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Why the "city's full services" and not America's full services? Shouldn't homeless people all over the nation be housed, not just the ones who come to San Franc
by racer-v 9y ago
Why the "city's full services" and not America's full services? Shouldn't homeless people all over the nation be housed, not just the ones who come to San Francisco?
- cheriot 9y agoWhen we support all of the people that can be verified living and working in SF prior to their homelessness then we can use your excuse for shirking our responsibilities.
- racer-v 9y agoWhy are we (collectively) only responsible to the homeless in SF? I'm proposing that we all take responsibility for homelessness in America as a whole.
- cheriot 9y agoGiving up until the Federal government solves the problem isn't good enough. Especially because nobody even knows what policies will work. It's better to experiment at the city level.
- racer-v 9y agoIt sounds like you're giving up until the city solves the problem. I've been homeless and taken in by others, and likewise my family has taken homeless folks into our own house. There is a lot we can do at a personal level, but in the last analysis the problem is systemic: it's caused by capitalism and the regime of private property, not the policies of one city.
- cheriot 9y agoI'm glad you've been so selfless. That doesn't mean the Federal government is going to do the first thing about homelessness. Nor does it mean elasticity of demand has the same slope in all markets. The city of San Francisco is in a unique position of having resources and political will to try new policies. I'll cast my vote accordingly.
- racer-v 9y agoYou remind me of someone who thinks he can fix a mouse problem in just one room of the house, without paying attention to the other, connected rooms. "I'm only worried about mice which are currently in the bedroom - thinking about the entire house is too much."
- cheriot 9y agoSolving big problems works better when you can solve the small problems they're composed of. First figure out how to catch, kill, or deter a mouse and then expand the solution to the rest of the house. You're way to focused on the concept of elasticity. There's a lot more to figure out before that's the immediate problem.
- racer-v 9y agoYou're making it sound like this is some difficult research problem. The answer to homelesness is simple: give them homes. Give them food. Give them money. This is how it works in every industrial society that's solved the problem. Your error is that you're obsessed with trying to fix this within a market economy, by specifically housing them in areas of high economic activity where they can supposedly find "opportunity". That won't work and is counterproductive.
- cheriot 9y agoMaking people permanently dependent doesn't work either. This country has entire communities subsisting on Medicare and social security. We don't need more of them. There's plenty of space in the places that have jobs and no reason to exclude people.
- racer-v 9y agoIf you're convinced that you should be making everyone work instead of subsidizing their existence (which is much cheaper), you need to bring jobs outside of the city. Telling everyone to just live in San Francisco doesn't scale.
- nitrogen 9y agoYou edited your post quite drastically. I'm responding to the original: > Why do you insist it be the city's services and not the federal govenment's services? Where in San Francisco do suggest we house the nation's 643,000 homeless if the problem isn't solved at a national level? Is it really only 643000? San Francisco's a city of ~800000 and could probably handle a 75% increase with a bit of high density construction. Sounds like such an easy problem to solve financially speaking. Why hasn't it been done already?
- racer-v 9y agoI got the number from 2009 data: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_States#Improved_data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Sta... I think the reason it hasn't been done is that it would change the character of the city in a way most people wouldn't consider positive.