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Salesforce’s Benioff Spars with Twitter’s Dorsey Over Support for Homeless

42 points by petethomas 8y ago

gruglife 8y ago
There is only one way to end this ..... fight to the death :)
saagarjha 8y ago
> Benioff says his investors aren’t complaining that he’s campaigning for a tax increase. Honestly, this is quite surprising. I know Tim Cook has been grilled in the past at shareholder meetings for "wasting" money on green initiatives.
- dahdum 8y ago
  I'd think that positioning himself this way would be seen as a positive. The more he virtue signals and raises his own profile the easier it is to move in the Fortune 500/1000 circles, landing new or expanded contracts.
romed 8y ago
Kinda seeing Jack's side of the argument. Why do we need the voters to partition up the city budget in perpetuity? It's a bad way to run the government. The city has a far better, far cheaper lever by which it can fix the homelessness crisis: nuke the housing market by permitting 45-foot-tall multifamily buildings on every parcel in the city. The fact that they will never do this tells you everything about that city.
- ummonk 8y ago
  Yup, exactly. It's a terrible idea to start passing piecemeal tax increases to fund specific programs. And Prop C will only put an expensive bandaid on the housing crisis, absent an actual increase in the housing stock; any homeless you house will just result in displacing lower middle class people.
- Animats 8y ago
  It's been tried. Huge failures. See Robert Taylor Homes (Chicago)[1], Pruett-Igoe (St. Louis) [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_Homes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_Homes [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe
  - Inconel 8y ago
    Both you and the user notfromhere seem to be interpreting the GP post as suggesting the solution is large public housing projects, it's possible my reading comprehension is really off today but I see no such suggestion. To me the GP seems to be saying that so much as high housing costs are responsible for at least part of the homeless crisis, perhaps less restrictive zoning might help considering that large portions of SF and very large portions of the Bay Area as a whole are pretty low density, at least compared to other global urban centers.
  - grandmczeb 8y ago
    Those are public housing projects. Lifting zoning requirements is a different solution.
  - romed 8y ago
    Neither you nor the sibling comment I'm not going to bother responding to expended one iota of brainpower parsing my post. This is what an ordinary 45-foot-tall apartment building looks like in San Francisco. This type of building houses the overwhelming majority of San Franciscans, while occupying relatively little land: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7759476,-122.4242439,3a,75y,137.71h,93.81t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sDif2OJtOFTRQ84TpPoWeuA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7759476,-122.4242439,3a,75y,... Most of the land in San Francisco is limited by law to short, detached, single-family dwellings. Erasing that regulation will make housing dramatically cheaper.
- notfromhere 8y ago
  Housing at risk populations in huge towers has already been tried tons of times. Look up Cabrini-Green
  - thatswrong0 8y ago
    45 feet is not a huge tower.
    - njarboe 8y ago
      True, but I read it as 45 stories (and thought, maybe not everywhere). Probably others did also.
- njarboe 8y ago
  For other in this thread: 45ft is 4 or 5 stories, not a tower.
cheeze 8y ago
Good. It sickens me that there is so much wealth in both the Bay Area and Seattle, yet both cities are going through a homelessness crisis. I recognize I'm part of the problem and I'm working to help the problem, but I'm only a little guy, not a billionaire. Tech companies keep building skyscrapers, feeding their engineers food every day and paying their employees ludicrous salaries, yet those employees walk past tons of homeless folks on their way to the offices... Are there any examples that folks are aware of where a big tech company (or really any company) stepped in to help with a crisis like this? What companies should we be celebrating for being 'good citizens'?
- fx32s 8y ago
  Actually many of them regularly donate to charity and have employee charity matching programmes (https://macrumors.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202084918-Apple-Support-for-Charity https://macrumors.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202084918-Ap...) I'm not sure if only money would help in this case without tackling the fundamental reasons of why people are homeless (lack of social security and affordable housing). California is the state with the highest income taxes but little goes to solve these fundamental problems. Pointing to companies and claiming "you make money, you should fix everything that goes wrong here" is too simple in my opinion. Companies exist to create wealth for the shareholders. I don't particularly like it but that's how the system is set up.
- Padradov 8y ago
  If I may ask - why are you part of the problem?
  - InclinedPlane 8y ago
    If you live in a booming city and you have a high paying job then you are part of the problem. You are paying lots of money for rent, which raises the cost of housing, which forces a lot of people who can't afford housing elsewhere. As an individual it's difficult to not contribute to these problems, and the solution isn't for high wage workers to stop moving to cities either. But it's important to recognize that simply going about your daily life with no ill intentions doesn't mean that nobody is harmed by your actions. We live in complex societies with complex interrelationships and complex rules (laws, regulations, social norms, etc.) that govern them. We have a responsibility to understand the unintended consequences of our actions so we can actively correct for them (through government, laws, taxation, etc.)
mmmmmmmmm 8y ago
Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. I don't know what Benioff's motivation is here, but if he actually thinks this tax will improve the homeless situation, he's even dumber than he looks.
andyburke 8y ago
I was never a Salesforce fan, but Benioff is making me take a second look.
- anothergoogler 8y ago
  Don't read too much into it: SFDC feels the pinch in recruiting, and they are heavily invested in a San Francisco presence with their tower.
dpflan 8y ago
“This is the Bay Area: We have 70 billionaires. We're the headquarters of the 4th industrial revolution,” Benioff said. “We're in a homeless crisis."
sremani 8y ago
From Wikipedia: In 2014, the City of San Francisco spent $167 million annually on housing homeless residents.[64] By 2016, total spending (including housing and treatment) was believed to be $241 million annually.[65] However, much of this spending is focused on housing the formerly homeless, or those at risk, and not the currently homeless. The city's shelter program has approximately 1,200 beds, and several hundred people are on a waitlist to be housed.[65] Even with 1,200 shelter beds and several hundred on waiting list, most homeless avoid the shelter for various reasons such as: overcrowding, safety, and rules that, among other things, separate people experiencing homelessness from their possessions, pets, and loved ones. In 2015, the Navigation Center shelter was created to address these issues.[65] -------------------------------------------- How much money is going to solve this problem ? This reminds me of extending roads to tackle congestion, 5 years after the extension, the roads have same congestion conditions because of the sprawl. At some point, spending more money and making it better for being homeless in SFO will attract even more homeless and creating the conditions similar to today. I do not have enough information about Prop C and what each of them are coming from, but I am leaning towards Jack simply because the holier than thou smugness from Benioff.
- wbronitsky 8y ago
  Just to make sure I understand your argument: You are going to vote a certain way on a proposition because tech a CEO was smug about why you should vote one way or another? Regardless of which way you are voting, there has to be a better, more informed and analytical way to decide how to vote.
  - sremani 8y ago
    It never occurred to me but I think as a non-resident of SFO I should have refrained from commenting on this issue. Consider my post as an observation of a curious mind.
    - wbronitsky 8y ago
      I don't think your feelings on this are invalid at all! In fact, I think anyone should contribute here. I was just pointing out that a more rigorous system to figure out who/what to vote for would probably benefit you and everyone who lives in the community that is governed by the voting outcomes.
Animats 8y ago
There's now homeless removal as a service.[1] "Call Bio SoCal for fast and professional service to clean up and remove the homeless encampment. We operate 24/7 and can provide service during or after business hours to meet your needs and get you back in business." In Seattle, there's an app for reporting homeless encampments.[2] Dallas considered a concentration camp, to be called "Dignity Field", at an old military base.[3] [1] https://biosocal.com/services/homeless-encampment-clean-out/ https://biosocal.com/services/homeless-encampment-clean-out/ [2] https://www.seattle.gov/homelessness/unauthorized-encampments https://www.seattle.gov/homelessness/unauthorized-encampment... [3] https://www.dallasnews.com/news/news/2016/05/02/old-naval-base-near-grand-prairie-may-be-repurposed-for-homeless-tent-city-exiles https://www.dallasnews.com/news/news/2016/05/02/old-naval-ba...
- mmmmmmmmm 8y ago
  Bio SoCal seems like a great service. Thanks for making me aware.
- tathougies 8y ago
  The first two seem distasteful, but I fail to see how the dignity field proposal falls in the same vein. You are both criticizing inaction (just get them out of here and I don't care what happens to them) and action (let's get them in one area, offer them shelter, and provide services). This seems to me like speaking out of both sides of your mouth.
- Inconel 8y ago
  Name aside, which just seems very paternalistic, based on the article you linked I can't see anything particularly objectionable about the third proposal. I would've definitely preferred to live in that kind of sanctioned open air campground compared to some of the places I've had so sleep.
- Jach 8y ago
  "Dignity Field" is pretty good, I still prefer "Sanctuary District"[0] though. [0] http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Sanctuary_District http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Sanctuary_District
shafyy 8y ago
What do you guys think is the biggest lever for this crisis?
- olivermarks 8y ago
  I've lived in the area for twenty five plus years and have known local social workers and city employees. I also have friends who are effectively homeless (living in RV's) having grown up in silicon valley and been evicted from family rental homes and can't afford massively increased rents. There's a huge number of people who wind up in San Francisco for all sorts of reasons and the civic reputation for being less harsh on homeless plus relatively mild weather makes it a place people wind up staying in. There's always been flop houses in the tenderloin and people on the streets but the disparity between the wealthy and the poor is very striking now. The opioid crisis is a big thing in SF but the levers are unaffordable rents, no care for the insane (who often self medicate with street drugs), an attractive place with lots of dumpster diving lifestyles behind classy restaurants and a general romanticism that dates back to the beats and hippies. There are huge numbers of people living in their cars and couch surfing who are less visible than the unwashed zombie insane that you see at most downtown intersections and passed out on sidewalks but this is in essence a have and have not crisis
- grandmczeb 8y ago
  High housing costs.
- tomatotomato37 8y ago
  As an outsider looking in I would say decent weather and constraining geography that prevents the usual urban reaction to high housing prices, which is to sprawl like mad.
- InclinedPlane 8y ago
  There are many but the biggest is probably the destruction of unions, destruction of the social safety net (e.g. welfare et al), and especially the stagnation of wages for nearly the last half century. If the minimum wage had kept pace with, say, per capita GDP since the 1960s it would be at around $20/hr by now, and if it had been increased gradually over time to keep parity with economic growth (as it had been for decades in the past) then there would be no great immediate economic shock to having the minimum wage "so high". And such a high minimum wage would also raise the wages of a lot of other folks as well, pushing up the bottom end of the wage scale, forcing a lot more of the economic growth since the '80s to have gone to workers instead of just corporate and millionaire profits/income. All of which would have led to a situation where it was much more difficult for climbing housing prices to force huge numbers of people into a homelessness that represented a huge uphill climb to get out of. On top of that there's the insane SF zoning problems and many other issues, but those are really just the icing on the cake, the core problem is the massive wealth/income inequality that exists in the US today.
samstave 8y ago
This is a complex issue and is close to home for me. I have thought a lot about what I would want to do regarding hte homeless problem, and have looked into the spend that SF has to this problem, as well as the self-limiting regulations on the housing market which prevent small-size, high density developments from even doing proof-of-concepts. After thinking on the problem a bit, I am personally drawn to the following ideas: 1. Mobile health and hygeine centers: -- These would be truck-trailers converted to contain a micro-clinic and showering facilities. And would provide standard low-cost 'scrubs'-like clothing to provide cleaner, more dignified clothing. 2. Paying homeless in resources (food/beds) in exchange for cleaning up the city. 3. Autonomous pressure-washing-street-robots. In silicon Valley, and SF specifically - it would be thoughtful and clean to have industrial sized Roomba Street Cleaning bots that will crawl along the sidewalks and pressure wash them. They should be able to dock and refill/dump/charge at various locations. These should have sensors which count exactly how much foot traffic they see constantly - have cameras and be beacons for services. 3. Correct the zoning laws in bay-area counties for supporting small micro-dwelling communities. Currently, for example, alameda county zones a much larger parcel requirement for a single family dwelling than is needed. Also - the zoning laws do not allow for tiny/micro housing units to share common infrastructure. For example, even though you could fit multiple tiny homes on the 3800 SF lot requirement for a single family home, you cannot have more than one person/family living there, and these units could not share utility connections to power/sewer/water - and you cannot have them all have separate entrances, there can be only one primary entrance. But in the end, I think that providing showers/hygiene and basic clothing should be the starting point. Not having clothing or showers is a primary driving factor in the decline of mental health of homeless. You cannot focus on anything if these needs are not met. Based on the numbers I looked at in the past, SF was "paying" the equivalent of ~$25,000/homeless/year in their services.... but clearly this number is not evident in the lives of the homeless. Personally, I think there is a TON more that the tech community can do with respect to building and testing out various service offerings (like shower trucks/scrubs clothing/cleaning/etc)... I would love to work on these if anyone else would.
pg_bot 8y ago
San Francisco's politicians are treating the symptoms of the problem and not the root cause. Homelessness has increased because markets are not functioning due to poor governance. You could cure the majority of the problem by allowing developers to build more housing and removing caps on rent increases to tenants.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  Build more housing yes, but removing caps on rent increases, especially if there is not more housing, is just going to exacerbate the problem.
  - pg_bot 8y ago
    I know it's counterintuitive to most people, but price controls only cause shortages. Rent control is fundamentally an unfair policy as it selectively benefits one class of people (long term renters) over everyone else. In conditions where demand for housing increases dramatically, landlords tend to let apartments go vacant because they do not want to lock in a low price immediately if they know they could be stuck with a tenant for a long period of time. You can see this effect when you compare the cost increases of apartments over time with the allowable increase set by the rent control board. You can model renting your building quickly in excel. When you do so you can find the cases when it is smarter to hold the apartment and let market prices increase instead of leasing today. Your job as a landowner is to maximize the total amount of money you can make from ownership of the property. Landlords act rationally, so if you make rules that incentivize them to not rent it shouldn't be surprising to see empty units. If you run the numbers yourself for what happened in San Francisco you will easily be able to duplicate this effect. It's ok if you need to leave your apartment so long as you can find another apartment nearby. No one has a right to live in a particular city, and scarce resources will go to those most willing to pay for them. https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-rent-trends/ https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-ren... https://sfrb.org/sites/default/files/Document/Form/571%20Allowable%20Annual%20Increases%2018-19.pdf https://sfrb.org/sites/default/files/Document/Form/571%20All...
    - 8y ago
mindgam3 8y ago
Leaving aside the spectacle of two rich and powerful white male CEOs publicly throwing down about homelessness, which, admittedly, is riveting stuff - can we please talk about the real issue? “Critics of Prop C say that it sets aside too much of San Francisco’s budget to one issue, giving it less control over long-term spending. The new mayor has said that the city needs to better spend the money it already dedicates to combating homelessness.” Speaking as a full stack dev turned founder who experienced homelessless in San Francisco for several weeks in 2015, I am entirely unimpressed with the stated arguments against this corporate tax hike. Too much for one issue? Can someone tell me what might be a more pressing issue that incredibly wealthy corporations could be supporting? And regarding spending the current homeless better, well, yeah. Nobody’s going to argue against that. But is anybody seriously claiming that more money wouldn’t at least put a dent in the problem? Without sounding overly dramatic, people’s lives are at stake. And not just people of poor character who made bad life choices. Real people, people that you might even interact with in a social or professional context. God forbid any pampered Twitter employee actually had to experience surviving on the streets of SF for a few days. It’s so easy to judge. But it is so much harder to pick yourself back up when you are that far down. Basic, stupid things get in the way. Getting to interviews, having clean clothes, being able to shower and use the rest room. Not to mention the nearly constant power tripping you are subject to from everyone you interact with based on your position on the lowest rung of society. Yeah, I think companies making $50M a year should be glad to pay an extra half percent tax. If the moral argument isn’t persuasive, do it for business reasons. SF is attractive to the kinds of people who build world-changing startups because for all of its faults, it has a soul when it comes to progressive issues. Simply as a PR issue it would be wise for the tech community to take a simple action to make the world a better place, right here in our own backyard.

42 points by petethomas 8y ago

There is only one way to end this ..... fight to the death :)

> Benioff says his investors aren’t complaining that he’s campaigning for a tax increase. Honestly, this is quite surprising. I know Tim Cook has been grilled in the past at shareholder meetings for "wasting" money on green initiatives.

dahdum 8y ago
I'd think that positioning himself this way would be seen as a positive. The more he virtue signals and raises his own profile the easier it is to move in the Fortune 500/1000 circles, landing new or expanded contracts.

romed 8y ago

Kinda seeing Jack's side of the argument. Why do we need the voters to partition up the city budget in perpetuity? It's a bad way to run the government. The city has a far better, far cheaper lever by which it can fix the homelessness crisis: nuke the housing market by permitting 45-foot-tall multifamily buildings on every parcel in the city. The fact that they will never do this tells you everything about that city.

ummonk 8y ago
Yup, exactly. It's a terrible idea to start passing piecemeal tax increases to fund specific programs. And Prop C will only put an expensive bandaid on the housing crisis, absent an actual increase in the housing stock; any homeless you house will just result in displacing lower middle class people.
Animats 8y ago
It's been tried. Huge failures. See Robert Taylor Homes (Chicago)[1], Pruett-Igoe (St. Louis) [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_Homes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_Homes [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe
- Inconel 8y ago
  Both you and the user notfromhere seem to be interpreting the GP post as suggesting the solution is large public housing projects, it's possible my reading comprehension is really off today but I see no such suggestion. To me the GP seems to be saying that so much as high housing costs are responsible for at least part of the homeless crisis, perhaps less restrictive zoning might help considering that large portions of SF and very large portions of the Bay Area as a whole are pretty low density, at least compared to other global urban centers.
- grandmczeb 8y ago
  Those are public housing projects. Lifting zoning requirements is a different solution.
- romed 8y ago
  Neither you nor the sibling comment I'm not going to bother responding to expended one iota of brainpower parsing my post. This is what an ordinary 45-foot-tall apartment building looks like in San Francisco. This type of building houses the overwhelming majority of San Franciscans, while occupying relatively little land: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7759476,-122.4242439,3a,75y,137.71h,93.81t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sDif2OJtOFTRQ84TpPoWeuA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7759476,-122.4242439,3a,75y,... Most of the land in San Francisco is limited by law to short, detached, single-family dwellings. Erasing that regulation will make housing dramatically cheaper.
notfromhere 8y ago
Housing at risk populations in huge towers has already been tried tons of times. Look up Cabrini-Green
- thatswrong0 8y ago
  45 feet is not a huge tower.
  - njarboe 8y ago
    True, but I read it as 45 stories (and thought, maybe not everywhere). Probably others did also.
njarboe 8y ago
For other in this thread: 45ft is 4 or 5 stories, not a tower.

cheeze 8y ago

Good. It sickens me that there is so much wealth in both the Bay Area and Seattle, yet both cities are going through a homelessness crisis. I recognize I'm part of the problem and I'm working to help the problem, but I'm only a little guy, not a billionaire. Tech companies keep building skyscrapers, feeding their engineers food every day and paying their employees ludicrous salaries, yet those employees walk past tons of homeless folks on their way to the offices... Are there any examples that folks are aware of where a big tech company (or really any company) stepped in to help with a crisis like this? What companies should we be celebrating for being 'good citizens'?

fx32s 8y ago
Actually many of them regularly donate to charity and have employee charity matching programmes (https://macrumors.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202084918-Apple-Support-for-Charity https://macrumors.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202084918-Ap...) I'm not sure if only money would help in this case without tackling the fundamental reasons of why people are homeless (lack of social security and affordable housing). California is the state with the highest income taxes but little goes to solve these fundamental problems. Pointing to companies and claiming "you make money, you should fix everything that goes wrong here" is too simple in my opinion. Companies exist to create wealth for the shareholders. I don't particularly like it but that's how the system is set up.
Padradov 8y ago
If I may ask - why are you part of the problem?
- InclinedPlane 8y ago
  If you live in a booming city and you have a high paying job then you are part of the problem. You are paying lots of money for rent, which raises the cost of housing, which forces a lot of people who can't afford housing elsewhere. As an individual it's difficult to not contribute to these problems, and the solution isn't for high wage workers to stop moving to cities either. But it's important to recognize that simply going about your daily life with no ill intentions doesn't mean that nobody is harmed by your actions. We live in complex societies with complex interrelationships and complex rules (laws, regulations, social norms, etc.) that govern them. We have a responsibility to understand the unintended consequences of our actions so we can actively correct for them (through government, laws, taxation, etc.)

mmmmmmmmm 8y ago

Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. I don't know what Benioff's motivation is here, but if he actually thinks this tax will improve the homeless situation, he's even dumber than he looks.

andyburke 8y ago

I was never a Salesforce fan, but Benioff is making me take a second look.

anothergoogler 8y ago
Don't read too much into it: SFDC feels the pinch in recruiting, and they are heavily invested in a San Francisco presence with their tower.

dpflan 8y ago

“This is the Bay Area: We have 70 billionaires. We're the headquarters of the 4th industrial revolution,” Benioff said. “We're in a homeless crisis."

sremani 8y ago

From Wikipedia: In 2014, the City of San Francisco spent $167 million annually on housing homeless residents.[64] By 2016, total spending (including housing and treatment) was believed to be $241 million annually.[65] However, much of this spending is focused on housing the formerly homeless, or those at risk, and not the currently homeless. The city's shelter program has approximately 1,200 beds, and several hundred people are on a waitlist to be housed.[65] Even with 1,200 shelter beds and several hundred on waiting list, most homeless avoid the shelter for various reasons such as: overcrowding, safety, and rules that, among other things, separate people experiencing homelessness from their possessions, pets, and loved ones. In 2015, the Navigation Center shelter was created to address these issues.[65] -------------------------------------------- How much money is going to solve this problem ? This reminds me of extending roads to tackle congestion, 5 years after the extension, the roads have same congestion conditions because of the sprawl. At some point, spending more money and making it better for being homeless in SFO will attract even more homeless and creating the conditions similar to today. I do not have enough information about Prop C and what each of them are coming from, but I am leaning towards Jack simply because the holier than thou smugness from Benioff.

wbronitsky 8y ago
Just to make sure I understand your argument: You are going to vote a certain way on a proposition because tech a CEO was smug about why you should vote one way or another? Regardless of which way you are voting, there has to be a better, more informed and analytical way to decide how to vote.
- sremani 8y ago
  It never occurred to me but I think as a non-resident of SFO I should have refrained from commenting on this issue. Consider my post as an observation of a curious mind.
  - wbronitsky 8y ago
    I don't think your feelings on this are invalid at all! In fact, I think anyone should contribute here. I was just pointing out that a more rigorous system to figure out who/what to vote for would probably benefit you and everyone who lives in the community that is governed by the voting outcomes.

Animats 8y ago

There's now homeless removal as a service.[1] "Call Bio SoCal for fast and professional service to clean up and remove the homeless encampment. We operate 24/7 and can provide service during or after business hours to meet your needs and get you back in business." In Seattle, there's an app for reporting homeless encampments.[2] Dallas considered a concentration camp, to be called "Dignity Field", at an old military base.[3] [1] https://biosocal.com/services/homeless-encampment-clean-out/ https://biosocal.com/services/homeless-encampment-clean-out/ [2] https://www.seattle.gov/homelessness/unauthorized-encampments https://www.seattle.gov/homelessness/unauthorized-encampment... [3] https://www.dallasnews.com/news/news/2016/05/02/old-naval-base-near-grand-prairie-may-be-repurposed-for-homeless-tent-city-exiles https://www.dallasnews.com/news/news/2016/05/02/old-naval-ba...

mmmmmmmmm 8y ago
Bio SoCal seems like a great service. Thanks for making me aware.
tathougies 8y ago
The first two seem distasteful, but I fail to see how the dignity field proposal falls in the same vein. You are both criticizing inaction (just get them out of here and I don't care what happens to them) and action (let's get them in one area, offer them shelter, and provide services). This seems to me like speaking out of both sides of your mouth.
Inconel 8y ago
Name aside, which just seems very paternalistic, based on the article you linked I can't see anything particularly objectionable about the third proposal. I would've definitely preferred to live in that kind of sanctioned open air campground compared to some of the places I've had so sleep.
Jach 8y ago
"Dignity Field" is pretty good, I still prefer "Sanctuary District"[0] though. [0] http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Sanctuary_District http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Sanctuary_District

shafyy 8y ago

What do you guys think is the biggest lever for this crisis?

olivermarks 8y ago
I've lived in the area for twenty five plus years and have known local social workers and city employees. I also have friends who are effectively homeless (living in RV's) having grown up in silicon valley and been evicted from family rental homes and can't afford massively increased rents. There's a huge number of people who wind up in San Francisco for all sorts of reasons and the civic reputation for being less harsh on homeless plus relatively mild weather makes it a place people wind up staying in. There's always been flop houses in the tenderloin and people on the streets but the disparity between the wealthy and the poor is very striking now. The opioid crisis is a big thing in SF but the levers are unaffordable rents, no care for the insane (who often self medicate with street drugs), an attractive place with lots of dumpster diving lifestyles behind classy restaurants and a general romanticism that dates back to the beats and hippies. There are huge numbers of people living in their cars and couch surfing who are less visible than the unwashed zombie insane that you see at most downtown intersections and passed out on sidewalks but this is in essence a have and have not crisis
grandmczeb 8y ago
High housing costs.
tomatotomato37 8y ago
As an outsider looking in I would say decent weather and constraining geography that prevents the usual urban reaction to high housing prices, which is to sprawl like mad.
InclinedPlane 8y ago
There are many but the biggest is probably the destruction of unions, destruction of the social safety net (e.g. welfare et al), and especially the stagnation of wages for nearly the last half century. If the minimum wage had kept pace with, say, per capita GDP since the 1960s it would be at around $20/hr by now, and if it had been increased gradually over time to keep parity with economic growth (as it had been for decades in the past) then there would be no great immediate economic shock to having the minimum wage "so high". And such a high minimum wage would also raise the wages of a lot of other folks as well, pushing up the bottom end of the wage scale, forcing a lot more of the economic growth since the '80s to have gone to workers instead of just corporate and millionaire profits/income. All of which would have led to a situation where it was much more difficult for climbing housing prices to force huge numbers of people into a homelessness that represented a huge uphill climb to get out of. On top of that there's the insane SF zoning problems and many other issues, but those are really just the icing on the cake, the core problem is the massive wealth/income inequality that exists in the US today.

samstave 8y ago

This is a complex issue and is close to home for me. I have thought a lot about what I would want to do regarding hte homeless problem, and have looked into the spend that SF has to this problem, as well as the self-limiting regulations on the housing market which prevent small-size, high density developments from even doing proof-of-concepts. After thinking on the problem a bit, I am personally drawn to the following ideas: 1. Mobile health and hygeine centers: -- These would be truck-trailers converted to contain a micro-clinic and showering facilities. And would provide standard low-cost 'scrubs'-like clothing to provide cleaner, more dignified clothing. 2. Paying homeless in resources (food/beds) in exchange for cleaning up the city. 3. Autonomous pressure-washing-street-robots. In silicon Valley, and SF specifically - it would be thoughtful and clean to have industrial sized Roomba Street Cleaning bots that will crawl along the sidewalks and pressure wash them. They should be able to dock and refill/dump/charge at various locations. These should have sensors which count exactly how much foot traffic they see constantly - have cameras and be beacons for services. 3. Correct the zoning laws in bay-area counties for supporting small micro-dwelling communities. Currently, for example, alameda county zones a much larger parcel requirement for a single family dwelling than is needed. Also - the zoning laws do not allow for tiny/micro housing units to share common infrastructure. For example, even though you could fit multiple tiny homes on the 3800 SF lot requirement for a single family home, you cannot have more than one person/family living there, and these units could not share utility connections to power/sewer/water - and you cannot have them all have separate entrances, there can be only one primary entrance. But in the end, I think that providing showers/hygiene and basic clothing should be the starting point. Not having clothing or showers is a primary driving factor in the decline of mental health of homeless. You cannot focus on anything if these needs are not met. Based on the numbers I looked at in the past, SF was "paying" the equivalent of ~$25,000/homeless/year in their services.... but clearly this number is not evident in the lives of the homeless. Personally, I think there is a TON more that the tech community can do with respect to building and testing out various service offerings (like shower trucks/scrubs clothing/cleaning/etc)... I would love to work on these if anyone else would.

pg_bot 8y ago

San Francisco's politicians are treating the symptoms of the problem and not the root cause. Homelessness has increased because markets are not functioning due to poor governance. You could cure the majority of the problem by allowing developers to build more housing and removing caps on rent increases to tenants.

s73v3r_ 8y ago
Build more housing yes, but removing caps on rent increases, especially if there is not more housing, is just going to exacerbate the problem.
- pg_bot 8y ago
  I know it's counterintuitive to most people, but price controls only cause shortages. Rent control is fundamentally an unfair policy as it selectively benefits one class of people (long term renters) over everyone else. In conditions where demand for housing increases dramatically, landlords tend to let apartments go vacant because they do not want to lock in a low price immediately if they know they could be stuck with a tenant for a long period of time. You can see this effect when you compare the cost increases of apartments over time with the allowable increase set by the rent control board. You can model renting your building quickly in excel. When you do so you can find the cases when it is smarter to hold the apartment and let market prices increase instead of leasing today. Your job as a landowner is to maximize the total amount of money you can make from ownership of the property. Landlords act rationally, so if you make rules that incentivize them to not rent it shouldn't be surprising to see empty units. If you run the numbers yourself for what happened in San Francisco you will easily be able to duplicate this effect. It's ok if you need to leave your apartment so long as you can find another apartment nearby. No one has a right to live in a particular city, and scarce resources will go to those most willing to pay for them. https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-rent-trends/ https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-ren... https://sfrb.org/sites/default/files/Document/Form/571%20Allowable%20Annual%20Increases%2018-19.pdf https://sfrb.org/sites/default/files/Document/Form/571%20All...
  - 8y ago

mindgam3 8y ago

Leaving aside the spectacle of two rich and powerful white male CEOs publicly throwing down about homelessness, which, admittedly, is riveting stuff - can we please talk about the real issue? “Critics of Prop C say that it sets aside too much of San Francisco’s budget to one issue, giving it less control over long-term spending. The new mayor has said that the city needs to better spend the money it already dedicates to combating homelessness.” Speaking as a full stack dev turned founder who experienced homelessless in San Francisco for several weeks in 2015, I am entirely unimpressed with the stated arguments against this corporate tax hike. Too much for one issue? Can someone tell me what might be a more pressing issue that incredibly wealthy corporations could be supporting? And regarding spending the current homeless better, well, yeah. Nobody’s going to argue against that. But is anybody seriously claiming that more money wouldn’t at least put a dent in the problem? Without sounding overly dramatic, people’s lives are at stake. And not just people of poor character who made bad life choices. Real people, people that you might even interact with in a social or professional context. God forbid any pampered Twitter employee actually had to experience surviving on the streets of SF for a few days. It’s so easy to judge. But it is so much harder to pick yourself back up when you are that far down. Basic, stupid things get in the way. Getting to interviews, having clean clothes, being able to shower and use the rest room. Not to mention the nearly constant power tripping you are subject to from everyone you interact with based on your position on the lowest rung of society. Yeah, I think companies making $50M a year should be glad to pay an extra half percent tax. If the moral argument isn’t persuasive, do it for business reasons. SF is attractive to the kinds of people who build world-changing startups because for all of its faults, it has a soul when it comes to progressive issues. Simply as a PR issue it would be wise for the tech community to take a simple action to make the world a better place, right here in our own backyard.