3 ms·

San Francisco spend over $300Million/yr on 7500 homeless people per year, and there's still human feces all over Market Street.

stuartaxelowen 9y ago
I'm no where near an expert here, but at that expense, why not just give them the money?
- AnthonyMouse 9y ago
  > I'm no where near an expert here, but at that expense, why not just give them the money? If you give them the money then all the money goes to the people it's supposed to help and there is no cut for the middle men. But the middle men are the ones with the ability to successfully lobby for programs to exist. It's the same sort of thing as low income housing subsidies. Landlords lobby for them because they pretend to address high rents when their actual result is to keep rents high. Or even increase rents by stimulating demand without increasing supply.
  - adventured 9y ago
    That is in fact not the primary issue. The primary issue is: if you directly give the homeless people $40,000, the people in the lower and lower middle 1/3 economic tier are going to ask why they're not getting that kind of help - cash thrown at them - despite the fact that they're working two jobs and at least paying some taxes.
    - AnthonyMouse 9y ago
      > The primary issue is: if you directly give the homeless people $40,000, the people in the lower and lower middle 1/3 economic tier are going to ask why they're not getting that kind of help - cash thrown at them - despite the fact that they're working two jobs and at least paying some taxes. To which the obvious solution is a UBI. Which would then solve the equivalent problem with all the programs aimed at the working poor.
- rcxdude 9y ago
  Also, a significant fraction of homeless will probably not be able to effectively use the money without a support structure in place. It's very likely a good sum of that money would wind up in the wrong hands and help no-one.
- michaelt 9y ago
  Politicians fear that being generous to homeless people will attract more homeless people from other cities, causing a net increase in homeless people in their city. I mean, if in City A the cops hassle homeless people and the only support offered is bus tickets to other cities, while City B offers good support and humane policing, I'd take the bus ticket from A to B - who wouldn't?
JBlue42 9y ago
Wow, didn't know that. A lot of politics, unfortunately, is showing visible progress. Whether it's $300mm or $100mm, some sort of impact should've been visible on the streets or at least touted by our mayors due to the political points they get. Goes for transit as well. Because the homeowning / wealthy won't pay their fair share of taxes, those of us in the lower brackets who will really benefit from public transit also have to take on that burden at the sales tax level.
- stult 9y ago
  One problem with homelessness is that it's in many ways a classic externality. It's often cheaper for localities to provide no services (which cost money and attract more homeless individuals) and instead to encourage homeless people to migrate elsewhere. Hence the controversial practice wherein some cities buy homeless people one way bus tickets to other cities, or plane tickets to other states in the extraordinary case of Hawaii. So even if that $300m got 7500 individuals off the street, another 7500 would move in to replace them right away. Which is why you don't see any visible effects of the spending. Even when cities do undertake to provide services rather than shifting costs, their capacity to provide those services is only a tiny fraction of the national demand. And it's functionally a national or at least regional market because the homeless tend to be a very mobile population due to lack of fixed housing or employment. So you get cities like Portland, OR, where they provide extensive services, but the downtown areas where the services are located have been inundated with homeless people, which has been extremely detrimental to businesses in the area, has strained public safety resources, and damaged the quality of life of many local residents (eg a couple years ago a homeless man made a tent home on the sidewalk outside my apartment and then would scream at the top of his lungs for hours every night for months, making it impossible to sleep, presumably because of some mental illness). In some ways, it makes zero sense for San Francisco to spend any money at all on the homeless, because it's one the most expensive places in the nation that we could be housing and providing assistance to the homeless population. But homeless people have rights, including the freedom to travel where they want. So they will continue to be attracted to cities that treat them well, at a disproportionate expense to locals (who ironically tend to be the ones most sympathetic to their need), while NIMBYists contribute nothing and experience no detriment. While also generating homeless people at the same rate as the more welcoming areas. All of which is to say that we need some national policy here, otherwise a few cities will continue to shoulder the burden while most will skate along as free riders. A functioning mental health system would be incredibly helpful, for example, because then mental health services wouldn't be limited to a few locations.
chrischen 9y ago
Wow, that's like a 40k salary per homeless person. Where did you get those numbers (I'm interested in quoting the source too)?
- a_bonobo 9y ago
  Here's an interesting in-depth article that cites a slightly lower number: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-record-241-million-on-homeless-6808319.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-recor... But it's from 2016 so it probably grew since then. A lot of the money goes to social housing towards 'ex' homeless people.
- s0rce 9y ago
  Its not really relevant how much is spent per homeless person, what you want to know is how many people that money keeps off the streets. If you spent 100M and kept all but one last homeless man off the street by your metric you've spent 100M/homeless, while in reality you've spent 100M to keep all but one off the street.
  - refurb 9y ago
    Should be trivial to find out how many formerly homeless people SF current supports.
- pfarnsworth 9y ago
  https://www.sfchronicle.com/aboutsfgate/article/Despite-money-and-work-homelessness-in-SF-as-bad-11242946.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/aboutsfgate/article/Despite-mone... $275M last year, $305M this year. Absolutely no accountability for the spend and no metrics to figure out if it's actually doing anything. It's a complete waste of money.

stuartaxelowen 9y ago

I'm no where near an expert here, but at that expense, why not just give them the money?

AnthonyMouse 9y ago
> I'm no where near an expert here, but at that expense, why not just give them the money? If you give them the money then all the money goes to the people it's supposed to help and there is no cut for the middle men. But the middle men are the ones with the ability to successfully lobby for programs to exist. It's the same sort of thing as low income housing subsidies. Landlords lobby for them because they pretend to address high rents when their actual result is to keep rents high. Or even increase rents by stimulating demand without increasing supply.
- adventured 9y ago
  That is in fact not the primary issue. The primary issue is: if you directly give the homeless people $40,000, the people in the lower and lower middle 1/3 economic tier are going to ask why they're not getting that kind of help - cash thrown at them - despite the fact that they're working two jobs and at least paying some taxes.
  - AnthonyMouse 9y ago
    > The primary issue is: if you directly give the homeless people $40,000, the people in the lower and lower middle 1/3 economic tier are going to ask why they're not getting that kind of help - cash thrown at them - despite the fact that they're working two jobs and at least paying some taxes. To which the obvious solution is a UBI. Which would then solve the equivalent problem with all the programs aimed at the working poor.
rcxdude 9y ago
Also, a significant fraction of homeless will probably not be able to effectively use the money without a support structure in place. It's very likely a good sum of that money would wind up in the wrong hands and help no-one.
michaelt 9y ago
Politicians fear that being generous to homeless people will attract more homeless people from other cities, causing a net increase in homeless people in their city. I mean, if in City A the cops hassle homeless people and the only support offered is bus tickets to other cities, while City B offers good support and humane policing, I'd take the bus ticket from A to B - who wouldn't?

JBlue42 9y ago

Wow, didn't know that. A lot of politics, unfortunately, is showing visible progress. Whether it's $300mm or $100mm, some sort of impact should've been visible on the streets or at least touted by our mayors due to the political points they get. Goes for transit as well. Because the homeowning / wealthy won't pay their fair share of taxes, those of us in the lower brackets who will really benefit from public transit also have to take on that burden at the sales tax level.

stult 9y ago
One problem with homelessness is that it's in many ways a classic externality. It's often cheaper for localities to provide no services (which cost money and attract more homeless individuals) and instead to encourage homeless people to migrate elsewhere. Hence the controversial practice wherein some cities buy homeless people one way bus tickets to other cities, or plane tickets to other states in the extraordinary case of Hawaii. So even if that $300m got 7500 individuals off the street, another 7500 would move in to replace them right away. Which is why you don't see any visible effects of the spending. Even when cities do undertake to provide services rather than shifting costs, their capacity to provide those services is only a tiny fraction of the national demand. And it's functionally a national or at least regional market because the homeless tend to be a very mobile population due to lack of fixed housing or employment. So you get cities like Portland, OR, where they provide extensive services, but the downtown areas where the services are located have been inundated with homeless people, which has been extremely detrimental to businesses in the area, has strained public safety resources, and damaged the quality of life of many local residents (eg a couple years ago a homeless man made a tent home on the sidewalk outside my apartment and then would scream at the top of his lungs for hours every night for months, making it impossible to sleep, presumably because of some mental illness). In some ways, it makes zero sense for San Francisco to spend any money at all on the homeless, because it's one the most expensive places in the nation that we could be housing and providing assistance to the homeless population. But homeless people have rights, including the freedom to travel where they want. So they will continue to be attracted to cities that treat them well, at a disproportionate expense to locals (who ironically tend to be the ones most sympathetic to their need), while NIMBYists contribute nothing and experience no detriment. While also generating homeless people at the same rate as the more welcoming areas. All of which is to say that we need some national policy here, otherwise a few cities will continue to shoulder the burden while most will skate along as free riders. A functioning mental health system would be incredibly helpful, for example, because then mental health services wouldn't be limited to a few locations.

chrischen 9y ago

Wow, that's like a 40k salary per homeless person. Where did you get those numbers (I'm interested in quoting the source too)?

a_bonobo 9y ago
Here's an interesting in-depth article that cites a slightly lower number: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-record-241-million-on-homeless-6808319.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-recor... But it's from 2016 so it probably grew since then. A lot of the money goes to social housing towards 'ex' homeless people.
s0rce 9y ago
Its not really relevant how much is spent per homeless person, what you want to know is how many people that money keeps off the streets. If you spent 100M and kept all but one last homeless man off the street by your metric you've spent 100M/homeless, while in reality you've spent 100M to keep all but one off the street.
- refurb 9y ago
  Should be trivial to find out how many formerly homeless people SF current supports.
pfarnsworth 9y ago
https://www.sfchronicle.com/aboutsfgate/article/Despite-money-and-work-homelessness-in-SF-as-bad-11242946.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/aboutsfgate/article/Despite-mone... $275M last year, $305M this year. Absolutely no accountability for the spend and no metrics to figure out if it's actually doing anything. It's a complete waste of money.