San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless • Hacker News Board

Re: San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless

#21

Post by gbear605 » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:13 AM UTC

MaupitiBlue wrote: post #13

bparsons wrote: post #7

San Francisco in 2019 arguably has more wealth concentrated within it than any place at any other time in history. Making poor and mentally ill people sleep on the street is a choice you have made as a society. Places with far, far fewer resources have somehow managed to sort this problem out.

Have you actually been to SF? Nobody makes these people do anything. In any sane polis, you'd institutionalize the ones that require it, and run the rest off. SF's leaders pride themselves on adopting the opposite approach.

A better option instead of "run the rest off" is to actually give them houses.[1][2][3]

[1]: https://aeon.co/essays/best-way-to-solve-homelessness-give-p...

[2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36092852 (includes specifics on San Francisco)

[3]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/22/home-free

Re: San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless

#22

Post by surfallday » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:13 AM UTC

hypatiahypatia wrote: post #5

"If San Francisco wanted to give its homeless addicts their best shot at stability, it would go after the open-air drug trade with every possible tool, including immigration law" "Taxpayer subsidies should go to citizens, not individuals who are defying the rule of law." "The tales veer from one confused and improbable situation to the next, against a backdrop of drug use, petty crime, and chaotic child-rearing. Behi…

>>The author presumably has no problem with the wealthy doing drugs

1. Probably true and 2. Probably because "the wealthy" doing drugs generally does not result in outbreaks of typhus and typhoid fever; and MASSIVE rat infestations like we see in LA.

Re: San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless

#23

Post by zanny » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:17 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #10

hypatiahypatia wrote: post #5

"If San Francisco wanted to give its homeless addicts their best shot at stability, it would go after the open-air drug trade with every possible tool, including immigration law" "Taxpayer subsidies should go to citizens, not individuals who are defying the rule of law." "The tales veer from one confused and improbable situation to the next, against a backdrop of drug use, petty crime, and chaotic child-rearing. Behi…

As a Bangladeshi (and I suspect folks from almost any Asian country) these views seem to be a given, and entirely consistent with what my parents might say. I’d wager it’s a very small group of people, especially outside the West, who would consider these ideas fascist, or at all controversial.

And those policies, internationally, alienate the disenfranchized and lead them to a life of crime and likely an early grave.

Asia has a bit of an escape hatch in how essential and inescapable family is - its rare you have someone so thoroughly hopeless there because its the obligation of their blood relatives to do something about them before they are publicly homeless and drug addled. So you don't see people in this state as often, but when they are, it is the worst place to be homeless and helpless.

Its casting a wide net of "Asian" but Japan (or at least greater Tokyo) has a housing first imitative of their own that does work resoundingly well for their very infrequent homelessness cases. Its legitimately hard to perfectly "fall through the cracks" there between familial obligation and state support programs.

Re: San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless

#24

Post by rrrhys » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:18 AM UTC

bparsons wrote: post #7

San Francisco in 2019 arguably has more wealth concentrated within it than any place at any other time in history. Making poor and mentally ill people sleep on the street is a choice you have made as a society. Places with far, far fewer resources have somehow managed to sort this problem out.

Did you read the article? Until it gets all 'get rid of the homeless' in the second half, it breaks down this argument in a lot of detail.

Re: San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless

#25

Post by PeterisP » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:18 AM UTC

GrassFedAltCoin wrote: post #6

Something annoying about this kind of reporting is that the writer constantly refers to the homeless population as a monolithic group called "the homeless." The writer ascribes all kinds of attitudes and beliefs onto them, ostensibly based on the writer's interactions with homeless people in investigating this story. There's a weird self-fulfilling prophecy going on in which the writer only interacts with homeless pe…

One particular inconsistency in the article is that it intersperses mentions of a sizeable mentally ill homeless population with an expectation and recommendation that they can be supported or housed in a manner that requires these people to accept responsibility for themselves and keep to a "single standard of behavior for all" - which is not really compatible with many of the involved mental illnesses.

The author does mention relevant aspects of multiple different subgroups, but still suggests various universal "solutions" that might work for one group but obviously can't work for another.

Re: San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless

#26

Post by zanny » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:23 AM UTC

MaupitiBlue wrote: post #13

bparsons wrote: post #7

San Francisco in 2019 arguably has more wealth concentrated within it than any place at any other time in history. Making poor and mentally ill people sleep on the street is a choice you have made as a society. Places with far, far fewer resources have somehow managed to sort this problem out.

Have you actually been to SF? Nobody makes these people do anything. In any sane polis, you'd institutionalize the ones that require it, and run the rest off. SF's leaders pride themselves on adopting the opposite approach.

> run the rest off

Yes, its sure to solve their homeless problem by putting them on a bus and dropping them in a desert.

I mean, it will solve their homelessness problem. When they are dead.

That is such a gross and inhumane way to approach it. If people are homeless you figure out why that is and fix it so they can be housed, not kick the can over the fence into the next precinct over.

The mindset that it sure it inconsiderate of people to exist and be inconvenient in their existence is why the problem happens in the first place. Have some damn humility and empathy, there is no gene to be homeless, its a product of circumstance and bad luck. For every lucky bastard who grows up with the right people to make the right connections to get the right break to make it rich there is someone who grows up with the wrong people who abandon them to drug addiction and the streets.

99% of the time the only thing separating you from anyone else you walk past on the street are the collective circumstances that led you to where you are now. Nothing innate preordained your successes or failures.

Re: San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless

#27

Post by surfallday » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:25 AM UTC

GrassFedAltCoin wrote: post #6

Something annoying about this kind of reporting is that the writer constantly refers to the homeless population as a monolithic group called "the homeless." The writer ascribes all kinds of attitudes and beliefs onto them, ostensibly based on the writer's interactions with homeless people in investigating this story. There's a weird self-fulfilling prophecy going on in which the writer only interacts with homeless pe…

>>"You aren't, for instance, going to get a homeless person who doesn't do drugs"

what does that even mean (like they only abuse alcohol?)?

There are not thousands but 10s of thousands of discarded needles being cleaned up monthly and weekly (https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/09/04/the-city-picks-...)

>> Feels like an inherently biased sort of investigation.

this is a weird call out.

What is the proposed alternative here?

Re: San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless

#28

Post by aazaa » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:29 AM UTC

> San Francisco’s progressive self-image soon trumped common sense, and in 1996, at the urging of the Coalition on Homelessness, voters turned Jordan out of city hall in favor of former state assembly speaker Willie Brown. Brown had run on a compassion platform, but he soon came to repudiate it, observing with amazement that many of the homeless didn’t actually want to come off the streets. ...

When people think of the Great Depression, they tend to imagine bread lines, lots of unemployment, and general poverty.

What if a modern depression in the US looks like San Francisco? A deep divide between haves and have-nots. The have-nots spiral ever further downward, propelled by abundant drugs, while the haves struggle to comprehend (or even notice) what's happening. Leaders have run out of ideas about how to solve the problem, contenting themselves with damage control.

All the while drip, drip drip... the problems continue to compound.

Re: San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless

#29

Post by rayiner » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:30 AM UTC

zanny wrote: post #23

rayiner wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Bangladeshi (and I suspect folks from almost any Asian country) these views seem to be a given, and entirely consistent with what my parents might say. I’d wager it’s a very small group of people, especially outside the West, who would consider these ideas fascist, or at all controversial.

And those policies, internationally, alienate the disenfranchized and lead them to a life of crime and likely an early grave. Asia has a bit of an escape hatch in how essential and inescapable family is - its rare you have someone so thoroughly hopeless there because its the obligation of their blood relatives to do something about them before they are publicly homeless and drug addled. So you don't see people in thi…

The article isn’t taking issue with housing first initiatives or the like. It’s taking issue with the normalization and enablement of deviant and anti-social behavior. Enforcement of laws and norms against such conduct is very aggressive in Japan (and Singapore, etc.). That doesn’t mean that, for people who are mentally incapable of following those norms, there can’t be compassionate care in an institutional setting. But they aren’t permitted to disrupt normal society.

Re: San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless

#30

Post by gbear605 » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:32 AM UTC

surfallday wrote: post #27

GrassFedAltCoin wrote: post #6

Something annoying about this kind of reporting is that the writer constantly refers to the homeless population as a monolithic group called "the homeless." The writer ascribes all kinds of attitudes and beliefs onto them, ostensibly based on the writer's interactions with homeless people in investigating this story. There's a weird self-fulfilling prophecy going on in which the writer only interacts with homeless pe…

>>"You aren't, for instance, going to get a homeless person who doesn't do drugs" what does that even mean (like they only abuse alcohol?)? There are not thousands but 10s of thousands of discarded needles being cleaned up monthly and weekly ( https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/09/04/the-city-picks-... ) >> Feels like an inherently biased sort of investigation. this is a weird call out. What is the proposed alter…

> what does that even mean (like they only abuse alcohol?)?

Only about 35% of the homeless population has an addiction. Less than half of the homeless population neither has an addiction nor a mental illness. [1] Just because there is lots of substance abuse (and yes, there certainly is), doesn't mean that the average homeless person does drugs. When you talk about the homeless population, you have to include people who are really quite like you but had a bad turn. Many of them have a story like "I got a mortgage with a large down payment just before 2008, when I lost my job and then shortly my house. I had to go to the streets because I had nowhere else to go."

[1]: https://sunrisehouse.com/addiction-demographics/homeless-pop...