Live data from Hacker News

Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

theguardian.com

111–120 of 153 posts

Re: Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

#111
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest issue with shelters is also that they're incredibly unsafe, much of the time. Rape, robbery, and assault are commonplace.

Y: "There are too many homeless here, it feels unsafe." A: "How dare you! Those are human beings!" Y: "Why can't they stay in shelters?" A: "They feel unsafe, there are too many homeless there." It would be funny if it weren't tragic.

What's tragic is that you think warehousing people who are overwhelmingly addicts, or mentally ill would be workable. The term, 'Bedlam' springs to mind.

Besides, it's almost like different homeless people are... different... people.

Re: Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

#112
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Y: "There are too many homeless here, it feels unsafe." A: "How dare you! Those are human beings!" Y: "Why can't they stay in shelters?" A: "They feel unsafe, there are too many homeless there." It would be funny if it weren't tragic.

What's tragic is that you think warehousing people who are overwhelmingly addicts, or mentally ill would be workable. The term, 'Bedlam' springs to mind. Besides, it's almost like different homeless people are... different... people.

That is not what I think.

Re: Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

#113
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... without any sense of responsibility ... ones who take advantage ... people who don't learn to get along ... All this sounds like you're blaming the homeless. Your last paragraph suggests that you have solutions to the problem. What are they?

Call me crazy, but I think it's pretty obvious that the only solution to homelessness is homes. Of course that's the compassionate solution, but compassion holds little weight in the libertarian idealist sociopathy of Silicon Valley. But even from a cost perspective housing is the only solution. You can make homelessness illegal, but then you're just housing the homeless in prisons. If you're going to house people an…

Begs the question of, homes where. Public housing, hotel rooms, condominiums, remote cabins, camps, shelters, the devil is in those details.

"Homeless" is a euphemism, more of a metonym for a cluster of issues that form an identifiable other. It's a general problem of how should a society deal with extreme exceptional minorities. From a majority rule perspective, there are probably still more homeless people than millionaires (let alone billionaires) in the bay area, so maybe they will organize and win the right to camp anywhere.

Rich people need permits, licenses, planning permission, and community consent to build homes. Tent dwellers, not so much. In fact, if the resolution doesn't pass to prevent people from camping in the street, what's to stop anyone from setting up pre-fab luxury sidewalk camps like those at burning man.

Re: Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

#114
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's tragic is that you think warehousing people who are overwhelmingly addicts, or mentally ill would be workable. The term, 'Bedlam' springs to mind. Besides, it's almost like different homeless people are... different... people.

That is not what I think.

I can only read posts, not minds.

Re: Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

#115
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me crazy, but I think it's pretty obvious that the only solution to homelessness is homes. Of course that's the compassionate solution, but compassion holds little weight in the libertarian idealist sociopathy of Silicon Valley. But even from a cost perspective housing is the only solution. You can make homelessness illegal, but then you're just housing the homeless in prisons. If you're going to house people an…

Begs the question of, homes where. Public housing, hotel rooms, condominiums, remote cabins, camps, shelters, the devil is in those details. "Homeless" is a euphemism, more of a metonym for a cluster of issues that form an identifiable other. It's a general problem of how should a society deal with extreme exceptional minorities. From a majority rule perspective, there are probably still more homeless people than mil…

> Begs the question of, homes where. Public housing, hotel rooms, condominiums, remote cabins, camps, shelters, the devil is in those details.

There are a wide variety of options. One which has historically worked well in Europe is to provide an area of shipping containers converted into simple homes with a shower, toilet, cot, and padlock on the door.

> "Homeless" is a euphemism, more of a metonym for a cluster of issues that form an identifiable other.

No, "homeless" is not a fucking euphemism. It means "without a home", just like "jobless" means "without a job" and "hopeless" means "without hope" and "grasp-on-reality-less" means "without a grasp on reality".

> Rich people need permits, licenses, planning permission, and community consent to build homes. Tent dwellers, not so much.

These permits, licenses, planning permission, and are community consent are necessary to prevent people with a wide variety of options from making decisions that harm other people.

Tent dwellers arguably cause harm to others by being there, but they don't have other options. The voluntarily homeless are few and far between.

The two kinds of laws are incomparable: one seeks to limit the harm done by people with too much power, while the other tries to write out of existence the only option a group of people have.

> In fact, if the resolution doesn't pass to prevent people from camping in the street, what's to stop anyone from setting up pre-fab luxury sidewalk camps like those at burning man.

When this becomes a problem let me know. Meanwhile, maybe we can talk about current real problems that exist, like the people who we are literally forcing to rot to death in our streets.

Re: Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

#116

This article addresses a lot of the myths of homelessness which get repeated in any discussion about SF homeless (with supporting citation). http://48hills.org/2016/02/16/five-myths-about-the-homeless-... Key point in my mind when it comes to talking about these tent cities, is that most of SF's homeless -- over 70% -- were living in San Francisco at the time they became homeless. And as much as 50% of the homeless h…

That link says that the problem is that they got priced out and that's why they're homeless (and you imply that's the cause too). I don't buy it. I have tons of friends who have gotten priced out of SF, or even the whole bay area. They moved to other parts of the state or country. It sucks, but it didn't make them homeless.

Re: Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

#117
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... without any sense of responsibility ... ones who take advantage ... people who don't learn to get along ... All this sounds like you're blaming the homeless. Your last paragraph suggests that you have solutions to the problem. What are they?

Call me crazy, but I think it's pretty obvious that the only solution to homelessness is homes. Of course that's the compassionate solution, but compassion holds little weight in the libertarian idealist sociopathy of Silicon Valley. But even from a cost perspective housing is the only solution. You can make homelessness illegal, but then you're just housing the homeless in prisons. If you're going to house people an…

Oddly enough, it tends to not be the idealist libertarians in Silicon Valley and San Francisco who oppose housing.

Re: Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

#118

This article addresses a lot of the myths of homelessness which get repeated in any discussion about SF homeless (with supporting citation). http://48hills.org/2016/02/16/five-myths-about-the-homeless-... Key point in my mind when it comes to talking about these tent cities, is that most of SF's homeless -- over 70% -- were living in San Francisco at the time they became homeless. And as much as 50% of the homeless h…

> over 70% -- were living in San Francisco at the time they became homeless

People should be very, very careful with this number. The criterion used to measure it consider someone who has spent 30+ years in SF to be identical to someone who got off a bus from Nevada, spent a month in a subsidized SRO, and is now in a tent.

Which is to say 48hills is playing a little fast and loose with the truth, but you probably already knew they tend to do that.

Re: Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

#119
People don't have a coherent idea of what they think of the encampments.

Propose a measure like this and the most empathic of the privileged people point out how insensitive it is.

Embrace reality and call San Francisco the peninsula's biggest camp ground, and the same people call it insensitive.

Both statements ignore the security issues and circumstances that many campers endure so not mutually exclusive of insensitivity, but at a certain point you are just turning a blind eye in your own special way.

If living in a tent actually is a viable option, then we should stop treating it like it is the most sensitive topic to even talk about casually.

People should be taking as much censorship pity for all the people that live in old walkups or luxury apt in liquification zones of SF. A tent would most likely fair better during an earthquake.

Re: Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

#120

Forgive my crass naïveté, for I live in a chilly northeastern college town where homelessness = death for half the year, but why are people so concerned about keeping the poorest of the poor living at the tiny tip of the wealthiest peninsula in America? Homelessness and the situations that create it are great tragedies. But to me it seems completely absurd that this problem is dealt with a municipal level. Homeless s…

You do realize that this isn't a problem that can be solved with more money, right?

The City of SF's budget was 8.9 billion dollars FY 2015-2016[0], roughly 1.2 of which was earmarked on "human welfare and neighborhood development".

This isn't a "throw more money/resources at it and it will be fixed" type of problem.

It's a problem that needs to be restated in different terms, which requires a paradigm shift in how we view the homeless, mental illness, and addiction in the United States.

[0]http://sfmayor.org/ftp/uploadedfiles/mayor/budget/SF_Budget_...

Post reply on HN