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We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup

shafyy.com

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Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup

#161

Post by Loughla »

mdemare wrote: post #157
shafyy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oversimplifying here, but the homeless probem arises due to high housing cost and poor health care system. In addition to fighting the symptoms (which is already being done ok-ish), we need to fight the mentioned root causes. Unfortunately, the health care problem goes back to CA or even on a national level. Often times, mentally ill or people that lost their jobs for another reason become homeless, and from there th…

I heard rumors that a lot of towns just send their psychiatric homeless to SF with a one-way ticket.

That's been a rumor for as long as homelessness has existed. It's either SF, or San Diego, or Seattle, or some other large, urban, mild-weathered city.

Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup

#162

Post by jjoonathan »

CPLX wrote: post #113
arkades wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(A) It's cold (B) Our cops are super aggressive with the homeless. I mean, technically that can be described as "policy", but probably not the way you meant it I used to volunteer for an annual winter round-up, where a bunch of volunteers would get vans and go looking for homeless and try to get them into shelters. We did this on one of the coldest nights of the year, trying to prevent people from dying in the chill.…

(C) NYC has a right to shelter law. Combine that with your B and you can start to see the outlines of an actual policy decision.

Yes, but the details completely determine whether or not it is any good. A real right to shelter plus police action against homeless camps _could_ be reasonable, but if the police action is real and the right to shelter isn't, it becomes evil again.

Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup

#163

Post by [deleted] »

analogmemory wrote: post #35
superpermutat0r wrote: post #4

I can't even work in SF. The time wasted to drive to work kills me, I can't get desensitized to all the homeless shitting on streets, stabbing themselves with needles, talking schizophrenically in a dead language, every time I go grab a coffee or lunch in a cheaper area, it's like watching animal slaughter every day. Quality of life definitely much better in Mediterranean city I live today.

Cool. Good to see the privileged viewpoint of white folks still exists. I'd imagine it's much easier to judge others over the internet that to actually find ways to help them. And yes I'm being purposely judgemental of you. Have you taken the time to understand why these states happen for transient folks? Our mental health system is broken and the federal government refuses to grand basic health care for all its citi…

[deleted]

Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup

#164

Post by evmar »

CPLX wrote: post #66
shafyy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oversimplifying here, but the homeless probem arises due to high housing cost and poor health care system. In addition to fighting the symptoms (which is already being done ok-ish), we need to fight the mentioned root causes. Unfortunately, the health care problem goes back to CA or even on a national level. Often times, mentally ill or people that lost their jobs for another reason become homeless, and from there th…

I dunno. As someone who lives in NYC where we really just don't have the same problem at all it's pretty clear there are some policy reasons involved too.

When I last visited NYC (from SF) I remember walking by a guy who was older and clean but vaguely possibly homeless who as I recall was standing on the street corner minding his own business. And as I walked by, some police walked up to him and did the policey sort of "show id, what are you doing here" kind of thing.

I later marvelled to an NY-based coworker about how this could happen, since I've never seen it happen in SF (just random harassment of people who aren't even screaming/needling/etc.). His response: "oh, were you in Chelsea?" (Answer: yes.)

I guess that's one way to "solve" homelessness -- harass them until they move elsewhere.

Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup

#165

Post by opencl »

pound wrote: post #159
opencl wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The overwhelming majority of homeless people in California lived in the same county they currently do before they became homeless. Climate is clearly not the main factor. 71% in SF homeless already lived in SF, 90% already lived in California: https://socketsite.com/archives/2016/02/san-franciscos-homel... the cite link in that article is dead but refers to http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/2015-San-Fra…

There is an issue with SF report (idk about LA one) 1) It was self-reported 2) "Lived in SF" in report meant they were SF residents and this is requires just any bill with city address within 30 days (consider cases like: moved to SF with hopes of better opportunities, out on the streets in couple of months - but sf resident for a short term prior).

From the report: "Eleven percent (11%) had lived in San Francisco for less than one year."

Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup

#166

Post by yourapostasy »

shafyy wrote: post #25
superpermutat0r wrote: post #4

I can't even work in SF. The time wasted to drive to work kills me, I can't get desensitized to all the homeless shitting on streets, stabbing themselves with needles, talking schizophrenically in a dead language, every time I go grab a coffee or lunch in a cheaper area, it's like watching animal slaughter every day. Quality of life definitely much better in Mediterranean city I live today.

Oversimplifying here, but the homeless probem arises due to high housing cost and poor health care system. In addition to fighting the symptoms (which is already being done ok-ish), we need to fight the mentioned root causes. Unfortunately, the health care problem goes back to CA or even on a national level. Often times, mentally ill or people that lost their jobs for another reason become homeless, and from there th…

> ...homeless probem arises due to high housing cost...

I heard an interesting theory during a discussion of how off the rails weird some cities' denizens were X decades ago, and how you no longer really see that any longer. The hypothesis put forward was that back then rents were very cheap relative to minimum wage, and minimum wage jobs didn't take much more than a grade school education to hold down. A lot of borderline or minimally-mentally-ill people could fit in between these cracks and live out their lives relatively peacefully coexisting with the broader mainstream, though to be sure adding "color" to the surroundings.

I think this hypothesis has legs. I've read that there were successful experiments at simply outright giving homeless a place to live of their own reduced the incidence of homeless-related crimes to a statistically significant degree. If that is true, then it is worth questioning our economic incentives making housing ever-more expensive.

From my perspective as someone outside the real estate industry, I'm perfectly fine with reducing values by 10X or 100X in more HCOL areas through removal of all state support for the industry. As far as I'm concerned, that's simply stranded capital idling uselessly instead of working for everyone. I wish Bezos would apply his "your margin is my opportunity" aphorism to real estate and healthcare.

Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup

#167

Post by evmar »

redm wrote: post #83

I keep hearing that SF spends so much money on the homeless, but I don't see that to be the case. NYC spent $3.2b in 2019 [1]; they guarantee a bed for every person, every night, etc. If SF wants to solve the issue, look to NYC, and open it's checkbook. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-22/nyc-doubl...

NYC's budget is roughly 10x SF's budget. So proportionally, SF could spend ~$320m to match, which is actually right around what it does spend.

(NYC is also ~10x the population of SF, etc., so that also lines up pretty well.)

Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup

#168

Post by rtio »

superpermutat0r wrote: post #10
shafyy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you live now?

Split, Croatia. Weather is equivalent, smaller city, lots of foreigners, and a growing IT industry. For a foreigner it's also very easy to just come and live in Croatia, they give staying permits to anyone who comes to just live and spend money (not work) but after you find work, getting an EU blue card is a piece of cake.

Isn't it annoying/limiting to live in a "tourist town" or maybe that is just part of the year?

Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup

#169

Post by nradov »

asdfman123 wrote: post #67

As an outsider, at this point I have no idea why anyone would want to do a startup in SF. I mean, obviously, all the connections and resources are nice, but you are literally burning investor money on $5k/mo rent. That's absurd. Rent out a house in Austin, Texas for $2k and each of your co-founders can share a room. There's investors and as deep a talent pool as you'll ever need unless you're GoogleAmazon and you nee…

Noted venture capitalist Peter Thiel agrees that Silicon Valley / Bay Area is no longer the best location for startups due to high real estate costs.

https://www.sfgate.com/expensive-san-francisco/article/peter...

Re: We moved to Turkey from San Francisco to continue working on our startup

#170

Post by nostrademons »

FabHK wrote: post #118
nostrademons wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SF already spends an exorbitant amount on housing the homeless ($241M in 2016). Its poverty rate is also not particularly high by American city standards (9.6%, vs 11.3% for the surrounding Bay Area, 19.6% for LA, 19.0% for NYC, 34.5% for Detroit). The main reasons there's such a visible homeless problem are: 1.) Housing crisis in general. A lot of that $241M goes to lower-income residents who are at risk of homeless…

> 2.) A general laissez-faire attitude toward the homeless. [...] There's widespread opposition to criminalizing homelessness and say arresting or tazing homeless people. I want to point out that it is a departure from laissez-faire to criminalise, arrest, and taze the homeless, but another conceivable departure from laissez-faire is to house them. EDIT to clarify.

SF does this in a big way for the ordinary family that lost a job or suffered a health emergency and then got evicted because housing is hella expensive in SF. That's what much of the $241M goes to.

The homeless people that you see crowding Civic Center BART or the Tenderloin or the Mission are generally not people that want housing - they're addicts, or mentally ill, or veterans suffering from PTSD, or just rebel against the strictures of modern society. You can't force them into housing without involuntarily committing them, which is what cities generally did in the 50s and 60s. That's definitely not laissez-faire, and has its own moral issues.

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