9 ms·

Largest Homeless Camp In US is in Silicon Valley

156 points by jalanco 13y ago

outside1234 13y ago
I don't want to downplay this because these conditions are terrible. But I once worked in India for 3 months, in Mumbai, and I can tell you that on a global scale, this is nothing. My commute in the morning consisted of driving, for 1 HOUR, through the largest slum in the world. 20 kilometers on a side big. So while its terrible that this exists in Silicon Valley, on a global scale we have much bigger problems. For me, that's the biggest reason I hope Bill Gates keeps on doing what he's doing.
- rza 13y ago
  Just because things are worse in India, that shouldn't mean we should ignore everything else until it's fixed there first. Because for one, it's much easier for US citizens to fix problems in the US, for both legal and practical reasons. Hopefully something like this right in America's fabled land of idea-makers and disruptors will compel some real action to resolve it.
  - elsewhen 13y ago
    There are charities and NGOs that can do the "fixing," and a dollar spent alleviating the problem in India may be an order of magnitude more effective than in the states.
    - mhurron 13y ago
      And thanks to national boarders a dollar spent in India does nothing to help those anywhere else. There is no 'fixing homelessness.' You 'fix' it in India, or in the US or in Canada or in where ever. Sending money to 'fix' India or Africa is a decision to not spend it 'fixing' issues at home.
      - venomsnake 13y ago
        That is not true ... charity and economics are not a zero sum game. If you elevate 1000000 Indian people to the working class they will begin consuming a lot of stuff, some of which will be made in the US or having major part of its IP from US. Some of these dollars will come back home. After all what one person spends is another ones income. There is nothing wrong of course with trying to help closer to home first.
        asdfdsa1234 13y ago
        Charity tends not to elevate anyone to the working class. Most money ameliorates poverty temporarily, is spent on fundraising and bureaucracy, or is diverted (stolen).
- rayiner 13y ago
  These are our problems. Those are India's problems. We don't have to commute for an hour every morning through an Indian slum. We do have to commute every morning through the slums in our country.
  - elsewhen 13y ago
    So, "out of sight, out of mind?"
    - rayiner 13y ago
      No, the natural and rational human desire to fix things closer at hand before fixing things farther away. India's people can worry about their fellow Indians. We should worry, first, about our fellow Americans.
    - elsewhen 13y ago
      I agree with you on "natural" but rational? It seems focusing on nearby problems in the modern world is only rational if you are acting out of selfishness. If you are acting from altruism (and also believe that all humans are of equal value), you would pursue the strategies that have the most leverage.
      - venomsnake 13y ago
        Not at all. You should help where you could do the most. In US it is the US poor - because you have common language, you know the rules, you have the connections and resources etc etc ... India - there is different country, different culture, different customs. We cannot solve the problems of the people by not knowing them in depth and that is major investment. We cannot offer one size fits all "learn to code" solution that earned the tech industry the recent mocking.
      - rayiner 13y ago
        In the sense of a rational actor that maximizes their own utility.
- randomdrake 13y ago
  I don't understand comments and attitudes like this. "On a global scale, we have much bigger problems." People starving down the block are no less a problem than people starving on the other side of the world. It's atrocious that human beings have to live in squalor anywhere. There are people who need help everywhere and I do not get why people feel the need to measure one form of suffering against another. You say "I don't want to downplay this" but then follow with: "we have bigger problems." How much more could you downplay it? I hypothesize that folks (not necessarily OP) do this, consciously or unconsiously, so they can more easily justify inaction for themselves. "Well I could volunteer on Sunday at the Soup Kitchen but India has it so much worse. How could I/we be so selfish?"
  - elsewhen 13y ago
    It's triage -- solving the biggest fixable problem first.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      Poverty in a place like India, because of its scale and the country's broken social institutions, is a much more uphill battle than poverty in the U.S.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
      - igravious 13y ago
        You'd think that, wouldn't you? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq... There is a greater relative disparity in wealth between the rich and poor in the US of A than India. (relative poverty) Out of the developed countries the US is easily one of the least unequal (if not the most unequal -- I haven't checked) places. This is, of course, because universal health care is communism and social security is for spongers and the lazy. In absolute terms there is undoubtedly more extreme poverty in India than the US. Why that is so is not as simple as the country's broken social institutions, we're still talking about the world's largest democracy here. I would imagine the caste system plays a part. Colonialism too.
- the_rosentotter 13y ago
  Well, I'm from Denmark and we don't have homeless people. (Excluding those who choose to be because of mental issues.) There are many things I admire about the US and SV but please don't get complacent.
  - sluukkonen 13y ago
    What? Copenhagen alone has thousands of homeless people. And what makes you think that people choose to be homeless?
    - venus 13y ago
      I'm no expert on Denmark but I bet that Copenhagen's homeless issues are a mix of lack of resources and a politically correct unwillingness to forcibly detain people who really should be placed into care (chronic alcoholism, mental disease, drugs). That is perhaps what the parent meant by "choosing" to be homeless: substance abuse/mental health cases who opt out of the system to pursue their addictions. No point arguing about the definition of "choose". America's situation is different; they have an idealogical opposition to social welfare and there is no system to opt out of. The homeless situation in SF is far worse than in any EU city I know of.
      - bluedino 13y ago
        >> The homeless situation in SF is far worse than in any EU city I know of. I don't know if I'd really call it a situation. Homeless people choose to go to SF because it's one of the best places for them. You won't freeze sleeping on the street, plenty of handouts...
        venus 13y ago
        I'd imagine the main reason is that SF is walkable - not only for the homeless themselves, but also for the targets of their begging activity. The weather is liveable, I suppose, but LA's is better - if that's all it was, they'd be in LA, but LA's much more car-based. Anyway, whatever the reason, I think it is actually a "situation". Many cities have homeless problems, but SF's is amazingly in your face. Most SF people I know would simply not walk through Tenderloin at any time, even in broad daylight. It's in the middle of the freaking city! That is not normal.
frank_boyd 13y ago
A wise guy once said "The American Dream, you'd have to be asleep to believe in it". Is this camp here one example of the "99%-ers' flip side" of the "American Dream"?
- mikecane 13y ago
  History: http://www.american-pictures.com/ http://www.american-pictures.com/
bowlofpetunias 13y ago
For me, personally, this cancels out anything good about Silicon Valley. This is why I really don't give a crap why SV is such a great place for tech entrepreneurs. If this is the price, I rather live in a place where people have the decency to compromise their ambition a little bit in favor of those less fortunate. And I'm far from a socialist. I would like many things in my country to be way more libertarian, and on a personal level I'm as selfish as the next guy. But there's a line, a line of common decency and civilization, and this is so far beyond that it's obscene.
- venomsnake 13y ago
  Eradicating poverty is very good economic investment even if we ignore the decency and compassion - these are people that cannot consume and cannot produce so they behave like a double punch on potential GDP and growth.
  - asdfdsa1234 13y ago
    Some people are not currently worth hiring at any wage due to their attitudes, ability, addictions, or mental illness, let alone at a wage that would put them above the poverty line. Eradicating poverty is far from simple, increasingly expensive the further down the tail you go, and almost certainly not a good investment.
    - igrekel 13y ago
      Better yet, if they have any additional income , they will have to spend it so it goes back in the general economy right away.
    - drivingmenuts 13y ago
      < Some people are not currently worth hiring at any wage due to their attitudes, ability, addictions, or mental illness, let alone at a wage that would put them above the poverty line. It would appear that the current solution is to throw them away like so much trash.
TallGuyShort 13y ago
I know my experience is entirely anecdotal, so even I take it with a grain of salt, but unbiased, verified data on this topic is hard to come by at a large scale. I spend between 10 - 20% of both my income and time working through a charitable organization, and since moving to Silicon Valley a couple of years ago, I have been disappointed to see that most of the people who I've worked with who have become homeless recently enough for me to know the circumstances well (or who have become homeless while I have known them), and most of the people who have had long-term welfare dependencies, have not shown any initiative or drive to seize opportunities. They have rejected job offers for silly reasons, they have soured their relationships with those willing to help them over silly issues, and they have in some cases outright rejected offers of assistance. Now, I don't say this to suggest that all homeless people deserve to live in camps like this, but I would like to suggest that the existence of homeless camps is not a sign that our society is beyond "common decency and civilization... so far beyond that it's obscene", as one commenter has described it. I don't doubt that there are many who are or who have been in those camps that had fallen on hard times and did not get a fair second chance - but likewise I personally know some who have simply been beyond help, and I don't know why. Clearly there are places that have more or less homelessness, so there must be some cause involved that may not be obvious - all I wish to say as that as a "hacker" in Silicon Valley, I have spent my efforts in this direction far enough that my wife asked me to cut back for the sake of our family - and I was simply unable to get most people to accept the help they needed. I am skeptical of suggestions that all that is needed is for the 1% to stop being so 1%-ish. (I apologize - I have made several small edits while organizing my thoughts that aren't convenient to label explicitly as edits...) edit: (Yes - another one) For the record, I agree with most of the suggestions that have been provided in responses. I think these are avenues worth further investment and exploration. My only point here is that it's not just a case of the 1% in Silicon Valley being selfish.
- StandardFuture 13y ago
  That's because it is absolutely foolish to think that this problem is purely economical. There are much deeper and more complex problems PER INDIVIDUAL that you don't know about. Personality traits, undiagnosed mental disorders, a horrible upbringing, etc., etc., etc. To summarize all these people's problems as stemming from a singular cause does nothing for anyone. I think we can show that helping a particular individual does way more good than trying to solve a whole "group of people's" "problems". That's why when you read stories about a single guy helping a single homeless person/person in straits it truly does mean more for us as individuals than just a charity wanting us to throw money at them. Case in point: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/york-city-programmer-homeless-man-software-coding-classes/story?id=20042021 http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/york-city-programmer-homele...
davidf18 13y ago
The reason for the high cost of rent and of purchasing houses is because of "rent seeking" on the part of landholders who wish to keep land costs high by restricting land use. Fix the zoning codes and density restrictions which will diminish the artificial "rent seeking" and you'll see a corresponding increase in market efficiency and lowering of the cost of housing. For example, in Manhattan which is where I live, the number of people in Manhattan has decreased from 2.3 million to 1.6 million or 700,000 fewer citizens with a corresponding increase in the cost of living as there are far fewer apartments. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/opinion/gothams-towering-ambitions.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/opinion/gothams-towering-a...
- smutticus 13y ago
  I don't know why you were downvoted. You are exactly right. Until SV makes the connection between forcing everyone to live in ranch homes and homelessness the problem will never go away. The best way to reduce homelessness is to reduce rent costs. The best way to reduce rent costs is to create more supply of rental homes.
  - ryandrake 13y ago
    Not just rental homes, but AFFORDABLE rental homes. There's plenty of development going on here, but it's all $800,000 townhouses and luxury apartment buildings. This is not housing for the poor or even for middle class workers for that matter.
- unono 13y ago
  The tech companies should be in on this. They have to pay higher salaries to retain employees because rent costs so much. If they lobbied for more abundant housing they could decrease the salaries they have to pay and save a bundle.
- jupiterjaz 13y ago
  This guy gets it. Liberalizing zoning rules and restrictions would go a long way to alleviating this problem. For some reason liberals are against liberalization in this day and age.
shire 13y ago
It takes one person to make a difference it's just sad people in Silicon Valley can't contribute together to fix this particular problem.
smutticus 13y ago
But god forbid we let people live in their cars. Or for that matter anything less than a single family ranch home. Housing costs are crazy in the bay area because people refuse to allow more dense housing. With the homeless problem the way it is in the bay area we should be doing everything to decrease the cost of rent. Instead municipalities do everything in their power to prevent more housing from being built. I don't see homelessness in the bay area as some kind of tragedy. I see it as a crime.
- asdfdsa1234 13y ago
  If the Bay Area were the entire world, I would agree, but most of the country is very cheap.
  - angersock 13y ago
    Be that as it may, getting transport over to those other, cheaper places is not necessarily easy or affordable.
    - pjscott 13y ago
      In some cities, most notably New York, homeless people can get free transportation out. Usually it's just bus fare, which is admirably cheap by the standards of government social programs.
      - lutusp 13y ago
        Hawaii also. The state of Hawaii has started a program that gives free one-way airline tickets to homeless people who decide they want to leave. http://rt.com/usa/hawaii-one-way-tickets-homeless-824/ http://rt.com/usa/hawaii-one-way-tickets-homeless-824/ Now if only New York will offer airline tickets instead of bus tickets, the homeless can commute back and forth between New York and Hawaii forever. :)
        cowsandmilk 13y ago
jayferd 13y ago
These look an awful lot like homes to be calling the people living in them "homeless". I wonder what it would look like if the city didn't keep bulldozing them?
- jlgreco 13y ago
  It would look like a [bigger] third-world slum.
  - jayferd 13y ago
    Those... get bulldozed all the time too, unfortunately.
pastaking 13y ago
Does it surprise anyone that Troy the carpenter did not know how to spell? Pic: http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/5204f8736bb3f7b330000000-1200/a-sense-of-ownership-after-losing-a-lifetimes-worth-of-things-is-almost-universal-in-the-jungle.jpg http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/5204f8736bb3f7b3300...
unono 13y ago
There's an easy solution to this - electric robo-cars. With self-driving cars that can roam around, and thus not violate city ordinances against parking, there would be no homeless. Electric charging is fairly cheap and the city could even pay it for those deemed destitute. A robo-car with shower, kitchenette, bedroom would radically transform the situation for poor people worldwide.
- asdfdsa1234 13y ago
  Robocars with shower, kitchenette, and bedroom would not be within the means of many homeless people. Edit for response: a robocar with all of these amenities would be an RV costing much more than $10,000; the land cost would just be shifted to the public as these vehicles take up all available parking. Not to mention that a shower and kitchenette would require utility hookups, meaning they would really need an RV camp...
  - unono 13y ago
    The cost of producing a car is only a few thousand dollars, and a robo-car is just a car with a few extra smartphones. San Francisco spends about $40,000 per street homeless person http://www.triplepundit.com/2013/05/hult-gov-policy-homelessness-government-track/ http://www.triplepundit.com/2013/05/hult-gov-policy-homeless... Even in slums in India people are capable of affording low cost cars like tata nano's. And with the great efficiencies brought about by robo-cars, they would be even cheaper to manufacture and sell. And the above doesn't factor in the value of land. Much of rent/mortgage goes into paying off the actual land-owner (usually a bank). Take away that exorbitant cost and robo-cars would actually be much cheaper than even a small apartment. At $700/month, $8,400 per year VS $10,000 one-time cost robo-car.
- emiliobumachar 13y ago
  Those ordinances against parking are probably in place to forbid people from living in their cars. New legislation will pass to forbid technical solutios. If one could convince legislators and voters that people should not be forbidden to live in cars, than the original ordinances against parking can be revoked.
Kurtz79 13y ago
This is sad, I have arrived in the valley just a couple of days ago and I found striking the contrast between San Francisco, where there are literally hordes of homeless on the main streets, and the actual valley (Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Mountain View...) with its idyllic single family homes in the middle of the trees, all clean and shiny. I wonder how many residents know about the existence of these camps ? I guess it's easy to forget that poverty exists if it's not screaming at you in the face.
realrocker 13y ago
It looks very similar to the slums near my flat in Bangalore, albeit, ironically, richer. Edit: Similar in it's disarrayed outlook and temporary permanence.
beefman 13y ago
Largest by acreage?
justin_vanw 13y ago
I don't know the answer to this question, but I feel like it's important from a social justice perspective: Where did the people in this camp originate from? I think putting people in the following statistical buckets would be enlightening: Locals: - Raised (attended k-12 schools) in Silicon Valley. Transplants who arrived healthy and able to survive: - Moved to the Valley to take a job, but were stranded when the job went away (no drug or alcohol additions pre job loss, no disabling psychiatric conditions pre job loss). - Moved to the Valley for other reasons, were stranded (again, no drug, alcohol, psychiatric causes to homelessness) Transplants who moved here because the conditions for transients are better here: - Moved to the Valley having previously been homeless. - Moved to the Valley, initially with a place to stay, but with substantial drug and alcohol abuse problems. - Moved to the Valley with substantial mental health issues that had previously caused chronic homelessness. There are probably much better ways to break this down, but hopefully that makes the idea clear. This is important because there is a huge moral difference in having great wealth and allowing people to fall into homelessness VS becoming a national hub that attracts homeless people because of better living conditions. Either way, having people live outside is not acceptable, but the solutions we might pursue are very different. If this is local-grown homelessness, it is our responsibility to address it and ensure that people aren't reduced to such conditions, regardless of what anyone from the outside contributes to the solution. If transients from across the country (or world) are concentrating here, it doesn't reduce the responsibility to address it, but it does mean that it is not our sole responsibility. The places that are exporting homelessness to us should be liable to help fix it here, otherwise they have a perverse financial incentive to put homeless people on a bus headed in any direction to make it someone else's problem. The more benefits we provide, the stronger the attraction will be to homeless people everywhere, which will only make the problem here more insurmountable.
- devilsadvocate8 13y ago
  >The places that are exporting homelessness to us should be liable to help fix it here "Liable" is an odd word to use in a decision regime that has no incentives or feedback.
  - 13y ago
mmagin 13y ago
While I don't want to diminish how bad it may be for those actually living in this situation, it seems to me that the only big problems about this -- besides "poverty makes non-poor people feel guilty" are essentially safety and sanitation. In this setting, there is too much fire danger, too much danger of the spread of disease, and danger of violence from less stable individuals living in the area. Aside from that, it's basically like going camping -- except the density is too high to be safe. One could argue that basically we (society) are merely failing to provide them with proper water, sewer, police, etc. because they're not doing this on privately-owned land and not doing it in a manner conforming to building codes, etc. Instead we kick them off the land periodically, hoping that someone else will take care of the problem.
michaelochurch 13y ago
Dear Californian elites, It's time to talk about something you don't believe can happen to you, and that's urban decay. It has many causes, plenty more proximate than this one, but the first is the economic stickiness (technical term) of housing prices. People don't sell in a down market. They hoard. This price:liquidity correlation is toxic. Creating new housing (which requires regulatory change) is the only way. If you don't take care of the poverty caused by the high housing prices, if you laugh it off as "not our problem", your city will not reach maturity but fall into urban decay and it will take decades for your municipality to recover both from the physical damage and disenfranchisement, but also from the damage to reputation. Sincerely, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, D.C., Minneapolis, Atlanta, et al.
gdne 13y ago
I've lived in SV for nearly 20 years. There's a reason that the homeless problem is as bad as it is here. It's not economics biased against the poor. It's not greedy landlords. It comes down to two things: First, SV has the economic ability to support a homeless population this large. If the homeless couldn't get basic necessities, they wouldn't be here. There are many reports that show panhandlers here can make $10-15 an hour. Highest anywhere in the world. SV people are extremely giving. The second reason? Weather. The weather is mild enough that people can live in makeshift shelters year round. With a huge population to provide all the necessities, there's no reason for them to leave SV. I have a friend who lives in Toronto. We got on the topic of homelessness and asked him how they deal with the homeless in Toronto. He said, "we have an amazing homeless abatement program here. It's called winter." If SV had snowy winters, there would be dramatically fewer homeless here.
nazgulnarsil 13y ago
If you are unknowledgeable about economics/incentive structures you really should try not to get so angry when your outraged intuitive solutions get shot down. I understand that moral intuitions tell your brain to get angry when they are violated, but you should take it as an opportunity to educate yourself. Casting your opponents as some sort of immoral monsters is not constructive.
davidf18 13y ago
Many of those who are homeless, in jail, etc. have some sort of underlying mental illness for which they are self medicating with drugs and alcohol. Years ago these people were in hospitals but with the use of new medications and changes in policy they were able to live in some sort of assisted living facilities. These facilities would assist with medication and other support. Yet, when the hospitals were closed, the promised assisted living facilities by and large never materialized. The self-medicating mentally ill end up in jail as they sell drugs to sustain their drug habit.
solnyshok 13y ago
Looking at the map of homeless camps in the Silicon Valley, one might come to the conclusion, that Adobe is the root cause of all evil that ever came out of SV. http://tinyurl.com/oqnzxnm http://tinyurl.com/oqnzxnm

156 points by jalanco 13y ago

I don't want to downplay this because these conditions are terrible. But I once worked in India for 3 months, in Mumbai, and I can tell you that on a global scale, this is nothing. My commute in the morning consisted of driving, for 1 HOUR, through the largest slum in the world. 20 kilometers on a side big. So while its terrible that this exists in Silicon Valley, on a global scale we have much bigger problems. For me, that's the biggest reason I hope Bill Gates keeps on doing what he's doing.

rza 13y ago
Just because things are worse in India, that shouldn't mean we should ignore everything else until it's fixed there first. Because for one, it's much easier for US citizens to fix problems in the US, for both legal and practical reasons. Hopefully something like this right in America's fabled land of idea-makers and disruptors will compel some real action to resolve it.
- elsewhen 13y ago
  There are charities and NGOs that can do the "fixing," and a dollar spent alleviating the problem in India may be an order of magnitude more effective than in the states.
  - mhurron 13y ago
    And thanks to national boarders a dollar spent in India does nothing to help those anywhere else. There is no 'fixing homelessness.' You 'fix' it in India, or in the US or in Canada or in where ever. Sending money to 'fix' India or Africa is a decision to not spend it 'fixing' issues at home.
    - venomsnake 13y ago
      That is not true ... charity and economics are not a zero sum game. If you elevate 1000000 Indian people to the working class they will begin consuming a lot of stuff, some of which will be made in the US or having major part of its IP from US. Some of these dollars will come back home. After all what one person spends is another ones income. There is nothing wrong of course with trying to help closer to home first.
      - asdfdsa1234 13y ago
        Charity tends not to elevate anyone to the working class. Most money ameliorates poverty temporarily, is spent on fundraising and bureaucracy, or is diverted (stolen).
rayiner 13y ago
These are our problems. Those are India's problems. We don't have to commute for an hour every morning through an Indian slum. We do have to commute every morning through the slums in our country.
- elsewhen 13y ago
  So, "out of sight, out of mind?"
  - rayiner 13y ago
    No, the natural and rational human desire to fix things closer at hand before fixing things farther away. India's people can worry about their fellow Indians. We should worry, first, about our fellow Americans.
  - elsewhen 13y ago
    I agree with you on "natural" but rational? It seems focusing on nearby problems in the modern world is only rational if you are acting out of selfishness. If you are acting from altruism (and also believe that all humans are of equal value), you would pursue the strategies that have the most leverage.
    - venomsnake 13y ago
      Not at all. You should help where you could do the most. In US it is the US poor - because you have common language, you know the rules, you have the connections and resources etc etc ... India - there is different country, different culture, different customs. We cannot solve the problems of the people by not knowing them in depth and that is major investment. We cannot offer one size fits all "learn to code" solution that earned the tech industry the recent mocking.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      In the sense of a rational actor that maximizes their own utility.
randomdrake 13y ago
I don't understand comments and attitudes like this. "On a global scale, we have much bigger problems." People starving down the block are no less a problem than people starving on the other side of the world. It's atrocious that human beings have to live in squalor anywhere. There are people who need help everywhere and I do not get why people feel the need to measure one form of suffering against another. You say "I don't want to downplay this" but then follow with: "we have bigger problems." How much more could you downplay it? I hypothesize that folks (not necessarily OP) do this, consciously or unconsiously, so they can more easily justify inaction for themselves. "Well I could volunteer on Sunday at the Soup Kitchen but India has it so much worse. How could I/we be so selfish?"
- elsewhen 13y ago
  It's triage -- solving the biggest fixable problem first.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    Poverty in a place like India, because of its scale and the country's broken social institutions, is a much more uphill battle than poverty in the U.S.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - igravious 13y ago
      You'd think that, wouldn't you? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq... There is a greater relative disparity in wealth between the rich and poor in the US of A than India. (relative poverty) Out of the developed countries the US is easily one of the least unequal (if not the most unequal -- I haven't checked) places. This is, of course, because universal health care is communism and social security is for spongers and the lazy. In absolute terms there is undoubtedly more extreme poverty in India than the US. Why that is so is not as simple as the country's broken social institutions, we're still talking about the world's largest democracy here. I would imagine the caste system plays a part. Colonialism too.
the_rosentotter 13y ago
Well, I'm from Denmark and we don't have homeless people. (Excluding those who choose to be because of mental issues.) There are many things I admire about the US and SV but please don't get complacent.
- sluukkonen 13y ago
  What? Copenhagen alone has thousands of homeless people. And what makes you think that people choose to be homeless?
  - venus 13y ago
    I'm no expert on Denmark but I bet that Copenhagen's homeless issues are a mix of lack of resources and a politically correct unwillingness to forcibly detain people who really should be placed into care (chronic alcoholism, mental disease, drugs). That is perhaps what the parent meant by "choosing" to be homeless: substance abuse/mental health cases who opt out of the system to pursue their addictions. No point arguing about the definition of "choose". America's situation is different; they have an idealogical opposition to social welfare and there is no system to opt out of. The homeless situation in SF is far worse than in any EU city I know of.
    - bluedino 13y ago
      >> The homeless situation in SF is far worse than in any EU city I know of. I don't know if I'd really call it a situation. Homeless people choose to go to SF because it's one of the best places for them. You won't freeze sleeping on the street, plenty of handouts...
      - venus 13y ago
        I'd imagine the main reason is that SF is walkable - not only for the homeless themselves, but also for the targets of their begging activity. The weather is liveable, I suppose, but LA's is better - if that's all it was, they'd be in LA, but LA's much more car-based. Anyway, whatever the reason, I think it is actually a "situation". Many cities have homeless problems, but SF's is amazingly in your face. Most SF people I know would simply not walk through Tenderloin at any time, even in broad daylight. It's in the middle of the freaking city! That is not normal.

frank_boyd 13y ago

A wise guy once said "The American Dream, you'd have to be asleep to believe in it". Is this camp here one example of the "99%-ers' flip side" of the "American Dream"?

mikecane 13y ago
History: http://www.american-pictures.com/ http://www.american-pictures.com/

bowlofpetunias 13y ago

For me, personally, this cancels out anything good about Silicon Valley. This is why I really don't give a crap why SV is such a great place for tech entrepreneurs. If this is the price, I rather live in a place where people have the decency to compromise their ambition a little bit in favor of those less fortunate. And I'm far from a socialist. I would like many things in my country to be way more libertarian, and on a personal level I'm as selfish as the next guy. But there's a line, a line of common decency and civilization, and this is so far beyond that it's obscene.

venomsnake 13y ago
Eradicating poverty is very good economic investment even if we ignore the decency and compassion - these are people that cannot consume and cannot produce so they behave like a double punch on potential GDP and growth.
- asdfdsa1234 13y ago
  Some people are not currently worth hiring at any wage due to their attitudes, ability, addictions, or mental illness, let alone at a wage that would put them above the poverty line. Eradicating poverty is far from simple, increasingly expensive the further down the tail you go, and almost certainly not a good investment.
  - igrekel 13y ago
    Better yet, if they have any additional income , they will have to spend it so it goes back in the general economy right away.
  - drivingmenuts 13y ago
    < Some people are not currently worth hiring at any wage due to their attitudes, ability, addictions, or mental illness, let alone at a wage that would put them above the poverty line. It would appear that the current solution is to throw them away like so much trash.

TallGuyShort 13y ago

I know my experience is entirely anecdotal, so even I take it with a grain of salt, but unbiased, verified data on this topic is hard to come by at a large scale. I spend between 10 - 20% of both my income and time working through a charitable organization, and since moving to Silicon Valley a couple of years ago, I have been disappointed to see that most of the people who I've worked with who have become homeless recently enough for me to know the circumstances well (or who have become homeless while I have known them), and most of the people who have had long-term welfare dependencies, have not shown any initiative or drive to seize opportunities. They have rejected job offers for silly reasons, they have soured their relationships with those willing to help them over silly issues, and they have in some cases outright rejected offers of assistance. Now, I don't say this to suggest that all homeless people deserve to live in camps like this, but I would like to suggest that the existence of homeless camps is not a sign that our society is beyond "common decency and civilization... so far beyond that it's obscene", as one commenter has described it. I don't doubt that there are many who are or who have been in those camps that had fallen on hard times and did not get a fair second chance - but likewise I personally know some who have simply been beyond help, and I don't know why. Clearly there are places that have more or less homelessness, so there must be some cause involved that may not be obvious - all I wish to say as that as a "hacker" in Silicon Valley, I have spent my efforts in this direction far enough that my wife asked me to cut back for the sake of our family - and I was simply unable to get most people to accept the help they needed. I am skeptical of suggestions that all that is needed is for the 1% to stop being so 1%-ish. (I apologize - I have made several small edits while organizing my thoughts that aren't convenient to label explicitly as edits...) edit: (Yes - another one) For the record, I agree with most of the suggestions that have been provided in responses. I think these are avenues worth further investment and exploration. My only point here is that it's not just a case of the 1% in Silicon Valley being selfish.

StandardFuture 13y ago
That's because it is absolutely foolish to think that this problem is purely economical. There are much deeper and more complex problems PER INDIVIDUAL that you don't know about. Personality traits, undiagnosed mental disorders, a horrible upbringing, etc., etc., etc. To summarize all these people's problems as stemming from a singular cause does nothing for anyone. I think we can show that helping a particular individual does way more good than trying to solve a whole "group of people's" "problems". That's why when you read stories about a single guy helping a single homeless person/person in straits it truly does mean more for us as individuals than just a charity wanting us to throw money at them. Case in point: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/york-city-programmer-homeless-man-software-coding-classes/story?id=20042021 http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/york-city-programmer-homele...

davidf18 13y ago

The reason for the high cost of rent and of purchasing houses is because of "rent seeking" on the part of landholders who wish to keep land costs high by restricting land use. Fix the zoning codes and density restrictions which will diminish the artificial "rent seeking" and you'll see a corresponding increase in market efficiency and lowering of the cost of housing. For example, in Manhattan which is where I live, the number of people in Manhattan has decreased from 2.3 million to 1.6 million or 700,000 fewer citizens with a corresponding increase in the cost of living as there are far fewer apartments. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/opinion/gothams-towering-ambitions.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/opinion/gothams-towering-a...

smutticus 13y ago
I don't know why you were downvoted. You are exactly right. Until SV makes the connection between forcing everyone to live in ranch homes and homelessness the problem will never go away. The best way to reduce homelessness is to reduce rent costs. The best way to reduce rent costs is to create more supply of rental homes.
- ryandrake 13y ago
  Not just rental homes, but AFFORDABLE rental homes. There's plenty of development going on here, but it's all $800,000 townhouses and luxury apartment buildings. This is not housing for the poor or even for middle class workers for that matter.
unono 13y ago
The tech companies should be in on this. They have to pay higher salaries to retain employees because rent costs so much. If they lobbied for more abundant housing they could decrease the salaries they have to pay and save a bundle.
jupiterjaz 13y ago
This guy gets it. Liberalizing zoning rules and restrictions would go a long way to alleviating this problem. For some reason liberals are against liberalization in this day and age.

shire 13y ago

It takes one person to make a difference it's just sad people in Silicon Valley can't contribute together to fix this particular problem.

smutticus 13y ago

But god forbid we let people live in their cars. Or for that matter anything less than a single family ranch home. Housing costs are crazy in the bay area because people refuse to allow more dense housing. With the homeless problem the way it is in the bay area we should be doing everything to decrease the cost of rent. Instead municipalities do everything in their power to prevent more housing from being built. I don't see homelessness in the bay area as some kind of tragedy. I see it as a crime.

asdfdsa1234 13y ago
If the Bay Area were the entire world, I would agree, but most of the country is very cheap.
- angersock 13y ago
  Be that as it may, getting transport over to those other, cheaper places is not necessarily easy or affordable.
  - pjscott 13y ago
    In some cities, most notably New York, homeless people can get free transportation out. Usually it's just bus fare, which is admirably cheap by the standards of government social programs.
    - lutusp 13y ago
      Hawaii also. The state of Hawaii has started a program that gives free one-way airline tickets to homeless people who decide they want to leave. http://rt.com/usa/hawaii-one-way-tickets-homeless-824/ http://rt.com/usa/hawaii-one-way-tickets-homeless-824/ Now if only New York will offer airline tickets instead of bus tickets, the homeless can commute back and forth between New York and Hawaii forever. :)
      - cowsandmilk 13y ago

jayferd 13y ago

These look an awful lot like homes to be calling the people living in them "homeless". I wonder what it would look like if the city didn't keep bulldozing them?

jlgreco 13y ago
It would look like a [bigger] third-world slum.
- jayferd 13y ago
  Those... get bulldozed all the time too, unfortunately.

pastaking 13y ago

Does it surprise anyone that Troy the carpenter did not know how to spell? Pic: http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/5204f8736bb3f7b330000000-1200/a-sense-of-ownership-after-losing-a-lifetimes-worth-of-things-is-almost-universal-in-the-jungle.jpg http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/5204f8736bb3f7b3300...

unono 13y ago

There's an easy solution to this - electric robo-cars. With self-driving cars that can roam around, and thus not violate city ordinances against parking, there would be no homeless. Electric charging is fairly cheap and the city could even pay it for those deemed destitute. A robo-car with shower, kitchenette, bedroom would radically transform the situation for poor people worldwide.

asdfdsa1234 13y ago
Robocars with shower, kitchenette, and bedroom would not be within the means of many homeless people. Edit for response: a robocar with all of these amenities would be an RV costing much more than $10,000; the land cost would just be shifted to the public as these vehicles take up all available parking. Not to mention that a shower and kitchenette would require utility hookups, meaning they would really need an RV camp...
- unono 13y ago
  The cost of producing a car is only a few thousand dollars, and a robo-car is just a car with a few extra smartphones. San Francisco spends about $40,000 per street homeless person http://www.triplepundit.com/2013/05/hult-gov-policy-homelessness-government-track/ http://www.triplepundit.com/2013/05/hult-gov-policy-homeless... Even in slums in India people are capable of affording low cost cars like tata nano's. And with the great efficiencies brought about by robo-cars, they would be even cheaper to manufacture and sell. And the above doesn't factor in the value of land. Much of rent/mortgage goes into paying off the actual land-owner (usually a bank). Take away that exorbitant cost and robo-cars would actually be much cheaper than even a small apartment. At $700/month, $8,400 per year VS $10,000 one-time cost robo-car.
emiliobumachar 13y ago
Those ordinances against parking are probably in place to forbid people from living in their cars. New legislation will pass to forbid technical solutios. If one could convince legislators and voters that people should not be forbidden to live in cars, than the original ordinances against parking can be revoked.

Kurtz79 13y ago

This is sad, I have arrived in the valley just a couple of days ago and I found striking the contrast between San Francisco, where there are literally hordes of homeless on the main streets, and the actual valley (Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Mountain View...) with its idyllic single family homes in the middle of the trees, all clean and shiny. I wonder how many residents know about the existence of these camps ? I guess it's easy to forget that poverty exists if it's not screaming at you in the face.

realrocker 13y ago

It looks very similar to the slums near my flat in Bangalore, albeit, ironically, richer. Edit: Similar in it's disarrayed outlook and temporary permanence.

beefman 13y ago

Largest by acreage?

justin_vanw 13y ago

I don't know the answer to this question, but I feel like it's important from a social justice perspective: Where did the people in this camp originate from? I think putting people in the following statistical buckets would be enlightening: Locals: - Raised (attended k-12 schools) in Silicon Valley. Transplants who arrived healthy and able to survive: - Moved to the Valley to take a job, but were stranded when the job went away (no drug or alcohol additions pre job loss, no disabling psychiatric conditions pre job loss). - Moved to the Valley for other reasons, were stranded (again, no drug, alcohol, psychiatric causes to homelessness) Transplants who moved here because the conditions for transients are better here: - Moved to the Valley having previously been homeless. - Moved to the Valley, initially with a place to stay, but with substantial drug and alcohol abuse problems. - Moved to the Valley with substantial mental health issues that had previously caused chronic homelessness. There are probably much better ways to break this down, but hopefully that makes the idea clear. This is important because there is a huge moral difference in having great wealth and allowing people to fall into homelessness VS becoming a national hub that attracts homeless people because of better living conditions. Either way, having people live outside is not acceptable, but the solutions we might pursue are very different. If this is local-grown homelessness, it is our responsibility to address it and ensure that people aren't reduced to such conditions, regardless of what anyone from the outside contributes to the solution. If transients from across the country (or world) are concentrating here, it doesn't reduce the responsibility to address it, but it does mean that it is not our sole responsibility. The places that are exporting homelessness to us should be liable to help fix it here, otherwise they have a perverse financial incentive to put homeless people on a bus headed in any direction to make it someone else's problem. The more benefits we provide, the stronger the attraction will be to homeless people everywhere, which will only make the problem here more insurmountable.

devilsadvocate8 13y ago
>The places that are exporting homelessness to us should be liable to help fix it here "Liable" is an odd word to use in a decision regime that has no incentives or feedback.
- 13y ago

mmagin 13y ago

While I don't want to diminish how bad it may be for those actually living in this situation, it seems to me that the only big problems about this -- besides "poverty makes non-poor people feel guilty" are essentially safety and sanitation. In this setting, there is too much fire danger, too much danger of the spread of disease, and danger of violence from less stable individuals living in the area. Aside from that, it's basically like going camping -- except the density is too high to be safe. One could argue that basically we (society) are merely failing to provide them with proper water, sewer, police, etc. because they're not doing this on privately-owned land and not doing it in a manner conforming to building codes, etc. Instead we kick them off the land periodically, hoping that someone else will take care of the problem.

michaelochurch 13y ago

Dear Californian elites, It's time to talk about something you don't believe can happen to you, and that's urban decay. It has many causes, plenty more proximate than this one, but the first is the economic stickiness (technical term) of housing prices. People don't sell in a down market. They hoard. This price:liquidity correlation is toxic. Creating new housing (which requires regulatory change) is the only way. If you don't take care of the poverty caused by the high housing prices, if you laugh it off as "not our problem", your city will not reach maturity but fall into urban decay and it will take decades for your municipality to recover both from the physical damage and disenfranchisement, but also from the damage to reputation. Sincerely, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, D.C., Minneapolis, Atlanta, et al.

gdne 13y ago

I've lived in SV for nearly 20 years. There's a reason that the homeless problem is as bad as it is here. It's not economics biased against the poor. It's not greedy landlords. It comes down to two things: First, SV has the economic ability to support a homeless population this large. If the homeless couldn't get basic necessities, they wouldn't be here. There are many reports that show panhandlers here can make $10-15 an hour. Highest anywhere in the world. SV people are extremely giving. The second reason? Weather. The weather is mild enough that people can live in makeshift shelters year round. With a huge population to provide all the necessities, there's no reason for them to leave SV. I have a friend who lives in Toronto. We got on the topic of homelessness and asked him how they deal with the homeless in Toronto. He said, "we have an amazing homeless abatement program here. It's called winter." If SV had snowy winters, there would be dramatically fewer homeless here.

nazgulnarsil 13y ago

If you are unknowledgeable about economics/incentive structures you really should try not to get so angry when your outraged intuitive solutions get shot down. I understand that moral intuitions tell your brain to get angry when they are violated, but you should take it as an opportunity to educate yourself. Casting your opponents as some sort of immoral monsters is not constructive.

davidf18 13y ago

Many of those who are homeless, in jail, etc. have some sort of underlying mental illness for which they are self medicating with drugs and alcohol. Years ago these people were in hospitals but with the use of new medications and changes in policy they were able to live in some sort of assisted living facilities. These facilities would assist with medication and other support. Yet, when the hospitals were closed, the promised assisted living facilities by and large never materialized. The self-medicating mentally ill end up in jail as they sell drugs to sustain their drug habit.

solnyshok 13y ago

Looking at the map of homeless camps in the Silicon Valley, one might come to the conclusion, that Adobe is the root cause of all evil that ever came out of SV. http://tinyurl.com/oqnzxnm http://tinyurl.com/oqnzxnm