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A cautionary tale from the streets of San Francisco

economist.com

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Re: A cautionary tale from the streets of San Francisco

#191

Post by RobLach »

Homelessness is a solved problem.

SF residents don't want the solution.

Real estate is the primary wealth building asset class of long-term residents who bought property ages ago or inherited it.

In California property taxes as assessed at time of sale, so you hold onto properties realistically valued at multiple millions while paying taxes at rate appropriate to tens of thousands.

Bulldozing a single family home to build a multi-family unit has an enormous cost on the back end given re-assessment.

Any potential drop in property values has massive protest. It's such a nice free-ride you will fight tooth and nail for.

These residents just want the homeless population "dealt with".

The only solution viable for these residents is getting rid of homeless people through force.

This in untenable give that these residents also have internalized a set of liberal moral values, which mostly means alleviating guilt by dumping money onto ineffective non-profit organization who at worst are siphoning public funds for themselves or at best are trying their best at executing strategies which have minimal impact.

Consider that between 2010 and 2020, SF built ~25,000 new housing units.

Charlotte, NC, a city with a lower population, built 160,000 new units.

Norway has homeless population of 0.07% by mostly doing one thing: building and giving homes to people who don't have them.

That would cause property values to plummet. Many long-term residents would have to seek employment after a lifetime of living off rents.

Re: A cautionary tale from the streets of San Francisco

#192

Post by jacobn »

mrobot wrote: post #148
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go take a walk through a housing project in Baltimore or Brooklyn and you won't have any doubts about the situation or have to trust the opinion of someone else. Just make sure you get your affairs in order first.

This doesn't help. I already know "the projects are bad". If you think "the projects are bad" means "public housing can never work" and you haven't looked at who benefits from public housing failing and how they would control legislation and would alter the course of any project you planned, and how a good example would certainly cost them a lot of money, you aren't really taking the question of developing working pu…

How would you avoid those same issues happening yet again to the hoped for shiny new effort?

Re: A cautionary tale from the streets of San Francisco

#193

Post by systemvoltage »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #184
nuerow wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No it's not a disingenuous take. I read the article. You have a politician who actually goes and talks to a group of homeless (...) Sorry, it actually is. You have a guy who decided to live in a tent for a week as a publicity stunt, and that is supposed to make him an insightful expert on the nature and causes of the problem, in total contrast with the observations and experience of every single person that ever di…

I’ll bite, but I think you ought to know that I cannot so far understand you’re reasoning. Who, then, is qualified to speak on these issues? Is only aggregate data through official channels, and not individual experience, relevant to the discussion?

It seems to me that homelessness is a desired state by the far-left progressives. I don't get the sense from talking to people here in Berkeley/Oakland that they want to eradicate homelessness. If you offer a few discussion points about possible solutions, you get sneered at and shot down. The arguments are weak and don't hold up, so they are varnished with emotional appeal (be kind to homeless) and other soft-tactics of altruism. I disagree with this whole premise. You can still be kind and try to solve homelessness and clean up our streets. There is nothing wrong with that and infact the only right thing to do. Like every city in the world. No one should be afraid of calling homelessness a problem that we want to get rid of. Methods of doing that can be debated but resist the appeal for this so called wokeness that is endemic in places like Universities.

Re: A cautionary tale from the streets of San Francisco

#194

Post by robbyt »

tayo42 wrote: post #179
robbyt wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

z

So being homeless isnt the problem, mudering isnt exclusive to homeless people. Drugs and prostitution aren't problems. Cities not having adequate public serivces like bathrooms is a problem.

So you'll host a camp in your backyard then?

Re: A cautionary tale from the streets of San Francisco

#195

Post by crooked-v »

b9a2cab5 wrote: post #149
whateveracct wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody said that. They said incarceration for petty theft is unreasonable.

Refusing to put thieves in jail leads to thieves not caring if they get caught. Which leads us back to modern day SF. There is a big difference between petty theft as you'd think petty would mean (<$30 of small stuff) and what the law defines it as (<$950 of stuff).

You're also making the implicit assumption here that people who commit petty theft would actually care about the marginally higher chance of suffering consequences from it in a context where there isn't anything to mitigate the reasons they're committing petty theft in the first place.

Re: A cautionary tale from the streets of San Francisco

#196

Post by nuerow »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #184
nuerow wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No it's not a disingenuous take. I read the article. You have a politician who actually goes and talks to a group of homeless (...) Sorry, it actually is. You have a guy who decided to live in a tent for a week as a publicity stunt, and that is supposed to make him an insightful expert on the nature and causes of the problem, in total contrast with the observations and experience of every single person that ever di…

I’ll bite, but I think you ought to know that I cannot so far understand you’re reasoning. Who, then, is qualified to speak on these issues? Is only aggregate data through official channels, and not individual experience, relevant to the discussion?

> Who, then, is qualified to speak on these issues?

For starters, can we agree that a publicity stunt like spending a week in a tent as a live action roleplay is no way to get any insight on a deep-rooted social and economic problem? Specially given the clear preexisting bias and political motivation to ignore the problem, avoid accountability, and continue doing absolutely nothing?

> Is only aggregate data through official channels, and not individual experience, relevant to the discussion?

I am really perplexed by the insistence of this take. I mean, aren't these "official channels" actually people paid by him to work for him full time on this issue?

How terribly disfuncional and incompetent is a whole local government, led by this mayor, supposed to be if he feels the need to waste a week's worth of his personal time to do something himself when no one in his own organization, not a single person, is able to reliably gather any info or insight onto the problem?

I mean, in other issues we see the executives of local governments appointing people to actually fix the problem with clear goals in mind, and hold them accountable for the outcome.

But no. I this case we're only seeing a former senator turned mayor somehow arriving at the conclusion that homeless people are all drug addicts and/or suffering from mental health problems. From that starting point, the solution is, surprisingly, to go with the same political tropes of using the police to brush the problem under the rug by banning all the undesidables to get them out of sight.

https://www.denverpost.com/2021/05/18/aurora-homelessness-ca...

Re: A cautionary tale from the streets of San Francisco

#197

Post by redis_mlc »

s5300 wrote: post #161
baby wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I listened to the Joe Rogan’s podcast and the solution seemed to be housing and treatment first, punishment later.

Coming to conclusions about solutions via Joe Rogan's podcast is only contributing to the problem, friend.

[dead]

Re: A cautionary tale from the streets of San Francisco

#198

Post by mrobot »

mrobot wrote: post #148
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go take a walk through a housing project in Baltimore or Brooklyn and you won't have any doubts about the situation or have to trust the opinion of someone else. Just make sure you get your affairs in order first.

This doesn't help. I already know "the projects are bad". If you think "the projects are bad" means "public housing can never work" and you haven't looked at who benefits from public housing failing and how they would control legislation and would alter the course of any project you planned, and how a good example would certainly cost them a lot of money, you aren't really taking the question of developing working pu…

> How would you avoid those same issues happening yet again to the hoped for shiny new effort?

Maybe i am getting your tone wrong, but in saying 'hoped for shiny new effort' i think maybe you are dismissing an effort from ever working, which seems it would be defeatist for anyone who genuinely believes public housing could be good. I guess i just don't feel like you are asking in good faith. If you wanted to do it, you would have to believe you can overcome these challenges by becoming aware of all of them, and then organizing to make it happen.

Just to understand what we are up against if we actually try to make it happen, look to the Philadelphia MOVE bombing of 1985 [1]. People organizing fully within their rights yet Philadelphia bombed Philadelphia. Smears all around of course. Anything but admit bombing your own city is bad, i guess.

[1]: https://billypenn.com/2020/05/11/move-101-why-30-years-ago-p...

Re: A cautionary tale from the streets of San Francisco

#199

Post by tayo42 »

robbyt wrote: post #194
tayo42 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So being homeless isnt the problem, mudering isnt exclusive to homeless people. Drugs and prostitution aren't problems. Cities not having adequate public serivces like bathrooms is a problem.

So you'll host a camp in your backyard then?

I think you should take a step back from this topic if it's making your responses that emotional or elaborate more. Nothing you said is a rational response. That was 100% flame bait.

Re: A cautionary tale from the streets of San Francisco

#200

Post by swearwolf »

tayo42 wrote: post #179
robbyt wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

z

So being homeless isnt the problem, mudering isnt exclusive to homeless people. Drugs and prostitution aren't problems. Cities not having adequate public serivces like bathrooms is a problem.

Drugs create big livability problems for the neighborhood residents who aren’t using them. For example, despite the presence of needle exchanges throughout my city, it’s not uncommon to find a used needle on the ground. Or, people who are high on meth do all sorts of disruptive and disturbing things, like having screaming matches with themselves in the middle of the street. So yeah, drugs are, in fact, a problem.
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