Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 153 posts

Re: Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

#91

Post by WillPostForFood »

bm1362 wrote: post #85
autognosis wrote: post #83

CTRL+F "Minimum wage" yields no results in either the OP, or the comments. That tells me that SF is going to have a homelessness problem for loooong time. CA has told everyone that they CANNOT work if their time is not worth at least $21/hour. $15 for minimum wage, and ~$7 for taxes on the business to provide that employment. Of course you are going to have these problems. Downvote me if you like. But you cannot igno…

So you're saying that a high minimum wage prevents homeless people from getting jobs? That opinion seems overly simplistic -- I'm inclined to believe homelessness isn't a result of the lack of opportunity.

High minimum wage reduces opportunity for those capable of working to find work. And if you are going to hire someone at $15/hr it may mean you now longer have to take a chance on someone less skilled, less experienced, or with a sketchy record. It is simplistic, or simple economics. But of course you are right, the core problem of homelessness isn't lack of opportunity, or lack of housing.

Re: Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

#92

Post by krinchan »

pavlov wrote: post #76
fatdog wrote: post #39

Why do homeless people camp on sidewalks? Because it works. The question becomes, "works for what?" The proposition appears to mean to make camping "not work," by imposing risk and cost on campers. It's responding to a symptom, but it's like treating cancer with crutches. 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 prote…

... without any sense of responsibility ... ones who take advantage ... people who don't learn to get along ... All this sounds like you're blaming the homeless. Your last paragraph suggests that you have solutions to the problem. What are they?

> Your last paragraph suggests that you have solutions to the problem. What are they?

Right? I read that word soup and walked away with the paraphrase, "I'd tell you how to fix it, but I'm afraid you just aren't smart enough to understand."

Re: Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

#93

Post by DominikR »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #81
DominikR wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh you've got me completely wrong, I wouldn't guarantee anyone a place or service anywhere in the world. What I'm saying is that people are free to go and stay where ever they want in their country as long as it isn't someones private property. That's a very basic freedom that we all have. You don't have a mandatory responsibility to care for the homeless and homeless do not have a responsibility to accept any your c…

When your property taxes (or your landlord's property taxes that you pay in rent) are used to pay for expensive public services that could be done much cheaper elsewhere, homelessness is most certainly an infringement of private property. If a homeless person is robbed, your taxes pay for their police investigation. If a homeless person is stabbed, your taxes pay for their medical treatment. As far as this "very basi…

The costs for the examples you list are costs of having your own nation and your own set of laws.

There's no point in having either of those if we collectively do not enforce it.

Your position would allow to introduce arbitrary limits on freedom because you can always show a direct or indirect cost caused by having freedom. (it would certainly be cheaper to have everyone living in safe and orderly labour camps, wouldn't it?)

Regarding the U.S. Constitution: I'm in the EU but from my basic understanding the Constitution is a list of supreme laws limiting the governments power to interfere with citizens freedoms and not the other way around. Compiling a list of citizens freedoms would be senseless anyway as it would quickly approach an infinite list. Since I have not heard about a Constitutional law that allows the government to displace people internally it follows that the government does not have this power.

Re: Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

#94

Post by mancerayder »

odonnellryan wrote: post #48
product50 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah - what if there is a homeless colony right next to your current house? Would you say the same thing then?

> Oh yeah - what if there is a homeless colony right next to your current house? Would you say the same thing then? So, there is actually one near me. Not next to my house, but near me: http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2015/04/01/shantytown-in-hoboken... Weird, right? This is in Hoboken...extremely (bay-area-levels) rich area. SF median household income: $65,519.00 Hoboken: $105,710 (population difference between Hoboken…

I live in a similar situation in Brooklyn, in an area ripe for shantytown-living.

The commenters who are disgusted at the lack of compassion, while on the morally-correct side of the equation, fail to consider the practical aspects of streets saturated with homeless people. It's at best 'tolerable', often 'kinda scary' and very often 'downright dangerous'[1]. Seeing this every morning and every night, in a walking city, is a drag on public safety and, yes, neighborhood value and progress. Retail and housing suffer when people have to step over passed-out zombies on their way out of their apartments or into their stores.

I don't know what the right answer is, but from my observation it seems that the police and the prisons play the role of the mental health worker and the shelter. The former is more expensive than the latter, but it's easier.

In the article below, it took several dozen overdoses before the police finally cleared the homeless off the street. It's not a coincidence that in New York City, the homeless (and associated social problems like aggressive panhandling and threatening behavior, as well as sexual assaults) tend to hang out not too far from their shelters. The location being referenced below is near several shelters (in a neighborhood that has a huge percentage of all the shelters of the city).

1 http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/NYC-K2-Synthetic-Mariju...

Re: Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

#95

Post by mancerayder »

mancerayder wrote: post #94
odonnellryan wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh yeah - what if there is a homeless colony right next to your current house? Would you say the same thing then? So, there is actually one near me. Not next to my house, but near me: http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2015/04/01/shantytown-in-hoboken... Weird, right? This is in Hoboken...extremely (bay-area-levels) rich area. SF median household income: $65,519.00 Hoboken: $105,710 (population difference between Hoboken…

I live in a similar situation in Brooklyn, in an area ripe for shantytown-living. The commenters who are disgusted at the lack of compassion, while on the morally-correct side of the equation, fail to consider the practical aspects of streets saturated with homeless people. It's at best 'tolerable', often 'kinda scary' and very often 'downright dangerous'[1]. Seeing this every morning and every night, in a walking ci…

I think substance abuse and mental health issues are huge, huge factors into why able-bodied men end up 'having' to live on the street. Getting your fix is expensive and can definitely take precedence over paying your rent (or showing up at work).

Re: Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

#96

Post by fatbird »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #56
product50 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah - what if there is a homeless colony right next to your current house? Would you say the same thing then?

Counterexample: you could live where I live (upstate New York) on a tenth of the cost of San Francisco. A homeless person with marginally employable skills that moved from SF to upstate NY could work and afford to live in a home with heat and running water. But if people choose not to work, I don't see what makes them any more "entitled" to live in a city than the people who work to make rent and pay taxes to support…

You don't earn an entitlement to live in a city; the city is obligated to justify excluding you from its area. In the U.S., vagrancy laws allowing police to generally run undesirables out of town have been found unconstitutional under due process analysis.

Everyone on the street is there for a variety of different reasons. You can't reduce it to choosing not to work.

Re: Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

#97

Post by autognosis »

bm1362 wrote: post #85
autognosis wrote: post #83

CTRL+F "Minimum wage" yields no results in either the OP, or the comments. That tells me that SF is going to have a homelessness problem for loooong time. CA has told everyone that they CANNOT work if their time is not worth at least $21/hour. $15 for minimum wage, and ~$7 for taxes on the business to provide that employment. Of course you are going to have these problems. Downvote me if you like. But you cannot igno…

So you're saying that a high minimum wage prevents homeless people from getting jobs? That opinion seems overly simplistic -- I'm inclined to believe homelessness isn't a result of the lack of opportunity.

Yes, that is a fact. Minimum wage increases unemployment. Ispso facto.

No job ---> no self-reliance.

Homelessness is only a short leap from that point.

Simple does not imply over simplification.

Re: Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

#98

Post by [deleted] »

bm1362 wrote: post #85
autognosis wrote: post #83

CTRL+F "Minimum wage" yields no results in either the OP, or the comments. That tells me that SF is going to have a homelessness problem for loooong time. CA has told everyone that they CANNOT work if their time is not worth at least $21/hour. $15 for minimum wage, and ~$7 for taxes on the business to provide that employment. Of course you are going to have these problems. Downvote me if you like. But you cannot igno…

So you're saying that a high minimum wage prevents homeless people from getting jobs? That opinion seems overly simplistic -- I'm inclined to believe homelessness isn't a result of the lack of opportunity.

[deleted]

Re: Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

#99

Post by WillPostForFood »

stale2002 wrote: post #73
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not address it locally? Its easy to say "somebody else's problem" when dealing with your poor, dirty homeless neighbors. And its a problem all over - the reciprocal argument "the State can't fix everything for everybody" is valid too. The real hangup in all this comes when temporary fixes (tents) are pulled out from under people, and ephemeral future fixes by indeterminate somebody are waved around. People have t…

Because it is extremely expensive to address it locally, and you could help a LOT more people by taking that money and building homes for people in less expensive places. Every 1 homeless person that you help in SF is 10 people that you could be helping somewhere else

You can still do that without having the state run the program. The homeless problem in SF might looks somewhat different from Chula Vista, so it makes sense to have locally created programs in addition to state programs. Regardless, the state does run homeless programs, and earlier this year passed a two billion dollar program to build housing for the homeless.

Re: Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

#100

Post by mancerayder »

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #20

I'm so glad I left that horrible place called the bay area. These inhumane rich jerks just don't want to see poor people. What a disgusting culture.

Which area did you end up in such that the culture is much different?
Post reply on HN