5 ms·

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 a

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.
    - reinhardt 13y ago
      > the offer of a place to live. By "offer", do you mean for free? Well, duh. What the GP most likely meant is that some people prefer to be homeless rather than having to get and hold down a job to afford a place to live.
      - roguecoder 13y ago
        I've watched several friends spend two or three years doing nothing but hunt for a job, and they were lucky enough to have friends with couches to crash on, enough money for interview clothes and a computer to access job ads on. You act like that's a trivial step: it's not. Besides the challenge of actually finding a job, a minimum wage job won't cover rent in SF and certainly not with money left over for things like food, transportation or phone service. Have you seen the installation art piece about the minimum wage? It's a box with a crank on it that spits out a penny every 4.97 seconds: http://disinfo.com/2012/12/the-mininum-wage-machine/ http://disinfo.com/2012/12/the-mininum-wage-machine/ That's what working is like to most people, except often more dangerous and demeaning.
  - beat 13y ago
    There are exceptions that prove the rule. But "most" is an excuse. As Paul Graham said on a different thread yesterday, if you have a choice between two explanations and one justifies you being lazy, choose the other one.
- oblique63 13y ago
  Seriously. Comments like that are the reason I try to frequent HN less often. I grew up in the mission in SF, but that was when it was still a 'ghetto' that nobody wanted to set foot in (I still have a lot of friends that are paranoid about it), and as you might assume from that, my family wasn't ever that financially well off either. So seeing things like this just makes me cringe at how disconnected and insensitive this newer wave of (for the lack of a better term) 'more fortunate' people are. Being able to simultaneously look at the absurd rent prices in SF, and then interpret the homelessness problem as a 'choice' is some serious obliviousness, if not an all-out exercise in orwellian double-think. I know it's a bit of a popular 'thing' amongst a certain subculture in the Haight (hell some of my friends have done that), but that's been around for ages, and I'd hardly call that culture a majority... The original article pretty much got it right: people here like living in bubbles.
  - michaelochurch 13y ago
    An upvote is not enough. Thank you for posting this. Yes, there are a few people who prefer to be homeless. They're very rare. The idea that they're "most" is laughable.
gdonelli 13y ago
"Most of the homeless in SF actually want to be on the streets." I have heard this from many americans, for some reason my european mindset cannot get why someone would not want shelter or food.. a reliable manner. Most of these people have not had the opportunity to do any better. It is not their fault.
- fossuser 13y ago
  Mental illness and drug abuse complicate things and with no universal health care treatment options are limited. The homeless people who remain homeless are usually in these categories and it can be hard to help them.
thenomad 13y ago
Most of the homeless in SF actually want to be on the streets. {{Citation needed}}
- VMG 13y ago
  same goes for the OP (or the inverse statement)
  - misc_closet 13y ago
    You need a citation to prove that homeless people don't want to be homeless? Silicon Valley has peaked. Idealistic, social-conscience-having nerds take note: This is what happens when you let neoliberalism, Randroidism, and corporate psychopathy infect your tech community. Technology is supposed to be used to create a Star Trek future. Not to spy on everyone as we make their jobs obsolete, drive up their rental costs, and put them on the street. Then demonstrate zero compassion for the victims that Silicon Valley has created.
    - VMG 13y ago
      I'm not in silicon valley, but I know people who volunteered in homeless shelters.
      - misc_closet 13y ago
        So your second hand anecdotes trump literally thousands of statisticians, economists, social workers, and other social scientists who spend their entire lives understanding these issues? You're so fucking right wing. If academia was politically empowered to implement the scientifically proven methods we could eliminate poverty and homelessness tomorrow, and cut mental illness by 90%.
    - michaelochurch 13y ago
      Silicon Valley has peaked. Idealistic, social-conscience-having nerds take note: This is what happens when you let neoliberalism, Randroidism, and corporate psychopathy infect your tech community. Technology is supposed to be used to create a Star Trek future. Not to spy on everyone as we make their jobs obsolete, drive up their rental costs, and put them on the street. Then demonstrate zero compassion for the victims that Silicon Valley has created. You, sir, win the Indignation for May 14, 2013: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtCiP8B2xpc#t=7s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtCiP8B2xpc#t=7s We really need to push these corporate/private-equity assholes out of our industry. We had a good thing for a while, but they came in and stole it. We have to take it back from those pieces of shit. Having worked both in finance and in VC-funded "tech" I can only say that the people in finance are a lot better and much more ethical. It seems that technology management (at least in the VC-funded space, where the investors agree that only "their kind" is actually fit to manage) is an Argentina for people who get flushed out of banking because they're too unethical even for Wall Street.
michaelkeenan 13y ago
> Most of the homeless in SF actually want to be on the streets. To those surprised by this sentence, jarjoura might be influenced by this recent Priceonomics blog post: http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/43085729257/the-street-kids-of-san-francisco http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/43085729257/the-street-kid... "Most street kids we spoke to came from one of two backgrounds: either they had job prospects (whether good or dead-end) but preferred the freedom of homelessness, or were transient homeless who fell in love with the street kid community...Street kids defied our expectations of living on the street as a last resort; instead they seem to be drawn to the Haight."
- king_jester 13y ago
  The article focuses on a very specific demographic of homeless people in a specific area of SF. These people do not represent a complete picture of homelessness. For example, most of the people interviewed in the article are white, but other races (esp. black folks) are several times more likely to be homeless or occupying shelter spaces.
brown9-2 13y ago
I think this comment seems to assume that "homeless" is the only problem, whereas I think the OP was discussing poverty in general as well. I don't think anyone can say (with a straight face) that most people who live in poverty have chosen that lifestyle.
king_jester 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. This is ludicrous. By almost every metric being homeless sucks: access to work is harder to find and keep, medical care isn't as available, physical safety is harder to keep, you are more likely to be arrested, you are more likely to be assaulted, etc. This mindset is straight out of the Victorian era. > 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. Homelessness is a systemic issue that can't just be solved only with individual people's time and/or money. > 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. That is because the issues that go with homelessness are not simply done once someone gets shelter. Also, public housing in most places in the US is at capacity and cannot accommodate any more people until someone dies or moves out. Some locales also put qualifications on public housing that will, by definition, keep people homeless or dependent on that public housing indefinitely.
adammil 13y ago
They don't choose to be on the streets, specifically. Instead, they make terrible choices that lead to being on the streets due to things like addiction and mental illness.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > They don't choose to be on the streets, specifically. Instead, they make terrible choices that lead to being on the streets due to things like addiction and mental illness. Except perhaps in the case of trauma-induced mental illness resulting from a trauma that is a forseeable consequence of a choice made prior to the existence of the illness (and even in that case it may be a problematic position), I am having trouble seeing even a remote argument that "being on the streets due to [...] mental illness" as the result of "terrible choices".

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.
  - reinhardt 13y ago
    > the offer of a place to live. By "offer", do you mean for free? Well, duh. What the GP most likely meant is that some people prefer to be homeless rather than having to get and hold down a job to afford a place to live.
    - roguecoder 13y ago
      I've watched several friends spend two or three years doing nothing but hunt for a job, and they were lucky enough to have friends with couches to crash on, enough money for interview clothes and a computer to access job ads on. You act like that's a trivial step: it's not. Besides the challenge of actually finding a job, a minimum wage job won't cover rent in SF and certainly not with money left over for things like food, transportation or phone service. Have you seen the installation art piece about the minimum wage? It's a box with a crank on it that spits out a penny every 4.97 seconds: http://disinfo.com/2012/12/the-mininum-wage-machine/ http://disinfo.com/2012/12/the-mininum-wage-machine/ That's what working is like to most people, except often more dangerous and demeaning.
- beat 13y ago
  There are exceptions that prove the rule. But "most" is an excuse. As Paul Graham said on a different thread yesterday, if you have a choice between two explanations and one justifies you being lazy, choose the other one.
oblique63 13y ago
Seriously. Comments like that are the reason I try to frequent HN less often. I grew up in the mission in SF, but that was when it was still a 'ghetto' that nobody wanted to set foot in (I still have a lot of friends that are paranoid about it), and as you might assume from that, my family wasn't ever that financially well off either. So seeing things like this just makes me cringe at how disconnected and insensitive this newer wave of (for the lack of a better term) 'more fortunate' people are. Being able to simultaneously look at the absurd rent prices in SF, and then interpret the homelessness problem as a 'choice' is some serious obliviousness, if not an all-out exercise in orwellian double-think. I know it's a bit of a popular 'thing' amongst a certain subculture in the Haight (hell some of my friends have done that), but that's been around for ages, and I'd hardly call that culture a majority... The original article pretty much got it right: people here like living in bubbles.
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  An upvote is not enough. Thank you for posting this. Yes, there are a few people who prefer to be homeless. They're very rare. The idea that they're "most" is laughable.

gdonelli 13y ago

"Most of the homeless in SF actually want to be on the streets." I have heard this from many americans, for some reason my european mindset cannot get why someone would not want shelter or food.. a reliable manner. Most of these people have not had the opportunity to do any better. It is not their fault.

fossuser 13y ago
Mental illness and drug abuse complicate things and with no universal health care treatment options are limited. The homeless people who remain homeless are usually in these categories and it can be hard to help them.

thenomad 13y ago

Most of the homeless in SF actually want to be on the streets. {{Citation needed}}

VMG 13y ago
same goes for the OP (or the inverse statement)
- misc_closet 13y ago
  You need a citation to prove that homeless people don't want to be homeless? Silicon Valley has peaked. Idealistic, social-conscience-having nerds take note: This is what happens when you let neoliberalism, Randroidism, and corporate psychopathy infect your tech community. Technology is supposed to be used to create a Star Trek future. Not to spy on everyone as we make their jobs obsolete, drive up their rental costs, and put them on the street. Then demonstrate zero compassion for the victims that Silicon Valley has created.
  - VMG 13y ago
    I'm not in silicon valley, but I know people who volunteered in homeless shelters.
    - misc_closet 13y ago
      So your second hand anecdotes trump literally thousands of statisticians, economists, social workers, and other social scientists who spend their entire lives understanding these issues? You're so fucking right wing. If academia was politically empowered to implement the scientifically proven methods we could eliminate poverty and homelessness tomorrow, and cut mental illness by 90%.
  - michaelochurch 13y ago
    Silicon Valley has peaked. Idealistic, social-conscience-having nerds take note: This is what happens when you let neoliberalism, Randroidism, and corporate psychopathy infect your tech community. Technology is supposed to be used to create a Star Trek future. Not to spy on everyone as we make their jobs obsolete, drive up their rental costs, and put them on the street. Then demonstrate zero compassion for the victims that Silicon Valley has created. You, sir, win the Indignation for May 14, 2013: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtCiP8B2xpc#t=7s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtCiP8B2xpc#t=7s We really need to push these corporate/private-equity assholes out of our industry. We had a good thing for a while, but they came in and stole it. We have to take it back from those pieces of shit. Having worked both in finance and in VC-funded "tech" I can only say that the people in finance are a lot better and much more ethical. It seems that technology management (at least in the VC-funded space, where the investors agree that only "their kind" is actually fit to manage) is an Argentina for people who get flushed out of banking because they're too unethical even for Wall Street.

michaelkeenan 13y ago

> Most of the homeless in SF actually want to be on the streets. To those surprised by this sentence, jarjoura might be influenced by this recent Priceonomics blog post: http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/43085729257/the-street-kids-of-san-francisco http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/43085729257/the-street-kid... "Most street kids we spoke to came from one of two backgrounds: either they had job prospects (whether good or dead-end) but preferred the freedom of homelessness, or were transient homeless who fell in love with the street kid community...Street kids defied our expectations of living on the street as a last resort; instead they seem to be drawn to the Haight."

king_jester 13y ago
The article focuses on a very specific demographic of homeless people in a specific area of SF. These people do not represent a complete picture of homelessness. For example, most of the people interviewed in the article are white, but other races (esp. black folks) are several times more likely to be homeless or occupying shelter spaces.

brown9-2 13y ago

I think this comment seems to assume that "homeless" is the only problem, whereas I think the OP was discussing poverty in general as well. I don't think anyone can say (with a straight face) that most people who live in poverty have chosen that lifestyle.

king_jester 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. This is ludicrous. By almost every metric being homeless sucks: access to work is harder to find and keep, medical care isn't as available, physical safety is harder to keep, you are more likely to be arrested, you are more likely to be assaulted, etc. This mindset is straight out of the Victorian era. > 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. Homelessness is a systemic issue that can't just be solved only with individual people's time and/or money. > 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. That is because the issues that go with homelessness are not simply done once someone gets shelter. Also, public housing in most places in the US is at capacity and cannot accommodate any more people until someone dies or moves out. Some locales also put qualifications on public housing that will, by definition, keep people homeless or dependent on that public housing indefinitely.

adammil 13y ago

They don't choose to be on the streets, specifically. Instead, they make terrible choices that lead to being on the streets due to things like addiction and mental illness.

dragonwriter 13y ago
> They don't choose to be on the streets, specifically. Instead, they make terrible choices that lead to being on the streets due to things like addiction and mental illness. Except perhaps in the case of trauma-induced mental illness resulting from a trauma that is a forseeable consequence of a choice made prior to the existence of the illness (and even in that case it may be a problematic position), I am having trouble seeing even a remote argument that "being on the streets due to [...] mental illness" as the result of "terrible choices".