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FWIW, I upvoted; but I agree this is an ongoing problem on HN and really any place that allows people to downvote based on how they feel. You can state all the

by than3 3y ago

FWIW, I upvoted; but I agree this is an ongoing problem on HN and really any place that allows people to downvote based on how they feel. You can state all the facts you want and some people downvote because they simply didn't like it; others downvote because your replied topic was about a downvote (against policy) and those same problematic people who downvoted may also have multiple accounts and/or be doing this to promote a certain propagandist narrative. There's really no way to combat it or tell given the site design. Ultimately its a bridge too far and violates free speech by de-amplifying what you said (because it goes invisible once it goes under a certain vote, greyed out at 0, hidden -1, delisted/invisible -2) but that's mainly just my opinion that the vast majority of people (or more accurately bots) here don't hold. Its why I think most current social media should be outlawed (as its currently designed). It interferes with communications which are an important signal over public discourse for our representatives to take action. They stop being responsive and representing when they can't receive meaning from their constituency because its an intentionally jammed/noisy channel and they so far have failed to take any action to remedy that jamming, which can have grave historical consequences. When there's no effective representation, the rule of law eventually breaks down.

scarmig 3y ago
It's down voted because it's a figure that people who follow the discussion closely know is misleading. The context it's usually used in (including here) suggests homelessness is because people were gainfully employed and renting in SF before being kicked because of greedy landlords, but that's a small minority of people actually included in the figure. It also includes anyone who's ever crashed on a friend's couch for a month, been jailed, hospitalized, or rented a motel room in SF. Those people still deserve empathy, but they're a very different group than those who once were productive and housed in SF and then ended up on the streets because of a bout of bad luck.
- mbgerring 3y ago
  > The context it's usually used in (including here) suggests homelessness is because people were gainfully employed and renting in SF before being kicked because of greedy landlords No, that isn’t the context here. When I wrote this here, and when I put this figure on a Muni bus ad for Street Sheet’s ad campaign in 2015, I was responding to the often-repeated false assertion that SF is “a dumping ground” for unhoused people, that people “come here to be homeless”, that “other cities send their homeless here”, etc etc etc. Claiming that “housed in San Francisco before becoming unhoused” should only include “productive” people who were paying their own rent with their name on the lease is moving the goal posts by an entire football field. Cities are full of poor people. They ought to be — cities are great places to find opportunities to get out of poverty. And lots of people, self included, show up in cities with no money or plan, and crash on couches, in hotel rooms, in their cars, etc, until they land on their feet. San Francisco has always been a place where people have done this. We didn’t have large-scale homelessness here until the second half of the 80s, after federal public housing was gutted and especially after the Loma Prieta quake wiped out a lot of affordable housing. If cities don’t make room for poor people, those people will end up on the street. People try to make this more complicated than it is, but every serious study on this lands in the same place, every time — just provide housing.
  - scarmig 3y ago
    > And lots of people, self included, show up in cities with no money or plan, and crash on couches, in hotel rooms, in their cars, etc, until they land on their feet. Sure. But the approach to dealing with that subset of people should be different than the approach for the subset who were once employed and renting in San Francisco and then ended up homeless through a health emergency, job loss, or eviction. The latter group has shown the ability to sustain themselves in SF in the past, while the former hasn't. And, morally, the place of original residence is responsible for them, not the taxpayers of San Francisco. If nothing else, people with longstanding ties to the community and economy should get preference for services compared those who didn't. And homelessness advocates get this: the entire point of conflating them is to increase sympathy for the people who just turn up.
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      > But the approach to dealing with that subset of people should be different than the approach for the subset who were once employed and renting in San Francisco and then ended up homeless through a health emergency, job loss, or eviction. How do you even begin to discriminate on that? The USA lacks a residency system like other countries. I agree with your point, but it’s not possible to implement here, which is why the non profits continue the conflation.
      - scarmig 3y ago
        For San Francisco in particular, if you work in San Francisco, you pay a local income tax of ~0.4%. Make having paid that (say, $50 paid by either you or the person you're married to) or having attended an SFUSD school as qualifiers for assistance. That covers the large majority of homeless that SF should target for help and are all easily accessible to the city government, with no documentation required by the applicant. You can imagine corner cases (attended a private school, lived in SF but worked outside it) but it'd be an improvement over the status quo. Even many of the corner cases could be captured with additional documentation that would require a bit more effort on the applicant's side.
    - 3y ago

by than3 3y ago

scarmig 3y ago

It's down voted because it's a figure that people who follow the discussion closely know is misleading. The context it's usually used in (including here) suggests homelessness is because people were gainfully employed and renting in SF before being kicked because of greedy landlords, but that's a small minority of people actually included in the figure. It also includes anyone who's ever crashed on a friend's couch for a month, been jailed, hospitalized, or rented a motel room in SF. Those people still deserve empathy, but they're a very different group than those who once were productive and housed in SF and then ended up on the streets because of a bout of bad luck.

mbgerring 3y ago
> The context it's usually used in (including here) suggests homelessness is because people were gainfully employed and renting in SF before being kicked because of greedy landlords No, that isn’t the context here. When I wrote this here, and when I put this figure on a Muni bus ad for Street Sheet’s ad campaign in 2015, I was responding to the often-repeated false assertion that SF is “a dumping ground” for unhoused people, that people “come here to be homeless”, that “other cities send their homeless here”, etc etc etc. Claiming that “housed in San Francisco before becoming unhoused” should only include “productive” people who were paying their own rent with their name on the lease is moving the goal posts by an entire football field. Cities are full of poor people. They ought to be — cities are great places to find opportunities to get out of poverty. And lots of people, self included, show up in cities with no money or plan, and crash on couches, in hotel rooms, in their cars, etc, until they land on their feet. San Francisco has always been a place where people have done this. We didn’t have large-scale homelessness here until the second half of the 80s, after federal public housing was gutted and especially after the Loma Prieta quake wiped out a lot of affordable housing. If cities don’t make room for poor people, those people will end up on the street. People try to make this more complicated than it is, but every serious study on this lands in the same place, every time — just provide housing.
- scarmig 3y ago
  > And lots of people, self included, show up in cities with no money or plan, and crash on couches, in hotel rooms, in their cars, etc, until they land on their feet. Sure. But the approach to dealing with that subset of people should be different than the approach for the subset who were once employed and renting in San Francisco and then ended up homeless through a health emergency, job loss, or eviction. The latter group has shown the ability to sustain themselves in SF in the past, while the former hasn't. And, morally, the place of original residence is responsible for them, not the taxpayers of San Francisco. If nothing else, people with longstanding ties to the community and economy should get preference for services compared those who didn't. And homelessness advocates get this: the entire point of conflating them is to increase sympathy for the people who just turn up.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    > But the approach to dealing with that subset of people should be different than the approach for the subset who were once employed and renting in San Francisco and then ended up homeless through a health emergency, job loss, or eviction. How do you even begin to discriminate on that? The USA lacks a residency system like other countries. I agree with your point, but it’s not possible to implement here, which is why the non profits continue the conflation.
    - scarmig 3y ago
      For San Francisco in particular, if you work in San Francisco, you pay a local income tax of ~0.4%. Make having paid that (say, $50 paid by either you or the person you're married to) or having attended an SFUSD school as qualifiers for assistance. That covers the large majority of homeless that SF should target for help and are all easily accessible to the city government, with no documentation required by the applicant. You can imagine corner cases (attended a private school, lived in SF but worked outside it) but it'd be an improvement over the status quo. Even many of the corner cases could be captured with additional documentation that would require a bit more effort on the applicant's side.
  - 3y ago