Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps
theguardian.comTwo big problems with just moving people into shelters:
1. Homeless shelters are horribly funded and have long waiting lists for beds. This proposal provides no additional funding. My guess is most people will be forced to take the bus ticket option.
2. Shelter beds themselves are poorly maintained, unsanitary, and often have bed bugs. It sounds counter-intuitive but a lot of homeless people are _choosing_ the streets over homeless shelters.
To be honest, I think the people bankrolling this bid know that moving people into shelters is unfeasible, and they're cynically hoping to just bus the homeless out of San Francisco.
Many shelters also have rules that nobody can adhere to like curfew hours or being forced to stand in line everyday to get a spot first come first served. Often you can't book more than one night at a time so you have to spend a significant part of your day, everyday, securing your temporary bed and storage for that night so if you have a job you can't stay at a shelter.
It's much better to just live out of a tent. Problem is people in squatter tents tend to get ridiculously drunk every night, light their tent on fire accidentally or spend all night screaming and fighting with each other thus police get called and their tent city dismantled.
The Salvation Army from what I've seen has the best system going. You can book 3 months, and they help you with employment. You get your own room and there's not a lot of rules besides no alcohol or drugs allowed in the building. This is where most of the homeless go who fell through the social safety net for whatever reasons, and they can save 3 months of income to get back on their feet whereas the addicts, chronic homeless by choice, and mentally ill are the ones in tent cities.
The biggest issue with shelters is also that they're incredibly unsafe, much of the time. Rape, robbery, and assault are commonplace.
It would be funny if it weren't tragic.Y: "There are too many homeless here, it feels unsafe." A: "How dare you! Those are human beings!" Y: "Why can't they stay in shelters?" A: "They feel unsafe, there are too many homeless there."What's tragic is that you think warehousing people who are overwhelmingly addicts, or mentally ill would be workable. The term, 'Bedlam' springs to mind.
Besides, it's almost like different homeless people are... different... people.
That is not what I think.
I can only read posts, not minds.
And even your ability to read posts is questionable, given that ~Camillo didn't write any of the words you're putting into their mouth.
But sadly less unsafe than the street. It sucks to be homeless big time.
It does suck, but safety on the streets is highly variable depending on your experience and what you're trying to be safe from. If your bad experiences are getting groped every night, the risk of death from exposure or someone hassling you on the streets may seem more desirable.
Daily survival is not a game theory problem. If I were homeless and expected sexual assault at shelters I would probably feel so insecure there that I would end up trying to live on the street instead, even at the risk of freezing.
It's not a rational choice but sexual assault does not often result in (or come from) rational decisions.
Theres a number of initiatives to end homelessness and how much of the public cost and burden is lowered by ending homelessness first.
The housing first principle is an interesting thing to look into -- has been successful in some areas at greatly reducing issues and helping people improve their position in life.
Why do homeless people camp on sidewalks? Because it works. The question becomes, "works for what?" The proposition appears to mean to make camping "not work," by imposing risk and cost on campers. It's responding to a symptom, but it's like treating cancer with crutches.
What does the street provide an alley or park doesn't? I've said before, the perceived security from non-underclass people walking by. Police protect non-underclass people from violence, and the homeless get this additional benefit by extension by being nearby. In shelters and tent cities, you are more likely to be targeted for crime.
Sure people without addresses have a right to safety and security of person like everyone else, but their behavior (often due to mental illness or drug use or factors outside of their direct control) makes it extra difficult/costly to provide it.
Other people pay a lot of money in tax to the state to reduce their daily exposure to violence, regardless of the factors that might contribute to it. Tent cities are a source of risk, and they are provocative symbols of the limits of the ability of the local government to operate credibly. Governments, mainly for their own sake, must remove tent cities when they pop up, arguably because that's what they were originally chartered to do.
Some may say that the homeless are "just trying to live," but it could be said they are hovering around public services without any sense of responsibility to the local society that provides them.
They are human beings, but ones who take advantage of the lack of a continuous tribal identity in cities, where they can live with people believing they are someone else's problem. People who don't learn to get along get run out of small towns (or worse). Add a drug addiction to severe mental illness, and you basically get a municipal zombie problem.
To me, homelessness is only a complicated problem from the perspective of an ideology that cannot tolerate examples of the limits to its power. Everyone else has solutions, just not ones that reinforce the narcissism of maternalistic policymakers.
... without any sense of responsibility ... ones who take advantage ... people who don't learn to get along ...
All this sounds like you're blaming the homeless. Your last paragraph suggests that you have solutions to the problem. What are they?
Call me crazy, but I think it's pretty obvious that the only solution to homelessness is homes.
Of course that's the compassionate solution, but compassion holds little weight in the libertarian idealist sociopathy of Silicon Valley. But even from a cost perspective housing is the only solution.
You can make homelessness illegal, but then you're just housing the homeless in prisons. If you're going to house people anyway, there are cheaper ways to do it than with a prison.
You can bus the homeless somewhere else, but there's a long history of other places bussing people back to SF. Given the homeless want to be in SF because of climate, opportunities, etc., the average is that they're more likely to end up there.
Unless there's something else I haven't thought of, that really only leaves housing.
Existing programs are intended to get people into a position where they can obtain housing, but these de facto don't work very well, because they attempt to get them other things before housing. Housing before a job works better than a job before housing. Housing before addiction treatment works better than addiction treatment before housing. None of the existing solutions are sustainable as long as the person isn't housed. It's unrealistic to expect someone to hold down a job or kick their addiction while living on the streets. Without housing, no auxiliary solution is sustainable.
So not only is the only solution to homelessness housing, but it's housing first.
Oddly enough, it tends to not be the idealist libertarians in Silicon Valley and San Francisco who oppose housing.
Begs the question of, homes where. Public housing, hotel rooms, condominiums, remote cabins, camps, shelters, the devil is in those details.
"Homeless" is a euphemism, more of a metonym for a cluster of issues that form an identifiable other. It's a general problem of how should a society deal with extreme exceptional minorities. From a majority rule perspective, there are probably still more homeless people than millionaires (let alone billionaires) in the bay area, so maybe they will organize and win the right to camp anywhere.
Rich people need permits, licenses, planning permission, and community consent to build homes. Tent dwellers, not so much. In fact, if the resolution doesn't pass to prevent people from camping in the street, what's to stop anyone from setting up pre-fab luxury sidewalk camps like those at burning man.
> Begs the question of, homes where. Public housing, hotel rooms, condominiums, remote cabins, camps, shelters, the devil is in those details.
There are a wide variety of options. One which has historically worked well in Europe is to provide an area of shipping containers converted into simple homes with a shower, toilet, cot, and padlock on the door.
> "Homeless" is a euphemism, more of a metonym for a cluster of issues that form an identifiable other.
No, "homeless" is not a fucking euphemism. It means "without a home", just like "jobless" means "without a job" and "hopeless" means "without hope" and "grasp-on-reality-less" means "without a grasp on reality".
> Rich people need permits, licenses, planning permission, and community consent to build homes. Tent dwellers, not so much.
These permits, licenses, planning permission, and are community consent are necessary to prevent people with a wide variety of options from making decisions that harm other people.
Tent dwellers arguably cause harm to others by being there, but they don't have other options. The voluntarily homeless are few and far between.
The two kinds of laws are incomparable: one seeks to limit the harm done by people with too much power, while the other tries to write out of existence the only option a group of people have.
> In fact, if the resolution doesn't pass to prevent people from camping in the street, what's to stop anyone from setting up pre-fab luxury sidewalk camps like those at burning man.
When this becomes a problem let me know. Meanwhile, maybe we can talk about current real problems that exist, like the people who we are literally forcing to rot to death in our streets.
I'm no expert in the area, but Housing First programs seem to be getting popular and having some results.
To me it seems if we say food and shelter are our first needs, it's hard to work on other health and life issues without those first.
Very few people choose to end up in the circumstances that lead them to be homeless and once there, I can't say many people with homes and resources would fare much better if both were taken away.
> You can make homelessness illegal, but then you're just housing the homeless in prisons.
Not if you resort to corporal punishment which doesn't impose a cost on the taxpayer and can still act as a deterrent on the most destitute. (N.B. not an endorsement)
Not the OP, but I suggest state-run work-camps or mini-work-cities for the sane and able-bodied. The rest get taken to either psychiatric facilities, or to dedicated facilities for the physically-disabled.
The able-bodied and sane get put to work in work camps. It need not be back-breaking labour. It can be absolutely anything. The point behind it is to ease them back into a normal functioning life. Give them a pretend-life that is safe. A bank account with fake-money, or real-money but limit the things they can spend it on. I.e. shops at the work-camp, entertainment, furniture stores for their temporary fake living accommodation. If it's real money, tell them that they can keep it once they've demonstrated that they are ready to go back into society.
We claim to "rehabilitate" criminals, so I fail to see why we can't do something on a similar effort-level for the really needy individuals in our society. Giving them money, free-food, and packing them into people-warehouses does not really help them. It just drags the problem along.
"I suggest state-run work-camps or mini-work-cities for the sane and able-bodied."
My take is that you failed to understand how chronic homelessness works. Excluding the mentally ill, most of the said "able-bodied" individuals (including drug addicts) are there by choice. They managed to limit their needs and wants to a minimal levels and cover those with almost no work at all. As far as I could understand the way homeless people think, there are only small windows of opportunity for some external motivation to reach them, and that's in the times when they can't cover their basic needs, like shelter in a really cold weather, or water in a really dry day. Even these are looked at as nice-to-have not a must-have, so the effect of leverage is weak, as many of them will rather try to suffer and endure it through at the first sign of required work from their part.
"We claim to "rehabilitate" criminals, so I fail to see why we can't do something on a similar effort-level for the really needy individuals in our society."
I think you again fail at understanding what's the deal with criminals and homeless and why the society works to rehabilitate the criminals but not the homeless. (Actually the homeless that can be rehabilitated are actually worked on, as in the homeless that themselves work on their condition are helped.) The imprisoned criminals are a group of people that for some reason were considered dangerous to be left active in the society. So not necessarily the punishment for their crimes but the threat they continuously pose is the primary reason for their temporary or permanent disposal from the rest of society. Rehabilitation comes as a natural step for these active people, as they are active and potentially still useful for society. The homeless, on the other hand, don't pose much threat to society, and the main problem with any assumed social program involving them is that most of these are not active. There isn't much drive to change anything, neither from society (unless there is something political about it), nor from the homeless themselves.
Would you put them on trains to get to these camps? Tatoo a handy identification number on them?
> Your last paragraph suggests that you have solutions to the problem. What are they?
Right? I read that word soup and walked away with the paraphrase, "I'd tell you how to fix it, but I'm afraid you just aren't smart enough to understand."
I walked away with something different. Homelessness is supposed to be a complicated problem if you don't get into details. The key is not to treat the mass of the homeless people as a whole but to understand and consider each of the factors that lead to people ending up living on the streets. To address this requires work of course, but for some reason it seems more convenient to be left as a perpetual problem.
> Other people pay a lot of money in tax to the state to reduce their daily exposure to violence,
Just to be clear, police and courts use an extremely small fraction of tax revenue.
Could you please expand on the argument that governments were originally chartered to remove tent cities?
Forgive my crass naïveté, for I live in a chilly northeastern college town where homelessness = death for half the year, but why are people so concerned about keeping the poorest of the poor living at the tiny tip of the wealthiest peninsula in America?
Homelessness and the situations that create it are great tragedies. But to me it seems completely absurd that this problem is dealt with a municipal level. Homeless shelters are good to have but there is so little space in the city of San Francisco for the working people, let alone the tech workers forking over several thousands of dollars each month in rent.
San Francisco is a tiny city. California is a very big state. I don't understand this problem at all.
I agree with one of your points: that dealing with homelessness on a municipal level is problematic. It disincentivizes cities from providing extremely good care for its homeless population for fear that it will just attract more homeless people. There are already US cities whose answer to the homeless problem is to buy them a bus ticket to a city where they will be better cared for.
I do, however, think you are being a bit naive with respect to the notion that people are "keeping" the homeless in SF. The city's homeless population chooses to be there, for various reasons including SF's fair year-round weather and the fact that some have a connection to the city going back to before it was the tech-center it is today.
You do realize that this isn't a problem that can be solved with more money, right?
The City of SF's budget was 8.9 billion dollars FY 2015-2016[0], roughly 1.2 of which was earmarked on "human welfare and neighborhood development".
This isn't a "throw more money/resources at it and it will be fixed" type of problem.
It's a problem that needs to be restated in different terms, which requires a paradigm shift in how we view the homeless, mental illness, and addiction in the United States.
[0]http://sfmayor.org/ftp/uploadedfiles/mayor/budget/SF_Budget_...
There's plenty of space; the problem is that it's illegal to use it to build the kind and amount of housing necessary. With the right density levels and zoning regulations, you can basically build apartments for $200k/each at arbitrarily high land values.
I don't like having homeless people on the streets but even the homeless have freedoms and the same rights that you and I enjoy.
What you are saying is that SF is only for certain people, all others should be made to go.
No, he's not saying that at all. He's asking why this problem should be addressed at the municipal level, and why it isn't being addressed at the state level or federal level instead. It's a valid question: the State of California has a lot more resources to deal with a problem like this than any single municipality within the state, and the Federal government even moreso.
Given how much of a problem homelessness is throughout the state of California, why is the state government not addressing it?
It's more like this: San Francisco is very expensive. It is also a nice place to live.
Why not put shelters and programs to get people back on their feet in less expensive places so that eventually the formerly homeless can live in San Francisco by paying rent with the money they earn by working?
Just like everybody else.
I agree with this. The fact is that to live in the bay area now is expensive and many people (myself included) work hard to afford to live here. I don't understand why someone who doesn't or can't work should be guaranteed a place here. If I was injured or became a drug addict/mentally ill and needed to stop working I would strongly consider moving back to where I lived for the past few years in Eastern WA, life was exponentially cheaper. Problem is these places where living is cheap probably have little to no services for the mentally ill/ addicts. This is why I agree with your statement that the state should establish services in more cost effective areas. I guess this seems like shipping them off to camps away from rich people but at least the dollars spent on services and shelters can serve more people more effectively.
> This is why I agree with your statement that the state should establish services in more cost effective areas.
How's that supposed to work? The state builds a homeless ghetto in Salinas and trucks all the homeless there with promises of housing and services? Who is this supposed to be attractive to? The residents of the town now housing the ghetto? The homeless who are being shipped somewhere that they don't want to be, somewhere that can't actually support a homeless population on the street? If the program fails either wholesale or for that individual, will they truck them back to SF or just dump them on the streets in this town with no support for homelessness?
Oh you've got me completely wrong, I wouldn't guarantee anyone a place or service anywhere in the world.
What I'm saying is that people are free to go and stay where ever they want in their country as long as it isn't someones private property. That's a very basic freedom that we all have.
You don't have a mandatory responsibility to care for the homeless and homeless do not have a responsibility to accept any your care. Especially if your care amounts to basically forcing them to live in a different place.
When your property taxes (or your landlord's property taxes that you pay in rent) are used to pay for expensive public services that could be done much cheaper elsewhere, homelessness is most certainly an infringement of private property.
If a homeless person is robbed, your taxes pay for their police investigation. If a homeless person is stabbed, your taxes pay for their medical treatment.
As far as this "very basic freedom" for people to "go and stay where ever they want" goes - can you point out where this is guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution?
The costs for the examples you list are costs of having your own nation and your own set of laws.
There's no point in having either of those if we collectively do not enforce it.
Your position would allow to introduce arbitrary limits on freedom because you can always show a direct or indirect cost caused by having freedom. (it would certainly be cheaper to have everyone living in safe and orderly labour camps, wouldn't it?)
Regarding the U.S. Constitution: I'm in the EU but from my basic understanding the Constitution is a list of supreme laws limiting the governments power to interfere with citizens freedoms and not the other way around. Compiling a list of citizens freedoms would be senseless anyway as it would quickly approach an infinite list. Since I have not heard about a Constitutional law that allows the government to displace people internally it follows that the government does not have this power.
Your "private property" is not being infringed by a decision about how taxes are spent. You have taxation with representation, talk to your representative about how angry you are about being taxed so much when you see that money being spent on the homeless people you might trip over on the way to Whole Foods.
> It's more like this: San Francisco is very expensive. It is also a nice place to live.
I don't care, I can be where ever I want as long as it is not someones property. Doesn't matter if I'm poor or rich.
> Why not put shelters and programs to get people back on their feet
Such programs and shelters do already exist all over the country. Do you want to force them to move to these places or camps?
> Just like everybody else.
Not everybody wants to be you or me.
Everywhere is someone's property. You're on private property or you are on government-owned property. Those are the only options.
Why not address it locally? Its easy to say "somebody else's problem" when dealing with your poor, dirty homeless neighbors. And its a problem all over - the reciprocal argument "the State can't fix everything for everybody" is valid too.
The real hangup in all this comes when temporary fixes (tents) are pulled out from under people, and ephemeral future fixes by indeterminate somebody are waved around. People have to be sheltered every day. Starting today.
Because it is extremely expensive to address it locally, and you could help a LOT more people by taking that money and building homes for people in less expensive places.
Every 1 homeless person that you help in SF is 10 people that you could be helping somewhere else
You can still do that without having the state run the program. The homeless problem in SF might looks somewhat different from Chula Vista, so it makes sense to have locally created programs in addition to state programs. Regardless, the state does run homeless programs, and earlier this year passed a two billion dollar program to build housing for the homeless.
This article addresses a lot of the myths of homelessness which get repeated in any discussion about SF homeless (with supporting citation).
http://48hills.org/2016/02/16/five-myths-about-the-homeless-...
Key point in my mind when it comes to talking about these tent cities, is that most of SF's homeless -- over 70% -- were living in San Francisco at the time they became homeless. And as much as 50% of the homeless had lived in SF for ten years or more.
The people sleeping on the sidewalk are San Franciscans who have been priced out of housing. San Francisco is their home. These people aren't going anywhere just because you take away their tents.
> over 70% -- were living in San Francisco at the time they became homeless
People should be very, very careful with this number. The criterion used to measure it consider someone who has spent 30+ years in SF to be identical to someone who got off a bus from Nevada, spent a month in a subsidized SRO, and is now in a tent.
Which is to say 48hills is playing a little fast and loose with the truth, but you probably already knew they tend to do that.
This is a quote from the source, the 2015 San Francisco Housing Count Report:
"Seventy-one percent (71%) of respondents reported they were living in San Francisco at the time they most recently became homeless, an increase from 61% in 2013. Of those, nearly half (49%) had lived in San Francisco for 10 years or more. Eleven percent (11%) had lived in San Francisco for less than one year. "
http://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Franc...
So, no it's not "fast and loose," they actually did make a distinction between short- and long-term residents.
You're absolutely, completely, 100% correct in your statements. The 2015 San Francisco Homeless Count Report makes precisely that distinction! They do so because it matters.
Should you choose to check it, you will find that the 48hills page you linked to does not make any such distinction. In fact, it omits the 49% figure altogether and states "That means seven out of ten homeless people used to be your neighbors – before the tech boom and the eviction epidemic".
I think some reasonable people might choose to describe this phrasing as perhaps potentially slightly misleading.
That link says that the problem is that they got priced out and that's why they're homeless (and you imply that's the cause too). I don't buy it. I have tons of friends who have gotten priced out of SF, or even the whole bay area. They moved to other parts of the state or country. It sucks, but it didn't make them homeless.
The increased cost of housing makes dealing with the problem more difficult (expensive). But just because someone used to live in SF doesn't mean the reason they became homeless was the price of housing. The report shows that over 10 years, the homeless population has only increased by 468 people, which does show any strong correlation to the huge increase in the price of housing over that period. High prices have made the problem marginally worse, but the major underlying problems are the same as 10 years ago: drug abuse, mental illness, disability. It is pretty obvious walking around SF that the problem isn't just that rents are too high. These are people who need other kinds of help, and housing pricing talk distracts from the more difficult issues to deal with.
The price of housing not only affects incentives for landlords to evict; it affects it affects the cost of shelters and temporary housing; it affects the cost of running clinics and social services facilities, and so on.
To an outsider, San Fransisco's policy towards the homeless seems literally insane.
Despite the negative frame of the headline, is this obviously a bad idea? It does mention requiring that people be offered a shelter bed.Or if this is a horrible/insensitive/bad idea as stated, what's the smart, thoughtful, and progressive way to change the status quo?
San Francisco spends $241 million[0] of it's $8.9 billion budget[1] on programs to help the homeless and to help folks avoid becoming homeless (through housing assistance, etc). The 2015 count of homeless people in San Francisco is 7,539[2].
This measure doesn't increase spending on the homeless issue but, honestly, the San Francisco govt has shown the ability to absorb funding increases without noticeable impact in services. This is especially true of homeless services.
My impression is that this measure is born of frustration with the governmental inaction on the homeless problem in SF.
[0] http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-record... [1] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SF-budget-increase-aim... [2] http://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Franc...
From your [0] link.
"Eight city departments oversee at least 400 contracts to 76 private organizations"
That says a lot about how spending $31,967.10 for every homeless person can amount to, well, no one seems to know.
I'm curious what happened in New Orleans and the other places referenced that have seen success helping their homeless populations. Knowing even a little bit about systems, layering more complexity (and money) on top of a dysfunctional effort in SF isn't going to meaningfully help.
Yeah, and those private organizations (mostly non-profits) are very effective at lobbying, so it's hard to terminate contracts to consolidate services.
One thing to clarify is that, because some (~$60 Million in 2015 [3]) goes to housing assistance. The people helped by the budget includes more than 7,539 represented by the point in time count, so the $31K/person number is a bit high.
That said, SF spends a lot of money on homeless and the homeless population hasn't significantly decreased in over a decade.
[3] http://sfbos.org/sites/default/files/FileCenter/Documents/56... page 6
That's a good clarification on the number of people the funds are going to help. Thanks.
> That says a lot about how spending $31,967.10 for every homeless person can amount to, well, no one seems to know.
The "76 private organizations" that all this money is being funneled toward probably know.
That says a lot about how spending $31,967.10 for every homeless person can amount to, well, no one seems to know.
"As Randy Shaw points out (in an article that has other problems, but gets this absolutely right), almost half the money that the Chron identifies as “homeless” spending is actually money spend on people who are in supportive housing. That’s housing money, not homeless money."
http://48hills.org/2016/02/16/five-myths-about-the-homeless-...
Well considering that NO largely gentrified in the wake of Katrina (essentially the rich literally stealing from the poor), maybe we can look for a better model
Proportionally (to population), I'd say it's less than or around the NYC numbers.
Something really interesting: "Hawaii has the highest homeless rate per capita in the nation, according to federal statistics."
Hawaii the state spends something around 40m a year on the homeless.
But a lot of Hawaii homeless live in tents on the beach!
Just some interesting numbers. I know a lot of the homeless kids in Hawaii also get picked up by school buses as well.
There's an explicit 24h limit before they get kicked out and the entirety of their assets gets confiscated. On the flip side there's no timeline for providing shelter beds and a one-way bus ticket is deemed equivalent.
This is inhumane.
This feels like wealthy people wanting to erase the daily reminders about inequality so that they don't have to think about it.
If the supporters of this measure really cared about homelessness, there would be provisions for actual reintegration into society instead of just a stick. But that costs money and effort.
"Opponents of the measure point out that the proposed law does not include any funding for additional housing or shelters, and the city’s existing shelters have long waiting lists for beds."
I think they just tell them to go to a shelter.
It does mention requiring that people be offered a shelter bed.
But provides no funding (or even specific requirements that would imply funding; e.g. "shelter for 30 days"). Which basically means, in effect "umm, actually we're not really going to provide shelter. We're just going to keep rousting you and rousting you until you head out over to Oakland, or down the Peninsula".
Just that people like Moritz, Conway, Oberndorf, Bogue and Mayer don't want to come out an say it. Even though it's apparently exactly what they want.
I'm not able to evaluate whether it's a good idea. But from my experience in the Bay Area, the intention is likely as others have described it: it's inconvenient to have to witness such nasty people, so let's shovel them elsewhere.
It's as insane as it sounds to you.
Edit: what's a progressive, sensitive solution? It starts with something as simple as responding with basic kindness and decency instead of stepping over them on our way to work. Some believe this is pointless or insufficient. It may not work on its own, but it's the only thing that will point us in the right direction.
With all due respect, that second paragraph seems to be sort of exactly the type of woo woo thinking us asshole NYC types associate with San Franscisco's intractable politics around this problem. It's a genuinely hard problem, but it's hard to see how "be kind" bumper sticker proposals are a serious response.
Bumper stickers sound worse than useless.
The point is, human problems are often intractable until the humans in question are treated with some dignity. And it's hard to treat someone with dignity when you are unable to look them in the eye.
OK. Let's be kind and decent to people. What do you think that looks like, in terms of actual behavior? Instead of just walking past someone panhandling, what does a kind and decent reaction look like? Would you consider looking them in the eye and saying "No" to be kindness and decency? If not, what is - listening to their story? Giving money? Expressing sympathy? How much of a person's day should be devoted to kindness and decency?
Some would characterize the resources devoted to services for the most vulnerable among us as kindness and decency expressed. Which suggests that a progressive, sensitive solution started decades ago. What's the next step?
Kindness isn't in the action but the intent. I cannot give you a precise characterization of that intent, but I trust you know it when you experience it. Take a moment and reflect on a moment you experienced deep, profound kindness so that we can be on the same wavelength here.
Kind motivation can be expressed fiercely (as in "tough love"), and conversely, many seemingly-kind actions sprout from an unwholesome place. So I can't tell you what "kind behavior" looks like.
The progressive solutions you see today are the natural result of blossoming intent. _First_ we start learning to see black people, gay people, women, etc. as equal to ourselves, and then our actions, behaviors, and ultimately policies reflect that choice. We're headed in the right direction.
When a behavior is only _ostensibly_ kind -- like when I'm trying to shovel dirty people away under the guise of helping them -- at best I prolong the real problem, and at worst I get an atrocity.
So I cannot give you an actual solution to the homelessness problem, other than to say: motivation matters a lot more than we tech types often consider.
> Take a moment and reflect on a moment you experienced deep, profound kindness so that we can be on theh same wavelength here.
OK. Focused. Right here with you.
> The progressive solutions you see today are the natural result of blossoming intent.
The progressive solutions I see today look like kindness and decency unmoored from any notion of efficiency. There's no concern for what actually advances the goals we purport to care about with kindness and decency. There's just actions that leave us feeling that we've seen the homeless as equal people and thought kind things about them and expressed this with large dollops of cash and social tolerance.
Given that this has been going on for decades, I harbor a seed of doubt that this blossoming intent is going to manifest as effective policy in the near future. I find myself thinking that warm fuzzies are great, but helping people is better.
> When a behavior is only _ostensibly_ kind -- like when I'm trying to shovel dirty people away under the guise of helping them -- at best I prolong the real problem, and at worst I get an atrocity.
Prolonging the problem, solving the problem, and causing atrocities are all things that can result from actions. They are things that can result from actions rooted in cruelty and from actions rooted in kindness alike. Mao starved millions of people while genuinely trying to help them.
Thank you for trying. You have helped me understand why SF's policies are so completely broken - they're created and executed by people whose only real measurement is purity of motivation and for whom actually helping people is largely irrelevant.
> Mao starved millions of people while genuinely trying to help them.
It's of course impossible to truly know another's motivations, but I don't agree that this was true of Mao.
For my part, I don't believe that the "only real measurement" is purity of motivation. But I do believe that when policies are created under the disingenuous guise of kindness (as I suspect the ones from this article are) they ultimately do more harm than good.
Anyway, thank you for at least remaining polite.
I want you to take a moment and focus on a time in your life when you tried, deeply and genuinely tried something, and saw your attempt fail because your pure intent wasn't the same as a workable approach. I want us to be on the same wavelength here. It's an experience that every engineer has at least once.
One cannot reverse-engineer intentions from results. Great suffering can result from the kindest of intentions. Such outcomes do not invalidate the deep and genuine kindness felt, the intent that bloomed therein, or the suffering that resulted. One should never confuse intent for effect and one should never assume good intent automatically leads to good results. More than one person has died from a misguided blooming of genuine kindness.
I implore you to consider something objective, countable, and measurable. Like people helped for money spent, rather than genuineness of kindness or blooming of intent. Think like an engineer trying to solve a problem. Decades of pure motives, deep and genuine kindness, and overflowing decency got us here. There's little reason to think more will fix matters, and there are thousands of people who could really use some practical help (and who won't look too closely at how genuine your kindness is if it drives help).
> I implore you to consider something objective, countable, and measurable. Like people helped for money spent, rather than genuineness of kindness or blooming of intent.
I don't think we disagree there. I even attended a conference (the Effective Altruism Summit) on just this topic. I also put my money where my mouth is. The only reason I spend time on any of this is because I've spent more than a little time introspecting on my true motives.
Maybe I can be more precise in what I'm trying to communicate.
Take two people with equal capacities for analytical reasoning and ask them to solve some human problem. Suppose that in the first person, the realization of empathy has not deeply taken root.
Even if they generate superficially similar solutions, the first will likely be infused with a self-serving agenda in ways that will become visible in myriad details of its implementation. (In fact, without such an agenda, the first person wouldn't ever consider solving the problem on his own in the first place.)
I'm not talking about a sociopath here. I'm talking about a mostly decent human being, whose mind is nevertheless generally too busy to perceive the tremendous amount of need around him (or else regards it disdainfully). This describes me (though hopefully a little less in recent years) as well as the vast majority of my colleagues.
Silicon Valley already has the talent. That talent could use a little more heart.
I understand why you feel this way. It seems impossible that so much talent and intelligence could fail to solve such obviously tractable problems, if but moved by basic empathy and kindness and decency to examine them seriously. Silicon Valley can do anything it sets its mind to. History makes that plain!
I don't think I agree. I think the kinds of problems Silicon Valley can effectively solve are limited in nature and scope. I think the problems surrounding homelessness in Silicon Valley and the larger Bay are fundamentally political, shaped by decades of an excess of empathy and kindness and decency and a dearth of pragmatism. I think that an understanding of this situation has driven away many with empathy for their own emotional self-preservation.
In short, I don't agree that the problem is that mostly decent human beings fail to see the tremendous amount of need around them. I think the problem is that mostly decent human beings see the need, and also that it exists within an intractable political framework. Thus, they retreat rather than break themselves on those rocks of kindness and decency gone horrifyingly wrong.
The problem is not a lack of empathy or lack of awareness. The problem is that we're in a scenario where you cannot question the cost-effectiveness of homelessness spending without someone retorting "Those people work really hard!", as if that is some kind of response to the point raised.
> It seems impossible that so much talent and intelligence could fail to solve such obviously tractable problems
It's not that I think that Silicon Valley can solve the problem. It's really only that I think it's disingenuous to claim one is trying to help people if one is really only trying to shovel them out of sight, and that this chasm will ultimately be reflected in the outcome of any plan that results.
That said, I hope I am wrong about the protagonists of the story.
I agree. It's quite likely that competent people who set out with ill intent will manage to achieve some ill.
This should not be confused for a belief that setting out with good intentions will yield good results. It's far, far harder to improve things than it is to make things worse. Social policy does not function on the "Law of Attraction".
I agree. I don't think it even has to go as far as ill will. Even run-of-the-mill selfishness bleeds deeply into purported attempts to help others.
Thus an essential part of helping anyone is: be sure that you're really doing it to _help them_. It's not sufficient by a long shot (as you rightly point out), but it is more or less necessary.
Thanks for the frank discussion.
Homelessness is an industry in SF. Lots of livelihoods seem to rely on there being a problem:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/sidewalks-san-francisco-133...
Its already the case that as the camps get larger, the police come in with city trucks to force everyone out, then they remove the trash and sometimes seem to steam wash the area.
Removal seems to be roughly based on the proximity of the camp to retail/residential, and the size of the camp. This has been going on since at least the 90s, although the camps are larger and more visible in the last few years.
As a result the homeless kind of blow around, try to find an inconspicuous spot, and hang on until they are ousted again. I've known several people with palette and tarp covered homes tucked away in corners in light industrial areas hang onto a spot for 3 or more years. But usually, a tent on the sidewalk (or a barely running tan RV) establishes a safe place for more tents/RVs/vans/etc and the cycle continues.
Once there are a few people living in a spot, the police become regular visitors because of all the fighting, human waste, theft, etc. Residents constantly call in complaints hoping to raise the bar enough to get them removed.
Since the police are already spending a huge amount of time trying to manage and break down camps, how is this law going to help?
Something similar was actually tried already in the Soviet Union and in other Communist/Socialist countries with regards to Gypsies. (it didn't target them specifically and instead all homeless, but policy makers had this group in mind)
Laws were implemented that would force them to live in (free) government assigned apartments and accept government assigned jobs.
This policy failed because you can't force someone to like or accept a lifestyle they don't want. They just run away at the first opportunity. You can offer them different opportunities and some might accept it, but as far as I know this is already being done.
What is funny though about this article is that many of the SF tech billionaires are themselves immigrants from former Communist countries or children of these immigrants. Many of their statements seem to indicate that they believe in technocrat rule and some kind of artificial betterment of people that can be achieved through education and policy. (which often translates into propaganda and use of force if you ask me)
It's interesting how values can persist throughout generations, even if you move to a different continent.
I find it more plausible that tech billionaires are just more likely, as a group, to believe in technocrat rule, etc. than are people who are not tech billionaires. Being an immigrant from Communist countries or a child of such immigrants is just as likely or more likely to make one despise top-down solutions as it is to make one favor them. People with such backgrounds have direct experience of the sorts of problems that arise from heavy-handed government involvement in society. Based on what I've seen, I speculate that financially successful immigrants from Communist countries actually tend, as a group, to favor hands-off government.
Build a mental health infrastructure, reform the prison system, and you'll be solving more than half of your homeless "problem"... which is mostly an addiction and mental health problem at its core.
CTRL+F "Minimum wage" yields no results in either the OP, or the comments.
That tells me that SF is going to have a homelessness problem for loooong time.
CA has told everyone that they CANNOT work if their time is not worth at least $21/hour. $15 for minimum wage, and ~$7 for taxes on the business to provide that employment. Of course you are going to have these problems.
Downvote me if you like. But you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality. if you really cared about these people, you'd abolish the minimum wage yesterday.
So you're saying that a high minimum wage prevents homeless people from getting jobs? That opinion seems overly simplistic -- I'm inclined to believe homelessness isn't a result of the lack of opportunity.
High minimum wage reduces opportunity for those capable of working to find work. And if you are going to hire someone at $15/hr it may mean you now longer have to take a chance on someone less skilled, less experienced, or with a sketchy record. It is simplistic, or simple economics. But of course you are right, the core problem of homelessness isn't lack of opportunity, or lack of housing.
Yes, that is a fact. Minimum wage increases unemployment. Ispso facto.
No job ---> no self-reliance.
Homelessness is only a short leap from that point.
Simple does not imply over simplification.
Minimum wages also correlate with higher economic growth, as higher wages mean more people can buy more stuff, and so more people are employed to sell those people that stuff.
Also you leave out mental illness and addiction which are impossible-to-ignore factors when comparing homelessness to impoverishment.
I didn't see a need for the downvotes. But you're definitely conflating two very different issues.
Actually the issues are closely linked. For example, look at the Davis-Bacon Act which according to the National Center for Policy Analysis "the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act, requiring ‘prevailing’ wages on federally assisted construction projects, was supported by the idea that it would keep contractors from using ‘cheap colored labor’ to underbid contractors using white labor.". Similarly in 1925 British Columbia passed the Hours of Work Act to stop "Oriental labour" from competing with whites. Minimum wage (or Basic wage) was enacted in Australia for the same reason.
It was also praised by progressives at the time. Harvard’s Arthur Holcombe said that these laws “protect the white Australian’s standard of living from the invidious competition of the colored races, particularly of the Chinese.” Florence Kelley said that the laws were “redeeming the sweated trades” by preventing the “unbridled competition” of the unemployable, the “women, children, and Chinese were reducing all the employees to starvation”.
There was a time where we understood the economic impacts of so called minimum wage. We knew that it made it illegal for low skilled workers to be employed. Fast forward to today, if a homeless person cannot produce at a rate of $13.00, which is San Francisco minimum wage, they are not allowed to work. It's against the law! So though it might not solve every case, it would surely help if it were legal for them to hold a job.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/carriesheffield/2014/04/29/on-th...
https://www.quora.com/Is-the-claim-that-minimum-wage-laws-ha...
Well, they're overlapping for sure. But you have to keep in mind that the root causes behind homelessness are quite complex, and fairly stated, many of these people wouldn't be employable at any wage -- even if there were jobs for them, which are by no means guaranteed, or even likely to appear if we suddenly raised the minimum wage to a viable level (which I happen to be in favor of).
Or stated alternatively -- yes, over generations, the gradual lowering of the minimal wage (combined with the evisceration of middle class wages, and the decimation of affordable housing stock) has certainly been a major driving force behind the crisis we find ourselves in today. But simply raising the minimum wage isn't going to (quickly) reverse that tide.
So that's why the two issues seem to be (while overlapping) basically different kettles of fish.
“I strongly believe that it is not compassionate to allow human beings to live on our city streets,” wrote the measure’s author, supervisor Mark Farrell, in an op-ed. “Let’s help get the homeless into housing, not tents.”
By passing a measure that bans the tents -- but doesn't actually do anything to help get these people into housing. Or for that matter, any meaningful promise of a safe place to sleep at night (because without funding -- and that's precisely where the crux of the issue lies, behind this problem -- the phrase "offer shelter for all tent residents" has precisely zero chance of seeing a viable implementation).
Now that's compassionate.
Isn't San Francisco the same city that used made-up housing code to reject all attempts to build cheap "tiny houses" for the homeless? I seem to recall a tech multi-millionaire offering to build them FOR FREE and being denied.
You would think that a fully functional tiny house with plumbing and everything needed for one person would be far better than living on the street. But nooooo, it has to be full size houses or nothing I guess.
I was just in San Diego. Homeless people were everywhere. I heard that Vegas is literally busing homeless people out of Vegas and into San Diego. Apparently the homeless problem is even worse in San Francisco. That's insane to me.
The difference is SF doesn't have a skid row like like San Diego and LA do. I lived in SD for years and almost never saw any homeless because I spent most of my time in the northern parts. The "sketchy" parts of SF where these camps are (SOMA, TL, parts of the Mission) are only a stones-throw from the hot tech companies and million dollar condos.
Ah, makes sense. I personally have never been to SF. I have this idealized vision of what it's like just from knowing that all the major tech firms are there but, I'm sure that vision is not entirely accurate.
I have to say it is rather jarring to see homeless people in SF living in tents and cardboard boxes on streets lined with skyscrapers and around pristine parks and plazas.
So while the city does have a ritzy tech feel in the right parts, it is disconcerting to know that amidst so much concentrated wealth there are a lot more homeless people than you would expect. Really, a lot.
Unfortunately it's not as if these are all down-on-their-luck folks in between attempts at The American Dream. A lot of homeless people - in SF and in general - have mental illnesses and addiction problems and they do need help.
There's also the third group -- the guys who hang out around Cesar Chavez and run a chop shop for stolen bikes in their tent city. Unfortunately they suck away a lot of the goodwill for the first two groups.
My hometown is Anaheim, CA. I recently visited to go biking along the Santa Ana river, and I was shocked at the large numbers of homeless people throughout the stretch between the Angel Stadium and Santa Ana. Even more shocking was the fact that most of them seemed to be under 30. Every freeway overpass had encampments beneath and around it -- at least 30-40 tents total in the smaller encampments, and 60+ in the larger ones.
The river and the county seat (which also has encampments surrounding it) have become the only place where homeless encampments are allowed any sort of permanence, since police departments in cities throughout Southern California have adopted increasingly aggressive policies towards them. From what I understand, the river and county seat fall under the County Sheriff's jurisdiction, so city police can't evict them or seize possessions, and the Sheriff has realized that there is literally no where else for these people to go, and is currently allowing them to stay.
This year's ACLU report on homeless in Orange County is interesting:
https://www.aclusocal.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Nowhere...
I honestly had no idea how bad things are. I feel horrible about it.
Its ridiculous that supposed advocates endorse having people live in sidewalks as a compassionate policy.
I think you are missing the point. No one wants the homeless to live on the sidewalks, but there isn't a better place for them to go right now. Given that, any proposal removing them from the sidewalks is only going to make their lives more difficult unless it also provides for a alternative, which this bill doesn't do.
Meanwhile, unused homes outnumber the homeless 6-1 [1], and in Detroit, they bulldoze unused homes because it is more profitable to destroy and rebuild homes that are palatable for 'civilized' people than to let people live in them.[2]
[1] http://www.mintpressnews.com/empty-homes-outnumber-the-homel...
[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/the-mayor-of-detroits-radical...
Yes Detroit has demolished thousands of buildings over the last decade. Other than that your entire take on the situation is a simplification of a much larger problem which will not be solved by just applying the idea of "let people live in them".
An "unused" home does not simply sit in pristine condition waiting for the next person to come live in it. The abandoned homes in Detroit slated for demolition were built during a period which used lead paint and asbestos, abatement programs are expensive. As the homes sat unused they fell victim to scrappers who pull the copper pipe and wire from the wall, strip all of the architectual details, rip the aluminum siding from the outside, or knock down the brick facade, before the house eventually falls victim to an arsonist who may be doing their neighbors a favor. Most of the homes lie in isolated neighborhoods where burnt out buildings outnumber humans. When the homes are bulldozed they're not rebuilt, rather whole neighborhoods are set to be depopulated so city services can be better concentrated. This isn't a simple "profit" play, it is a coordinated downsizing to deal with reality
It is not simply a matter of providing homes. Most of the street people in San Francisco have serious mental illness and drug addiction problems. They cannot take care of themselves. Giving those people a home will not solve their problems.
Except it's really hard to provide treatment for those illnesses if you can't find them regularly, so giving them a home, first, and then bringing services to that home is the only policy that makes sense. Seems to be working in Utah.
Yeah, I know, I just want to make sure that our homeless problem is not linked to a scarcity of resources. I am very familiar with the links between mental illness and homelessness as well as lgbtq+ youth and homelessness.
Which makes sense. Think of how unfair it would be to those who actually paid for a house.
People don't have a coherent idea of what they think of the encampments.
Propose a measure like this and the most empathic of the privileged people point out how insensitive it is.
Embrace reality and call San Francisco the peninsula's biggest camp ground, and the same people call it insensitive.
Both statements ignore the security issues and circumstances that many campers endure so not mutually exclusive of insensitivity, but at a certain point you are just turning a blind eye in your own special way.
If living in a tent actually is a viable option, then we should stop treating it like it is the most sensitive topic to even talk about casually.
People should be taking as much censorship pity for all the people that live in old walkups or luxury apt in liquification zones of SF. A tent would most likely fair better during an earthquake.
I want to point out that this measure does not take effect until there is actual open housing in which to send homeless folks. They cannot be told to leave otherwise. Since there is no funding for new housing in this measure, there is some chance the removal measures outlined here will never get to be used. This means shelter will be guaranteed to anyone who is told to leave.
That said, my political club voted against this measure because the 24 hour time frame is way too short and does not meet federal standards for managing homeless population. It takes more time to engage with a homeless person and negotiate what sort of help would be best for them.
> I want to point out that this measure does not take effect until there is actual open housing in which to send homeless folks. They cannot be told to leave otherwise.
The text of the measure isn't that specific. [1] It just says that the city has to offer shelter. In no way does it state that shelter must be actually available or secured before removing the tent.
The pessimistic interpretation is that the police will be able to tell a tent dweller that they need to go to a shelter and just give them directions to the nearest one, and the requirements of the law will be satisfied.
[1] https://ballotpedia.org/San_Francisco,_California,_Prohibiti...
This looks really bad. Any chance anyone has another side to the story?
> “I strongly believe that it is not compassionate to allow human beings to live on our city streets,” wrote the measure’s author, supervisor Mark Farrell, in an op-ed. “Let’s help get the homeless into housing, not tents.”
I guess this would be the other side.
However, the article also points out that the measure doesn't provide any additional funding to pay for the housing that would be needed.
San Francisco spends roughly 35k/year per homeless person. Funding is not the issue. There are all sorts of issues around mental health, drugs, tolerance in certain neighborhoods, political corruption, inefficiencies in government etc. that contribute to the situation we have today. I guarantee you, though, that if a bunch of homeless people started camping out in Pac Heights, the issue would get "resolved" pretty quickly.
Funding is the issue, because
> There are all sorts of issues around mental health, drugs, tolerance in certain neighborhoods, political corruption, inefficiencies in government etc. that contribute to the situation we have today.
Can be addressed with funding.
Funding is the issue when it comes to a lack of housing, social and mental health services for the homeless.
> Funding is not the issue. There are all sorts of issues around mental health, drugs, tolerance in certain neighborhoods, political corruption, inefficiencies in government
Ho-hum. People become homeless because they don't have money. I've worked alongside more than one tech who has been homeless at some period in their lives. Some slept in their cars, some slept on park benches. Jim Carrey talks about how he was homeless as a teenager, what was the "mental health, drugs" etc. problem he had? He was actually working a full time job as a janitor after school.
San Francisco is full of white, upper middle class prep school assholes who have been handed everything their whole lives, who are parasites like Ron Conman, sucking vampirically off the labor of the young people working at the various startups. They sit in Atherton with their trophy wives and little brats and think up ways to fuck over the homeless people in the city. This is what the czar and his family did in Russia before the Bolsheviks lined those parasites up against the wall in 1918.
Long term homelessness is generally not just a result of lack of money. Healthy individuals can usually get out of homelessness with a bit of help. People suffering from severe mental illness or severe substance abuse have a much more difficult time escaping homelessness because they often have no support network and no way to rebuild one, and they have difficulty retaining any sort of employment.
... and the police are their de facto social workers / case workers.
I expect the property owners in the vicinity of any such proposed homeless shelter/housing would block its construction.
I think these guys are smart enough to know that people aren't setting up tents despite alternatives. How can it be compassion if what this article says is true; that the measure apparently provides no other kind of relief for them, just criminalizes their existence?
The good people of my town do this all the time. They campaign to close trailer parks or tear down low-income housing. The excuse is always "nobody should live like that".
But never do they create alternatives. Giving one the cynical feeling that its really all about rich people protecting their property values.
In my life, I've lived in a handful of home-owning working class and upper middle class metropolitan areas. Every single one of them has had a "crisis" when developers want to build low income housing. I'm talking putting signs on lawns, knocking on doors, scheduling protests, going to town hall meetings and starting grassroots campaigns to protect their property values under the guise of public safety and "think of the children".
Their stated fear is that crime will increase, but press them with some sympathy towards their anxiety and they'll freely make it known that they view their property as an investment and don't want to be in the presence of people they feel are beneath them.
I also spent a majority of my childhood in the low income housing people are so against. We didn't live in fear of robbery, assault nor was there a rampant drug problem. We frequently left our door and windows unlocked and many neighbors had our key. I had a large and healthy social circle as a kid because of the close vicinity to others the property provided. The sense of community was higher there than any other place I've lived. I've brought this up only to be told that I just don't understand.
What they say: "people shouldn't have to live without dignity"
What they mean: "people shouldn't live here without dignity"
What they do: "people without dignity shouldn't live"
They'll go somewhere.
No one can disagree with that statement. But from the article, this seems to be a typical "ban status quo, promise something better" bill where 90% of the proposal is mysteriously only concerned with the "ban status quo" part:
"Opponents of the measure point out that the proposed law does not include any funding for additional housing or shelters, and the city’s existing shelters have long waiting lists for beds."
I agree, tents don't preclude housing. Let's help the homeless get into housing, but let's not force them out of tents.
Except that the only way it "helps" them is by providing an "extra incentive" to get off the streets, which is hardly the issue.
Except in the next paragraph it says there is no provision for any housing in the bill, just removing the tents.
Unless those houses are already built ... that is pure uncut bullshit.
But with current rents in SF any permanent residence for a homeless will be seen as the city paying him 1000$ monthly. So giving homeless people housing is no starter.
Is it currently legal to build makeshift homes on the sidewalk?
I'm so glad I left that horrible place called the bay area. These inhumane rich jerks just don't want to see poor people. What a disgusting culture.
Oh yeah - what if there is a homeless colony right next to your current house? Would you say the same thing then?
> Oh yeah - what if there is a homeless colony right next to your current house? Would you say the same thing then?
So, there is actually one near me. Not next to my house, but near me: http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2015/04/01/shantytown-in-hoboken...
Weird, right? This is in Hoboken...extremely (bay-area-levels) rich area.
SF median household income: $65,519.00 Hoboken: $105,710 (population difference between Hoboken and SF is an order of magnitude, fyi)
Weird stuff. Anyway... it's definitely not "a good feeling" to see homeless people around. I donate and try to help, but I definitely get a big pang when asked for some cash for food, and the conversation goes like this:
"I don't have any cash on me, can I buy you something from this pizza place with my card?"
"No I don't want pizza."
I live in a similar situation in Brooklyn, in an area ripe for shantytown-living.
The commenters who are disgusted at the lack of compassion, while on the morally-correct side of the equation, fail to consider the practical aspects of streets saturated with homeless people. It's at best 'tolerable', often 'kinda scary' and very often 'downright dangerous'[1]. Seeing this every morning and every night, in a walking city, is a drag on public safety and, yes, neighborhood value and progress. Retail and housing suffer when people have to step over passed-out zombies on their way out of their apartments or into their stores.
I don't know what the right answer is, but from my observation it seems that the police and the prisons play the role of the mental health worker and the shelter. The former is more expensive than the latter, but it's easier.
In the article below, it took several dozen overdoses before the police finally cleared the homeless off the street. It's not a coincidence that in New York City, the homeless (and associated social problems like aggressive panhandling and threatening behavior, as well as sexual assaults) tend to hang out not too far from their shelters. The location being referenced below is near several shelters (in a neighborhood that has a huge percentage of all the shelters of the city).
1 http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/NYC-K2-Synthetic-Mariju...
The answer is engagement. Vancouver's safe injection site has an amazing record of 1) reducing the transmission of expensive diseases like HIV and Hep, 2) reducing crime (the Vancouver police are 100% behind the site), and getting users into rehab and having them be clean a year later. Basically, it's a public policy win all around--it more than pays for itself in reduced health care and police spending.
I think substance abuse and mental health issues are huge, huge factors into why able-bodied men end up 'having' to live on the street. Getting your fix is expensive and can definitely take precedence over paying your rent (or showing up at work).
I live on one side of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES), work on the other side, and walk through it twice a day. DTES is the centre of gravity for at-risk populations in the lower mainland, and it's basically where you see the homeless, the crazy, and the addicted hanging out, shooting up, and pitching tents.
It's never bothered me, and I've never been bothered. My property value is still amongst the highest in Canada. Various agencies have wisely decided to colocate services in the DTES to help the at-risk groups, and a touch of gentrification keeps police and city services involved.
So basically, I don't give a shit about a "homeless colony" (what, they're an infestation?) right next to my current house, and I'm glad that the attention it receives is focused on helping the people there rather than trying move them somewhere out of sight and out of mind.
The answer to that question isn't "Lets move the homeless colony", it's "Lets work to reduce poverty."
From what I've read, poverty definitely leads to lifestyles where you're "trapped" in poverty for a long time, or forever. It's like the disability we have in the US: once you're on it, you're very unlikely to ever get off it.
However, it's not just poverty that's the issue. It's mental health, it's drug abuse, and the lack of paths to a sustainable (long-term) lifestyle for these people who are homeless.
That means education: how to manage your money, what's a "good deal" involving various things, and how to take care of yourself.
It's incredibly surprising how many of these people get taken advantage of.
If you have close-to-or-zero skills, how can you possibly sustain yourself? If you have skills but you cannot recognize (because you were never taught) when you're being taken advantage of, how is that sustainable?
Counterexample: you could live where I live (upstate New York) on a tenth of the cost of San Francisco. A homeless person with marginally employable skills that moved from SF to upstate NY could work and afford to live in a home with heat and running water.
But if people choose not to work, I don't see what makes them any more "entitled" to live in a city than the people who work to make rent and pay taxes to support the services the city needs.
You don't earn an entitlement to live in a city; the city is obligated to justify excluding you from its area. In the U.S., vagrancy laws allowing police to generally run undesirables out of town have been found unconstitutional under due process analysis.
Everyone on the street is there for a variety of different reasons. You can't reduce it to choosing not to work.
Yes.
I still live in a place where there are homeless people all around me. The difference is that I try and look for systematic policy solutions and not just move the problem somewhere else. It's not easy, I really don't like it, but I'm not going to shirk from reality or my duty to society.
I also identify as a socialist so we're probably just not on the same page. I don't victim blame homeless people, and I don't try to sweep society's problems under the carpet.
You don't get to choose your community when you live in a city.
This is where the "this is a blaming comment speaking for others" button would come in handy to downvote this comment to oblivion. It matters not if the rationale for this comment is sensible or not - making statements that are non-provable and overarching is not a way to discuss something that is as important as a fellow human's health and well being. Rich people or not, tent cities are a less than ideal way for people to live. We can do better...together.
Which area did you end up in such that the culture is much different?
I have an idea: they should pass a law which forbids homeless people from setting up tents anyplace except certain zones. Those zones will be located in and around the very wealthiest neighborhoods in SF. Any violators will be simply moved to these locations. No funding is even necessary, only the designation of various places (like parks) in the wealthy neighborhoods as OK for homeless people to set up tents and camps.
I predict this would solve the homelessness problem in SF pretty quickly.
God damn these people.
Regulations are pointless bullshit -- unless, of course, there are homeless people dirtying up your view.
Fuck the poor!