10 ms·

SF tourist industry struggles to explain street misery to horrified visitors

94 points by dsr12 9y ago

legostormtroopr 9y ago
> You may ask, “Who cares what some dad from a flyover state or some businessman from another country thinks of us?” Do people really ask that? I'm sure they do, but the lack of respect for the "fly-over states" from America never fails to surprise me.
- jstewartmobile 9y ago
  The anti-redstater bot is still in R&D. https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/13/security-robots-are-being-used-to-ward-off-san-franciscos-homeless-population/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/13/security-robots-are-being-...
- dionidium 9y ago
  Do you spend much time on Hacker News? Such opinions are expressed here regularly. More seriously, it's not unusual to see, say, Florida casually compared to, say, Eastern Europe without any sense of how absurdly one-sided such comparisons actually are (e.g. on measures like GDP, standard of living, number of jobs, etc). Opinions are opinions. That's fine. But what I find as a Missourian living in NYC is that people on the coasts (who didn't move there from somewhere else) are largely ignorant of important factual properties of the South and the Midwest. It's not uncommon to see someone off by an order of magnitude about, say, GDP or population or whatever (expressed with extreme confidence, of course).
  - dylanh 9y ago
    I'm from Florida -- and have deep roots going back more than 100 years. Florida is significantly less developed than it has any right to be, on a range of measures.
    - dionidium 9y ago
      Yes, that's right. It's well into the bottom half of U.S. states by GDP per capita, which still puts it at around 4-5x the GDP per capita in most Eastern European countries (which was my point). The United States is ridiculously wealthy, even in places Americans love to denigrate. That's worth remembering whenever you feel like comparing Florida unfavorably to this or that other place.
      - maym86 9y ago
        GDP isn't really a great measure of how well a population is doing if inequality is high and wages are stagnant for low paid workers. Florida has one of the highest levels of inequality in the US and the US in general had more inequality than most European countries. Are the working poor in the south really that much better off than most of Europe where healthcare and social housing are more readily available? GDP alone is a bad measure of success for individuals living somewhere if the benefits are not shared.
  - jtmcmc 9y ago
    I think many of the people that live in major coastal cities that have extremely negative opinions of the rest of the country often lived in those places prior to moving there.
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  The rest of the paragraph in the article explains exactly why one should listen to outsiders.
- louprado 9y ago
  Honestly, I have only heard the term fly-over states when someone is mocking how liberals hypothetically mock red states.
habosa 9y ago
Justify it to tourists? How to we justify it to ourselves. Richest city in the richest state in the richest country in the world and we can't even provide a place for people to live. It's a failure at every level, there are too many culprits to list. Aside: I thought it was a great touch that in this article each homeless person pictured was mentioned by name. Humanizing these people is something we can all do without spending a penny. If someone stops you on the street asking for a dollar, at least have the courtesy to look them in the eye and politely decline. I've had a number of people thank me more forcefully for that small gesture than actually giving them money (of course, give if you can!).
- shiado 9y ago
  It really goes beyond providing a place to live. As somebody who does not live in the US it blows my mind that if somebody has mental illness bad enough that they cannot keep a job, they then cannot have health insurance and so they cannot get help because they cannot afford it. It really seems like Americans have optimized their healthcare system so that those that don't need help are the ones most eligible for it (which is perfect if you are an insurance company).
  - ars 9y ago
    > they then cannot have health insurance and so they cannot get help because they cannot afford it What? That's not true. People without income can get health insurance paid for by the state. It's called Medicaid, look it up. > which is perfect if you are an insurance company Again, what? That doesn't help insurance companies. They don't care, they'll just raise their rates. It helps the average person I suppose, although they end up paying for it in taxes, so it doesn't make a net difference. > As somebody who does not live in the US What you really are is someone who gets all their info about the US from the news. Please remember: If it's in the news it's not typical. Your impression about a county should be the opposite of whatever you read in the news.
    - DrScump 9y ago
      It's called Medicaid, In CA, it's called MediCal... but SF has its own program called Healthy SF as well.
prepend 9y ago
When I first traveled to San Francisco I was amazed by the homeless problem. And I lived in NY where there’s a substantial number of homeless. Sadly, each time I travel back, it seems worse and I’m jaded. I bring cash, you run out after just a block or two. I was staying in the Embarcadero and every restaurant and shop had a homeless person outside the door. Do even if you just gave a dollar or your change, I ran out. This is a difficult problem and I don’t even know how to measure it, much less solve.
tzhenghao 9y ago
This is sad and depressing to read. I was out in SF last week for a tech conference. A great time to escape the cold Chicago winter for arguably good SF weather all year round. Unfortunately, politics and poor city management has made this city much harder to live in. I would hop off the BART at Powell station and smell the strong stench of human excretion, or tents right outside the 16th Mission St station entrance. I feel bad for the homeless, but I don’t think the city is doing a good job is helping their situation either. I love SF for all the opportunities it brings, but hate the fact that it isn’t well distributed to all its residents, both the rich and the poor. SF highlights what’s good (and bad) about America’s current situation imo.
- a_cactus 9y ago
  Many of the homeless people in SF probably escaped the cold Chicago winters too. Due to nice weather, California cities have to support many of the Midwest’s homeless population. To compensate, there should be a lot more federal funding for homelessness.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    This is a myth. LAHSA does an annual homelessness census in Los Angeles. The overwhelming majority of the homeless are native Angelenos; 73% of them have been in LA for over 20 years.
  - idlewords 9y ago
    Please stop spreading this pernicious myth. Nearly 3/4 of the SF homeless population became homeless while living in the city; 90% did so in California. "The most recent homeless count, conducted in January 2015, found 6,686 homeless people in the city. Seventy-one percent of people reported living in San Francisco when they became homeless, up from 61 percent in 2013. Just 10 percent said they were living outside California when they became homeless, and the remaining 19 percent were living in the state but not in the city." http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/What-San-Franciscans-know-about-homeless-isn-t-7224018.php http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/What-San-Francisc...
jimrandomh 9y ago
As long as California's home construction continues to be below population growth, it will keep getting worse. There are a lot of causes you can point at, but until there's actually enough housing getting built, they're all red herrings.
- baseethrowaway 9y ago
  Yeah, this is point on... no. Unless a price of a home is ridiculously cheap (under $100 a month?), and even then, people without any income and/or mentally unwell people will not magically become non-homeless. Next time, read your post two times after writing and check for logical errors.
  - sorenbs 9y ago
    In Berlin you can live in a decent apartment in the city center for 400 $ per month. The only reason this is not possible in SF is that you have so much low density crap even in walking distance of the center. This is insane.
  - remarkEon 9y ago
    How in the world is that point incorrect? Housing isn’t being built at nearly the required rates to at least depress the growth in costs - and that’s been fairly well established here and elsewhere. Are you saying that population growth in California isn’t a factor here? AFAIK the growth rate is still positive, albeit decreasing. Though that’s statewide, the pattern is the same in SF. This sounds like a basic supply and demand question, no?
- kurthr 9y ago
  As long as a city parking space costs more than a person on assistance can pay, you're not going to have affordable housing. You can't call an uncovered slot of 200sq/ft with no services a home, but that goes for >$200/mo (a lot more than $6/day in most places) in a less nice part of downtown San Jose... I don't want to think what it runs in SF. The 80sqft tiny houses which violate building code are running $73k+ ignoring substantial land (320sqft+) and utilities costs (it's owned by the city). You have to treat mental health and drug addiction, because other homeless people don't want to live with them. Probably, you'll have to move people out of the city center, if you don't want substantial new taxes. However, if you don't bother to enforce anything you'll still end up with several thousand people living in the creeks under tarps, because they'd rather do that than go outside the city center.
henrikschroder 9y ago
Other countries, other states, other cities have "solved" this problem in a bunch of different ways, it's not a unique problem. What's unique is the city's unwillingness to actually solve it. At the core, you need to spend more money by basically giving these people healthcare, mental health care, and a place to live. "But that's not fair, what about all the good, honest citizens of the city who work their asses off to pay the exorbitant rents and exorbitant health insurances and still struggle to put food on the table bla bla bla" No, it's not fair, but as long as that mentality rules, SF will have a homeless problem. The city sure as fuck doesn't lack the money to solve it, it lacks political will. "But that's socialism!" Yes. Now do you want to solve the problem, or keep sticking your head in the sand and hope it goes away through the magic of capitalism and the free market?
- natalyarostova 9y ago
  I wasn't under the impression that the current issue in SF was a lack of willingness for politicians in both the city, and the state, to throw money at the problem due to constituents complaining it is unfair due to its socialistic resemblence. But I'll admit I haven't read about it as much since I moved from SF.
- jasonmp85 9y ago
  If we can eminent domain land to build walls and pipelines, we can do it for housing. This isn't about money; it's cheap to build housing. It's about land. Seize it and build housing. The end. EDIT: Of course this will never happen in the U.S. and we will always have homeless people and poor people like it's some axiom of civilization.
  - yonran 9y ago
    In America, the Takings Clause of the 5th Amendment requires that property owners must be compensated when their property is seized for public purposes, so any seizures still come out of the government’s budget. States are supposed to raise resources using their tax power, not the police power. The correct law to reform is California’s tax limitation law, Proposition 13.
KeepTalking 9y ago
This is the problem of our generation. Shame on us. Is this an Area where YC can help ? I challenge YC to consider Request for Startups that will consider ideas to fix this problem. I envision someone as powerful as YC and its network partnering with the city of SF,SJC,Oakland to allow for experimentation in finding long term fixes to this social issue. here is a NPR report that shows the impact of fixing the homeless problem. https://www.npr.org/2018/01/30/581778796/er-use-goes-down-as-hospital-program-pays-homeless-peoples-rent https://www.npr.org/2018/01/30/581778796/er-use-goes-down-as...
- bitL 9y ago
  C'mon, you can't make money off homeless. VC-backed startups are about 100x ROI and not guaranteed cash burn...
staunch 9y ago
Pretty soon the US could afford to give every person 1 x autonomous cars, 1 x off-grid solar paneled home, 1 x unlimited low earth orbit (low latency) satellite internet.
Animats 9y ago
SF spends about $214 million per year on homelessness. About half of that is for housing.[1] Dallas considered building a concentration camp.[2] [1] http://sfist.com/2016/04/12/no_san_francisco_does_not_spend_360.php http://sfist.com/2016/04/12/no_san_francisco_does_not_spend_... [2] http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/even-the-idea-of-homeless-concentration-camp-is-mischief-in-the-making-8269330 http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/even-the-idea-of-homeless...
meri_dian 9y ago
It's actually very easy to explain. Homeless people are attracted to places with nice year round weather. SF provides that. They are also attracted to places where they are tolerated or accepted. The people of SF are very tolerant of the homeless. As one of the commenters here says: "I bring cash, you run out after just a block or two." Sounds like a great place to be homeless. As for root causes, homelessness is mostly caused by drug addiction and mental illness. According the the National Coalition for the Homeless: "A 2008 survey by the United States Conference of Mayors asked 25 cities for their top three causes of homelessness. Substance abuse was the single largest cause of homelessness for single adults (reported by 68% of cities). Substance abuse was also mentioned by 12% of cities as one of the top three causes of homelessness for families. According to Didenko and Pankratz (2007), two-thirds of homeless people report that drugs and/or alcohol were a major reason for their becoming homeless." As for mental illness, according to a research summary compiled by the Treatment Advocacy Center: "Approximately one-third of the total homeless population includes individuals with serious, untreated mental illnesses" More affordable housing will not offer relief to the homeless because their state is largely caused by addiction and mental illness, not by high housing prices.
- mirimir 9y ago
  So do you have evidence that most SF homeless are immigrants? Many people have psychological problems, and/or dependence on various psychoactive drugs. And perhaps they do correlate with homelessness. But correlation does not prove causation. Maybe it's just that homelessness makes it all worse.
  - meri_dian 9y ago
    "According to Didenko and Pankratz (2007), two-thirds of homeless people report that drugs and/or alcohol were a major reason for their becoming homeless."
    - mirimir 9y ago
      Sure, but the point is that homelessness is horrible treatment for drug and/or alcohol dependence.
Girlang 9y ago
The city pays about $45,000/year per homeless person according to the figures in that article. That’s why there’s so many of them.
mirimir 9y ago
Shortage of housing that's affordable by minimum-wage workers is the fundamental problem. Plus lack of workable public transportation to places where housing is affordable. I imagine a meat grinder something like this. First you get evicted because you earn too little to pay the rent. Then you lose your job because you can't stay presentable. After a while, it's pretty much irreversible. So yeah. We need affordable housing. And we need fair wages.
- im3w1l 9y ago
  > First you get evicted because you earn too little to pay the rent. > Then you lose your job because you can't stay presentable. Then you lose your health because you aren't insured. Then you lose your sanity because you take drugs to cope.
  - mirimir 9y ago
    Thanks. I forgot those.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  I ... know a few people from the first Internet bubble that this describes, unfortunately.
pmoriarty 9y ago
"I actually think it’s the worst it’s ever been," said Handlery, who’s been in the San Francisco hotel business for 38 years. I don't know. I remember 20 years ago, around the first internet bubble, seeing literally hundreds of homeless people along Market St. It was like an army of homeless people. There are far fewer these days, at least in the fancy shopping districts and along Market. There are more tents around other parts of the city, though. Maybe it's more of a case of gentrification pushing the homeless to other parts of the city so they're "out of sight, out of mind". It reminds me of a plan I once heard about, of rounding up all the homeless and shipping them off to Treasure Island. That plan was never put in to practice, but I was shocked it was ever seriously considered. Still, in many ways what's been achieved is something similar, with the effective eviction of many homeless from the shopping areas and in to tents outside of it. The whole subtext of this article is kind of troubling. It's like the only reason that homelessness is a problem is that the tourists are seeing it, and that it's hurting the tourist industry's bottom line. I'm glad people are seeing it. If they weren't much less would be done to help.
- williamstein 9y ago
  I just spent the last three days around Market street in San Francisco (near City Hall), and the degree of disturbing clearly miserable homelessness was really shocking to me. I live in Seattle (with a big homeless problem as well), and I also lived in the Bay Area 20 years ago (for five years), and it definitely appears worse to me now. It seems worse nbow in the sense of just plain misery/drugs/violence... It's really sad.
jtmcmc 9y ago
SF's homeless problem is a direct result of so many negative federal policies and so many positive SF policies that it's so funny that people come out of this with a negative opinion on SF. SF spends so much fucking money on the homeless, including 112 million on supportive housing for the formerly homeless and 27 million spent on eviction prevention. The problem is that the issue of homelessness is a FEDERAL issue and that no one city, even SF has the resources to combat it. As some have said SF and many other west coast cities are extremely attractive to the homeless because they have relatively lenient laws regarding them, ample social services (relative to any other city) and moderate temperatures. SF is also a mecca for sending your queer/trans child that your religious beliefs can't bear to have around you. There are many obvious solutions to mitigate homelessness. Provided government housing, decent physical and mental healthcare, job training. San Francisco does all of those things. However, the fact is supply and demand is totally out of whack because SF is a sink for homelessness. This needs to be addressed federally and until then all west coast cities will continue to be filled with homeless and have their social services over run.
- BaronVonSteuben 9y ago
  Why is homelessness a federal issue?
  - jtmcmc 9y ago
    For many reasonsons. Some include the fact that homelessness isn't an issue that arises at a city level it's something that arises at a national level and was in part caused by federal decisions such as the privatization and defunding of mental health institutions and the failure of the federal government to appropriately care for veterans.
- WkndTriathlete 9y ago
  > As some have said SF and many other west coast cities are extremely attractive to the homeless because they have relatively lenient laws regarding them, ample social services (relative to any other city) and moderate temperatures. [citation needed] I'm skeptical of the weather argument. I would expect the homeless to move to Los Angeles or San Diego first. Of course, that's assuming the homeless have the mental capacity to even make the conscious decision to move there. I don't think most addicts or mentally disabled people have the wherewithal to make a move from, say, Chicago to SF. (I.e. how do you make a planned move with (a) no money and (b) no Google to figure out the commercial train line routes you can hop a ride on for free? Hop a train in Chicago and maybe end up in Lansing, Michigan or Toronto instead!)
ENGNR 9y ago
I took a trip to SF with the intention of later moving there for work. The #1 thing that prevented me from following through was the street issues. Not just from sympathy for the people who aren't helped after falling through the cracks (although that's also a big part of it), who wants to live in a place where you're one desperate decision from being mugged or attacked. Very glad the tech scene is spreading out around the world rather than further concentrating
loorinm 9y ago
I'm tired of all the "How can they let this happen?!?!" as if we don't know how capitalism works. "Political will" is just code for financial incentive. The fact that this problem isn't being solved, tells us very clearly that this isn't actually a problem for the majority of the city's income. The tech industry is strong enough that people will still show up to collect their $120k salaries, even if they have to step over people and feces to do that. Obviously tourism must not be a big income for the city. Which is why no one cares what "Mr. Hotel owner" has to say. SF will continue to become a tech dystopia, because no one comes to San Francisco to stay or to make a home or a community. Everyone is passing through, there to make their fortune in tech, and then leave. No one has kids there. That's why this isn't solved. San Francisco is not a community. Until it is, this problem will never go away. The recent shady "election" of the new mayor - a white male tech VC, would seem to support this. Apparently a black woman who was willing to go along with the rich white men wasn't enough.
loorinm 9y ago
It actually seems plausible that SF might have the worst homeless problem as a direct result of actually doing the most to help the homeless. SF literally gets punished, the better job they do. As they provide services, the city only attracts and retains a bigger and bigger population who become accustomed to relying on just enough services to continue living on the streets. San Francisco is creating its own problem here due to its own altruism.
dredmorbius 9y ago
Thinking through the dynamics a few weeks ago, the thought occurred that at least part of the homeless crisis in the US, which really didn't start until the 1980s, may be attributable to the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo and subsequent changes to the U.S. financial system. California's Proposition 13 and massive constraints on housing don't much help either. Drugs, stress, climate, mental illness, and various social safety net breakdowns are, of course, other (and significant) factors. https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/eDscpi6Kg7L https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/eDscpi6K...
RickJWagner 9y ago
"You may ask, “Who cares what some dad from a flyover state or some businessman from another country thinks of us?” " I can't even believe the author had that thought. Amazing.
hprotagonist 9y ago
Lest we think that “eat the rich!” is a particularly new critique of states which fail to address the needs of their citizens: WHAT keeps you from giving now? Isn't the poor person there? Aren't your own warehouses full? Isn't the reward promised? The command is clear: the hungry person is dying now, the naked person is freezing now, the person in debt is beaten now-and you want to wait until tomorrow? "I'm not doing any harm," you say. "I just want to keep what I own, that's all." You own! You are like someone who sits down in a theater and keeps everyone else away, saying that what is there for everyone's use is your own. . . . If everyone took only what they needed and gave the rest to those in need, there would be no such thing as rich and poor. After all, didn't you come into life naked, and won't you return naked to the earth? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry person; the coat hanging unused in your closet belongs to the person who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the person with no shoes; the money which you put in the bank belongs to the poor. You do wrong to everyone you could help, but fail to help. --Basil, 4th century THE large rooms of which you are so proud are in fact your shame. They are big enough to hold crowds-and also big enough to shut out the voice of the poor. . . . There is your sister or brother, naked, crying! And you stand confused over the choice of an attractive floor covering. --Ambrose, 4th century
apple4ever 9y ago
Its actually easy to explain. Government regulation. End of line.

94 points by dsr12 9y ago

> You may ask, “Who cares what some dad from a flyover state or some businessman from another country thinks of us?” Do people really ask that? I'm sure they do, but the lack of respect for the "fly-over states" from America never fails to surprise me.

jstewartmobile 9y ago
The anti-redstater bot is still in R&D. https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/13/security-robots-are-being-used-to-ward-off-san-franciscos-homeless-population/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/13/security-robots-are-being-...
dionidium 9y ago
Do you spend much time on Hacker News? Such opinions are expressed here regularly. More seriously, it's not unusual to see, say, Florida casually compared to, say, Eastern Europe without any sense of how absurdly one-sided such comparisons actually are (e.g. on measures like GDP, standard of living, number of jobs, etc). Opinions are opinions. That's fine. But what I find as a Missourian living in NYC is that people on the coasts (who didn't move there from somewhere else) are largely ignorant of important factual properties of the South and the Midwest. It's not uncommon to see someone off by an order of magnitude about, say, GDP or population or whatever (expressed with extreme confidence, of course).
- dylanh 9y ago
  I'm from Florida -- and have deep roots going back more than 100 years. Florida is significantly less developed than it has any right to be, on a range of measures.
  - dionidium 9y ago
    Yes, that's right. It's well into the bottom half of U.S. states by GDP per capita, which still puts it at around 4-5x the GDP per capita in most Eastern European countries (which was my point). The United States is ridiculously wealthy, even in places Americans love to denigrate. That's worth remembering whenever you feel like comparing Florida unfavorably to this or that other place.
    - maym86 9y ago
      GDP isn't really a great measure of how well a population is doing if inequality is high and wages are stagnant for low paid workers. Florida has one of the highest levels of inequality in the US and the US in general had more inequality than most European countries. Are the working poor in the south really that much better off than most of Europe where healthcare and social housing are more readily available? GDP alone is a bad measure of success for individuals living somewhere if the benefits are not shared.
- jtmcmc 9y ago
  I think many of the people that live in major coastal cities that have extremely negative opinions of the rest of the country often lived in those places prior to moving there.
stevenwoo 9y ago
The rest of the paragraph in the article explains exactly why one should listen to outsiders.
louprado 9y ago
Honestly, I have only heard the term fly-over states when someone is mocking how liberals hypothetically mock red states.

habosa 9y ago

Justify it to tourists? How to we justify it to ourselves. Richest city in the richest state in the richest country in the world and we can't even provide a place for people to live. It's a failure at every level, there are too many culprits to list. Aside: I thought it was a great touch that in this article each homeless person pictured was mentioned by name. Humanizing these people is something we can all do without spending a penny. If someone stops you on the street asking for a dollar, at least have the courtesy to look them in the eye and politely decline. I've had a number of people thank me more forcefully for that small gesture than actually giving them money (of course, give if you can!).

shiado 9y ago
It really goes beyond providing a place to live. As somebody who does not live in the US it blows my mind that if somebody has mental illness bad enough that they cannot keep a job, they then cannot have health insurance and so they cannot get help because they cannot afford it. It really seems like Americans have optimized their healthcare system so that those that don't need help are the ones most eligible for it (which is perfect if you are an insurance company).
- ars 9y ago
  > they then cannot have health insurance and so they cannot get help because they cannot afford it What? That's not true. People without income can get health insurance paid for by the state. It's called Medicaid, look it up. > which is perfect if you are an insurance company Again, what? That doesn't help insurance companies. They don't care, they'll just raise their rates. It helps the average person I suppose, although they end up paying for it in taxes, so it doesn't make a net difference. > As somebody who does not live in the US What you really are is someone who gets all their info about the US from the news. Please remember: If it's in the news it's not typical. Your impression about a county should be the opposite of whatever you read in the news.
  - DrScump 9y ago
    It's called Medicaid, In CA, it's called MediCal... but SF has its own program called Healthy SF as well.

prepend 9y ago

When I first traveled to San Francisco I was amazed by the homeless problem. And I lived in NY where there’s a substantial number of homeless. Sadly, each time I travel back, it seems worse and I’m jaded. I bring cash, you run out after just a block or two. I was staying in the Embarcadero and every restaurant and shop had a homeless person outside the door. Do even if you just gave a dollar or your change, I ran out. This is a difficult problem and I don’t even know how to measure it, much less solve.

tzhenghao 9y ago

This is sad and depressing to read. I was out in SF last week for a tech conference. A great time to escape the cold Chicago winter for arguably good SF weather all year round. Unfortunately, politics and poor city management has made this city much harder to live in. I would hop off the BART at Powell station and smell the strong stench of human excretion, or tents right outside the 16th Mission St station entrance. I feel bad for the homeless, but I don’t think the city is doing a good job is helping their situation either. I love SF for all the opportunities it brings, but hate the fact that it isn’t well distributed to all its residents, both the rich and the poor. SF highlights what’s good (and bad) about America’s current situation imo.

a_cactus 9y ago
Many of the homeless people in SF probably escaped the cold Chicago winters too. Due to nice weather, California cities have to support many of the Midwest’s homeless population. To compensate, there should be a lot more federal funding for homelessness.
- tptacek 9y ago
  This is a myth. LAHSA does an annual homelessness census in Los Angeles. The overwhelming majority of the homeless are native Angelenos; 73% of them have been in LA for over 20 years.
- idlewords 9y ago
  Please stop spreading this pernicious myth. Nearly 3/4 of the SF homeless population became homeless while living in the city; 90% did so in California. "The most recent homeless count, conducted in January 2015, found 6,686 homeless people in the city. Seventy-one percent of people reported living in San Francisco when they became homeless, up from 61 percent in 2013. Just 10 percent said they were living outside California when they became homeless, and the remaining 19 percent were living in the state but not in the city." http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/What-San-Franciscans-know-about-homeless-isn-t-7224018.php http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/What-San-Francisc...

jimrandomh 9y ago

As long as California's home construction continues to be below population growth, it will keep getting worse. There are a lot of causes you can point at, but until there's actually enough housing getting built, they're all red herrings.

baseethrowaway 9y ago
Yeah, this is point on... no. Unless a price of a home is ridiculously cheap (under $100 a month?), and even then, people without any income and/or mentally unwell people will not magically become non-homeless. Next time, read your post two times after writing and check for logical errors.
- sorenbs 9y ago
  In Berlin you can live in a decent apartment in the city center for 400 $ per month. The only reason this is not possible in SF is that you have so much low density crap even in walking distance of the center. This is insane.
- remarkEon 9y ago
  How in the world is that point incorrect? Housing isn’t being built at nearly the required rates to at least depress the growth in costs - and that’s been fairly well established here and elsewhere. Are you saying that population growth in California isn’t a factor here? AFAIK the growth rate is still positive, albeit decreasing. Though that’s statewide, the pattern is the same in SF. This sounds like a basic supply and demand question, no?
kurthr 9y ago
As long as a city parking space costs more than a person on assistance can pay, you're not going to have affordable housing. You can't call an uncovered slot of 200sq/ft with no services a home, but that goes for >$200/mo (a lot more than $6/day in most places) in a less nice part of downtown San Jose... I don't want to think what it runs in SF. The 80sqft tiny houses which violate building code are running $73k+ ignoring substantial land (320sqft+) and utilities costs (it's owned by the city). You have to treat mental health and drug addiction, because other homeless people don't want to live with them. Probably, you'll have to move people out of the city center, if you don't want substantial new taxes. However, if you don't bother to enforce anything you'll still end up with several thousand people living in the creeks under tarps, because they'd rather do that than go outside the city center.

henrikschroder 9y ago

Other countries, other states, other cities have "solved" this problem in a bunch of different ways, it's not a unique problem. What's unique is the city's unwillingness to actually solve it. At the core, you need to spend more money by basically giving these people healthcare, mental health care, and a place to live. "But that's not fair, what about all the good, honest citizens of the city who work their asses off to pay the exorbitant rents and exorbitant health insurances and still struggle to put food on the table bla bla bla" No, it's not fair, but as long as that mentality rules, SF will have a homeless problem. The city sure as fuck doesn't lack the money to solve it, it lacks political will. "But that's socialism!" Yes. Now do you want to solve the problem, or keep sticking your head in the sand and hope it goes away through the magic of capitalism and the free market?

natalyarostova 9y ago
I wasn't under the impression that the current issue in SF was a lack of willingness for politicians in both the city, and the state, to throw money at the problem due to constituents complaining it is unfair due to its socialistic resemblence. But I'll admit I haven't read about it as much since I moved from SF.
jasonmp85 9y ago
If we can eminent domain land to build walls and pipelines, we can do it for housing. This isn't about money; it's cheap to build housing. It's about land. Seize it and build housing. The end. EDIT: Of course this will never happen in the U.S. and we will always have homeless people and poor people like it's some axiom of civilization.
- yonran 9y ago
  In America, the Takings Clause of the 5th Amendment requires that property owners must be compensated when their property is seized for public purposes, so any seizures still come out of the government’s budget. States are supposed to raise resources using their tax power, not the police power. The correct law to reform is California’s tax limitation law, Proposition 13.

KeepTalking 9y ago

This is the problem of our generation. Shame on us. Is this an Area where YC can help ? I challenge YC to consider Request for Startups that will consider ideas to fix this problem. I envision someone as powerful as YC and its network partnering with the city of SF,SJC,Oakland to allow for experimentation in finding long term fixes to this social issue. here is a NPR report that shows the impact of fixing the homeless problem. https://www.npr.org/2018/01/30/581778796/er-use-goes-down-as-hospital-program-pays-homeless-peoples-rent https://www.npr.org/2018/01/30/581778796/er-use-goes-down-as...

bitL 9y ago
C'mon, you can't make money off homeless. VC-backed startups are about 100x ROI and not guaranteed cash burn...

staunch 9y ago

Pretty soon the US could afford to give every person 1 x autonomous cars, 1 x off-grid solar paneled home, 1 x unlimited low earth orbit (low latency) satellite internet.

Animats 9y ago

SF spends about $214 million per year on homelessness. About half of that is for housing.[1] Dallas considered building a concentration camp.[2] [1] http://sfist.com/2016/04/12/no_san_francisco_does_not_spend_360.php http://sfist.com/2016/04/12/no_san_francisco_does_not_spend_... [2] http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/even-the-idea-of-homeless-concentration-camp-is-mischief-in-the-making-8269330 http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/even-the-idea-of-homeless...

meri_dian 9y ago

It's actually very easy to explain. Homeless people are attracted to places with nice year round weather. SF provides that. They are also attracted to places where they are tolerated or accepted. The people of SF are very tolerant of the homeless. As one of the commenters here says: "I bring cash, you run out after just a block or two." Sounds like a great place to be homeless. As for root causes, homelessness is mostly caused by drug addiction and mental illness. According the the National Coalition for the Homeless: "A 2008 survey by the United States Conference of Mayors asked 25 cities for their top three causes of homelessness. Substance abuse was the single largest cause of homelessness for single adults (reported by 68% of cities). Substance abuse was also mentioned by 12% of cities as one of the top three causes of homelessness for families. According to Didenko and Pankratz (2007), two-thirds of homeless people report that drugs and/or alcohol were a major reason for their becoming homeless." As for mental illness, according to a research summary compiled by the Treatment Advocacy Center: "Approximately one-third of the total homeless population includes individuals with serious, untreated mental illnesses" More affordable housing will not offer relief to the homeless because their state is largely caused by addiction and mental illness, not by high housing prices.

mirimir 9y ago
So do you have evidence that most SF homeless are immigrants? Many people have psychological problems, and/or dependence on various psychoactive drugs. And perhaps they do correlate with homelessness. But correlation does not prove causation. Maybe it's just that homelessness makes it all worse.
- meri_dian 9y ago
  "According to Didenko and Pankratz (2007), two-thirds of homeless people report that drugs and/or alcohol were a major reason for their becoming homeless."
  - mirimir 9y ago
    Sure, but the point is that homelessness is horrible treatment for drug and/or alcohol dependence.

Girlang 9y ago

The city pays about $45,000/year per homeless person according to the figures in that article. That’s why there’s so many of them.

mirimir 9y ago

Shortage of housing that's affordable by minimum-wage workers is the fundamental problem. Plus lack of workable public transportation to places where housing is affordable. I imagine a meat grinder something like this. First you get evicted because you earn too little to pay the rent. Then you lose your job because you can't stay presentable. After a while, it's pretty much irreversible. So yeah. We need affordable housing. And we need fair wages.

im3w1l 9y ago
> First you get evicted because you earn too little to pay the rent. > Then you lose your job because you can't stay presentable. Then you lose your health because you aren't insured. Then you lose your sanity because you take drugs to cope.
- mirimir 9y ago
  Thanks. I forgot those.
dredmorbius 9y ago
I ... know a few people from the first Internet bubble that this describes, unfortunately.

pmoriarty 9y ago

"I actually think it’s the worst it’s ever been," said Handlery, who’s been in the San Francisco hotel business for 38 years. I don't know. I remember 20 years ago, around the first internet bubble, seeing literally hundreds of homeless people along Market St. It was like an army of homeless people. There are far fewer these days, at least in the fancy shopping districts and along Market. There are more tents around other parts of the city, though. Maybe it's more of a case of gentrification pushing the homeless to other parts of the city so they're "out of sight, out of mind". It reminds me of a plan I once heard about, of rounding up all the homeless and shipping them off to Treasure Island. That plan was never put in to practice, but I was shocked it was ever seriously considered. Still, in many ways what's been achieved is something similar, with the effective eviction of many homeless from the shopping areas and in to tents outside of it. The whole subtext of this article is kind of troubling. It's like the only reason that homelessness is a problem is that the tourists are seeing it, and that it's hurting the tourist industry's bottom line. I'm glad people are seeing it. If they weren't much less would be done to help.

williamstein 9y ago
I just spent the last three days around Market street in San Francisco (near City Hall), and the degree of disturbing clearly miserable homelessness was really shocking to me. I live in Seattle (with a big homeless problem as well), and I also lived in the Bay Area 20 years ago (for five years), and it definitely appears worse to me now. It seems worse nbow in the sense of just plain misery/drugs/violence... It's really sad.

jtmcmc 9y ago

SF's homeless problem is a direct result of so many negative federal policies and so many positive SF policies that it's so funny that people come out of this with a negative opinion on SF. SF spends so much fucking money on the homeless, including 112 million on supportive housing for the formerly homeless and 27 million spent on eviction prevention. The problem is that the issue of homelessness is a FEDERAL issue and that no one city, even SF has the resources to combat it. As some have said SF and many other west coast cities are extremely attractive to the homeless because they have relatively lenient laws regarding them, ample social services (relative to any other city) and moderate temperatures. SF is also a mecca for sending your queer/trans child that your religious beliefs can't bear to have around you. There are many obvious solutions to mitigate homelessness. Provided government housing, decent physical and mental healthcare, job training. San Francisco does all of those things. However, the fact is supply and demand is totally out of whack because SF is a sink for homelessness. This needs to be addressed federally and until then all west coast cities will continue to be filled with homeless and have their social services over run.

BaronVonSteuben 9y ago
Why is homelessness a federal issue?
- jtmcmc 9y ago
  For many reasonsons. Some include the fact that homelessness isn't an issue that arises at a city level it's something that arises at a national level and was in part caused by federal decisions such as the privatization and defunding of mental health institutions and the failure of the federal government to appropriately care for veterans.
WkndTriathlete 9y ago
> As some have said SF and many other west coast cities are extremely attractive to the homeless because they have relatively lenient laws regarding them, ample social services (relative to any other city) and moderate temperatures. [citation needed] I'm skeptical of the weather argument. I would expect the homeless to move to Los Angeles or San Diego first. Of course, that's assuming the homeless have the mental capacity to even make the conscious decision to move there. I don't think most addicts or mentally disabled people have the wherewithal to make a move from, say, Chicago to SF. (I.e. how do you make a planned move with (a) no money and (b) no Google to figure out the commercial train line routes you can hop a ride on for free? Hop a train in Chicago and maybe end up in Lansing, Michigan or Toronto instead!)

ENGNR 9y ago

I took a trip to SF with the intention of later moving there for work. The #1 thing that prevented me from following through was the street issues. Not just from sympathy for the people who aren't helped after falling through the cracks (although that's also a big part of it), who wants to live in a place where you're one desperate decision from being mugged or attacked. Very glad the tech scene is spreading out around the world rather than further concentrating

loorinm 9y ago

I'm tired of all the "How can they let this happen?!?!" as if we don't know how capitalism works. "Political will" is just code for financial incentive. The fact that this problem isn't being solved, tells us very clearly that this isn't actually a problem for the majority of the city's income. The tech industry is strong enough that people will still show up to collect their $120k salaries, even if they have to step over people and feces to do that. Obviously tourism must not be a big income for the city. Which is why no one cares what "Mr. Hotel owner" has to say. SF will continue to become a tech dystopia, because no one comes to San Francisco to stay or to make a home or a community. Everyone is passing through, there to make their fortune in tech, and then leave. No one has kids there. That's why this isn't solved. San Francisco is not a community. Until it is, this problem will never go away. The recent shady "election" of the new mayor - a white male tech VC, would seem to support this. Apparently a black woman who was willing to go along with the rich white men wasn't enough.

loorinm 9y ago

It actually seems plausible that SF might have the worst homeless problem as a direct result of actually doing the most to help the homeless. SF literally gets punished, the better job they do. As they provide services, the city only attracts and retains a bigger and bigger population who become accustomed to relying on just enough services to continue living on the streets. San Francisco is creating its own problem here due to its own altruism.

dredmorbius 9y ago

Thinking through the dynamics a few weeks ago, the thought occurred that at least part of the homeless crisis in the US, which really didn't start until the 1980s, may be attributable to the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo and subsequent changes to the U.S. financial system. California's Proposition 13 and massive constraints on housing don't much help either. Drugs, stress, climate, mental illness, and various social safety net breakdowns are, of course, other (and significant) factors. https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/eDscpi6Kg7L https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/eDscpi6K...

RickJWagner 9y ago

"You may ask, “Who cares what some dad from a flyover state or some businessman from another country thinks of us?” " I can't even believe the author had that thought. Amazing.

hprotagonist 9y ago

Lest we think that “eat the rich!” is a particularly new critique of states which fail to address the needs of their citizens: WHAT keeps you from giving now? Isn't the poor person there? Aren't your own warehouses full? Isn't the reward promised? The command is clear: the hungry person is dying now, the naked person is freezing now, the person in debt is beaten now-and you want to wait until tomorrow? "I'm not doing any harm," you say. "I just want to keep what I own, that's all." You own! You are like someone who sits down in a theater and keeps everyone else away, saying that what is there for everyone's use is your own. . . . If everyone took only what they needed and gave the rest to those in need, there would be no such thing as rich and poor. After all, didn't you come into life naked, and won't you return naked to the earth? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry person; the coat hanging unused in your closet belongs to the person who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the person with no shoes; the money which you put in the bank belongs to the poor. You do wrong to everyone you could help, but fail to help. --Basil, 4th century THE large rooms of which you are so proud are in fact your shame. They are big enough to hold crowds-and also big enough to shut out the voice of the poor. . . . There is your sister or brother, naked, crying! And you stand confused over the choice of an attractive floor covering. --Ambrose, 4th century

apple4ever 9y ago

Its actually easy to explain. Government regulation. End of line.