481–490 of 515 posts
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> A homeless person walked up and punched me in the face. Did he steal your phone, or just didn't like you?
> Did he steal your phone, or just didn't like you? Does it matter?
but from a practical standpoint I'd like to know if this is something I have to worry about now when I'm in San Francisco - getting punched by random homeless people.
I think he does have a point... but he could have put it better. I live in SF too; for ~10 years. I have never seen it this bad. The City passed a "sit/lie" law a couple of years ago.. but it's never enforced. The City is spending $1M/month ... for housing 225 people[1]. Do the math, and you'll see how ridiculous is that. At that rate, how much do you think the City can spend on the homeless? It has 7000 homeless, an…
>Do the math, and you'll see how ridiculous is that. It's $4444 per person per month. Why is that ridiculous? They need to employ people to manage the program as well as run shelters, pay rents, etc. $4444 is not so high that it's obviously too much.
Who will they pay rent to? The pier belongs to the City.
That much money gets a homeless basically a cot in a large warehouse. How is that worth $4K/month? And which other city spends $50K/homeless person?
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You can cherry-pick from his letter, but it's obvious that his first concern is about safety: > Worst of all, it is unsafe. > The residents of this amazing city no longer feel safe. > I shouldn’t have to worry about being accosted.
If that's his central message, he's wrong. Aside from some dips in 2013-2014, most crime rates in the city are lower than over the past ~15 years. Anecdotally, I live here now and I also lived here in 2006-2007, and most of downtown feels much safer. I am not a mind reader, but I think the guy sees poverty and feels threatened, and lacks the empathy to understand that the poors are human beings getting fucked by surg…
Just like they have no control over committing crime? Give me a break. Bad things happen to people. Use that as an excuse to terrorize residents and you're a far bigger piece of shit than someone who is being "insensitive" to their feelings.
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San Francisco has a $156M annual budget to address homelessness. That's not a small amount of money. First let's make sure that it's being spend efficiently.
Or, rather than get bogged down in never-ending "efficient government" debates, we can increase spending today and simultaneously address efficiencies. Far too often the demand "efficiency first" is just a means to delay the actual commitment of resources.
But if your code is O(n^3) and just doesn't ever give you an answer, upgrading your CPU is throwing good money after bad.
The current system and people are not able to solve the problem, even after spending >$22k per homeless person per year. How much more do you suggest spending, and why do you think it would make any difference to outcomes?
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I don't really know what your point is. The amount may be a large dollar figure, but it is clearly not enough to solve the problem, therefore the problem still exists. I'm curious how many people live in SF on 12-20k, but that's irrelevant. If someone has accommodation and is able to earn wages as a steady state, it is obvious that their costs will be less than a homeless person who needs mental health treatment, reh…
The point is that no amount of money will solve the problem with San Francisco's current approach (whatever that is). If they spend $50 million with zero effect, and they spend $100 million with zero effect, and they spend $150 million with zero effect, where do you guess the problem stands at the $200, $250, $500 marks?
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The devil doesn't seem to need more help, so maybe you should question your hobbies. That aside, what both you and he miss: the problem with the pain, struggle and despair of homelessness is not a comfortable person having to see it. It is a person having to experience the pain, struggle, and despair of homelessness. As a San Francisco with 5x his tenure, I am entirely proud that SF has not swept the homeless problem…
His post was incredibly tone-deaf, and he comes across as an entitled jerk. That said, there's a big difference between being reminded of other peoples' suffering and being assaulted. Leaning on someone's car, yelling at someone, and interrupting a theater are all acts of aggression. It's understandable that he's upset. Nobody should be subjected to this kind of behavior. Honestly you come across as kind of callous b…
> Leaning on someone's car, yelling at someone, and interrupting a theater are all acts of aggression.
He describes exactly none of those instances as even directed at him or his family. I get why people find mental illness to be troubling, and why they might feel unsafe. But he described nothing that was aggressive. Your feelings, although important, do not prove anything about what other people intend.
> People often seem to think we should give the homeless and drug addicts and mentally ill free reign to do whatever they want as some sort of act of kindness.
That is a ridiculous straw man. If they "seem" to think that to you, I don't believe you're trying very hard to understand what they actually think.
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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…
I agree with you! Many European countries (and I think Australia, though don't quote me) use government funded social housing as part of their HF programs. To me, that seems like an obvious solution to the supply problem though others in the anti-poverty community point to the stigma of housing projects in the US. I've never lived in a housing project and to tell you the truth, most of what I know about them comes fr…
If you're a welfare recipient the typically arrangement is for the rent to cost somewhere in the vicinity of 1/3 of your payment. Full rate Unemployment benefit in Australia is $600 a fortnight including something like $100 a fortnight 'Rent Assistance' payment. I believe welfare payment for people unfit for work for whatever reason is slightly more.
Australia also has fairly good services to homeless and disabled provided by the outreach sections of church organisations. Salvation Army and Mission Australia are the two I'm most familiar with. These services will, in certain circumstances, furnish a home and supply clothes.
We still have homelessness. Services are still stretched to their limits. There's a waiting period for the able-bodied to get in to public housing. We still have rough neighbour hoods.
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> Did he steal your phone, or just didn't like you? Does it matter?
Yes. You have to know what the victim did so you know what to tell them not to do next time. Stolen cell phone means that the victim shouldn't been out on their cellphone in the area. If it was because he didn't like the victim, it must have been some communication, I'm guessing non-verbal, that triggered the homeless person to attack. This is basic material that we go over in Victim Blaming 101. (/s, because last ti…
He barely broke stride, and kept walking on, talking to himself.
Some bystanders asked if I wanted to call the police.
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> Did he steal your phone, or just didn't like you? Does it matter?
Nothing matters nihilistically, but from a practical standpoint I'd like to know if this is something I have to worry about now when I'm in San Francisco - getting punched by random homeless people.
A homeless guy was walking up. As he passed me he held eye contact and said something like "You fucking bitch."
I was ready for him to attack me or whatever but we both kept walking. I'm just one guy, but I have never even lived in the city and I live out of country now. My friends who do live in the city all have lovely stories - people breaking into and sleeping in their cars, shitting in their cars, coming home and finding a homeless person standing in your bedroom (Santa Cruz).
I was in Chinatown talking to my grandmother on my cellphone. A homeless person walked up and punched me in the face. SF has the worst homeless problem I've ever seen in the first world, and it rivals the worst of what I've seen in the third world. It's a disgrace and it sucks and I don't have to like it. Whatever the local/state government is doing isn't working. And sure, maybe a lot of the homeless are just normal…
Your post made me realize that most of the complaints in this open letter aren't about homelessness, they're about crime. Quickly re-reading it, I see fights, indecent exposure, public disturbances, trespassing, harassment, assault. If this author had merely eliminated all mention of homelessness and replaced it with discussion of crime and criminals , it would have ditched all the heartless idiocy while still gettin…
It's the combination of the tragedy that so many live on the streets and the crime that such a population brings to the rest of us that is the issue. These people are often mentally unstable, violent, drug addicted, disturbed, etc.
Throwing them in jail is a waste of their potential and our money. Instead of only providing soup kitchens and free beds (which combined with the weather simply incentivizes out of state folks to come to SF), we should also provide some sort of long term, institutional mental care for these people - the present two options aren't working (a bed and some soup or if you get convicted of a crime a cage and some nutraloaf).