Comment by rangeofmotion | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rangeofmotion | Hacker News Reader

Oakland is a disaster. If I recall correctly, someone from the U.N. went to Oakland a year or two ago and declared a humanitarian crisis or something to that effect. I remember the wording was quite strong, saying that it matched conditions in third world countries they've been to which are in crisis. How people can just step right past so many homeless people and so much obvious city disrepair and human brokenness for years on end is beyond me. Yet Oakland and nearby Berkeley are home to a lot of people who are considered "progressive" and "caring" and who supposedly want a better world. If you can't achieve positive results for the people in your immediate vicinity (which the people of Oakland and Berkeley very much have the power to do, especially with things as simple as potholes), then do you get to count yourself as a person who can say they are working towards a better world? Thumbs up for these so-called vigilantes. They talk less and act more. I just hope they don't let the mayor co-opt their efforts by letting her go around saying she's all about it.

I remember reading a story by a motorcyclist who had ridden around the world. He had ridden through the most inhospitable places - some because of nature, some because of warfare.

I believe he was going through a US city and slept under a tree with his bike parked nearby, and he was woken and told it was too dangerous to do that. I thought it was Oakland, (but I might have misremembered and it was some other dangerous urban area).

Yeah, well... my parents won't let me walk home after dark in my tiny Canadian home town because it's "too dangerous", while it is objectively two orders of magnitude less dangerous than the large American city in which I now live (and routinely walk around after dark). People exaggerate danger, I've found.

I've spent many months cycling and walking throughout the US, mainly in the 2000s; it was striking to me to learn how scared some people are of the world around them.

I could imagine your story playing out anywhere - someone saying "it's too dangerous to do that here", doesn't actually mean much about the actual danger.

Because the old people who dominate local politics literally scream and talk over you when you try to do anything that would address a few big root causes (housing prices, prop 13 & property taxes).

That’s an exaggeration. Oakland is actually a nice place.

My observation is that, in the eyes of progressives, working class folks and politicians, the city government and services are first a source of jobs, and services are secondary.

Oakland was just ranked as one of the 5 worst-managed cities in the United States based on the following factors: 1) Financial Stability, 2) Education, 3) Health, 4) Safety, 5) Economy and 6) Infrastructure & Pollution.

And then there's this...

"A United Nations expert on housing explicitly singled out San Francisco and Oakland as the only two U.S. cities that are part of a 'global scandal'". "[The U.N. Special rapporteur] cites SF and Oakland along with worst slums in the world", calling the "'cruel and inhuman' treatment of the homeless 'a human rights violation'". She went on to say “There’s a cruelty here that I don’t think I’ve seen”. "In several respects, she said, the situation in California's cities [she was speaking from Oakland] is worse than other parts of the world"

"In Mexico City, I visited a low-income settlement that had been moved by the city onto empty land near a railway line,” [the U.N. Special rapporteur] said. "They had no running water. They stole electricity." The camp was noisy and dangerous. She noted that the camp in Mexico is virtually identical to those she visited in Oakland"

"Every person I spoke to today [in Oakland] has told me, 'we are human beings,'" said [the U.N. Special rapporteur] about her conversations with camp residents. "But if you need to assert to a UN representative that you are a human, well, something is seriously wrong."

I wouldn't call it "a nice place".

Have you actually been to Oakland?

There are a lot of homeless people here for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons is that the 'progressives' you call out aren't making homelessness illegal. They aren't making laws against pan handling, and sleeping on sidewalks. They're not trying to bus these people away to other cities.

Oakland and other cities are doing their best to own the homeless problem and provide support to these people where they are. They've built 'tuff-shed' communities, set up sites with showers and services, recently opened a space dedicated to people living in RVs...

Are they perfect? Do they solve the problem? No. But the city of Oakland is trying to solve a problem that should not be reasonably expected to be solved by a city. This problem is bigger than Oakland - and I think the city should get credit for making the investments they do to try and help.

If every other city was doing the same thing, homelessness would probably not be the big problem it is.

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