4 ms·

I suppose the elephant in the room is whether or not 'techies' are repulsed by the homeless because accusations like "...[they] spit, urinate, taunt you, sell d

by Crito 13y ago

I suppose the elephant in the room is whether or not 'techies' are repulsed by the homeless because accusations like "...[they] spit, urinate, taunt you, sell drugs, get rowdy..." have a basis in reality. I don't live in SF, so I can only go off what I hear (from the accused 'techies', so I'm only getting one side of the propaganda here..), but what I have heard is that 1) the homeless really seem to love SF, preferring it to perhaps any other city, and 2) there is at least a segment of the homeless population that engages in extremely anti-social behavior (specifically I have heard stories of BART escalators regularly being shut down because the homeless shit on them). (For background: most of my experience with the homeless comes from my interactions with them while working at a soup kitchen in a small city in Pennsylvania (those interactions were universally pleasant), and my interactions with them in Philadelphia (where an aversion to the homeless and an aversion to being mugged have a very close relationship...))

cynicalkane 13y ago
Add "verbal and sexual harassment of women in the street" to that list.
- Crito 13y ago
  Yes, some of these incidents even get national coverage (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/11/naked-subway-man-video_n_3423310.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/11/naked-subway-man-vi...). I can't speak to whether these sort of incidents get an exaggerated or unfair amount of coverage, or if these really are common problems. Of course either way, these sort of incidents/articles surely shape public perception; I don't think we can make this as simple as "Techies are nouveau riche who like to kick 'em when they're down".
  - elwell 13y ago
    they are common
  - smtddr 13y ago
    They do get an exaggerated coverage. It's really not that common. I've been riding BART to/from SF for my techie-job for 6+ years and I haven't seen anything like that. The most interesting thing I've seen in person is this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGkbJlmhI90 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGkbJlmhI90 Oh and I did see a guy yell at and punch a window on the BART train once for no apparent reason. It was late at night so not many people on the train but the few passengers were definitely freaked out. Window didn't even crack and he punched it HARD.
aaronem 13y ago
Facts, Citizen? How reductionist of you. As to your first point, I gather San Francisco very rarely has weather so inhospitable as to render living outdoors dangerous or even particularly unpleasant. As to your second, I forget who characterized man as "where the falling angel meets the rising ape", but it's an apt enough metaphor, and we fail to encourage the former at peril of encouraging the latter.
- enraged_camel 13y ago
  If weather was the main factor, we would expect the homeless to flock to San Diego -- or even any of the southern states -- and not San Francisco. So there's clearly something about SF other than the weather that attract a large number of homeless people.
  - aaronem 13y ago
    I grew up in Mississippi, and, believe me, brother, you don't want to be living outside come August -- it's nothing at all like San Francisco weather [1]. As for the rest, see my second point; if you expect nothing good of a man, that is precisely what you'll get. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco#Climate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco#Climate
mratzloff 13y ago
I live in Seattle, not San Francisco. This is not my experience whatsoever in Seattle. Perhaps this is the experience in San Francisco, however. In that case, to what do you ascribe that behavior? And What is the appropriate response to it?
- Crito 13y ago
  I also currently live in Seattle. My experience with the homeless in Seattle is characterized best as a lack of experience with the homeless in Seattle. They seem to rarely bother people, I have never been harassed by them. If there really is a stark difference in behavior, I don't know what to ascribe that to.
  - alexmat 13y ago
    The "Seattle Chill" is embraced by even our homeless it seems.
- elwell 13y ago
  seattle doesn't have good homeless weather.
  - mratzloff 13y ago
    But yet, there are a lot of homeless people in Seattle...
moocowduckquack 13y ago
accusations like "...[they] spit, urinate, taunt you, sell drugs, get rowdy..." have a basis in reality. Sounds like a stereotype of students as much as of the homeless.
mcantelon 13y ago
I'm from Vancouver where there's plenty of homeless. The Tenderloin's similar to Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (in which I worked for years), but one thing that I noticed that seemed more common in the Tenderloin was human faeces on sidewalks.
- yapcguy 13y ago
  Search the SF Chronicle archives. In a nutshell, the city doesn't have enough money to install public toilets which are deemed appropriate for use by the homeless etc. Not sure what the exact requirements were, but that's the nub of it. Of course, the city is giving payroll tax breaks to Twitter and other tech companies because they threatened to leave the city (to Australia at one point!) if they didn't get it. There's a link there somewhere... Anyway, end result is that Twitter employees are going to have to cycle in shit, walk in shit, and stand on BART escalator shit. Karma is beautiful.
ch00 13y ago
What baffles me is that these accusations and the subsequent discussions of "[they]" all treat homelessness as a homogenous problem. If we, as self-proclaimed as hackers and problem-solvers or whatever, want to discuss problems and solutions we have to understand what we're talking about first. Sure some subset of the homeless population spits, urinates, taunts, sells drugs and gets rowdy, but so do a lot of rowdy bar hoppers on Polk St every Saturday night. Homelessness is a complex subject with many causes and effects -- I don't claim to understand it; in fact, I'd like to learn more, but episodes like this don't seem to engender that kind of discussion, unfortunately.
dmpatierno 13y ago
I do live in SF and can confirm that we have a serious poop problem.
- mathattack 13y ago
  I remember it being a big problem in public parks too. (Perhaps more dogs than people)
jarrett 13y ago
First, we need to distinguish between homelessness and poverty on the one hand, and crime on the other. The two may overlap for some individuals (just as wealth and crime overlap for some), but they're by no means synonymous. The legitimate complaints about the homeless in SF seem to always revolve around criminal acts: Assault and vandalism, mostly. (The less legitimate complaints are usually a variant on "I shouldn't have to look at poor people.") Not all homeless people commit these sorts of crimes. Those who do are just disproportionately visible. This provides fodder for the false narrative that the homeless are criminals who are undeserving of compassion and responsible for their own criminality. So how can we discuss this issue without wrongly demonizing a whole demographic? Here's how. If you live in SF and you're bothered by street crime, complain about street crime. Advocate for community policing that a) keeps a lid on assault, vandalism, and other such crimes, and b) treats the public (including the homeless) as valued customers. It's fine to say that street crime in downtown SF bothers you. That's a completely understandable sentiment. I think most everyone feels the same way about the neighborhoods they inhabit. What's not fine is heaping overbroad blame on an already marginalized group.
- wdewind 13y ago
  Even the ones who do commit assault and vandalism are deserving of compassion, perhaps even more so.
  - aaronem 13y ago
    Of course! They'll never have a chance to improve themselves if they're never shown the error of their ways.
- Crito 13y ago
  I agree that whatever the situation, remembering that not all of the broader group are responsible for all of the publicly visible actions. It may be the homeless, bar hoppers, or students that are causing elevated crime in some area, but it is important to remember that not every homeless person, Friday night drinker, or student is a public menace by association. Still, if we want to know why the general public is displeased with college students in some hypothetical town, we should ask ourselves if there really is a problem with bored college students lobbing beer bottles through windows for fun. The hypothesis "The general public is frustrated with the local college kids because a highly visible minority of them wreck up the place" should probably be examined before we jump on board with less... direct.. hypotheses.
kenrikm 13y ago
If you've been to the Tenderloin area recently, then yeah you would know "...[they] spit, urinate, taunt you, sell drugs, get rowdy..." is completely accurate. I recently observed a two days in a row a shop owner who had to wash the sidewalk outside his shop to clear off the human feces. There is a homeless problem in SF, with as much money as the city spends on programs to help them I'm not sure why it's so much worse then other big cities, but it is.
- xxchan 13y ago
  ".. with as much money as the city spends on programs to help them.." - that's pretty much the answer right there.
prodigal_erik 13y ago
Mostly they're discreet about pissing in recessed entryways, but somebody tried to spit on me at a bus stop completely unprovoked, and there's more than one guy on Market around 3rd or 4th who would wander around and yell incoherently at pretty much any pedestrian within twenty feet. Some nights there was almost a Mad Max vibe to downtown. They didn't merely stop the Muni/BART escalators. Those huge machines were clogged with so much shit that they failed. http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Human-waste-shuts-down-BART-escalators-3735981.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Human-waste-shuts-down...
7Figures2Commas 13y ago
That's not the elephant in the room. The elephant in the room is the fact that tech companies and startups have been setting up shop in the very parts of the city where homelessness, crime and the behavior described have long been problems. That doesn't mean that these issues shouldn't be addressed, but I cannot for the life of me understand why "techies" have been flocking to areas of San Francisco where the average person would likely not feel safe the minute the sun goes down. As an example: I once went to an event at a venture-backed startup that chose to locate itself in an unsightly part of town in what was previously an auto body shop. It was literally right next door to an adult entertainment shop. Who in their right mind does this and doesn't expect to encounter unseemly behavior?
- Crito 13y ago
  Eh, In Philly I used to do my grocery shopping at a Trader Joes, located directly underneath an upscale apartment building, and directly across the street from two porno theaters and a salvation army. I don't think that it is fair to frame the situation as a problem of people not respecting some sort of informal 'urban decay quarantines'. That seems uncomfortably close to victim blaming to me (yes, the situation is not that simple as clearly the more impoverished are victims, but the well-off are nevertheless also victimized by criminal portion of the impoverished population. This is a difficult topic to discuss without appearing to lack compassion or be tone deaf)
  - 7Figures2Commas 13y ago
    As an employer, I have a moral obligation to do my best to ensure that my employees can get to and from work safely and without fear of harassment, assault, etc. As it relates to the topic at hand, this is the only reasonable consideration for management. Period. If doing what I can to protect the physical and mental well-being of my employees requires that I make a judgement call to avoid certain areas of a city, I would make that judgement call every single time because it's simply the right thing to do.
    - Crito 13y ago
lolwutf 13y ago
It's natural to be repulsed by another person who will "...spit, urinate, taunt you, sell drugs, get rowdy..." in front of you in public. But the key here is understanding the root cause and showing compassion towards the misguided. ...not constructing an us vs. them mentality, like Greg.
- mathattack 13y ago
  For better or worse, mental illness and/or long term substance abuse are behind many of these problems.

by Crito 13y ago

cynicalkane 13y ago

Add "verbal and sexual harassment of women in the street" to that list.

Crito 13y ago
Yes, some of these incidents even get national coverage (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/11/naked-subway-man-video_n_3423310.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/11/naked-subway-man-vi...). I can't speak to whether these sort of incidents get an exaggerated or unfair amount of coverage, or if these really are common problems. Of course either way, these sort of incidents/articles surely shape public perception; I don't think we can make this as simple as "Techies are nouveau riche who like to kick 'em when they're down".
- elwell 13y ago
  they are common
- smtddr 13y ago
  They do get an exaggerated coverage. It's really not that common. I've been riding BART to/from SF for my techie-job for 6+ years and I haven't seen anything like that. The most interesting thing I've seen in person is this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGkbJlmhI90 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGkbJlmhI90 Oh and I did see a guy yell at and punch a window on the BART train once for no apparent reason. It was late at night so not many people on the train but the few passengers were definitely freaked out. Window didn't even crack and he punched it HARD.

aaronem 13y ago

Facts, Citizen? How reductionist of you. As to your first point, I gather San Francisco very rarely has weather so inhospitable as to render living outdoors dangerous or even particularly unpleasant. As to your second, I forget who characterized man as "where the falling angel meets the rising ape", but it's an apt enough metaphor, and we fail to encourage the former at peril of encouraging the latter.

enraged_camel 13y ago
If weather was the main factor, we would expect the homeless to flock to San Diego -- or even any of the southern states -- and not San Francisco. So there's clearly something about SF other than the weather that attract a large number of homeless people.
- aaronem 13y ago
  I grew up in Mississippi, and, believe me, brother, you don't want to be living outside come August -- it's nothing at all like San Francisco weather [1]. As for the rest, see my second point; if you expect nothing good of a man, that is precisely what you'll get. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco#Climate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco#Climate

mratzloff 13y ago

I live in Seattle, not San Francisco. This is not my experience whatsoever in Seattle. Perhaps this is the experience in San Francisco, however. In that case, to what do you ascribe that behavior? And What is the appropriate response to it?

Crito 13y ago
I also currently live in Seattle. My experience with the homeless in Seattle is characterized best as a lack of experience with the homeless in Seattle. They seem to rarely bother people, I have never been harassed by them. If there really is a stark difference in behavior, I don't know what to ascribe that to.
- alexmat 13y ago
  The "Seattle Chill" is embraced by even our homeless it seems.
elwell 13y ago
seattle doesn't have good homeless weather.
- mratzloff 13y ago
  But yet, there are a lot of homeless people in Seattle...

moocowduckquack 13y ago

accusations like "...[they] spit, urinate, taunt you, sell drugs, get rowdy..." have a basis in reality. Sounds like a stereotype of students as much as of the homeless.

mcantelon 13y ago

I'm from Vancouver where there's plenty of homeless. The Tenderloin's similar to Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (in which I worked for years), but one thing that I noticed that seemed more common in the Tenderloin was human faeces on sidewalks.

yapcguy 13y ago
Search the SF Chronicle archives. In a nutshell, the city doesn't have enough money to install public toilets which are deemed appropriate for use by the homeless etc. Not sure what the exact requirements were, but that's the nub of it. Of course, the city is giving payroll tax breaks to Twitter and other tech companies because they threatened to leave the city (to Australia at one point!) if they didn't get it. There's a link there somewhere... Anyway, end result is that Twitter employees are going to have to cycle in shit, walk in shit, and stand on BART escalator shit. Karma is beautiful.

ch00 13y ago

What baffles me is that these accusations and the subsequent discussions of "[they]" all treat homelessness as a homogenous problem. If we, as self-proclaimed as hackers and problem-solvers or whatever, want to discuss problems and solutions we have to understand what we're talking about first. Sure some subset of the homeless population spits, urinates, taunts, sells drugs and gets rowdy, but so do a lot of rowdy bar hoppers on Polk St every Saturday night. Homelessness is a complex subject with many causes and effects -- I don't claim to understand it; in fact, I'd like to learn more, but episodes like this don't seem to engender that kind of discussion, unfortunately.

dmpatierno 13y ago

I do live in SF and can confirm that we have a serious poop problem.

mathattack 13y ago
I remember it being a big problem in public parks too. (Perhaps more dogs than people)

jarrett 13y ago

First, we need to distinguish between homelessness and poverty on the one hand, and crime on the other. The two may overlap for some individuals (just as wealth and crime overlap for some), but they're by no means synonymous. The legitimate complaints about the homeless in SF seem to always revolve around criminal acts: Assault and vandalism, mostly. (The less legitimate complaints are usually a variant on "I shouldn't have to look at poor people.") Not all homeless people commit these sorts of crimes. Those who do are just disproportionately visible. This provides fodder for the false narrative that the homeless are criminals who are undeserving of compassion and responsible for their own criminality. So how can we discuss this issue without wrongly demonizing a whole demographic? Here's how. If you live in SF and you're bothered by street crime, complain about street crime. Advocate for community policing that a) keeps a lid on assault, vandalism, and other such crimes, and b) treats the public (including the homeless) as valued customers. It's fine to say that street crime in downtown SF bothers you. That's a completely understandable sentiment. I think most everyone feels the same way about the neighborhoods they inhabit. What's not fine is heaping overbroad blame on an already marginalized group.

wdewind 13y ago
Even the ones who do commit assault and vandalism are deserving of compassion, perhaps even more so.
- aaronem 13y ago
  Of course! They'll never have a chance to improve themselves if they're never shown the error of their ways.
Crito 13y ago
I agree that whatever the situation, remembering that not all of the broader group are responsible for all of the publicly visible actions. It may be the homeless, bar hoppers, or students that are causing elevated crime in some area, but it is important to remember that not every homeless person, Friday night drinker, or student is a public menace by association. Still, if we want to know why the general public is displeased with college students in some hypothetical town, we should ask ourselves if there really is a problem with bored college students lobbing beer bottles through windows for fun. The hypothesis "The general public is frustrated with the local college kids because a highly visible minority of them wreck up the place" should probably be examined before we jump on board with less... direct.. hypotheses.

kenrikm 13y ago

If you've been to the Tenderloin area recently, then yeah you would know "...[they] spit, urinate, taunt you, sell drugs, get rowdy..." is completely accurate. I recently observed a two days in a row a shop owner who had to wash the sidewalk outside his shop to clear off the human feces. There is a homeless problem in SF, with as much money as the city spends on programs to help them I'm not sure why it's so much worse then other big cities, but it is.

xxchan 13y ago
".. with as much money as the city spends on programs to help them.." - that's pretty much the answer right there.

prodigal_erik 13y ago

Mostly they're discreet about pissing in recessed entryways, but somebody tried to spit on me at a bus stop completely unprovoked, and there's more than one guy on Market around 3rd or 4th who would wander around and yell incoherently at pretty much any pedestrian within twenty feet. Some nights there was almost a Mad Max vibe to downtown. They didn't merely stop the Muni/BART escalators. Those huge machines were clogged with so much shit that they failed. http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Human-waste-shuts-down-BART-escalators-3735981.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Human-waste-shuts-down...

7Figures2Commas 13y ago

That's not the elephant in the room. The elephant in the room is the fact that tech companies and startups have been setting up shop in the very parts of the city where homelessness, crime and the behavior described have long been problems. That doesn't mean that these issues shouldn't be addressed, but I cannot for the life of me understand why "techies" have been flocking to areas of San Francisco where the average person would likely not feel safe the minute the sun goes down. As an example: I once went to an event at a venture-backed startup that chose to locate itself in an unsightly part of town in what was previously an auto body shop. It was literally right next door to an adult entertainment shop. Who in their right mind does this and doesn't expect to encounter unseemly behavior?

Crito 13y ago
Eh, In Philly I used to do my grocery shopping at a Trader Joes, located directly underneath an upscale apartment building, and directly across the street from two porno theaters and a salvation army. I don't think that it is fair to frame the situation as a problem of people not respecting some sort of informal 'urban decay quarantines'. That seems uncomfortably close to victim blaming to me (yes, the situation is not that simple as clearly the more impoverished are victims, but the well-off are nevertheless also victimized by criminal portion of the impoverished population. This is a difficult topic to discuss without appearing to lack compassion or be tone deaf)
- 7Figures2Commas 13y ago
  As an employer, I have a moral obligation to do my best to ensure that my employees can get to and from work safely and without fear of harassment, assault, etc. As it relates to the topic at hand, this is the only reasonable consideration for management. Period. If doing what I can to protect the physical and mental well-being of my employees requires that I make a judgement call to avoid certain areas of a city, I would make that judgement call every single time because it's simply the right thing to do.
  - Crito 13y ago

lolwutf 13y ago

It's natural to be repulsed by another person who will "...spit, urinate, taunt you, sell drugs, get rowdy..." in front of you in public. But the key here is understanding the root cause and showing compassion towards the misguided. ...not constructing an us vs. them mentality, like Greg.

mathattack 13y ago
For better or worse, mental illness and/or long term substance abuse are behind many of these problems.