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Comment by tsunamifury | Hacker News Reader

You can judge, but SF goes further than any city I've seen to provide services to the homeless. So much so that it's a mild weather Mecca to many. So you can turn up your nose and go back home to a city that likely ships them here or "takes care of it" so you don't see it -- but you are being naive. The poor will always be with us, and we are judged by how we treat them.

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Have you been outside of the US? Coming from Europe, SF is utterly shocking. I've never seen anywhere else like it. Government provides a lot of support for low-income and homeless people in EU.

Part of the reason there are so many homeless in SF is because the SF government and local charities provide food and shelter. The tourists handing out money doesn't help with attracting them. Much of the panhandling money is used for drugs, as basic needs such as food and shelter are already covered by the government and nonprofits. If you really want to help them, volunteer at a homeless kitchen or directly donate to them.

I walk by the local drug dealers in the Tenderloin every day, and all the clientele I've seen are homeless people.

Wow that's some serious reactionnary stupid stuff. You are pretending that these people are homeless because the State provides for them? Man, you are such a model person for this new techno-aristocracy.

Have you been around in EU? Governments' ability to help varies from one extreme to the other. There is no guaranteed EU treatment.

Yes I've traveled quite extensively and nothing has ever come close to SF. I don't for a moment pretend to understand all the issues that contribute to this. I'm simply making an anecdotal observation based on my own experiences.

Yeah? Like where does it even approach neat the level of the US? Give a name...

Have you been to southern Italy? The homeless/squatter situation I saw there was very similar.

Not further than Sorrento.

The EU is too big to speak of a one entity. And things are changing too.

I lived in the third largest city in Sweden, and when I moved in there were the handful (like, probably less than 5) of homeless beggars that everyone knew. There were probably more homeless but they were sheltered by the state.

But by the time I moved out, in front of every supermarket there was a Romanian beggar with her head down.

I'll agree SF is definitely on a completely different level though. I've never seen anyone defecate in public outside of SF (and yeah I've been to China)

That's probably not what you think. The beggars you saw in front of supermarkets were likely part of a criminal gang and had a handler collecting their money.

Should be pretty easy to investigate, arrest, deport them and forbid them to come back.

> You can judge, but SF goes further than any city I've seen to provide services to the homeless...

That's nice to hear!

I do realize now that my comment is naive; definitely only a tiny snapshot from the limited time that I spent over there and is not a complete picture or a total impression of the place.

But I still do wish that SV had a better situation/solution to these otherwise normal people problems.

San Francisco alone spends 241 million on homelessness per year. Most places deal with these "normal people problems" by criminalizing it to the point where people leave to places like SF or are jailed.

Well, that's a lot of money! I hope it's being effectively used.

Since it's SV we're talking about, this money could probably be used to find a better solution with a better outcome to the problem of homelessness all across America. And then other states can follow suit!

So your comment isn't really accurate.

> San Francisco alone spends 241 million on homelessness per year.

The $241 million figure is a little misleading because it encompasses the total spending across homeless services and supportive housing. Supportive housing is $112 million and the people within are NOT counted as homeless (nor should they be but that $112 out of $241 million is not being used on homeless people). [1]

It certainly doesn't help that the amount of money actually used on the homeless is contracted out to many, many, many companies and split across other government groups making it effectively impossible to spend efficiently and to track (I really wish they'd get this corrected; I mean we're the city of Silicon Valley for crepes sake!)

> Most places deal with these "normal people problems" by criminalizing it

Many cities spend more money, year over year, to house, shelter, feed and medically treat the homeless. Sure they'll get arrested too and I'm sure there are exceptions but I couldn't find any information regarding further criminalization, in recent years, as a way to get rid of the homeless (if you have a source that would be great). In fact here in SF the supervisor wants to do away with tents calling them illegal [2]

> people leave to places like SF

Only 10% of the homeless in a 2015 report came from out of state. 71% of the homeless lived in SF before becoming homeless, which is about 10% higher in just 2 years. I don't think very many are leaving to go to SF to be homeless. [3]

[1] http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-record...

[2] http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2016/01/25/s-f-supervisor-scott-wie...

[3] https://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Fran...

"Lived in SF before becoming homeless" is self-reported in a survey of people who do not want the city to start sending them elsewhere, and "lived on a friend's couch" technically counts but shouldn't. What we want to know is whether they were ever able to support themselves here, and only 30% of them owned or rented.

> technically counts but shouldn't.

But that shouldn't technically count as homeless either. Honestly I can't really find any better numbers but I get your point and maybe there just are not any better numbers I dunno.

> SF goes further than any city I've seen to provide services to the homeless.

Maybe? It's difficult to track the money. Per capita SF doesn't even have the highest amount of homeless and yet you rarely see them on the streets in NYC and other major cities (and it's not because they're all in jail; NYC spent over a $1 billion in 2014 on homeless services and shelters and recently NY state started a $10 billion initiative to help the homeless). I wish SF did a better job tracking where the funds go and how effective they are being spent.

> a city that likely ships them here

This is a bit of a myth. In a 2015 report [1] only 10% of the homeless in SF came from another state. 71% of the homeless lived in SF itself and then became homeless.

> "takes care of it" so you don't see it

NYC has over 200 shelters. Many of the shelters in SF have waiting lists of several hundred people to the point where they have to live in tents which can be pretty dangerous in and of itself. Granted not all of the shelters are like that but many are and when you can't even stay in a shelter it doesn't really give them a lot of choice.

> The poor will always be with us, and we are judged by how we treat them.

I agree! It's far safer to have them off of the streets in many respects by providing affordable housing, temporary housing and even shelters. SF just doesn't have enough of that to go around for the homeless. I would love to see them expand their shelter services to provide more places for them to stay. But that certainly doesn't mean I want someone to "take care of it" so I "don't see it".

I think your comment came off a bit crass by assuming parent wanted to not see them and calling them naive.

[1] https://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Fran...

Admittedly the poster's complaint was about Silicon Valley, not SF.

I have looked at the homelessness statistics in Silicon Valley and the vast majority here actually lived here before becoming homeless. You don't usually see homeless people in most of the valley because they tend to stay out of sight by the creeks or other out of the way areas, but you do see them in downtown San Jose and to a lesser extent downtown Palo Alto.

I don't know the budget for homeless spending down here in Silicon Valley, but I doubt it is that high.

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