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> If homelessness was just a question of money, this issue would already be solved. While cities report inconsistently, San Francisco currently spends around $4

> If homelessness was just a question of money, this issue would already be solved. While cities report inconsistently, San Francisco currently spends around $430 per city resident per year on services and programs for the homeless, compared to $260 in New York and $110 in Los Angeles. Yet the problem in our city is worse, and despite increases in spending, has continued to worsen. Can somebody please explain how spending per resident is a fair measure of this? Isn't spending per homeless resident the relevant measure? (SF has a much higher homeless rate and we actually spend less per homeless resident than NYC!)

istjohn 8y ago
Great point. And it's no mystery why Seattle and San Francisco are seeing homelessness become more and more of a problem. It's a direct result of the rise of a wildly profitable tech industry in those cities. It's maddening to see companies like Amazon and Stripe oppose initiatives to address these issues in their hometowns.
- xibalba 8y ago
  > It's a direct result of the rise of a wildly profitable tech industry in those cities. Connect the dots for me. How is the increase of the homeless population the direct result of the rise of tech cos like Amazon and Stripe?
  - abalone 8y ago
    I’ll bite.. increased housing demand raises rents, the “main culprit” in the recent homelessness increase.[1] [1] https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/11/06/west-coast-homeless-crisis-california-oregon-washington/ https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/11/06/west-coast-home...
    - niij 8y ago
      Why is supply not keeping up? I think it's because of an artificial cap on housing.
      - abalone 8y ago
        This is a separate question. Thanks for your thought. There are other possibilities. Like, say, insatiable demand from around the country and world from people who'd love to move to SF to make their play in the tech boom. But the fact remains that the tech boom has created a sudden surge in housing demand from people making a lot more than working class folks.
        mixedCase 8y ago
        If it's in high demand and supply is being artificially restricted, how would it not be "insatiable"?
        abalone 8y ago
        Inelastic demand. Even with full throttle development, when you have a whole country (nay, world) of tech industry professionals would want to move to the heart of their industry in a boom time, you may not see much movement in price. Consider that all that worldwide demand would need to be soaked up before prices come down to working class affordable levels. We see inelastic demand with disasters as well as economic booms centered around geographic areas. You see something similar in the phenomenon of how adding more lanes to roads doesn't necessarily relieve congestion.
Empact 8y ago
Yeah, if only there were some way to tackle that ratio by adding more residents. More housing means more places to house the homeless, and a broader tax base to support them by, thus making this an easier problem to solve. https://yimbyaction.org/voterguide/ https://yimbyaction.org/voterguide/
- abalone 8y ago
  That’s not answering my question though. Collison claims money won’t solve the problem but uses a comparison that shows nothing of the sort. How does this make sense to anyone? Did he just whiff on logic here, or is he misleading us because he’s deep into a bare knuckle political fight, or am I missing something?
  - Empact 8y ago
    Money alone won't solve the problem. If the system is efficient, you need just a certain amount of money to solve the problem. If the system is corrupt / unaccountable, there are endless pockets to divert the money into, and no amount of money will solve the problem.
    - abalone 8y ago
      Still doesn’t answer my question. The insinuation that the SF system is “corrupt” is based entirely on the apparently invalid comparison. We actually spend less per homeless person than NYC. If you’re not going to answer that’s fine, but please don’t thread hijack. I’m really just looking for an explanation of what seems to be an obvious (fatal?) logical flaw in Collison’s post.
smsm42 8y ago
This: https://abc7news.com/news/data-shows-sf-has-2nd-highest-homeless-population-in-us/1407123/ https://abc7news.com/news/data-shows-sf-has-2nd-highest-home... says NYC has 887 homeless per 100K, while SF has 795. SF seems to spend about 54K per homeless person, while NYC about 29K, or 54% of SF number.
- abalone 8y ago
  First of all this is a common error. SF spends only about $3.8K per homeless person.[1] You can't just divide by the homeless population because a huge portion of the budget goes towards homeless prevention. Things like subsidies to keep people housed. So there are many more people supported by that budget. Moreover, you're misunderstanding my question. That's how much SF spends per homeless resident. Great, in theory that's what we should be comparing with other cities (calculated correctly of course). But that's not what Collison did. He just compared how much cities spend per resident.. i.e. he took the homeless budget and divided it by the population of SF, not just the homeless. You see how that misled and confused you? It makes no sense to me, except as a trick? Please, somebody explain how this makes any kind of sense. [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Businesses-must-contribute-more-to-city-s-13178743.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Bu...
  - smsm42 8y ago
    > First of all this is a common error. SF spends only about $3.8K per homeless person. I addressed that in another comment, it seems to be a sort of a trick, like those jokes that calculate that only two people work in the whole country by double-counting a lot of things. > You see how that misled and confused you? No, I do not. Combining per resident statistics with homeless/resident ratio - which is available - it is easy to see spending per homeless. Of course it's the total spending - then we need to see what the money is actually spent on and whether it is actually effective for reducing homelessness or just feeding some people who would wish nothing more but continue getting a paycheck for "helping homeless", but would not really like the problem to disappear and the paycheck be gone with it. I am not saying that's a common situation - I don't know - but this is something that needs to be checked, and the article seems to just throw out 78% of spending, showing no interest at all about what happened to it, and then declare "we spend very little on homeless". If that's true, then where's the rest of the money? What happened to it?

istjohn 8y ago

Great point. And it's no mystery why Seattle and San Francisco are seeing homelessness become more and more of a problem. It's a direct result of the rise of a wildly profitable tech industry in those cities. It's maddening to see companies like Amazon and Stripe oppose initiatives to address these issues in their hometowns.

xibalba 8y ago
> It's a direct result of the rise of a wildly profitable tech industry in those cities. Connect the dots for me. How is the increase of the homeless population the direct result of the rise of tech cos like Amazon and Stripe?
- abalone 8y ago
  I’ll bite.. increased housing demand raises rents, the “main culprit” in the recent homelessness increase.[1] [1] https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/11/06/west-coast-homeless-crisis-california-oregon-washington/ https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/11/06/west-coast-home...
  - niij 8y ago
    Why is supply not keeping up? I think it's because of an artificial cap on housing.
    - abalone 8y ago
      This is a separate question. Thanks for your thought. There are other possibilities. Like, say, insatiable demand from around the country and world from people who'd love to move to SF to make their play in the tech boom. But the fact remains that the tech boom has created a sudden surge in housing demand from people making a lot more than working class folks.
      - mixedCase 8y ago
        If it's in high demand and supply is being artificially restricted, how would it not be "insatiable"?
        abalone 8y ago
        Inelastic demand. Even with full throttle development, when you have a whole country (nay, world) of tech industry professionals would want to move to the heart of their industry in a boom time, you may not see much movement in price. Consider that all that worldwide demand would need to be soaked up before prices come down to working class affordable levels. We see inelastic demand with disasters as well as economic booms centered around geographic areas. You see something similar in the phenomenon of how adding more lanes to roads doesn't necessarily relieve congestion.

Empact 8y ago

Yeah, if only there were some way to tackle that ratio by adding more residents. More housing means more places to house the homeless, and a broader tax base to support them by, thus making this an easier problem to solve. https://yimbyaction.org/voterguide/ https://yimbyaction.org/voterguide/

abalone 8y ago
That’s not answering my question though. Collison claims money won’t solve the problem but uses a comparison that shows nothing of the sort. How does this make sense to anyone? Did he just whiff on logic here, or is he misleading us because he’s deep into a bare knuckle political fight, or am I missing something?
- Empact 8y ago
  Money alone won't solve the problem. If the system is efficient, you need just a certain amount of money to solve the problem. If the system is corrupt / unaccountable, there are endless pockets to divert the money into, and no amount of money will solve the problem.
  - abalone 8y ago
    Still doesn’t answer my question. The insinuation that the SF system is “corrupt” is based entirely on the apparently invalid comparison. We actually spend less per homeless person than NYC. If you’re not going to answer that’s fine, but please don’t thread hijack. I’m really just looking for an explanation of what seems to be an obvious (fatal?) logical flaw in Collison’s post.

smsm42 8y ago

This: https://abc7news.com/news/data-shows-sf-has-2nd-highest-homeless-population-in-us/1407123/ https://abc7news.com/news/data-shows-sf-has-2nd-highest-home... says NYC has 887 homeless per 100K, while SF has 795. SF seems to spend about 54K per homeless person, while NYC about 29K, or 54% of SF number.

abalone 8y ago
First of all this is a common error. SF spends only about $3.8K per homeless person.[1] You can't just divide by the homeless population because a huge portion of the budget goes towards homeless prevention. Things like subsidies to keep people housed. So there are many more people supported by that budget. Moreover, you're misunderstanding my question. That's how much SF spends per homeless resident. Great, in theory that's what we should be comparing with other cities (calculated correctly of course). But that's not what Collison did. He just compared how much cities spend per resident.. i.e. he took the homeless budget and divided it by the population of SF, not just the homeless. You see how that misled and confused you? It makes no sense to me, except as a trick? Please, somebody explain how this makes any kind of sense. [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Businesses-must-contribute-more-to-city-s-13178743.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Bu...
- smsm42 8y ago
  > First of all this is a common error. SF spends only about $3.8K per homeless person. I addressed that in another comment, it seems to be a sort of a trick, like those jokes that calculate that only two people work in the whole country by double-counting a lot of things. > You see how that misled and confused you? No, I do not. Combining per resident statistics with homeless/resident ratio - which is available - it is easy to see spending per homeless. Of course it's the total spending - then we need to see what the money is actually spent on and whether it is actually effective for reducing homelessness or just feeding some people who would wish nothing more but continue getting a paycheck for "helping homeless", but would not really like the problem to disappear and the paycheck be gone with it. I am not saying that's a common situation - I don't know - but this is something that needs to be checked, and the article seems to just throw out 78% of spending, showing no interest at all about what happened to it, and then declare "we spend very little on homeless". If that's true, then where's the rest of the money? What happened to it?