Salesforce’s Benioff Spars with Twitter’s Dorsey Over Support for Homeless
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
In Seattle, there's an app for reporting homeless encampments.[2]
Dallas considered a concentration camp, to be called "Dignity Field", at an old military base.[3]
[1] https://biosocal.com/services/homeless-encampment-clean-out/
[2] https://www.seattle.gov/homelessness/unauthorized-encampment...
[3] https://www.dallasnews.com/news/news/2016/05/02/old-naval-ba...
In 2014, the City of San Francisco spent $167 million annually on housing homeless residents.[64] By 2016, total spending (including housing and treatment) was believed to be $241 million annually.[65] However, much of this spending is focused on housing the formerly homeless, or those at risk, and not the currently homeless. The city's shelter program has approximately 1,200 beds, and several hundred people are on a waitlist to be housed.[65] Even with 1,200 shelter beds and several hundred on waiting list, most homeless avoid the shelter for various reasons such as: overcrowding, safety, and rules that, among other things, separate people experiencing homelessness from their possessions, pets, and loved ones. In 2015, the Navigation Center shelter was created to address these issues.[65] --------------------------------------------
How much money is going to solve this problem ? This reminds me of extending roads to tackle congestion, 5 years after the extension, the roads have same congestion conditions because of the sprawl. At some point, spending more money and making it better for being homeless in SFO will attract even more homeless and creating the conditions similar to today.
I do not have enough information about Prop C and what each of them are coming from, but I am leaning towards Jack simply because the holier than thou smugness from Benioff.
You are going to vote a certain way on a proposition because tech a CEO was smug about why you should vote one way or another?
Regardless of which way you are voting, there has to be a better, more informed and analytical way to decide how to vote.
SF needs to do something until they can build enough housing to stop low income tenenats from being evicted. Measure C is one such way to stem the displacement crisis. If the homeless census ever starts to indicate a majority of unshelteted people are from out of state then we can talk about different ways to tackle the problem.
Prop C is about getting 0.5% of business revenue (if it's over $50million) towards homelessness. And we already are spending ~ $250million a year. This is not the case of an effective program that's just underfunded.
Drive housing prices down and you reduce homeless problem. But I'll bet that's pretty close to a forbidden idea.
I recognize I'm part of the problem and I'm working to help the problem, but I'm only a little guy, not a billionaire.
Tech companies keep building skyscrapers, feeding their engineers food every day and paying their employees ludicrous salaries, yet those employees walk past tons of homeless folks on their way to the offices...
Are there any examples that folks are aware of where a big tech company (or really any company) stepped in to help with a crisis like this? What companies should we be celebrating for being 'good citizens'?
I'm not sure if only money would help in this case without tackling the fundamental reasons of why people are homeless (lack of social security and affordable housing). California is the state with the highest income taxes but little goes to solve these fundamental problems.
Pointing to companies and claiming "you make money, you should fix everything that goes wrong here" is too simple in my opinion. Companies exist to create wealth for the shareholders. I don't particularly like it but that's how the system is set up.
As an individual it's difficult to not contribute to these problems, and the solution isn't for high wage workers to stop moving to cities either. But it's important to recognize that simply going about your daily life with no ill intentions doesn't mean that nobody is harmed by your actions. We live in complex societies with complex interrelationships and complex rules (laws, regulations, social norms, etc.) that govern them. We have a responsibility to understand the unintended consequences of our actions so we can actively correct for them (through government, laws, taxation, etc.)
SF could be a much less expensive place to live if supply of housing had ever kept up with demand. If it were less expensive, there'd be fewer homeless people. The regulations here were put in place by regressives. Not our fault.
If politicians hadn't wholesale wiped out mental institutions without any other plan in place, we would probably see fewer mentally ill homeless people. Not our fault.
Many drug addicts go homeless, and it's really hard to accept any personal responsibility for that. Drug addiction is a health problem treated like a criminal problem, and again that's a societal problem.
There are a lot of reasons why homelessness is such a problem here, but they're really large, difficult problems that are _not_ a result of wanting to live and work here.
I don't even think companies should really be to blame either.. these companies are generating enormous wealth and paying enormous salaries to workers here. These workers _live here_ and use their salaries here, which naturally generates other jobs that can provide others their livelihood. This would be a good thing if not for the limited supply of housing, which means attracting more workers results in displacing other, less wealthy citizens.
What realistically do you expect these companies to do to fix mental health issues? Drug addiction? The housing crisis?
When a lot of wealth is generated by a city, a lot of people attempt to move there to cash in on it. The number of people who physically can live in a city is limited by the number of housing units available. If they don't build new housing, then for every person who moves in, another person is going to be displaced, whether that be moving elsewhere or ending up on the streets or moving in with other people. Market mechanisms ensure that the housing that is available goes to the people who are willing to pay the most, which is generally the highly-paid tech workers in SF & Seattle and the financial types in NYC.
The solution is pretty obvious: build more housing.
It's also independent of the amount of wealth that's generated, or whether the new housing is high-end gentrified condos or low-end affordable housing. If the new housing is high-end condos, then all the tech workers move into new construction and people who otherwise would've ended up homeless stay in their existing apartments, or move into the run-down apartments vacated by the tech workers. If the new housing is small affordable units, the high-end tech workers stay put and the homeless move into the new construction.
A startup environment thrives because it easy to start Apple in a garage.
Housing comes with a lot of restrictions for code, land, labor, environment
Make it profitable to build housing for low wage workers
In conditions where demand for housing increases dramatically, landlords tend to let apartments go vacant because they do not want to lock in a low price immediately if they know they could be stuck with a tenant for a long period of time. You can see this effect when you compare the cost increases of apartments over time with the allowable increase set by the rent control board.
You can model renting your building quickly in excel. When you do so you can find the cases when it is smarter to hold the apartment and let market prices increase instead of leasing today. Your job as a landowner is to maximize the total amount of money you can make from ownership of the property. Landlords act rationally, so if you make rules that incentivize them to not rent it shouldn't be surprising to see empty units. If you run the numbers yourself for what happened in San Francisco you will easily be able to duplicate this effect.
It's ok if you need to leave your apartment so long as you can find another apartment nearby. No one has a right to live in a particular city, and scarce resources will go to those most willing to pay for them.
https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-ren...
https://sfrb.org/sites/default/files/Document/Form/571%20All...
I've always found this to be a shitty argument, because in the vast majority of cases, the person making it isn't someone who's being told they don't deserve to live where they grew up, and isn't someone who would end up being someone who gets priced out of their home.
I'll say it again: If you remove rent control without having more housing being built already, the people who have been living there since before the tech boom will have their rents raised astronomically, to the point where they will become homeless. That is absolutely wrong, and telling them to just leave town is even more wrong.
"If you remove rent control without having more housing being built already, the people who have been living there since before the tech boom will have their rents raised astronomically, to the point where they will become homeless"
There is no empirical evidence to support this position. This is one of the few points that the economic profession has come to a consensus on. Rent control creates far more problems than it solves. Both people can live in the city if the market functions properly. The supply of housing exists, you are just choosing to not utilize it effectively by enacting rent control.
I know I am unlikely to change your mind based on the facts that I have presented. I don't want to belittle or ridicule you. I sincerely believe that you want to do what is right for the public at large. If this is indeed the case, I hope you can do some more reading on the subject and will believe that you come to the same conclusion that many others have. I am not denying that some people will be negatively impacted, but if you look at the net impact you will see that more people will benefit regardless of their income level by the repeal of rent control.
That is not the counterfactual to my argument. And while I do have sympathy for those who do need to leave, SF's history as a destination for marginalized members of society due to their sexuality, I also have sympathy for those who are already there, and do wish to continue living where they have roots. Repealing rent control when there is not surplus housing does nothing but raise rents, because the housing that people claim will be built if there is no rent control will not appear overnight.
"There is no empirical evidence to support this position."
You have the fact that rents in SV are already insane. Landlords are wanting to raise rents even further, otherwise they would not be wanting the repeal of rent control.
"ut if you look at the net impact you will see that more people will benefit regardless of their income level by the repeal of rent control"
Only if the additional housing is there. Otherwise they will be forced to leave. Rents will rise, which you cannot deny, and it is quite likely that many of those already there will not be able to afford it. Building housing is slow, and you are asking those most vulnerable to bear the brunt of the damage.
“Critics of Prop C say that it sets aside too much of San Francisco’s budget to one issue, giving it less control over long-term spending. The new mayor has said that the city needs to better spend the money it already dedicates to combating homelessness.”
Speaking as a full stack dev turned founder who experienced homelessless in San Francisco for several weeks in 2015, I am entirely unimpressed with the stated arguments against this corporate tax hike.
Too much for one issue? Can someone tell me what might be a more pressing issue that incredibly wealthy corporations could be supporting?
And regarding spending the current homeless better, well, yeah. Nobody’s going to argue against that. But is anybody seriously claiming that more money wouldn’t at least put a dent in the problem?
Without sounding overly dramatic, people’s lives are at stake. And not just people of poor character who made bad life choices. Real people, people that you might even interact with in a social or professional context. God forbid any pampered Twitter employee actually had to experience surviving on the streets of SF for a few days. It’s so easy to judge. But it is so much harder to pick yourself back up when you are that far down. Basic, stupid things get in the way. Getting to interviews, having clean clothes, being able to shower and use the rest room. Not to mention the nearly constant power tripping you are subject to from everyone you interact with based on your position on the lowest rung of society.
Yeah, I think companies making $50M a year should be glad to pay an extra half percent tax. If the moral argument isn’t persuasive, do it for business reasons. SF is attractive to the kinds of people who build world-changing startups because for all of its faults, it has a soul when it comes to progressive issues. Simply as a PR issue it would be wise for the tech community to take a simple action to make the world a better place, right here in our own backyard.
Honestly, this is quite surprising. I know Tim Cook has been grilled in the past at shareholder meetings for "wasting" money on green initiatives.
I have thought a lot about what I would want to do regarding hte homeless problem, and have looked into the spend that SF has to this problem, as well as the self-limiting regulations on the housing market which prevent small-size, high density developments from even doing proof-of-concepts.
After thinking on the problem a bit, I am personally drawn to the following ideas:
1. Mobile health and hygeine centers: -- These would be truck-trailers converted to contain a micro-clinic and showering facilities. And would provide standard low-cost 'scrubs'-like clothing to provide cleaner, more dignified clothing.
2. Paying homeless in resources (food/beds) in exchange for cleaning up the city.
3. Autonomous pressure-washing-street-robots. In silicon Valley, and SF specifically - it would be thoughtful and clean to have industrial sized Roomba Street Cleaning bots that will crawl along the sidewalks and pressure wash them. They should be able to dock and refill/dump/charge at various locations. These should have sensors which count exactly how much foot traffic they see constantly - have cameras and be beacons for services.
3. Correct the zoning laws in bay-area counties for supporting small micro-dwelling communities. Currently, for example, alameda county zones a much larger parcel requirement for a single family dwelling than is needed.
Also - the zoning laws do not allow for tiny/micro housing units to share common infrastructure. For example, even though you could fit multiple tiny homes on the 3800 SF lot requirement for a single family home, you cannot have more than one person/family living there, and these units could not share utility connections to power/sewer/water - and you cannot have them all have separate entrances, there can be only one primary entrance.
But in the end, I think that providing showers/hygiene and basic clothing should be the starting point.
Not having clothing or showers is a primary driving factor in the decline of mental health of homeless. You cannot focus on anything if these needs are not met.
Based on the numbers I looked at in the past, SF was "paying" the equivalent of ~$25,000/homeless/year in their services.... but clearly this number is not evident in the lives of the homeless.
Personally, I think there is a TON more that the tech community can do with respect to building and testing out various service offerings (like shower trucks/scrubs clothing/cleaning/etc)...
I would love to work on these if anyone else would.
There's a huge number of people who wind up in San Francisco for all sorts of reasons and the civic reputation for being less harsh on homeless plus relatively mild weather makes it a place people wind up staying in. There's always been flop houses in the tenderloin and people on the streets but the disparity between the wealthy and the poor is very striking now.
The opioid crisis is a big thing in SF but the levers are unaffordable rents, no care for the insane (who often self medicate with street drugs), an attractive place with lots of dumpster diving lifestyles behind classy restaurants and a general romanticism that dates back to the beats and hippies.
There are huge numbers of people living in their cars and couch surfing who are less visible than the unwashed zombie insane that you see at most downtown intersections and passed out on sidewalks but this is in essence a have and have not crisis
On top of that there's the insane SF zoning problems and many other issues, but those are really just the icing on the cake, the core problem is the massive wealth/income inequality that exists in the US today.
The city has a far better, far cheaper lever by which it can fix the homelessness crisis: nuke the housing market by permitting 45-foot-tall multifamily buildings on every parcel in the city. The fact that they will never do this tells you everything about that city.
https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7759476,-122.4242439,3a,75y,...
Most of the land in San Francisco is limited by law to short, detached, single-family dwellings. Erasing that regulation will make housing dramatically cheaper.
Look up Cabrini-Green