Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

San Francisco library turning off WiFi at night to keep homeless from using it

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 184 posts

Re: San Francisco library turning off WiFi at night to keep homeless from using it

#121

Post by scarmig »

politelemon wrote: post #101
0xB31B1B wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Library wifi is not a homeless service. An 24 hour open seat on a subway is not a homeless service. Parks where children play is not a homeless service. Public goods being overtaken by an antisocial drug users in the name of homeless support is not progressive.

It boggles my mind to see a comment like this, it is fundamentally based on the assumption that homeless people are subhuman and not deserving of amenities. Further it's looking at the purpose and situation in life as a qualification of usage. A homeless person walking into a library to use it, is now a library patron, would they still be excluded due to them being homeless? If I am upset one day and decide to take a…

Everyone should have access to public amenities. But a widespread homelessness problem ends up denying amenities to people who aren't homeless: when libraries regularly have people smoking meth or shooting up in the bathrooms, that makes it uncomfortable for most people to use. It's easy enough to say "they should just get over it, someone passed out on the bathroom floor is not really a threat to anyone," but that betrays a certain level of privilege that ignores the feelings of most people and the genuine lack of safety and cleanliness that homelessness introduces to those spaces.

In your hypothetical example, if you were inebriated, aggressive, and unhygienic, I'd strongly support you being removed from the subway circuit, because you'd similarly be denying access to it to others.

Re: San Francisco library turning off WiFi at night to keep homeless from using it

#122

Post by JumpCrisscross »

sangnoir wrote: post #119
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How about shoring up the social safety net like other developed countries? Genuinely curious: how is the mental-health and drug addiction nexus dealt with when one has an unwilling participant?

Participate in what exactly? You won't find many takers if the intervention is automatic institutionalization. There are a lot of areas the US has not explored between commiting people to mental asylums and letting them roam the streets.

> Participate in what exactly?

I don't know–I'm asking what "other developed countries" do.

Re: San Francisco library turning off WiFi at night to keep homeless from using it

#123

Post by stickfigure »

notaustinpowers wrote: post #87
stickfigure wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your address and WiFi password? Maybe we can turn your neighborhood into the homeless camp known for free wifi. Homelessness is a complex subject but the impact of homeless people is not spread evenly. The people that live in that neighborhood (I used to be one) don't want it concentrated there. A few homeless people might be tolerable; a major camp is not, and free wifi at night acts as a magnet. I don't blam…

Kick 'em while they're down right? How dare you, a public citizen, use public services!

Nobody is being denied public services; the WiFi works for everyone during daylight hours. It's just turned off at night to discourage people from sleeping there. They close and lock the library doors too.

Re: San Francisco library turning off WiFi at night to keep homeless from using it

#124

Post by FireBeyond »

michaelt wrote: post #116
FireBeyond wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell us all about Willard's booming economy and the wide swathes of open jobs available to new residents there... ... in a town of 250 people, where nearly a third of the population lives below the poverty line. The ONLY people that benefits is the residents of SF or wherever, that successfully managed to "make it someone else's problem".

The homeless people who get a roof over their heads don't benefit from it? Really?

I didn't say it was without benefit, whatsoever. But it's not a net positive. Now you have a bunch of people who the local populace is going to be bitter at, because they get subsidized shelter. There's no jobs to be had, so you have people living there who are now going to be taking more from local social services (and they're not contributing particularly to local taxes). There's not much of anything to do there (and not in the whiny sense, there's near zero amenities, it's a town of 250 people). They're stuck there, because any notable services and infrastructure require a car (there's no public transit infrastructure).

In my mind? All you've done is create a powder keg.

Re: San Francisco library turning off WiFi at night to keep homeless from using it

#125

Post by panda888888 »

notaustinpowers wrote: post #72
0xB31B1B wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Library wifi is not a homeless service. An 24 hour open seat on a subway is not a homeless service. Parks where children play is not a homeless service. Public goods being overtaken by an antisocial drug users in the name of homeless support is not progressive.

I hope you never become homeless. I was, for 4 weeks, and my local libraries wifi is what helped me stay in touch with my parents when my phone data was shut off for nonpayment. It helped me secure a job back at home. You need to rethink your idea of what homelessness is. It's not antisocial drug users. It's also LGBT kids thrown out of their home. It's families being evicted because the parents lost their job. Even…

As I said in a different comment to another user, compassion fatigue is real. Maybe this makes me cold-hearted, but where I live, sympathy, support, and assistance enable these people to voluntarily continue their lifestyle. 90+% of the homeless people I encounter are addicted to drugs and/or have a significant, untreated mental illness, to the point where they'd prefer to stay on the street as opposed to working. These people don't use the library to look for jobs, they use the library to sell stolen shit on craigslist in order to fund their drug use.

Re: San Francisco library turning off WiFi at night to keep homeless from using it

#126

Post by 8f2ab37a-ed6c »

FireBeyond wrote: post #110
michaelt wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the average home in San Francisco sells for $1.2 million, and the average home in Willard, New Mexico sells for $120,000 is it really so dreadful to help ten times as many homeless people?

Tell us all about Willard's booming economy and the wide swathes of open jobs available to new residents there... ... in a town of 250 people, where nearly a third of the population lives below the poverty line. The ONLY people that benefits is the residents of SF or wherever, that successfully managed to "make it someone else's problem".

People with non-tech jobs already can't afford to live in SF. Unless you're expecting the formerly unhoused to suddenly become a Senior Machine Learning Engineer at FAANG, they aren't going to have a great time trying to make ends meet in SF.

It's not a city where you want to rediscover yourself in, unless you inherited property from a previous generation or you're one of the lucky few whose career is benefiting from the latest tech gold rush. You will not escape the homelessness cycle unless SF taxpayers guarantee you free housing until you get hired by Netflix.

Re: San Francisco library turning off WiFi at night to keep homeless from using it

#127

Post by silverquiet »

somerandomqaguy wrote: post #58
notaustinpowers wrote: post #12

Every day I start to believe more and more that people won't stop with homelessness until every homeless person is dead. "Emergency housing is a drain on taxpayer dollars." "Job placement is taking jobs away from locals." "Soup kitchens are another drain on taxpayer money." "Homeless services are a waste of money." It makes me sick how people can act when it comes to the homeless population when so many of us are jus…

I doubt they want them dead. If I had to guess, I'd say they just want them gone. How many people would look the other way if we were talking putting homeless into death camps and mass murdering them, that I have no idea about.

One of the more absurd details of the holocaust was that it started as a plan to move all the Jews to Madagascar. (I like to imagine a bunch of Nazis in a room in the early 30's with a world map and they just sort of agreed that it looked like a big enough island). They just wanted the Jews gone too, but economic realities caught up with them I suppose.

Re: San Francisco library turning off WiFi at night to keep homeless from using it

#128

Post by 8f2ab37a-ed6c »

2023throwawayy wrote: post #64
8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair there's gotta be a more cost-effective place to house the unhoused than the Castro, West Village or Beverly Hills. I'm sure we can find cheaper stretches of land somewhere in the US.

To be fair... "Go somewhere that rich people aren't" isn't much of a solution.

That's an uncharitable read. There are market realities to the cost of real estate, there's no need to add a moralistic spin to it.

Re: San Francisco library turning off WiFi at night to keep homeless from using it

#129

Post by Beldin »

joenot443 wrote: post #14
reaperducer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in hopes the Castro neighborhood’s unhoused population would move on. We really need to implement solutions better than "go be homeless somewhere else."

In NYC the DHS intakes and beds 60,000 homeless people _every single night_. To say that there aren't solutions in place is incorrect. At least in NYC, the folks you see sleeping on sidewalks have broadly chosen that position over a bed in a shelter. It's a point of pride for many New Yorkers that if you're homeless and willing to get clean, the city will provide a bed for you every night. https://www.nyc.gov/assets/…

> In NYC the DHS intakes and beds 60,000 homeless people _every single night_.

I interpreted parent's use of the term "solution" quite differently.

Re: San Francisco library turning off WiFi at night to keep homeless from using it

#130

Post by seanmcdirmid »

joenot443 wrote: post #14
reaperducer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in hopes the Castro neighborhood’s unhoused population would move on. We really need to implement solutions better than "go be homeless somewhere else."

In NYC the DHS intakes and beds 60,000 homeless people _every single night_. To say that there aren't solutions in place is incorrect. At least in NYC, the folks you see sleeping on sidewalks have broadly chosen that position over a bed in a shelter. It's a point of pride for many New Yorkers that if you're homeless and willing to get clean, the city will provide a bed for you every night. https://www.nyc.gov/assets/…

> It's a point of pride for many New Yorkers that if you're homeless and willing to get clean, the city will provide a bed for you every night.

And if you don't want to get clean, just go to San Francisco? At least you can sleep outside in any season without dying.

Post reply on HN