21 ms·

Come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep

• austenallred 13y ago
  I think one aspect of this is that San Francisco is somewhat of a safe-haven for the homeless and transient. While they do provide some context for the economic disparity between the poor and the rich, most of my homeless/transient buddies prefer living homeless/transient lifestyles in San Francisco to living homeless/transient lifestyles anywhere else.
  • jrochkind1 13y ago
    Yeah, OP acknolwedged that, right? > Thing is, those in poorer situations flock here, because they can get healthcare, support, and help, but other times it just feels like a passive aggressive fuck-you-got-mine. if you don’t tip, it isn’t so much a snub, it’s saying “i don’t think you deserve healthcare”. Alternatively for those with healthcare provided, it locks them into their job.
• addlepate 13y ago
  How is leaving SF any different? You're doing the same thing but at a greater step of remove. Instead of the homeless people being down the block, they're safely away from you in a distant country. As for your local area, I suppose either there are no homeless or poor people, or you are just constantly thinking about them, unlike those hard-hearted Californians. Come on.
• jrochkind1 13y ago
  The guy's Scottish, he thinks it's about San Fran specifically, it's really about AMERICA. Maybe San Fran puts it even more in your face. But compared to most any other country even half as rich as America, the lack of social safety net in the U.S. is kind of shocking. People in Europe don't really realize the extent of it.
  • wting 13y ago
    The wealth disparity is probably more evident in SF. For example, Honolulu has a huge homeless population despite the huge tourism industry. The city just pushes homeless towards parts of the island where tourists don't visit and thus aren't aware of the problem.
  • amackera 13y ago
    I have had similar experiences in Toronto, Canada. We even have universal healthcare, and good social programs. At least in SF a homeless person won't die from exposure in the wintertime.
    • meunier 13y ago
      Toronto has way more of a handle on homelessness than other parts of Canada in my experience. It's much worse in the neighbouring provincial capitals, Montreal and Winnipeg.
      • throwaway1979 13y ago
        I've always been somewhat confused by the homeless out in the street in Canada. I thought we had a social safety net, shelters, etc. Everyone of these people can't be drug users and people with severe mental health issues, right?
  • troebr 13y ago
    I'm French living in Jersey. I have been to San Francisco, even though it's blatant when you walk here, everywhere in the US I have that feeling that the poor are really forgotten. And they live in third-world country conditions. In France, the average rich is not as rich, and it's probably a lot harder to become successful and wealthy than here; but the poor are not left behind as much. It feels more like a society where you take a significant chunk from the rich to make sure the poor can get by. Sure there are abuses, high taxes and whatnot, but the old and the poor can afford to go to the dentist, and retire when the time comes. The way I see it, European countries have a kind of nation-wide health insurance, vs individual insurance here. We have a nation-wide student loan, versus individual student loans. That helps controlling the costs and profits, and helps making sure that everybody who needs care or education can get it. But whether it is related or not, America is more daring, more exciting, and there are more opportunities when you have the right cards to do something. But if you had a bad hand to start with, then you're royally screwed. Put simply, it's better to be born poor in Europe than in the US, and better to be born rich in the US than in Europe.
• ambiate 13y ago
  As a person with severe social anxiety, I felt truly anonymous in my visit to San Francisco last summer. I was not worried or threatened like my wife. I knew all things come and go in SF. The inherent risks of SF seemed easier to evaluate due to the larger population. To me, it was bliss. The divide between rich and poor was no different than anywhere I have visited in the USA. A visit to Mississippi can open eyes to the evil dividing lines of human behaviors.
• woodchuck64 13y ago
  > Stepping over the homeless, weaving between the street corner schizophrenics Imagine having a chronic disease simultaneously with an absolutely intolerable fear of doctors, hospitals, institutions and the social safety net. That's a hard problem.
  • ajross 13y ago
    I can't tell exactly the point you're trying to make. Obviously there are specific cases ("schizophrenics" here, I guess) who are going to be very hard to treat in any safety net, and the US has no monopoly on them. But the point was broader, that relative to the rest of the industrial world the US has far more people at the "bottom" , falling out of the net. Walking around cities in Europe, you generally don't find people sleeping on park benches or camping under highway interchanges, etc... In most US cities, that's fairly routine. And many of us consider that a bad thing. Note that none of that excuses the poorly informed and counterproductive moralizing in the linked article. The author is a jerk. But the problem is real.
    • bearmf 13y ago
      There are plenty of people sleeping on park benches in Europe, especially in large cities like London and Paris.
      • ajross 13y ago
        Now, I'm sure this is a difficult thing to measure, and there's lots of room for legitimate argument. Nonetheless Wikipedia tells me that 248 Londoners "sleep rough each night", where 3-5000 of San Francisco's homeless population "refuse shelter". That's a full order of magnitude difference even ignoring the fact that London's population is several times that of SF. And again, it gets to the safety net argument. It's not that the english are accepting shelter where the americans are not, it's that the english don't need to "accept" the homeless shelters in the first place because they are sleeping at home.
        • 13y ago
• bluedino 13y ago
  Not everyone can create, whether it's a website or designing the next iPhone. Very few people can. Those people that do are rewarded very well. Besides, if we were all trying to cure hunger or house the homeless who would be creating all the fancy computers we use every day? And why blame 'programmers', there are plenty of doctors, lawyers, and financial workers in SF that have to 'step over' the homeless every day on their way to work as well.
  • smacktoward 13y ago
    "Besides, if we were all trying to cure hunger or house the homeless who would be creating all the fancy computers we use every day?" You're right, it is hard to imagine how we would survive without Yet Another SocialMobilePhotoSharing Application. Remember the Dark Days, my friends? When to share a photo you actually had to be around people, and talk to them? Ugh. I shudder to think upon it. We lived like savages, back then; filthy, stinking savages.
  • ajross 13y ago
    Curing hunger and housing the homeless doesn't, the last time I checked, require creativity or programming talent. Growing food and constructing buildings are what we geeks like to call "mature technology", and thus not something we concern ourselves with except at the margins where changes in efficiency have economic impact.
    • WalterSear 13y ago
      Growing food and constructing buildings won't solve the problem either. We have plenty of both already. Motivating the self-absorbed, indolent masses to legislate away homelessness is the problem.
• madaxe 13y ago
  "Last night, someone told me “In California, there isn’t a conflict between being a Capitalist, and a Liberal”, with a wry grin on his face." Of course there isn't. Liberalism in its purest form (as espoused by Hayek, say) is, in effect, free market capitalism with a light but universally applicable (no "special cases", as those lead to totalitarianism) set of regulations to prevent bad actors (e.g. hey, let's put heroin in baby formula so it's really more-ish). There's this odd commingling of the concepts of socialism and liberalism in the general populace's minds, for some reason. The two could not be more antithetical. As to the rest of it - the US is neither capitalist nor liberal. It's corporatist, with a distinct socialist bent, but not where people usually point the finger. "Obamacare" is not socialist, it's liberal, as a core concept of liberalism is that the state should fund things that people cannot or will not fund for themselves, like roads and healthcare. Protectionist policies to keep the banks, agribusinesses and other without-legislation-to-protect them unprofitable enterprises ARE socialist, as they centralise control of industrial and economic output into government, and allow businesses that would not survive in a true free market to prosper. Rant over.
  • maheart 13y ago
    I agree with agriculture, but how are banks unprofitable? EDIT: I should say "unprofitable without legislation"
    • madaxe 13y ago
      In a recent timescale, there was a multi-billion dollar bailout of failed institutions. It was pretty big news. Most of the banking sector would have gone bust without it, which would, as happened in Iceland, have left verdant territory for a new breed to spring up in. In a more general scale, the entire banking sector is propped up by protectionist policies that allow: > Fractional lending (this is called reserve banking) on a minimal reserve. It's pretty odd that banks can do this, but, say, you, can't. > Setting of core econometric KPIs by people who stand to benefit directly from those KPIs. LIBOR and EURIBOR are recent examples of this, but market fixing has been going on since forever, and is endorsed passively through a lack of legislation to do anything about it, and a lack of will to prosecute. > No other banks to exist, without jumping through serious hoops, and tying themselves in a death-grip to one of the "special" banks. > Immunity to prosecution for bad actors. Corporate personhood is applied with amazing selectivity. If you're a juggernaut, no worries. If you're a small guy, enjoy federal prison. > Indiscriminate money laundering and funding of illegal activities overseas. HSBC just got busted for proactively helping out the cartels in Latin America, and got a slap on the wrist. They're not alone in this kind of thing - look at Brown Brothers Harriman. They funded Nazi Germany. Prosecution? Nah. Wild profits that span generations. I could go on and on and on, but the moment that you treat any particular person or entity "specially", you're on the road to hell, as you've just interfered with a self-regulating system, as free (but blanket regulated) markets are, and you'll need to interfere more, and more, and more, and suddenly you're telling factories that they should only make size seven shoes for the next two years to fulfil their quota.
• jpeg_hero 13y ago
  its no land of "Milk and Honey" is it? just wait until you get the disillusionment from going down to "Hollywood"
  • madaxe 13y ago
    And don't wear sandals, unless you like needles in your toes.
• jayferd 13y ago
  Yeah, housing. It's the big issue of the day here, and you can see how much it affects our culture. Basically we created a mortgage system that only works as long as property values continue to rise, which created a lot of political will behind "improvement" measures like eliminating public housing, like we did in the early 80s. (see http://www.wraphome.org/downloads/without_housing.pdf http://www.wraphome.org/downloads/without_housing.pdf [pdf] for a fascinating study on the origins of modern homelessness) I'm doing some experiments with cooperative housing and income-sharing right now, which slightly mitigates my contribution to gentrification, but something else is needed, and I'm not sure what.
  • beatpanda 13y ago
    If you're interested in cooperative housing and income sharing, you might be interested in this idea - raising money from well-paid engineers for the San Francisco Public Land Trust, in order to create permanent affordable housing (with the added bonus of not depending on the government to manage it) and home-ownership options for low-income families. Email is in my profile if you want to chat.
  • rottyguy 13y ago
    I actually think we created a mortgage system that will keep most people working (income earning) for the majority of their lives (30yrs). Now that our life span is increasing, will the norm be 40yrs?
    • jtbigwoo 13y ago
      You can get a 40 year mortgage at many banks now. I doubt 40 year mortgages will ever catch on. The banks generally charge a higher interest rate for the longer term so the payments aren't much cheaper than a 30 year loan.
• beatpanda 13y ago
  I make a point of maintaining a clean separation between my work and my social life for exactly the reasons this author describes. The biggest problem San Francisco has right now is a bunch of people who came here for money, with no interest in being part of its social fabric. Many of whom loudly complain about how much San Francisco sucks, and how it should change to meet their needs. You either need to start actually being a part of this city, or move your ass down the peninsula. Or better yet, move your company somewhere else. I hear they've got lower taxes and cheaper engineers pretty much everywhere else.
  • brianmcconnell 13y ago
    Same here. I've been in SF for 20 years, during most of which I have worked for my own companies. My routine: wake up around 8, or whenever I wake up (no alarm clock), work straight through until about 6pm. Walk downhill to the neighborhood/sports bar to grab dinner, watch the ballgame (no discussion of work as none of the people there do tech work). Get a pleasant buzz on, hang out with friends. Go home, sleep, rinse, repeat. Works well for me.
  • nsxwolf 13y ago
    Every city is the way it is because of the people that come into it. Now different people are coming in and things are changing. San Francisco is a place that people historically migrate to when looking for gold. The aspects of the culture that creates, the ones you like, anyway, are unpredictable and subject to change.
    • beatpanda 13y ago
      You could also say that "San Francisco is a place that people historically migrate to to subjugate native populations and force them to adopt a new culture and religion". Does that make it ethically defensible? Or did we not learn anything from the last few hundred years? I should also point out that the reason companies started coming to San Francisco in the first place was because of the culture that is currently being displaced, largely by people who don't care about the culture at all.
• glesica 13y ago
  I think that when people say "hard problems" they mean "problems that almost certainly have solutions if you are willing to put in the effort". Poverty on the other hand is a much, much harder problem than that. In fact, no one quite knows how to solve it in a general way (there are things that seem to work in certain contexts but not in others, many special case half-solutions). And on top of that, there probably isn't a clear path between solving the poverty problem and wealth the way there is between solving the {photo sharing, social media, web search, ...} problem and wealth.
  • beat 13y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee The solution is simple. You simply give every adult citizen enough money every year to insure that they can afford food, shelter, and other basic needs. Give it to everyone, rich or poor, same amount. BAM! No more poverty, except in self-inflicted cases (drug addiction, for example), or things like severe and very expensive illness (which are covered by other means). This can be paid for in large part by the abolition of welfare systems, unemployment, Social Security, etc. The stock criticism is that people wouldn't work, because they wouldn't have to. Frankly, I don't want such poorly motivated people working anyway, because they're not productive. And anyone who wants more than barely-poverty will get a job or start a business. Another nice feature is that this supports people who want to do something productive but not financially valuable - charity work, ministry, art.
    • beatpanda 13y ago
      Fun fact: Richard Nixon supported something like this idea in the early 70's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax
      • michaelochurch 13y ago
        It's always amusing to me to realize that, in 2013, Nixon would be too far left for the Democratic party.
    • 13y ago
• downandout 13y ago
  This speaks to a larger problem: The world simply doesn't need many of the people born into it. Parents in the US have children for recreational purposes - child birth rates do not fluctuate with the demand for labor. These kids grow up, and many of them wind up sleeping on the streets of their chosen city or more commonly just barely living paycheck-to-paycheck, because there is no societal need for them. This bears itself out in statistics: 25% of households have a net worth of zero or less (negative net worth). 22% of children in the US live in homes below the poverty line. In our world, the needs of many can be met by the work of a few. Only those few will prosper, while the rest languish. The harsh reality is that prospective parents that don't have anything to pass onto their children need to take a hard look at whether they should be having children, given that going forward there may very well be no way for those children to earn a living.
  • noonespecial 13y ago
    You need a great number of many to create a pool large enough to get those precious few that can advance humanity enough to do all of that providing by the few. Humanity could be two people living in a grass hut finding just enough berries to eat each day, but it wouldn't be much fun.
    • VMG 13y ago
      Those "precious few" will probably not come from unfit parents who already have six children. Broken families and lack of family planning lie at the heart of crime and poverty. (I can already see the "eugenictler" strawman being put up in the distance)
      • pfortuny 13y ago
        You -as well as I- most probably come from unfit ancestors with lots of children. And that is irrelevant, as far as I can tell. So your argument is?
        • VMG 13y ago
• santu11 13y ago
  Are we creating the right kind of "WEALTH"? This should be a question people (who are doing startups) should ask themselves. IMHO, that is why socialist Governments providing education, healthcare, roads and security sound popular to some people. All these are part of wealth that are provided to citizens at low prices. But in a capitalistic economy, it is left to individuals (entrepreneurs) to provide this services at competitive prices. One way of looking to solve the problems of the poor and deprived people would be to provide them services of education, healthcare, housing etc. at ultra-competitive prices. I know it is easier said than done. But it is something worth doing.
  • georgefox 13y ago
    I get your point, but it may be a bit of a stretch to label governments providing things like roads socialist.
    • santu11 13y ago
      Yeah I agree, it is a bit of a stretch. A degree of centralized control in areas like town planning and security is needed. I guess in most countries governments contract out road construction to private companies anyways. But my primary point was we as entrepreneurs and visionaries need to work on the hard problems.
  • misc_closet 13y ago
    When the poor have no money they can't pay entrepreneurs. When the super-rich have all the money, the super-rich drive up the cost of living. The middle class then must directly serve the interests of the rich in order to get enough profit to afford the higher cost of living. It quickly becomes uneconomical to sell anything to poor people. It's a poverty spiral. Uneducated families just get more uneducated without state intervention. Rich families just get richer, driving up cost of living, cornering markets to destroy the free market, and making the poor families poorer in comparison. When are we going to wake up from this Randian dystopia we're creating??
    • thatswrong0 13y ago
• georgefox 13y ago
  Welcome to a very individualistic and, by consequence, antisocial society. As an American that's never stepped foot in California, this sounds surprisingly familiar, albeit with the unique addition of free food and free beer at work.
  • mabhatter 13y ago
    Why do people commute 45+ minutes each way to work... To live in a Suburb where the dont interaxt with any neighbors. a place with no public transport, no major retailers, and no place for "malcontents" to flock within 10 miles that's not private property. Even my small city has no "public space" or public transportation after business hours. We have lots of small parks designed to deter "being homeless" there. Everything about American Rural and Suburb culture drives out those who Rent, and don't want to own full-size autos with all the "rat-race" keeping up with payments and insurance and taxes... Right up until people retire and realize they can't keep up.
    • eric_the_read 13y ago
      In my case: good schools for my kids. I looked at several options nearer to the downtown area, and in every case, the schools were rated at the middle or near the bottom of the rankings. The schools where I ended up are near the top.
      • georgefox 13y ago
        That's a good point and seemingly common reasoning (at least around here), but it does raise some chicken–egg questions.
• jarjoura 13y ago
  There is a disparity between rich and poor in this country, sure, but come on. Most of the homeless in SF actually want to be on the streets. So many of them are young and it used to make me sad but I have just learned to accept it. I always make a point to package up leftovers and hand them out. I'll even reach into my wallet and hand out a few dollars too. If there were more I could do though, I would be more than happy to donate some of my time, as I'm sure many in this city would too. Also, is more public housing the answer? Not sure about that one. They all look like government buildings with horrible fluorescent off-green lighting filled with junkies and drug addicts far from being cured.
  • downandout 13y ago
    Most of the homeless in SF actually want to be on the streets. That is perhaps the most ignorant sentence I have ever read on HN. Most homeless people don't have a choice. If they do have a choice, the fact that they choose to live on the streets likely speaks to the horrific situation they would face at their home. I can assure you that no one wants to be homeless.
    • ams6110 13y ago
      I don't know about "most" but somewhere between "most" and "no one" there ARE some people who choose to be "on the streets."
      • downandout 13y ago
        Please find one and post about it here. I would love to meet this mythical person and take a video of them rejecting the offer of a place to live.
        • fishtoaster 13y ago
          Some examples: http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/43085729257/the-street-kids-of-san-francisco http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/43085729257/the-street-kid... I'll agree, "most" is probably way off. It is greater than 0, but it could well be a negligible amount.
• briholt 13y ago
  The same is true for Los Angeles. I've been in an office building while people were discussing six-figure sums like they were nothing, when outside in the alley below there were literally homeless people in a knife fight over a candy bar.
  • VMG 13y ago
    Do you think they fought because they would starve to death otherwise or because they had mental issues?
    • briholt 13y ago
      Mental issues for sure. There are a few places for the homeless to get food in that area, so it'd be unlikely for a non-mentally-ill person to starve.
    • misc_closet 13y ago
      Nutrition and mental illness are closely linked. Lack of healthcare and mental illness are closely linked. Lack of housing and mental illness are correlated. Lack of employment opportunities and mental illness are correlated. You talk like an evil person from the 19th century. Mental illness is not a character defect, it's an illness. It has external causes. Psychologists have found that one way to increase the level of mental illness in society is to raise unemployment through austerity measures and other stupid economic policies that are opposed by most economists yet implemented by neoliberal governments. Another way to increase general mental illness levels is to stigmatize the mentally ill and treat them as if they have character or moral defects. This causes people with mild depressions, for instance, to sink into major depressions. Another cause of mental illness is a lack of housing. Putting people on the street causes mental illness. They aren't poor because they're mentally ill. Just as often, they are mentally ill because they're poor. If they could AFFORD treatment, they could be CURED of their illness. The issue is poverty straight up. You're a terrible person for implicitly blaming the victims.
• regis 13y ago
  One thing that I think is missing from these discussions about the homeless in SF is: many of these people do not want to be rent-paying members of society and even if there was housing for them, some might still prefer their current lifestyle. Many people still view that lifestyle choice as unacceptable because it challenges the typical goals of someone working hard for a 'better' life. I don't think the question should be 'how do we get these people to participate in society?' but 'why don't they want to participate and how can we accommodate these alternative life choices?' Otherwise any progress made would benefit those who want to see the streets cleaned up and not necessarily those living out there.
  • beat 13y ago
    I don't think anyone actually PREFERS to be homeless, except for a few exotics. Most of the homeless in America are that way due to either a: unfortunate economic circumstances, or b: mental illness that precludes normal social functioning.
    • regis 13y ago
      I think many people choose being homeless over giving into the pressures of our society like having to sustain a job in order to pay rent and go out for dinner etc... and all that stuff that 'normal' people desire. I've met homeless people that split their time between SF and some hills near Santa Cruz and only come into the city to sell some hash or hang out ith friends for a couple of days... but yes there are also many people on the streets who don't want to be there too.
      • misc_closet 13y ago
        Are you aware that we live in a period of peak unemployment? There are literally millions of people who want jobs. The jobs were all made obsolete by Silicon Valley. The safety net was shredded by Silicon Valley-style neoliberal ethics based on Ayn Rand.
        • regis 13y ago
• _vn5r 13y ago
  I was in SF in march, and when I commented about this to someone, he said that a friend of his, who worked in an organization that works on helping the homeless, told him that other states actually give the homeless a one-way ticket to SF so its no longer their problem. I was shocked with this, asked a couple more people if they had heard about that, and they had. My conclusion was that maybe everyone (or most people) was expecting someone else, or the government, to help the homeless, and there comes the vicious cycle.
• MarkPNeyer 13y ago
  i worked at uber and twilio in the city. I was so bothered by the homeless people I saw everyday that it seriously impeded my work performance. i'd walk by them and feel terrible for not being able to help, for having an easy time making money, and feel afraid that my bipolar disorder would get worse and i'd end up like them. it was hard to function properly at work when I'd start my day feeling guilty, powerless and afraid.
  • ardit33 13y ago
    How old are you? I used to have the same existential feelings as well when I moved in SF, but over time you just get used to it and don't care anymore. It is part of the maturation process and realize that the world is not a fair place, and no not everybody is equal and will live equally. One thing you realize is that a lot of the people on the streets have major mental conditions (usually schizophrenia, and major drug addictions or chronic alcoholism), and there is almost no way to just rehab them, and put them in a place that they can take care of themselves. Some of them are beyond the point of return and some need so much care, then only loving family can provide. Externally, you can't do much. Other countries have both better mental care provided from the state, and especially a social net. Usually family will take care of their ill. Be happy with what you got, do a good job, and make sure to be close to your family and have close friends. You will realize that is part of life, and once and a while you will have a need for support from closed ones, but as long as you an handle yourself well most of the time and try to live a good life you wont have to worry.
    • MarkPNeyer 13y ago
      i'm 27 now - this was when i was 25. i've since moved to the south bay to work at google, and things have improved significantly after a lot of meditation. i honestly have a more 'adversarial' mindset towards the homeless - i think a lot of the people in sf begging for change simply don't want to work, and because they can make a living preying on the guilt of people like me, they do so. as for the schizophrenics out there, i am honestly still a little afraid of being one of them, but i'm lucky enough to have a huge support network.
• seyfarth 13y ago
  %s/san francisco/milwaukee/g
• mynameishere 13y ago
  Oh, man. Been in America--in the freakin' Castro district--for 19 days and already making generalizations?
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• dowstreet 13y ago
  The 2007-2008 San Francisco Civil Grand Jury Report on current efforts to address homelessness - some interesting info. http://sfcourts.org/modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=1985 http://sfcourts.org/modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=198...
• orangethirty 13y ago
  What are tech companies doing to improve the area? And when I say improve, I mean helping those who need it most.
  • stuaxo 13y ago
    Too busy making "beautiful" interfaces, "disrupting" business, "changing the world" etc etc ad infinitum.
    • orangethirty 13y ago
      No one helps out? That's a shame. You can't build products for people who can't buy them.
• gummify 13y ago
  Not too far north along the west coast, the homelessness situation is mirrored in Vancouver, Canada. I have friends who have volunteered with non-for-profit agencies that support homeless people in identifying their needs and allocating resources to them if possible, such as social housing. My friends have told me that the people she has interviewed from the streets nearly 75% are mentally or physically handicapped or have fell into drug abuse and would never be able to function as a normal tax paying citizen again. There are cases where she has met people who where once normal people with normal jobs but because of a couple bad choices or traumatic situations, have gone into debt or turned to drugs and alcohol. One man was once a lawyer who lost his family over night and couldn't handle the stress and turned to gambling, drugs, and alcohol and probably suffered from PTSD and then sooner or later ended up on the streets. In Canada, homeless/unemployed receive around $300/month from the government and if you have a psychical or mental disability, I believe you receive a little more financial assistance. Some homeless people just stay on the assistance instead of trying to get employment. However, there is hope but we cannot rely on the government to sort it out. There is a privately funded organization called UGM that has a men's shelter and rehab program in the core of the homelessness district (equivalent to Tenderloin here) and are working on opening a women's and children's rehabilitation program. I volunteered there once and was taken aback on how well put together the program is. It's costly though, to build the building and support the program costs millions. They take in about 40 homeless people and puts them through a 6 month program. There are strict rules and guidelines in the program but in return they receive bedding, food, clean clothes and clean environment to live in, classes to help you finish your high school diploma, computer lessons, emotional and spiritual support, and career counselling, etc. It's still a newer program but they've seen a pretty high success rate, with many graduates becoming outreach works in the community.
  • cheeseprocedure 13y ago
    > However, there is hope but we cannot rely on the government to sort it out. Indeed: "A change in public policy saw the mass discharge of Riverview Hospital's patients as an effort to integrate them into the community while the province considered the land for development. However, this caused a large influx of mentally ill into the DTES as poor follow-up support failed to reach a majority of these individuals." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_Eastside#Mental_Illness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_Eastside#Mental_Illnes...
• dclowd9901 13y ago
  I've tried to figure out a way to say what you've said in this post since I've gotten here, and every time, it's sounded like an indictment on the poor. Brilliant post, and it's criminal that an area so full of brilliant people can be so detached from the most actual problems facing the world, when they're right on the proverbial doorstep.
  • misc_closet 13y ago
    The lack of compassion, perspective, and empathy in this thread alone is enough to make any idealistic computer geek want to burn down Silicon Valley. It's fucking shameful that nerds--educated and wealthy people who should know better--have these cruel, regressive attitudes toward the underprivileged. Shame shame shame. Anyone who isn't ashamed of San Francisco's treatment of the homeless--who isn't ashamed of many of the attitudes displayed in this HN thread--is a horrible monster of a person. A person severely deficient in empathy.
• kpennell 13y ago
  Ah!!! Someone finally nailed it
• yuz0h 13y ago
  You want to see income disparity at work, travel to Mumbai and live there for a day. I've lived in Mumbai vicariously through VICE, and that was an eye opener on the income inequality issue.
  • mtext 13y ago
    ...vice.
• Mz 13y ago
  It is no different online. People online know I am homeless. Most of them step over me and move on, though all I have asked for is help figuring out how to make money online instead of going back to a normal job that was helping to kill me. I imagine this comment will get buried or ignored or negative attention, an ironic repeat of the problem people are decrying.
• tokenadult 13y ago
  Places with good weather have huge visible homeless populations. (I have traveled all over the United States, and have been to all fifty states. AFTER EDIT: I have been in, and have lived in, gritty "skid row" neighborhoods of large United States cities, and have lived in Los Angeles.) Places with lousy weather, like the place where I grew up and now live, certainly have people who are "homeless" in the sense of not having a secure legal right to occupy a particular place at their own discretion, but most people with that lack of legal right to choose their living circumstances are indoors during cold winter nights. There is much provision of emergency shelter in the United States, by both governmental organizations and private charities. There are also both federal and state programs for providing free or heavily subsidized leaseholds for housing to poor families, and private charities that build single-family homes for poor families. People are more visibly out on the street in the United States mostly on a regional or seasonal basis. Since quite a few of the comments here mention Europe, my question (as someone who has never been to any part of Europe) is where do people live in Europe if they have no personal funds to buy or rent housing? Do they live in housing operated by some unit of government, or where? All of the above said, yes, I am not sure that United States social policy is a model for anywhere, and perhaps hackers working on social policy here would be helpful. There are already enough empty housing units in the United States to house everyone who needs a house. The tough policy issues are in allocating people to houses (or houses to people) and looking out for other aspects of everyone's welfare.
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  • tobinfricke 13y ago
    Having moved from the U.S. to northern Germany, I have to say: the difference is shocking. Here, mentally unstable homeless people are not a daily sight on the city streets. In fact, I have seen only one San Francisco-style lunatic: and he was, indeed, raving in English. Saying that "United States social policy is [not] a model for anywhere" must be an understatement. I would ask: what social policy? Any aid from the government ("welfare") is heavily stigmatized, except perhaps for retirees. From homelessness to health care to public transportation to to education to racial tension to gun violence, the U.S. appears a mockery of itself. Regarding the homelessness situation in California, I learned in school that it had something to do with Governor Ronald Reagan dismantling the state's mental health system. Have you seen skid row in Los Angeles? I can't imagine that such a scene exists anywhere in western Europe. This article looks relevant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Stat...
• jarrett 13y ago
  This article leaves out an important point: Most, if not all, programmers I know do care about these issues, but we can't solve them. We would if we could, but it's not what our profession is good at. The title of the article, "come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep," speaks to this. We programmers have the tools to solve many interesting and important problems, but certainly not all. Deeply rooted social problems such as homelessness cannot be solved with a mobile app or data analysis. So programmers see homeless people on the way to work, and we feel bad, but what can we do? Maybe the author wants us to feel guilty about the gap between rich and poor. But bear in mind most of us are not the rich of America. We're in the middle. Yes, it's much, much more comfortable in the middle than at the bottom, and I think most of us are grateful to be where we are. But most of us aren't aristocrats; we work for a living. And we're also not the ones who want to further widen the income gap. Rather, we tend to vote for progressive candidates and policies. Is there more we could do? I'm not sure what it would be. Charitable donations help a little, but won't solve the problem. Volunteering helps a little, but again, it's marginal. It's the people who actually work in advocacy, politics, and homeless services that are really in a position to help solve these problems. Programmers just aren't the ones to do it. Coincidentally, I actually do have some experience in the homeless services world. And from what I have seen, the solution is basically money. Much of the homeless population cannot be permanently cured. There is no homelessness reboot, where you go in for rehab, mental health treatment, etc., and you come out ready to face the world as a gainfully employed, self-sufficient person. Even with treatment, relapses are the norm, rather than the exception. Consequently, the realistic and humane solution is to put up the money for a basic safety net. Considering the number of homeless in our country and the rather modest price of providing basic food and shelter, it would not really be a noticeable drain on our society. And just to head off criticism: We're not talking about putting lazy people in the Hilton and feeding them caviar. Even spartan, barracks-style homeless shelters, such as the ones where I've worked, are a whole lot better than leaving people on the street. So-called lazy people (i.e. those who can work but don't want to) will not take advantage of this, because it's not an attractive option. No matter how lazy you are, you will choose to work over living in a homeless shelter if you can.
  • ricardobeat 13y ago
    It's not about charity. There are plenty of businesses to be built that help improve education, income inequality and social services, or steer politics to do the same.
• onemorepassword 13y ago
  With the exception of a very small sub group of people with serious mental issues, it's not a hard problem. Most of it has been solved already. It's just a matter of having the will to do it. That will is absent. Most developers in SF laugh at the amount of money their European counterparts get paid after taxes. The don't consider not having to step over homeless people a "benefit". That attitude is your problem right there.
  • the_cat_kittles 13y ago
    I don't know if its hard or not, but the difficulty to monetary reward is certainly extremely unfavorable, and that is a pretty big governing factor in where most startups dedicate their efforts.
  • redcircle 13y ago
    > The don't consider not having to step over homeless people a "benefit". My daughter really tries to stop us from visiting San Francisco, because there is nothing that she can do to help the homeless. So even though I like the city, I don't get to make much use of it (plus, on an not-unrelated note, the city is child unfriendly). Making matters even more surreal, the Willows Market in Menlo Park now sells caviar at the checkout counter, nestled amongst the chocolate and other things targeted for impulse buys.
  • scotty79 13y ago
    I'm quite amazed how nasty living environments rich people can bear. If I were to bet I'd swore that rich would do something about the poor before it gets anywhere near as bad as in US. But then again there's India. So I stand corrected.
• peterhunt 13y ago
  Anyone who's been around the US knows that San Francisco has one of the most visible homeless populations in the country. It's interesting to note that SF also has perhaps the strongest "social safety net" programs in the country. I don't understand how the author then makes the jump to "we need more social safety net programs." Maybe we should just run them effectively. Also the characterization of the social lives of SV employees is just plain wrong, but that's a tangential point.
  • tobinfricke 13y ago
    I think this just shows that homelessness must be addressed on a nationwide scale.
• orbital303 13y ago
  When homeless people can be monetized, they will be, and they will grow the GDP because as we know, this is the only measure of real progress ("economic 'progress'"). The more homeless, the more money, the higher the GDP. Welcome to America. Or the world for that matter. The US is all about fuck you, I got mine. If it hasn't spread to your doorstep (I find this hard to believe as it's a general societal trend, not specific to the US) you aren't looking hard enough. At least you don't have people arguing abou scala or ruby or language xyz on your doorstep. If you did, you might prefer the homeless too.
• jaibot 13y ago
  This seems like a good time to remind everyone that there's a known method for reducing human misery you can do right now. http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities Give some money. This won't help the person on your doorstep, but it is probably the best way to convert money into well being. And you can look yourself in the mirror and say that even though the world is quite fucked up, you are doing _something_ about it.
  • misc_closet 13y ago
    What about using entrepreneurial skills, website design, and internet marketing knowledge like SEO to engage in the political process? What if Silicon Valley, instead of always lobbying for corporate perks, lobbied for a civilized society and lobbied the government to take care of the underprivileged? So many people are saying they're powerless to do anything... yet they have a plethora of useful skills that could be employed to create political change. They have money. They have time. They have language skills and influence. If tech people worked together to create a Star Trek like society, starting in SV, it could be done. The first step would be marketing a plan, attracting allies, and counteracting the Ayn Rand corporate fascist propaganda that has flooded the internet and pop culture.
  • kpennell 13y ago
    thanks for posting this.
• dominostars 13y ago
  San Francisco homelessness is not a question about rich vs. poor. It's a question about what to do with people who are mentally handicapped and/or drug abusers. This is partially a money problem, but it's largely a social problem. A lot of other countries deal with this better because they have stronger family support structures. Programming can help, but this isn't a programming problem. And there's no money in it, so anybody who's trying to solve this problem can't afford to live in San Francisco. Stepping over homeless people on my way to a cushy tech job has given me loads of cognitive dissonance. I have a really hard time with this, and I think about it every single day on my way to work. Frankly, I'm not sure what to do about it, and I'd love to have an open discussion instead of an anti-american one. Everyone here who's arguing about their superior European social programs are really preaching to the quire, because most Americans on Hacker News would kill to have these social programs.
  • jarrett 13y ago
    Indeed. We (the folks on HN) are mostly the good guys in this fight. We'd like to help, and I'd like to think we support the right political causes in the ways that we can. But there comes a point where you're doing what you can given your role in society, and you still have to go past homeless people on your way to work. It doesn't make you any less compassionate than the people in any other country.
  • shpiel 13y ago
    I work in the Downtown Crossing section of Boston, which has the one of the highest visible homeless populations in the Boston area. I was also consistently troubled by the number of homeless people I encountered to and from work. It really helped to volunteer at a nearby homeless shelter (Pine Street Inn). I was comforted to see some of worst cases (including people I encountered daily) have access to meals, a clinic, a shelter, and treated with courtesy. I was also struck by how many people seemed normal - not someone who was mentally ill or spent time on the street. In general America fulfills a lot of need with private charity - which can occasionally be really impressive. When I worked at a large financial institution there were lots of opportunities for matched giving and volunteering opportunities. I wish tech companies would do this more.
• eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  You know what? Thanks for writing that. The States needs to hear it.
• iguana 13y ago
  Come here and work on hard problems, like rounding corners and getting people to click on stuff.
• michaelochurch 13y ago
  George Carlin said it the best: The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep 'em showing up at those jobs.
• hawkharris 13y ago
  I think it's often harder to acknowledge local problems such as homelessness because they require a sustained commitment. You literally seem them as you walk home or drive to work. Contrast that with the instant gratification of making a one-time contribution to solve a distant problem, and it's easy to see why many prefer the latter approach.
• shruubi 13y ago
  "After all, technology is social before it is technical." That is quite possibly one of the stupidest comments I have ever read...
• gvr 13y ago
  I'm originally Swedish and moved from France to Silicon Valley in 2001; I found it so depressing to see all the homeless people in SF that I ended up getting a place in Palo Alto rather than SF. As I gradually became desensitized I made my way further and further up north, until I finally ended up in SF 5 years later. I am very happy in San Francisco and have no plans on moving back for a lot of different reasons: lots of smart people working on interesting projects, great weather, beautiful city, and so forth. Having said that, one of the few things that I don't love about living here is a more civilized i.e. socialistic system. The current situation, where we live in one of the greatest richest cities in the US, with terrible infrastructure (compared to most European and Asian metropolitan areas) and homeless everywhere is completely appalling and depressing, and I do think most people would be happier if we had great streets, parks, transportation and a clean city even if that meant a little bit less cash in their pockets - even if they don't realize it. I think most people that don't value these things have probably not spent a lot of time in cities that have them.
• just2n 13y ago
  > The cost of living is always increasing, and the flashy money from silicon valley is accelerating the gentrification of SF. rent-control is a last ditch effort to prevent those who grew up here from being displaced, but in return prevents them from being able to move within the city. In particular, the bit about being prevented from moving within the city. There are many problems with SF itself. One of which is the homeless population. But that doesn't feel so urgent. After all, what can we do for drug addicts and mentally handicapped people, outside of putting them in institutions? They're better taken care of here than they would be in most places, and those who live on the streets are at least in a moderate climate. It sucks, but it could be a whole lot worse. And every time I see people give them money, I feel compelled to explain to them that the money won't actually help them, but a sandwich might. This is a visible problem, especially to tourists, which may be why it's so widely talked about. But there are other extreme problems with the city. Consider rent control, which is only barely mentioned in this article. It's actively destroying the city. Most economists agree about the effects of rent control, too, and studies have shown the negative effects to be strikingly similar to many of the problems SF is currently facing (which will only continue to get worse). http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.html. How about we solve this problem before SF is just a business center with 0 housing. Then with all that extra housing, we find a place to take better care of our homeless? It's really hard to put them up when you just don't have the appropriate accommodations for it.