Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

Removal seems to be roughly based on the proximity of the camp to retail/residential, and the size of the camp. This has been going on since at least the 90s, although the camps are larger and more visible in the last few years.

As a result the homeless kind of blow around, try to find an inconspicuous spot, and hang on until they are ousted again. I've known several people with palette and tarp covered homes tucked away in corners in light industrial areas hang onto a spot for 3 or more years. But usually, a tent on the sidewalk (or a barely running tan RV) establishes a safe place for more tents/RVs/vans/etc and the cycle continues.

Once there are a few people living in a spot, the police become regular visitors because of all the fighting, human waste, theft, etc. Residents constantly call in complaints hoping to raise the bar enough to get them removed.

Since the police are already spending a huge amount of time trying to manage and break down camps, how is this law going to help?

"Eight city departments oversee at least 400 contracts to 76 private organizations"

That says a lot about how spending $31,967.10 for every homeless person can amount to, well, no one seems to know.

I'm curious what happened in New Orleans and the other places referenced that have seen success helping their homeless populations. Knowing even a little bit about systems, layering more complexity (and money) on top of a dysfunctional effort in SF isn't going to meaningfully help.

What does the street provide an alley or park doesn't? I've said before, the perceived security from non-underclass people walking by. Police protect non-underclass people from violence, and the homeless get this additional benefit by extension by being nearby. In shelters and tent cities, you are more likely to be targeted for crime.

Sure people without addresses have a right to safety and security of person like everyone else, but their behavior (often due to mental illness or drug use or factors outside of their direct control) makes it extra difficult/costly to provide it.

Other people pay a lot of money in tax to the state to reduce their daily exposure to violence, regardless of the factors that might contribute to it. Tent cities are a source of risk, and they are provocative symbols of the limits of the ability of the local government to operate credibly. Governments, mainly for their own sake, must remove tent cities when they pop up, arguably because that's what they were originally chartered to do.

Some may say that the homeless are "just trying to live," but it could be said they are hovering around public services without any sense of responsibility to the local society that provides them.

They are human beings, but ones who take advantage of the lack of a continuous tribal identity in cities, where they can live with people believing they are someone else's problem. People who don't learn to get along get run out of small towns (or worse). Add a drug addiction to severe mental illness, and you basically get a municipal zombie problem.

To me, homelessness is only a complicated problem from the perspective of an ideology that cannot tolerate examples of the limits to its power. Everyone else has solutions, just not ones that reinforce the narcissism of maternalistic policymakers.