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Comment by ghobs91 | Hacker News Reader

While I don't doubt billionaires hoard money, I think trying to solve this with taxes is misguided. They should look at the stats showing how many homeless ended up in that situation because of rising rents.

I'd be willing to bet NIMBY antics are a large cause of this problem. SF metro area has the 4th highest rate of homeless people per capita, I have to imagine absurdly high rents is a part of it.

SF politicians don't want to admit this because of the donations/support they receive from NIMBY groups, but they are very clearly the cause of many problems in the bay area, whether its housing or slow transit expansion. It's especially ironic that such a "progressive" area would be so rife with elitism and gate keeping.

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> I'd be willing to bet NIMBY antics are a large cause of this problem. SF metro area has the 4th highest rate of homeless people per capita, I have to imagine absurdly high rents is a part of it.

There's a robust correlation in US between homeless population and the stringency of zoning/land-use laws that restrict/delay/obstruct new housing: https://urbanpolicy.berkeley.edu/pdf/Raphael_homelessness_an...

Homeless problem is downstream of NIMBY problem -- it's not an issue with "mental health" or "drug use" (sure, the most flagrant instances of homelessness have those involved, but that's because of what makes things flagrant, not what makes people homeless), it's to do with pathological overpricing and undersupply of housing (especially and most crucially at the lower end of pricing) in US.

And no, "SF has earthquakes" isn't an excuse. So does Tokyo and they manage to build apartments and have rents far far lower than those in SF -- while having a /much/ higher population.

“Hoarding money” is a non-problem. It’s also known as “saving money”. I would be quite surprised if the various cash rich companies of Silicon Valley are not keeping their money in banks where it’s being lent out to people and businesses which need to borrow money.

Even if they were keeping their gold in vaults, which would be harming them by denying themselves interest they are still not harming anyone. If you have an option to use a certain amount of resources and you don’t then those resources are still available to everyone else. If Bill Gates withdraws his net worth in cash and sets it on fire the productive capacity of the world is unchanged but he’s not going to use that money to buy anything. Everyone holding physical dollars is infinitesimally richer in terms of purchasing power.

I would imagine most billionaires have their money in the same place as Benioff, tied up as equity in their company.

I would imagine they have it in tax shelters worldwide because they can hire the best tax lawyers and accountants, those who work in firms that actively lobby to keep arcane loopholes open so their client fees keep flowing in.

If the company is publicly traded, executives' acquisition or disposal of stock is publicly disclosed through SEC Form 4:

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1512673/000120919118...

In October 2018 (so far), Jack Dorsey redeemed 103,035 shares @ a rough average of $80, bringing in $8,242,800 cash (pre-tax).

Same logic applies. The money is being put to productive use, not sitting there doing nothing. Whether it’s capital invested in a specific company or capital lent to a bank which acts as an abstraction layer for lending capital to many companies doesn’t change the fact that the money is being put to use.

If someone can’t afford rent in SF, they have other options besides living on the streets. For example, they can move somewhere cheaper.

The homeless in San Francisco are mostly people who can’t afford to live anywhere because they are incapable of generating or maintaining anything of monetary value. Rents could fifty bucks a month and they’d still be on the streets. The problem, then, is how to take care of those people.

There will always be a percentage of homeless that are as you say, usually because of mental illness. To say "most" of them fall into that category is a huge assumption to make without data to back it up.

I think most rational and competent people would choose sharing an apartment in Bakersfield over living on the streets in San Francisco.

Some people are not competent or rational.

And you cannot get a decent job without a place to live, which also puts pressure on bankruptcies. You cannot share an apartment when you have a family or when you cannot afford even that.

At $50 a month begging will easily cover rent. I embrace your reductio ad absurdum. If housing is cheap enough even people with serious substance abuse or mental problems can afford somewhere to live. The lower rent goes the better because even in San Francisco neither junkies nor the insane are a majority of homeless.

Hong Kong has really, really high rent but you don’t see people sleeping on the streets because shitty housing isn’t illegal. You can get a bed in a shared room. I wouldn’t want to live 18 to a room but it beats sleeping on the streets.

This is all about property owners zoning everywhere so cheap housing is illegal. Just making flophouses/single room occupancy legal again would make large improvements in the homeless situation.

Make building housing legal again.

> they are incapable of generating or maintaining anything of monetary value.

I've met lots of engineers that fall into that category.

Not to mention whole divisions and companies.

Besides exiling people from the community they were born into is genocide.

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