7 ms·

'Am I in the bad part of town?'

30 points by sverige 8y ago

dan_quixote 8y ago
The situation is arguably worse in Seattle. We have over 11000 homeless with a smaller total population. We also had a similar story in the news today -> https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/letter-to-seattle-convention-leaders-your-homeless-problem-is-out-of-control/770150626 https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/letter-to-seattle-conventio...
- Latteland 8y ago
  i don't think these are easy problems that can be solved just by the city being "less wasteful" and stopping doing stupid things, which seems to be the common response to the problems.
  - stuaxo 8y ago
    Housing the homeless seems to be more effective than a lot of alternatives.
    - mitochondrion 8y ago
      In a more humane age, they were housed in asylums. Then Reagan happened.
      - sverige 8y ago
        Actually, Big Pharma happened. And it was the left who argued that asylums were inhumane, more than the right arguing that it was too expensive. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was a real agent of change in how people thought about the problem as well.
      - rhapsodic 8y ago
        >In a more humane age, they were housed in asylums. Then Reagan happened. No, the ACLU happened. Because of their efforts, it's much more difficult today to involuntarily commit someone to an institution who thinks that aliens are controlling their digestive system. That's not to say that state governments weren't happy to empty out and shut down their mental institutions, however.
rahimnathwani 8y ago
SF spends over 300MM USD per year on homelessness (equivalent to 40k USD per homeless person per year): 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... The homeless population is less than 8k people.
- random_user456 8y ago
  The perfect example of an incompetent government. They could literally just pay each homeless person that 40k a year, or literally build the housing and house each person. Instead they waste 300 mill in non effective programs.
  - kaybe 8y ago
    The question remains how many people they kept off the streets with the program.
  - creep 8y ago
    >pay each homeless person that 40k a year Pay 40k/year to people who, likely, have never been in a situation in which they were taught how to manage money and live according to their means? To people who, likely, grew up with drug addicts for parents, or single mothers/fathers living paycheque-to-paycheque?
- Letmesleep69 8y ago
  You aren't measuring the people they keep off the street using that money. Dollars spent per homeless person is useless. If they spent 5 dollars more to reduce the homeless population to 1 would you say they spent 300MM per homeless person?
  - rahimnathwani 8y ago
    This is a reasonable point. Do you have links to any data about how much of that money was spent to keep people off the street and/or how many people were kept of the street by this expenditure per day during the last year?
rdlecler1 8y ago
Homelessness in SF has network effects which are entrenching it. The city does provide a lot of resources so it makes it ‘easier’ to be homeless. On top of that it’s quite centralized and so if you fall in because of mental health or economic issues you’re likely to run into people who are doing/selling drugs. With a less dense homeless population these probabilities are less. Then you have sufficiently warm weather year round (unlike NY). I don’t know of a humane way to solve this issue that doesn’t require billions and billions of dollars, but we may be doing more damage than good by not taking a harder stance like NY did.
- Pica_soO 8y ago
  Creative citys have more homeless- disrupting, non-incremental creativity relies on controlled schizophrenia, and those "useful" creatives have family members or children who get the full hardcore life destroying side of a brain on a runaway recombination trip. I`m happy im living in germany. I have a brother, who studied engineering - and he got hit hard by the "dark side of the family" with several episodes. He is on a state pension now, he will not live the life of his dreams, but at least he does not have to fear for his existence and roam the streets. Several members of my extended family have similar issues to a varying degree, and its the state pulling them through, the family carrying them - or spouses, who basically steer them remote. The last type can be very bewildering for others a grown up man, engineering great machinery, being basically ordered around like a little kid in social life by his wife. Do you really think, all those break-troughs grown on trees? Are made by those normal, 9-5-5 a week, incremental cogwheels? Don't you ever wonder, who dreams up all those paranoia and excitement drenched TV-shows you consume? All this can be done by everybody, if you just show up and work really hard? The homelessness you see, is a by product of the creative process. Get used to it. Handle it like a grown up, stop trying to solve the problem by protest-antics preachings to a reality who does not care about your moral outrage. Grow up.
bsaul 8y ago
i confirm this strange feeling when visiting SF. You talk with your friend about insane salaries and company valuation while walking on the street and you're passing next to drooling zombies with crazy eyes probably still high on drugs and no teeth. then you hear about real estate prices and the insane tax levels and you realize something has gone completely wrong in that region.
nailer 8y ago
As someone who grew up with yhe idyllic images of Full House and now travels regularly to SF for work: San Francisco is awful. You'll smell sewerage odors wandering up from a grate in Bangkok but you'll see and smell human shit smeared everywhere in downtown San Francisco.

30 points by sverige 8y ago

The situation is arguably worse in Seattle. We have over 11000 homeless with a smaller total population. We also had a similar story in the news today -> https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/letter-to-seattle-convention-leaders-your-homeless-problem-is-out-of-control/770150626 https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/letter-to-seattle-conventio...

Latteland 8y ago
i don't think these are easy problems that can be solved just by the city being "less wasteful" and stopping doing stupid things, which seems to be the common response to the problems.
- stuaxo 8y ago
  Housing the homeless seems to be more effective than a lot of alternatives.
  - mitochondrion 8y ago
    In a more humane age, they were housed in asylums. Then Reagan happened.
    - sverige 8y ago
      Actually, Big Pharma happened. And it was the left who argued that asylums were inhumane, more than the right arguing that it was too expensive. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was a real agent of change in how people thought about the problem as well.
    - rhapsodic 8y ago
      >In a more humane age, they were housed in asylums. Then Reagan happened. No, the ACLU happened. Because of their efforts, it's much more difficult today to involuntarily commit someone to an institution who thinks that aliens are controlling their digestive system. That's not to say that state governments weren't happy to empty out and shut down their mental institutions, however.

rahimnathwani 8y ago

SF spends over 300MM USD per year on homelessness (equivalent to 40k USD per homeless person per year): 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... The homeless population is less than 8k people.

random_user456 8y ago
The perfect example of an incompetent government. They could literally just pay each homeless person that 40k a year, or literally build the housing and house each person. Instead they waste 300 mill in non effective programs.
- kaybe 8y ago
  The question remains how many people they kept off the streets with the program.
- creep 8y ago
  >pay each homeless person that 40k a year Pay 40k/year to people who, likely, have never been in a situation in which they were taught how to manage money and live according to their means? To people who, likely, grew up with drug addicts for parents, or single mothers/fathers living paycheque-to-paycheque?
Letmesleep69 8y ago
You aren't measuring the people they keep off the street using that money. Dollars spent per homeless person is useless. If they spent 5 dollars more to reduce the homeless population to 1 would you say they spent 300MM per homeless person?
- rahimnathwani 8y ago
  This is a reasonable point. Do you have links to any data about how much of that money was spent to keep people off the street and/or how many people were kept of the street by this expenditure per day during the last year?

rdlecler1 8y ago

Homelessness in SF has network effects which are entrenching it. The city does provide a lot of resources so it makes it ‘easier’ to be homeless. On top of that it’s quite centralized and so if you fall in because of mental health or economic issues you’re likely to run into people who are doing/selling drugs. With a less dense homeless population these probabilities are less. Then you have sufficiently warm weather year round (unlike NY). I don’t know of a humane way to solve this issue that doesn’t require billions and billions of dollars, but we may be doing more damage than good by not taking a harder stance like NY did.

Pica_soO 8y ago
Creative citys have more homeless- disrupting, non-incremental creativity relies on controlled schizophrenia, and those "useful" creatives have family members or children who get the full hardcore life destroying side of a brain on a runaway recombination trip. I`m happy im living in germany. I have a brother, who studied engineering - and he got hit hard by the "dark side of the family" with several episodes. He is on a state pension now, he will not live the life of his dreams, but at least he does not have to fear for his existence and roam the streets. Several members of my extended family have similar issues to a varying degree, and its the state pulling them through, the family carrying them - or spouses, who basically steer them remote. The last type can be very bewildering for others a grown up man, engineering great machinery, being basically ordered around like a little kid in social life by his wife. Do you really think, all those break-troughs grown on trees? Are made by those normal, 9-5-5 a week, incremental cogwheels? Don't you ever wonder, who dreams up all those paranoia and excitement drenched TV-shows you consume? All this can be done by everybody, if you just show up and work really hard? The homelessness you see, is a by product of the creative process. Get used to it. Handle it like a grown up, stop trying to solve the problem by protest-antics preachings to a reality who does not care about your moral outrage. Grow up.

bsaul 8y ago

i confirm this strange feeling when visiting SF. You talk with your friend about insane salaries and company valuation while walking on the street and you're passing next to drooling zombies with crazy eyes probably still high on drugs and no teeth. then you hear about real estate prices and the insane tax levels and you realize something has gone completely wrong in that region.

nailer 8y ago

As someone who grew up with yhe idyllic images of Full House and now travels regularly to SF for work: San Francisco is awful. You'll smell sewerage odors wandering up from a grate in Bangkok but you'll see and smell human shit smeared everywhere in downtown San Francisco.