4 ms·

I struggle to figure out why the homeless are so visible in SF but not in other cities like Manhattan. My only haphazard guess is that it has to do with the wea

by zests 5y ago

I struggle to figure out why the homeless are so visible in SF but not in other cities like Manhattan. My only haphazard guess is that it has to do with the weather. I could ask the same question about why SF is the only city that has to lock up soap in their grocery stores. SF strikes me as the city with the highest highs and the lowest lows.

asdff 5y ago
Manhattan has orders of magnitude more homeless but shelters over 90% of them.
- darkhorse22 5y ago
  Yep, and anyone who thinks SF's homeless situation is bad needs to take a trip down to LA. LA's a step away from favelas.
  - mixmastamyk 5y ago
    People in favelas typically have built their own home and often have electricity. LA is worse because having a tent is fortunate.
yardie 5y ago
I can say it's a lack of forward thinking policy. My city, for example, has a very small but visible homeless problem. The majority are housed in shelters and shared housing. The remainder are the mentally, pedophiles, and physically violent. There is also a quantity of pet owners, pets aren't allowed in shelters so they chose the streets, but will use the shelter's showers. Our chronically homeless count has gone down from 8,000 to just over 1,000. SF strikes me as nice but not kind city. If you're destitute they'll give you a dollar. But building affordable housing is too far a step.
- thatfrenchguy 5y ago
  > But building affordable housing is too far a step Building any housing that's not a McMansion in SF is literally almost impossible. NIMBY politics run deep in California.
  - yardie 5y ago
    California has so many great things going for it the locals would rather it not change. So they’ll pretend it’s full. And aggravate people there to leave and convince outsiders it’s not worth going to. That’s how I interpret the laws. They are dysfunctional for a reason. Because no rational government could run this way.
- bombcar 5y ago
  I can understand affordable housing to help lower incomes - but couldn’t SF build housing for the actual unemployed homeless far away from the city, even unto another state?
  - Seattle3503 5y ago
    Is this serious? Why should other states import SFs homeless problem?
rufus_foreman 5y ago
in New York City where it gets colder and they are hunted by their own kind, these men often crawl under car radiators, drink the anti-freeze, get warm and grateful for some minutes, then die. but that is an older culture and a wiser one - Bukowski, 1973
woodruffw 5y ago
It's not the weather: NYC goes to great efforts to house its homeless, including renting hotels indefinitely[1] to house homeless individuals and families. It's one of the few pieces of city policy that I'm proud to publicize. And, for what it's worth, many pricier essentials are either locked or behind sliding panes in NYC stores. The Duane Reade near me has panes that chime when you push them aside, alerting anyone nearby and also preventing you from swiping an entire row of items into a bag or cart. [1]: https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/homelessness/2020/06/25/close-to-20-percent-of-nyc-hotels-are-housing-the-homeless https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/homelessness/2020/06/25...
- zests 5y ago
  What happens to all of the people who are too mentally unstable to live in a hotel/SRO/shelter?
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    The same thing that happens to them elsewhere in the US: the overwhelming majority of them are taken in by the carceral system in lieu of actual care. I'd like to think that NYC is at least slightly better, numbers wise, but it probably isn't.
    - diogenescynic 5y ago
      In California that doesn’t seem to be the case. I can take you to streets where there a half naked people out of their mind and no cops are coming for them.
- jonas21 5y ago
  I think a lot of it is the weather -- acting as a forcing function to deliver the observed results. If NYC, if you don't have enough shelter space, there will be large numbers of people dying in the streets in the winter, so the city's hand is forced, and they have to build enough shelters or rent hotels, etc. That's not the case in California. And likewise, if you prefer to sleep outside instead of in a shelter, that's an option year-round in California. But not in NYC, at least for a few months a year. So your hand is forced and you have to get used to sleeping in a shelter.
stock_toaster 5y ago
It is fairly visible in Eugene, Portland, and Seattle too. Though, it doesn't seem to be on par with SF quite yet.
Vadoff 5y ago
Probably because if you're homeless and sleep outside during the winter in NYC you'll die.
- scruple 5y ago
  My father has told me stories about being around Washington D.C. in the 70s. How it wasn't all that uncommon to stumble across a dead body in the winter. Whether homeless or drunk, they'd fall asleep and die in the cold. One particularly bad winter, he found a dead body in the stairwell leading up to his apartment. I'm sure it still happens today but the way he spoke about it made me realize how quickly the world changes.
tayo42 5y ago
The tenderloin is right in the middle of the city, next to just about everything you would want to do in the city. That's where they all congregate. SF is also pretty small. The most visited areas of NYC don't have sros and homeless shelters
- woodruffw 5y ago
  This isn’t true: NYC has largely eliminated SROs, but the most touristy neighborhoods are also frequently the ones with the most shelters and/or DHS accommodations. Off the top of my head: Chinatown, Midtown/TS, and the UWS all have a large number of shelters and accommodations. I grew up next to one on the UWS, volunteered at another, and currently live next to a third.
  - tayo42 5y ago
    Check a map of homeless shelters in sf and compare it to Manhattan. Manhattan has them scattered around, sf has everything in the tenderloin. It's like having a 10x10 block of only homeless related stuff right next to times Square. So it's very visible. NYC's poverty is pushed to the edges of city and boroughs
    - woodruffw 5y ago
      Three things: * Manhattan alone has twice as many people as San Francisco, in less than half the space. It also isn't districted as cleanly as SF is -- even the office and business areas of Manhattan are heavily residential. Put another way: everybody lives somewhere in Manhattan, so it makes sense to scatter shelters and other managed housing throughout the island. * If we're talking specifically about shelters, Manhattan's are not particularly scatted: the majority are in midtown (right next to Times Square!), and a sizable minority are on the LES/in Chinatown. It's hard to find an official reference for this (since so many of NYC's shelters are nonprofits), but here's a user-created map with some datapoints[1]. * As mentioned in the original comment, NYC aggressively attempts to house its homeless population, including with indefinite hotel rentals. Hotels are dispersed through the city, so it's no particular surprise that their use as homeless housing results in the homeless being somewhat less concentrated in particular neighborhoods. You have an independent (and correct!) point about poverty in the city, but I don't think your observation makes sense for homelessness itself. [1]: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&ll=40.646567760917634%2C-73.91660065661395&spn=0.187112%2C0.184858&source=embed&mid=1JaCy6H5996OgBpvf5FPDC4Udi00&z=11 https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&ll=...
u678u 5y ago
NYC is strict, if you see tents or mattresses you ring the city and they'll take it away within a few hours. https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-02253 https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-02253
baby 5y ago
Disparity is everywhere in the US, but it’ll be more visible in some places. The fact that we’re talking about this here is just the beginning, so many people can’t see that there’s a huge crisis coming up for the US.

by zests 5y ago

asdff 5y ago

Manhattan has orders of magnitude more homeless but shelters over 90% of them.

darkhorse22 5y ago
Yep, and anyone who thinks SF's homeless situation is bad needs to take a trip down to LA. LA's a step away from favelas.
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  People in favelas typically have built their own home and often have electricity. LA is worse because having a tent is fortunate.

yardie 5y ago

I can say it's a lack of forward thinking policy. My city, for example, has a very small but visible homeless problem. The majority are housed in shelters and shared housing. The remainder are the mentally, pedophiles, and physically violent. There is also a quantity of pet owners, pets aren't allowed in shelters so they chose the streets, but will use the shelter's showers. Our chronically homeless count has gone down from 8,000 to just over 1,000. SF strikes me as nice but not kind city. If you're destitute they'll give you a dollar. But building affordable housing is too far a step.

thatfrenchguy 5y ago
> But building affordable housing is too far a step Building any housing that's not a McMansion in SF is literally almost impossible. NIMBY politics run deep in California.
- yardie 5y ago
  California has so many great things going for it the locals would rather it not change. So they’ll pretend it’s full. And aggravate people there to leave and convince outsiders it’s not worth going to. That’s how I interpret the laws. They are dysfunctional for a reason. Because no rational government could run this way.
bombcar 5y ago
I can understand affordable housing to help lower incomes - but couldn’t SF build housing for the actual unemployed homeless far away from the city, even unto another state?
- Seattle3503 5y ago
  Is this serious? Why should other states import SFs homeless problem?

rufus_foreman 5y ago

in New York City where it gets colder and they are hunted by their own kind, these men often crawl under car radiators, drink the anti-freeze, get warm and grateful for some minutes, then die. but that is an older culture and a wiser one - Bukowski, 1973

woodruffw 5y ago

It's not the weather: NYC goes to great efforts to house its homeless, including renting hotels indefinitely[1] to house homeless individuals and families. It's one of the few pieces of city policy that I'm proud to publicize. And, for what it's worth, many pricier essentials are either locked or behind sliding panes in NYC stores. The Duane Reade near me has panes that chime when you push them aside, alerting anyone nearby and also preventing you from swiping an entire row of items into a bag or cart. [1]: https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/homelessness/2020/06/25/close-to-20-percent-of-nyc-hotels-are-housing-the-homeless https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/homelessness/2020/06/25...

zests 5y ago
What happens to all of the people who are too mentally unstable to live in a hotel/SRO/shelter?
- woodruffw 5y ago
  The same thing that happens to them elsewhere in the US: the overwhelming majority of them are taken in by the carceral system in lieu of actual care. I'd like to think that NYC is at least slightly better, numbers wise, but it probably isn't.
  - diogenescynic 5y ago
    In California that doesn’t seem to be the case. I can take you to streets where there a half naked people out of their mind and no cops are coming for them.
jonas21 5y ago
I think a lot of it is the weather -- acting as a forcing function to deliver the observed results. If NYC, if you don't have enough shelter space, there will be large numbers of people dying in the streets in the winter, so the city's hand is forced, and they have to build enough shelters or rent hotels, etc. That's not the case in California. And likewise, if you prefer to sleep outside instead of in a shelter, that's an option year-round in California. But not in NYC, at least for a few months a year. So your hand is forced and you have to get used to sleeping in a shelter.

stock_toaster 5y ago

It is fairly visible in Eugene, Portland, and Seattle too. Though, it doesn't seem to be on par with SF quite yet.

Vadoff 5y ago

Probably because if you're homeless and sleep outside during the winter in NYC you'll die.

scruple 5y ago
My father has told me stories about being around Washington D.C. in the 70s. How it wasn't all that uncommon to stumble across a dead body in the winter. Whether homeless or drunk, they'd fall asleep and die in the cold. One particularly bad winter, he found a dead body in the stairwell leading up to his apartment. I'm sure it still happens today but the way he spoke about it made me realize how quickly the world changes.

tayo42 5y ago

The tenderloin is right in the middle of the city, next to just about everything you would want to do in the city. That's where they all congregate. SF is also pretty small. The most visited areas of NYC don't have sros and homeless shelters

woodruffw 5y ago
This isn’t true: NYC has largely eliminated SROs, but the most touristy neighborhoods are also frequently the ones with the most shelters and/or DHS accommodations. Off the top of my head: Chinatown, Midtown/TS, and the UWS all have a large number of shelters and accommodations. I grew up next to one on the UWS, volunteered at another, and currently live next to a third.
- tayo42 5y ago
  Check a map of homeless shelters in sf and compare it to Manhattan. Manhattan has them scattered around, sf has everything in the tenderloin. It's like having a 10x10 block of only homeless related stuff right next to times Square. So it's very visible. NYC's poverty is pushed to the edges of city and boroughs
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    Three things: * Manhattan alone has twice as many people as San Francisco, in less than half the space. It also isn't districted as cleanly as SF is -- even the office and business areas of Manhattan are heavily residential. Put another way: everybody lives somewhere in Manhattan, so it makes sense to scatter shelters and other managed housing throughout the island. * If we're talking specifically about shelters, Manhattan's are not particularly scatted: the majority are in midtown (right next to Times Square!), and a sizable minority are on the LES/in Chinatown. It's hard to find an official reference for this (since so many of NYC's shelters are nonprofits), but here's a user-created map with some datapoints[1]. * As mentioned in the original comment, NYC aggressively attempts to house its homeless population, including with indefinite hotel rentals. Hotels are dispersed through the city, so it's no particular surprise that their use as homeless housing results in the homeless being somewhat less concentrated in particular neighborhoods. You have an independent (and correct!) point about poverty in the city, but I don't think your observation makes sense for homelessness itself. [1]: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&ll=40.646567760917634%2C-73.91660065661395&spn=0.187112%2C0.184858&source=embed&mid=1JaCy6H5996OgBpvf5FPDC4Udi00&z=11 https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&ll=...

u678u 5y ago

NYC is strict, if you see tents or mattresses you ring the city and they'll take it away within a few hours. https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-02253 https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-02253

baby 5y ago

Disparity is everywhere in the US, but it’ll be more visible in some places. The fact that we’re talking about this here is just the beginning, so many people can’t see that there’s a huge crisis coming up for the US.