4 ms·

It's strange that a rich area can't take care of this problem. E.g. supporting the homeless some way, cleaning them up and helping them to find some job and hou

It's strange that a rich area can't take care of this problem. E.g. supporting the homeless some way, cleaning them up and helping them to find some job and housing.

enraged_camel 7y ago
The argument most commonly put forth by NIMBY types is that providing services for homeless people simply encourages more homeless to move to that city. Here in Austin, the City announced plans to build a new community center to help the homeless. Nearby residents are losing their fucking minds over it.
- andymoe 7y ago
  Same in San Francisco... I think we might actually get it built anyway though.
- merpnderp 7y ago
  I have a friend who's neighborhood had a community center for the homeless put in, but with strict rules on violence and drug usage. So homeless people migrate to the neighborhood to get into the shelter, but are often quickly turned out because they can't stop fighting or shooting up. And because of this, my friend's neighborhood is now a dangerous, very crime ridden place to live. Two weeks ago he and his wife were leaving for work and a junkie walked around from their backyard, leaned into his wife's open car window and reached for her purse before he could jump out of his car and run the guy off. They're losing their fucking minds over this.
- conanbatt 7y ago
  San Francisco is a net-exporter of homeless people, according to a piece by The Guardian. Aproximately half the homeless population was sent to other states.
natalyarostova 7y ago
They spend vast amounts of money on the problem, but the way they approach the problem makes the solution intractable. To the extent the drug addicted and severely mentally ill homeless can want things, and want the right to continue their current life, they are afforded that right. That is to say, it is their fundamental right to use drugs, live, and defecate on the street (I know these things are illegal, but really, legality is determined by enforcement, not what is on the books. And as far as enforcement goes, these things are legal for all intents and purposes). So long as they don't want help, and so long as it is their right to refuse and continue as they are, nothing will change. The alternatives are many, but they all start with some type of enforcement agency willingly stripping these peoples rights, and forcibly and potentially violently taking them into government custody, which the citizens of San Francisco find far more appalling than solving the problem. Note: What I said above doesn't generalize to 'the homeless,' and people out of a job and down on their luck, It specifically is targeted to the worst offenders who scatter the city with waste and needles.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- silvestrov 7y ago
  SF spends $250 million in 2017. 1/3 on actual homeless, 2/3 on preventing homelessness (e.g. rental subsidies). https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Businesses-must-contribute-more-to-city-s-13178743.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Bu...
  - bluGill 7y ago
    That doesn't mean those programs are effective. Lots has been written on both sides of the political aisle on this.
  - rolltiide 7y ago
    other rich areas violate civil rights. when people say "take care of it" they mean "we'll tolerate wild indiscretions"
- kradroy 7y ago
  There was a good article comparing and contrasting the way San Francisco County and San Mateo County handle their homeless. Summary is that both are a bit extreme (SM jails homeless for petty crime; SF basically does nothing, even in murder cases) and the middle ground is probably what will work. The question is how SF gets there. SF's recent bill to involuntarily commit chronically mentally ill individuals is a step in the right direction, but it's so toothless that it won't matter much. An individual has to be brought to inpatient mental services 8 times in a year to trigger the rule. Why bother?
rtio 7y ago
Not really. Tends to be the same in any booming city. The opposite is the exception.
- leesalminen 7y ago
  We just came back from Nashville, a fast growing city with 150 new residents every day. We did not experience any of the issues we saw in SF earlier this year (and last year, and the year before that).
  - geebee 7y ago
    As another anecdote, I encountered some fairly aggressive panhandling in Nashville. I was there for a convention but got out into the city a bit. At the crosswalk near music row toward the river, a man asked for change and heckled me until the light changed and I crossed. In east Nashville, I definitely saw things that reminded me of home (in SF): very ill, almost certainly addicted people wandering around, attempting to stop me and ask for "five dollars", with a bit of menace thrown in. This was a year ago. It was not as bad as SF by a long shot, but absolutely present.
  - rtio 7y ago
    I wouldn't put Nashville in the same category as San Francisco. The Bay Area is the home to one of the largest industries in the modern economy and therefor to a significant part of the richest companies and people in the world. Go to other places with accelerating inequality and you will see largely see the same thing. Finding a counterexample is more challenging. But I am not so sure people are that interested in the facts anyways.
- zzzzzzzza 7y ago
  Progress and Poverty, Henry George
shuckles 7y ago
The resources exist, but San Francisco is very poorly governed, and one way that manifests is inefficiency at all levels. A unit of affordable housing costs $750k and a decade from site acquisition to occupancy.
themagician 7y ago
It’s not a problem for the really wealthy. If you’re really wealthy and live in SF you live at elevation where homeless are rare. Pacific Heights, Ashbury Heights, Nob Hill, Russian Hill—the occasional homeless person but nothing out of that ordinary. The homeless problem is a sea level problem.
conanbatt 7y ago
California and San francisco are amongst the most corrupt states I know. Believe me, I am from Argentina, I can smell corruption a mile a way. 2.5 billion dollars spent on a broken bus station, and they are going to fix long-term homelessness with 800 million, and a poop patrol that earns 100k+ a year per employee?
- ataturk 7y ago
  NY State is the same way. People live in their own little worlds and ignore what I tell them even though it is based on experience. These big cities and big states have massive slush funds that are tapped by corrupt politicos. It's becoming a 3rd World system in the US.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  Hahaha, this is so true. If you've ever lived outside America (esp. in the third world) you can see the corruption immediately. These things don't cost as much as Californians think they do.
jasode 7y ago
>It's strange that a rich area can't take care of this problem. Apparently, it's a really difficult problem that nobody has really solved. Yes, San Francisco is wealthy. And Monte Carlo is wealthy too with Lamborghinis and Ferraris. Why does MC not have a rampant "homeless problem"? Well, if a homeless person tried to lay down a blanket to sleep on the sidewalk across from the iconic casino, he's going to be rounded up by MC police. As far as I can tell, MC doesn't have a homeless shelter so I'm not sure where the MC police takes the vagrants. San Francisco police obviously do not remove all homeless people from the sidewalk. And nobody is suggesting SF emulate what MC does. Can SF spend money on housing for homeless? Multiple cities have tried this with mixed results[1] ... poop in the stairways, drugs, etc. Which city in the world has the best homeless program (especially dealing with mentally ill homeless) and what do they do differently? [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=washington+dc+homeless+apartment+sedgwick https://www.google.com/search?q=washington+dc+homeless+apart...
- umanwizard 7y ago
  Presumably vagrants in Monte Carlo would just be deported. I doubt there are any actual citizens of Monaco who are homeless.
nostrademons 7y ago
SF already spends an exorbitant amount on housing the homeless ($241M in 2016). Its poverty rate is also not particularly high by American city standards (9.6%, vs 11.3% for the surrounding Bay Area, 19.6% for LA, 19.0% for NYC, 34.5% for Detroit). The main reasons there's such a visible homeless problem are: 1.) Housing crisis in general. A lot of that $241M goes to lower-income residents who are at risk of homelessness, not ones actually on the street, to keep them in their homes. From there, it largely goes to the landlords, if the apartment isn't rent-controlled, since it's more money chasing the same amount of housing. If the apartment is rent-controlled, it goes to the tenant + other landlords, since rent-controlled apartments drive up the rent for everybody else. 2.) A general laissez-faire attitude toward the homeless. SF has a strong culture of live-and-let-live; if you don't bother the homeless, they won't bother you. (This attitude may or may not reflect reality, but it's the culture.) There's widespread opposition to criminalizing homelessness and say arresting or tazing homeless people. 3.) Poor mental health & substance abuse services. This is a legacy of history: JFK moved responsibility for mental health services from the state to federal government, Reagan consequently cut the budget for the state of CA's mental health services, and then when Reagan was president, he moved responsibility back to the states, without any corresponding increase in funding. As a result, the mentally ill are nobody's problem, so they just sorta hang out on street corners or wander across major boulevards. 4.) Mild climate. SF is an attractive place to be homeless. I grew up in Boston; we didn't have much of a visible homeless problem. Why? Because come wintertime, they would all either freeze to death or huddle together in the subway stations, keeping them out of public view unless you took the T. In SF, they sprawl all over the Tenderloin, the Mission, the Civic Center, SOMA, etc, all of which are prominent neighborhoods that get a lot of gentrified and/or tourist traffic.
- FabHK 7y ago
  > 2.) A general laissez-faire attitude toward the homeless. [...] There's widespread opposition to criminalizing homelessness and say arresting or tazing homeless people. I want to point out that it is a departure from laissez-faire to criminalise, arrest, and taze the homeless, but another conceivable departure from laissez-faire is to house them. EDIT to clarify.
Kalium 7y ago
There's a witch's brew of reasons for this. A lot of those who persist in living on the street are hardest to help, for reasons that often involve medical issues, psychological issues, addiction issues, or a general aversion to getting off the street. California makes involuntary commitment extremely difficult (for good historical reason), so people who refuse help or treatment don't get any. SF is also incredibly bad at making use of a vast pool of resources. The amount of money spent to help the indigent is substantial, but no amount of ineffective spending can address real problems. Other changes that might help, such as constructing homes for the homeless, run into stiff political resistance in a permitting system designed to make it easy to block anything. That residents and voters seem to care more about what makes them feel compassionate than what demonstrably helps also helps little. The result is a mess.
thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
Consider what does it mean to be rich? Rich is when you can afford the necessities of life: Shelter, food, water, transportation, medical insurance. Rich does not mean having lots of Money (just look at venezuella where they were handing out trillion dollar bills but everyone was extremely poor). SF has a lot of money and dollars but it is NOT Rich. Yes, if some of the residents left SF they'd be rich, but not while they remain there and certainly not the average person in SF. We have a serious lack of wealth problem here in SF and it's all directly or indirectly caused by the housing crisis. Throwing more money at it won't solve the issue, you need more actual "wealth". Wealth is not dollar bills. Wealth is houses, apartments, etc, that's what we need so desperately and it's not being allowed. SF really needs to take a good long hard look at why building costs so much in this city. Why do developers need to spend 1000$/sq ft just to break even? SF needs to start learning from other cities that have done it right, like Houston (building here costs less than 1/10th as much), Dallas, Chicago, etc. And, no it's not just because SF is landlocked - we have the same self imposed problem over here in the east bay where there's miles and miles of empty space right off the 7 lane highways.

It's strange that a rich area can't take care of this problem. E.g. supporting the homeless some way, cleaning them up and helping them to find some job and housing.

enraged_camel 7y ago

The argument most commonly put forth by NIMBY types is that providing services for homeless people simply encourages more homeless to move to that city. Here in Austin, the City announced plans to build a new community center to help the homeless. Nearby residents are losing their fucking minds over it.

andymoe 7y ago
Same in San Francisco... I think we might actually get it built anyway though.
merpnderp 7y ago
I have a friend who's neighborhood had a community center for the homeless put in, but with strict rules on violence and drug usage. So homeless people migrate to the neighborhood to get into the shelter, but are often quickly turned out because they can't stop fighting or shooting up. And because of this, my friend's neighborhood is now a dangerous, very crime ridden place to live. Two weeks ago he and his wife were leaving for work and a junkie walked around from their backyard, leaned into his wife's open car window and reached for her purse before he could jump out of his car and run the guy off. They're losing their fucking minds over this.
conanbatt 7y ago
San Francisco is a net-exporter of homeless people, according to a piece by The Guardian. Aproximately half the homeless population was sent to other states.

natalyarostova 7y ago

They spend vast amounts of money on the problem, but the way they approach the problem makes the solution intractable. To the extent the drug addicted and severely mentally ill homeless can want things, and want the right to continue their current life, they are afforded that right. That is to say, it is their fundamental right to use drugs, live, and defecate on the street (I know these things are illegal, but really, legality is determined by enforcement, not what is on the books. And as far as enforcement goes, these things are legal for all intents and purposes). So long as they don't want help, and so long as it is their right to refuse and continue as they are, nothing will change. The alternatives are many, but they all start with some type of enforcement agency willingly stripping these peoples rights, and forcibly and potentially violently taking them into government custody, which the citizens of San Francisco find far more appalling than solving the problem. Note: What I said above doesn't generalize to 'the homeless,' and people out of a job and down on their luck, It specifically is targeted to the worst offenders who scatter the city with waste and needles.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
silvestrov 7y ago
SF spends $250 million in 2017. 1/3 on actual homeless, 2/3 on preventing homelessness (e.g. rental subsidies). https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Businesses-must-contribute-more-to-city-s-13178743.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Bu...
- bluGill 7y ago
  That doesn't mean those programs are effective. Lots has been written on both sides of the political aisle on this.
- rolltiide 7y ago
  other rich areas violate civil rights. when people say "take care of it" they mean "we'll tolerate wild indiscretions"
kradroy 7y ago
There was a good article comparing and contrasting the way San Francisco County and San Mateo County handle their homeless. Summary is that both are a bit extreme (SM jails homeless for petty crime; SF basically does nothing, even in murder cases) and the middle ground is probably what will work. The question is how SF gets there. SF's recent bill to involuntarily commit chronically mentally ill individuals is a step in the right direction, but it's so toothless that it won't matter much. An individual has to be brought to inpatient mental services 8 times in a year to trigger the rule. Why bother?

rtio 7y ago

Not really. Tends to be the same in any booming city. The opposite is the exception.

leesalminen 7y ago
We just came back from Nashville, a fast growing city with 150 new residents every day. We did not experience any of the issues we saw in SF earlier this year (and last year, and the year before that).
- geebee 7y ago
  As another anecdote, I encountered some fairly aggressive panhandling in Nashville. I was there for a convention but got out into the city a bit. At the crosswalk near music row toward the river, a man asked for change and heckled me until the light changed and I crossed. In east Nashville, I definitely saw things that reminded me of home (in SF): very ill, almost certainly addicted people wandering around, attempting to stop me and ask for "five dollars", with a bit of menace thrown in. This was a year ago. It was not as bad as SF by a long shot, but absolutely present.
- rtio 7y ago
  I wouldn't put Nashville in the same category as San Francisco. The Bay Area is the home to one of the largest industries in the modern economy and therefor to a significant part of the richest companies and people in the world. Go to other places with accelerating inequality and you will see largely see the same thing. Finding a counterexample is more challenging. But I am not so sure people are that interested in the facts anyways.
zzzzzzzza 7y ago
Progress and Poverty, Henry George

shuckles 7y ago

The resources exist, but San Francisco is very poorly governed, and one way that manifests is inefficiency at all levels. A unit of affordable housing costs $750k and a decade from site acquisition to occupancy.

themagician 7y ago

It’s not a problem for the really wealthy. If you’re really wealthy and live in SF you live at elevation where homeless are rare. Pacific Heights, Ashbury Heights, Nob Hill, Russian Hill—the occasional homeless person but nothing out of that ordinary. The homeless problem is a sea level problem.

conanbatt 7y ago

California and San francisco are amongst the most corrupt states I know. Believe me, I am from Argentina, I can smell corruption a mile a way. 2.5 billion dollars spent on a broken bus station, and they are going to fix long-term homelessness with 800 million, and a poop patrol that earns 100k+ a year per employee?

ataturk 7y ago
NY State is the same way. People live in their own little worlds and ignore what I tell them even though it is based on experience. These big cities and big states have massive slush funds that are tapped by corrupt politicos. It's becoming a 3rd World system in the US.
scarejunba 7y ago
Hahaha, this is so true. If you've ever lived outside America (esp. in the third world) you can see the corruption immediately. These things don't cost as much as Californians think they do.

jasode 7y ago

>It's strange that a rich area can't take care of this problem. Apparently, it's a really difficult problem that nobody has really solved. Yes, San Francisco is wealthy. And Monte Carlo is wealthy too with Lamborghinis and Ferraris. Why does MC not have a rampant "homeless problem"? Well, if a homeless person tried to lay down a blanket to sleep on the sidewalk across from the iconic casino, he's going to be rounded up by MC police. As far as I can tell, MC doesn't have a homeless shelter so I'm not sure where the MC police takes the vagrants. San Francisco police obviously do not remove all homeless people from the sidewalk. And nobody is suggesting SF emulate what MC does. Can SF spend money on housing for homeless? Multiple cities have tried this with mixed results[1] ... poop in the stairways, drugs, etc. Which city in the world has the best homeless program (especially dealing with mentally ill homeless) and what do they do differently? [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=washington+dc+homeless+apartment+sedgwick https://www.google.com/search?q=washington+dc+homeless+apart...

umanwizard 7y ago
Presumably vagrants in Monte Carlo would just be deported. I doubt there are any actual citizens of Monaco who are homeless.

nostrademons 7y ago

SF already spends an exorbitant amount on housing the homeless ($241M in 2016). Its poverty rate is also not particularly high by American city standards (9.6%, vs 11.3% for the surrounding Bay Area, 19.6% for LA, 19.0% for NYC, 34.5% for Detroit). The main reasons there's such a visible homeless problem are: 1.) Housing crisis in general. A lot of that $241M goes to lower-income residents who are at risk of homelessness, not ones actually on the street, to keep them in their homes. From there, it largely goes to the landlords, if the apartment isn't rent-controlled, since it's more money chasing the same amount of housing. If the apartment is rent-controlled, it goes to the tenant + other landlords, since rent-controlled apartments drive up the rent for everybody else. 2.) A general laissez-faire attitude toward the homeless. SF has a strong culture of live-and-let-live; if you don't bother the homeless, they won't bother you. (This attitude may or may not reflect reality, but it's the culture.) There's widespread opposition to criminalizing homelessness and say arresting or tazing homeless people. 3.) Poor mental health & substance abuse services. This is a legacy of history: JFK moved responsibility for mental health services from the state to federal government, Reagan consequently cut the budget for the state of CA's mental health services, and then when Reagan was president, he moved responsibility back to the states, without any corresponding increase in funding. As a result, the mentally ill are nobody's problem, so they just sorta hang out on street corners or wander across major boulevards. 4.) Mild climate. SF is an attractive place to be homeless. I grew up in Boston; we didn't have much of a visible homeless problem. Why? Because come wintertime, they would all either freeze to death or huddle together in the subway stations, keeping them out of public view unless you took the T. In SF, they sprawl all over the Tenderloin, the Mission, the Civic Center, SOMA, etc, all of which are prominent neighborhoods that get a lot of gentrified and/or tourist traffic.

FabHK 7y ago
> 2.) A general laissez-faire attitude toward the homeless. [...] There's widespread opposition to criminalizing homelessness and say arresting or tazing homeless people. I want to point out that it is a departure from laissez-faire to criminalise, arrest, and taze the homeless, but another conceivable departure from laissez-faire is to house them. EDIT to clarify.

Kalium 7y ago

There's a witch's brew of reasons for this. A lot of those who persist in living on the street are hardest to help, for reasons that often involve medical issues, psychological issues, addiction issues, or a general aversion to getting off the street. California makes involuntary commitment extremely difficult (for good historical reason), so people who refuse help or treatment don't get any. SF is also incredibly bad at making use of a vast pool of resources. The amount of money spent to help the indigent is substantial, but no amount of ineffective spending can address real problems. Other changes that might help, such as constructing homes for the homeless, run into stiff political resistance in a permitting system designed to make it easy to block anything. That residents and voters seem to care more about what makes them feel compassionate than what demonstrably helps also helps little. The result is a mess.

thorwasdfasdf 7y ago

Consider what does it mean to be rich? Rich is when you can afford the necessities of life: Shelter, food, water, transportation, medical insurance. Rich does not mean having lots of Money (just look at venezuella where they were handing out trillion dollar bills but everyone was extremely poor). SF has a lot of money and dollars but it is NOT Rich. Yes, if some of the residents left SF they'd be rich, but not while they remain there and certainly not the average person in SF. We have a serious lack of wealth problem here in SF and it's all directly or indirectly caused by the housing crisis. Throwing more money at it won't solve the issue, you need more actual "wealth". Wealth is not dollar bills. Wealth is houses, apartments, etc, that's what we need so desperately and it's not being allowed. SF really needs to take a good long hard look at why building costs so much in this city. Why do developers need to spend 1000$/sq ft just to break even? SF needs to start learning from other cities that have done it right, like Houston (building here costs less than 1/10th as much), Dallas, Chicago, etc. And, no it's not just because SF is landlocked - we have the same self imposed problem over here in the east bay where there's miles and miles of empty space right off the 7 lane highways.