A cautionary tale from the streets of San Francisco • Hacker News Board

Re: A cautionary tale from the streets of San Francisco

#341

Post by alexashka » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

RobLach wrote: post #246

alexashka wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've given this some thought. What I don't understand is why you think cities should provide shelter for people who don't contribute to them. If you can't make a city a better place - you should have shelter, somewhere cheap and distant. If you get your life together there, you can come and try living in a city again. Living in a city should be a privilege, not a right - cities take a lot of work and if you aren't…

Because it’s cheaper in the long term, not even considering the social/humanitarian benefits.

If we're going to go off of what's cheaper, converting homeless people into fertilizer seems best.

There are no social benefits to forcing productive members of society to quietly tolerate and provide for unproductive members. It fosters resentment and tension.

You see, 'social' includes everyone, not just those we re-allocate someone else's resources towards. There's this stupid idea that if someone's a 'victim', they deserve special treatment. No, that's not an axiom. It is only an axiom if you're stupid and haven't gone out of your way to ever really try and 'help' 'victims' - those that have, quickly realize what a bottomless pit it often is.

Re: A cautionary tale from the streets of San Francisco

#342

Post by dandotway » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 10:31 PM UTC

pseudalopex wrote: post #336

dandotway wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Became friends with a number of homeless, bought them meals, gave them money, gave them clothing, heard their life stories in their own words, etc. There used to be a lot near where I used to live.

How did you meet? On the street? At a shelter? Most homeless people are homeless under a year in the US. Many have jobs. Many sleep on couches not streets. Or in cars not shelters. And they try to avoid the stigma of homelessness.

> Most homeless people are homeless under a year in the US

Source?

> Many have jobs

Source?

> How did you meet? On the street?

Yes, and a few did indeed have cars and sleep in cars.

Re: A cautionary tale from the streets of San Francisco

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Post by azinman2 » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 11:00 PM UTC

musicale wrote: post #249

azinman2 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No permanent address is self reported. In general those who aren't employable are unreliable for self-assessments as to why (although I don't doubt the lack of address is a hinderance -- for sure it would be). Similarly, lost job tells us little about the bigger picture. What led to them being a lost job away from being homeless? Was it living beyond their means? No family? No friends willing to take them in? Being r…

> the amount of money ($1B+) SF spends on homeless yearly > TOTAL NUMBER OF PERSONS EXPERIENCING HOMELESSNESS, 2013-2019 > 7,008 (2013) 6,775 (2015) 6,858 (2017) 8,011 (2019) Are both of these figures correct? Wikipedia[1] says it was $241M in 2016 but notes "However, much of this spending is focused on housing the formerly homeless, or those at risk, and not the currently homeless" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home…

You're right, depending on how you itemize things. However, there's $1B+ spent on human welfare and neighborhood development [1], much of which crosses over in one way or another either supporting the homeless or trying to not make people homeless with programs like food banks. If you look at where that's going [2], you'll see the areas with the highest unemployment are getting most of these funds.

[1] https://sfgov.org/scorecards/finance/expenditures-and-revenu...

[2] https://www.sfdph.org/dph/files/mtgsGrps/FoodSecTaskFrc/docs...

Re: A cautionary tale from the streets of San Francisco

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Post by camgunz » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 11:44 PM UTC

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #326

camgunz wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but it's so insufficient that to even bring it up is a red flag. It's like if we were all getting together to try and solve climate change and someone said "I'm super religious, I spent the last week in nature speaking with God, and it's clear to me that while there are other things we can and should do, this will never work without everyone individually praying every day." We would collectively be like "huh, c…

> Sure, but it's so insufficient that to even bring it up is a red flag. This is the crux of it. Your position disagrees with mine, that's fine, but please don't assume that bringing up an issue based on personal experience with the problem is a "red flag." That's disingenuous and unproductive. You then go on to strawman a bizarre tale of a religious person being overly evangelical about a deeply individual experienc…

Personal experiences are valid and important, but they're almost never representative. That's why we run studies and experiments: our anecdotal experiences don't give us enough data and often lead to generalization fallacies. They also typically come along with confirmation bias, a pitfall which the Mayor here likely fell into.

For the rest of your post, I'm not saying we can't talk about problems affecting individuals? I think a lot of good can be done on the individual level: drug treatment, counseling, medical care, etc. Not sure where you're coming up with any of this.

Re: A cautionary tale from the streets of San Francisco

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Post by sershe » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 12:45 AM UTC

swearwolf wrote: post #331

kentonv wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one older unit is being replaced by multiple newer units, that's still a net increase in housing which will cause other old units to become more affordable. Again, it's expected that new developments will always be high-end, but they make other existing housing cheaper in the process. > The roads in these older neighborhoods are ill prepared for increased density Infrastructure is a problem. Many American cities s…

There’s something that I think often gets overlooked about the replacement of old buildings with new ones, and I think it’s pretty important. The lowest tier of housing in a given city is generally accessible to poor people in ways that new construction, or even properly maintained older buildings never will be. Slumlords operate at this level, and while they suck for many other reasons, they are often willing to ren…

But that is not actually what happens in the cities like SF. The lowest tiers of housing are not affordable. The worst apartment I've ever lived in my life (including Soviet-built flats) was in SF - a crappy 1906 victorian (or whatever you call these ugly hovels SF is full of) subdivided into 6 units; drafty, not updated in ages, no dishwasher or laundry, etc. It was also the 2nd or 3rd most expensive rental per sqft in my life (the only other ones were also in SFBA). I took it because I didn't even realize apartments SO crappy can exist, e.g. I didn't realize there was no dishwasher until after moving in... and the whole neighborhood was like that. Normally, that would all be "lower tier" housing. In SF, it was $3k/mo in 2014 and rented to either techies, or roommates (sometimes 2 unrelated people per bedroom). If someone built luxury towers in the same neighborhood, the techies would have moved there and actually made the lower tier of housing somewhat cheaper for others.

Re: A cautionary tale from the streets of San Francisco

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Post by zthrowaway » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 2:41 AM UTC

RobLach wrote: post #191

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…

Giving them a home isn’t going to solve their drug addiction. Far from having a 100% solution.

Re: A cautionary tale from the streets of San Francisco

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Post by rsj_hn » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 2:57 AM UTC

RobLach wrote: post #191

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…

So SF will now be giving away houses, huh? OK, I'll take a free home in SF, sure.

But not to the middle class, no, just to the homeless. Then how many days do I need to survive on the street in order to get a free house? If it's a hundred days, and one of these places is 800K, then that's like paying me 8K per day -- it's a no brainer. For a free house, I'm even willing to mutter to myself and defecate on your porch. You are right, this would cause property values to plummet -- it's literally paying me to come into your neighborhood and be antisocial.

Just give me the date and time of the degradation olympics and there will be lots of people willing to participate. More people than SF can afford to build houses for.

You get more of what you subsidize, not less.

Re: A cautionary tale from the streets of San Francisco

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Post by solidsnack9000 » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 3:34 AM UTC

Tiktaalik wrote: post #340

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should so many people need public assistance at all? When most people can't afford to live somewhere...they move somewhere else.

There's countless reasons why someone may be unable to work and accordingly they'll need income assistance. Disability and Age are significant ones. Mental illness, drug addiction are others. "Move somewhere else" assumes that there is actually somewhere more affordable to live, (and one has the funds to relocate) which is not necessarily obviously the case. Further flung places with arguably cheaper housing costs ad…

In regard to San Francisco, though, there are many, many more affordable places to live. I was going to say, that literally any other place in the USA is more affordable; but NYC finally surpassed San Francisco as most expensive rental market in August of this year:

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/24/new-york-surpasses-san-franc...

Re: A cautionary tale from the streets of San Francisco

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Post by saargrin » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 7:34 AM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #279

inglor_cz wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Norway has 5 million people in total, and used to be very homogeneous. I think it was Robert Putnam who showed that with increasing diversity, you will get less solidarity and openness/trust towards strangers. Homelessness may be a solved problem in Norway , but it does not mean that Norwegian solution is readily transplantable into San Francisco. Much like we failed to transplant modern way of life to Afghanistan.

> Much like we failed to transplant modern way of life to Afghanistan. Which attempt are you talking about. The 3 times the British empire invaded, the three times the Soviet Union invaded or the latest Nato-American invasion. (Historically there was the Sikh, Mugal, Muslim invasions too, etc. etc.) Possibly the locals got a poor view of western "civilization" by being on the wrong end of its armies multiple times. S…

Regarding Afghanistan, you forget to mention that part of history where Afghanis raided and conquered large parts of what is now India (the Durani empire and Babur come to mind) , not to mention raiding into Persia and Merv

Its hard to pretend Afghanis' view of "civilization" was formed by the British "invasion" which was not permanent

Re: A cautionary tale from the streets of San Francisco

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Post by randomsearch » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 7:51 AM UTC

zarkov99 wrote: post #332

randomsearch wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This attitude and it’s logical conclusions are why America has this problem. Compared to most European countries there’s an utter lack of compassion for people less fortunate. Yes, a small part of homelessness is caused by drug issues (far more drug problems are the consequences of homelessness) but you only have to look at the absence of a proper welfare state, health system, and other essential safety nets, to see…

I believe you are misinformed. There is plenty of compassion, specially in the cities discussed in the book, that is not the issue at all, nor is lack of spending at all . Please read the book, or listen to any of the podcasts the author recently did, the Joe Rogan one is good summary. Please, I do not mean to be condescending, just listen or read with an open mind. This is not about compassion vs accountability or l…

> I believe you are misinformed

I've travelled all over America and Europe. The difference between attitudes to homeless people and welfare spending is vast. I've heard so many Americans describe homeless people as "bums".

> nor is lack of spending at all.

The small government and lack of a welfare and healthcare system are the principle criticism aimed at the US by Europeans. It's such a shame, as there are many things I admire about America but I wouldn't want to live in such an inequitable country without these now well-established essential components of a civilised society.

Having said that:

> just listen or read with an open mind.

As you wrote so reasonably, I will examine this material afresh, to see if it presents any convincing counter-arguments. The cold hard facts of US tax and government spending etc. will be hard to overcome, but I will be patient.

> this is about solving a problem that is destroying American cities.

This is certainly something we agree on, it is so tragic to see, it feels like another sign of America's downfall - a decline that has consequences for every western nation.

For our part, in the UK we are headed down the American path: slashing public spending, which has led to the closure of many of our homeless hostels, eradicating the welfare safety net so that many people live on the street for lack of housing, etc. The result has been soaring homelessness in our cities on a level I had not seen outside of America until the last decade.