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If someone can’t afford rent in SF, they have other options besides living on the streets. For example, they can move somewhere cheaper. The homeless in San Fr

If someone can’t afford rent in SF, they have other options besides living on the streets. For example, they can move somewhere cheaper. The homeless in San Francisco are mostly people who can’t afford to live anywhere because they are incapable of generating or maintaining anything of monetary value. Rents could fifty bucks a month and they’d still be on the streets. The problem, then, is how to take care of those people.

ghobs91 8y ago
There will always be a percentage of homeless that are as you say, usually because of mental illness. To say "most" of them fall into that category is a huge assumption to make without data to back it up.
- i_am_nomad 8y ago
  I think most rational and competent people would choose sharing an apartment in Bakersfield over living on the streets in San Francisco.
  - AstralStorm 8y ago
    Some people are not competent or rational. And you cannot get a decent job without a place to live, which also puts pressure on bankruptcies. You cannot share an apartment when you have a family or when you cannot afford even that.
barry-cotter 8y ago
At $50 a month begging will easily cover rent. I embrace your reductio ad absurdum. If housing is cheap enough even people with serious substance abuse or mental problems can afford somewhere to live. The lower rent goes the better because even in San Francisco neither junkies nor the insane are a majority of homeless. Hong Kong has really, really high rent but you don’t see people sleeping on the streets because shitty housing isn’t illegal. You can get a bed in a shared room. I wouldn’t want to live 18 to a room but it beats sleeping on the streets. This is all about property owners zoning everywhere so cheap housing is illegal. Just making flophouses/single room occupancy legal again would make large improvements in the homeless situation. Make building housing legal again.
Gibbon1 8y ago
> they are incapable of generating or maintaining anything of monetary value. I've met lots of engineers that fall into that category. Not to mention whole divisions and companies. Besides exiling people from the community they were born into is genocide.

ghobs91 8y ago

There will always be a percentage of homeless that are as you say, usually because of mental illness. To say "most" of them fall into that category is a huge assumption to make without data to back it up.

i_am_nomad 8y ago
I think most rational and competent people would choose sharing an apartment in Bakersfield over living on the streets in San Francisco.
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  Some people are not competent or rational. And you cannot get a decent job without a place to live, which also puts pressure on bankruptcies. You cannot share an apartment when you have a family or when you cannot afford even that.

barry-cotter 8y ago

At $50 a month begging will easily cover rent. I embrace your reductio ad absurdum. If housing is cheap enough even people with serious substance abuse or mental problems can afford somewhere to live. The lower rent goes the better because even in San Francisco neither junkies nor the insane are a majority of homeless. Hong Kong has really, really high rent but you don’t see people sleeping on the streets because shitty housing isn’t illegal. You can get a bed in a shared room. I wouldn’t want to live 18 to a room but it beats sleeping on the streets. This is all about property owners zoning everywhere so cheap housing is illegal. Just making flophouses/single room occupancy legal again would make large improvements in the homeless situation. Make building housing legal again.

Gibbon1 8y ago

> they are incapable of generating or maintaining anything of monetary value. I've met lots of engineers that fall into that category. Not to mention whole divisions and companies. Besides exiling people from the community they were born into is genocide.