4 ms·

Tolerant San Francisco fed up with dirty, smelly streets

33 points by spking 9y ago

inostia 9y ago
In the past week I've been assaulted and threatened twice by crazed homeless men. The first grabbed a glass bottle from his cart and raised it up as if he was going to hit me in the head (this was by Civic Center BART). The second charged angrily at me near Lake Merritt. I'm really fed up personally with the "homeless advocates" who are willing to overlook this violent and scary behavior in the name of social justice... We all have the right to live in peace.
- dokein 9y ago
  I've worked in homeless shelters and for public health. The major mistake uninformed advocates (not all advocates) make is they think: this is a person, just like me, down on their luck. It happens because that's how we naturally sympathize with people -- we put ourselves in their shoes. Unfortunately that only describes a small minority of homeless people. The majority have serious psychiatric and/or personality disorders and/or drug abuse and/or health problems -- there's a lot of collinearity here too so it's hard to analyze the percent variance explained by each. Thus, their needs are different. Instead of just more opportunities (and the requisite services to bridge them to those opportunities), many are in need of a heavily structured mental health-oriented program. In the past there was instituionalization, which of course failed because we treated these individuals as subhuman, rather than human with disability. I'm not sure what the best solution is but providing free gyms and needles ain't it.
parliament32 9y ago
So SF's finally figuring out why "compassion" doesn't work?
alexandercrohde 9y ago
I'm glad people are finally speaking up. It was a really weird situation. What scared me wasn't the homelessness, but that nobody felt comfortable acknowledging it or saying anything about it (positive, nor negative) for fear of being insensitive. I don't think anybody actually thought the situation was acceptable, it was just an Emporer's New Robes situation. It disgusted me that so many people could disconnect themselves that much from reality.
John_KZ 9y ago
There's one small trick that makes homelessness disappear: Housing.
- wetpaws 9y ago
  San Francisco homelessness has almost nothing to do with housing. For the most part, as people mentioned, it is either related to addiction or deinstitutionalization that caused a lot of mental people end on the streets.
  - John_KZ 9y ago
    You can still provide some sort of housing to those people. Just taking them off the streets will improve everyones quality of living (if it's as bad as described in the article). Most of them would certainly be capable of some kind of work too. However to me this article reads like a campaign of a "conservative" candidate. "Look at what those tolerant liberals did to us, we need to be more intolerant and start using violence and jails." The solution clearly isn't to ignore the problem but they don't seem to offer a solution to the problem, only a way to push it to someone else's back yard.
pascalxus 9y ago
In China, in some parts, you can rent super cheap apartments for 80$ per month in some cases: they may not be super lavish or durable or even have electricity everywhere, but it's better than living out on the street. I think SF should declare a state of emergency, throw the entire Rulebook/lawbook out the window and work with several developers to build at least 10,000 units as cost effectively as possible. We need more options between the current 2 extremes: 2 million dollar condo vs 20$ tent. The 240 million dollars per year they're currently spending to help the homeless will go a LOT farther that way.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
oicu812 9y ago
I think the photos and additional info in these links add some context: [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16893415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16893415 [2] https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Breed-Wiener-working-to-ease-destructive-12597752.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Breed-Wiener-workin...

33 points by spking 9y ago

In the past week I've been assaulted and threatened twice by crazed homeless men. The first grabbed a glass bottle from his cart and raised it up as if he was going to hit me in the head (this was by Civic Center BART). The second charged angrily at me near Lake Merritt. I'm really fed up personally with the "homeless advocates" who are willing to overlook this violent and scary behavior in the name of social justice... We all have the right to live in peace.

dokein 9y ago
I've worked in homeless shelters and for public health. The major mistake uninformed advocates (not all advocates) make is they think: this is a person, just like me, down on their luck. It happens because that's how we naturally sympathize with people -- we put ourselves in their shoes. Unfortunately that only describes a small minority of homeless people. The majority have serious psychiatric and/or personality disorders and/or drug abuse and/or health problems -- there's a lot of collinearity here too so it's hard to analyze the percent variance explained by each. Thus, their needs are different. Instead of just more opportunities (and the requisite services to bridge them to those opportunities), many are in need of a heavily structured mental health-oriented program. In the past there was instituionalization, which of course failed because we treated these individuals as subhuman, rather than human with disability. I'm not sure what the best solution is but providing free gyms and needles ain't it.

parliament32 9y ago

So SF's finally figuring out why "compassion" doesn't work?

alexandercrohde 9y ago

I'm glad people are finally speaking up. It was a really weird situation. What scared me wasn't the homelessness, but that nobody felt comfortable acknowledging it or saying anything about it (positive, nor negative) for fear of being insensitive. I don't think anybody actually thought the situation was acceptable, it was just an Emporer's New Robes situation. It disgusted me that so many people could disconnect themselves that much from reality.

John_KZ 9y ago

There's one small trick that makes homelessness disappear: Housing.

wetpaws 9y ago
San Francisco homelessness has almost nothing to do with housing. For the most part, as people mentioned, it is either related to addiction or deinstitutionalization that caused a lot of mental people end on the streets.
- John_KZ 9y ago
  You can still provide some sort of housing to those people. Just taking them off the streets will improve everyones quality of living (if it's as bad as described in the article). Most of them would certainly be capable of some kind of work too. However to me this article reads like a campaign of a "conservative" candidate. "Look at what those tolerant liberals did to us, we need to be more intolerant and start using violence and jails." The solution clearly isn't to ignore the problem but they don't seem to offer a solution to the problem, only a way to push it to someone else's back yard.

pascalxus 9y ago

In China, in some parts, you can rent super cheap apartments for 80$ per month in some cases: they may not be super lavish or durable or even have electricity everywhere, but it's better than living out on the street. I think SF should declare a state of emergency, throw the entire Rulebook/lawbook out the window and work with several developers to build at least 10,000 units as cost effectively as possible. We need more options between the current 2 extremes: 2 million dollar condo vs 20$ tent. The 240 million dollars per year they're currently spending to help the homeless will go a LOT farther that way.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

oicu812 9y ago

I think the photos and additional info in these links add some context: [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16893415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16893415 [2] https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Breed-Wiener-working-to-ease-destructive-12597752.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Breed-Wiener-workin...