9 ms·

A Window onto an American Nightmare

41 points by blendo 6y ago

blendo 6y ago
Despite the alarmist headline, the story is seems nuanced and even-handed.
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  I normally understand "alarmist" to imply "unjustified/exaggerated", whereas I don't think simply calling this situation a "nightmare" falls into that category. I would call it click-bait, since it does nothing to communicate the topic, though I probably wouldn't even bother leveling that criticism out loud in a case where I feel like the gravity of the topic overshadows it and the topic is handled well in the body of the article.
  - tonywastaken 6y ago
    This may be anecdotal, but the homeless situation + shelter-in-place combination IS a nightmare. I live it every day and I cannot describe it any other way. I didn't mind it when I spent 14 hours a day out of the house working, but I am now living, breathing, and hearing it 24 hours a day and it is a nightmare. And it's not just that they are homeless, it's all the criminal activity that radiates from the encampments right below my window.
- everdrive 6y ago
  Not sure if this is the case here, but apparently writers often don't choose their own headlines. https://archive.thinkprogress.org/why-writers-dont-write-headlines-558decd956d4/ https://archive.thinkprogress.org/why-writers-dont-write-hea...
  - ghaff 6y ago
    That is correct. Writers will usually write one (or may use one an editor provided when they gave the assignment), but typically an editor will decide on the final headline/subhead/etc.
    - vwcx 6y ago
      At both TIME and NatGeo, it wasn’t uncommon to focus group different headlines and covers before going to print. This coverline caused particular rage internally amongst staff: https://images.app.goo.gl/cGhZ8usRNCBqhcp49 https://images.app.goo.gl/cGhZ8usRNCBqhcp49
  - mdanger007 6y ago
    Editors write headlines. And as someone who has been published, sometimes they write your stories too.
xwdv 6y ago
Stuffing as many homeless as possible in close quarters at Moscone gives the impression San Francisco is hellbent on killing off its homeless population using COVID-19.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  Do you know of a better spot to shelter them? The city only owns so much property.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    There's an entire legal process for solving the fact that a city owns too little property: they can simply buy it with eminent domain, and that is precisely what they should be doing. They can ED single-family homes, rezone the properties for multifamily dwellings, and either auction them off or build on them through the housing authority. Everyone would win: the city could clear out lots of under-assessed junk, people who need housing wil get more supply, and even the owners who get bought out in the ED proceeding will get a huge paycheck, and the city needs no additional powers nor deliberations to do this, they can simply decide to do it at an ordinary supervisors' meeting. That they have chosen not to exercise such powers for the last 40-plus years tells you everything you need to know about why this problem persists.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      Eminent domain is much too slow to address the current crisis. What they're trying to do is get hotel rooms, but they can only source and staff them so quickly.
      - jeffbee 6y ago
        The "crisis" is older than most people who live in SF. Yes these buildings should have broken ground long ago, but that's no reason to delay.
cousin_it 6y ago
EDIT: ignore this comment, the reasoning is wrong, see below. > San Francisco officially reported 8,640 homeless residents in 2002—a peak—and almost as many in 2019 ... San Francisco spends more per capita on homelessness solutions than nearly any other U.S. city—three hundred and thirty million dollars a year. 330000000 / 8640 = 38194 > the median monthly rent for a one-bedroom in the city is now, by one estimate, about thirty-five hundred dollars 3500 * 12 = 42000 These numbers are surprisingly close. Moreover, 1) you need one apartment per family not per person 2) you can pay below median if you buy in bulk and aren't very picky 3) many homeless have jobs.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- spaced-out 6y ago
  Most of that money goes to getting people like the guy profiled in the article into housing, after which they're no longer considered homeless. In other words, not all of the $330 million is for that 8,640 people, most of it is going toward housing people who would otherwise be homeless.
  - cousin_it 6y ago
    Wow, I'm stupid. Won't remove my comment, let it stay as a monument. Thank you!
  - johnchristopher 6y ago
    I suppose that money isn't spent only on housing but on social workers salaries, vaccination campaign, STD prevention campaign, food distribution, etc., right ?
magna7 6y ago
Serious question. Why don't homeless people in SF and NYC go look for work in cheaper cities across America? It seems like these people with degrees and work experience can find work elsewhere and affordable housing, so I don't understand why they would continue to live in the most expensive cities in the world... I'm not American, so maybe I'm missing something.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  The bit the piece touched on was that the couple it followed came to SF because it has a support system for drug addicts and the homeless. What it didn't say is that any local solution will just improve the conditions in SF, attracting more homeless and drug addicts. SF and NYC would be better off finding those cheaper cities that need workers and showing them how to run services for the homeless. They might also want to connect the marginally homeless with these cities early. That said, I doubt there's much work for the SF homeless. Between addiction and mental health problems, most aren't employable.
  - epistasis 6y ago
    This is not a significant source of homeless people in SF. The vast majority have been living in the area, just struggling to get by. There are so many people that are one financial crisis (eg car repair) away from being evicted. It's no surprise that 1% of the population is homeless in a city where rents are not covered by entry level jobs, and where cheap rental options like SROs are being eliminated.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      Is that true? Both the top people profiled in this article moved from out of state into SF and appear to have immediately become homeless.
      - throwawaysea 6y ago
        It’s not true. Many homeless are coached to respond to surveys (like the annual point in time count) with a claim that they’re long time locals, since it garners more political sympathy and support. But if you talk to homeless in SF or Seattle or view news clips interviewing people in camps, it seems the majority have moved in from elsewhere due to laws that permit permanent nomadic lifestyles and open drug abuse. It is just “induced demand” in action. Incentives and disincentives have effects on behaviors. The only statistics that should be trusted are ones that have verifiable records proving the historical residency of homeless populations. Everything else is easily manipulable and not trustworthy.
samirillian 6y ago
> The mayor opposed the idea, but it gained support from local powers such as Benioff and Pelosi, and passed as Proposition C. The tax has raised three hundred million dollars annually. But, for now, that money remains unavailable, ensnared in legal challenges from the business world. Does anybody know about these legal challenges?
golf1052 6y ago
The line that stuck out the most to me > In San Francisco today, people who earn less than [$82,000] a year—or a [$117,000] for a family of four—are considered low-income. Most people outside of San Francisco would consider that a lot of money. Would a barista working at a Starbucks in the city ever earn that much? What about a public school teacher or cleaning staff? Essential services that need to be filled are worked by people who need to live somewhere.
ur-whale 6y ago
http://archive.is/hm7Vd http://archive.is/hm7Vd
tomohawk 6y ago
The rest of us in areas not controlled by the Democrat party do not think of this as an American Nightmare. Awful and terrible, yes, but a single party has been in control of these areas for a long time.
- carapace 6y ago
  There are homeless people in Republican-controlled areas.
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't take HN threads into partisan flamewar. It's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
fortran77 6y ago
Of course I'm sympathetic to the plight of the homeless, and I think it's outrageous that SF isn't building more housing as as fast as possible to try to bring the prices down. However, there's a dilemma where cities that have the best services (and climate) for people who are happy camping anywhere will attract folks who come there just to be homeless, like the subject of this story. > He made money by hunting exotic minerals and rocks. Did he? Or was he stealing exotic minerals and rocks from the National Parks in 48 states he camped at? (See https://www.nps.gov/subjects/geology/permits.htm#CP_JUMP_5479119 https://www.nps.gov/subjects/geology/permits.htm#CP_JUMP_547... ) Shame on the New Yorker fact-checkers for not confirming where he got those minerals.
- carapace 6y ago
  > SF isn't building more housing as as fast as possible to try to bring the prices down. If every construction company and contractor in the entire state of CA came to SF and started building apartment buildings as fast as they could, they would still only add enough capacity to prevent rates rising, at best. No human agency can actually bring the prices down.
  - erik_seaberg 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Contractors_State_License_Board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Contractors_State_L... says California has 104K licensed building contractors. Couldn't they build 200K duplexes housing 800K people (roughly the current population of SF) in a couple of years?
    - carapace 6y ago
      I'm exaggerating, here's the article I'm drawing on: https://experimental-geography.blogspot.com/2016/05/employment-construction-and-cost-of-san.html https://experimental-geography.blogspot.com/2016/05/employme... He collects and analyzes historical data going back to 1948. Punchline: "Today's outrageous prices are exactly in line with the 6.6% trend that began 60 years ago." Rent in the Bay Area has gone up 6.6% per year for sixty years. > In conclusion > San Francisco is an expensive city because it is an affluent city with a growing population and no easily available land for development. Sonja Trauss is right that building more housing would reduce rents of both high- and low-end apartments. Tim Redmond is right that building enough housing to make much of a dent in prices would change the visual character of most streets, although the result could be more like Barcelona than like the Hong Kong that he fears. The unsettled question is which of these is the higher priority. > Building enough housing to roll back prices to the "good old days" is probably not realistic, because the necessary construction rates were never achieved even when planning and zoning were considerably less restrictive than they are now. Building enough to compensate for the growing economy is a somewhat more realistic goal and would keep things from getting worse. > In the long run, San Francisco's CPI-adjusted average income is growing by 1.72% per year, and the number of employed people is growing by 0.326% per year, which together (if you believe the first model) will raise CPI-adjusted housing costs by 3.8% per year. Therefore, if price stability is the goal, the city and its citizens should try to increase the housing supply by an average of 1.5% per year (which is about 3.75 times the general rate since 1975, and with the current inventory would mean 5700 units per year). If visual stability is the goal instead, prices will probably continue to rise uncontrollably. > If you want to do your own analysis, the data is all available to download on Github. Please let me know what other explanations you find for the patterns!
nootanond 6y ago
I see a story about man who deliberately made a series of selfish high risk decisions and continued to do so with no regard for his future or his role in society. I've done the same, to an extent - but if I ended up homeless at any point I would not have expected society to pay for my continued foolishness. There's no doubt that welfare in some form is ideal for a modern society, but people should recognize that willingness to work is tied to desire for survival/comfort and willingness to work for most people decreases as the welfare floor increases. Forcing someone to work for those who do not contribute to society is theft. There is no reason to believe that the average person will commit to pursuits beneficial for the collective if his needs are guaranteed to be met regardless of his willingness or ability to participate.
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  > Forcing someone to work for those who do not contribute to society is theft. This is a terrible way to think about a functioning society. Taxes are not theft, and we absolutely should be supporting those who do not 'contribute to society'. What about folks with mental illnesses, physical impairments, advanced age, pregnancy, recovering from injuries, drug/alcohol addiction, or any other number of reasons why someone might need to have us all cover for them? Why is it any different in this case?
  - apta 6y ago
    > What about folks with mental illnesses, physical impairments, advanced age, pregnancy, recovering from injuries, drug/alcohol addiction Drug and alcohol addition are definitely not in the same group as the rest.
    - danShumway 6y ago
      Given how much we now know about the history of the opioid epidemic, how much we now know about how cigarettes/alcohol have been advertised throughout recent history and what the motivations were behind those advertisements, I feel like this is a particularly naive comment. Nobody gets up in the morning and says, "gee, I'd really like to introduce a high-cost, crippling dependency in my life." Understanding that and treating drug abuse like a physical/social disease has turned out to be a surprisingly effective social policy. It's not clear to me why addicted people should be treated differently than anyone else in any other challenging situation. Certainly once someone is addicted to a drug, there are obvious biological forces preventing them from quitting cold-turkey.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

41 points by blendo 6y ago

blendo 6y ago

Despite the alarmist headline, the story is seems nuanced and even-handed.

happytoexplain 6y ago
I normally understand "alarmist" to imply "unjustified/exaggerated", whereas I don't think simply calling this situation a "nightmare" falls into that category. I would call it click-bait, since it does nothing to communicate the topic, though I probably wouldn't even bother leveling that criticism out loud in a case where I feel like the gravity of the topic overshadows it and the topic is handled well in the body of the article.
- tonywastaken 6y ago
  This may be anecdotal, but the homeless situation + shelter-in-place combination IS a nightmare. I live it every day and I cannot describe it any other way. I didn't mind it when I spent 14 hours a day out of the house working, but I am now living, breathing, and hearing it 24 hours a day and it is a nightmare. And it's not just that they are homeless, it's all the criminal activity that radiates from the encampments right below my window.
everdrive 6y ago
Not sure if this is the case here, but apparently writers often don't choose their own headlines. https://archive.thinkprogress.org/why-writers-dont-write-headlines-558decd956d4/ https://archive.thinkprogress.org/why-writers-dont-write-hea...
- ghaff 6y ago
  That is correct. Writers will usually write one (or may use one an editor provided when they gave the assignment), but typically an editor will decide on the final headline/subhead/etc.
  - vwcx 6y ago
    At both TIME and NatGeo, it wasn’t uncommon to focus group different headlines and covers before going to print. This coverline caused particular rage internally amongst staff: https://images.app.goo.gl/cGhZ8usRNCBqhcp49 https://images.app.goo.gl/cGhZ8usRNCBqhcp49
- mdanger007 6y ago
  Editors write headlines. And as someone who has been published, sometimes they write your stories too.

xwdv 6y ago

Stuffing as many homeless as possible in close quarters at Moscone gives the impression San Francisco is hellbent on killing off its homeless population using COVID-19.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
Do you know of a better spot to shelter them? The city only owns so much property.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jeffbee 6y ago
  There's an entire legal process for solving the fact that a city owns too little property: they can simply buy it with eminent domain, and that is precisely what they should be doing. They can ED single-family homes, rezone the properties for multifamily dwellings, and either auction them off or build on them through the housing authority. Everyone would win: the city could clear out lots of under-assessed junk, people who need housing wil get more supply, and even the owners who get bought out in the ED proceeding will get a huge paycheck, and the city needs no additional powers nor deliberations to do this, they can simply decide to do it at an ordinary supervisors' meeting. That they have chosen not to exercise such powers for the last 40-plus years tells you everything you need to know about why this problem persists.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Eminent domain is much too slow to address the current crisis. What they're trying to do is get hotel rooms, but they can only source and staff them so quickly.
    - jeffbee 6y ago
      The "crisis" is older than most people who live in SF. Yes these buildings should have broken ground long ago, but that's no reason to delay.

cousin_it 6y ago

EDIT: ignore this comment, the reasoning is wrong, see below. > San Francisco officially reported 8,640 homeless residents in 2002—a peak—and almost as many in 2019 ... San Francisco spends more per capita on homelessness solutions than nearly any other U.S. city—three hundred and thirty million dollars a year. 330000000 / 8640 = 38194 > the median monthly rent for a one-bedroom in the city is now, by one estimate, about thirty-five hundred dollars 3500 * 12 = 42000 These numbers are surprisingly close. Moreover, 1) you need one apartment per family not per person 2) you can pay below median if you buy in bulk and aren't very picky 3) many homeless have jobs.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
spaced-out 6y ago
Most of that money goes to getting people like the guy profiled in the article into housing, after which they're no longer considered homeless. In other words, not all of the $330 million is for that 8,640 people, most of it is going toward housing people who would otherwise be homeless.
- cousin_it 6y ago
  Wow, I'm stupid. Won't remove my comment, let it stay as a monument. Thank you!
- johnchristopher 6y ago
  I suppose that money isn't spent only on housing but on social workers salaries, vaccination campaign, STD prevention campaign, food distribution, etc., right ?

magna7 6y ago

Serious question. Why don't homeless people in SF and NYC go look for work in cheaper cities across America? It seems like these people with degrees and work experience can find work elsewhere and affordable housing, so I don't understand why they would continue to live in the most expensive cities in the world... I'm not American, so maybe I'm missing something.

dehrmann 6y ago
The bit the piece touched on was that the couple it followed came to SF because it has a support system for drug addicts and the homeless. What it didn't say is that any local solution will just improve the conditions in SF, attracting more homeless and drug addicts. SF and NYC would be better off finding those cheaper cities that need workers and showing them how to run services for the homeless. They might also want to connect the marginally homeless with these cities early. That said, I doubt there's much work for the SF homeless. Between addiction and mental health problems, most aren't employable.
- epistasis 6y ago
  This is not a significant source of homeless people in SF. The vast majority have been living in the area, just struggling to get by. There are so many people that are one financial crisis (eg car repair) away from being evicted. It's no surprise that 1% of the population is homeless in a city where rents are not covered by entry level jobs, and where cheap rental options like SROs are being eliminated.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Is that true? Both the top people profiled in this article moved from out of state into SF and appear to have immediately become homeless.
    - throwawaysea 6y ago
      It’s not true. Many homeless are coached to respond to surveys (like the annual point in time count) with a claim that they’re long time locals, since it garners more political sympathy and support. But if you talk to homeless in SF or Seattle or view news clips interviewing people in camps, it seems the majority have moved in from elsewhere due to laws that permit permanent nomadic lifestyles and open drug abuse. It is just “induced demand” in action. Incentives and disincentives have effects on behaviors. The only statistics that should be trusted are ones that have verifiable records proving the historical residency of homeless populations. Everything else is easily manipulable and not trustworthy.

samirillian 6y ago

> The mayor opposed the idea, but it gained support from local powers such as Benioff and Pelosi, and passed as Proposition C. The tax has raised three hundred million dollars annually. But, for now, that money remains unavailable, ensnared in legal challenges from the business world. Does anybody know about these legal challenges?

golf1052 6y ago

The line that stuck out the most to me > In San Francisco today, people who earn less than [$82,000] a year—or a [$117,000] for a family of four—are considered low-income. Most people outside of San Francisco would consider that a lot of money. Would a barista working at a Starbucks in the city ever earn that much? What about a public school teacher or cleaning staff? Essential services that need to be filled are worked by people who need to live somewhere.

ur-whale 6y ago

http://archive.is/hm7Vd http://archive.is/hm7Vd

tomohawk 6y ago

The rest of us in areas not controlled by the Democrat party do not think of this as an American Nightmare. Awful and terrible, yes, but a single party has been in control of these areas for a long time.

carapace 6y ago
There are homeless people in Republican-controlled areas.
dang 6y ago
Please don't take HN threads into partisan flamewar. It's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

fortran77 6y ago

Of course I'm sympathetic to the plight of the homeless, and I think it's outrageous that SF isn't building more housing as as fast as possible to try to bring the prices down. However, there's a dilemma where cities that have the best services (and climate) for people who are happy camping anywhere will attract folks who come there just to be homeless, like the subject of this story. > He made money by hunting exotic minerals and rocks. Did he? Or was he stealing exotic minerals and rocks from the National Parks in 48 states he camped at? (See https://www.nps.gov/subjects/geology/permits.htm#CP_JUMP_5479119 https://www.nps.gov/subjects/geology/permits.htm#CP_JUMP_547... ) Shame on the New Yorker fact-checkers for not confirming where he got those minerals.

carapace 6y ago
> SF isn't building more housing as as fast as possible to try to bring the prices down. If every construction company and contractor in the entire state of CA came to SF and started building apartment buildings as fast as they could, they would still only add enough capacity to prevent rates rising, at best. No human agency can actually bring the prices down.
- erik_seaberg 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Contractors_State_License_Board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Contractors_State_L... says California has 104K licensed building contractors. Couldn't they build 200K duplexes housing 800K people (roughly the current population of SF) in a couple of years?
  - carapace 6y ago
    I'm exaggerating, here's the article I'm drawing on: https://experimental-geography.blogspot.com/2016/05/employment-construction-and-cost-of-san.html https://experimental-geography.blogspot.com/2016/05/employme... He collects and analyzes historical data going back to 1948. Punchline: "Today's outrageous prices are exactly in line with the 6.6% trend that began 60 years ago." Rent in the Bay Area has gone up 6.6% per year for sixty years. > In conclusion > San Francisco is an expensive city because it is an affluent city with a growing population and no easily available land for development. Sonja Trauss is right that building more housing would reduce rents of both high- and low-end apartments. Tim Redmond is right that building enough housing to make much of a dent in prices would change the visual character of most streets, although the result could be more like Barcelona than like the Hong Kong that he fears. The unsettled question is which of these is the higher priority. > Building enough housing to roll back prices to the "good old days" is probably not realistic, because the necessary construction rates were never achieved even when planning and zoning were considerably less restrictive than they are now. Building enough to compensate for the growing economy is a somewhat more realistic goal and would keep things from getting worse. > In the long run, San Francisco's CPI-adjusted average income is growing by 1.72% per year, and the number of employed people is growing by 0.326% per year, which together (if you believe the first model) will raise CPI-adjusted housing costs by 3.8% per year. Therefore, if price stability is the goal, the city and its citizens should try to increase the housing supply by an average of 1.5% per year (which is about 3.75 times the general rate since 1975, and with the current inventory would mean 5700 units per year). If visual stability is the goal instead, prices will probably continue to rise uncontrollably. > If you want to do your own analysis, the data is all available to download on Github. Please let me know what other explanations you find for the patterns!

nootanond 6y ago

I see a story about man who deliberately made a series of selfish high risk decisions and continued to do so with no regard for his future or his role in society. I've done the same, to an extent - but if I ended up homeless at any point I would not have expected society to pay for my continued foolishness. There's no doubt that welfare in some form is ideal for a modern society, but people should recognize that willingness to work is tied to desire for survival/comfort and willingness to work for most people decreases as the welfare floor increases. Forcing someone to work for those who do not contribute to society is theft. There is no reason to believe that the average person will commit to pursuits beneficial for the collective if his needs are guaranteed to be met regardless of his willingness or ability to participate.

Pfhreak 6y ago
> Forcing someone to work for those who do not contribute to society is theft. This is a terrible way to think about a functioning society. Taxes are not theft, and we absolutely should be supporting those who do not 'contribute to society'. What about folks with mental illnesses, physical impairments, advanced age, pregnancy, recovering from injuries, drug/alcohol addiction, or any other number of reasons why someone might need to have us all cover for them? Why is it any different in this case?
- apta 6y ago
  > What about folks with mental illnesses, physical impairments, advanced age, pregnancy, recovering from injuries, drug/alcohol addiction Drug and alcohol addition are definitely not in the same group as the rest.
  - danShumway 6y ago
    Given how much we now know about the history of the opioid epidemic, how much we now know about how cigarettes/alcohol have been advertised throughout recent history and what the motivations were behind those advertisements, I feel like this is a particularly naive comment. Nobody gets up in the morning and says, "gee, I'd really like to introduce a high-cost, crippling dependency in my life." Understanding that and treating drug abuse like a physical/social disease has turned out to be a surprisingly effective social policy. It's not clear to me why addicted people should be treated differently than anyone else in any other challenging situation. Certainly once someone is addicted to a drug, there are obvious biological forces preventing them from quitting cold-turkey.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]