Homeless people are attracted to places with nice year round weather. SF provides that.
They are also attracted to places where they are tolerated or accepted. The people of SF are very tolerant of the homeless. As one of the commenters here says: "I bring cash, you run out after just a block or two." Sounds like a great place to be homeless.
As for root causes, homelessness is mostly caused by drug addiction and mental illness. According the the National Coalition for the Homeless:
"A 2008 survey by
the United States Conference of Mayors asked 25 cities for their top three causes of homelessness.
Substance abuse was the single largest cause of homelessness for single adults (reported by 68% of cities).
Substance abuse was also mentioned by 12% of cities as one of the top three causes of homelessness for
families. According to Didenko and Pankratz (2007), two-thirds of homeless people report that drugs
and/or alcohol were a major reason for their becoming homeless."
As for mental illness, according to a research summary compiled by the Treatment Advocacy Center:
"Approximately one-third of the total homeless population includes individuals with serious, untreated mental illnesses"
More affordable housing will not offer relief to the homeless because their state is largely caused by addiction and mental illness, not by high housing prices.
70%+ of homeless people in SF were previously housed in SF. Yes they are attracted to SF but it's in the same way that you and I may be attracted to the city. They came for the weather, the jobs, the culture, and they got left behind.
You're right about drug abuse and mental illness, but neither of those should leave someone to a life on the streets. Treatment is the answer for people with mental health issues or addictions.
“Homlessness” is a much broader concept than the yelling szizophric on the street with that weird “missing hair syndrome” on his head that a lot of them have.
It covers things like eviction, family unit disruption, etc.
Yeah sure 70% of homeless fall into “previously housed here and fell on hard times.”
While sad and should be addressed it is not the homelessness that is greatly affecting quality of life. It is the small fraction of chronically sick, chronically insane and chronically addicted that are literally dying on the streets in front of people.
Thank you for pointing this out. It's far to common to hear that the increase in homelessness is the result of out-of-town transients invading from afar and then settling here.
They may have previously been housed in SF, but they lost their shelter for one reason or another - likely drugs or mental illness, given statistics - and stayed in SF for the reasons I gave.
That number is self-reported and ostensibly includes crashing on someone's couch for a month before getting kicked out. (IIRC, the head of Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing admitted as much recently on Michael Krasny's Forum show.) Plus, most forms of public assistance require being a California or San Francisco resident. The legal definition and logic of residency doesn't translate easily into non-lawyer speak, so like with many such things there are common myths about meeting residency requirements, such as having lived in a place for at least 1 year, etc.[1] And it doesn't matter that the legal requirements are rarely enforced, people needing assistance will often follow a script.
If you know anything about how evictions work in this city, like the fact that Ellis Act evictions require a _ridiculous_ amount of compensation (think at least $20-$30k), it's obvious the real problem with homelessness in the city is drugs and mental health and the fact that, for whatever reasons, homeless from around the Bay Area, California, and Western U.S. inflate our numbers.
My mother is part of a jobs program that pays her to tend to some disabled people in public housing[2]. That is, she's intimately familiar with many assistance programs from the perspective of both beneficiary and provider. In San Francisco, if you live on the streets but are willing to enter treatment (for mental health or drugs), it's _very_ easy to be housed. It's actually a source of resentment because plenty of people who could really use public housing, but who otherwise work their butts off to stay off the streets, can't get it in favor of people who can get housing (plus cash benefits) merely by stopping drugs.
Drug and mental health issues are legitimate problems that people need and deserve help overcoming (often in perpetuity), and I don't have a problem funding programs to help those people. But IMO using the housing crisis to explain street homelessness is self-serving and counter-productive rhetoric by people effected by high rents, who have every incentive to link the two problems considering that the city actually puts resources into addressing homelessness. The cost of housing no doubt plays a part at the margins (e.g. by taking extremely low-end housing off the market that once upon a time might have been more tolerant of drug addicted and mentally ill tenants causing trouble and missing rent), but based on the facts on the ground I can't see how it's even close to being the primary cause of the magnitude of the problem today.
[1] It doesn't help that during the 1990s many states, including California, tried to make many of those myths the law, but SCOTUS shot them down (I think because of the Privileges & Immunities Clause). Still, Republican pundits today still push for hard requirements like 1 year of residency, having had a job, etc. This lends the myths credibility and keeps them circulating.
[2] Disabled in a very technical, legal sense. Every one of her "clients" is at least as physically capable as others of similar age. Most disabled in these programs are people who, because of psychiatric or cognitive issues, simply have trouble taking care of themselves or mastering life skills more generally, even if in conversation they seem perfectly normal and intelligent. The public housing they live in would deteriorate into garbage dumps and drug dens if people didn't come in and clean up after them and tamp down on bad behavior Involving police or social workers would be far too expensive, and such blatant exercise of authority would drive these people back out onto the streets. IOW, you literally need to _pay_ these people to stay off the street. Humans are... complex....
Speaking as someone with multiple addicts in his immediate family (some with 40+ year addiction histories), I promise you that treatment is rarely the "answer". Most addicts don't want to go to treatment. They want to maximize their draw from society and minimize their effort to get that draw so that they can continue to use drugs as much as possible.
> I promise you that treatment is rarely the "answer". Most addicts don't want to go to treatment.
Most addicts don't want to go to treatment because treatment doesn't work - mostly it gets people to focus on their failures and feel bad about themselves. Someone responded to my previous quip about AA's miserable success rate with...
I'd say 12-step is closer to "takes credit for the
~10-15% of people who'd beat their addictions anyways".
My girlfriend was doing fine with her addictions. The main factor was that I did not approve, and she liked me more than the drugs. She's spent the last two years getting 'treated' by the mental health professionals, who have reversed cause (self-medicating) and effect ('mental illness').
Some months ago her treatment provider did a genetic test, and decided she'd benefit from Vitamin B-9 - grains fortified with folic acid doesn't work for poor methylators. It's too bad the treatment providers don't start with healthy diets and supplements for all their patients.
Maybe that's the best we can accomplish -- grant them some of what they want so they are otherwise prevented from harming society and the ripple effects of a black market supply chain are eliminated.
So do you have evidence that most SF homeless are immigrants?
Many people have psychological problems, and/or dependence on various psychoactive drugs. And perhaps they do correlate with homelessness. But correlation does not prove causation. Maybe it's just that homelessness makes it all worse.
By the city's 2017 San Francisco Homeless Count &
Survey, most either were already homeless when then arrived in the city (31%) or became homeless after being here less than 10 years (another 31%, see page 22).
The claim is that homeless (and borderline homeless) people are already attracted to San Francisco, and that making it more attractive isn't going to solve the problem while there are near-unlimited reserves of more homeless people in the rest of the country.
All cities attract homeless people to a greater or lesser extent. It's easier to blend in and live off the system's detritus in a large city than in a rural area or small town, if you don't have any friends or family willing to support you.
Let's be clear, you're arguing against data by waving your hands. Then using your "they're not from here" assertion to justify the city not dealing with the problem. Then suggesting that the Federal government should do this without talking about how that could possibly happen.
I'm pointing out that the demand for housing in any city is elastic; if you house the current 6,000 homeless without addressing the systemic problems, more arrive to take their place and you're back where you started.
Rich European countries which have solved this problem don't do it by putting all the homeless in Paris or Berlin. They're distributed throughout urban, suburban, and rural areas of the country, which is what we need to do.
It sounds like you haven't really gotten to know many homeless people. If you did, you'd realize that what they typically need is not a job but something more like basic income - food and shelter, which can be more easily provided in a place that's not the most expensive city in America.
If you want to see what cheap housing and food without economic opportunity go to rural West Virginia. It doesn't work well. The first steps you describe need to be followed by incorporating people back into the economy.
The natural tendency of a competitive (capitalist) economy is to exclude a subset of people. The "economy" is the cause of homelessness, not the solution. The solution has to come from outside the economy.
My meaning was outside the capitalist system of exchanging services for goods. Many, many people need goods and have no meaningful services to exchange. The idea that we need to cram all of these people in the most dense and expensive centers of capitalist activity is ludicrous and harmful.
I'm not sure how one defines "already homeless" before arrival. Maybe something like "had been homeless before". But maybe they were hoping to do better in SF. But even so, from a sister post,[0] I get that 71% became homeless after moving to SF. So yes, it's arguable that ~30% of SF homeless are immigrants. I guess that they like the weather too.
Still, deportation doesn't seem like a viable option.
> I'm not sure how one defines "already homeless" before arrival.
Shipping homeless and/or mentally ill to other locations is a thing that's been done by a number of jurisdictions, more than once over an extended period of time with San Francisco as the destination.
"According to Didenko and Pankratz (2007), two-thirds of homeless people report that drugs and/or alcohol were a major reason for their becoming homeless."
It's true that mental illness and substance abuse are major drivers of homelessness, but lack of affordable housing can be the final straw for someone on the brink of homelessness
I've known long term renters who've lived in the same apartment for years and been forced out by landlords trying to capitalize on rising rents. If you are getting by on low income, or have a moderate or severe but treated mental illness (even like ptsd for vets), and lose your home, that can be the start of a slippery slope that can lead to homelessness. Affordable housing would provide a safety net to catch people falling down this slope
Justify it to tourists? How to we justify it to ourselves.
Richest city in the richest state in the richest country in the world and we can't even provide a place for people to live. It's a failure at every level, there are too many culprits to list.
Aside: I thought it was a great touch that in this article each homeless person pictured was mentioned by name. Humanizing these people is something we can all do without spending a penny. If someone stops you on the street asking for a dollar, at least have the courtesy to look them in the eye and politely decline. I've had a number of people thank me more forcefully for that small gesture than actually giving them money (of course, give if you can!).
Richest city in the richest state in the richest country in the world and we can't even provide a place for people to live.
To think this through: very few homeless people were born in San Francisco. Everyone has freedom of movement in this country. If San Francisco commits to house everyone within its municipal boundaries, we'll need to be prepared to house all the homeless from the rest of the state and the country as well.
In other words, the problem has to be solved at a national level.
You're completely right, but I think what they were trying to say is, of all the homeless people in the USA, very few of them were born in SF. Yet due to freedom of movement, they could all come here for the price of a Greyhound bus ticket.
Actually, your link verifies my claim that most were not born in San Francisco: 29% already homeless when arriving here, plus 51% of the remaining 71% have lived here less than 10 years, means a minimum of 65% are transplanted from other areas.
That's not saying we shouldn't help them, but just that this is a national problem, not one that San Francisco can solve unilaterally.
I have lived in San Francisco for only four years. Am I not deserving of the city's full services in hard times?
I agree that the federal government needs to do a lot more, but cities can solve their own problems too. These people are our neighbors. We can do better for them.
Why the "city's full services" and not America's full services? Shouldn't homeless people all over the nation be housed, not just the ones who come to San Francisco?
You edited your post quite drastically. I'm responding to the original:
> Why do you insist it be the city's services and not the federal govenment's services? Where in San Francisco do suggest we house the nation's 643,000 homeless if the problem isn't solved at a national level?
Is it really only 643000? San Francisco's a city of ~800000 and could probably handle a 75% increase with a bit of high density construction. Sounds like such an easy problem to solve financially speaking. Why hasn't it been done already?
When we support all of the people that can be verified living and working in SF prior to their homelessness then we can use your excuse for shirking our responsibilities.
Why are we (collectively) only responsible to the homeless in SF? I'm proposing that we all take responsibility for homelessness in America as a whole.
Giving up until the Federal government solves the problem isn't good enough. Especially because nobody even knows what policies will work. It's better to experiment at the city level.
It sounds like you're giving up until the city solves the problem. I've been homeless and taken in by others, and likewise my family has taken homeless folks into our own house. There is a lot we can do at a personal level, but in the last analysis the problem is systemic: it's caused by capitalism and the regime of private property, not the policies of one city.
I'm glad you've been so selfless. That doesn't mean the Federal government is going to do the first thing about homelessness. Nor does it mean elasticity of demand has the same slope in all markets.
The city of San Francisco is in a unique position of having resources and political will to try new policies. I'll cast my vote accordingly.
You remind me of someone who thinks he can fix a mouse problem in just one room of the house, without paying attention to the other, connected rooms. "I'm only worried about mice which are currently in the bedroom - thinking about the entire house is too much."
Solving big problems works better when you can solve the small problems they're composed of. First figure out how to catch, kill, or deter a mouse and then expand the solution to the rest of the house.
You're way to focused on the concept of elasticity. There's a lot more to figure out before that's the immediate problem.
You're making it sound like this is some difficult research problem. The answer to homelesness is simple: give them homes. Give them food. Give them money. This is how it works in every industrial society that's solved the problem.
Your error is that you're obsessed with trying to fix this within a market economy, by specifically housing them in areas of high economic activity where they can supposedly find "opportunity". That won't work and is counterproductive.
Making people permanently dependent doesn't work either. This country has entire communities subsisting on Medicare and social security. We don't need more of them. There's plenty of space in the places that have jobs and no reason to exclude people.
If you're convinced that you should be making everyone work instead of subsidizing their existence (which is much cheaper), you need to bring jobs outside of the city. Telling everyone to just live in San Francisco doesn't scale.
That's self-reported poll data not verified against any objective source.
I think it's natural for a subject of such a poll to respond how s/he thinks will produce a result favorable to her/him in the long run. People like a sense of belonging.
It really goes beyond providing a place to live. As somebody who does not live in the US it blows my mind that if somebody has mental illness bad enough that they cannot keep a job, they then cannot have health insurance and so they cannot get help because they cannot afford it. It really seems like Americans have optimized their healthcare system so that those that don't need help are the ones most eligible for it (which is perfect if you are an insurance company).
> they then cannot have health insurance and so they cannot get help because they cannot afford it
What? That's not true. People without income can get health insurance paid for by the state.
It's called Medicaid, look it up.
> which is perfect if you are an insurance company
Again, what? That doesn't help insurance companies. They don't care, they'll just raise their rates. It helps the average person I suppose, although they end up paying for it in taxes, so it doesn't make a net difference.
> As somebody who does not live in the US
What you really are is someone who gets all their info about the US from the news. Please remember: If it's in the news it's not typical. Your impression about a county should be the opposite of whatever you read in the news.
I live in the Mission. When I have a friend come over from out of town, their first shock comes from the large number of homeless tents literally on my doorstep, a few blocks away from a major street (Valencia).
I then take them for a walk. As I pass the empty block at 22nd and Mission, I tell them how it used to be a tall apartment building where poorer people lived under rent control for a long time, and the landlord burned it down because he couldn’t evict them and wasn’t happy with the money he was making. Second shock.
https://missionlocal.org/tag/22nd-street-fire/
Finally, we take a stroll to Dolores Park, and I point to them the house that Zuckerberg bought. There’s usually a homeless person hanging around, so one can provide a little verbal comment: “this person survives on a few dollars day, and a few floors above you have someone worth $80B“
There are no words to describe how screwed up things are.
@GuiA I know your neighborhood well - until recently I had space below SF autoworks on 21st & Valencia. What you didn't mention about the Zuckerberg mansion is the constant security detail around it - private security in black full size Suburbans. Regarding 22nd & Mission it is amazing how quickly it all got torn down so an expensive apartment building could be erected. Corner lots and gas stations seem to have a lot of accidental damage in SF that results in them being quickly demolished.
In my experience the vast majority of SF homeless have substance abuse issues overlaid over mental health problems. The streets are dirty and dangerous, but the dumpster diving behind restaurants and food stores are rich pickings compared to other west coast cities, according to street people I befriended.
Other countries, other states, other cities have "solved" this problem in a bunch of different ways, it's not a unique problem. What's unique is the city's unwillingness to actually solve it.
At the core, you need to spend more money by basically giving these people healthcare, mental health care, and a place to live.
"But that's not fair, what about all the good, honest citizens of the city who work their asses off to pay the exorbitant rents and exorbitant health insurances and still struggle to put food on the table bla bla bla"
No, it's not fair, but as long as that mentality rules, SF will have a homeless problem. The city sure as fuck doesn't lack the money to solve it, it lacks political will.
"But that's socialism!"
Yes. Now do you want to solve the problem, or keep sticking your head in the sand and hope it goes away through the magic of capitalism and the free market?
The article itself points out that SF is already spending $305 million a year on homelessness. The number of homeless people is only officially 6500. It's probably closer to 12,000 but how much more do you want to spend? That's $46K per person!
You prop up this solution of something vague but close to socialism as a silver bullet, but with no evidence. If $46K per person doesn't show that socialism is failing to work, then what will?
1) City spending isn't the full picture. How much money does the city lose because tourists/people/businesses choose other places because they perceive SF as a dump? That's the true cost of the problem, and the obvious answer is that as long as you spend below that amount to solve the problem, it's a win.
2) $46k is a crazy amount of money in my mind. What? How? How can you spend all that money and not get any results other than basic survival? Is it incompetence on a massive scale? Corruption? A failure of imagination?
3) Again, my main point is that this is a solved problem. It is not a unique problem. Contrary to what a bunch of other commenters in this thread have said, SF is not a unique snowflake of a city where this problem is magically unsolveable. It's the fucking not-invented-here syndrome from the software world, but applied to city politics. This is not rocket science. This is not uncharted territory. Learn from others, ffs.
Much of that is going into housing, so what little is left is likely not enough for the full gamut of professional services that these individuals likely require.
It probably does count much of the state and federal spending on SF homelessness, which is funneled through the city budget (as revenue that pays for an expense) and not direct state/federal spending that bypasses the City and County.
The article doesn't make the claim of excluding federal and state funding, and the usual method of reporting expenditures by a public jurisdiction would include spending which happened to be supported by (e.g., backfilled by partial matching funds, in one common model) money from other jurisdictions at higher levels.
their spending is inefficient largely because of anti-socialist attitudes. it's not politically viable to just give the homeless $30k a year tax free but it's almost certainly the cheapest and most effective way to solve the problem
Giving anyone who shows up and claims they are homeless $30K is the cheapest and most effective way to solve the problem? It sounds like the most effective way to rob SF of its treasury.
"30k spending per person" does not mean each homeless person gets 30k. This money goes to all the workers who go through papers, work at shelters, office people to write papers to try to get more money from the federal government, and all sorts of other bureaucracy.
Almost none of it goes to the homeless people themselves.
As stated elsewhere, many of them are addicted to drugs and have mental health issues. Giving someone with one or both of those problems $30k won't help.
It seems stupid to blame socialism for this, when really SF's problem is that they throw money at problems but don't care enough about efficacy. The most effective policy for ending homelessness is socialist: The government simply gives the homeless person a house, no questions asked, no strings attached. You want a house, you get one.
The homeless person now has a house, and so they're not homeless. (duh!) It's shockingly simple, and ruthlessly effective at not only getting people off the street but solving health, addiction, and employment problems. Oh, and did I mention that it's way cheaper than the traditional patchwork model of mitigating homelessness?
Again, and again, simply giving away houses is a cheaper and more effective way at ending this problem. Cases in point:
Utah cut homelessness by over 90%. [0]
Finland has had similar results. [1]
Just today, NPR reported that Chicago hospitals cut ER costs and improved the health of frequent homeless patients by simply giving them an apartment.[2]
Housing First works. It's a waste of time and money to do anything else. Oh and it's gasp socialist!
> The government simply gives the homeless person a house, no questions asked, no strings attached. You want a house, you get one.
Your references don't support this.
[0]
> The idea of Housing First is that housing comes first, services later. Clients do have to pay some rent — either 30 percent of income or up to $50 a month, whichever is greater.
They also review every case and only provide housing to those that aren't dealing drugs, and aren't violent.
[1]
> Tenants pay rent and are entitled to receive housing benefits. Depending on their income, they may contribute to the cost of the services. The rest is covered by the municipalities. They provide the support themselves or buy support from other service providers, mainly from the NGOs.
[2] is in reference to Chicago. I don't think that city is a success story.
I never said there shouldn't be any social services. I don't think 100% socialism is the answer, though.
> It's cheaper.
You are comparing San Francisco to other areas which run these programs, and holding it up as if it is the only alternative to socialism. This is hardly true, isn't it?
> It's giving housing first.
Only to those that play by the rules. I think that is really the best solution out there. A compromise between self responsibility and care.
> Finally, Numbers and Chicago don't care what you think.
I wasn't under the impression that the current issue in SF was a lack of willingness for politicians in both the city, and the state, to throw money at the problem due to constituents complaining it is unfair due to its socialistic resemblence. But I'll admit I haven't read about it as much since I moved from SF.
Pragmatism over ideology should be the rule of politics. Whatever works and provides the better situation. Too many people get bent out of shape over whether something is liberal or conservative, whether it's fair, whether it applies to their situation (I had to work hard for my home), etc. How about whether it solves the problem?
Orange county is certainly very pragmatic about it. Down there or Irvine, if you're homeless and the cops see you, you get driven to city limits, identity recorded, and told not to come back.
The second time you get beat up, recorded again and driven to city limits. The third time and afterwards, you get beat up, all your stuff gets destroyed/confiscated, and you're driven to city limits.
There is no homeless problem in Orange County/Irvine despite it having nicer weather than San Francisco.
Thank for putting it into words for me. Its so hard to express political support for these types of solutions without being decried as a naive bleeding-heart liberal.
That said I'm under the impression that a huge fraction of bay-area homeless are of the mentally-unsound variety not the out-of-work variety.
Which sounds like a lack of proper mental health services in the area, including institutions. Those homeless because of mental illness probably can't function well enough to provide for themselves. Society should be taking care of them. And it's much more likely for those people to become productive if they're receiving proper care.
If we can eminent domain land to build walls and pipelines, we can do it for housing. This isn't about money; it's cheap to build housing. It's about land.
Seize it and build housing. The end.
EDIT: Of course this will never happen in the U.S. and we will always have homeless people and poor people like it's some axiom of civilization.
In America, the Takings Clause of the 5th Amendment requires that property owners must be compensated when their property is seized for public purposes, so any seizures still come out of the government’s budget. States are supposed to raise resources using their tax power, not the police power. The correct law to reform is California’s tax limitation law, Proposition 13.
You have to go up a couple levels of government for it to not be murder. California is the controlling authority on the definition of murder, assuming that the situation doesn't involve federal property or federal employees. California can just make an exemption for homeless people, and that is that.
This is sad and depressing to read. I was out in SF last week for a tech conference. A great time to escape the cold Chicago winter for arguably good SF weather all year round. Unfortunately, politics and poor city management has made this city much harder to live in. I would hop off the BART at Powell station and smell the strong stench of human excretion, or tents right outside the 16th Mission St station entrance. I feel bad for the homeless, but I don’t think the city is doing a good job is helping their situation either. I love SF for all the opportunities it brings, but hate the fact that it isn’t well distributed to all its residents, both the rich and the poor. SF highlights what’s good (and bad) about America’s current situation imo.
Many of the homeless people in SF probably escaped the cold Chicago winters too.
Due to nice weather, California cities have to support many of the Midwest’s homeless population. To compensate, there should be a lot more federal funding for homelessness.
This is a myth. LAHSA does an annual homelessness census in Los Angeles. The overwhelming majority of the homeless are native Angelenos; 73% of them have been in LA for over 20 years.
Please stop spreading this pernicious myth. Nearly 3/4 of the SF homeless population became homeless while living in the city; 90% did so in California.
"The most recent homeless count, conducted in January 2015, found 6,686 homeless people in the city. Seventy-one percent of people reported living in San Francisco when they became homeless, up from 61 percent in 2013. Just 10 percent said they were living outside California when they became homeless, and the remaining 19 percent were living in the state but not in the city."
When I first traveled to San Francisco I was amazed by the homeless problem. And I lived in NY where there’s a substantial number of homeless.
Sadly, each time I travel back, it seems worse and I’m jaded. I bring cash, you run out after just a block or two. I was staying in the Embarcadero and every restaurant and shop had a homeless person outside the door. Do even if you just gave a dollar or your change, I ran out.
This is a difficult problem and I don’t even know how to measure it, much less solve.
Do you spend much time on Hacker News? Such opinions are expressed here regularly. More seriously, it's not unusual to see, say, Florida casually compared to, say, Eastern Europe without any sense of how absurdly one-sided such comparisons actually are (e.g. on measures like GDP, standard of living, number of jobs, etc).
Opinions are opinions. That's fine. But what I find as a Missourian living in NYC is that people on the coasts (who didn't move there from somewhere else) are largely ignorant of important factual properties of the South and the Midwest. It's not uncommon to see someone off by an order of magnitude about, say, GDP or population or whatever (expressed with extreme confidence, of course).
Yes, that's right. It's well into the bottom half of U.S. states by GDP per capita, which still puts it at around 4-5x the GDP per capita in most Eastern European countries (which was my point).
The United States is ridiculously wealthy, even in places Americans love to denigrate. That's worth remembering whenever you feel like comparing Florida unfavorably to this or that other place.
GDP isn't really a great measure of how well a population is doing if inequality is high and wages are stagnant for low paid workers.
Florida has one of the highest levels of inequality in the US and the US in general had more inequality than most European countries.
Are the working poor in the south really that much better off than most of Europe where healthcare and social housing are more readily available? GDP alone is a bad measure of success for individuals living somewhere if the benefits are not shared.
I think many of the people that live in major coastal cities that have extremely negative opinions of the rest of the country often lived in those places prior to moving there.
As long as California's home construction continues to be below population growth, it will keep getting worse. There are a lot of causes you can point at, but until there's actually enough housing getting built, they're all red herrings.
As long as a city parking space costs more than a person on assistance can pay, you're not going to have affordable housing. You can't call an uncovered slot of 200sq/ft with no services a home, but that goes for >$200/mo (a lot more than $6/day in most places) in a less nice part of downtown San Jose... I don't want to think what it runs in SF. The 80sqft tiny houses which violate building code are running $73k+ ignoring substantial land (320sqft+) and utilities costs (it's owned by the city).
You have to treat mental health and drug addiction, because other homeless people don't want to live with them. Probably, you'll have to move people out of the city center, if you don't want substantial new taxes. However, if you don't bother to enforce anything you'll still end up with several thousand people living in the creeks under tarps, because they'd rather do that than go outside the city center.
Not to disagree with your second point, but that 200ft^2 of land can house a lot of people if you're building 20 stories onto it. It seems to me housing crisis is affected massively by the anti-high-density sentiment in SF preventing efficient use of land.
Yes, but look at building costs for those 20 stories. They won't be like a tiny house. SJ has an airport, and SF has a lot of marsh fill. Both are in earthquake country. I don't think it's ok to violate earthquake standards so we can build tall buildings for the homeless (and to cost less than $5-600/mo they would need to be purpose built). We also don't want ghettos like Cabrini Green, but try putting them next to someone paying 10x ($5k/mo) in the same building. Your best bet is just straight up subsidy to get prices down and high value low cost build. That will be expensive to house even a few % of the population... a 1-2% sales tax increase (since that's one of the few the city could keep).
Unless a price of a home is ridiculously cheap (under $100 a month?), and even then, people without any income and/or mentally unwell people will not magically become non-homeless. Next time, read your post two times after writing and check for logical errors.
In Berlin you can live in a decent apartment in the city center for 400 $ per month. The only reason this is not possible in SF is that you have so much low density crap even in walking distance of the center. This is insane.
How in the world is that point incorrect? Housing isn’t being built at nearly the required rates to at least depress the growth in costs - and that’s been fairly well established here and elsewhere. Are you saying that population growth in California isn’t a factor here? AFAIK the growth rate is still positive, albeit decreasing. Though that’s statewide, the pattern is the same in SF.
This sounds like a basic supply and demand question, no?
I took a trip to SF with the intention of later moving there for work. The #1 thing that prevented me from following through was the street issues. Not just from sympathy for the people who aren't helped after falling through the cracks (although that's also a big part of it), who wants to live in a place where you're one desperate decision from being mugged or attacked.
Very glad the tech scene is spreading out around the world rather than further concentrating
SF's homeless problem is a direct result of so many negative federal policies and so many positive SF policies that it's so funny that people come out of this with a negative opinion on SF.
SF spends so much fucking money on the homeless, including 112 million on supportive housing for the formerly homeless and 27 million spent on eviction prevention.
The problem is that the issue of homelessness is a FEDERAL issue and that no one city, even SF has the resources to combat it.
As some have said SF and many other west coast cities are extremely attractive to the homeless because they have relatively lenient laws regarding them, ample social services (relative to any other city) and moderate temperatures.
SF is also a mecca for sending your queer/trans child that your religious beliefs can't bear to have around you.
There are many obvious solutions to mitigate homelessness. Provided government housing, decent physical and mental healthcare, job training.
San Francisco does all of those things. However, the fact is supply and demand is totally out of whack because SF is a sink for homelessness.
This needs to be addressed federally and until then all west coast cities will continue to be filled with homeless and have their social services over run.
> As some have said SF and many other west coast cities are extremely attractive to the homeless because they have relatively lenient laws regarding them, ample social services (relative to any other city) and moderate temperatures.
[citation needed]
I'm skeptical of the weather argument. I would expect the homeless to move to Los Angeles or San Diego first.
Of course, that's assuming the homeless have the mental capacity to even make the conscious decision to move there. I don't think most addicts or mentally disabled people have the wherewithal to make a move from, say, Chicago to SF. (I.e. how do you make a planned move with (a) no money and (b) no Google to figure out the commercial train line routes you can hop a ride on for free? Hop a train in Chicago and maybe end up in Lansing, Michigan or Toronto instead!)
There are lots of homeless in San Diego and LA, however, they don't have the same level of density that SF is nor the same level of social services.
>I don't think most addicts or mentally disabled people have the wherewithal to make a move from, say, Chicago to SF.
There is a distinction between people with mental health problems and mental disability. Things like addiction and mental health exist on a pretty vast spectrum and have massive variations day to day.
As to how homeless people get around - well I see you haven't been on the greyhound much but that's a major way to travel for homeless both with their own money or with tickets paid for by various cities.
For many reasonsons. Some include the fact that homelessness isn't an issue that arises at a city level it's something that arises at a national level and was in part caused by federal decisions such as the privatization and defunding of mental health institutions and the failure of the federal government to appropriately care for veterans.
Shortage of housing that's affordable by minimum-wage workers is the fundamental problem. Plus lack of workable public transportation to places where housing is affordable.
I imagine a meat grinder something like this. First you get evicted because you earn too little to pay the rent. Then you lose your job because you can't stay presentable. After a while, it's pretty much irreversible.
So yeah. We need affordable housing. And we need fair wages.
Lest we think that “eat the rich!” is a particularly new critique of states which fail to address the needs of their citizens:
WHAT keeps you from giving now? Isn't the poor person there? Aren't your own warehouses full? Isn't the reward promised? The command is clear: the hungry person is dying now, the naked person is freezing now, the person in debt is beaten now-and you want to wait until tomorrow? "I'm not doing any harm," you say. "I just want to keep what I own, that's all." You own! You are like someone who sits down in a theater and keeps everyone else away, saying that what is there for everyone's use is your own. . . . If everyone took only what they needed and gave the rest to those in need, there would be no such thing as rich and poor. After all, didn't you come into life naked, and won't you return naked to the earth?
The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry person; the coat hanging unused in your closet belongs to the person who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the person with no shoes; the money which you put in the bank belongs to the poor. You do wrong to everyone you could help, but fail to help.
--Basil, 4th century
THE large rooms of which you are so proud are in fact your shame. They are big enough to hold crowds-and also big enough to shut out the voice of the poor. . . . There is your sister or brother, naked, crying! And you stand confused over the choice of an attractive floor covering.
--Ambrose, 4th century
Pretty soon the US could afford to give every person 1 x autonomous cars, 1 x off-grid solar paneled home, 1 x unlimited low earth orbit (low latency) satellite internet.
"I actually think it’s the worst it’s ever been," said Handlery, who’s been in the San Francisco hotel business for 38 years.
I don't know. I remember 20 years ago, around the first internet bubble, seeing literally hundreds of homeless people along Market St. It was like an army of homeless people.
There are far fewer these days, at least in the fancy shopping districts and along Market. There are more tents around other parts of the city, though. Maybe it's more of a case of gentrification pushing the homeless to other parts of the city so they're "out of sight, out of mind".
It reminds me of a plan I once heard about, of rounding up all the homeless and shipping them off to Treasure Island. That plan was never put in to practice, but I was shocked it was ever seriously considered. Still, in many ways what's been achieved is something similar, with the effective eviction of many homeless from the shopping areas and in to tents outside of it.
The whole subtext of this article is kind of troubling. It's like the only reason that homelessness is a problem is that the tourists are seeing it, and that it's hurting the tourist industry's bottom line.
I'm glad people are seeing it. If they weren't much less would be done to help.
I just spent the last three days around Market street in San Francisco (near City Hall), and the degree of disturbing clearly miserable homelessness was really shocking to me. I live in Seattle (with a big homeless problem as well), and I also lived in the Bay Area 20 years ago (for five years), and it definitely appears worse to me now. It seems worse nbow in the sense of just plain misery/drugs/violence... It's really sad.
I'm tired of all the "How can they let this happen?!?!" as if we don't know how capitalism works.
"Political will" is just code for financial incentive.
The fact that this problem isn't being solved, tells us very clearly that this isn't actually a problem for the majority of the city's income.
The tech industry is strong enough that people will still show up to collect their $120k salaries, even if they have to step over people and feces to do that.
Obviously tourism must not be a big income for the city. Which is why no one cares what "Mr. Hotel owner" has to say.
SF will continue to become a tech dystopia, because no one comes to San Francisco to stay or to make a home or a community. Everyone is passing through, there to make their fortune in tech, and then leave. No one has kids there. That's why this isn't solved. San Francisco is not a community. Until it is, this problem will never go away.
The recent shady "election" of the new mayor - a white male tech VC, would seem to support this. Apparently a black woman who was willing to go along with the rich white men wasn't enough.
Thinking through the dynamics a few weeks ago, the thought occurred that at least part of the homeless crisis in the US, which really didn't start until the 1980s, may be attributable to the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo and subsequent changes to the U.S. financial system.
California's Proposition 13 and massive constraints on housing don't much help either.
Drugs, stress, climate, mental illness, and various social safety net breakdowns are, of course, other (and significant) factors.
This is the problem of our generation. Shame on us.
Is this an Area where YC can help ? I challenge YC to consider Request for Startups that will consider ideas to fix this problem. I envision someone as powerful as YC and its network partnering with the city of SF,SJC,Oakland to allow for experimentation in finding long term fixes to this social issue.
here is a NPR report that shows the impact of fixing the homeless problem.
It actually seems plausible that SF might have the worst homeless problem as a direct result of actually doing the most to help the homeless.
SF literally gets punished, the better job they do.
As they provide services, the city only attracts and retains a bigger and bigger population who become accustomed to relying on just enough services to continue living on the streets.
San Francisco is creating its own problem here due to its own altruism.
Homeless people are attracted to places with nice year round weather. SF provides that.
They are also attracted to places where they are tolerated or accepted. The people of SF are very tolerant of the homeless. As one of the commenters here says: "I bring cash, you run out after just a block or two." Sounds like a great place to be homeless.
As for root causes, homelessness is mostly caused by drug addiction and mental illness. According the the National Coalition for the Homeless:
"A 2008 survey by the United States Conference of Mayors asked 25 cities for their top three causes of homelessness. Substance abuse was the single largest cause of homelessness for single adults (reported by 68% of cities).
Substance abuse was also mentioned by 12% of cities as one of the top three causes of homelessness for families. According to Didenko and Pankratz (2007), two-thirds of homeless people report that drugs and/or alcohol were a major reason for their becoming homeless."
As for mental illness, according to a research summary compiled by the Treatment Advocacy Center:
"Approximately one-third of the total homeless population includes individuals with serious, untreated mental illnesses"
More affordable housing will not offer relief to the homeless because their state is largely caused by addiction and mental illness, not by high housing prices.