. Compassion isn't letting the homeless do anything, camp and violate other's rights, disrupt and distress the working lower to middle class, and reducing the penalties for petty crime while increasing the fines for minor infractions by taxpayers.
CydeWeys 9y ago
I live in NYC, and we're currently in the middle of a two-week-long span of high winds and average temperatures of -9°C, with lows of -15°C (before you add in wind chill). If you don't have good shelter for these conditions death is pretty much a guarantee. I sure as hell would never want to be homeless in NYC during a winter like this one. You cannot discount the effect of weather on homeless populations, and even the homeless can typically scrounge together enough money for a one-way bus ticket to somewhere warmer, once.
- beaner 9y ago
  I agree, weather plays a huge role. To praise NYC for lack of homelessness when very few homeless could live there as a result of that factor, doesn't make much sense.
- southphillyman 9y ago
  Basically. I think weather is likely main reason places like SF, LA, and San Diego have huge homeless populations.
  - CydeWeys 9y ago
    That in combination with unaffordable housing. There are plenty of homeless people in these places who aren't mentally ill and do in fact still have full-time jobs; they just literally can't afford a place to live and end up living in their car in a parking lot somewhere. If everything else about their situation remained the same, except rent prices were cheaper, they wouldn't be homeless.
python-guy-vt 9y ago
>This is a product of SF being extremely welcoming and supportive of the homeless and the poor. >NYC has less of these things because it has undergone extreme gentrification and has politics and police which treat the homeless much worse. This is part of the puzzle. However, I think there are other contributing factors too, like the weather. If I was homeless I sure wouldn't want to be in NY in winter.
twobyfour 9y ago
Also NYC does have an enormous homelessness problem. It's just that it also has a culture of police action driving homeless people out of upscale areas so that the well off don't have to be distressed by noticing it.

by beaner 9y ago

adventured 9y ago

New York City has homeless shelter capacity for 60,000 or more people every night. It puts San Francisco to shame in that regard. The reason tens of thousands of homeless people aren't all in the street, is because they have such vast shelter capacity. San Francisco can't manage to handle 3,000 to 4,000 people without permanent shelter (~6,600 total homeless), despite its immense affluence as a city. It's a failure of priorities.

cheeseblubber 9y ago
I think you need to account for the fact that SF has a population of ~860,000 where as NY has a population of ~8,500,000. You also have to account for the weather in SF vs NY. Not defending either city just trying to put the numbers in to perspective
- adventured 9y ago
  I was accounting for that. NYC manages to provide shelter space for 10x the number of homeless persons as there are total in SF, while having 10x the population of SF. I'd argue that it's easier for a smaller affluent city of 860k to solve a problem of roughly 3,000 +/- homeless people (their problem isn't the 6k overall figure, it's a smaller subset of that), than it is to deal with 10x that homeless figure at 10x the city size. Human problems like that get more difficult with scale rather than easier. I'm not sure how SF weather plays in to providing shelter space for the homeless as a problem. It should be easier and cheaper for SF to do it, as SF requires both less air conditioning in the warm months and less heating in the cold months. Of course, this is also where SF's terrible zoning laws show up as usual.
  - maccam94 9y ago
    The weather effect isn't about the cost of the shelter space. There is less incentive to put up with shelter rules (or risks, as the case may be) when the homeless can sleep outdoors somewhat comfortably year-round.
  - francisofascii 9y ago
    Anecdotally I can tell you shelters begin to fill up when it snows or gets extremely cold. This weekend NYC is looking at lows in the teens. SF, lows in the mid 40s.

tmh79 9y ago

New York State law also mandates that cities must provide shelter beds for their homeless population, so there is enough shelter space for their homeless population, there is no such law in SF/CA.

jdietrich 9y ago
A significant proportion of the rough sleeper population are not easily housed. They may have significant mental health issues that do not warrant involuntary hospitalisation, but cause them to be extremely disruptive or unwilling to be housed. They may have unmanaged substance abuse problems, particularly alcohol dependency. Trauma and PTSD often play a significant role. Sometimes, they're just antisocial assholes. Most of these people can eventually be housed, but it often takes years of intensive support and dozens of false starts. Homelessness exists in a complex relationship with many other personal and social problems. The provision of shelters is only one element of the solution. If you aim for a complete and rapid elimination of visible rough sleeping, you'll inevitably end up persecuting rough sleepers or bussing them off to somewhere else. There is a great deal that can be done to reduce rough sleeping and much of it isn't being done, but there's no magic wand.
- icantdrive55 9y ago
  How do you know? The hubris on this site can be stifling some days. Give them a place to sleep, relieve themselfs, and shower. That's all most of them want.
  - jdietrich 9y ago
    >How do you know? I've worked in housing advice and have been personally involved in rehousing homeless people. A member of my immediate family is a director of a housing association and has run several supported housing facilities. It'd be fantastic if homelessness was as simple as "give people homes", but it isn't. Housing is part of the problem - a very large part in some areas - but chronic rough sleepers have very complex needs. If you don't believe me, go out and talk to some rough sleepers. Ask them about their life stories. Ask them about the people they've met on the streets. You'll find some people who have had a bad run of luck and just need somewhere to stay, but you'll also find people who are highly dysfunctional and need intensive support to rebuild their lives.

hueving 9y ago

Having lots of homeless people on the streets is the opposite of solving the homeless problem. SF should be demonized.

michaelt 9y ago
What beaner is saying is: If City A orders cops to hassle rough sleepers and panhandlers, closes homeless shelters and offers the homeless bus tickets to other cities; while City B doesn't do those things; then City B will have more homeless people on the streets despite the fact their policies are kinder, more charitable and more humane towards the homeless.
- ForRealsies 9y ago
  Are there statistics on Homeless -> Employed figures?
skj 9y ago
Only if you frame the problem as "I see homeless people".
- hueving 9y ago
  And your framing is "homelessness isn't a problem" I assume then? Because that's San Francisco's policy.

notyourday 9y ago

San Francisco is a perfect illustration of a liberal ethos : "Let me step over a homeless person on my way to a party where I can pontificate with my compassionate friends about the homelessness over a glass of Aubert"

bronos 9y ago

I've yet to meet a person in SF who wants these policies towards the homeless. Compassion is reducing the friction to life, somehow creating $500/month apartments with no credit checks and month to month. Compassion isn't letting the homeless do anything, camp and violate other's rights, disrupt and distress the working lower to middle class, and reducing the penalties for petty crime while increasing the fines for minor infractions by taxpayers.

CydeWeys 9y ago

I live in NYC, and we're currently in the middle of a two-week-long span of high winds and average temperatures of -9°C, with lows of -15°C (before you add in wind chill). If you don't have good shelter for these conditions death is pretty much a guarantee. I sure as hell would never want to be homeless in NYC during a winter like this one. You cannot discount the effect of weather on homeless populations, and even the homeless can typically scrounge together enough money for a one-way bus ticket to somewhere warmer, once.

beaner 9y ago
I agree, weather plays a huge role. To praise NYC for lack of homelessness when very few homeless could live there as a result of that factor, doesn't make much sense.
southphillyman 9y ago
Basically. I think weather is likely main reason places like SF, LA, and San Diego have huge homeless populations.
- CydeWeys 9y ago
  That in combination with unaffordable housing. There are plenty of homeless people in these places who aren't mentally ill and do in fact still have full-time jobs; they just literally can't afford a place to live and end up living in their car in a parking lot somewhere. If everything else about their situation remained the same, except rent prices were cheaper, they wouldn't be homeless.

python-guy-vt 9y ago

>This is a product of SF being extremely welcoming and supportive of the homeless and the poor. >NYC has less of these things because it has undergone extreme gentrification and has politics and police which treat the homeless much worse. This is part of the puzzle. However, I think there are other contributing factors too, like the weather. If I was homeless I sure wouldn't want to be in NY in winter.

twobyfour 9y ago

Also NYC does have an enormous homelessness problem. It's just that it also has a culture of police action driving homeless people out of upscale areas so that the well off don't have to be distressed by noticing it.