811–820 of 1001 posts
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On my street in the Mission there were mostly illegal immigrants living on the sidewalk in tents, they told me as much.
Even supposing that is true, which seems very unlikely, it is clearly untrue of the SF homeless population in general and of the East Bay homeless population.
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Edit: Unlike the sibling poster I am saying it give it to them directly. I guarantee you it if you set the average homeless person up with a nice apartment and just gave them the change from that $4700 in a real bank account no strings attached in perpetuity the problem would get sorted real quick. Oh no they do drugs ?! like the heaviest drug users I've ever met aren't white collar. Even better offer them that same…
Definitely giving them $4700/month no strings attached will solve the problem quickly. I get it, white collar people are the heaviest drug users, but the fent will kill them in the street in a couple of months. That’s just $10,400 spent, which is much better than where we are now. It is, however, a very dark solution, and not humane at all.
If you want to force people into rehab because their addiction is going to kill them then do that. That's an independent problem from being homeless.
We can't be like addiction is a disease and "just get clean your ability to have food and shelter depends on it" at the same time.
Edit: Also good fucking lord I can't even imagine a worse way to do permanent housing. You disperse them into regular neighborhoods like any other renter. Whoever thought packing them together was a good idea is insane.
The bit about white collar drug users isn't some snipe about executives doing too much cocaine, but that white collar drug users aren't dropping dead like flies on vinegar.
>oakland has 40 shelter beds
Where is the money going, I wonder? The article alludes to it, but I wish they would have gone farther in following the money; I suspect a lot of the spending goes to overtime for police on enforcement actions, as opposed to any long term solutions.
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The structures built on land usually depreciate over time. It’s the land value that appreciates. So building new stock would still increase demand for land which would increase prices everywhere.
Existing structures targeting lower density and higher cost per square foot could be repurposed and optimized for affordability. Even policy changes regarding what new projects are permissible would go a long way. Are you making the argument that it's an economic/geographic impossibility to house more people for less money rather than an issue of political/social will?
Think about it like this: housing the homeless is a subsidy. Subsidies increase demand.
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The strategy is called “housing first” and has been proven to work in Finland: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle... The idea that homeless people need homes to be able to advance further seems to trigger some people — after all, most of us pay for our housing, so why should they get it for free? What people don’t consider is that when “we”, the people with houses, don’t spend our dollars ho…
The way 'housing first' has been implemented in SF is terrible. It is operated as a lottery helping a very tiny percentage of the homeless with a house/apt worth $1mil+. Those numbers will never solve the problem. If I saw a reasonable housing first program where it actually provides cost-efficient housing for all that need it, I'd be a strong proponent. The current system is not that, it's incredibly unfair, a tax-p…
1 million dollars in San Francisco real estate is a one room (maybe two room if it's in extra bad shape) hovel.
And that's the real problem. San Francisco is not a place for the poor to try to raise their lives to middle class. It's a place for middle class to struggle to stay above water. The homeless in sf need to be given decent places to live in a place where land costs something normal. That place does not currently exist in or near San Francisco, but can be reached by an hour or two bus ride.
Having lived/spent time in a few places with varying homeless problems and approaches to homelessness, I find it fucking depressing every time I read about how badly - and inefficiently - the US handles it. Probably because I see alarming parallels with my own country. Billions going where, exactly? If the problems growing, and you are just sinking billions into it without making any measurable impact, where the fuck…
I mean if you really want to be blunt and honest about it, the reason we have a worse problem is because ...... Drugs, mental illness, and sometimes just bad decision making skills. The US has a LOT of drugs, and you can look at our education system at large and make up your own conclusion about our decision making ability as a whole. I volunteered with homeless and the facts are out there. Honestly the experience le…
If homelessness gets solved, these giant organizations cease to be
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The most frustrating part of that is the absurd number of people who see the obvious problem of wildly expensive and tightly constrained housing supply, complain about it being impossible to buy a home, and then actively refuse to even allow for the possibility that cities may have been under-building for some time.
If those people bothered to actually vote instead of just complaining online then the problem would be less severe.
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The way 'housing first' has been implemented in SF is terrible. It is operated as a lottery helping a very tiny percentage of the homeless with a house/apt worth $1mil+. Those numbers will never solve the problem. If I saw a reasonable housing first program where it actually provides cost-efficient housing for all that need it, I'd be a strong proponent. The current system is not that, it's incredibly unfair, a tax-p…
It's unfortunate that some of the smallest, most expensive, most mismanaged and ideological 7x7 mile real estate in the US is being used as the dumpster for humans in need of serious medical attention and societal support. SF can barely build a public toilet without it turning into a taxpayer trough feeding frenzy, so expecting it to be the Mecca of the homeless, the addicted and the downtrodden is comedic at best, a…
We already have a (very successful, uncontroversial) program that provides free bus tickets to unhoused people who came from elsewhere and have a support system wherever they came from. That leaves the other 70%.
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I'm quoting a tweet from the president of Y Combinator. I'm not against giving people housing, but I think there needs to be a sobriety requirement. Why would putting someone in a house cure them of their addiction? Put them through rehab, then give them a house when they leave rehab.
They use drugs because they live on the streets. Treating a symptom instead of the cause is stupid, especially if the symptom (drug use) will likely return as soon as they return to the streets after rehab/prison.
Drugs put you in a place where you prioritize getting high over paying rent. And so it goes.