4 ms·

I also look at this as - individuals have so much wealth, along with these companies, yet no one is doing a single fucking thing to help the homeless. Facebook

I also look at this as - individuals have so much wealth, along with these companies, yet no one is doing a single fucking thing to help the homeless. Facebook and Google could reverse their negative PR so quickly if they actually put some money meaningfully toward the problem, not into fake tax shelters for their founders.

asdffdsa 8y ago
define "meaningfully", keeping in mind the city spends hundreds of millions on homelessness already (kind of insulting and ignorant to say "no one is doing a single fucking thing")
nieksand 8y ago
Does SFO homelessness really have a shortage of money being thrown at the problem?
jeffreyrogers 8y ago
How would you solve it? I think it's a really tough problem and a significant fraction of the homeless population has serious mental health problems. I live in a city (Salt Lake City) that did a great job fixing its homelessness problem... for a couple of years. Now it's worse than it has ever been. Partly this is because more homeless people are coming to the area because they've heard about how great the resources here are. The problem with trying to solve homelessness is that most things that work to solve it incentivize more homeless people to move to the area that is solving the problem. At least that's what it seems like to me.
- crushcrashcrush 8y ago
  It's simple. We need more fucking housing. Period. End of story. We need condo towers. We need townhomes. We need mid-rises. And secondly, we need free and low cost mental health services. That's it. Problem solved. The problem is we're 20 years behind.
  - rak00n 8y ago
    Nope, your just indentfied the problem that needs to be solved. You haven't "solved" the problem, which is massively more complex.
    - crushcrashcrush 8y ago
      You must be really fun at cocktail parties.
  - notacoward 8y ago
    More affordable housing only solves a problem for those with moderate incomes. Evidence: every other city in the US that has cheaper housing but also still plenty of homeless. Free and low-cost mental health services are closer to the mark, but still far from a simple problem. Many homeless people have complex, multi-faceted problems. Many resist initial contact. Many have trouble with maintaining any kind of regular schedule for either medication or counseling. Funding that many therapists (not just head-counters) and ensuring their security is a challenge unto itself. Not a simple problem at all. If there's one thing that makes Silicon Valley unpleasant to me, it's the "simple, just do X" hand-wave that so many there indulge in regarding every damn topic. I'm sure your job isn't so simple a child could do it. Why act like everybody else's is?
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  Really I think that hints that homelessness should be addressed federally just to stop the buck passing. Not helping matters is the electoral college biasing against urban areas where homelessness is more of a problem.
  - conanbatt 8y ago
    The buck-passing however is from San Francisco to other cities. Guardian published a piece estimating San Francisco would double its homeless population if it hadnt exported it.
    - Nasrudith 8y ago
      The point is that it is multi-lateral circular shipping as a result of incentives - following them doesn't speak well to their character but it is a systemic problem.
aeorgnoieang 8y ago
How many homeless people could one even very wealthy person help in San Fransisco or Silicon Valley? Even just building a homeless shelter, which I think are still uniformly pretty terrible places, is probably near-impossible; and not just because of the opposition from residents to them being built in their areas or neighborhoods, but also the regular, general opposition to any new development. And just giving homeless people a better place to live is only one, tho extremely important, dimension along which homeless people can be helped. And then of course one should expect side-effects to any help one would give, e.g. increasing 'demand' for help for homeless people. I'd imagine one reason why there's so many homeless people in San Fransisco is that it's already one of the best places to be homeless.
conanbatt 8y ago
Its true private could solve it, but there is a crowding out effect as well as a double-charging effect. The city announces it spends 400 million on homelessness and fails, while it spends 2600U$S a month per household. If you are a private worker you pay a monopoly surplus to the landlord and then get taxed to hell, and then you would give charity to help the homelessness the previous two mostly provoke? Hell no.
conanbatt 8y ago
It would probably be illegal for facebook and google to run a homeless shelter in san francisco. The city would never allow such a thing to happen, because they want first-right to spend.

asdffdsa 8y ago

define "meaningfully", keeping in mind the city spends hundreds of millions on homelessness already (kind of insulting and ignorant to say "no one is doing a single fucking thing")

nieksand 8y ago

Does SFO homelessness really have a shortage of money being thrown at the problem?

jeffreyrogers 8y ago

How would you solve it? I think it's a really tough problem and a significant fraction of the homeless population has serious mental health problems. I live in a city (Salt Lake City) that did a great job fixing its homelessness problem... for a couple of years. Now it's worse than it has ever been. Partly this is because more homeless people are coming to the area because they've heard about how great the resources here are. The problem with trying to solve homelessness is that most things that work to solve it incentivize more homeless people to move to the area that is solving the problem. At least that's what it seems like to me.

crushcrashcrush 8y ago
It's simple. We need more fucking housing. Period. End of story. We need condo towers. We need townhomes. We need mid-rises. And secondly, we need free and low cost mental health services. That's it. Problem solved. The problem is we're 20 years behind.
- rak00n 8y ago
  Nope, your just indentfied the problem that needs to be solved. You haven't "solved" the problem, which is massively more complex.
  - crushcrashcrush 8y ago
    You must be really fun at cocktail parties.
- notacoward 8y ago
  More affordable housing only solves a problem for those with moderate incomes. Evidence: every other city in the US that has cheaper housing but also still plenty of homeless. Free and low-cost mental health services are closer to the mark, but still far from a simple problem. Many homeless people have complex, multi-faceted problems. Many resist initial contact. Many have trouble with maintaining any kind of regular schedule for either medication or counseling. Funding that many therapists (not just head-counters) and ensuring their security is a challenge unto itself. Not a simple problem at all. If there's one thing that makes Silicon Valley unpleasant to me, it's the "simple, just do X" hand-wave that so many there indulge in regarding every damn topic. I'm sure your job isn't so simple a child could do it. Why act like everybody else's is?
Nasrudith 8y ago
Really I think that hints that homelessness should be addressed federally just to stop the buck passing. Not helping matters is the electoral college biasing against urban areas where homelessness is more of a problem.
- conanbatt 8y ago
  The buck-passing however is from San Francisco to other cities. Guardian published a piece estimating San Francisco would double its homeless population if it hadnt exported it.
  - Nasrudith 8y ago
    The point is that it is multi-lateral circular shipping as a result of incentives - following them doesn't speak well to their character but it is a systemic problem.

aeorgnoieang 8y ago

How many homeless people could one even very wealthy person help in San Fransisco or Silicon Valley? Even just building a homeless shelter, which I think are still uniformly pretty terrible places, is probably near-impossible; and not just because of the opposition from residents to them being built in their areas or neighborhoods, but also the regular, general opposition to any new development. And just giving homeless people a better place to live is only one, tho extremely important, dimension along which homeless people can be helped. And then of course one should expect side-effects to any help one would give, e.g. increasing 'demand' for help for homeless people. I'd imagine one reason why there's so many homeless people in San Fransisco is that it's already one of the best places to be homeless.

conanbatt 8y ago

Its true private could solve it, but there is a crowding out effect as well as a double-charging effect. The city announces it spends 400 million on homelessness and fails, while it spends 2600U$S a month per household. If you are a private worker you pay a monopoly surplus to the landlord and then get taxed to hell, and then you would give charity to help the homelessness the previous two mostly provoke? Hell no.

conanbatt 8y ago

It would probably be illegal for facebook and google to run a homeless shelter in san francisco. The city would never allow such a thing to happen, because they want first-right to spend.