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Comment by dzlobin | Hacker News Reader

While I don’t disagree that SF is a mess, your example is completely wrong. That lot will become low-income housing and is temporarily being used as that.

https://sfmohcd.org/730-stanyan

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"Temporarily" according to who? And still $15.5m and $XXm still to be spent on the new development, and for now it's a massive tent camp---this is why SF has budget problems is my point. They're squandering the resources they have and not even solving the problems, they're actually making it worse in most cases. Tents tripled in the city in the last few months: https://abc7news.com/homeless-coronavirus-san-francisco-hous... SF could house these people instead of leaving them in tents somewhere else, but we have this ridiculous idea we have to house them in the most expensive city in the country where there's no new supply. We're spending nearly $1m per affordable housing unit.. who is paying for this? It's doomed to fail.

There is now bidding for developers of the site. Here is a link to some better journalism about this topic: https://socketsite.com/archives/2019/09/city-seeking-develop...

The first comment on your story says it all:

>I mean, the Geneva Towers work, right? Sunnydale Housing is a pleasure to visit and is really well-kept.

>What we need is more government-owned, city-run housing. That’ll make things better.

Show me an example where the SF government has ever done this successfully and affordable. SF government is pretty clearly incompetent and probably fraudulent/criminal.

Where do you suggest housing these people. What if they refuse accommodations.

Not sure if sf can legally just ship them to say Modesto where housing is cheaper

I don't have all the solutions, but I'd probably find a working model from another country and try to find a way to apply it here rather then this nauseating, arrogant, and ineffective strategy of just dumping money down an unaccountable hole and never demanding any results. SF voters are to blame ultimately for enabling this behavior.

See country = federal government.

If California has a perfect homeless solution that it’s peer states don’t share in. California will see immigration of homeless from other states.

Not necessarily... SF could copy a policy from Amsterdam or Copenhagen. My point is just look for a working example and model it off that. You're look for an arbitrary semantic difference to invalidate it. SF has the budget of some small countries and California has a budget bigger than actual countries. The money isn't the issue--it's how it's squandered and wasted on unaccountable half-brained solutions.

but his point about SF funds being squandered, definately has a lot of truth to it. There are a lot of ways to build high density housing in a cost effective manner that are not being used. The city constantly fights against anyone that tries to build any kind of cost effective housing. I've talked to SF residents (even the very people who work in Nonprofits that supposedly help the homeless), and they'll make any excuse they can against building any kind of cost effective housing: i really don't get it.

The fact that it's only a temporary homeless tent camp doesn't do a whole lot to make the situation better. I think you're not recognizing how absurd this sounds to outsiders; most people would not live in a city that formally sanctioned tent camps in residential neighborhoods.

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