19 ms·

I was really swept up in this article and the portrait of Amanda Barrows - what a unique and strong person and this city is incredibly lucky to have her. Unlik

I was really swept up in this article and the portrait of Amanda Barrows - what a unique and strong person and this city is incredibly lucky to have her. Unlike some here, I came away with a deep sense of empathy, and today’s HN snark and frustration bounced off me pretty hard. The public order issues - homelessness in parks, the challenges of shared spaces—have certainly impacted me. But more than that, I struggle with how to translate the state of the world to my boys. I always remind them: every unhoused person was once a little boy or girl. We might be older now, but we’re still kids inside, and nobody dreams of growing up in these circumstances. What struck me most was the balance of compassion and pragmatism that Amanda brings to her work. It’s easy to be frustrated with the policies and bureaucratic inefficiencies that slow down real solutions - but they are, in some ways, understandable. The biggest frustration for me is the gap between the mental state of many unhoused individuals and the requirements needed to secure housing. The city surely understands the long-term costs of its policies, and it’s run by highly pragmatic people with limited budgets. But rules are rules, and at some point, top-down accommodations (including medical interventions...) are necessary to bridge this gap.

searealist 2y ago
This was written by AI.
- II2II 2y ago
  If it takes an AI to display empathy, perhaps we should surrender to the AI overlords.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - throw16180339 2y ago
    AI overlords worked pretty well for the Culture (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series).
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - searealist 2y ago
    The overlap of people who use unicode emdash and real dash in the same comment is close to 0%. It also has the obvious cadence and filler words of chatgpt.
    - tptacek 2y ago
      Mail hn@ycombinator.com. Don't litigate it on the thread.
      - moralestapia 2y ago
        He's free to do whatever he wants, it's within the guidelines. I also found his comment mildly interesting.
        tptacek 2y ago
        Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        kortilla 2y ago
        Sounds like that needs to be updated to include accusations of AI. What a world
    - crummy 2y ago
      was the post edited? I don't see any emdashes.
      - 2y ago
- dang 2y ago
  Please don't do this here. Edit: I called this wrong - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43075184 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43075184. Sorry!
  - searealist 2y ago
    Putting aside the particular accusation that I have raised for a moment, I am curious to understand whether Hacker News (HN) has established any formal, informal, or otherwise broadly accepted community guidelines, rules, policies, or best practices regarding the usage of comments generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence, specifically through ChatGPT or similar AI-driven language models. My inquiry is motivated by the observation that AI-generated text has become increasingly prevalent in online discourse, and different platforms have adopted varying stances on whether such content is acceptable, encouraged, discouraged, or outright prohibited. Some online communities prefer organic, human-generated discussions to preserve authenticity, while others are more permissive, provided that AI-generated responses align with the spirit and intent of meaningful discourse. Thus, within the context of HN’s commenting system, does the platform have an explicit policy, a tacit expectation, or any historical precedent regarding whether AI-assisted comments are permissible? If so, are there any specific constraints, recommendations, or guiding principles that users should adhere to when leveraging AI for participation in discussions? Furthermore, if such a policy exists, is it officially documented within HN’s guidelines, or is it more of an unwritten cultural norm that has evolved over time through community moderation and feedback? I would appreciate any insights on whether this matter has been formally addressed or discussed in past threads, as well as any pointers to relevant resources that shed light on HN’s stance regarding AI-assisted participation.
    - tqi 2y ago
      > My inquiry is motivated by the observation that AI-generated text has become increasingly prevalent in online discourse You ever notice that only stuff you disliked is AI?
      - baumy 2y ago
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- mrlambchop 2y ago
  In the spirit of tech conversations, here was my original input from my history: --- I was swept up in this article and the portrait for Amanda (barrows) - what a unique and strong person - this city is soo lucky to have her. I want to respond that unlike some here, I came away with huge empathy and today's HN snark and frustration bounced off me pretty hard accordingly. The public order issues such as homelessness in the park have impacted me, but more so, how to translate the state of the world to my children. I always remind them that this person was once a little boy / girl and we might be older, but we're still kids inside and nobody dreamt to grow up in this environment. The compassion and my own empathy shown here coupled with the pragmatic approach shown by Amanda washed over me and the policies and bureaucratic inefficiencies that make solutions slow and ineffecient are understandable, but also highly frustrating. The unhoused individuals and their mental state vs the requirements to find a home are very frustrating - the city surely understands the cost of housing policies and is run by highly pragmatic people, but rules are rules and some top down accommodations and medications are needed to help merge this. --- I personally don't see my opinions changed here - I think the posted text is a bit better but also agree on the uncanny valley issue. A little less brain swelling and I would have been all over the small signals :) Personally, I find AI and the derivatives extremely helpful when it comes to communication (a booster for the mind!) and use it all the time when translating into other languages and also removing my northern British dialect from communication over in California.
  - butter999 2y ago
    A lesson to take from this is, "if a post expresses strong opinions, and you believe AI was involved in it's generation, then they probably used AI to edit, not to generate whole cloth." A hallmark of ChatGPT is an unwillingness to take a position, and instead to describe what positions it's possible to take. By the time you've prompted it enough to take a strong position, you've probably crossed into "editing" rather than "generating". You can disagree with someone's view, but editing their words with AI doesn't make them wrong or disingenuous any more than asking another human to critique your post would be. And to imply otherwise is, itself, disingenuous and disruptive. The exception would be if you thought there was no human involvement in the account at all, in which case, as another commenter noted, the appropriate thing would be to email the mods.
nocoiner 2y ago
This comment captured a lot of my thoughts about the article, Amanda and many of the other comments on this thread, except that you put them into words much more capably and eloquently than I was able to do. Well stated.
- deadbabe 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - squigz 2y ago
    Is your reaction to someone eloquently saying something that it must be fake?
    - TOMDM 2y ago
      https://xkcd.com/810/ https://xkcd.com/810/
  - dang 2y ago
    Please don't do this here.
nullc 2y ago
That's what the article was written for-- and it's one valid perspective on it. To those whose lives have been irreparably harmed by the violent mentally ill people inhabiting SF's streets and parks while the police stand idle and billions of their tax dollars are spent annually failing to solve the problem-- it might hit a bit differently. That isn't the story here, but when you see people taking it differently than you it isn't necessarily because are in any way lacking in compassion. The article paints the person in question as a harmless Garden Hermit ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_hermit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_hermit ), perhaps he is but many of the support-resistant homeless are certainly not harmless.
- vlovich123 2y ago
  If a black person attacks you, does that mean that black people are then violent? All the statistics I've ever seen indicate that while the homeless and mentally ill are particularly prone to being victims of violence, they don't seem to actually pose a higher issue of safety than anyone else you encounter in your daily life. It makes sense that would be the case when you think of it - do the rates of violence decrease as you move up the socioeconomic ladder? By all indications the rate of violence among the very wealthy is not dissimilar from those lower on the socioeconomic ladder. Why would you think homelessness is a cliff through which people suddenly become drastically more violent, especially considering how people like Putin and drug lords are extremely wealthy while paying people lower on the socioeconomic rung to do violence on their behalf to protect their economic interests?
  - searealist 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - vlovich123 2y ago
      So the logic is we should jail all the people I don't want my kids around?
      - 2y ago
sweeter 2y ago
I think it is an understandable reaction. They're a long history of articles like "man saves multiple orphans from the orphan crushing machine" and people go "ahhh that's so sweet" and nobody stops to ask "why do we have an orphan crushing machine and why can't do anything about that?" I think it's important to do both.
- rsktaker 2y ago
  Wonderful analogy
- red75prime 2y ago
  > why can't do anything about that Maybe because it's not the orphan crushing machine, but the lack of the low functioning orphan saving machine. Or a mix of both.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- username332211 2y ago
  I get the impression that the reaction right now is more likely to be caused by someone in government turning off a lot of those orphan crushing machines recently. And the only thing to show for it is gangs of feral orphans raping and pillaging. (If I can stretch the metaphor a bit too much.) I suspect if someone did a survey, they'd find that most places in the internet have grown consistently less empathetic in terms of social policy since mid 2020.
  - vlovich123 2y ago
    Did you read the article? It seems like the cycle of doom these people are in where a) there’s an impossible to navigate beauracracy b) the beauracracy is setting up zero tolerance policy to kick them out when they’re just starting to try to make their way. It doesn’t sound like the orphan crushing machines were ever truly turned off.
ninetyninenine 2y ago
I mean the article dances around it. I hate to say this, but we have to face reality. It is empathy that is in great part responsible for for the crime ridden shit show that is much of SF. How do we balance empathy while making SF not a gigantic pile of shit? I don't think there is an answer here. It's choose one, or choose the other.
- slantedview 2y ago
  I thought it was expensive housing.
  - ninetyninenine 2y ago
    You thought wrong. SF gave out free syringes and created laws that were empathetic to robbers and thieves. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/san-francisco-sign-stolen-goods/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/san-francisco-sign-stolen-...
    - kurikuri 2y ago
      What does that snopes article have to do with what you said? Free syringes make sense because people will find disease-prone means to get their fix, and then they end up in emergency rooms requiring more expensive care.
      - ninetyninenine 2y ago
        The sign is a satirical prank made to show awareness of a specific law.
    - majormajor 2y ago
      Which part of that link is the part you mean to emphasize? Is it just Prop 47? Cause then a more direct link to it than to a picture of a fake sign would probably be more compelling. (And in that case, that's not a city-level law anyway.)
Aunche 2y ago
> What struck me most was the balance of compassion and pragmatism that Amanda brings to her work. Nothing about this article strikes me as pragmatic. She's spending all her energy attempting to help people with the least likelihood of success and then gets angry at the system when they inevitably fail. The city didn't kick Morrisette out of the hotel because they like zero-tolerance policies, but because other people deserve a chance a chance to live in a free hotel room as well.
- mordae 2y ago
  I am sorry to hear that the richest country on earth cannot afford tiny private flats for anyone and everyone unhoused.
  - Aunche 2y ago
    I mean yes. When engineers making six figures can't afford a flat in the bay area thanks to nimbyism, then you can't expect the government to either.
    - truckerbill 2y ago
      That's kinda the whole point, but noone is framing that situation as the problem. They would rather think that homeless people are innately inferior and thus deserve to suffer, rather than victims of circumstance in one way or another.
      - doomroot 2y ago
        > but noone is framing that situation as the problem. I think yimbys are framing that situation as THE problem.
        truckerbill 2y ago
        I meant here, though I think there is also tendency in general As a side note I think the state of current discourse has shown that anything other than concrete language presents too much opportunity to talk past each other. So I don't think talking about yimbys is specific enough (and its too tempting to strawman). Same for magas and libs, they are broad labels for a broad spectrum of people
ErigmolCt 2y ago
Amanda's work is proof that personal engagement makes a difference, but scaling that kind of approach is incredibly difficult
- dsign 2y ago
  Indeed. But I have another point of view: what if our society is utterly broken? To see what I mean, imagine a world where that level of effort would cure any disease, even aging. How would that split us?
  - altacc 2y ago
    Society is far from perfect and some are definitely leaning more towards broken than perfect. I don't know how many people really see themselves as part of society vs individuals living among other unconnected individuals. Homelessness, poor physical or mental health, crime, domestic violence, discrimination. There's a long list of social ills that get worse when a society is inequitable and unequal. These problems and their effects go down significantly when a society acts to maintain its own health and distribution of resources is more equal, there is social mobility, individuals are under less financial stress, etc... Number will never go to zero or even close but there are countries where the base homelessness rate is similar to the US but the manifestation of problem is very different as is the approach, mostly that being homeless isn't considered criminal. e.g. very few people sleep rough, their homelessness period is shorter and living in cars is not normal. Just that last fact, that living in cars is relatively common and that includes children, makes me look at the US and decide that yes, US society is broken.
  - jmcgough 2y ago
    The biggest problem with our society is that no one knows or helps their neighbors anymore. I work in the emergency department and maybe a third of the patients are more in need of a good support system than medical treatment. Met a guy whose elderly wife isn't strong enough to lift him when he falls out of bed, so once a week they call EMS or the fire department to get him back in bed. So many things that you used to call on your neighbors for help with, but life for many Americans in 2025 is isolating and lonely.
RobertRoberts 2y ago
Most people I met when homeless didn't want the help the government offered. There's a direct conflict between people who lead and those that actually want to help. Unfortunately, a lot of the homeless I knew were very proud, arrogant, angry, bitter and many other emotions that made it nearly impossible to get them to take care of themselves through any intervention. And if people refuse to take care of themselves, they will always be in a state where they need others to step in. Once they become destructive to society, I don't think any expectation of mercy from leadership should be expected. That leads to the situations we currently see in some places today. It's not the lack of shelter that's the issue. There's plenty of shelter and housing if you want it.
- ncr100 2y ago
  It's a good set of points you make. When programming, when engineering, I often run into these sorts of intractable problems. Changing the rules, changing the preconditions or some aspect of the problem itself, that's usually how I solve them. In this article, it looks like the Park Ranger is changing the rules by making the system work for the person who is experiencing homelessness instead of forcing the person to go alone into a system that they don't like and they don't necessarily see the value of. SO it is possible to fix with the appropriate smart thinking and willingness to maintain multiple simultaneous perspectives, it seems.
throwawaymaths 2y ago
> The city surely understands the long-term costs of its policies, and it’s run by highly pragmatic people with limited budgets. Is that the case? maybe there are highly pragmatic people in the org, but i dont think they are "running" things. and the city's budget for homelessness is astoundingly high (look it up)
- Miraste 2y ago
  If anyone is wondering, it's ~1 billion dollars per year, for a homeless population of less than 10,000. With this money, they have achieved basically zero change in that number for years. Staggering, incredible levels of waste.
  - ryoshu 2y ago
    If the population is increasing YoY and the number of homeless remains the same, is it?
  - throwawaymaths 2y ago
    jesus, the amount has increased since last i checked -- it was 80k/homeless person before. > basically zero change i would have to be persuaded the change hasn't been negative Obviously some secular external effects (like fentanyl) have been causing a large part of the problem, but still.
  - istjohn 2y ago
    It might be more appropriate to look at the numbers of people being brought off the streets. They have over 14,000 supportive housing units and 4,200 shelter beds. 5,000 of the supportive housing units were added in the last 5 years."More than 20,000 people seek homeless services in San Francisco over the course of a full year" [0]. At the Jan 2024 Point-in-Time count, 4,354 unsheltered people were counted, a 1% decrease since 2022 and a 16% decrease since 2019. There was a 20% decrease in the number of people living in cars since 2019. To compare, NYC spends $4 billion per year and has 62,000 supportive housing units and 130,000 shelter beds (these NYC numbers come from GPT4o Search and are unverified). 0. https://www.sf.gov/reports--september-2024--2024-point-time-count https://www.sf.gov/reports--september-2024--2024-point-time-...
bagels 2y ago
I wish that park rangers didn't have to bear the cost of this problem. Nobody has the appetite to do anything effective about it.

searealist 2y ago

This was written by AI.

II2II 2y ago
If it takes an AI to display empathy, perhaps we should surrender to the AI overlords.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- throw16180339 2y ago
  AI overlords worked pretty well for the Culture (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series).
llamaimperative 2y ago
[flagged]
- searealist 2y ago
  The overlap of people who use unicode emdash and real dash in the same comment is close to 0%. It also has the obvious cadence and filler words of chatgpt.
  - tptacek 2y ago
    Mail hn@ycombinator.com. Don't litigate it on the thread.
    - moralestapia 2y ago
      He's free to do whatever he wants, it's within the guidelines. I also found his comment mildly interesting.
      - tptacek 2y ago
        Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        kortilla 2y ago
        Sounds like that needs to be updated to include accusations of AI. What a world
  - crummy 2y ago
    was the post edited? I don't see any emdashes.
    - 2y ago
dang 2y ago
Please don't do this here. Edit: I called this wrong - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43075184 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43075184. Sorry!
- searealist 2y ago
  Putting aside the particular accusation that I have raised for a moment, I am curious to understand whether Hacker News (HN) has established any formal, informal, or otherwise broadly accepted community guidelines, rules, policies, or best practices regarding the usage of comments generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence, specifically through ChatGPT or similar AI-driven language models. My inquiry is motivated by the observation that AI-generated text has become increasingly prevalent in online discourse, and different platforms have adopted varying stances on whether such content is acceptable, encouraged, discouraged, or outright prohibited. Some online communities prefer organic, human-generated discussions to preserve authenticity, while others are more permissive, provided that AI-generated responses align with the spirit and intent of meaningful discourse. Thus, within the context of HN’s commenting system, does the platform have an explicit policy, a tacit expectation, or any historical precedent regarding whether AI-assisted comments are permissible? If so, are there any specific constraints, recommendations, or guiding principles that users should adhere to when leveraging AI for participation in discussions? Furthermore, if such a policy exists, is it officially documented within HN’s guidelines, or is it more of an unwritten cultural norm that has evolved over time through community moderation and feedback? I would appreciate any insights on whether this matter has been formally addressed or discussed in past threads, as well as any pointers to relevant resources that shed light on HN’s stance regarding AI-assisted participation.
  - tqi 2y ago
    > My inquiry is motivated by the observation that AI-generated text has become increasingly prevalent in online discourse You ever notice that only stuff you disliked is AI?
    - baumy 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mrlambchop 2y ago
In the spirit of tech conversations, here was my original input from my history: --- I was swept up in this article and the portrait for Amanda (barrows) - what a unique and strong person - this city is soo lucky to have her. I want to respond that unlike some here, I came away with huge empathy and today's HN snark and frustration bounced off me pretty hard accordingly. The public order issues such as homelessness in the park have impacted me, but more so, how to translate the state of the world to my children. I always remind them that this person was once a little boy / girl and we might be older, but we're still kids inside and nobody dreamt to grow up in this environment. The compassion and my own empathy shown here coupled with the pragmatic approach shown by Amanda washed over me and the policies and bureaucratic inefficiencies that make solutions slow and ineffecient are understandable, but also highly frustrating. The unhoused individuals and their mental state vs the requirements to find a home are very frustrating - the city surely understands the cost of housing policies and is run by highly pragmatic people, but rules are rules and some top down accommodations and medications are needed to help merge this. --- I personally don't see my opinions changed here - I think the posted text is a bit better but also agree on the uncanny valley issue. A little less brain swelling and I would have been all over the small signals :) Personally, I find AI and the derivatives extremely helpful when it comes to communication (a booster for the mind!) and use it all the time when translating into other languages and also removing my northern British dialect from communication over in California.
- butter999 2y ago
  A lesson to take from this is, "if a post expresses strong opinions, and you believe AI was involved in it's generation, then they probably used AI to edit, not to generate whole cloth." A hallmark of ChatGPT is an unwillingness to take a position, and instead to describe what positions it's possible to take. By the time you've prompted it enough to take a strong position, you've probably crossed into "editing" rather than "generating". You can disagree with someone's view, but editing their words with AI doesn't make them wrong or disingenuous any more than asking another human to critique your post would be. And to imply otherwise is, itself, disingenuous and disruptive. The exception would be if you thought there was no human involvement in the account at all, in which case, as another commenter noted, the appropriate thing would be to email the mods.

nocoiner 2y ago

This comment captured a lot of my thoughts about the article, Amanda and many of the other comments on this thread, except that you put them into words much more capably and eloquently than I was able to do. Well stated.

deadbabe 2y ago
[flagged]
- squigz 2y ago
  Is your reaction to someone eloquently saying something that it must be fake?
  - TOMDM 2y ago
    https://xkcd.com/810/ https://xkcd.com/810/
- dang 2y ago
  Please don't do this here.

nullc 2y ago

That's what the article was written for-- and it's one valid perspective on it. To those whose lives have been irreparably harmed by the violent mentally ill people inhabiting SF's streets and parks while the police stand idle and billions of their tax dollars are spent annually failing to solve the problem-- it might hit a bit differently. That isn't the story here, but when you see people taking it differently than you it isn't necessarily because are in any way lacking in compassion. The article paints the person in question as a harmless Garden Hermit ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_hermit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_hermit ), perhaps he is but many of the support-resistant homeless are certainly not harmless.

vlovich123 2y ago
If a black person attacks you, does that mean that black people are then violent? All the statistics I've ever seen indicate that while the homeless and mentally ill are particularly prone to being victims of violence, they don't seem to actually pose a higher issue of safety than anyone else you encounter in your daily life. It makes sense that would be the case when you think of it - do the rates of violence decrease as you move up the socioeconomic ladder? By all indications the rate of violence among the very wealthy is not dissimilar from those lower on the socioeconomic ladder. Why would you think homelessness is a cliff through which people suddenly become drastically more violent, especially considering how people like Putin and drug lords are extremely wealthy while paying people lower on the socioeconomic rung to do violence on their behalf to protect their economic interests?
- searealist 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - vlovich123 2y ago
    So the logic is we should jail all the people I don't want my kids around?
    - 2y ago

sweeter 2y ago

I think it is an understandable reaction. They're a long history of articles like "man saves multiple orphans from the orphan crushing machine" and people go "ahhh that's so sweet" and nobody stops to ask "why do we have an orphan crushing machine and why can't do anything about that?" I think it's important to do both.

rsktaker 2y ago
Wonderful analogy
red75prime 2y ago
> why can't do anything about that Maybe because it's not the orphan crushing machine, but the lack of the low functioning orphan saving machine. Or a mix of both.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
username332211 2y ago
I get the impression that the reaction right now is more likely to be caused by someone in government turning off a lot of those orphan crushing machines recently. And the only thing to show for it is gangs of feral orphans raping and pillaging. (If I can stretch the metaphor a bit too much.) I suspect if someone did a survey, they'd find that most places in the internet have grown consistently less empathetic in terms of social policy since mid 2020.
- vlovich123 2y ago
  Did you read the article? It seems like the cycle of doom these people are in where a) there’s an impossible to navigate beauracracy b) the beauracracy is setting up zero tolerance policy to kick them out when they’re just starting to try to make their way. It doesn’t sound like the orphan crushing machines were ever truly turned off.

ninetyninenine 2y ago

I mean the article dances around it. I hate to say this, but we have to face reality. It is empathy that is in great part responsible for for the crime ridden shit show that is much of SF. How do we balance empathy while making SF not a gigantic pile of shit? I don't think there is an answer here. It's choose one, or choose the other.

slantedview 2y ago
I thought it was expensive housing.
- ninetyninenine 2y ago
  You thought wrong. SF gave out free syringes and created laws that were empathetic to robbers and thieves. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/san-francisco-sign-stolen-goods/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/san-francisco-sign-stolen-...
  - kurikuri 2y ago
    What does that snopes article have to do with what you said? Free syringes make sense because people will find disease-prone means to get their fix, and then they end up in emergency rooms requiring more expensive care.
    - ninetyninenine 2y ago
      The sign is a satirical prank made to show awareness of a specific law.
  - majormajor 2y ago
    Which part of that link is the part you mean to emphasize? Is it just Prop 47? Cause then a more direct link to it than to a picture of a fake sign would probably be more compelling. (And in that case, that's not a city-level law anyway.)

Aunche 2y ago

> What struck me most was the balance of compassion and pragmatism that Amanda brings to her work. Nothing about this article strikes me as pragmatic. She's spending all her energy attempting to help people with the least likelihood of success and then gets angry at the system when they inevitably fail. The city didn't kick Morrisette out of the hotel because they like zero-tolerance policies, but because other people deserve a chance a chance to live in a free hotel room as well.

mordae 2y ago
I am sorry to hear that the richest country on earth cannot afford tiny private flats for anyone and everyone unhoused.
- Aunche 2y ago
  I mean yes. When engineers making six figures can't afford a flat in the bay area thanks to nimbyism, then you can't expect the government to either.
  - truckerbill 2y ago
    That's kinda the whole point, but noone is framing that situation as the problem. They would rather think that homeless people are innately inferior and thus deserve to suffer, rather than victims of circumstance in one way or another.
    - doomroot 2y ago
      > but noone is framing that situation as the problem. I think yimbys are framing that situation as THE problem.
      - truckerbill 2y ago
        I meant here, though I think there is also tendency in general As a side note I think the state of current discourse has shown that anything other than concrete language presents too much opportunity to talk past each other. So I don't think talking about yimbys is specific enough (and its too tempting to strawman). Same for magas and libs, they are broad labels for a broad spectrum of people

ErigmolCt 2y ago

Amanda's work is proof that personal engagement makes a difference, but scaling that kind of approach is incredibly difficult

dsign 2y ago
Indeed. But I have another point of view: what if our society is utterly broken? To see what I mean, imagine a world where that level of effort would cure any disease, even aging. How would that split us?
- altacc 2y ago
  Society is far from perfect and some are definitely leaning more towards broken than perfect. I don't know how many people really see themselves as part of society vs individuals living among other unconnected individuals. Homelessness, poor physical or mental health, crime, domestic violence, discrimination. There's a long list of social ills that get worse when a society is inequitable and unequal. These problems and their effects go down significantly when a society acts to maintain its own health and distribution of resources is more equal, there is social mobility, individuals are under less financial stress, etc... Number will never go to zero or even close but there are countries where the base homelessness rate is similar to the US but the manifestation of problem is very different as is the approach, mostly that being homeless isn't considered criminal. e.g. very few people sleep rough, their homelessness period is shorter and living in cars is not normal. Just that last fact, that living in cars is relatively common and that includes children, makes me look at the US and decide that yes, US society is broken.
- jmcgough 2y ago
  The biggest problem with our society is that no one knows or helps their neighbors anymore. I work in the emergency department and maybe a third of the patients are more in need of a good support system than medical treatment. Met a guy whose elderly wife isn't strong enough to lift him when he falls out of bed, so once a week they call EMS or the fire department to get him back in bed. So many things that you used to call on your neighbors for help with, but life for many Americans in 2025 is isolating and lonely.

RobertRoberts 2y ago

Most people I met when homeless didn't want the help the government offered. There's a direct conflict between people who lead and those that actually want to help. Unfortunately, a lot of the homeless I knew were very proud, arrogant, angry, bitter and many other emotions that made it nearly impossible to get them to take care of themselves through any intervention. And if people refuse to take care of themselves, they will always be in a state where they need others to step in. Once they become destructive to society, I don't think any expectation of mercy from leadership should be expected. That leads to the situations we currently see in some places today. It's not the lack of shelter that's the issue. There's plenty of shelter and housing if you want it.

ncr100 2y ago
It's a good set of points you make. When programming, when engineering, I often run into these sorts of intractable problems. Changing the rules, changing the preconditions or some aspect of the problem itself, that's usually how I solve them. In this article, it looks like the Park Ranger is changing the rules by making the system work for the person who is experiencing homelessness instead of forcing the person to go alone into a system that they don't like and they don't necessarily see the value of. SO it is possible to fix with the appropriate smart thinking and willingness to maintain multiple simultaneous perspectives, it seems.

throwawaymaths 2y ago

> The city surely understands the long-term costs of its policies, and it’s run by highly pragmatic people with limited budgets. Is that the case? maybe there are highly pragmatic people in the org, but i dont think they are "running" things. and the city's budget for homelessness is astoundingly high (look it up)

Miraste 2y ago
If anyone is wondering, it's ~1 billion dollars per year, for a homeless population of less than 10,000. With this money, they have achieved basically zero change in that number for years. Staggering, incredible levels of waste.
- ryoshu 2y ago
  If the population is increasing YoY and the number of homeless remains the same, is it?
- throwawaymaths 2y ago
  jesus, the amount has increased since last i checked -- it was 80k/homeless person before. > basically zero change i would have to be persuaded the change hasn't been negative Obviously some secular external effects (like fentanyl) have been causing a large part of the problem, but still.
- istjohn 2y ago
  It might be more appropriate to look at the numbers of people being brought off the streets. They have over 14,000 supportive housing units and 4,200 shelter beds. 5,000 of the supportive housing units were added in the last 5 years."More than 20,000 people seek homeless services in San Francisco over the course of a full year" [0]. At the Jan 2024 Point-in-Time count, 4,354 unsheltered people were counted, a 1% decrease since 2022 and a 16% decrease since 2019. There was a 20% decrease in the number of people living in cars since 2019. To compare, NYC spends $4 billion per year and has 62,000 supportive housing units and 130,000 shelter beds (these NYC numbers come from GPT4o Search and are unverified). 0. https://www.sf.gov/reports--september-2024--2024-point-time-count https://www.sf.gov/reports--september-2024--2024-point-time-...

bagels 2y ago

I wish that park rangers didn't have to bear the cost of this problem. Nobody has the appetite to do anything effective about it.