A Plan to Flood San Francisco with News on Homelessness
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Advocacy is a longstanding taboo in American journalism, making reporters and editors wary of discussing solutions to the problems they highlight in their coverage.
[T]he question of whether San Francisco’s journalists are crossing into activism has not come up, at least not in the initial meeting of news organizations last month. [...] “It was sort of shocking that there was no dissension [...] On the contrary, the conversation was, ‘Let’s do way more.’”
"Your job is to investigate solutions," she said. "People want to read about how to fix broken systems."
It's disappointing that most of the comments here are missing all of this, and just focusing on the same old arguments about homelessness that could be made on any of the articles that get written 25 times a week.
I hope that's true, but I suspect that people prefer to read about how broken things are, and point fingers at the perceived culprits. Fixing things leads eventually to "slow news days".
Where I live in Japan, it's not uncommon for the news to spend a bunch of time on a non-fatal car crash, or a string of petty thefts in convenience stores, or a section of train tracks that needed to be fixed in a hurry. Every few weeks, some government official will be disgraced for having a staff member who spent a few dollars worth of public funds on a discretionary lunch or something like that. Occasionally, someone will get murdered (usually small kids, sadly) and that will dominate the news for a day, or a week. Celebrities getting married. And then the horror show of news from other parts of the world.
I'm exaggerating, but not by much. We should all be so lucky to have these slow news days.
locally (Atlanta here) the homeless situation never comes up unless some over the top sporting event or convention is in town. then its stories about how they are being pushed out or hidden from view. If anything the news plays the lets ignore them line because it doesn't want to jeopardize its access to some politicians by making it an issue.
I would assume that in SF either someone in the news finally said "screw it" or they have some unseen politicians in the background giving them the the go. Sorry to sound so cynical but damn if homelessness and similar issues only arise during political season.
This is important--and you can see it on the issue of homelessness itself. Journalists' failure to cover homelessness may (charitably) have been borne of a desire for neutrality, but failure to cover an issue is not necessarily neutral in effect. If homeless is, objectively, a serious problem, the failure to cover it is a form of tacit (though inadvertent) support.
It's just that ones motives are harder to discern and, thus, one's actions are more readily justified when one does nothing. When one does something, the universe of justifications narrows dramatically, and there's no escaping the fact that the world will be able to see and evaluate your motives.
It's not as if they all became homeless last night. That would be news.
I think you're missing a lot about modern journalism if you think that journalists just cover "things that have just happened." There is also investigative journalism, profiles, editorials, etc.
Just go take a look at nytimes.com. What fraction of the stuff you see there is just reporting on things that have just happened? If you think the New York Times really would be better if it were pared down to only "news," I expect you're probably in a very small minority.
An anthropologist analyzed despair fatigue. And discussed journalism's role: How could such total, lock-step defiance of reality be maintained in a country with a formally free press and highly educated population? To some degree, you find the familiar bubble effect. Politicians, journalists, lobbyists, CEOs, and corporate bureaucrats rarely talk to anyone except each other. They constitute a distinct intellectual universe. (http://thebaffler.com/salvos/despair-fatigue-david-graeber)
The NYT article mentions, "journalists who advocate causes might be selective in their reporting or biased in their coverage." But of course, "professional journalism" hides selective, biased coverage. For example, something's newsworthy when a government or corporate bureaucrat says it: When a journalist reports what official sources are saying, or debating, she is professional. When she steps outside this range of official debate to provide alternative perspectives or to raise issues those in power prefer not to discuss, she is no longer being professional. (http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/McChesney/Media_Crisis_Tim...)
http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-record...
Hear me out, I am not a heartless bastard.
The social services provided, combined with milder weather, make SF a better place to be homeless than other areas. Surely homeless people, just like the rest of us, are attracted to cities that serve them better.
If you built every homeless person a house I don't think there would be any less homeless on the streets of SF. Homeless in LA who desire a house would simply migrate to SF. A Greyhound bus ticket is not that expensive.
So until you find a solution to homelessness in the entire USA, or at least the Western USA, I can't see any one city solving the problem (as opposed to moving the problem to a different city).
[0] http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic...
Until it's not. Unintended consequences abound!
Several things are obviously questionable:
* Relying of people self reporting their motives and history is problematic even for sober and sane people.
* Who made the study? What's the methodology? What are their incentives?
* Etc...
A non-peer-reviewed survey is just a gut-feeling with a budget, doubly so when we're reading about in a newspaper with an explicitly stated agenda on the subject.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mVDhDNv...
> Other reasons for moving to San Francisco cited in the homeless count were that they were looking for work
So they move for work, and a part of that, at least, is benefits if/when they don't find it. "If I go to SF, I can get welfare, which means I've got an extra month to find a job. I'll get one for sure in three months".
> that they were traveling through
And the benefits encouraged them to stay vs move on? Who knows?
I'm not saying it is true that stopping welfare would SOLVE the problem. Rather, homelessness in SF is at least partly a result of the benefits and caring, and that may not be a bad thing. An extra X homeless in SF vs in a less caring city may be a net positive for the USA. To say that SF's welfare options don't affect the total homeless population is overstating the case.
The deeper problem is EVERYONE is biased here, and the truth is hidden beneath 400 layers of guilt, emotion and in-group signalling, and no one is clear on what a "solution" means.
Not you; you seem to just be making up a series of random reasons that people might do things off the top of your head, and using them as some sort of evidence that listening to people who actually spoke to and surveyed the effected people and the people who work with them is equally as worthless as what you're saying.
> The deeper problem is EVERYONE is biased here, and the truth is hidden beneath 400 layers of guilt, emotion and in-group signalling, and no one is clear on what a "solution" means.
This is not the deeper problem. We were talking about the homeless.
I'll bet there is an interesting analysis to be made with Minneapolis - a city that is, for the most part, as liberal and progressive as SF is - and comparing the "pull effect" of their funding with their weather, etc.
This is what San Franciscans want and what they get. If you self select to such a narrow mindset, this is the outcome.
But the second is that we don't know the counterfactual. It's very difficult to guess how many homeless people there would be in SF if that money hadn't been spent. If $240M moved the needle from 10k down to 6k (for a net drop of 4k), was it worth it? What if it was 20k (net -14k)? We have no idea what that number actually is. We're looking solely at the difference and trying to make a judgment on the subtrahend.
Source: http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Myths-like-homele...
(I don't know how I got to my initial reading!)
My petite SO made the mistake of parking in the wrong parking spot outside a verizon store next to Tenderloin and a homeless person chased her around our car trying to stab her with a screwdriver. In the middle of the afternoon on a weekday. And because it's sf, a couple guys saw what was happening and crossed the street to avoid getting involved, and the useless sf police took 8+ minutes to show up.
SF tolerates street trash acting up and acting out in ways real cities -- eg nyc -- simply don't.
I get off at the civic center bart station and coworkers are regularly worried about their safety.
I don't know what the solution is, but I don't care about them. It's fundamentally unreasonable to expect people to be unsafe walking around sf in the middle of the afternoon.
"street trash" is a particularly nasty way to refer to people. They might be mentally ill, drug-addicted, and perhaps criminal, but they're still human beings. Maybe, just maybe, if society treated people who find themselves at rock bottom with a bit of respect and compassion then they wouldn't end up in a situation where they chase women around cars with screwdrivers.
There's an interesting theory that suggests there's two different sorts of wealth - private wealth and public wealth. Private wealth is living in a nice house and driving a fancy car. Public wealth is living in a clean, beautiful community where it's safe to walk around without fear. If you want to be happy then both sorts of wealth are equally important.
Here's a tip; if someone is engaging in crime, they're a criminal. In this case it sounds like at least assault. This isn't a downtrodden Okie with his family in a hooptie trying to make ends meet until the Depression is over, it's a nutjob trying to attack someone with a lethal weapon.
There are reasons why people turn to crime. If we deal with those reasons before the crime happens then, in general, everyone is better off.
it's a nutjob trying to attack someone with a lethal weapon.
Someone who is dangerously insane probably shouldn't be living on the streets. They represent a danger to the public. It's clearly preferable that those people are given aid in whatever ways necessary so no one gets stabbed. That's the problem with looking down on these people and referring to them as trash - you put yourself in the position of thinking they shouldn't be helped at all, so you end up having to live with the threat they pose.
I would prefer to give aid to the poor women accosted and assaulted by this criminal, than give aid to the criminal. Life is full of choices.
Now therr might be people who had a good upbringing and education, no psychological issues and all opportunities in life but they still become criminals. These are generally corrupt politicians and bankers and asshole CEO's and such, NOT the kind of people who would be hurt by harsh anti-crime policy.
Just how anti-encryption laws don't hinder cruminals, only good-meaning activists and journalists, neither do harsh laws against crime help against actual crime. See how Denmark and other nordic countries treat criminals - they have extremely low crime rates as result.
Then he spit on me.
I can't describe in words the pure unadulterated rage and anger I felt in that moment. I wanted to pulverize every single bone in his body, over and over again, until he was a bloody pulp. Until there was nothing left, except a blood stain on the ground. But I didn't. I turned the other cheek, but not for a pretty reason. I simply didn't want to get his blood on me.
It's hard to love someone that hates you and possibly wants to harm you, but I think that's the first step to solving the homeless problem in SF. Compassion is a difficult trait to master.
I wouldn't tolerate unleashed dogs begging for food, shitting in the streets and otherwise accosting strangers for no reason.
I refuse to tolerate this behavior from Human Beings.
Act like a human or cease to expect to be treated as one. (Mental illness aside, of course.)
Between me + SO, 9 years in nyc, 10 years in sf.
Source: http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Myths-like-homele...
Cheap homes are $20k a pop. $10k for materials, and $10k for contracted labor. If you allocate another $20k for the land itself, and completing utility connections to it whenever they do not already exist, that's $40k total.
If you had $240M to spend each year, you could build 5000 houses every year, and have $40M left over for rudimentary commercial strips, administrative buildings, libraries, schools, firehouses, and cop shops.
You could stamp out a new municipality every year in 10 undeveloped adjacent square-mile survey sections. 6400 acres would be 5000 for the houses, and 1400 for the commons and businesses. You don't even need to go as far as Mississippi from SF. There are huge tracts of undeveloped land on the Great Plains between I-25 and I-35. They're actually cheaper than Mississippi, mostly because they have a less reliable fresh water supply.
Congratulations! You've reinvented the reservation system!
If you allocate another $20k for the land itself
I used to know an older fellow who lived out of a van half-full of tools, and did odd jobs where he could. I saw him around my favorite coffee shop; I think he got free coffee in exchange for fixing stuff sometimes. There was an article on HN not too long ago about a guy who went from an nice house and a swanky tech job to homeless and living out of his car in less than a year; he managed to crawl back out by doing freelance work on his laptop, but things were pretty awful for him for a while.
It's way too easy to say that homeless people are all beyond help, and therefore we can ignore them and leave them to rot with a clear conscience. But it's not true. And even for the people you mentioned--die-hard "lifestyle" homeless may be out of reach, but public assistance programs can sometimes give the addicts and the crazies a hand up, or (better) prevent them from ever becoming homeless in the first place.
San Francisco has a number of problems with "homelessness". Our most visible problem is a very serious one - there are a lot of alcoholic, drug addicted, and mentally ill people living on the street, some of whom are prone to erratic, aggressive, and violent behavior. There is also a large and less visible problem with people who are not addicted or mentally ill, but who are in difficult economic circumstances and who are having great difficulty finding a safe place to sleep. These two things are related some of the time, but I don't believe that they are simply two sides of the same coin, they also exist as acute if not orthogonal problems.
I appreciate that "homeless" was, at least in part, intended as a more humane term than various derisive terms like bum, vagrant, and so forth. This I am in favor of - regardless of how you feel, I see no benefit in derisive terms, I don't think it requires a derisive term to express an opinion, even if it's an unsympathetic one. But while it's a mouthful, I do think it's probably more descriptive to say that SF (and other cities as well) have a serious problem with "mentally ill and/or addicted people who live on the streets" when discussing that specific issue, rather than using the blanket term "homeless" which encompasses much more than this.
The story about the couple having sex in a tent on a busy street with the flaps open while a pit bull stands sentry, or a person getting chased around by a crazed man with a sharpened screwdriver - well, I hope we all know that there exists a large population of of people who desperately try to maintain appearances (and sanity) but are actually in pretty dire economic circumstances. You don't necessarily notice them. The two situations call for very different solutions.
That would make an interesting basic income experiment.
If instead the $240M helped every single homeless person become un-homeless except for 1, it's not the case that SF is spending $240M on the one homeless guy.
I'll probably be better after some more sleep, but I know the black dog and anxiety is always just around the corner. It makes it very hard to do anything let alone look for work. I really don't know how an already homeless person with a worse mental illness does it. I fear they could be the most capable person in the world, but if you hit a certain stage it's very hard to pick up from.
It not self-pity either. I constantly tell myself that the feeling isn't reality but just my brain being out of kilter temporarily. And I'm of course correct. But if your head isn't ordered, no amount of positive thinking is ever going to fix it. Sometimes all you can do is ride it out, but you can only do this if you have a safe place to sleep, eat and keep yourself clean. And that sure as hell isn't on the streets.
I hope that is never me, but sometimes I realise that I'm only a few steps removed from the situation of those without anything. That's why I get frustrated with so many attitudes towards homelessness and mental illness. Saying that it's there own fault isn't terribly helpful. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Maybe some homeless people choose to be homeless. Maybe some are lazy and got into the situation through their own behaviour. But I'll hazard a guess that isn't most people.
God help you if you ever hit rock bottom. God help you from the morally outraged, fit and wealthy self-made man. In his eyes, you're worse than a failure, you deserve your situation.
All I can say is that if an expert dismisses your symptoms as "just" anxiety and dysthrithmia find a better expert... :-)
My heart goes out to you. I know words are cheap, but I truly understand how you feel.
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/20/nyregion/in-wake-of-attack...
Whether they're effective or not is a different question...
I think that's incredibly unlikely. "Homelessness" is not a technical problem, it's a choice about desired tradeoffs. SF is squeamish about anything that might actually work.
Surely not blanket coverage to raise awareness? The problem is obvious to any one who has spent a day in the city. I don't think this will elicit the call to action they want.
From the relatively little time I have spent in SF and having lived in a number of major cities, the challenges do seem unique. All of the biggest cities have many homeless, however they are not routinely exposing themselves, screaming, lashing out, openly injecting drugs and defecating to the extent they do in SF.
I feel incredibly sorry for the homeless described above, it is really hard to work out why the behaviours seem so common in SF and not other cities.
http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-men...
For the former, let's get help. But for the latter, let's not judge.
Yes, they have geographical limitations on how much housing they can build horizontally, but on top of those they also have strict self-imposed limitations on how much they can build vertically.
From here in Indianapolis, IN when the whether turns cold for the winter many homeless get out of town, turn to the shelters or other means of general weather protection. While some will just layer up and deal with the cold. I know a "homeless" man that chooses to be "homeless". He loves the freedom of being able to go and do as he pleases. I would imagine SF has many who enjoy the life style. How do you "fix" that? Besides flat out ordinances with police backing...
Very dynamic issue to "fix".
Just trying to palm it off on everyone else, people know the system is broken, they don't need more whiny ass bitching. They want solutions!
Edit: Actually reading further down one of the proposed 'solutions' is building a mental hospital for them all!! That's just horrific, not all of them are mentally ill and that's a dangerous judgement to make. They just need help to get back on their feet. It could just as easily be any one of us in their position!
2. Want to avoid stepping on feces/urine? Build some restrooms? Oh no? They will just have sex in them, or shoot up. Problem. (By the way, I can find a restroom in that lovely city.)
3. That study concluded most homeless are from San Francisco. "Oh, no they arn't! It's a bad study!" Problem.
4. "There here for the benefits?" What benefits? I only know of one benefit, and that benefit was for homeless animals. It was shut down years ago.
5. Every county in the Bay Area has been essentially harassing the Homeless. In Marin County, where your bosses live; there's not one square inch of land that's legal to pitch a tent, or sleep--that's free. If you have no money--you are breaking some municipal/county law by sleeping.
6. Our economy has desimated most jobs. The jobs left don't provide a livable wage. This has been going on for 25-30 years. Problem.
7. I haven't even got to drug use, or mental patients. Problem.
8. Oh yea, why is the Bay Area going to do this day of homeless awareness now? I think the writing us on the walls. I know Willie Brown is publically wondering what SF is going to do with thousands of newly unemployed tech. workers.
Did you mean "can't" or maybe "can never"? In most cities I've been to, including SF, it's been really hard to find public restrooms.
We detached it from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11705156 and marked it off-topic.
Wow. Golf clap for bravery there. Great work.
When that happens, you can move them on, but they'll eventually grow to such numbers there's nowhere to move them to. One day, you might hit a personal crisis. Or your kids might hit that personal crisis. Or your whole family might find themselves living in a car. Then you will be the one being moved on. And you will curse those who dismantled the welfare systems. You may well be cursing yourself.
In all seriousness, refugees are dying on Manus Island and Nauru already, either from suicide, lack of medical care or from violence. In my view, it's only marginally more safe in off-shore detention than it is on the very boats the facilities are meant to be stopping.
There are media outlets in San Francisco (The Street Sheet, Poor Magazine, and others) that dedicate most of their coverage to poor and homeless people, and to proposed solutions for poverty in San Francisco. This "coordinated media wave" is insulting to the hard work those publications put in, and to people who have been working on homelessness in San Francisco since it first reached crisis proportions in the mid-80s, and especially after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
The first quote in the article is about how the editor of the Chronicle wasn't bothered at all by this massive humanitarian crisis until it made her personally uncomfortable. And that, to me, displays a disgusting lack of empathy for someone whose job is supposed to be "comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable".
Edit: see my links below... Not sure why I'm getting down voted but these things happened and contributed to the situation at hand. Homelessness is a very complicated issue, I'm not suggesting this is the entirety of it.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/09/11/2602391/san-franc...
http://www.povertyinsights.org/2013/10/14/did-reagans-crazy-...
In fact, the city of SF sued Nevada for exactly this: http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/09/11/2602391/san-franc...
Interesting report! Thanks for linking.
He also cut school lunches shortly after taking office which spawned the famous meme "Ketchup is a vegetable."[1] Now I know some hagiographer of Saint Ronald of Hollywood (Peace Be Upon His Name), will say that he never said that. And they would be technically correct. The actual guidelines said that schools "could credit a condiment such as pickle relish as a vegetable."
Similarly, SF can offer whatever "fair share" it likes, but can't force other cities to do the same.
Then make a deal with some other place that has lots of cheap land that they handle the people who gets arrested for this (for a fee), which is still cheaper than rent in SF.
I am certain that part b) is illegal. SF is free to arrest people locally for local crimes, but they can't 'extradite' those arrested to other states: If you're charged with a crime, it's your constitutional right to be tried "by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed"[1].
Actually, something like the latter (with or without formal arrest) has happened a lot with the homeless and/or mentally ill (and, especially, the mentally ill homeless.) Though, IIRC, SF has more frequently been cited as a destination than a source of those types of maneuvers.
And why assume I'm a he?
I see others claiming you are incorrect, but haven't been arsed to actually read their sources to see who is actually right.
Regardless, I see nothing "horrible" with what you've said.
I'm curious. Why do you make this a talking point when you are, in fact, a he?
There's a big gender bias in tech already, and even within anonymous HN I see this in comments all the time where everyone is assumed male and few ever point it out directly. If we want balance in tech these kinds of assumptions need to get chipped away to make others feel welcome. It's the same thing with race, sexuality, etc.
My point is there's no sex field next to my handle... It was just assumed. I'm guessing that you googled me to even start this discussion, and even then you have no idea what my gender identity is. These biases are the types that keep tech a men's club and make it hard for women to want to be around 99% guys.
ugh, this old distortion.
You're probably referring to the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act which, while signed into law by Reagan, was actually co-authored by two Democratic state senators and a Republican assemblyman, following the advice given at the time by the medical establishment - and under pressure from the public - that protections were needed to prevent the inappropriate over-commitment of people into asylums.
The result was an "overreaction," and more patients were released than should have been - again, under the advice of medical professionals. [1]
However, before this, people were sent to asylums - indefinitely - for reasons that today would seem barbaric. Alcoholics, the mentally retarded, people with anxiety disorders, or simply troublemakers whose families didn't want to deal with them anymore - locked up in asylums and the key thrown away before this legislation was passed.
We might be suffering for a lack of mental health services, but over-committing people into asylums seems like the greater evil.
The narrative that Reagan got into office and one day decided to boot everyone out onto the street for no good reason is just wrong.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-men...
And yes, it does make it much more difficult to put people in a mental institution against their will - but it also is the unforeseen cause for what the OP described.
Because it's often trotted out as an indictment against one man in particular, and his political party in general.
1. The climate is good. 2. The population is rich. and 3. The government is liberal.
It's a trifecta of bum-bait. No policy changes aside from going right-wing and shipping them off to Austin or Charlotte (or whatever liberal sucker is next down the list) is going to fix the problem.