5 ms·

Sure they could. Just pay for housing for all homeless SF residents. The only reason it doesn't happen is because people with money and power don't care enough

by door4 8y ago

Sure they could. Just pay for housing for all homeless SF residents. The only reason it doesn't happen is because people with money and power don't care enough to make the material sacrifices required to solve the problem.

DoreenMichele 8y ago
Homelessness is rooted in two things: very serious personal problems that have no easy answer combined with a dire shortage of genuinely affordable housing in the US.* We need to dramatically improve availability of affordable housing. That would get a lot of retirees and the like off the street. But the ones who would, say, burn the house down while you weren't looking need a lot more than a free place to live. If you care deeply about this issue, work on affordable housing. But please stop acting like homeless people are all puppies that need to be adopted by some well-meaning stranger. It's incredibly dehumanizing and tends to compound the problem. * https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-poverty-west-coast-no-30-affordable-homes/ https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-pove...
- wdewind 8y ago
  I've been reading you on here for a while and I respect your experience and deep thoughtfulness on these issues so I'm really interested in your opinion on this: what about the other half of the problem? How can we navigate the balance of providing mental health services vs. forced incarceration? I want this to be government funded, but our government has a track record on mental health that literally includes long periods in which "put them on an island" was the official policy for "treating" wide varieties of mentally ill people. What things could we do that would actually make a difference here? Is there any meaningful way to make progress without reducing the freedom of the mentally ill?
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    Better nutrition would help a whole lot. It is more effective and more humane than the drugs we prefer. If psychoactive drugs help a mental health issue, you can assume it has medical roots for at least a portion of the problem. Treating the medical roots, which can include various infections, is a good path forward. There used to be an article online called "Diseases of the mind." One thing it talked about: When antibiotics were invented, thousands of people in asylums were successfully treated for syphilis and then set free. Another point it made: Mental illness tends to occur in demographic clusters exactly like infectious disease, which implies it might actually be due to infectious disease. Let me suggest this for a little related reading: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16140867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16140867 Edit: This is what I am working on: http://pocketputer.com http://pocketputer.com Being homeless and helpless is crazy-making. I want to help people start making money, setting goals, etc while still homeless, like I did. Video from The Loneliness Project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYc85A8f2CM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYc85A8f2CM It's aimed at the issue if isolation in the elderly. Homeless people also suffer from social isolation. It's late. I'm tired. I will add that not all personal problems are about being crazy. Some people have learning disabilities or other barriers to regular employment. I feel like this answer really sucks because of the framing of the problem in this subthread. I have tried to answer your actual question, which is a legitimate question, but I think the problem is more complicated than that. :/
- PeterisP 8y ago
  It seems that affordable housing as such isn't a problem in USA, the problem is with affordable housing in certain areas where the jobs are. Housing a jobless, homeless person can be very affordable, there is a lot of empty, cheap housing available in areas where population has decreased due to lack of jobs. If we accept that we're going to subsidize these people anyway, then the lack of jobs at those locations isn't an issue.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    You aren't the first person to say something like this to me. I am willing to actively encourage poor people to develop portable income and move someplace cheaper. I am not willing to agree that we should ship people with boatloads of problems to the middle of fuck nowhere with no services, no shopping etc because burned out hell holes have nominally cheap housing. That's potentially an even emptier life than they currently have.
  - xg15 8y ago
    This seems like an enormously cynical way to argue to me. Yes, I'm sure there is still a lot of affordable living space available in the desert. It's not just about availability of work, it's also about the availability of infrastructure, opportunities to make connections, in short, ensuring a decent quality if life. If the current trend continues, this will probably push larger parts of the population to increasingly low-quality living spaces. This isn't even a problem restricted to homelessness.
    - PeterisP 8y ago
      But that's kind of the point - no matter what "should" be, it's an unavoidable fact that desirable real estate / desirable location of living is an inherently scarce, limited, exclusive resource; whatever you do, not everyone can have it. Living in the best locations is a luxury - the average person can't live in Hollywood Hills or NY SoHo, and yes, they have to to live in a lower quality living space that they can afford. A homeless person wanting to live only in SF is just like a starving person wanting only caviar; it's a luxury good that they're not going to realistically get because so many others want it as well. If you want better availability of infrastructure, better opportunities to make connections, and a better quality of life, then the question is how to improve the quality of life at locations which currently have low cost real estate - and decoupling income from jobs is one way that can happen; for many of these places the living environment actually is quite good (mainly because you can afford much more space), but the main (only?) problem is the lack of local jobs; if the local people wouldn't be forced to move to where the jobs are, there's nothing wrong with the infrastructure.
ribosometronome 8y ago
Do you earnestly think that setting up a fine for places that continue to use plastic straws is not considerably more trivial than creating a program to pay for housing for all the homeless in SF?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
remote_phone 8y ago
See my comment above. SF spends $300M on roughly 7500 homeless people per year.
woah 8y ago
SF spends as much money on streets and parks as they do on the homeless. It is a huge part of the city’s budget.
dang 8y ago
We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle. Would you please not create accounts to break HN's rules with? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

by door4 8y ago

DoreenMichele 8y ago

Homelessness is rooted in two things: very serious personal problems that have no easy answer combined with a dire shortage of genuinely affordable housing in the US.* We need to dramatically improve availability of affordable housing. That would get a lot of retirees and the like off the street. But the ones who would, say, burn the house down while you weren't looking need a lot more than a free place to live. If you care deeply about this issue, work on affordable housing. But please stop acting like homeless people are all puppies that need to be adopted by some well-meaning stranger. It's incredibly dehumanizing and tends to compound the problem. * https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-poverty-west-coast-no-30-affordable-homes/ https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-pove...

wdewind 8y ago
I've been reading you on here for a while and I respect your experience and deep thoughtfulness on these issues so I'm really interested in your opinion on this: what about the other half of the problem? How can we navigate the balance of providing mental health services vs. forced incarceration? I want this to be government funded, but our government has a track record on mental health that literally includes long periods in which "put them on an island" was the official policy for "treating" wide varieties of mentally ill people. What things could we do that would actually make a difference here? Is there any meaningful way to make progress without reducing the freedom of the mentally ill?
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  Better nutrition would help a whole lot. It is more effective and more humane than the drugs we prefer. If psychoactive drugs help a mental health issue, you can assume it has medical roots for at least a portion of the problem. Treating the medical roots, which can include various infections, is a good path forward. There used to be an article online called "Diseases of the mind." One thing it talked about: When antibiotics were invented, thousands of people in asylums were successfully treated for syphilis and then set free. Another point it made: Mental illness tends to occur in demographic clusters exactly like infectious disease, which implies it might actually be due to infectious disease. Let me suggest this for a little related reading: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16140867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16140867 Edit: This is what I am working on: http://pocketputer.com http://pocketputer.com Being homeless and helpless is crazy-making. I want to help people start making money, setting goals, etc while still homeless, like I did. Video from The Loneliness Project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYc85A8f2CM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYc85A8f2CM It's aimed at the issue if isolation in the elderly. Homeless people also suffer from social isolation. It's late. I'm tired. I will add that not all personal problems are about being crazy. Some people have learning disabilities or other barriers to regular employment. I feel like this answer really sucks because of the framing of the problem in this subthread. I have tried to answer your actual question, which is a legitimate question, but I think the problem is more complicated than that. :/
PeterisP 8y ago
It seems that affordable housing as such isn't a problem in USA, the problem is with affordable housing in certain areas where the jobs are. Housing a jobless, homeless person can be very affordable, there is a lot of empty, cheap housing available in areas where population has decreased due to lack of jobs. If we accept that we're going to subsidize these people anyway, then the lack of jobs at those locations isn't an issue.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  You aren't the first person to say something like this to me. I am willing to actively encourage poor people to develop portable income and move someplace cheaper. I am not willing to agree that we should ship people with boatloads of problems to the middle of fuck nowhere with no services, no shopping etc because burned out hell holes have nominally cheap housing. That's potentially an even emptier life than they currently have.
- xg15 8y ago
  This seems like an enormously cynical way to argue to me. Yes, I'm sure there is still a lot of affordable living space available in the desert. It's not just about availability of work, it's also about the availability of infrastructure, opportunities to make connections, in short, ensuring a decent quality if life. If the current trend continues, this will probably push larger parts of the population to increasingly low-quality living spaces. This isn't even a problem restricted to homelessness.
  - PeterisP 8y ago
    But that's kind of the point - no matter what "should" be, it's an unavoidable fact that desirable real estate / desirable location of living is an inherently scarce, limited, exclusive resource; whatever you do, not everyone can have it. Living in the best locations is a luxury - the average person can't live in Hollywood Hills or NY SoHo, and yes, they have to to live in a lower quality living space that they can afford. A homeless person wanting to live only in SF is just like a starving person wanting only caviar; it's a luxury good that they're not going to realistically get because so many others want it as well. If you want better availability of infrastructure, better opportunities to make connections, and a better quality of life, then the question is how to improve the quality of life at locations which currently have low cost real estate - and decoupling income from jobs is one way that can happen; for many of these places the living environment actually is quite good (mainly because you can afford much more space), but the main (only?) problem is the lack of local jobs; if the local people wouldn't be forced to move to where the jobs are, there's nothing wrong with the infrastructure.

ribosometronome 8y ago

Do you earnestly think that setting up a fine for places that continue to use plastic straws is not considerably more trivial than creating a program to pay for housing for all the homeless in SF?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

remote_phone 8y ago

See my comment above. SF spends $300M on roughly 7500 homeless people per year.

woah 8y ago

SF spends as much money on streets and parks as they do on the homeless. It is a huge part of the city’s budget.

dang 8y ago

We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle. Would you please not create accounts to break HN's rules with? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html