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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

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?

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?