7 ms·

Silicon Valley man launches a hunger strike against housing the homeless

11 points by Quanttek 7y ago

jelliclesfarm 7y ago
This is misleading. He went on a hunger strike to protest the City Council making a decision to build low barrier Navigation centers next to residences and schools without public input. He wants them to hold something like a referendum and let the people decide location of the HNC if it were to pass.
- Quanttek 7y ago
  > without public input Not true. From the article: > The city of Fremont started developing a proposal for a new navigation center, and asked residents for input. Elected officials and staff organized three public meetings about the proposal, accepted comments online, and heard from hundreds of residents at city council meetings. Fremont residents wore white to city hearings to express support for the proposed center; others wore either red or blue, to express their opposition to specific proposed sites. The article also talks about how we wants the houses people decide whether and where it's built. I think anybody will recognize the ridiculousness of holding a whole referendum on whether one small service center is getting built (especially with Grant money on the line, this will effectively kill the proposal)
  - jelliclesfarm 7y ago
    That’s a Medium opinion piece. It is not a news article. A biased and ill informed one, in my opinion. Why is it ridiculous? Here: http://www.ktvu.com/homeless/fremont-resident-on-hunger-strike-over-proposed-homeless-center http://www.ktvu.com/homeless/fremont-resident-on-hunger-stri... [..]Sun said he’s not against a homeless navigation center. He doesn't care where it's built. He does care who has a say and feels it should be up to the voters. It’s his first hunger strike over the city’s first-ever homeless navigation center. He said it should be a ballot initiative for the voters to decide and not city leaders. “Only position I take is the decision making,” said Sun. “I believe this decision is so critical for Fremont.” [..] Sacramento is holding Bay Area cities hostage. The citizens pay for all of this. Are you saying people shouldn’t get a say on how their cities are run? It costs the city 4 more million and approximately 45% of the 2 million grant money is for administrative costs. It only serves 45 homeless people for six months(a bed and one meal a day and counseling) and grant money comes with strings that the city has to take in 45 people from other cities in alameda county. That means 45 out of 608 homeless headcount in Fremont will get the ‘service’ of being directed to homeless services. Is that a good use of 2.4 million grant money? You can build a permanent group homes housing 50-60 people for the same amount in another part of CA that isn’t crazy expensive Bay Area. Better uses for the grant money.
    - patthebunny 7y ago
      You could build it even cheaper in rural wyoming, but it doesn't matter if that's not where the problem is. This is a narcissistic NIMBY.
      - jelliclesfarm 7y ago
        Why is it narcissistic? Migration happens all the time and it’s an economic issue. It is absolutely normal that people move to places they can afford. Millions of people do it everyday. What is more important to alleviate homelessness? Placing them in communities built in affordable places to deliver care and services ..or insist on keeping them in unaffordable tier 1 cities like Seattle and Bay Area cities? All progressive politics seems to be geared towards strengthening and propagating a voter base rather than finding real solutions.
    - umeshunni 7y ago
      > Are you saying people shouldn’t get a say on how their cities are run? If there's one thing Bay Area cities have proven, it's that their citizens are incapable of running their cities. Putting NIMBY interests above regional interests are how they ended up in the current situation where any solution requires 7 counties, 22 regional associations and hundreds of so-called cities who can object to anything but are incapable of doing anything..
      - jelliclesfarm 7y ago
        I have never understood why NIMBYism is a bad thing. It simply means that one is involved with local governance and wants to voice their needs. It’s a good thing, yes? Regional government is Big Govt which is inefficient, bulky and expensive. Small units are efficient to run and tighter ships to maneuver. YIMBYism is too close to co-dependency rather than cooperation. Do we want a nanny state?
        SamReidHughes 7y ago
        You could draw a distinction between nimbyism that infringes on people's ability to do what they want with their own property, and nimbyism in regards to what the government does with its money.
SeeDave 7y ago
N3 Cattle Ranch with 50,000 acres of land is on sale for $72m. Proposition C will raise $300m per year. Why not buy this cattle ranch and build all sorts of mental health, addiction treatment, job training, etc. facilities? [0] https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/N3-Cattle-Company-ranch-larger-than-San-Francisco-14069717.php https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/N3-Cattle-Company-... [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/SF-Prop-C-homeless-tax-measure-to-raise-300-13369555.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/SF-Prop-C-homel...
- innagadadavida 7y ago
  Building this will increase homelessness as more people will migrate here. This is not a solution. Instead it is better to give housing near farms and other areas that need unskilled labor. Why not build more schools and libraries there instead? It’s a shame that we neglect our future generations at the cost of housing the homeless. There has to be set ratio on how much commercial vs housing a township can have. Endlessly building office space will make all of our lives more difficult.
  - jelliclesfarm 7y ago
    I am with you on farms and even food industry jobs. It’s short time to train them. I have worked with juvenile girls from half way homes. Working in the orchards and gardening is therapeutic and fills a labour deficit. With more automation and tech, it can also become less physically demanding. It can be a skill based job rather than manual jobs. My goal to automate farming: If you know how to use a smart phone, you can farm.
- jelliclesfarm 7y ago
  I think it’s a good idea. Grant money should be used to create income producing communities that help the most vulnerable. Homelessness also has a mental health/substance abuse angle. It stresses local resources to address these issues and it is something like 43k/person allegedly when they are on the streets. It’s some super dodgy math that doesn’t inspire confidence in government. One big issue I see is that homeless from the street being placed in sec 8 or affordable homes often end up back on the streets. I feel a certain percentage of them still need the community..while some of us see it as a dysfunctional relationship(I have had the opportunity to work with some homeless folks and this is my 2c), ..they still need their community. Sometimes they need their community with them so they don’t lapse back into homelessness and street living. Group homes and large homesteads with multiple small units which still have low skill jobs is also a solution. Solutions should include community preservation to be able to retain sheltered status.
patthebunny 7y ago
Awesome, lets help him out. Nobody let him have any food.
jelliclesfarm 7y ago
Fun fact: when London Breed, the mayor of SF wanted to build homeless units that are modular units made in Mare Island(in nearby Vallejo), the unions did not approve. It was decided that a factory building modular homes will be built instead to maintain construction jobs locally. They still haven’t found a site to create this factory. Almost 4 years now and the homeless population has grown in SF and has spilled into neighboring Bay Area cities. It’s easy to make scapegoats out of the productive tax paying, home owning, working class by branding them NIMBYs. Perhaps NIMBYism is the needed inoculation against chronic homelessness that is getting worse under inefficient state and regional governments.
- throwawaynihil 7y ago
  Whenever I read "NIMBY", I already know the person is a caucasian, male, 20-40 something white tech/finance bro complaining about rent, spewing out wildly inaccurate numbers (some YCbros claim that rent is $7500 per month for a 1br in the tenderloin), and expressing their sense of entitlement for San Francisco to be exactly like whatever boring town they migrated from.

11 points by Quanttek 7y ago

This is misleading. He went on a hunger strike to protest the City Council making a decision to build low barrier Navigation centers next to residences and schools without public input. He wants them to hold something like a referendum and let the people decide location of the HNC if it were to pass.

Quanttek 7y ago
> without public input Not true. From the article: > The city of Fremont started developing a proposal for a new navigation center, and asked residents for input. Elected officials and staff organized three public meetings about the proposal, accepted comments online, and heard from hundreds of residents at city council meetings. Fremont residents wore white to city hearings to express support for the proposed center; others wore either red or blue, to express their opposition to specific proposed sites. The article also talks about how we wants the houses people decide whether and where it's built. I think anybody will recognize the ridiculousness of holding a whole referendum on whether one small service center is getting built (especially with Grant money on the line, this will effectively kill the proposal)
- jelliclesfarm 7y ago
  That’s a Medium opinion piece. It is not a news article. A biased and ill informed one, in my opinion. Why is it ridiculous? Here: http://www.ktvu.com/homeless/fremont-resident-on-hunger-strike-over-proposed-homeless-center http://www.ktvu.com/homeless/fremont-resident-on-hunger-stri... [..]Sun said he’s not against a homeless navigation center. He doesn't care where it's built. He does care who has a say and feels it should be up to the voters. It’s his first hunger strike over the city’s first-ever homeless navigation center. He said it should be a ballot initiative for the voters to decide and not city leaders. “Only position I take is the decision making,” said Sun. “I believe this decision is so critical for Fremont.” [..] Sacramento is holding Bay Area cities hostage. The citizens pay for all of this. Are you saying people shouldn’t get a say on how their cities are run? It costs the city 4 more million and approximately 45% of the 2 million grant money is for administrative costs. It only serves 45 homeless people for six months(a bed and one meal a day and counseling) and grant money comes with strings that the city has to take in 45 people from other cities in alameda county. That means 45 out of 608 homeless headcount in Fremont will get the ‘service’ of being directed to homeless services. Is that a good use of 2.4 million grant money? You can build a permanent group homes housing 50-60 people for the same amount in another part of CA that isn’t crazy expensive Bay Area. Better uses for the grant money.
  - patthebunny 7y ago
    You could build it even cheaper in rural wyoming, but it doesn't matter if that's not where the problem is. This is a narcissistic NIMBY.
    - jelliclesfarm 7y ago
      Why is it narcissistic? Migration happens all the time and it’s an economic issue. It is absolutely normal that people move to places they can afford. Millions of people do it everyday. What is more important to alleviate homelessness? Placing them in communities built in affordable places to deliver care and services ..or insist on keeping them in unaffordable tier 1 cities like Seattle and Bay Area cities? All progressive politics seems to be geared towards strengthening and propagating a voter base rather than finding real solutions.
  - umeshunni 7y ago
    > Are you saying people shouldn’t get a say on how their cities are run? If there's one thing Bay Area cities have proven, it's that their citizens are incapable of running their cities. Putting NIMBY interests above regional interests are how they ended up in the current situation where any solution requires 7 counties, 22 regional associations and hundreds of so-called cities who can object to anything but are incapable of doing anything..
    - jelliclesfarm 7y ago
      I have never understood why NIMBYism is a bad thing. It simply means that one is involved with local governance and wants to voice their needs. It’s a good thing, yes? Regional government is Big Govt which is inefficient, bulky and expensive. Small units are efficient to run and tighter ships to maneuver. YIMBYism is too close to co-dependency rather than cooperation. Do we want a nanny state?
      - SamReidHughes 7y ago
        You could draw a distinction between nimbyism that infringes on people's ability to do what they want with their own property, and nimbyism in regards to what the government does with its money.

SeeDave 7y ago

N3 Cattle Ranch with 50,000 acres of land is on sale for $72m. Proposition C will raise $300m per year. Why not buy this cattle ranch and build all sorts of mental health, addiction treatment, job training, etc. facilities? [0] https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/N3-Cattle-Company-ranch-larger-than-San-Francisco-14069717.php https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/N3-Cattle-Company-... [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/SF-Prop-C-homeless-tax-measure-to-raise-300-13369555.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/SF-Prop-C-homel...

innagadadavida 7y ago
Building this will increase homelessness as more people will migrate here. This is not a solution. Instead it is better to give housing near farms and other areas that need unskilled labor. Why not build more schools and libraries there instead? It’s a shame that we neglect our future generations at the cost of housing the homeless. There has to be set ratio on how much commercial vs housing a township can have. Endlessly building office space will make all of our lives more difficult.
- jelliclesfarm 7y ago
  I am with you on farms and even food industry jobs. It’s short time to train them. I have worked with juvenile girls from half way homes. Working in the orchards and gardening is therapeutic and fills a labour deficit. With more automation and tech, it can also become less physically demanding. It can be a skill based job rather than manual jobs. My goal to automate farming: If you know how to use a smart phone, you can farm.
jelliclesfarm 7y ago
I think it’s a good idea. Grant money should be used to create income producing communities that help the most vulnerable. Homelessness also has a mental health/substance abuse angle. It stresses local resources to address these issues and it is something like 43k/person allegedly when they are on the streets. It’s some super dodgy math that doesn’t inspire confidence in government. One big issue I see is that homeless from the street being placed in sec 8 or affordable homes often end up back on the streets. I feel a certain percentage of them still need the community..while some of us see it as a dysfunctional relationship(I have had the opportunity to work with some homeless folks and this is my 2c), ..they still need their community. Sometimes they need their community with them so they don’t lapse back into homelessness and street living. Group homes and large homesteads with multiple small units which still have low skill jobs is also a solution. Solutions should include community preservation to be able to retain sheltered status.

patthebunny 7y ago

Awesome, lets help him out. Nobody let him have any food.

jelliclesfarm 7y ago

Fun fact: when London Breed, the mayor of SF wanted to build homeless units that are modular units made in Mare Island(in nearby Vallejo), the unions did not approve. It was decided that a factory building modular homes will be built instead to maintain construction jobs locally. They still haven’t found a site to create this factory. Almost 4 years now and the homeless population has grown in SF and has spilled into neighboring Bay Area cities. It’s easy to make scapegoats out of the productive tax paying, home owning, working class by branding them NIMBYs. Perhaps NIMBYism is the needed inoculation against chronic homelessness that is getting worse under inefficient state and regional governments.

throwawaynihil 7y ago
Whenever I read "NIMBY", I already know the person is a caucasian, male, 20-40 something white tech/finance bro complaining about rent, spewing out wildly inaccurate numbers (some YCbros claim that rent is $7500 per month for a 1br in the tenderloin), and expressing their sense of entitlement for San Francisco to be exactly like whatever boring town they migrated from.