8 ms·

Oversimplifying here, but the homeless probem arises due to high housing cost and poor health care system. In addition to fighting the symptoms (which is alread

by shafyy 7y ago

Oversimplifying here, but the homeless probem arises due to high housing cost and poor health care system. In addition to fighting the symptoms (which is already being done ok-ish), we need to fight the mentioned root causes. Unfortunately, the health care problem goes back to CA or even on a national level. Often times, mentally ill or people that lost their jobs for another reason become homeless, and from there the downward spiral begins. So, a better security net for those who suffer from mental and physical problems would be a good start.

justaguyhere 7y ago
Can't remember where, but I remember reading stats that a huge percentage (like a third) homeless people are military veterans :(
- fucking_tragedy 7y ago
  The largest percentage of homeless people are families. The largest causes of homelessness are job loss, arguments with friends and family whom they lived with, eviction, and divorce/separation. Drugs & alcohol are responsible for 15%, and illness/medical problems account for 7%. [1] [1] http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017SanFrancisco-PIT-FINAL.pdf http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017SanFranc...
unixhero 7y ago
There are also homeless regardless if they receive help, due to mental illnesses.
- quakeguy 7y ago
  ...and?!?
toasterlovin 7y ago
The specific problems OP mentions are not due to high housing costs. What about rent being expensive means people have to shoot up or defecate in broad daylight on a public street?
- mplewis 7y ago
  When you're homeless, you don't have your own private bathroom.
- bluGill 7y ago
  When you have nothing else to live for you are more likely to turn to such escapes. The correlation is pretty strong, even though it isn't a strict cause-effect relation. Yes of course people who own a house do drugs. Some of them destroy their mind to the point they can no longer keep their house.
  - toasterlovin 7y ago
    The simplest hypothesis is that drug use and mental health lead to homelessness. And if that's the case, then the problem isn't housing costs (though high housing costs are a problem, just a separate one), it's that people have addiction and mental health issues.
    - fucking_tragedy 7y ago
      The problem with your simple hypothesis is that the data doesn't back it up. Drugs & alcohol account for 15% of the reasons for homelessness in SF, and medical issues/illness account for 7%[1]. The data shows that housing costs and financial instability are the largest causes of homelessness in SF. [1] http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017SanFrancisco-PIT-FINAL.pdf http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017SanFranc...
      - toasterlovin 7y ago
        Sorry, I should have been more specific: I am referring to visible homelessness, people living on the street, etc. The colloquial meaning of the term 'homeless', in other words. I should have been more specific, especially given that this confusion regarding the use of this term is a pet peeve of mine.
        7y ago
CPLX 7y ago
I dunno. As someone who lives in NYC where we really just don't have the same problem at all it's pretty clear there are some policy reasons involved too.
- shuckles 7y ago
  This seems like a stretch. I saw my fair share of empty subway cars which contained within them an unpleasant surprise when I was there last month. Not conclusive, but “at all” is a very strong standard.
  - CPLX 7y ago
    I'm not saying there's no homeless people, there are. But the SFO phenomenon of open drug use, screaming disruptive people, and street level encampments isn't something you see really anywhere in the five boroughs, excepting maybe a few errant overpasses or very industrial areas of Hunts Point or similar.
    - waqf 7y ago
      Yeah, same in Boston. We definitely have homeless people but they are usually polite-to-the-point-of-deferential to passers by — the complete opposite of SF.
    - inferiorhuman 7y ago
      There's a much more tolerant attitude towards drug use, we've got a milder climate, San Francisco specifically doesn't prosecute quality of life crimes, and it's significantly harder to commit someone against their will or mandate that they continue to use psychiatric medication. Notice the comment on this thread about how in the poor areas it was unpleasant to get lunch? That attitude carries over. Starting with the fucking super bowl there was a very dramatic effort to shoo away the homeless people from where 'super bowl city' was. The net effect was a dispersal of homeless encampments the likes of which I've never seen. Combine that with stagnating wages at the low end and rising cost of living and you have a lot more people on the streets. Make no mistake, the homeless population in the whole of the Bay Area is growing dramatically. Meanwhile in some "street photography" (but really mostly creep shots) group a couple people have been posting pictures of indigent folks from the 90s. The difference is pretty dramatic. From a friend who works for the city -- both meth and heroin have hit San Francisco very hard. The type of people that you see on the streets these days has changed. San Francisco is also paralyzed by extremely aggressive NIMBYs. Shelters are at capacity, but the city's efforts to build more shelters (e.g. Embarcadero) are being battled by carpetbaggers. A while back the idea of "wet houses" was floated to get addicts off the streets (where folks will call 911 and tie up a large chunk of SFFD/paramedic resources). Of course that didn't go over well with the punishment first crowd. New York is also facing record homelessness and is actually buying property to house homeless folks — San Francisco is…
atourgates 7y ago
Listened to a Gavin Newsom interview a while back, where he had some pretty decent insight. The interviewer challenged him on the homeless problem in SF. His answer was basically, "Yes, there are homeless people in SF now. The challenge is that during my tenure as mayor, we got people off the streets, but X x 2 homeless people came to SF from other places." Newsom was far from blameless, but his point that homelessness in SF can't be solved on a SF level, or a bay-area level or possibly even a state-wide level, but needs a more global solution rings true to me.
mdemare 7y ago
I heard rumors that a lot of towns just send their psychiatric homeless to SF with a one-way ticket.
- Loughla 7y ago
  That's been a rumor for as long as homelessness has existed. It's either SF, or San Diego, or Seattle, or some other large, urban, mild-weathered city.
yourapostasy 7y ago
> ...homeless probem arises due to high housing cost... I heard an interesting theory during a discussion of how off the rails weird some cities' denizens were X decades ago, and how you no longer really see that any longer. The hypothesis put forward was that back then rents were very cheap relative to minimum wage, and minimum wage jobs didn't take much more than a grade school education to hold down. A lot of borderline or minimally-mentally-ill people could fit in between these cracks and live out their lives relatively peacefully coexisting with the broader mainstream, though to be sure adding "color" to the surroundings. I think this hypothesis has legs. I've read that there were successful experiments at simply outright giving homeless a place to live of their own reduced the incidence of homeless-related crimes to a statistically significant degree. If that is true, then it is worth questioning our economic incentives making housing ever-more expensive. From my perspective as someone outside the real estate industry, I'm perfectly fine with reducing values by 10X or 100X in more HCOL areas through removal of all state support for the industry. As far as I'm concerned, that's simply stranded capital idling uselessly instead of working for everyone. I wish Bezos would apply his "your margin is my opportunity" aphorism to real estate and healthcare.

by shafyy 7y ago

justaguyhere 7y ago

Can't remember where, but I remember reading stats that a huge percentage (like a third) homeless people are military veterans :(

fucking_tragedy 7y ago
The largest percentage of homeless people are families. The largest causes of homelessness are job loss, arguments with friends and family whom they lived with, eviction, and divorce/separation. Drugs & alcohol are responsible for 15%, and illness/medical problems account for 7%. [1] [1] http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017SanFrancisco-PIT-FINAL.pdf http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017SanFranc...

unixhero 7y ago

There are also homeless regardless if they receive help, due to mental illnesses.

quakeguy 7y ago
...and?!?

toasterlovin 7y ago

The specific problems OP mentions are not due to high housing costs. What about rent being expensive means people have to shoot up or defecate in broad daylight on a public street?

mplewis 7y ago
When you're homeless, you don't have your own private bathroom.
bluGill 7y ago
When you have nothing else to live for you are more likely to turn to such escapes. The correlation is pretty strong, even though it isn't a strict cause-effect relation. Yes of course people who own a house do drugs. Some of them destroy their mind to the point they can no longer keep their house.
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  The simplest hypothesis is that drug use and mental health lead to homelessness. And if that's the case, then the problem isn't housing costs (though high housing costs are a problem, just a separate one), it's that people have addiction and mental health issues.
  - fucking_tragedy 7y ago
    The problem with your simple hypothesis is that the data doesn't back it up. Drugs & alcohol account for 15% of the reasons for homelessness in SF, and medical issues/illness account for 7%[1]. The data shows that housing costs and financial instability are the largest causes of homelessness in SF. [1] http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017SanFrancisco-PIT-FINAL.pdf http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017SanFranc...
    - toasterlovin 7y ago
      Sorry, I should have been more specific: I am referring to visible homelessness, people living on the street, etc. The colloquial meaning of the term 'homeless', in other words. I should have been more specific, especially given that this confusion regarding the use of this term is a pet peeve of mine.
      - 7y ago

CPLX 7y ago

I dunno. As someone who lives in NYC where we really just don't have the same problem at all it's pretty clear there are some policy reasons involved too.

shuckles 7y ago
This seems like a stretch. I saw my fair share of empty subway cars which contained within them an unpleasant surprise when I was there last month. Not conclusive, but “at all” is a very strong standard.
- CPLX 7y ago
  I'm not saying there's no homeless people, there are. But the SFO phenomenon of open drug use, screaming disruptive people, and street level encampments isn't something you see really anywhere in the five boroughs, excepting maybe a few errant overpasses or very industrial areas of Hunts Point or similar.
  - waqf 7y ago
    Yeah, same in Boston. We definitely have homeless people but they are usually polite-to-the-point-of-deferential to passers by — the complete opposite of SF.
  - inferiorhuman 7y ago
    There's a much more tolerant attitude towards drug use, we've got a milder climate, San Francisco specifically doesn't prosecute quality of life crimes, and it's significantly harder to commit someone against their will or mandate that they continue to use psychiatric medication. Notice the comment on this thread about how in the poor areas it was unpleasant to get lunch? That attitude carries over. Starting with the fucking super bowl there was a very dramatic effort to shoo away the homeless people from where 'super bowl city' was. The net effect was a dispersal of homeless encampments the likes of which I've never seen. Combine that with stagnating wages at the low end and rising cost of living and you have a lot more people on the streets. Make no mistake, the homeless population in the whole of the Bay Area is growing dramatically. Meanwhile in some "street photography" (but really mostly creep shots) group a couple people have been posting pictures of indigent folks from the 90s. The difference is pretty dramatic. From a friend who works for the city -- both meth and heroin have hit San Francisco very hard. The type of people that you see on the streets these days has changed. San Francisco is also paralyzed by extremely aggressive NIMBYs. Shelters are at capacity, but the city's efforts to build more shelters (e.g. Embarcadero) are being battled by carpetbaggers. A while back the idea of "wet houses" was floated to get addicts off the streets (where folks will call 911 and tie up a large chunk of SFFD/paramedic resources). Of course that didn't go over well with the punishment first crowd. New York is also facing record homelessness and is actually buying property to house homeless folks — San Francisco is…

atourgates 7y ago

Listened to a Gavin Newsom interview a while back, where he had some pretty decent insight. The interviewer challenged him on the homeless problem in SF. His answer was basically, "Yes, there are homeless people in SF now. The challenge is that during my tenure as mayor, we got people off the streets, but X x 2 homeless people came to SF from other places." Newsom was far from blameless, but his point that homelessness in SF can't be solved on a SF level, or a bay-area level or possibly even a state-wide level, but needs a more global solution rings true to me.

mdemare 7y ago

I heard rumors that a lot of towns just send their psychiatric homeless to SF with a one-way ticket.

Loughla 7y ago
That's been a rumor for as long as homelessness has existed. It's either SF, or San Diego, or Seattle, or some other large, urban, mild-weathered city.

yourapostasy 7y ago

> ...homeless probem arises due to high housing cost... I heard an interesting theory during a discussion of how off the rails weird some cities' denizens were X decades ago, and how you no longer really see that any longer. The hypothesis put forward was that back then rents were very cheap relative to minimum wage, and minimum wage jobs didn't take much more than a grade school education to hold down. A lot of borderline or minimally-mentally-ill people could fit in between these cracks and live out their lives relatively peacefully coexisting with the broader mainstream, though to be sure adding "color" to the surroundings. I think this hypothesis has legs. I've read that there were successful experiments at simply outright giving homeless a place to live of their own reduced the incidence of homeless-related crimes to a statistically significant degree. If that is true, then it is worth questioning our economic incentives making housing ever-more expensive. From my perspective as someone outside the real estate industry, I'm perfectly fine with reducing values by 10X or 100X in more HCOL areas through removal of all state support for the industry. As far as I'm concerned, that's simply stranded capital idling uselessly instead of working for everyone. I wish Bezos would apply his "your margin is my opportunity" aphorism to real estate and healthcare.