7 ms·

SF just passed 300 million/year measure that's supposed to help the homeless and that's in addition to the 240 million/year of funding that's already there. Bo

SF just passed 300 million/year measure that's supposed to help the homeless and that's in addition to the 240 million/year of funding that's already there. Both of those combined exceeds the budgets of most cities. First I would say, let's figure out how to use that money so that it's actually working. 540 million/year is enough to give the 7000 homeless in SF 77,000$ per year. Let's put that to good use and make sure it doesn't end up in administrative waste before throwing more $ at it.

alistairSH 8y ago
Are those numbers correct? If so, that's insane. For $77k/year, SF should be able to house every single one of them with money to spare.
- manfredo 8y ago
  The latest tax increased it from 30k to about 60-70k. As to why it's doing so little, there's a variety of explanations. Some say that homeless often have mental or drug abuse issues that keep them from being able to live on their own. Others (including the mayor) say that the money is more than enough, and we need more accountability of what we already spend. 70k is about the median wage of a single person in SF.
  - alistairSH 8y ago
    Even losing half the bureaucracy, that leaves 35k/year for actual aid. Toss half of that at misc care and other programs. 17.5/year left for housing. Not much, but should still be enough for group home type arrangements. Or, at least I would hope so. I've never been involved in these programs on either side, but it's amazing that $70k/year might not be enough to house somebody.
    - megaman8 8y ago
      1/2 for bureacrazy? that sounds like a lot for just overhead
      - conanbatt 8y ago
        Well, whatever money you spend to provide a service goes straight into someones pocket first, before a homeless person gets anything in return.
    - grogenaut 8y ago
      You're going to be real surprised then when you find out what assisted living or memory care costs for your parents. Hint it's at least double what normal cost of living is. And many of these folks do need that level of care and supervision.
      - alistairSH 8y ago
        Sure, that doesn't surprise me. But how many of those 7000 homeless need that level of care? Half? 2/3? SF should at least be able to get the "easy" people off the street.
        sciurus 8y ago
        Maybe they already have?
        wpietri 8y ago
        They have definitely worked hard to do so. On BART I happened to start talking with somebody wearing a jacket from the Homeless Outreach Team. It's his job to talk people into getting the help they need and getting off the streets. The ones we talked about are definitely the difficult cases. That doesn't surprise me at all. There's a homeless guy in my neighborhood I've been talking with at least 7 years. He has mentioned being born at the hospital 3 blocks from my place, and I'm sure he grew up in the neighborhood. He's polite, friendly, and very set in his ways. I suspect he has some sort of alcohol-induced anterograde amnesia. He has absolutely no interest in living in any sort of setting where he'd be constrained by others. From the way he talks about it, I expect there's some sort of history of abuse by authority figures. I don't think it's impossible for him to get help. But I think it would have to include living in his neighborhood and I think it would need a lot of patient and intensive help from professionals. Otherwise he's just going to do what's familiar to him.
- beginningguava 8y ago
  There's a lot of bureaucrats and cronies taking their cut, I'd be surprised if 10% of that actually made it to the homeless
pentae 8y ago
Considering the annual cost of a taxpayer for a prison inmate is $31k a year, surely thats a problem that can be solved with that budget.
- jmalicki 8y ago
  In California it's about $75k/yr[1] so that budget should be roughly enough. https://www.politifact.com/california/statements/2017/aug/09/kamala-harris/does-it-cost-75k-year-lock-inmate-california/ https://www.politifact.com/california/statements/2017/aug/09...
- rbanffy 8y ago
  A fair amount of resources spent in prison inmates is dedicated to keeping them inside the prison.
bryanlarsen 8y ago
The divisor should be 7000 people + however many people are not homeless because of the money SF spends reducing homelessness. I certainly hope that's a number much larger than 7000.
- alistairSH 8y ago
  Ah, true enough. Maybe the 7000 are truly the worst off, and in need of extra services.
- jawnv6 8y ago
  You're correct. A full 50% of the budget is housing assistance. 10% is eviction prevention. After that, we're getting into the services and support for the 7000+ people that the point-in-time count captures.
2RTZZSro 8y ago
The vast majority of that 300 million per year will go to bureaucrats for group meetings to discuss how to solve the homeless problem. San Francisco voters have no say in the matter and they are unable to influence change because these organizations are run by unelected bureaucrats. If you vote for another figurehead they will keep the same bureaucrats.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Reference, please.
jawnv6 8y ago
Using the point-in-time count as a divisor for the entire budget is so ridiculously asinine I'm shocked so many folks are engaging with it in good faith. "Let's figure out how to use that money" might begin with understanding how it's already spent. Here's a more in depth article correcting this fallacy: http://beyondchron.org/sfs-homeless-spending-myth/ http://beyondchron.org/sfs-homeless-spending-myth/ “Since the 1980’s, the media has created an impression—now shared by the public and some supervisors—that you can simply divide homeless spending ($165 million) by the homeless numbers (7000) and then give that amount of money (over $20,000 per homeless person) to get them off the streets. But most of SF’s “homeless budget” is spent on people already housed. The city is not spending $165 million on 7000 reported homeless, but on thousands more living in supportive permanent housing.” - same author, from 2014 This is dangerously ignorant analysis and I'd hope you would take some time to research where that money is spent before sharing your opinion again.
- RobertRoberts 8y ago
  A vital figure is missing from the article, how many people are actually being housed with that budget? If it's 10k people, that is $16,500 per person (ignoring administrative costs). So that is pretty damn effective budgeting. (roughly) But, it's 1k people that is $165,000 a person, which is piss poor. So just shouting down someone else that is missing a few numbers is pointless without all the numbers. You may end up agreeing with their sentiment if you find the end results are the same. (ie, possibly the budget is going to rich land owners pockets instead of actually helping more people)
  - jawnv6 8y ago
    I'm sorry, taking a budget for homeless and homeless assistance and dividing by point-in-time count is destined for asinine useless territory no matter what information I lack. 50% of the budget is housing assistance. 10% is eviction prevention. 20% is medical care. So just napkin math and 2/3rds of the 77k/y figure is for folks outside the point-in-time count. His "sentiment" is wholly based in steadfast ignorance over what those numbers pay for. Pretending to have a firm enough grasp to _direct_ future spending when whiffing on those basics isn't as endearing as you'd think. I'm thrilled by the success of the Navigation Centers pioneered by Ed Lee. But it's really, really hard to talk about those specifics with people who just want a numerator and denominator to talk about per-person abstract figures as if policy can drop out of an equation. This may shock the HN crowd, but I live in SF and have awareness of this issue not gleaned from the immediate article. If you're going to baselessly insinuate that "rich landowners" are pocketing funds, I'd appreciate if you could name the organization you suspect? Hamilton Families? Community Housing Partnership? C'mon, lets rat out those fat cats!
closeparen 8y ago
Presumably, the things a government needs to buy to help are housing and personnel, which are unusually expensive here by a wide margin. So having far and away the highest spending per person needing assistance seems correct.

alistairSH 8y ago

Are those numbers correct? If so, that's insane. For $77k/year, SF should be able to house every single one of them with money to spare.

manfredo 8y ago
The latest tax increased it from 30k to about 60-70k. As to why it's doing so little, there's a variety of explanations. Some say that homeless often have mental or drug abuse issues that keep them from being able to live on their own. Others (including the mayor) say that the money is more than enough, and we need more accountability of what we already spend. 70k is about the median wage of a single person in SF.
- alistairSH 8y ago
  Even losing half the bureaucracy, that leaves 35k/year for actual aid. Toss half of that at misc care and other programs. 17.5/year left for housing. Not much, but should still be enough for group home type arrangements. Or, at least I would hope so. I've never been involved in these programs on either side, but it's amazing that $70k/year might not be enough to house somebody.
  - megaman8 8y ago
    1/2 for bureacrazy? that sounds like a lot for just overhead
    - conanbatt 8y ago
      Well, whatever money you spend to provide a service goes straight into someones pocket first, before a homeless person gets anything in return.
  - grogenaut 8y ago
    You're going to be real surprised then when you find out what assisted living or memory care costs for your parents. Hint it's at least double what normal cost of living is. And many of these folks do need that level of care and supervision.
    - alistairSH 8y ago
      Sure, that doesn't surprise me. But how many of those 7000 homeless need that level of care? Half? 2/3? SF should at least be able to get the "easy" people off the street.
      - sciurus 8y ago
        Maybe they already have?
        wpietri 8y ago
        They have definitely worked hard to do so. On BART I happened to start talking with somebody wearing a jacket from the Homeless Outreach Team. It's his job to talk people into getting the help they need and getting off the streets. The ones we talked about are definitely the difficult cases. That doesn't surprise me at all. There's a homeless guy in my neighborhood I've been talking with at least 7 years. He has mentioned being born at the hospital 3 blocks from my place, and I'm sure he grew up in the neighborhood. He's polite, friendly, and very set in his ways. I suspect he has some sort of alcohol-induced anterograde amnesia. He has absolutely no interest in living in any sort of setting where he'd be constrained by others. From the way he talks about it, I expect there's some sort of history of abuse by authority figures. I don't think it's impossible for him to get help. But I think it would have to include living in his neighborhood and I think it would need a lot of patient and intensive help from professionals. Otherwise he's just going to do what's familiar to him.
beginningguava 8y ago
There's a lot of bureaucrats and cronies taking their cut, I'd be surprised if 10% of that actually made it to the homeless

pentae 8y ago

Considering the annual cost of a taxpayer for a prison inmate is $31k a year, surely thats a problem that can be solved with that budget.

jmalicki 8y ago
In California it's about $75k/yr[1] so that budget should be roughly enough. https://www.politifact.com/california/statements/2017/aug/09/kamala-harris/does-it-cost-75k-year-lock-inmate-california/ https://www.politifact.com/california/statements/2017/aug/09...
rbanffy 8y ago
A fair amount of resources spent in prison inmates is dedicated to keeping them inside the prison.

bryanlarsen 8y ago

The divisor should be 7000 people + however many people are not homeless because of the money SF spends reducing homelessness. I certainly hope that's a number much larger than 7000.

alistairSH 8y ago
Ah, true enough. Maybe the 7000 are truly the worst off, and in need of extra services.
jawnv6 8y ago
You're correct. A full 50% of the budget is housing assistance. 10% is eviction prevention. After that, we're getting into the services and support for the 7000+ people that the point-in-time count captures.

2RTZZSro 8y ago

The vast majority of that 300 million per year will go to bureaucrats for group meetings to discuss how to solve the homeless problem. San Francisco voters have no say in the matter and they are unable to influence change because these organizations are run by unelected bureaucrats. If you vote for another figurehead they will keep the same bureaucrats.

dredmorbius 8y ago
Reference, please.

jawnv6 8y ago

Using the point-in-time count as a divisor for the entire budget is so ridiculously asinine I'm shocked so many folks are engaging with it in good faith. "Let's figure out how to use that money" might begin with understanding how it's already spent. Here's a more in depth article correcting this fallacy: http://beyondchron.org/sfs-homeless-spending-myth/ http://beyondchron.org/sfs-homeless-spending-myth/ “Since the 1980’s, the media has created an impression—now shared by the public and some supervisors—that you can simply divide homeless spending ($165 million) by the homeless numbers (7000) and then give that amount of money (over $20,000 per homeless person) to get them off the streets. But most of SF’s “homeless budget” is spent on people already housed. The city is not spending $165 million on 7000 reported homeless, but on thousands more living in supportive permanent housing.” - same author, from 2014 This is dangerously ignorant analysis and I'd hope you would take some time to research where that money is spent before sharing your opinion again.

RobertRoberts 8y ago
A vital figure is missing from the article, how many people are actually being housed with that budget? If it's 10k people, that is $16,500 per person (ignoring administrative costs). So that is pretty damn effective budgeting. (roughly) But, it's 1k people that is $165,000 a person, which is piss poor. So just shouting down someone else that is missing a few numbers is pointless without all the numbers. You may end up agreeing with their sentiment if you find the end results are the same. (ie, possibly the budget is going to rich land owners pockets instead of actually helping more people)
- jawnv6 8y ago
  I'm sorry, taking a budget for homeless and homeless assistance and dividing by point-in-time count is destined for asinine useless territory no matter what information I lack. 50% of the budget is housing assistance. 10% is eviction prevention. 20% is medical care. So just napkin math and 2/3rds of the 77k/y figure is for folks outside the point-in-time count. His "sentiment" is wholly based in steadfast ignorance over what those numbers pay for. Pretending to have a firm enough grasp to _direct_ future spending when whiffing on those basics isn't as endearing as you'd think. I'm thrilled by the success of the Navigation Centers pioneered by Ed Lee. But it's really, really hard to talk about those specifics with people who just want a numerator and denominator to talk about per-person abstract figures as if policy can drop out of an equation. This may shock the HN crowd, but I live in SF and have awareness of this issue not gleaned from the immediate article. If you're going to baselessly insinuate that "rich landowners" are pocketing funds, I'd appreciate if you could name the organization you suspect? Hamilton Families? Community Housing Partnership? C'mon, lets rat out those fat cats!

closeparen 8y ago

Presumably, the things a government needs to buy to help are housing and personnel, which are unusually expensive here by a wide margin. So having far and away the highest spending per person needing assistance seems correct.