Comment by GuiA | Hacker News Reader

Comment by GuiA | Hacker News Reader

The whole report is a great read, which completely lines up with my experience living in various places in the US (particularly California + Louisiana) as a European - but this example near the beginning particularly stands out to me because, living in an area in San Francisco with a very visible homeless population, I witness it on a near daily basis:

"I witnessed a San Francisco police officer telling a group of homeless people to move on but having no answer when asked where they could move to"

As I said, I witness this extremely regularly just outside of my apartment. It ranges from a patrol car stopping for a few minutes to just give a talk to the homeless people that amounts to "hey, we're the police, we are letting you know we're here and we've got our eye on you... we know you can't magically stop being homeless but please stop looking so homeless", all the way to 4-5 cars + a firetruck/ambulance on standby while the officers make the homeless people take down camp, pat them down, etc. with sometimes a city sanitation pickup truck taking away all of their possessions as garbage (it seems that many homeless people are hoarders).

I'm not sure what's going on "behind the scenes" here. Is it an irate neighbor that calls the police complaining about the homeless people and asking them to do something about it, which they then do their best to? Or is interacting with the homeless population an actual, documented part of their job? If so, is it tracked? What are the outcomes they hope for?

What I observe is that when they make the homeless people leave, they'll typically be back a few days/weeks later, so clearly this is only shuffling the problem around, rather than actually solving it in any meaningful way.

My hunch is that this is all essentially theater - the police/fire department know they can't do anything, but have instructions from above to do "something" about it, so they just end up doing what they can, even if it is utterly pointless and ineffective. But at least the irate neighbor is satisfied that there are no more homeless people outside their window for now.

It's all very sad.

It was my understanding that SF in particular is an incredibly rich county and that there are adequate beds available in shelters for the homeless. Is this not the case?

This article[0] claims that the shelter system has 1200 beds, and that official figures put the homeless population count at ~7000, while unofficial figures put it more around 10 000-12 000 and the parent article quotes 21 000.

[0] https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Questions-about-San-Fran...

The city of San Francisco spends $40,000 per person per year on the city’s homeless population. That was $241 million in 2016 [0]. The issue of homelessness is complicated but is made worse by terrible mismanagement by the city.

[0] - https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-recor...

Shelters are notoriously nasty places, and a bed alone is not what these people need. Many, if not most are seriously mentally ill, and need a level of care that isn’t available to people without serious money. Since the 1980’s mental health has been shafted in the US, with predictable results for homelessness and mass violence. Remember that the Us is a country in which a sitting congresswomen and bystanders can be gunned down by a paranoid schizophrenic who was known to authorities, and nothing changes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Lee_Loughner

> in which a sitting congresswomen

That's a part of the problem right there: Gabrielle Giffords is a woman, not a man - unlike the other 78% of Congress. As usual with politics, as long as you're not a white, able-bodied male with money, no one will care what happens to you. There will be a couple of rallies, maybe a week or so of media headlines and that's it. Oh and maybe anniversaries of the event.

Sounds cruel but I have the feeling that it will need a rich white powerful politician's kid to die or be maimed in a mass shooting to have any effect on gun control. And even then, I wouldn't bet my money on actual change happening.

As for mental health, no idea how more funding for that can ever be passed. Unlike with a person with a wound it's difficult to "see" mental health issues (or, the healing process), and a culture in which mental health issues are regarded as "weaknesses" that must be ignored/covered-over than be helped doesn't help eithr.

Ever hear of Steve Scalise?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Scalise

SF spends about a quarter of a billion dollars a year on homelessness.[1] There are not adequate beds available in shelters for the homeless.[2]

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-recor...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/10/san-francisc...

There are not adequate beds available in shelters for the homeless. There are not even adequate shelters for the homeless. The shelters are not always even safe places to be if you're homeless. Nor are the shelters that exist adequate substitutes for mental hospitals that a portion of the homeless population should be housed within but can't be because they don't exist.

If you're homeless, there are worse places to be than San Francisco and not many that are better, certainly none that I could think of. Maybe Salt Lake City? That said, there aren't any good places to be homeless in America, only comparatively better.

There aren't enough beds, and many homeless people prefer sleeping on the street, then in a shelter, for a number of logical reasons.

1. They are more likely to be assaulted or robbed in a shelter. Shelter staff may or may not do shit to help you.

2. Shelter admission hours can be limited - they may be incompatible with their job.

3. You are expected to be drug and alochol free in a shelter. For someone with an addiction, this may not be something they can accept. [1]

[1] Before anyone suggests that the solution is for those people to just quit their addiction, please keep in mind that there are many wealthy, intelligent, mentally sound people in a stable, supportive environment, with a loving family are unable to break their addictions.

> 3. You are expected to be drug and alochol free in a shelter. For someone with an addiction, this may not be something they can accept.

There's an addition to this: pets, especially dogs but also rats. For many homeless people their pets are their only living companion - but shelters accepting people with pets are a rarity even in Europe. Of course, because multiple dogs in the same space will lead to all night barking, territory fights etc. - this is why unconditional (!) housing first policies are the only thing that works.

> 1. They are more likely to be assaulted or robbed in a shelter. Shelter staff may or may not do shit to help you.

I'm not sure you can still call something like that a shelter to be honest.

The implicit, undocumented, de facto aim of moving homeless on to somewhere else is to have them die quietly out of the public eye.

A better way to solve the “homeless problem” is to give people homes, counselling, and access to work. This is because homelessness is usually a result of losing a job and thus a house and thus one’s self esteem (and in some cases, one’s mind).

Worked in Utah.

TL;DR Housing the homeless is cheaper than the chronic costs of not housing the homeless.

"Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness By 91 Percent; Here's How"

https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chroni...

Disputed counterpoint: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13894796#13895345

No, they aim to move homeless so that whatever camp they create is not their de facto home.

SF spends a mind boggling amount of money on supporting the homeless population and trying to get them back on their feet. Unfortunately this compassion is rewarded by many more homeless people moving to SF to take advantage of the amenities.

It's because of this. [1]

A large contingent of the public wants to not have any homeless, but isn't willing to fund getting homeless people off the streets. (Yes, San Francisco may be mismanaging their homeless budget, but not every city is.)

So, since they aren't willing to do anything constructive, but are willing to complain, they call the police. Since it's almost impossible to be homeless and not be breaking one law or another, the police show up, move them somewhere else, and the cycle repeats.

[1] https://thehomelessguy.wordpress.com/2015/09/26/citizen-do-n...

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