4 ms·

> We did as little as possible to deal with homelessness and mental illness SF would beg to differ. They have a budget of $100k per homeless person. They can't

> We did as little as possible to deal with homelessness and mental illness SF would beg to differ. They have a budget of $100k per homeless person. They can't solve the problem because the problem is not money

geysersam 2mo ago
The problem is money, but for preventing homelessness and mental illness in the first place.
sroussey 2mo ago
And still once I was ina small restaurant that let a homeless guy use the toilet and they forced the door open after hearing crashing sounds, and he had painted the walls with his poop and jumped up and down on the sink until it broke off. Days later I saw a sign in their window saying the bathroom was for customers only.
ericd 2mo ago
Something to keep in mind is that that figure includes homeless people who have been homed and are being supported, it's not just the ones currently on the streets.
justin66 2mo ago
Spending money is necessary but not sufficient to fix this sort (or literally any sort?) of big problem. I hope you don't think San Francisco having spent a lot of money on the problem (the $100k per person figure in isolation is deceptive, but let's not dwell on that) means we've expended more than a really minimal amount of effort as a nation on the problem. Consider how little the problem of homelessness was discussed during the last presidential cycle, or how often it's discussed in congress, and I think you'll see what I mean. (consider the words used when debating it and you'll really understand what I mean)
vkou 2mo ago
I assure you, if they stopped spending that money tomorrow, things would get dramatically worse, as all the people that money keeps off the streets would be on them.
- CamperBob2 2mo ago
  Do they spend $100,000 per homeless person in Europe and Asia? If not, why don't they have similar problems?
  - mikelitoris 2mo ago
    Closer familial ties + extremely harsh laws for drug sale and use. Asians realized how opium fucked China for a century and made sure none of that shit flies.
  - fragmede 2mo ago
    If they're spending money on, say, school lunches for poor kids and on substance abuse programs, they're not technically spending money on homeless people, but it's hard to see that the money that isn't being spent on the unhoused doesn't help people not become unhoused in the first place.
  - dolmen 2mo ago
    EU: The social net prevents homelessness. We don't get broke because of medical bills. Labor laws prevent being fired without prévenance. Being fired grants you employment benefits.
    - Auracle 2mo ago
      The vast majority of the homeless you see on the streets in the US are there no because of money trouble, but because of mental health or drug issues (or both). People with money issues can almost always lean on friends or family. It’s the people that no longer have any friends or family willing to put up with them that end up on the streets.
      - panta 2mo ago
        Then the question becomes why US has such a huge problem with mental health and drugs that most other countries don't have with this scale. Maybe it's easier to develop mental health and/or drug issues when there are no societal safety nets, like accessible healthcare, decent affordable housing, unemployment benefits, ...
cortesoft 2mo ago
Just because you can spend money poorly doesn’t mean money isn’t needed to fix an issue.
ajmurmann 2mo ago
What do you suggest the solution is?
- giardini 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - ajmurmann 2mo ago
    So mass murder?
- anon48293 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - ajmurmann 2mo ago
    So anyone who has LSD on them gets life in prison? Sounds expensive. Is that how other countries have avoided having this many visible homeless? Any concerns about police placing drugs on someone if punishment is this harsh?
    - s1artibartfast 2mo ago
      Yeah, that is actually how a lot of countries in Asia have handled the problem
      - crote 2mo ago
        So how come incarceration in Asia is orders of magnitude lower than in the US?
        s1artibartfast 2mo ago
        The laws are enforced harshly and consistently, so people follow them. As a result, you have low crime and low total incarceration. Take auto theft. In California, we have 1 auto theft arrest per 15 stolen cars. Incarceration rate is 1 in 5 of those arrested, so 1 per 75 stolen cars. Japan has 1 arrest for every 2 stolen cars - A much higher rate of getting caught. Japan has about 5,000 stolen vehicles nationally per year. California has about 200,000 per year. As a result, there are very few in prison for it, despite the 10 year sentence.
dgoldstein0 2mo ago
SF - and probably much of the US homeless problem elsewhere - is largely cost of housing; rent and home prices are ridiculous enough that if you don't make big bucks, you are likely barely scraping by. Rents here are rising way faster than inflation, and it makes everything more expensive and means a lot more people are living that much closer to not being able to pay their rent. Way easier to end up homeless after losing your job when paying 3k/month in rent than 1k/month, as at the cheaper rent saving money is actually possible. We've consistently built a tiny fraction of the new residential units needed for projected population growth for decades now. Supply has been barely growing while demand surged; what else should we expect? Other parts of the country have not been as extreme, but this has played out in other cities too. We've had terrible housing policy, and increased homelessness is a direct consequence.
- slg 2mo ago
  What you say is completely true, but part of the problem is that people have very different ideas of what they are talking about when they talk about homeless people. People who tend to complain about the homeless are generally only complaining about the visibly homeless (i.e., the people living on the street). Meanwhile the people who advocate for helping the homeless are more likely to also care about the invisible homeless who tend to make up the majority of all homeless people. These are the folks who might have jobs, live in their car, have a gym membership to shower, etc. You could spend a lot of time with many of these people and have no idea they were homeless and as a result they aren't included in many people's perception of the problem of homelessness. Therefore, it's hard for people to believe that something as simple as lowering rent prices could actually solve homelessness for a majority of homeless people.
  - mrngld 2mo ago
    I think the burden of proof is on your position. When activists in my area pick a fight with local government, it's never over that invisible group. Indeed, as far as I can tell, they don't give a rip about the veterans living in the forest over by the VA hospital. I've never seen them over there. They're too busy picking fights defending the ones pooping at the downtown parks (and not in the public toilet) or trying to get city funding and approval for safe drug use, etc. Now, you're right that there are people that do care and put tremendous effort into that more invisible group. Churches and church-backed organizations do a lot of that. Difference is, except for fund-raising from like-minded folks (and a lot of them hate even asking for money), they go about their work quietly, without seeking attention or reward. There'd be the possibility of joining forces, but not with the DSA-types that jump in the limelight and scream the loudest and advocate for free needles. The people doing the bulk of the hard work don't want to make a statement on Palestine, they just want volunteers for the hard-to-staff weekday shower-cleaning shift. They need men willing to be mentors, etc. They care about the actual people they're serving, not trying to bring about glorious revolution. The two groups aren't compatible at the moment.
dyauspitr 2mo ago
The problem is you can’t get people off the street if they don’t want to get off the street unless you do it forcibly. You can end the homeless problem overnight but SF is too empathetic. I’m not even saying this is a fault, I’d rather they fail on the side of empathy than succeed violently.
- crote 2mo ago
  Very few people want to be homeless. The alternatives offered to them just somehow manage to be even worse than homelessness.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  - dyauspitr 2mo ago
    They don’t want to be homeless but they don’t want to put up with free housing drug free rules so they prefer to stay on the streets where they can keep using.
  - laughing_man 2mo ago
    The problem is one of the alternatives they consider worse than homelessness is a life without opioids. I had cousin who was homeless in San Diego. Over the years she came into money a couple times, either from family members or through inheritance. Instead of getting a place to live she figured drugs were a better use for that money. We tried everything to get her off the street, and nothing worked. She wouldn't even stay at a shelter. Because she had no intention of giving up the drugs.
panta 2mo ago
The problem is money, but at a different level. When you deal with the homeless it's too late. That money must be spent before someone becomes homeless, on welfare: unemployment benefits, accessible healthcare and housing. A minor cut taken care of immediately is nothing, but let it turn into gangrene and you won't be able to fix it at all.
- hgomersall 2mo ago
  Even benefits etc are too late. The money should be spent on providing hope for people. It's 45 years of neoliberalism that we are reaping.
  - latexr 2mo ago
    > The money should be spent on providing hope for people. How do you suggest that would work? Obviously you can’t just buy hope, so could you provide some specific ideas?
    - hgomersall 2mo ago
      Yes, develop an economy that is not run for rent seekers. Provide a job guarantee so everyone can work at a wage floor. Build housing stock that is actually affordable and desirable for anyone on a normal wage. Make sure healthcare is affordable and available universally. Provide schools that are good regardless of where you live or what you can afford. Those things would be a start.
- ricardobayes 2mo ago
  AFAIK also SF was long known as "hobo capital", meaning many homeless or drifting people just ended up there. So it's much more complex than that, since many of the homeless are not even locals.
idiotsecant 2mo ago
Because they're forced to burn dollars to solve a problem that was created upstream for the want of pennies.
detourdog 2mo ago
I think around 1986 Reagan cut the federal funding to the facilities that would house the mentally ill. This created the homeless situation in the USA. I remember the term homeless as newly formed at that time and remember the population exploding as I went through college in center city Philadelphia.
- aninteger 2mo ago
  We've had homeless people forever (although less). I think we used "hobo", or "tramp" back in the 1960s.
  - detourdog 2mo ago
    There was always a population that preferred living on the margins of society. Hobo’s and tramps are different than the mentally ill and they were called hobos and tramps. My grandmother used to trade food for labor of these people as they passed through. The homeless were people that could not care for themselves or be of use in some way. The grey area might be junkies.
- xp84 2mo ago
  Some good source material: https://factually.co/fact-checks/politics/did-ronald-reagan-cut-funding-and-cause-mental-institution-closures-nyc-cfa9c6 https://factually.co/fact-checks/politics/did-ronald-reagan-... The homeless situation as we know it had multiple causes in the 80s and prior. Part of it was Reagan-era policies wanting to save money, but the other half (which in my view would have probably still "achieved" the same end result) was activists who argued that involuntary institutionalization violated the rights of those who were committed. "The Left" and "The Right" were full partners in dismantling what we had. In my opinion, both were too stupid to realize the consequences of just deleting what existed without having a realistic plan for how to deal with those people. It's like if you realized your water heater was consuming $30 worth of electricity every month so you just turn the breaker off and say "We saved $30 and improved our climate footprint" but now everyone has to take cold showers forever and the dishes don't get properly cleaned.
dessimus 2mo ago
SF is one of the highest cost of living cities in the US. I'm guessing housing and utilities is going to chew up the majority of that $100K, before you even consider medical and mental health visits and transportation to and from those visits, and there is likely tons of resistance from surrounding localities to allowing the City to relocate those they are helping to suburbs where they might find cheaper and/or more accessible housing, food costs, improved access to healthcare, etc.

geysersam 2mo ago

The problem is money, but for preventing homelessness and mental illness in the first place.

sroussey 2mo ago

And still once I was ina small restaurant that let a homeless guy use the toilet and they forced the door open after hearing crashing sounds, and he had painted the walls with his poop and jumped up and down on the sink until it broke off. Days later I saw a sign in their window saying the bathroom was for customers only.

ericd 2mo ago

Something to keep in mind is that that figure includes homeless people who have been homed and are being supported, it's not just the ones currently on the streets.

justin66 2mo ago

Spending money is necessary but not sufficient to fix this sort (or literally any sort?) of big problem. I hope you don't think San Francisco having spent a lot of money on the problem (the $100k per person figure in isolation is deceptive, but let's not dwell on that) means we've expended more than a really minimal amount of effort as a nation on the problem. Consider how little the problem of homelessness was discussed during the last presidential cycle, or how often it's discussed in congress, and I think you'll see what I mean. (consider the words used when debating it and you'll really understand what I mean)

vkou 2mo ago

I assure you, if they stopped spending that money tomorrow, things would get dramatically worse, as all the people that money keeps off the streets would be on them.

CamperBob2 2mo ago
Do they spend $100,000 per homeless person in Europe and Asia? If not, why don't they have similar problems?
- mikelitoris 2mo ago
  Closer familial ties + extremely harsh laws for drug sale and use. Asians realized how opium fucked China for a century and made sure none of that shit flies.
- fragmede 2mo ago
  If they're spending money on, say, school lunches for poor kids and on substance abuse programs, they're not technically spending money on homeless people, but it's hard to see that the money that isn't being spent on the unhoused doesn't help people not become unhoused in the first place.
- dolmen 2mo ago
  EU: The social net prevents homelessness. We don't get broke because of medical bills. Labor laws prevent being fired without prévenance. Being fired grants you employment benefits.
  - Auracle 2mo ago
    The vast majority of the homeless you see on the streets in the US are there no because of money trouble, but because of mental health or drug issues (or both). People with money issues can almost always lean on friends or family. It’s the people that no longer have any friends or family willing to put up with them that end up on the streets.
    - panta 2mo ago
      Then the question becomes why US has such a huge problem with mental health and drugs that most other countries don't have with this scale. Maybe it's easier to develop mental health and/or drug issues when there are no societal safety nets, like accessible healthcare, decent affordable housing, unemployment benefits, ...

cortesoft 2mo ago

Just because you can spend money poorly doesn’t mean money isn’t needed to fix an issue.

ajmurmann 2mo ago

What do you suggest the solution is?

giardini 2mo ago
[flagged]
- ajmurmann 2mo ago
  So mass murder?
anon48293 2mo ago
[flagged]
- ajmurmann 2mo ago
  So anyone who has LSD on them gets life in prison? Sounds expensive. Is that how other countries have avoided having this many visible homeless? Any concerns about police placing drugs on someone if punishment is this harsh?
  - s1artibartfast 2mo ago
    Yeah, that is actually how a lot of countries in Asia have handled the problem
    - crote 2mo ago
      So how come incarceration in Asia is orders of magnitude lower than in the US?
      - s1artibartfast 2mo ago
        The laws are enforced harshly and consistently, so people follow them. As a result, you have low crime and low total incarceration. Take auto theft. In California, we have 1 auto theft arrest per 15 stolen cars. Incarceration rate is 1 in 5 of those arrested, so 1 per 75 stolen cars. Japan has 1 arrest for every 2 stolen cars - A much higher rate of getting caught. Japan has about 5,000 stolen vehicles nationally per year. California has about 200,000 per year. As a result, there are very few in prison for it, despite the 10 year sentence.

dgoldstein0 2mo ago

SF - and probably much of the US homeless problem elsewhere - is largely cost of housing; rent and home prices are ridiculous enough that if you don't make big bucks, you are likely barely scraping by. Rents here are rising way faster than inflation, and it makes everything more expensive and means a lot more people are living that much closer to not being able to pay their rent. Way easier to end up homeless after losing your job when paying 3k/month in rent than 1k/month, as at the cheaper rent saving money is actually possible. We've consistently built a tiny fraction of the new residential units needed for projected population growth for decades now. Supply has been barely growing while demand surged; what else should we expect? Other parts of the country have not been as extreme, but this has played out in other cities too. We've had terrible housing policy, and increased homelessness is a direct consequence.

slg 2mo ago
What you say is completely true, but part of the problem is that people have very different ideas of what they are talking about when they talk about homeless people. People who tend to complain about the homeless are generally only complaining about the visibly homeless (i.e., the people living on the street). Meanwhile the people who advocate for helping the homeless are more likely to also care about the invisible homeless who tend to make up the majority of all homeless people. These are the folks who might have jobs, live in their car, have a gym membership to shower, etc. You could spend a lot of time with many of these people and have no idea they were homeless and as a result they aren't included in many people's perception of the problem of homelessness. Therefore, it's hard for people to believe that something as simple as lowering rent prices could actually solve homelessness for a majority of homeless people.
- mrngld 2mo ago
  I think the burden of proof is on your position. When activists in my area pick a fight with local government, it's never over that invisible group. Indeed, as far as I can tell, they don't give a rip about the veterans living in the forest over by the VA hospital. I've never seen them over there. They're too busy picking fights defending the ones pooping at the downtown parks (and not in the public toilet) or trying to get city funding and approval for safe drug use, etc. Now, you're right that there are people that do care and put tremendous effort into that more invisible group. Churches and church-backed organizations do a lot of that. Difference is, except for fund-raising from like-minded folks (and a lot of them hate even asking for money), they go about their work quietly, without seeking attention or reward. There'd be the possibility of joining forces, but not with the DSA-types that jump in the limelight and scream the loudest and advocate for free needles. The people doing the bulk of the hard work don't want to make a statement on Palestine, they just want volunteers for the hard-to-staff weekday shower-cleaning shift. They need men willing to be mentors, etc. They care about the actual people they're serving, not trying to bring about glorious revolution. The two groups aren't compatible at the moment.

dyauspitr 2mo ago

The problem is you can’t get people off the street if they don’t want to get off the street unless you do it forcibly. You can end the homeless problem overnight but SF is too empathetic. I’m not even saying this is a fault, I’d rather they fail on the side of empathy than succeed violently.

crote 2mo ago
Very few people want to be homeless. The alternatives offered to them just somehow manage to be even worse than homelessness.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- dyauspitr 2mo ago
  They don’t want to be homeless but they don’t want to put up with free housing drug free rules so they prefer to stay on the streets where they can keep using.
- laughing_man 2mo ago
  The problem is one of the alternatives they consider worse than homelessness is a life without opioids. I had cousin who was homeless in San Diego. Over the years she came into money a couple times, either from family members or through inheritance. Instead of getting a place to live she figured drugs were a better use for that money. We tried everything to get her off the street, and nothing worked. She wouldn't even stay at a shelter. Because she had no intention of giving up the drugs.

panta 2mo ago

The problem is money, but at a different level. When you deal with the homeless it's too late. That money must be spent before someone becomes homeless, on welfare: unemployment benefits, accessible healthcare and housing. A minor cut taken care of immediately is nothing, but let it turn into gangrene and you won't be able to fix it at all.

hgomersall 2mo ago
Even benefits etc are too late. The money should be spent on providing hope for people. It's 45 years of neoliberalism that we are reaping.
- latexr 2mo ago
  > The money should be spent on providing hope for people. How do you suggest that would work? Obviously you can’t just buy hope, so could you provide some specific ideas?
  - hgomersall 2mo ago
    Yes, develop an economy that is not run for rent seekers. Provide a job guarantee so everyone can work at a wage floor. Build housing stock that is actually affordable and desirable for anyone on a normal wage. Make sure healthcare is affordable and available universally. Provide schools that are good regardless of where you live or what you can afford. Those things would be a start.
ricardobayes 2mo ago
AFAIK also SF was long known as "hobo capital", meaning many homeless or drifting people just ended up there. So it's much more complex than that, since many of the homeless are not even locals.

idiotsecant 2mo ago

Because they're forced to burn dollars to solve a problem that was created upstream for the want of pennies.

detourdog 2mo ago

I think around 1986 Reagan cut the federal funding to the facilities that would house the mentally ill. This created the homeless situation in the USA. I remember the term homeless as newly formed at that time and remember the population exploding as I went through college in center city Philadelphia.

aninteger 2mo ago
We've had homeless people forever (although less). I think we used "hobo", or "tramp" back in the 1960s.
- detourdog 2mo ago
  There was always a population that preferred living on the margins of society. Hobo’s and tramps are different than the mentally ill and they were called hobos and tramps. My grandmother used to trade food for labor of these people as they passed through. The homeless were people that could not care for themselves or be of use in some way. The grey area might be junkies.
xp84 2mo ago
Some good source material: https://factually.co/fact-checks/politics/did-ronald-reagan-cut-funding-and-cause-mental-institution-closures-nyc-cfa9c6 https://factually.co/fact-checks/politics/did-ronald-reagan-... The homeless situation as we know it had multiple causes in the 80s and prior. Part of it was Reagan-era policies wanting to save money, but the other half (which in my view would have probably still "achieved" the same end result) was activists who argued that involuntary institutionalization violated the rights of those who were committed. "The Left" and "The Right" were full partners in dismantling what we had. In my opinion, both were too stupid to realize the consequences of just deleting what existed without having a realistic plan for how to deal with those people. It's like if you realized your water heater was consuming $30 worth of electricity every month so you just turn the breaker off and say "We saved $30 and improved our climate footprint" but now everyone has to take cold showers forever and the dishes don't get properly cleaned.

dessimus 2mo ago

SF is one of the highest cost of living cities in the US. I'm guessing housing and utilities is going to chew up the majority of that $100K, before you even consider medical and mental health visits and transportation to and from those visits, and there is likely tons of resistance from surrounding localities to allowing the City to relocate those they are helping to suburbs where they might find cheaper and/or more accessible housing, food costs, improved access to healthcare, etc.