5 ms·

The Outsiders – Homelessness in San Francisco

54 points by brandonb 12y ago

vinceguidry 12y ago
Fantastic article. Well worth reading in its entirety.
kefka 12y ago
Great article. After reading reddit.com/r/news , I found the following: http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2015/03/01/amateur-videographer-captures-deadly-officer-involved-shooting-on-camera/ http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2015/03/01/amateur-videograph... So, one homeless disposal technique is to house them. Another is to consider them violent criminals and execute them.
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/2xmkaz/deadly_lapd_shooting_of_homeless_man_caught_on/cp1k4ky http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/2xmkaz/deadly_lapd_sho...
- cozzyd 12y ago
  Then there's the also the ship them off to California strategy, http://www.businessinsider.com/nevada-california-mental-patient-dumping-2013-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/nevada-california-mental-pati...
tpainton 12y ago
San Francisco has a homeless problem because it invited such. I guess it's total coincidence that the most liberal cities in the US also have the highest incidence of homeless population. As long as it remains a profitable and easy lifestyle, homelessness persists. Change those variables however you want and the problem goes away. This is not to say there are not those who are homeless due to bum luck. In many cities, this is the majority. Not so much in San Francisco where homelessness is a true profession.
- matt_morgan 12y ago
  The article discusses all of these subjects with a great deal more thoughtfulness and evidence than you have mustered. Give it a shot.
- skj 12y ago
  > I guess it's total coincidence that the most liberal cities in the US also have the highest incidence of homeless population. [citation needed]
  - cozzyd 12y ago
    I don't doubt this is true due to higher cost-of-living, improved services (and therefore more accurate counts... homelessness is severely undercounted in many places) and the trend that more liberal cities tend not to have the suburbs within city limits (or conversely, cities without suburbs within city limits are more liberal...)
  - gadders 12y ago
    Here you go: http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_4_san-francisco-homeless.html http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_4_san-francisco-homeless...
    - genericuser 12y ago
      That article does not seem to claim that point in it. Maybe I just missed it. But I checked all usages of high, population, city, and cities, so if the point is made in that article is is done so with different enough language to be difficult to find considering the article's length. Edit: That all means I am calling bullshit on that being a citation for that fact (or 'fact' depending on your view of it).
      - cozzyd 12y ago
        The Manhattan Institute's mission is (I paraphrase) to make selfish rich people feel less guilty, so I would be wary of any claims made by the article.
e40 12y ago
How, after all of the city’s investments, can it be faced with a virtually identical situation a quarter century It's clear that the problem would be much, much worse had it not been for all that investment.
- masterleep 12y ago
  Alternately, it's clear that the so-called investment badly missed the mark.
  - presidentender 12y ago
    Given the disagreement and the impossibility of hard scientific investigation into the problem, it's clear that nothing is clear.
acomjean 12y ago
Thorough. As a city dweller for many years, you do get jaded. Although I give financially to charities and try to be compassionate I do get annoyed at the constant pan handling. Interesting that the article is coming from a fairly upscale magazine chain http://www.modernluxury.com/ http://www.modernluxury.com/
yohann305 12y ago
Apple rejected my app where you could give your lunch leftover to the nearby homeless person. Apple told me the homeless person did not agree to be tracked. Well shall we give them all an iPhone so that they could agree? (you smell sarcasm?) I mean it's not like they are safe and this app would jeopardize their safety more...
- Centreal 12y ago
  Could you tag, track, or predict a (safe and secure?) time and space to leave food instead of their identity? Microempathic targeting of food pain points could be a healthily decentralizable dApp for Bitnation?
sxcurry 12y ago
Good article about a difficult problem. Here's an excellent series on homelessness in Portland OR: http://www.oregonlive.com/portland-homeless/#incart_maj-story-1 http://www.oregonlive.com/portland-homeless/#incart_maj-stor...
sankyo 12y ago
"While the homeless may always be with us, we need to ensure that we are helping them in the most effective ways possible. For the city named after Francis of Assisi, a nobleman who gave away everything he had when he saw a poor man on the street, nothing less is acceptable." The article seems to imply that creating more housing will solve this problem. Such is not the case. "Homeless" is a euphemism. There are two types of street people: 1. Those who cannot take care of themselves. 2. Those who will not take care of themselves. As a society, we should take care of the people who are unable to take care of themselves. I do not know how to define "take care", but it definitely should not include having schizophrenic episodes on the corner, intimidating panhandling, drug fueled benders, and shitting like animals on the city sidewalks. One idea is to lock them up in an institution. This is expensive, arguably unfair, and creates an opportunity for abuse and corruption (one flew over the cuckoo's nest), and sets up a big liability - How long before violence or abuse causes a huge payout from the government? For the others who _can_ take care of themselves but will not, they seem to me to be some combination of really bad choices and really bad luck, it is less clear to me what our responsibility to them is, and I wonder how much they can be helped. Consider Tap from the article. If he just wants to tap dance and get drunk all day, sleeping and shitting on the streets in my neighborhood, I am completely unsupportive. I will call the cops every time I find him passed out. Hopefully they will run him out of town. As much as he wants this lifestyle, it cannot make ends meet. He seems like a likable fellow during his stable periods, but I do not want to subsidize him. If you don't want to make an honest living, you are going to have to break laws: dealing drugs, breaking car windows and stealing from them, stealing and selling bicycles. I have no tolerance for these layabouts and I cannot see why anyone else should either.
- lotsofmangos 12y ago
  You really have no idea.
- room271 12y ago
  Your binary divide between worthy homeless and unworthy is simplistic. Why, for example, do some cities have far more homeless people than others. The high number of homeless people really struck me when I visited San Francisco a couple of years ago, and it's worth as a city asking why. For a wealthy place, it was incredibly sad and surprising too.

54 points by brandonb 12y ago

Fantastic article. Well worth reading in its entirety.

kefka 12y ago

Great article. After reading reddit.com/r/news , I found the following: http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2015/03/01/amateur-videographer-captures-deadly-officer-involved-shooting-on-camera/ http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2015/03/01/amateur-videograph... So, one homeless disposal technique is to house them. Another is to consider them violent criminals and execute them.

happyscrappy 12y ago
http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/2xmkaz/deadly_lapd_shooting_of_homeless_man_caught_on/cp1k4ky http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/2xmkaz/deadly_lapd_sho...
cozzyd 12y ago
Then there's the also the ship them off to California strategy, http://www.businessinsider.com/nevada-california-mental-patient-dumping-2013-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/nevada-california-mental-pati...

tpainton 12y ago

San Francisco has a homeless problem because it invited such. I guess it's total coincidence that the most liberal cities in the US also have the highest incidence of homeless population. As long as it remains a profitable and easy lifestyle, homelessness persists. Change those variables however you want and the problem goes away. This is not to say there are not those who are homeless due to bum luck. In many cities, this is the majority. Not so much in San Francisco where homelessness is a true profession.

matt_morgan 12y ago
The article discusses all of these subjects with a great deal more thoughtfulness and evidence than you have mustered. Give it a shot.
skj 12y ago
> I guess it's total coincidence that the most liberal cities in the US also have the highest incidence of homeless population. [citation needed]
- cozzyd 12y ago
  I don't doubt this is true due to higher cost-of-living, improved services (and therefore more accurate counts... homelessness is severely undercounted in many places) and the trend that more liberal cities tend not to have the suburbs within city limits (or conversely, cities without suburbs within city limits are more liberal...)
- gadders 12y ago
  Here you go: http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_4_san-francisco-homeless.html http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_4_san-francisco-homeless...
  - genericuser 12y ago
    That article does not seem to claim that point in it. Maybe I just missed it. But I checked all usages of high, population, city, and cities, so if the point is made in that article is is done so with different enough language to be difficult to find considering the article's length. Edit: That all means I am calling bullshit on that being a citation for that fact (or 'fact' depending on your view of it).
    - cozzyd 12y ago
      The Manhattan Institute's mission is (I paraphrase) to make selfish rich people feel less guilty, so I would be wary of any claims made by the article.

e40 12y ago

How, after all of the city’s investments, can it be faced with a virtually identical situation a quarter century It's clear that the problem would be much, much worse had it not been for all that investment.

masterleep 12y ago
Alternately, it's clear that the so-called investment badly missed the mark.
- presidentender 12y ago
  Given the disagreement and the impossibility of hard scientific investigation into the problem, it's clear that nothing is clear.

acomjean 12y ago

Thorough. As a city dweller for many years, you do get jaded. Although I give financially to charities and try to be compassionate I do get annoyed at the constant pan handling. Interesting that the article is coming from a fairly upscale magazine chain http://www.modernluxury.com/ http://www.modernluxury.com/

yohann305 12y ago

Apple rejected my app where you could give your lunch leftover to the nearby homeless person. Apple told me the homeless person did not agree to be tracked. Well shall we give them all an iPhone so that they could agree? (you smell sarcasm?) I mean it's not like they are safe and this app would jeopardize their safety more...

Centreal 12y ago
Could you tag, track, or predict a (safe and secure?) time and space to leave food instead of their identity? Microempathic targeting of food pain points could be a healthily decentralizable dApp for Bitnation?

sxcurry 12y ago

Good article about a difficult problem. Here's an excellent series on homelessness in Portland OR: http://www.oregonlive.com/portland-homeless/#incart_maj-story-1 http://www.oregonlive.com/portland-homeless/#incart_maj-stor...

sankyo 12y ago

"While the homeless may always be with us, we need to ensure that we are helping them in the most effective ways possible. For the city named after Francis of Assisi, a nobleman who gave away everything he had when he saw a poor man on the street, nothing less is acceptable." The article seems to imply that creating more housing will solve this problem. Such is not the case. "Homeless" is a euphemism. There are two types of street people: 1. Those who cannot take care of themselves. 2. Those who will not take care of themselves. As a society, we should take care of the people who are unable to take care of themselves. I do not know how to define "take care", but it definitely should not include having schizophrenic episodes on the corner, intimidating panhandling, drug fueled benders, and shitting like animals on the city sidewalks. One idea is to lock them up in an institution. This is expensive, arguably unfair, and creates an opportunity for abuse and corruption (one flew over the cuckoo's nest), and sets up a big liability - How long before violence or abuse causes a huge payout from the government? For the others who _can_ take care of themselves but will not, they seem to me to be some combination of really bad choices and really bad luck, it is less clear to me what our responsibility to them is, and I wonder how much they can be helped. Consider Tap from the article. If he just wants to tap dance and get drunk all day, sleeping and shitting on the streets in my neighborhood, I am completely unsupportive. I will call the cops every time I find him passed out. Hopefully they will run him out of town. As much as he wants this lifestyle, it cannot make ends meet. He seems like a likable fellow during his stable periods, but I do not want to subsidize him. If you don't want to make an honest living, you are going to have to break laws: dealing drugs, breaking car windows and stealing from them, stealing and selling bicycles. I have no tolerance for these layabouts and I cannot see why anyone else should either.

lotsofmangos 12y ago
You really have no idea.
room271 12y ago
Your binary divide between worthy homeless and unworthy is simplistic. Why, for example, do some cities have far more homeless people than others. The high number of homeless people really struck me when I visited San Francisco a couple of years ago, and it's worth as a city asking why. For a wealthy place, it was incredibly sad and surprising too.