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Comment by ameister14 | Hacker News Reader

San Francisco spends about $35,000 per homeless person in an attempt to deal with the problem.

This really doesn't mean anything to me without a citation. Wikipedia led me to this [1] article, that states "Nearly half of the homeless money, $81.5 million, goes for rent subsidies and programs to assist the 6,355 people living in "permanent supportive housing" - long the cornerstone of the city's program for helping the down and out.".

I'm not sure if the 6,355 in the supportive housing contributes to the 7000 "homeless" statistic, but dollar spent per homeless person seems like a measurement that's at best misleading and at worst a propaganda soundbyte.

[1] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/S-F-spendi...

That's not nearly half the money at this point. That article was from 2014 - SF spent 271 million this past year. So spending is up over a hundred million dollars, but it doesn't seem to have solved anything.

I think what he's saying it may be giving with the right and taking with the left.

It really isn't, though - if you spend 270 million to combat homelessness, shouldn't some of that go to making sure people stay off the streets after you get them off?

Any source for this? That sounds high, it would be enough to pay the rent for a year for each one.

Sure, http://www.sfchronicle.com/aboutsfgate/article/Despite-money...

http://projects.sfchronicle.com/sf-homeless/numbers/

Or move them somewhere less expensive and give them a solidly lower-middle class lifestyle.

The "bus ticket out of town" idea's been tried over and over. Are you saying SF city money should go directly to other area's rent markets?

> Are you saying SF city money should go directly to other area's rent markets?

If SF isn't able to handle the issue themselves, then why shouldn't they use their money to help them? Should it only be the poorer areas of the country that handle the issues that the rich areas cause?

Now that I think about it, it isn't such a bad idea after all. You're basically moving transient welfare programs from municipal to state concerns. It would be really nice if the government of California could set something up.

Hacker News decides the solution to San Francisco's homeless problem is to put them on a bus and send them somewhere else.

Nothing like a good old oversimplification to brush away a proposal to improve the lives of people.

Poverty and homelessness are complex issues, especially when regional inequality gets involved. If a certain city or state is too expensive for the poor to comfortably live in, why would it be bad to send them somewhere that would be easier to live? Why could it not be part of a number of steps to tackle the problem of poverty and homelessness?

Rent? I am pretty sure that would cover a mortage in plenty of places[1], which is less than 500 usd month[2] over 30 years. But even if it was not, we generally buy things where they are cheap, not where they are expensive - that naturally brings up the local price.

[1]: https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/ten-homes-under-100k-eas...

[2]: https://www.dollartimes.com/loans/mortgage-payment.php?lengt...

It states in the article that many of the homeless people already have jobs or other income that would pay for housing in a less onerous property market. The problem is that they can't or don't want to move.

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