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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’

#461

Post by vatotemking »

hluska wrote: post #113
toxican wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, what on earth are the limits for a millennial? My late-20s self, a 9th grader and a man in his 30s should not all be classified the same...

This reminds me of 'generation X'. When I was in my early twenties, that badge made absolutely no sense as I was lumped into a group with my mid-thirties cousins and people who were still in high school. As I've aged, it has started to make more sense. Maybe the term millennial will be the same?? Edit - replaced the word 'pumped' with 'lumped'.

There is a term used about older generations always hating newer generations but I forgot.

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

#462

Post by [deleted] »

hluska wrote: post #113
toxican wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, what on earth are the limits for a millennial? My late-20s self, a 9th grader and a man in his 30s should not all be classified the same...

This reminds me of 'generation X'. When I was in my early twenties, that badge made absolutely no sense as I was lumped into a group with my mid-thirties cousins and people who were still in high school. As I've aged, it has started to make more sense. Maybe the term millennial will be the same?? Edit - replaced the word 'pumped' with 'lumped'.

[deleted]

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

#463

Post by mneubrand »

rdlecler1 wrote: post #164

SF does have a much bigger homeless problem than other cities, and whether it is cause or effect, it's at least correlated with significant and chronic drug use. I live in an area affectionately known as the 'tender knob'. We've had people defecate on our steps, tear open our garbage bins and leave litter everywhere, and shoot up drugs and leave dirty needles in our outside stairwell. Before moving to SF from NY, I h…

Fwiw it's called the Tendernob because it is on the border of the Tenderloin and Nob Hill.

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

#464

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

mindslight wrote: post #447
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The important distinction is that this plan should be privately funded. Otherwise it would take vital public money that's used to help people truly in need. Everybody falls on hard times. Some more than worse. The mayor of my town was homeless for a while, and he truly brings a sympathetic ear to the stubborn and persistent problems with homelessness (not just the homeless themselves). My idea is that people on the m…

I think the core of the idea could work with public money as well. In the short term, I agree it's not wise to divert public money to such an experiment. But if it worked over the long term, it would align incentives better. Currently, a city spending more money on its homeless population creates positive feedback - more people come for the better benefits. It's in no single city's interest to spend too much, especia…

I disagree that spending on the homeless incentivizes homelessness, or homeless migration. If the benefits were wildly better one city over, maybe, but honestly the biggest thing is the weather: winter doesn't kill you in California. Everything else is secondary.

Homeless people live where they do for the same reason renters or homeowners do: friends, family, history, allure, and so on. If, say, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, announced and financed the biggest homeless benefit program in history (they won't, but bear with me), then would California's homeless people leave their warm, blue skies? Would homeless people in New York uproot and move halfway across the continent?

As an aside, my idea wasn't to take homeless people in SF and transplant them to LA, but to edge them out to elsewhere in the Bay Area. If the whole region took on SF's lead, then the other counties would do the same until there was a location with either enough space/tolerance for the homeless, or a population that couldn't or wouldn't join to pay in the same benefit scheme. And if they want to move back, they can use their regular income to help them get a job and a place to live.

Interestingly, the SF Gate reported that there are around 7,000 homeless people in San Francisco. If each of them were paid $500 each month to avoid the city, that cost would tally to $42 million per year. For the legions of wealthy tech workers and venture capitalists in San Francisco, that would barely be a drop in the bucket. For cleaner, safer, and more pleasant streets, is that not a worthwhile investment?

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

#465

Post by pj_mukh »

pj_mukh wrote: post #53

Any data to back this up? Can't really go on anecdotal stories or EMS accounts (who only see emergency situations by design).

Sorry guys. Downvote away, but the original commenter made a call on how "MOST" homeless people are homeless because of 'X'. I merely want to point out that in no way is his anecdotal experience relevant to the conversation on how to solve the problem.

I'm simply embarrassed by my techie cohorts, who think they just KNOW why homeless people are homeless. The bottomline is that there are far more qualified people (homeless activists/workers) who have told me otherwise and the average HN'er will have to provide data to convince me otherwise.

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

#466

Post by shopkins »

m1sta_ wrote: post #456
shopkins wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

It isn't meant to be taken literally. But to be literal, in my previous sentence, "We all have homeless problems in our cities" implicitly means "not just the people in San Francisco, California." I go on not to say "We all get accosted," but rather "We get accosted..." which due to the context of the previous sentence, simply exemplifies some of the people and situations that we (that is, people other than you or the author) come into contact with in the various cities we live in.

You said yourself you've been lucky enough to live and work in particularly nice parts of town. That sort of makes your dispute moot, and I still ask, "so does that mean the issue doesn't exist?"

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

#467

Post by webXL »

wfo wrote: post #274
themartorana wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The political argument against it is "I don't want a single dime of my money going to worthless scumbag lowlifes who are too lazy to get a job" or "anything the government does is by definition wasteful, the private sector needs to handle this problem like all problems" -- the same one that galvanizes the right against welfare, regulations, healthcare, etc. The conservatives we have in the US are so extreme they make…

Do those "extreme" conservatives have any political power in the cities where this is the biggest problem? What about the liberal yuppies who live closest to the problem and who are most vocal about it?

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

#468

Post by forgottenpass »

carapace wrote: post #424
forgottenpass wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a "SF tech bro"? It's a scapegoat boogieman. A tool of techies in SF to manage their cognitive dissonance. There are things everyone else in the city hates the startup/tech scene at large for. There are also people progressives hate for their not-progressive-enough views, and some of them have the gall to work in tech. When either of those (or any other number of criticisms) are stereotypically "bro" (or clos…

Co-worker of mine, actual quote: "Yeah, I know there's a pay disparity, and women are paid less than men. But really, socially, they have all the power." THAT, my friend is a "tech bro" and he's in SF.

Does he even lift?

Maybe he's a neckbeard instead for having that view. I mean, as long as we're throwing sterotypes around, maybe that one fits better.

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

#469

Post by pj_mukh »

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…

You are right, except we can't have that conversation till the entitled techies in the bay area just shut up for a sec. Our flooding of the market has showed how the lack of supply is the problem, but like you correctly pointed out, the deportation of techies is not the solution. But we certainly should not be writing articles like this, it makes solving the problem that much harder.

There are a lot of activists (mostly behind the scenes) trying to increase the supply the side of the economics. However, the weird alliance between the NIMBY's and progressives in the city keep pointing at the entitled techies (like the author of the article) to show how the techie's are part of the problem.

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

#470

Post by sp332 »

theorique wrote: post #186
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?

"tech bro" is like the n-word for a software engineer. It's demeaning, dehumanizing, and offensive. The writer needs to pick a less offensive word to describe precisely what he means.

You're being really fragile about this. A "bro" is someone who's out of touch, not a sub-human creature. If this person doesn't want to be called bad names, they should stop being bad things.
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