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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’

#451

Post by jkchu »

alva wrote: post #248

Does anyone have an answer to why so many of the homeless in SF behave in such a way? I have lived in major cities all my life that had varying degrees of homelessness. From my trips to SF I have been shocked to see the consistent and prevalent anti-social behaviour of the homeless. Mental illness is obviously a large problem, but I would expect to see similar levels between the SF homeless and comparable cities. Not…

I honestly do not have an exact answer, but I am thinking it has to do with:

1. SF is a city with high population density. It is only second to NYC.

2. Mild climate. Without harsh winters, you can sleep outside year round.

3. High cost of living. If someone falls under hard times and does not have the means to relocate, the high cost of living could be crushing.

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

#452

Post by zo1 »

joosters wrote: post #63
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…

So how many people are going to pay more taxes to raise the money for the government to do all these things? In the end, it still comes back to the people. It's not the government's fault.

>"So how many people are going to pay more taxes to raise the money for the government to do all these things?"

If you were to ask me, I'd say "not me". And not because I don't want it done, but because I already pay taxes with the assumption that this is what a government of a supposedly enlightened society should be spending it on. I.e. to care for its weakest members, the ones that need it the most.

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

#453

Post by pfarnsworth »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #450
pfarnsworth wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot the most important link: http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-record... SF spends $241 million per year on homeless, with no accountability and no ability to track results. They are NOT going above and beyond, they are wasting money with no improvement in results.

Funny, I did some research and found this article which seems to know where most of the money is going. So what happened in two years between my article in 2014 and your article that came out in 2016? How are you able to track this and then in two years, you suddenly have no idea where all the money is going? http://archives.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/sf-spends-1657-m... The lion’s share of the funding goes toward s…

Not track the money, track the results. We have no idea if this is helping to decrease homelessness or not. There are no metrics. That's a huge amount of money to spend, and not know if it's actually helping, or if the money is just being wasted.

Accountability means that if it doesn't work or if the money is being wasted, then someone needs to be held accountable.

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

#454

Post by 1024core »

beatpanda wrote: post #444
1024core wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a strawman. There's a difference between drinking a couple of pints of beer with buddies, and emptying a pint of cheap vodka and passing out on the street, covered in your own urine and/or vomit.

And your comment is also a strawman, because people get kicked out of shelters for simple possession.

Being in a shelter is a privilege. A shelter is free to make their own rules. Since quite a few of the residents may be fighting addictions or may be recovering alcoholics, the shelter may ban all alcohol and drugs to help in their recovery.

For example: I am a vegetarian and don't allow meat in my house. It's my house, I can set the rules. If you are my guest, you have to abide by them. It's quite simple, really.

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

#455

Post by monknomo »

hluska wrote: post #391
monknomo wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As to point 2, if there are enough homeless people in an area to turn an apartment building into a slum, there is already a de facto slum. It's just that it's a slum made of tents under a highway, rather than in a building.

Nicely said! This is purely anecdotal, but in my experience, proponents of the 'HF creates slums' theory tend to fall into one of two camps: - functionally blind - landlords The functionally blind (note that I'm not saying 'sight impaired...this is by design) tend to argue that homelessness is okay...as long as they can't see it. Often, they live in cities like mine (Regina, Canada) where for 3-4 months of the year,…

I suspect a 'better' way of handling the landlord issue is for the government to be the 'landlord of last resort' but I'm pretty sure that would be a hard sell. Still, it would remove the profit motive.

As to the functionally or willfully blind, I wonder if the HF campaigns start their publicity too late. Perhaps if there were more pictures of tent cities and shelters people would realize there is a local problem?

I know up in Anchorage, AK housing first started gaining momentum after quite a number of extremely visible tent camps and homeless folks getting frozen to the sidewalk.

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

#456

Post by m1sta_ »

shopkins wrote: post #185
m1sta_ wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So it doesn't exist, eh?

I'm just disputing the claim that "We [all] get accosted by mentally ill people, drunk people, high people, strung out people, dirty people. We smell piss on the street corners."

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

#457

Post by m1sta_ »

FanaHOVA wrote: post #237
m1sta_ wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You never lived in NYC, SF, LA, Philly, Rome, London or Paris then (And I'm just talking from personal experience, must be many more)

I have actually, but I've been lucky enough to live and work in particularly nice parts of the cities I live in. My comment was meant in reply specifically to "We [all] get accosted by mentally ill people, drunk people, high people, strung out people, dirty people. We smell piss on the street corners."

I've only ever had that experience while visiting SF.

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

#458

Post by a-saleh »

monkmartinez wrote: post #178
a-saleh wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I feel this "most of them prefer the way it is" is just a way to make excuses for us not solving a problem. For example in my city of ~ quarter mil. people, there are approximately 1000 people living on the streets and another 1000 without home (no adress, permanently living in hostels, people in prisons that no longer have home). Currently I know that there is project that focuses on the families without h…

Maybe, but funding new programs for homeless/mentally ill is problematic for a lot of reasons; A lot municipalities have budget problems with structural deficits. This puts pressure on basic infrastructure like roads, water, and sewer. Public transportation is under severe stress due to the budgets. Public safety agencies have been relying on grants (SAFER) from the fed to get basic needs met as the cities are tapped…

Well that is why the reasoning here is

1. "We already have lot of empty flats nobody lives in and need to maintain them" 2. "We already rent many flats for like 300$ a month to low income families, that have the courage for like 10 different visits to municipal office" 3. "Families that are on the edge of homelesness already live in some hostel and might be paying more than 300$ a month just to have a place to stay."

At least that is the gist of it as far as I know.

Second, this is an EU city, so I know that they want to get some initial funds from EU funds (the first set of flats needs to undergo reconstruction, because the basic utilities, like water and electricity are in terrible state) as a pilot 'housing first' project in the republic.

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

#459

Post by m3rc »

civilian wrote: post #410
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a theory that "left" and "right" can be replaced with how a big a circle of humanity you care about. The people towards the right care about their family, or their community. The people on the left care about a slightly wider circle. On the far "right" you get sociopaths that only care about themselves. On the far "left" you get utopian hippies that care about people suffering on the other side of the world. W…

Yeah! It's why it's so weird to see politicians and their supports protest efforts to reduce trade tariffs. With more trade, we will be literally creating new wealth. It will be helping lower the cost of the related goods in the first world, and it'll be giving more and slightly better jobs to the third world, where it'll be helping the poorest there. So why is it a bad thing again?

It's not good to end statements by throwing your hands up in the air and going "golly gee I just can't possibly fathom why anyone would think differently than ME!"

Right off the bat, never regulating trade means you only create short term wealth. You can't possibly think that no one would ever take issue with trade deals that take advantage of countries participating in human rights violations, or countries whose economic situation means they can offer manufacturing for drastically less and undervalue key industries

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

#460

Post by beatpanda »

1024core wrote: post #454
beatpanda wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And your comment is also a strawman, because people get kicked out of shelters for simple possession.

Being in a shelter is a privilege. A shelter is free to make their own rules. Since quite a few of the residents may be fighting addictions or may be recovering alcoholics, the shelter may ban all alcohol and drugs to help in their recovery. For example: I am a vegetarian and don't allow meat in my house. It's my house, I can set the rules. If you are my guest, you have to abide by them. It's quite simple, really.

The question isn't whether or not shelters have the right to make rules that make it incredibly difficult for people to maintain a shelter bed. The questions is are they doing the right thing -- that is, acting in the best interest of both the shelter clients and the greater public.

Shelters are paid for with public money to do a specific job, which is to create a safe place for people to sleep for people who have run out of options. The public should be able to examine whether restrictive shelter rules are helping or hurting the shelters' ability to do their job.

And, in fact, this happens pretty regularly -- there were public hearings on revised shelter rules about a year ago (http://www.sfbos.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=51...). A lot of people argued, correctly in my opinion, that the current regime of shelter rules put an undue burden on poor and homeless people, and make their already incredibly difficult lives even harder.

That's not what we should be doing. As lots of other people in this thread, and all throughout the community of people who study poverty alleviation, have pointed out, simply giving someone a home, or some kind of shelter, without conditions, is by far a more effective approach.

The whole idea of subjecting homeless people to more restrictive rules than anyone else faces to keep their housing is based on the notion that people are homeless because of some personal failure or lack of self-discipline. The data do not support this assumption, and we need to stop making policy based on it.

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