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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

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.
- seehafer 5y ago
  The Homeless Industrial Complex is as responsible for maintaining the conditions in SF as Chesa and his hands-off enforcement policies are. A lot of strife in our society today can be attributed to non-profits being incentivized to keep their raison d'être continuing in perpetuity.
  - b9a2cab5 5y ago
    It's easy to blame the system instead of making people take personal responsibility for their actions.
    - seehafer 5y ago
      When “the system” refuses to prosecute dealers of fentanyl because “they’re victims themselves” [1], you’re damn right I’m going to blame the system. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-inquiry/the-trial-of-chesa-boudin https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-inquiry/the-trial-o...
    - StanislavPetrov 5y ago
      It's also easy to blame the system when the system has failed miserably. There is plenty of blame to go around.
  - jmspring 5y ago
    I spent many years involved in politics at the city level in Santa Cruz. The Homeless Industrial Complex is a thing. There isn’t a desire to make things better as that will lead to lost jobs. Their insincerity becomes very obvious when you start pushing for accountability - like status reports / reports on progress and effectiveness - when entities get public funds. Another fun one is asking for a reduction in overlap when you have 2, 3, and 4 entities doing the same thing and all of them want public funds.
    - nuerow 5y ago
      > Their insincerity becomes very obvious when you start pushing for accountability - like status reports / reports on progress and effectiveness - when entities get public funds. I'm not sure what point you tried to make. I mean, this discussion is about identifying the root causes of a problem in order to actually fix it, but your comment focuses exclusively in organizations which, at worse, only work to mitigate it's impact while the problem is perpetuated. Let's put it this way: homeless shelters do not fabricate homeless people out of thin air, nor do they spend their budget hiring extras or crisis actors to pretend there are homeless people in the city. At most, you're putting up a strawman to attack organizations that exist to take the edge off this problem. What exactly do you believe would happen if suddenly all homeless shelters disappeared from the face of the earth? Do you believe homelessness would go away with that too?
- aidenn0 5y ago
  A reporter looking for a story went into my highschool while classes were in session and talked to some kids. Naturally these kids were skipping class (since classes were in session), and of course they told him everybody does it because in their social circle that was true. Needless to say the students that he could not have interviewed (since they were actually attending class) would have given him a different perspective
refurb 5y ago
So you’re saying his own experiences should be dismissed because he didn’t gather information through “official” channels?
- b9a2cab5 5y ago
  Clearly it wasn't the "right" opinion, so it must be dismissed!
- nuerow 5y ago
  > So you’re saying his own experiences should be dismissed because he didn’t gather information through “official” channels? That's a rather disingenuous take. Isn't it plausible that taking anecdotal evidence at face value doesn't actually add insight to not only the root causes but also the prevalence of some of it's different categories? I mean, spending a week living in a tent isn't exactly a way to gather proper statistics on the issue, not to mention the likelihood that the observer might be biased to begin with.
  - refurb 5y ago
    No it's not a disingenuous take. I read the article. You have a politician who actually goes and talks to a group of homeless - which is more than 99% would ever do - then come back with his observations. Sure, you can say "that doesn't represent all homeless", but I don't think the mayor was saying that. Here is a direct quote: "We can clearly do more to help people and move them on to stable housing," Coffman said. "What isn’t working is spending more money on it without changing behaviors. People are never going to [move] forward with their lives. You don’t want to be in a situation with public policy where you’re enabling really bad, destructive behavior." What is so terrible about those conclusions? And the gatekeeping by homeless advocates is really stark in that article. Their attitude is literally "You want to know about homelessness, you talk to me, don't go out there talking to these people on your own". How in the hell is that anything close to a reasonable take?
    - nuerow 5y ago
      > No it's not a disingenuous take. I read the article. You have a politician who actually goes and talks to a group of homeless (...) Sorry, it actually is. You have a guy who decided to live in a tent for a week as a publicity stunt, and that is supposed to make him an insightful expert on the nature and causes of the problem, in total contrast with the observations and experience of every single person that ever did any serious work on homelessness? The "goes and talks to a group of homeless" take sounds an awful lot like an attempt to go on the confirmation bias path, intended to fabricate a justification to continue to not address the root causes, than an honest and objective approach to understand issues.

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.
seehafer 5y ago
The Homeless Industrial Complex is as responsible for maintaining the conditions in SF as Chesa and his hands-off enforcement policies are. A lot of strife in our society today can be attributed to non-profits being incentivized to keep their raison d'être continuing in perpetuity.
- b9a2cab5 5y ago
  It's easy to blame the system instead of making people take personal responsibility for their actions.
  - seehafer 5y ago
    When “the system” refuses to prosecute dealers of fentanyl because “they’re victims themselves” [1], you’re damn right I’m going to blame the system. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-inquiry/the-trial-of-chesa-boudin https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-inquiry/the-trial-o...
  - StanislavPetrov 5y ago
    It's also easy to blame the system when the system has failed miserably. There is plenty of blame to go around.
- jmspring 5y ago
  I spent many years involved in politics at the city level in Santa Cruz. The Homeless Industrial Complex is a thing. There isn’t a desire to make things better as that will lead to lost jobs. Their insincerity becomes very obvious when you start pushing for accountability - like status reports / reports on progress and effectiveness - when entities get public funds. Another fun one is asking for a reduction in overlap when you have 2, 3, and 4 entities doing the same thing and all of them want public funds.
  - nuerow 5y ago
    > Their insincerity becomes very obvious when you start pushing for accountability - like status reports / reports on progress and effectiveness - when entities get public funds. I'm not sure what point you tried to make. I mean, this discussion is about identifying the root causes of a problem in order to actually fix it, but your comment focuses exclusively in organizations which, at worse, only work to mitigate it's impact while the problem is perpetuated. Let's put it this way: homeless shelters do not fabricate homeless people out of thin air, nor do they spend their budget hiring extras or crisis actors to pretend there are homeless people in the city. At most, you're putting up a strawman to attack organizations that exist to take the edge off this problem. What exactly do you believe would happen if suddenly all homeless shelters disappeared from the face of the earth? Do you believe homelessness would go away with that too?
aidenn0 5y ago
A reporter looking for a story went into my highschool while classes were in session and talked to some kids. Naturally these kids were skipping class (since classes were in session), and of course they told him everybody does it because in their social circle that was true. Needless to say the students that he could not have interviewed (since they were actually attending class) would have given him a different perspective

refurb 5y ago

So you’re saying his own experiences should be dismissed because he didn’t gather information through “official” channels?

b9a2cab5 5y ago
Clearly it wasn't the "right" opinion, so it must be dismissed!
nuerow 5y ago
> So you’re saying his own experiences should be dismissed because he didn’t gather information through “official” channels? That's a rather disingenuous take. Isn't it plausible that taking anecdotal evidence at face value doesn't actually add insight to not only the root causes but also the prevalence of some of it's different categories? I mean, spending a week living in a tent isn't exactly a way to gather proper statistics on the issue, not to mention the likelihood that the observer might be biased to begin with.
- refurb 5y ago
  No it's not a disingenuous take. I read the article. You have a politician who actually goes and talks to a group of homeless - which is more than 99% would ever do - then come back with his observations. Sure, you can say "that doesn't represent all homeless", but I don't think the mayor was saying that. Here is a direct quote: "We can clearly do more to help people and move them on to stable housing," Coffman said. "What isn’t working is spending more money on it without changing behaviors. People are never going to [move] forward with their lives. You don’t want to be in a situation with public policy where you’re enabling really bad, destructive behavior." What is so terrible about those conclusions? And the gatekeeping by homeless advocates is really stark in that article. Their attitude is literally "You want to know about homelessness, you talk to me, don't go out there talking to these people on your own". How in the hell is that anything close to a reasonable take?
  - nuerow 5y ago
    > No it's not a disingenuous take. I read the article. You have a politician who actually goes and talks to a group of homeless (...) Sorry, it actually is. You have a guy who decided to live in a tent for a week as a publicity stunt, and that is supposed to make him an insightful expert on the nature and causes of the problem, in total contrast with the observations and experience of every single person that ever did any serious work on homelessness? The "goes and talks to a group of homeless" take sounds an awful lot like an attempt to go on the confirmation bias path, intended to fabricate a justification to continue to not address the root causes, than an honest and objective approach to understand issues.