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Comment by habosa | Hacker News Reader

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!).

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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.

http://sfist.com/2016/02/11/71_of_sf_homeless_once_had_homes...

That's a common myth. 7/10 homeless people in SF were previously people with homes in SF.

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?

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.

It can't happen in every city until the first one figures it out. The next step needed is often not the full solution.

Dude nobody in this whole post is saying the federal government shouldn't do anything. Read these threads again.

I'm addressing comments that the solution has to be housing in San Francisco itself, rather than outside the city, such as:

> Only housing near economic opportunity means anything.

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?

I got the number from 2009 data: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Sta...

I think the reason it hasn't been done is that it would change the character of the city in a way most people wouldn't consider positive.

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.

Yes it was indeed heartening to see names rather than “a homeless man”.

What do say when you decline? I struggle with something that sounds appropriate. "Sorry"?

Kind and firm.

“Sorry I cant help you today”

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.

  It's called Medicaid,

In CA, it's called MediCal... but SF has its own program called Healthy SF as well.

Yup! You got it.

Thanks for this comment.

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.

> the landlord burned it down because he couldn’t evict them and wasn’t happy with the money he was making.

I decided to fact-check this claim. It is not true. The fire started in a poorly maintained electrical box.

  the landlord burned it down

This is known fact? There has been an arson conviction?

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