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Helping the homeless in San Francisco

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Re: Helping the homeless in San Francisco

#11

Post by cauterized »

dfabulich wrote: post #4

> We spend a lot of time in San Francisco and Silicon Valley thinking about ways to make people’s lives easier. And through that innovation, we’ve uncovered amazing opportunities – just think about life before Google Maps! But what if we aimed just 1% of that focus of looking out on what we can invent, in on what we can improve? What if we partnered with folks like those at ECS to match their decades of experience on…

Probably not to solve it, but maybe to improve on it.

Could you write an app that would make homeless outreach volunteers 2x-10x more efficient?

How about one that would crowd-source data collection to support political initiatives?

Or find a way to funnel food wasted by restaurants and supermarkets into the bellies of hungry people?

Maybe it's not just making an app, but turning the focus of SV's culture of "disruption" upon social problems. How could you "disrupt" the social, political, financial, or logistical patterns and problems that cause and perpetuate homelessness?

Re: Helping the homeless in San Francisco

#13

Post by StavrosK »

bxb1552 wrote: post #12

It's hard to believe that the problem is a lack of funds when the city's 2015-16 budget allocates $241m to help ~7k homeless people. It sounds more like we can't figure out how to deploy these resources effectively.

Jeez, $35k/yr/person and they're still homeless? If this were happening in my country, I'd be certain most of the money is lining someone's pockets.

Re: Helping the homeless in San Francisco

#14

Post by jxramos »

That ECS stuff makes me think about that old Heather MacDonald article about The sidewalks of San Francisco and all various interest groups and cynical factions she unveils in her article which she refers to as "Homelessness, Inc". It's forever changed my skepticism around this topic. http://www.city-journal.org/html/sidewalks-san-francisco-133...

Re: Helping the homeless in San Francisco

#15

Post by imh »

bxb1552 wrote: post #12

It's hard to believe that the problem is a lack of funds when the city's 2015-16 budget allocates $241m to help ~7k homeless people. It sounds more like we can't figure out how to deploy these resources effectively.

That sounds like a ton, but for the estimated 7k-10k homeless people in SF, that's $24k-34k per person annually. A lot of money, but not an insane amount given the high local costs of absolutely everything.

Re: Helping the homeless in San Francisco

#16

Post by mjevans »

cauterized wrote: post #11
dfabulich wrote: post #4

> We spend a lot of time in San Francisco and Silicon Valley thinking about ways to make people’s lives easier. And through that innovation, we’ve uncovered amazing opportunities – just think about life before Google Maps! But what if we aimed just 1% of that focus of looking out on what we can invent, in on what we can improve? What if we partnered with folks like those at ECS to match their decades of experience on…

Probably not to solve it, but maybe to improve on it. Could you write an app that would make homeless outreach volunteers 2x-10x more efficient? How about one that would crowd-source data collection to support political initiatives? Or find a way to funnel food wasted by restaurants and supermarkets into the bellies of hungry people? Maybe it's not just making an app, but turning the focus of SV's culture of "disrupt…

Re: Food waste.

My experience with food waste is that it is primarily an combination of liability, lack of incentives, and very slightly infrastructure/organization.

Businesses and individuals worry about the liability; what if I /give/ someone food (presumably in good faith) and then they turn on me and sue me for some form of payout. (Political, laws)

The incentives part, how can you provide incentive for someone to give away food that is still good, but nearing the end of being good, to those who need it in a timely manor so that it reaches those with need. How can you encourage the correct kind of food being donated? (Probably political arena taxes and tax credits to manage this; yes both, you have to punish undesired behavior too.)

The infrastructure largely exists in most places, but communicating that to the public (awareness) and making the public's interaction with that structure easy (here's the one area Tech could help; aside from raw funds) are the issues.

Re: Helping the homeless in San Francisco

#17

Post by Mz »

dfabulich wrote: post #4

> We spend a lot of time in San Francisco and Silicon Valley thinking about ways to make people’s lives easier. And through that innovation, we’ve uncovered amazing opportunities – just think about life before Google Maps! But what if we aimed just 1% of that focus of looking out on what we can invent, in on what we can improve? What if we partnered with folks like those at ECS to match their decades of experience on…

but this sounds to me like the author is inviting us to solve SF homelessness using technology.

Technology can be enormously useful in this space. I am homeless and I make money online in part by blogging, in part by doing freelance work.

You want to do some good in San Francisco in this space, let me suggest you start a San Francisco version of The San Diego Homeless Survival Guide -- listing important resources like where to get free food if you need it, as well as free electricity and wifi -- and then also give away free tablets to homeless people in the area.

http://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/

I used the internet to research my next city and moved from San Diego more than a year ago and my quality of life has been better ever since. My health is better, my income is trending up and if I can come up with $7.5 to $10k in the next few weeks, I am planning to buy a house.

Technology can do wonder to provide gig work, low cost access to information that is valuable on the street and help homeless people become digital nomads and start soling their own problems and pulling themselves up by the bootstraps -- instead of becoming trapped in shitty homeless programs that you treat you worse than an animal.

Re: Helping the homeless in San Francisco

#18

Post by SmokyBorbon »

> how on earth is it possible that the most technologically advanced city in the country, maybe the world, can allow this type of poverty, sickness, drug abuse, and helplessness exist on its doorsteps?

should be

> how on earth is it possible that San Francisco is allowed to cause this type of poverty, sickness, drug abuse, and helplessness?

Do-gooders like this author are the source of the suffering. We shouldn't expect them to come up with the cure.

In my city they providing meals to the homeless without a professional food preparation license. I'm sure the idiots intended to improve the quality of food the homeless receive. Instead it just starved them. I'm sure next year they'll come up with another idiotic solution to the starvation problem. But they'll never admit they caused it.

Re: Helping the homeless in San Francisco

#19

Post by the_economist »

Homelessness is mainly a byproduct of mental illness and drug addiction. If you want to solve homelessness, you need to target those problems. I would suggest that new technology is needed, particularly in the case of mental illness. We do not have a good medicine to treat schizophrenia, for example.

The city of San Francisco spends $241 million/year on ~7 thousand homeless, an indication that throwing money at this problem doesn't do much.

Re: Helping the homeless in San Francisco

#20

Post by cauterized »

mjevans wrote: post #16
cauterized wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not to solve it, but maybe to improve on it. Could you write an app that would make homeless outreach volunteers 2x-10x more efficient? How about one that would crowd-source data collection to support political initiatives? Or find a way to funnel food wasted by restaurants and supermarkets into the bellies of hungry people? Maybe it's not just making an app, but turning the focus of SV's culture of "disrupt…

Re: Food waste. My experience with food waste is that it is primarily an combination of liability, lack of incentives, and very slightly infrastructure/organization. Businesses and individuals worry about the liability; what if I /give/ someone food (presumably in good faith) and then they turn on me and sue me for some form of payout. (Political, laws) The incentives part, how can you provide incentive for someone t…

Yup, communication and facilitation are great places to start for a lot of these social challenges.

As for the rest: I'm aware of at least one very effective NGO in NYC whose mission is just such food distribution. The organization is called City Harvest, and I'm sure that a) it could use fresh new ideas and technical initiatives, and b) organizations in other cities could learn a lot by copying their model and learning how they handle the legal and logistical challenges.

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