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SF tech bro: ‘I shouldn’t have to see the pain, struggle, despair of homeless’

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Re: SF tech bro: ‘I shouldn’t have to see the pain, struggle, despair of homeless’

#221

Post by monkmartinez »

zepto wrote: post #162
monkmartinez wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've loaded many a homeless into my fire engine to take to the local Crisis Resource Center/ Behaviour Rehabilitation center because they begged and pleaded that they want help. Great! More often than not, we see them a few days later with Steel Reserve cans littered about after someone calls 911 for what appears to them a dead man on the side of the road. Mental illness is brutal. I feel for these guys, especially a…

Wanting help is not the same as being able to be helped. Veterans often have what is called 'treatment resistant PTSD', which is another way of saying that we haven't figured out how to treat them. There is a wealth of material on how even veterans who have supportive families and are housed and in treatment can't always hold down a job. New treatments such as VR based exposure therapy, or MDMA therapy are promising,…

Sure. We do our best with the training we've had to handle the situations we are presented with. I know there are subtleties and nuance, especially with vets. That doesn't change the fact that we have to deal with them now.

I'm not minimizing their issues, nor am I saying one-size fits all... but I would be remiss to not say: there are a lot of people dealing with mental/medical problems that are resistant to traditional therapies that don't resort to self-destructive behaviour to cope.

To wave off all the choices they make on a day-to-day basis is a disservice them and flies in the face of the people that are dealing with the same issues in non-self-destructive manner.

Re: SF tech bro: ‘I shouldn’t have to see the pain, struggle, despair of homeless’

#222

Post by BinaryIdiot »

m1sta_ wrote: post #155
shopkins wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hostility is warranted when you think you're solving a problem by whining about it on Medium. We all have homeless problems in our cities. We get accosted by mentally ill people, drunk people, high people, strung out people, dirty people. We smell piss on the street corners. But we don't publish it on the internet because of some grandiose vision that our words will suddenly shine light on the issue and spur some…

I don't have that problem. I've lived in lots of cities and have never had that problem.

Perhaps you just never went into the "right" areas to experience it but I've seen it in many cities.

Instead of basing your thoughts on personal anecdotes you should look towards statistics. For instance the New York City Department of Homeless Services estimated, in 2013, they had almost 50,000 homeless living in the city[1]. But this is just an example; you can look at a huge variety of statistics for many types of places to see how widespread the issues are.

Overall there are over 500,000 homeless people in America on any given night[2]. There are real problems.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Sta... (shitty source I know; it references a dead article but this is mostly just an example).

[2] http://www.endhomelessness.org/library/entry/the-state-of-ho... (though perhaps a little bit of a bias source; sorry didn't feel like reading too deeply into the government documents to find their data)

Re: SF tech bro: ‘I shouldn’t have to see the pain, struggle, despair of homeless’

#223

Post by icelancer »

tim333 wrote: post #88
monkmartinez wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a complex issue... but in my experience, most of the homeless are not looking for help to find jobs and/or contribute to society in manner that will lead them out of "homelessness." A lot of them prefer this "lifestyle"... we try very hard to help the people that want help. Most don't. Go talk to your local EMS/Fire department personnel and most of them will have similar stories. I know the homeless people in…

The issue my be complex but you don't see the same thing in most of Europe or Canada which suggests it's not immune to government action.

What? Have you been to Paris or any major large city in Europe? It's not different than most of American large cities. SF and Seattle just happen to be two of the worst in the nation for homelessness issues and a lot of that is because they move there.

Re: SF tech bro: ‘I shouldn’t have to see the pain, struggle, despair of homeless’

#224

Post by ndkdjdjd »

While I agree that what he wrote was very insensitive and naive, aside from condescending him and the "tech bros" the article completely undermines the fact that there is indeed a major homeless problem in SF. Having lived in many major cities I can attest that I have not seen anything quite like it.

Re: SF tech bro: ‘I shouldn’t have to see the pain, struggle, despair of homeless’

#225

Post by rwhitman »

It's fascinating to watch San Francisco rapidly transform from being the utopian refuge of American progressives in the late 20th century, into a libertarian city-state in the 21st.

I can't help but think the Bay Area's escalating tension over income disparity, and the politics surrounding it, is a seed for far uglier conflicts in the coming years. Thankful I'm a distant bystander and not a participant.

Re: SF tech bro: ‘I shouldn’t have to see the pain, struggle, despair of homeless’

#226

Post by jefurii »

monkmartinez wrote: post #45
Afforess wrote: post #9

To play devil's advocate, he's right. He shouldn't have to see the pain, struggle, and despair of homeless - the city government should be providing affordable housing and shelters for the homeless. That it hasn't is a failure of the local government, and should be addressed. Much of the reason that affordable housing is out of reach of many in San Francisco is due to government regulation, not market capitalism. Ext…

This is a complex issue... but in my experience, most of the homeless are not looking for help to find jobs and/or contribute to society in manner that will lead them out of "homelessness." A lot of them prefer this "lifestyle"... we try very hard to help the people that want help. Most don't. Go talk to your local EMS/Fire department personnel and most of them will have similar stories. I know the homeless people in…

> A lot of them prefer this "lifestyle"

For a number of years I helped run a Saturday morning soup kitchen at a church near the VA in West LA. Talked to a lot of people, mostly guys, and heard this a lot too, but for most of them it's not the whole story.

Most of the homeless people I encountered had a point in their lives when the system failed them. Many of them had some traumatic event and fell into alcoholism or drugs. Many of them either had a weak social net (family or friends) or burned through that net. Counselling was not available or came too late, and once they were far enough along unemployment ran out. Eventually they embraced homelessness because they could no longer imagine an alternative, so that they could think something positive about themselves.

My sense is that there was a window during which the system could have helped them with their problems when it became too much for their friends/family and before they went too far down that path. But certain elements in our society (cough Republicans/Libertarians) just don't want to help people at risk.

Re: SF tech bro: ‘I shouldn’t have to see the pain, struggle, despair of homeless’

#228

Post by JibberMeTimbers »

randomname2 wrote: post #30

What is a "SF tech bro"? In this context it seems to be intended as some kind of slur, or there is at least some negative connotation here. It's a man who works in tech who... what exactly?

They tried to answer this in the article. It looks like it's referring to the general young tech entrepreneur/wantrepreneur who moves to SF to try and make it big.

-Obscure startup -Worships tech people who made it big -Fond of quotes from leaders in technology -General enthusiasm for tech/robots/etc and hobbies

Re: SF tech bro: ‘I shouldn’t have to see the pain, struggle, despair of homeless’

#229

Post by zymhan »

themartorana wrote: post #145
mabbo wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our super-Conservative government for the last decade (now replaced by a young, hip, Liberal one) was actually really big behind the 'housing-first' method of helping the homeless (you get an apartment, no questions asked, then we work on your drug problems, etc later), and put a lot of money towards it. At first, this seems very socially liberal and at odds with a Conservative party kind of thing until you look at t…

Well, that's great, then. It seems like a liberal calling card but appeals to everyone's desire to save money while providing actually useful social services. So what's the political argument against it?

"We don't want to give people free houses just because they're too lazy to work" or some shit.

Re: SF tech bro: ‘I shouldn’t have to see the pain, struggle, despair of homeless’

#230

Post by odonnellryan »

notthegov wrote: post #213
odonnellryan wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The homeless often have mental illnesses. Forget less severe illness, 1/3 have been found to have severe illness: http://mentalillnesspolicy.org/consequences/homeless-mentall... So, it isn't they are homeless because they like the lifestyle, but it is often because of an illness that they prefer that lifestyle. We've all certainly felt extraordinary pressures related to common every-day life. Mental illness makes dea…

Where I live, it is more the opposite. People come here with irrational dreams, get on the street, fall into bad things, and then through dehydration, stress and living on the street, they become more irrational, and eventually permanently changed.

That's a good point, but if you're talking about addiction, mental illness is a precursor to addictive behavior. It is one of the major reasons why people self-medicate. Certainly is not the only reason.

My philosophy is: certain things are good for everyone if everyone has them. Some of these things: food, education, healthcare, place to sleep (securely), modest personal possessions, and so forth.

Reasons are mostly because of what you said. Homelessness leads to a general decline in society. If more people have healthcare, the general health of everyone goes up. If more people are fed, more people are productive, and production is good for everyone (to draw an incredibly broad generality). And so on.

It's unrealistic to say we'll do all those things 100%, but I do not think they are unrealistic goals for a modern and technologically advanced society.

Price breakdown:

30bil/year to end world hunger. 175bil/year to end world poverty.

20bil/year to end homelessness in the US.

I can't find numbers for everything, but those are some good ones to think about.

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