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The book's author was recently on Joe Rogan where they discussed the book and many of the policies in SF. They discussed: de-criminalization, the "Portugal app

The book's author was recently on Joe Rogan where they discussed the book and many of the policies in SF. They discussed: de-criminalization, the "Portugal approach", progressive policies, policing, etc. Also the use of language such as "homeless camps" which envisages a camp of homeless people just trying to live. Versus the reality which when social workers and mayors (mayor of Denver) went into these camps undercover only found that everyone was a drug abuser and were being enabled to self-destruct. Highly recommended, the author is a resident of "San Fransicko".

ProjectArcturis 5y ago
So what should we do? Locking everyone up seems like it would be even more expensive with even worse long-term results.
- mgummelt 5y ago
  Social services, with punishment for not participating.
- baby 5y ago
  I listened to part of the podcast and if I remember correctly his proposed solution is to offer treatment and housing, but it you don’t follow that road: prison. No idea if that’s a good idea, but living in SF I can definitely say that whatever the city, or even the US as a country, has been doing until now has been useless. Disclaimer: I used to live in Chicago, and while not as bad as sf, the homeless situation was the worst I had seen in my life at that time. So that sorts of tells me that this might be a national issue, not just an sf issue although it is definitely much more noticable in SF.
  - droopyEyelids 5y ago
    I do some work with the homeless in chicago, and the people you see living on the street are, by and large, not drug addicts. In Chicago, drug addicts are transient-homeless. They're in and out of shelters as they get evicted or kicked out of a place, but they find somewhere new (indoors) to live. Some may be periodic homeless. The chronic homeless in Chicago are usually physically and mentally disabled, and while they may drink, it's not substance abuse that keeps them from holding down a job and getting shelter. One of the recent encampments we visited had an interesting story. It sits on what was the future site of a factory, and the group had all gathered there to work as labor for the construction. However, the builders found contaminated soil, and were working on a mitigation plan when covid hit, and these guys (and a few women) have been living there ever since. They recently called the police because someone who moved in to camp had stolen propane tanks from the neighborhood grills. They're not all like that but it's a much different scene than a warm weather city's homeless camps. Edit: One thing that makes this plain is the lack of sharps in the chicago homeless camps. Most of the time you won't see orange caps!
    - baby 5y ago
      True! Not the same homeless population. Chicago homeless begs aggressively, the one in SF are just zombies.
      - rkk3 5y ago
        > Chicago homeless begs aggressively, the one in SF are just zombies. Have had many outdoor dining experiences in SF that I would consider aggressive begging...
        baby 5y ago
        I feel like it’s rare to be asked for money in SF. While in chicago everyday on your path you will hear the noise of agressive coin shaking.
- StanislavPetrov 5y ago
  Build facilities to rehabilitate drug addicts and facilities to treat and house the mentally ill. Allowing those who cannot take care of the themselves to roam the streets and engage in behavior that is self-destructive and destructive to society is not compassionate or logical - its a system that has proven to be a failure.
- tayo42 5y ago
  Why do we need to do anything? Whats the problem with people being homeless and keeping to them selves?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - robbyt 5y ago
    z
    - tayo42 5y ago
      So being homeless isnt the problem, mudering isnt exclusive to homeless people. Drugs and prostitution aren't problems. Cities not having adequate public serivces like bathrooms is a problem.
      - robbyt 5y ago
        So you'll host a camp in your backyard then?
        tayo42 5y ago
        I think you should take a step back from this topic if it's making your responses that emotional or elaborate more. Nothing you said is a rational response. That was 100% flame bait.
        robbyt 5y ago
        Seriously, if homeless camps aren't a problem then why aren't you hosting one?
        camgunz 5y ago
        Because no one should be expected to solve a societal problem personally.
etc-hosts 5y ago
Michael Shellenberger does not live in San Francisco, or at least he did not when he came in dead last in the 2016 governor election.
- nostrademons 5y ago
  Apparently he lived in San Francisco in the past, and now lives in Berkeley. He came in 9th out of 27 in the 2018 gubernatorial election.
  - etc-hosts 5y ago
    wow youre right, he got 30,000 votes he had pretty far to go to beat Newsom's 2,340,000 votes Shellenberger at least beat the guy who's entire campaign was appearing in ads dual wielding pistols ( Peter Liu )
samschooler 5y ago
Mayor of Denver never went to these camps. You may be talking about the Mayor of Aurora (city next to Denver) who just decided one day to pretend to be homeless. He didn’t work with any organization or ask about the problem. He just went to the most visible camps, met the most visible people and essentially just increased the stigma. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/auroras-mayor-went-undercover-as-a-homeless-person-upsetting-some-local-leaders/ar-BB1cz5Q2 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/auroras-mayor-went-unde...
- StanislavPetrov 5y ago
  >He didn’t work with any organization or ask about the problem. If you want to find out what a situation is like, why would asking someone about it be more informative than actually going there and witnessing it yourself? The self proclaimed "experts" are the ones responsible for the policies that have turned San Fransisco into what it is today.
  - CraigJPerry 5y ago
    Maybe it’s not a simple problem, in engineering we’re used to cause and effect in a system. With human scale problems it’s more like observing a cat than a machine responding to inputs. It seems to me you could fill a page of bullet points with the many causes of homelessness in SF. If that really is true, then it makes sense to have someone familiar Guide you through various aspects of the problem. Especially the non-obvious parts.
    - nuerow 5y ago
      > "It seems to me you could fill a page of bullet points with the many causes of homelessness in SF. That's a far better outcome than mindlessly brushing everything under the rug with baseless knee-jerk reactions of pinning the blame on moral weaknesses and failings of individuals.
    - andreskytt 5y ago
      It is a machine responding to inputs but it involves feedback to the level we don’t usually experience with computers. This introduces non-linearity which is difficult for a human mind to process in terms of cause and effect. They are still there, just more difficult to see. Consider Jay Forrester in Brooklin in the 70s. He correctly argued (and was apparently almost beat up by saying that), that simply setting up more housing projects increased the problem. The simplified argument went: The word spreads that there’s housing available, people move to the area, housing gets full but the inertia of the word-spread keeps going and people keep coming in. This leads to creation of more projects (as there are still people on the streets) perpetuating the cycle. Meanwhile, the businesses and residents start moving away from the area because of the projects and many homeless, dropping real estate prices and compounding the problem with another feedback loop. Complex stuff. Whatever the solution if SF (that I like very much) is, it better be looking out for that sort of policy resistance.
deanCommie 5y ago
It's good that people investigate homelessness and go one level deeper. But why do they stop at drug addiction? Or worse, decide that drug addiction is the underlying root cause that now needs to be treated with rehab, detox, or what have you. Drug addiction is not the cause of poverty. Poverty is the cause of drug addiction. The stories of the people who get into drugs recreationally, then descend into addiction, and destroy their lives are the exception vs those that start using to escape deeply challenging lives with poverty, physical abuse, and mental health struggles. The dramatically rising rates of homelessness and addiction across US/Canada are the side effects of the toxicity of our society, the erosion of social safety nets, and runaway wealth inequality, capitalism, and housing affordability crises. The Portugal model works when the rest of your society is cohesive enough to support those at the fringes. I don't know if it actually can succeed in nations founded on rugged individualism and who instill the obsession with liberty and freedom in every person from birth. This not only leads to society unwilling to help those that need it, it also makes those that need that help unwilling to accept it.
- nullc 5y ago
  > Poverty is the cause of drug addiction. Can you elaborate? On it's face this seems really counter intuitive to me. Drugs cost money. Not having money doesn't somehow force you to use drugs. Where the opposite direction seems obvious: The cost of maintaining an addiction and the reduction in reliability from drug use can result in being unable to work, increasing your poverty.
- refurb 5y ago
  Poverty is the cause of drug addiction. That explains the rampant drug abuse in the wealthy?
  - whateveracct 5y ago
    Nobody said poverty is the only cause of drug addiction period. The point was that with homeless people, the poverty and homelessness tends to be what causes the drug addiction.

ProjectArcturis 5y ago

So what should we do? Locking everyone up seems like it would be even more expensive with even worse long-term results.

mgummelt 5y ago
Social services, with punishment for not participating.
baby 5y ago
I listened to part of the podcast and if I remember correctly his proposed solution is to offer treatment and housing, but it you don’t follow that road: prison. No idea if that’s a good idea, but living in SF I can definitely say that whatever the city, or even the US as a country, has been doing until now has been useless. Disclaimer: I used to live in Chicago, and while not as bad as sf, the homeless situation was the worst I had seen in my life at that time. So that sorts of tells me that this might be a national issue, not just an sf issue although it is definitely much more noticable in SF.
- droopyEyelids 5y ago
  I do some work with the homeless in chicago, and the people you see living on the street are, by and large, not drug addicts. In Chicago, drug addicts are transient-homeless. They're in and out of shelters as they get evicted or kicked out of a place, but they find somewhere new (indoors) to live. Some may be periodic homeless. The chronic homeless in Chicago are usually physically and mentally disabled, and while they may drink, it's not substance abuse that keeps them from holding down a job and getting shelter. One of the recent encampments we visited had an interesting story. It sits on what was the future site of a factory, and the group had all gathered there to work as labor for the construction. However, the builders found contaminated soil, and were working on a mitigation plan when covid hit, and these guys (and a few women) have been living there ever since. They recently called the police because someone who moved in to camp had stolen propane tanks from the neighborhood grills. They're not all like that but it's a much different scene than a warm weather city's homeless camps. Edit: One thing that makes this plain is the lack of sharps in the chicago homeless camps. Most of the time you won't see orange caps!
  - baby 5y ago
    True! Not the same homeless population. Chicago homeless begs aggressively, the one in SF are just zombies.
    - rkk3 5y ago
      > Chicago homeless begs aggressively, the one in SF are just zombies. Have had many outdoor dining experiences in SF that I would consider aggressive begging...
      - baby 5y ago
        I feel like it’s rare to be asked for money in SF. While in chicago everyday on your path you will hear the noise of agressive coin shaking.
StanislavPetrov 5y ago
Build facilities to rehabilitate drug addicts and facilities to treat and house the mentally ill. Allowing those who cannot take care of the themselves to roam the streets and engage in behavior that is self-destructive and destructive to society is not compassionate or logical - its a system that has proven to be a failure.
tayo42 5y ago
Why do we need to do anything? Whats the problem with people being homeless and keeping to them selves?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- robbyt 5y ago
  z
  - tayo42 5y ago
    So being homeless isnt the problem, mudering isnt exclusive to homeless people. Drugs and prostitution aren't problems. Cities not having adequate public serivces like bathrooms is a problem.
    - robbyt 5y ago
      So you'll host a camp in your backyard then?
      - tayo42 5y ago
        I think you should take a step back from this topic if it's making your responses that emotional or elaborate more. Nothing you said is a rational response. That was 100% flame bait.
        robbyt 5y ago
        Seriously, if homeless camps aren't a problem then why aren't you hosting one?
        camgunz 5y ago
        Because no one should be expected to solve a societal problem personally.

etc-hosts 5y ago

Michael Shellenberger does not live in San Francisco, or at least he did not when he came in dead last in the 2016 governor election.

nostrademons 5y ago
Apparently he lived in San Francisco in the past, and now lives in Berkeley. He came in 9th out of 27 in the 2018 gubernatorial election.
- etc-hosts 5y ago
  wow youre right, he got 30,000 votes he had pretty far to go to beat Newsom's 2,340,000 votes Shellenberger at least beat the guy who's entire campaign was appearing in ads dual wielding pistols ( Peter Liu )

samschooler 5y ago

Mayor of Denver never went to these camps. You may be talking about the Mayor of Aurora (city next to Denver) who just decided one day to pretend to be homeless. He didn’t work with any organization or ask about the problem. He just went to the most visible camps, met the most visible people and essentially just increased the stigma. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/auroras-mayor-went-undercover-as-a-homeless-person-upsetting-some-local-leaders/ar-BB1cz5Q2 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/auroras-mayor-went-unde...

StanislavPetrov 5y ago
>He didn’t work with any organization or ask about the problem. If you want to find out what a situation is like, why would asking someone about it be more informative than actually going there and witnessing it yourself? The self proclaimed "experts" are the ones responsible for the policies that have turned San Fransisco into what it is today.
- CraigJPerry 5y ago
  Maybe it’s not a simple problem, in engineering we’re used to cause and effect in a system. With human scale problems it’s more like observing a cat than a machine responding to inputs. It seems to me you could fill a page of bullet points with the many causes of homelessness in SF. If that really is true, then it makes sense to have someone familiar Guide you through various aspects of the problem. Especially the non-obvious parts.
  - nuerow 5y ago
    > "It seems to me you could fill a page of bullet points with the many causes of homelessness in SF. That's a far better outcome than mindlessly brushing everything under the rug with baseless knee-jerk reactions of pinning the blame on moral weaknesses and failings of individuals.
  - andreskytt 5y ago
    It is a machine responding to inputs but it involves feedback to the level we don’t usually experience with computers. This introduces non-linearity which is difficult for a human mind to process in terms of cause and effect. They are still there, just more difficult to see. Consider Jay Forrester in Brooklin in the 70s. He correctly argued (and was apparently almost beat up by saying that), that simply setting up more housing projects increased the problem. The simplified argument went: The word spreads that there’s housing available, people move to the area, housing gets full but the inertia of the word-spread keeps going and people keep coming in. This leads to creation of more projects (as there are still people on the streets) perpetuating the cycle. Meanwhile, the businesses and residents start moving away from the area because of the projects and many homeless, dropping real estate prices and compounding the problem with another feedback loop. Complex stuff. Whatever the solution if SF (that I like very much) is, it better be looking out for that sort of policy resistance.

deanCommie 5y ago

It's good that people investigate homelessness and go one level deeper. But why do they stop at drug addiction? Or worse, decide that drug addiction is the underlying root cause that now needs to be treated with rehab, detox, or what have you. Drug addiction is not the cause of poverty. Poverty is the cause of drug addiction. The stories of the people who get into drugs recreationally, then descend into addiction, and destroy their lives are the exception vs those that start using to escape deeply challenging lives with poverty, physical abuse, and mental health struggles. The dramatically rising rates of homelessness and addiction across US/Canada are the side effects of the toxicity of our society, the erosion of social safety nets, and runaway wealth inequality, capitalism, and housing affordability crises. The Portugal model works when the rest of your society is cohesive enough to support those at the fringes. I don't know if it actually can succeed in nations founded on rugged individualism and who instill the obsession with liberty and freedom in every person from birth. This not only leads to society unwilling to help those that need it, it also makes those that need that help unwilling to accept it.

nullc 5y ago
> Poverty is the cause of drug addiction. Can you elaborate? On it's face this seems really counter intuitive to me. Drugs cost money. Not having money doesn't somehow force you to use drugs. Where the opposite direction seems obvious: The cost of maintaining an addiction and the reduction in reliability from drug use can result in being unable to work, increasing your poverty.
refurb 5y ago
Poverty is the cause of drug addiction. That explains the rampant drug abuse in the wealthy?
- whateveracct 5y ago
  Nobody said poverty is the only cause of drug addiction period. The point was that with homeless people, the poverty and homelessness tends to be what causes the drug addiction.