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S.F. spends more than $60K per tent at homeless sites
- wolverine876 5y agoThe title is misleading. They aren't being billed $60K each for tents, but for a whole range of services for a year, including shelter, food, hygiene, and security. I'd think the total ($15 million) should be divided by resident, not by domicile: > The city has six so-called “safe sleeping villages,” where homeless people sleep in tents and also receive three meals a day, around-the-clock security, bathrooms and showers. The city created these sites during the pandemic to quickly get people off crowded sidewalks and into a place where they can socially distance and access basic services. > The department is now asking the city for $15 million in the upcoming fiscal year for a similar number of tents, which amounts to about $57,000 per tent per year.
- aww_dang 5y agoHomes can be purchased in other parts of the country for less than $57K.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoI can imagine the political fallout of SF purchasing those and sending homeless people there would not be pretty.
- aww_dang 5y agoIt could revitalize depressed areas under the right circumstances. Vacant homes aren't desirable either.
- animal_spirits 5y agoI've had this idea as well. There are plenty of run-down rural communities that are deteriorating just because people move out and don't want to upkeep the town. Housing is cheap there and businesses need people to grow in these communities. It would also be helpful if we had more manufacturing and low education jobs in the US instead of using other countries cheap labor. That would incentivize people to move to these areas because there would be stable work for them.
- jrowley 5y agoBut you can’t move these individual’s support networks also. Their friends, family, doctors. They might not have a permanent living space, but they may have a city they grew up in, a place they call home.
- ArkanExplorer 5y agoGive them a bus pass and $5,000 cash, and banish them from the state. Many would take up the offer.
- aww_dang 5y agohttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/us/homeless-busing-seattle-san-francisco.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/us/homeless-busing-seattl... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/20/bussed-out-america-moves-homeless-people-country-study https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/...
- jrowley 5y agoExactly. Does bussing help the individual or simply get them out of your way? Sometimes returning people to their support networks in other states can be a solution, but “banishing” doesn’t sound legal or ethical.
- aww_dang 5y agoAccording to the article, some of the people were helped by the busing program. When they were "banished", they had entered a contract not to use homeless services in that locale. If they were not helped, were they any worse off? That question wasn't answered.
- innagadadavida 5y agoYou could even just give them a used car and free supplies. The same amount of money per person spent in schools will do wonders for everyone and the state. Stop the government corruption.
- Supermancho 5y ago> Homes can be purchased in other parts of the country for less than $57K. All you have to do is to get someone, who lives on the street, to agree to move to West Virginia. SMH
- wolverine876 5y ago> Homes can be purchased in other parts of the country for less than $57K. Again, shelter is only one social service. The $60K covers all the other ones too. Could that be done more cheaply elsewhere? I wonder - cities have an economy of scale. They also have more opportunity for people to move out of homelessness, into jobs, apartments, etc.
- economusty 5y agoHow many tents house more than 1 person? Even if each tent had 3 people, 20k per person is still a lot.
- wolverine876 5y agoYou're misunderstanding: The money goes to many things, not just tents. The article doesn't even indicate that tents are the majority of the cost. The cost is for providing basic social services; one of them is shelter.
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- anovikov 5y agoI can't see a real alternative to this (well at least knowing that S.F. is a liberal city, for conservative one, alternative is obvious). If they are given apartments instead, they will trash them. These people are bums after all.
- m0llusk 5y agoThere are a range of programs that grant apartments, many of them linked to work obligations. Some of them do get trashed while others are appreciated. The homeless are a complex and diverse group including many with serious problems and others who simply slid into destitution. The current crop of homeless are remarkably old and sick relative to what has been seen in the past.
- anovikov 5y agoThey came to right understanding that reduction of city income from property tax due to reduction of value of property if you move in ~1000 bums into city apartments, will be more than $15M a year...
- wussboy 5y agoWhat is the obvious conservative alternative?
- Cerium 5y agoGiving them one way bus tickets to a liberal city.
- fossislife 5y agoThis reminds me of the South Park episode "Night of the Living Homeless".
- anovikov 5y agoExactly! But real long-term solution is of course, make it a felony to not have a provable permanent address. Bums' perception of life varies, but main reason people become bums is that they love freedom too much - they don't want or due to mental health reasons, can't follow any kind of rules at all - being a bum, your life sucks but you are the most free a person could be. Prison scares them, because in the prison, they'll absolutely make one follow a lot of rules. Once it is really punishable by prison, these people will make up their minds and stop bumming. This is how it works in Belarus, and number of bums in prisons is absolutely negligible, and number of bums in the streets is zero.
- joelbondurant 5y agoSF, RIP that communist trash dump.
- Proven 5y agoThat's the whole point of a bureaucracy: grow, which means spend as much as possible. That 60K/tent makes a whole lot of unionized gov workers, contractors and NGOs happy!
- 71a54xd 5y agoThat's more than my living expenses for an entire year in Manhattan... wtf
- sneak 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No,_They_Can't https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No,_They_Can't
- frankbreetz 5y agoIt's worth pointing out that the poverty line is S.F. is 82k while the federal level is 12k. As others have pointed out this includes shelter, food ... So, they are spending 73% of the poverty line. This would be the same as a LCOL area spending under 9k to keep a person housed and fed. That seems entirely reasonable. I realize it's not apples to apples comparison,but I think it provides some perspective. https://sfgov.org/scorecards/safety-net/poverty-san-francisco https://sfgov.org/scorecards/safety-net/poverty-san-francisc...
- bigyikes 5y agoThe poverty line is so high primarily because of housing prices, right? Costs of tents, food, etc. don’t really scale in the same way that housing prices do, so I don’t think the comparison is worth much.
- frankbreetz 5y agoThat number includes a tent set up somewhere, so rent is definitely a variable.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> It's worth pointing out that the poverty line is S.F. is 82k while the federal level is 12k. No, its not. $82k is the federal HUD “Low income threshold” for San Francisco, which is not even loosely analogous to the poverty line; HUD income limits are calculated from local median income, not costs, and the low income limit is 80% of the median (and its the highest of three limits; there’s also a very low and extremely low income limit.) Its not a location-adjusted poverty measure, and based on national income distribution to federal poverty line comparison, if you were to abuse it that way the least bad way would be to use the extreme low income threshold, not the low income threshold.
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