San Francisco Orders Homeless to Leave Tent Camp

My real frustration is in fact with our cities are incentivizing businesses to create jobs while not creating more housing supply nor using that capital to improve our city like solve homelessness. This is unethical and despicable.

The city is not run by the techies who work here. The city is run by rich companies AND entrenched groups.

Entrenched groups are the older long-time homeowners looking to push the value of their own homes, the non-profit communities that want to protect their neighborhood's culture and the longtime renters who want to keep their rent control. There are countless entrenched players who push the status quo and the majority of them don't have that much money. Whether you agree that "keeping neighborhood culture" is important or not, we must first acknowledge that doing so is contributing in some way to housing prices.

I believe rich companies are not inherently evil. Many wish to help their employees by encouraging cities to build new housing alongside their new offices. However, when push comes to shove, companies will prioritize their office over new housing projects. New offices are also a lot easier to sell to many of the entrenched players.

How do we combat this all? We vote! Oh wait...

Unfortunately, those who have recently moved here (who tend to be techies) tend not to vote and many cannot simply because they haven't yet lived here long enough. Additionally, those who commute (most people) cannot vote in the locations where may be truly relevant. For example, if I work at Twitter but live in Oakland, I cannot vote to encourage more housing to be built in San Francisco.

The other big problem that many ignore is that many of us cannot vote in cities because frankly, we're not American. At last I counted there are over 250,000 Canadians alone that live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Don't forget all the other TN, H-1Bs, L-2, non-visa aliens and families that live (and more than likely, rent) here. The Bay Area likely has the most non-voting capable residents in the US. I would guess that up to 10% of Bay area residents cannot vote.

I don't know that you understand the problem at all if you refer to it as a choice. Particularly if you think the alternative choice is home ownership in abandoned areas of the country's most troubled city. Owning some empty, stripped-apart house in Detroit doesn't solve anybody's problems and certainly doesn't eliminate the cost of supporting the downtrodden. Many people in Detroit who have skills aren't finding employment and are barely surviving. A property title doesn't fill your stomach day after day. And the 4-figure houses you refer to are that way because they represent more liability than asset. They need massive investment to make them liveable.

Your comment is frankly ignorant.

I may be naive but I think we should be tackling the homeless with mental problems first. While I certainly have more empathy to those who have "lost my job, lost my apartment, and hence am homeless", I am unconfident that traditional support services can put them back on their feet without drastic improvements to the housing crisis in San Francisco. Furthermore, the mentally ill make everyone (especially those homeless who have fallen on hard times) less safe.

We need to start replacing these little residential houses with 10 story buildings. There is nowhere else to build, we need to start upgrading the existing buildings.

Will that change the city? Well yes, but cities evolve and some of the houses built after the earthquake are anachronistic and of out place in this time.