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Comment by GhostVII | Hacker News Reader

San Francisco's solution to everything seems to be to just keep raising taxes, and throwing money at things which don't work. At some point you have to realize that more money isn't always the solution, you actually have to fix your beurocracy. It's insane to me that the city with so many rich people and incredibly valuable companies is such a mess, your telling me that a small city with an incredibly wealthy population can't figure out how to keep the tenderloin from being full of tents and open drug use? Or get some form of functioning public transit? Pretty pathetic.

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Luckily a San Franciscan figured it all out over one hundred years ago so we don't have to wonder about this:

> THE GREAT PROBLEM IS SOLVED. We are able to explain social phenomena that have appalled philanthropists and perplexed statesmen all over the civilized world. We have found the reason why wages constantly tend to a minimum, giving but a bare living, despite increase in productive power:

> As productive power increases, rent tends to increase even more — constantly forcing down wages.

> Advancing civilization tends to increase the power of human labor to satisfy human desires. We should be able to eliminate poverty. But workers cannot reap these benefits because they are intercepted. Land is necessary to labor. When it has been reduced to private ownership, the increased productivity of labor only increases rent. Thus, all the advantages of progress go to those who own land. Wages do not increase — wages cannot increase. The more labor produces, the more it must pay for the opportunity to make anything at all.

A land value tax fixes our problems but Californians went and voted in Prop 13 which is about as far from that as you can get. http://www.henrygeorge.org/pchp23.htm

Everyone works but the empty lot.

I was not aware that Henry George was from San Francisco.

HG was born in Philadelphia (1839); arrived in San Francisco by 1860 or so, and lived in California until early 1880. He wrote "Our Land and Land Policy" and "Progress and Poverty" during that period, as well as owning and editing the SF Daily Evening Post for 4 years between those books. He then moved to NYC, where he lived until his death in 1897.

For an introduction to his ideas, see wealthandwant.com. For more contemporary references, see https://schalkenbach.org/introductionto-the-ideas-ofhenry-ge... and that entire site.

Most visible in restaurants. They came in and made a dangerous neighborhood a trendy hotspot and then got booted out because VC and law firms outbid them on rent.

You can purchase a 5K sqft lot outside of Austin for $2,200 and we still have a growing homeless problem. I'd look more into providing mental health, relocation, and incentives to stay off heavy drugs.

Surely that number is not right - probably lacking two digits?

You can get out of Austin pretty quick. 30 mins in some directions can get you out of the metro area. Also, 5k sqft is 1/10 of an acre.

That said, I don’t know anything about land prices in Texas right now.

>You can get out of Austin pretty quick. 30 mins in some directions can get you out of the metro area. Also, 5k sqft is 1/10 of an acre.

During the normal busy hours in which people commute, no way. I can only hope all the construction going on along 183 will speed things up on the East side. The 290/71 junction is another nightmare during rush hour.

30 minutes won't take you from the river to North Loop. And even Redbud is slow in the opposite direction.

north-south commute? You must be new here.

Nah. I arrived when it was too easy to speed on Mopac. I left town before a north-south was totally inconceivable. Dunno if the behind-Pease-on-Parkway trick still helps. I had an east-west when I bailed.

I always hear bay area friends tell me how it's not that bad there if you have room mates. Mean while the engineers here in their 30s are collecting income from their 3rd rental property already.

I know lots of people under 30 in the Bay Area who could have much more than 3 rental properties if they wanted to. Especially outside of the bay area.

It's just that living with roommates is pretty frugal, and before the pandemic, it was a good way to save an extra $10k a year living in a more central location. Every single person I know who is a bay area SWE makes enough to afford renting a 1bed apartment in a good area, they just don't think it's worth it.

Yes if your main goal in life is to live in a large house on a large lot in a nice area without spending much, you will not find it there, but your characterization makes it seem like bay area engineers are poor which is... not true

>> makes enough to afford renting a 1bed apartment in a good area

In most cities in the US this is not the definition of wealthy or even well off. living with roommates to save 10K a year does sound like one step above poverty.

When I lived in the bay area, lots of my friends lived in shared accommodation because they actually liked living with other people. Saving money was a side effect. They usually bought a place when they got married or not long after. That's not poverty.

This is common when you're a kid out of college, but a few years go by and living with other people sucks.

Maybe I am just a frugal person, but to me, if you told me I could get a post-tax extra 10k a year switching from a 1bed apartment to a roommate situation I would always take it as long as I could find reasonable people to live with. I was pretty far from poverty when I made that decision in the SF bay area. And again, I just said they could afford a 1bed apartment, not that this was the max they could afford. You're not being charitable with interpreting my reply.

> living with roommates to save 10K a year does sound like one step above poverty.

Sounds like every college student and recent grad I've ever known.

One of the problems is that every person wants to live in some trendy neighborhood in "The City". Naturally, that means landlords can get away with charging exorbitant rents (the bulk of the inventory is under rent control, which reduces incentives for folks to move out). Because of this, you end up with ridiculous startups that rent beds out to people, folks paying $2000+ for a small room in a small house, and so on.

Meanwhile, in the majority of places that aren't the Bay Area (or urban CA), folks in professions like engineering are set up with nice suburban homes and additional properties by their mid-thirties.

I have seen many east-coast transplants move back after realizing that the madness is not going to end in the past ten years. Giving up access to the Bay Area job market, or existing social or family circles are perhaps the only thing holding folks back from getting the hell out of this area, I feel.

Not everyone wants "nice suburban homes" or being a landlord. Many people like city life. It's really that simple.

I agree. A lot of this stuff is a function of age and marital status. Older people tend to get married and have kids, and once that happens they clearly prefer the suburbs.

There are many folks who prefer city life, but I bet they would be found in much greater numbers in the 'real' cities: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Washington D.C... San Francisco just feels like a slightly overgrown town with hardly any cultural amenities one would expect from a world-class city. It does have almost unparalleled access to very pretty coast, woodland, and desert all in three hours' range, though.

I don't know what exactly you consider "city life," but Los Angeles does not come anywhere close to San Francisco by my definition.

The second-class treatment of public transit over car-driving alone is awful. I don't have to worry about being stranded ANYWHERE in the bay because I didn't finish what I was doing by 5pm, unlike my last trip to Santa Monica.

40% of SF residents are married. That is just slightly lower than nearby mostly suburban Sonoma County at 47%. And the median age of an SF resident is actually higher than the state median.

How many with young (K-12) children?

How many billion dollar start ups came out of the Austin ecosystem? SF is expensive because it is productive. It’s producing wealth so prices go up. If you want to raise money, recruit talent SF adds value which is paid for with hire expenses. I would rather own equity in a high growth start up than 3 rental houses; at least from a growth perspective.

> I would rather own equity in a high growth start up than 3 rental houses; at least from a growth perspective.

But that isn't the choice, the choice is between three rental houses and a maybe 1 in 20 chance of owning equity in a high growth startup that may or may not IPO in the next 15 years.

The third option in west coast cities is probably more common than your startup option : working for an established company, possibly a FAANG, and accumulating enough wealth to retire early.

That's a false dichotomy. A startup engineer could easily afford three rental properties in most flyover states after 8 years of working from their salary alone.

It is the choice because the ecosystem is in SF. And because of the demand of people wanting to participate in the SF ecosystem, prices are higher. It’s a gold rush dynamic. YCs are the new 49ers.

It's more important and more achievable to become financially independent rather than to become outrageously wealthy. Someone with a tech job and 3 rental properties has a lot more flexibility in life than someone with a tech job and some stock/options in the same tech company they work for.

Live in Austin. Yes that's BS, unless you're talking about a 5.5k sf lot out carved out of a rural farmland (which are plentiful right outside of Austin).

Odd thing to argue about that is easily provable with a Zillow search. Plenty of half acre lots that sold int he last year for ~$5K east of downtown but certainly before farm country. And capital metro goes past it all the way to the toll road.

Montopolis and McKinney are basically right before farm country (I ride my bike there all of the time). Where on earth are you seeing 5k sf lots being sold for $2k?!?!

Or that figure is the monthly mortgage payment heh

No... In most parts of the country, a tenth of an acre of dirt past the edge of town does not run $200k.

Can you build on that? Is there water, electricity, gas and cable?

Yes. If you want to drive 50 miles outside the city you can get 10 acres for $50k.

50 miles is really far. You can get the exact same prices in California if you're willing to drive 50 miles outside SF / Bay Area proper.

SF has a $360 million dollar a year budget for addressing the homeless situation. I'm not sure what funding they may also get in addition from the County and State Level.

It was upped to about $600m. Good luck getting an audit.

Okay, that is something on the order of $10,000 per person if there's a homeless population of 60,000 people. I doubt if SF has such a large homeless population.

Does this $600 million cover things like Churches sheltering the homeless, pantries, and such? Or is it in addition to the the $600 million? Something is very rotten here.

Looks like 8k or 10k as of January [1], depending on which standard you consider, though obviously that may have gone up with recent events.

[1] https://sfgov.org/scorecards/safety-net/homeless-population

You're off by almost an order of magnitude [1]. Even if we say the official estimates are off by a huge margin and there are actually 20,000 homeless in SF, that's $30K per person, on top of however many millions are given out via begging and other programs. It's insanity.

[1] https://sfgov.org/scorecards/safety-net/homeless-population

Oh my. I feel like I will never understand California politics. Such blatant corruption and such a large vulnerable population, but also such a huge 'woke' electorate. It would take some crazy mental gymnastics to reconcile these things.

Said electorate is gradually moving elsewhere due to the issues and voting for the same policies that cause the same problems.

Yes. I have lived in the Bay Area for a long time now, but never really liked the general holier-than-thou attitude (interestingly, I keep meeting older people who have never turned conservative, but have instead turned even more rabidly leftist.) It's dispiriting to realise that moving elsewhere, to Texas, say, is no guarantee of being rid of this. The same cycle will likely be repeated, perhaps in the next decade or so!

Being woke doesn’t translate to voting for good policies. You’re even more susceptible to voting for heartstrings boondoggles when you’re extra woke.

Completely agree with everything you said. But how does woke and liberal politics square with almost complete apathy to the the plight of the homeless (or of those verging on homelessness)? Almost nothing has been done to make housing affordable (even very modest, incremental bills in this regard have been shot down). If you consider the plight of agricultural workers and housing for them, you would be even more befuddled. 9.2% sales tax? Regressive tax on the poor. Gasoline tax? Again, hurts the poor the most. What am I missing here?

What you're missing is the "left" has long since transferred its affections away from poor people who are not wards of the state.

"Woke" politics magically appeared in 2008 when leftists were manning occupy wall street, which pretty much immediately degenerated into escalating virtue signalling instead of, you know, making some reforms to wall street. I'm sure that was a total coincidence.

Well, it did appear to result in the CFPB (the thing that Elizabeth Warren was heading?) and Dodd-Frank, perhaps (one can never attribute these things to some particular movement or event, I feel). I don't know if they have been defanged already.

Anyhoo, so what is the pet constituency of the left? They do appear to be falling over themselves to regularise illegal immigrants (perhaps the Latinos in Texas handing Trump a win will give them pause?), while doing nothing for legal immigrants (who power the only growth sector America has going for it, technology.) They certainly don't care much for the working poor, as you have rightly pointed out.

Related: a "stirring" defense of child labor from a Gates foundation apparatchik that got published in the left-leaning guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/nov/06/c...

Pretty sure Gates is a Democrat! Yeah, man, Child Labor laws are so 19th century.

It's because CA voters are bombarded with propositions every election. At least a half dozen. People barely have time to study the issues, so they go off what makes sense from the headline or the title of the measure on the ballot. Hence being fleeced by Prop 22 and the new privacy laws, which sure looked pretty when they were sitting there in the ballot.

Prop 22 passing is what I simply can't square with the woke/liberal politics of CA. Workers' rights, whether they are cabbies, schoolteachers, government workers, construction crews, or really any other large workforce that can be unionized should be sacred to people of this persuasion. Yet, dispiritingly, it passed.

I don't blame them. I got texts from supposed "uber drivers" who really were paid actors (didn't even change their actual name for the advertisements, you can search for these actors websites yourself as I did) encouraging me to vote yes on 22. For people not keen on reading between the lines, this could have passed the sniff test.

Not only that, all these props are just propaganda to me. I see a bunch of youtube videos constantly telling me that people are gonna die if I don't vote for prop something. No information, just appeals to emotions.

SF does have a huge homeless population. Yes it go's to homeless shelters and other charities/programs. We sometimes forget that not all homeless are chronic homeless which is what most people associate as homeless.

Someone may be having hard times making rent and go to a church or other organization for financial help and other services. Battered women, at risk children also exist and may require a shelter with more security or women only shelters - which are funded too. There are many other services that exist that use that funding.

I didn't see waste. Actually, I would go so far as say most charities that receive federal and state funding rely on reporting to receive those grants and funding and things are very transparent. HMIS is the tech side of things that build the systems to track and report on everything.

SF has 10k homeless people. You can give everyone $60k a year outright right now and they would live a very comfortable life on that in the midwest.

I don't have the bandwidth right now to consider the actual numbers, but one thing worth noting - as it's often overlooked in these discussions - is that much of the money spent on homelessness is spent keeping people in housing such that they're not homeless. Dividing by the number that still remain homeless isn't the right choice of denominator for anything meaningful.

As someone who once earned money from a CA public project the wastes are gross negligence. All that money which is paid is almost certainly misappropriated.

Maybe if other states could be blocked from buying one way bus tickets for their homeless citizens and instead be responsible that would help.

This is an urban legend and gets claimed in every major city.

San Francisco has great weather, lots of well off people to panhandle from, and treats the homeless relatively better than its neighbors. It really is that simple.

Absolutely not an urban legend.

https://www.sacbee.com/news/investigations/nevada-patient-bu...

> This is an urban legend and gets claimed in every major city.

It's not an urban legend, it's well documented and there have been lawsuits based on it.

It’s real. There are plenty of articles about it. The cities are playing hot potato with the homeless because there’s no federal program to deal with it. 80% of the homeless get back on their feet in months. It’s only 20% who are chronically homeless. It’s a mental health and drug abuse issue.

It’s not an urban legend. Mayor Bloomberg had a well funded, well documented program in NYC. Quick duck duck go.

Many others have piled on, so the burden has shifted to you. What support do you have for this being an urban legend?

Literally one search shows sources from across the ideological spectrum covering this:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/us/homeless-busing-seattl...

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/10/27/nyc-exports-ho...

And other cities are bussing their homeless to NYC as well. How can NYC fund the entire countries homeless population?

California buses the homeless out as much as they're bused in. It's complicated[1].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/...

My take is that homelessness is a nationwide issue in the US more than anywhere else in the world, and its more visible in states that have more funding to address the issue. Knowing that, 360M$ is nowhere near enough to alleviate the symptoms, and nothing compared to what needs to be invested to cure the actual root cause.

360 Million is cute, NYC spends over 3 Billion and still hasn't cracked it.

Fort Worth is in the same state, almost the same population, growing just as fast, and has similar taxes. Yet Fort Worth doesn’t have the visible homeless problem that Austin and San Francisco do.

This is partly because the private security force employed by the wealthy Bass brothers forcefully (and sometimes violently) discourage the homeless from existing in downtown Fort Worth, especially the Sundance Square area.

I used to work downtown (Oil & Gas Commerce building) and became friends with the night-shift security guard, who told some really shocking stories about how the Bass goons would drag the homeless into alleys and beat them, simply for existing in downtown Ft. Worth.

That might be 0.1% of the city’s land area. Not really a significant cause. If you applied that exact same factor to Austin there would still be a ton of homeless people everywhere.

The homeless tend to congregate where they're treated better.

The cities that treat the homeless better, when confronted with a new influx of homeless, work to confront the problem with more spending and social programs, and the cycle continues.

If your security guard at the O&G/C Building said that, then you were being told a wild story.

There is NO WAY Sundance Security would do that. I personally know the security team members and how professionally they are trained, and I know the Basses and how they operate.

That's a horrible thing to say. And it is sad that you or anyone would actually believe it.

It's a tall tale that a late shift guard might enjoy telling, but it isn't the truth.

> You can purchase a 5K sqft lot outside of Austin for $2,200

How many miles away from the city though?

Quite a few, and not somewhere most would probably choose to live

> You can purchase a 5K sqft lot outside of Austin for $2,200 and we still have a growing homeless problem.

But not actually near Austin enough for it to be a sane place to live and commute to Austin from (especially if you depend on public transit).

30 mins east of downtown is farmland

Not with traffic. Takes 30 mins just to get to the airport from downtown around rush hour.

If you depend on public transit in Austin, you're not going to be able to commute reliably no matter where you live.

When I lived in Austin I took the bus almost every day without issue. Austin has the best public transit in all of Texas (though that’s admittedly a low bar).

Social problems exist in degrees. San Francisco, with the most stringent land-use restrictions in the US, and largely as a consequence of that, the highest rental rates in the world, experiences the problem of homelessness to a much higher degree.

A pet crusade of mine: California can pass a 100% (or close to that) land appreciation tax (capital gains tax on land), and that wouldn't violate Prop 13. High land appreciation taxes are essentially indistinguishable from Georgist LVT. China taxes land appreciation between 30-60%.

>China taxes land appreciation between 30-60%.

Doesn't the government technically own all the land in China and then just lease it to individuals? Slightly different system.

Not quite relevant, because we already tax land appreciation in the US today, it's just the capital gains tax. The capital gains tax is also low because (in theory) we want to incentivize investment in the name of growth. There's no reason why we ought to apply the same incentive in favor of investment in real asset growth. A Land Appreciation Tax is just a capital gains tax just on real estate.

In fact, LVT would be unconstitutional at the Federal level today, but a Land Appreciation Tax would not.

Why capital gains tax rate is lower

[..] The justification for a lower tax rate on capital gains relative to ordinary income is threefold: it is not indexed for inflation, it is a double tax, and it encourages present consumption over future consumption. ... Finally, a capital gains tax, like nearly all of the federal tax code, is a tax on future consumption.[..]

Yup, that too. It’s another consideration that I don’t think ought to be made for land appreciation. In fact, because it doesn’t account for inflation, for the longest holders of land, a high LAT functions like a very mild LVT in practice, while also neutralizing the attractiveness of land as an investment vehicle in general.

Most homeowners don't pay capital gains taxes when they sell their home.

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/06/capitalgainhomes...

No, they are different.

Unlike LVT, an appreciation tax is a transaction tax, which can be shifted to the purchasers.

I would argue that as a transaction tax, it reduces the demand for the land. The net effect is the same: curbing land speculation.

A transaction tax does not reduce the demand. It reduces the quantity of transactions that matches the demand and supply. That means it adds friction to the reallocation of resources for more efficient use. It literally encourages hoarding. That is even worse than speculation.

Why is it that traditional capital gains tax doesn’t function as a transaction tax on equities and securities?

I am not sure what you mean by "doesn't function as a traction tax". It does create the same incentive for hoarding. I don't see any advantage of it compared with LVT.

> China taxes land appreciation between 30-60%.

If you want support for your causes in the US, you probably don’t want to compare it to a communist regime that scares the crap out of people.

Unless this was sarcastic...?

I think it's fair that comparing something to China doesn't win adherents, but just because China does it, doesn't mean that it's "communist". China has shopping malls — does that make shopping malls communist?

Also, a Land Appreciation Tax isn't really radically different from the status quo in the US today. Land appreciation is already taxed as capital gains, it's just that the capital gains tax is intentionally set to be low to incentivize investment. The argument here is that we should not only NOT incentivize speculation on land, we should deter it by carving out a "special" capital gains tax on land.

Depends who owns the shopping mall

China does absolutely scare the crap out of both it’s own people and people abroad, but economically it’s clear they’ve done a lot of things right over the last 40 years. The US could learn a thing or two from the communists when it comes to Capitalism.

I don’t think they’ve done things right; they were granted access to the global trade network and had wages at pennies on the dollar from other countries. It would be almost impossible not to grow under those circumstances. Let’s see if their decisions are as effective when wages are more on parity and they are competing as peer economic levels.

> I don’t think they’ve done things right; they were granted access to the global trade network and had wages at pennies on the dollar from other countries. It would be almost impossible not to grow under those circumstances.

I’m guessing you don’t know that this was also true of America in the 18th and 19th centuries and a large part of how it became so wealthy. Especially when they kept using slaves long after it was banned elsewhere.

Nobody would ever sell. They'd just use the increased value as borrowing power if they ever needed cash. Housing prices would skyrocket.

If your idea were put on the ballot it'd probably pass.

It would just become another variable in pricing land. It would actually slow down appreciation because taxes would have to be priced into every transaction. You can't borrow against collateral you don't have, so lenders would obviously calculate the appreciation taxes due if they need to foreclose.

But would the lenders adjustments offset the huge rise in prices from people not selling?

Prop 13 already locks people in. With this law they'd have an even bigger reason to bank land forever.

I don't follow that. Suppose the tax was 100%. Real estate would effectively never appreciate, so no one would hoard it. If the tax is 0%, then it's a completely "free" market. Anything between the two just reduces the ROI.

Since a high ROI in the short term promotes speculation (and not development), it seems like this would reduce speculation and the likelihood of bubbles forming.

Of course that's a ridiculously oversimplified view. There are a zillion different ways to stack this, which is what would happen in any case. To spur development and not just buy-and-hold, the law might be written to exempt certain kinds of improvement costs.

That’s not true, because appreciation isn’t uniform in a housing market. Not everyone experienced the same value gain, so your tax bill might be hundreds of thousands of dollars while your neighbor’s tax bill might just be thousands of dollars.

This is also why capital gains taxes don’t get priced into equities and securities.

Markets don't move by magic. They move by the aggregation of thousands and millions of transactions. And yeah, sellers and lenders absolutely incorporate their taxes into prices.

I see what you are trying to say about capital gains taxes not being in the "price" of securities. But they are in aggregate because taxes inevitably have to be paid. The whole market can't go up without transactions pushing it higher. And all transactions that make profit get a portion pulled out for taxes. They quite literally act as a damper on how fast a market can move.

Wait are you seriously suggesting we adopt a taxation policy the CCP utilizes? Did I miss something?

A policy being associated with the CCP doesn't automatically mean it's wrong or that we can't learn something from it.

This one is

Then explain why so we can actually have a productive conversation. Making bare assertions just wastes everyone’s time, including yours.

> High land appreciation taxes are essentially indistinguishable from Georgist LVT

A capital gains tax is not “essentially indistinguishable” from a land value tax if rents rise and the owner never sells the property. The owner gets to collect increased rents for as long as his family owns it, and even his heirs don’t have to pay the tax on transfer (since capital gains are untaxed on inheritance in America due to the step-up basis and apparently also for the Chinese Land Appreciation Tax). Kevin Erdmann has written a good series of articles on focusing on the rental value of land rather than only sales prices: “A Conceptual Starting Point for Housing Affordability and Public Policy” <https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/commentary/conceptual-starti...>

Housing is literally exclusively a supply and demand problem. If you want rent to go down, allow more building. End of story. There's actually nothing else to it. Lower property values caused by an increase in supply will yield lower rents because rents are generally indexed to mortgage rates which are indexed to property values.

The problem is twofold.

1. Americans view property as an investment while also wanting it to be affordable. These are mutually exclusive. If you want something to be a good investment you want it to become less affordable over time.

2. Renters tend to be younger, transient, non-voters with weaker ties to the community. Landowners tend to be older, established voters with strong ties to the community. This means the city council panders to landowners, and they pass policies which prevent development.

SF is the worst for this, the city is basically unchanged since the 1970s to the absolute and sole benefit of landowners.

There are wonderful examples of cities which pretty much default-allow building housing, like Tokyo. Tokyo is incredibly affordable, downtown starter-home/condos cost $200K USD, and people in Japan do not view property as an investment but rather as somewhere to live. More like a car.

Yes, prop 13 sucks, yes a land value tax is pointing in the right direction, yes rent control isn't helping, but none of these things are a substitute for the simple unit economics of supply and demand. Anything other than permitting tons of new building is at best a band-aid over a hole in the dam.

> non-voters ... Landowners tend to be older, established voters ... city council panders to [voters]

surprise, surprise, if you don't vote and assert your civic duty and rights, you don't get included in the process to decide the direction of society.

> view property as an investment while also wanting it to be affordable. These are mutually exclusive.

they aren't - investment is supposed to increase the efficiency of production, thus increasing the availability of said product. The issue here is that land is scarce, and can be made more scarce by various laws. Building/construction costs have decreased somewhat, but the major cost is the land, and lack of density leads to lower supply.

> Anything other than permitting tons of new building is at best a band-aid over a hole in the dam.

yes, this is exactly it. However the people _want_ low density, but affordable! Both cannot be true. And thus, here there is conflict.

> they aren't - investment is supposed to increase the efficiency of production, thus increasing the availability of said product. The issue here is that land is scarce, and can be made more scarce by various laws. Building/construction costs have decreased somewhat, but the major cost is the land, and lack of density leads to lower supply.

You may have misunderstood, I'm suggesting it's not possible for something to remain perpetually affordable and be a good investment. A good investment becomes less affordable over time. A bad investment does the opposite.

For instance, nobody complains about how unaffordable AAPL shares are do they? That wouldn't make a lick of sense because that's the desired outcome. That's why you invest.

If you want housing to be affordable you don't invest, you buy. Like a car.

Yes. Because of policies that favor landowners housing in California has become primarily an investment instead of a place to live.

However it's not simple supply and demand. We have a ton of "speculative demand" which increases when prices rise and we can't reasonably stop that by building more. Yes California needs to build but even if we started Shanghai levels of growth today it's unlikely we'd get affordable cities before climate change renders the state unlivable.

We need to kill land speculation and taxes are the right way to do that.

I agree that a land tax is great policy if anyone wants to argue about fairness and outcomes. (And therefore I suspect politicians talking about land taxes will by a sign of the end times.)

But it is very easy to have cheap housing and lots of it without a land tax. If I could sign a 50 years lease with strong protections that might even be better for me than buying, and landlords would have the usual incentives to build lots of houses if there is demand.

The problem in California sounds like the landholders who are being rewarded are the ones who choose not to build more dwellings. Greedy landlords in high-demand areas would build more, because then they make more money. I'd rather rent to an apartment building of people than a wealthy middle class family. And they'd be making generational fortunes doing that.

> If you want rent to go down, allow more building. End of story. There's actually nothing else to it.

There's actually another solution, but people don't talk about it: reduce demand. Break some windows. Have a few organized robbery parties. Hold monthly "Stabby Sundays" where you just stab people randomly. That'll drive down demand, and prices will drop like a rock.

Obviously, I'm joking. Building more houses is the only solution to the problem of "a lot of people want to live here" and "it's almost impossible to build new houses."

Climate change is going to do that to California.

I'm sad you got downvoted for that, I really enjoyed it haha.

I would argue the solution is build a lot of affordable housing. I've noticed in Berlin, a lot of new development follows a pattern: small footprint apartments with luxury amenities. This is great if you're a landlord, and you want to maximize the revenue of your property. But it's terrible if you're just looking for a safe, clean place to live, and you end up paying double the rent because luxury units are the only thing available.

Small, luxury apartments are going to be more profitable than something more affordable. Landlords will build the most affordable thing they can, to do anything else would be irrational. If only luxury apartments are being built, that means demand for such apartments hasn't been satisfied yet. The solution is to allow MUCH more building, so that something affordable will eventually be built. Even without that, having luxury apartments prevents the renters from competing on more affordable units, so it likely does have a positive impact.

I don't know anything about Berlin, but in San Francisco, there are plenty of affordable housing requirements placed on developers of new apartment buildings. This ends up just making new construction MUCH more expensive, as a single unit has to support itself as well as some fraction of an affordable unit. The result is that it's even less profitable to build new housing.

I don't agree that the free market is the only way to allow for more affordable housing, or even a good one. To some extent, housing has inflexible demand. If you work in a city, you need to find housing at least within commuting distance of that city. Because of this, landlords can build tiny palaces, and people will pay 50% of their income or more to live there, even if they really want affordable housing. In some sense, you could argue that real-estate developers can operate like a cartel and control the supply of affordable housing.

One clear alternative to this public housing. In Vienna, for example, about a quarter of the population lives in social housing. And these are poorly maintained slums, these are nice, well-located and affordable apartments. The city/state can optimize for the actual housing needs of the city rather than for profit.

I would argue that housing, much like healthcare, can function better when managed as a public good, as there are too many perverse incentives at play when there is a profit motive involved.

Have you looked at Marzahn? Or was that too unsafe for you? :)

No I live in a beautiful Altbau in Kreuzkoln, but I wish more of the housing built would be in this style, not luxury shoe-boxes.

Isn't that what was happening in the states the last half a year? You guys seem to have a whole respected tradition of rioting.

Encouraging businesses to move elsewhere seems like it should help reduce demand. Why not do some load balancing? There are other places that need more businesses.

> Housing is literally exclusively a supply and demand problem. If you want rent to go down, allow more building

Wrong. Without Land Value Tax the housing market simply doesn't clear. If there is no force to make house and land owners to sell to those who would actually utilize it better, they will sit on it forever until a huge ass corp or gov eventually buys them out for ridiculous price. As an owner you just have to wait while not paying virtually anything. Everybody else who actually needs to live, work or produce something in that location has to rely on new housing in ever increasing urban sprawling cities.

San Francisco is a prime example of this and apparently always has been as Henry George showed more than a century ago.

> Housing is literally exclusively a supply and demand problem. If you want rent to go down, allow more building. End of story.

Uh, no? Suburbs reaching further out, without the infrastructure to support them, are not a happy ending. High risers in the wrong places cause infrastructure overload too. Putting high risers in the right places will ruin someone's vista. Hardly unsolvable, but far from "just build more".

> Uh, no? Suburbs reaching further out, without the infrastructure to support them, are not a happy ending.

So cap how far out you can build. Generally, of course, that already exists.

> High risers in the wrong places cause infrastructure overload too.

More houses means more residents means more jobs means more tax revenue. This revenue can then be plowed into shoring up the infrastructure to fit. That's what a city is.

> Putting high risers in the right places will ruin someone's vista.

And that sucks for them, but they've no right to a view.

> 1. Americans view property as an investment while also wanting it to be affordable. These are mutually exclusive. If you want something to be a good investment you want it to become less affordable over time.

This comes up a lot, but is false. It's easy to have every single home become more expensive over time while the average unit remains affordable. Let me paint a picture of how it would work in a city where you can actually build new housing at higher density.

Family buys single family home in year A for $100k. Lives there for a while, then sells in year B for $200k. The buyer is a developer, who then constructs a larger building on that same lot consisting of 4 apartments that now each sell for $100k again. Original family gains in wealth, developer makes tidy profit, new families can still buy a place to live for $100k. All numbers inflation-adjusted, you pick A and B to make whatever return you think is reasonable.

This is how density increases happened almost everywhere, until zoning laws became the new way to keep racial minorities out of white neighborhoods, roughly mid-century, after restrictive racial covenants (i.e., "when you buy this house you agree not to sell it to anyone non-white") became illegal.

Note what you don’t get out of this arrangement: a neighborhood that doesn’t change for 40 years; the ability to live in the same type of house your parents did, in the same neighborhood, for the same price. But you could have the same amount of (indoor) space they did, and outdoor space through public parks and the like.

What’s not sustainable is everyone having a suburban style detached single family home without increasing density in perpetuity. That is what leads to this contradiction.

The non-density alternative is sprawl, where prices rise in long-established neighborhoods, and outlying new developments are where you can buy new houses for less—which is what you observe all over California.

I see what you're saying, that densification and building up vertically means each unit represents a smaller proportion of the footprint of the building. This in turn means that the ground under the building becomes progressively more valuable as the average density of construction increases. This can happen either by permitting smaller units or by building taller, or both.

This feels transient to an extent no? At some point your building is tall enough and your unit as small as people are willing to accept.

But does this not apply primarily to the land underneath the building? Once you reach a certain plateau a 700sqft apartment on the 10th floor of a 50 story building isn't worth any more than an apartment on the 10th floor of a 70 story building is it?

> This feels transient to an extent no? At some point your building is tall enough and your unit as small as people are willing to accept.

Yes, there is an endgame here -- and also, truth be told, construction costs per unit start to go up once you pass 4 or 5 stories, so there's other economics at play.

But that endgame is Tokyo or midtown Manhattan, and we're not close to those levels of density basically anywhere on Earth -- and certainly not in the USA, where you can count with one finger the number of cities that might not be able to increase density because the buildings are so tall it's hard to imagine building more-attractive taller ones.

> But does this not apply primarily to the land underneath the building? Once you reach a certain plateau a 700sqft apartment on the 10th floor of a 50 story building isn't worth any more than an apartment on the 10th floor of a 70 story building is it?

This is an interesting question -- in my example, you might think it's pretty clear that a single condo in a 4-plex would be less valuable than the same land area with a single family home (even if all 4 units together are worth more). But it's not clear why a single condo in a 25-story doorman building is inherently more valuable than a similar condo in a 50-story doorman building, which is basically the only density increase that's realistic -- and in fact, maybe the larger building supports more amenities, making the individual units more expensive as density increases? Also, this level of density supports rapid transit that allows for more effective geographical distribution than the "freeways choked with traffic" sprawl we're seeing today.

That said, this is not the situation that SF (or really, any market in the USA outside of Manhattan) finds itself in. In all these cities, developers could build a larger number of less-expensive units to replace more-expensive lower-density units on a given land area (and still profit! And increase housing supply!), if they were allowed to by zoning and other (typically local) policy.

I used to live in the Tenderloin in 2013 and it has actually improved a lot since marijuana was legalized and public restrooms added in - back then, there was a guy on every street corner trying to sell you something, and certain alleyways/corners where there was daily cleaning for piles of human waste. It's become much less dangerous but still quite depressing to walk through.

I started talking to people living on the streets and my opinion is that the problem can't be fixed by throwing money at it. Some people don't want to get free treatment, a shelter bed, or transitionary housing because of drug addiction, mental illness, a dog who can't accompany them, etc. A lot of them travel to SF because of how much we spend on homeless people, and it used to be pretty common to find people reselling food bank donations on the street for a fraction of grocery-store prices.

If it was up to me, I would tell people that they either need to accept help to get back on their feet (I've witnessed the Homeless Outreach Team doing great work) or leave the city. However, espousing a "get tough on homelessness" attitude would be vilified by our political climate, so it won't ever be up to me.

I'll vote for you. Setting up a welfare magnet for the homeless in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country is cruelty, not compassion.

Excellent point

If I ever campaign for something you'll know it's me after recognizing that cruelty/compassion line ;)

> "get tough on homelessness" attitude would be vilified by our political climate, so it won't ever be up to me.

You and me both, the solution is really straightforward. I feel like homeless in general falls into 4 camps:

camp 1 - drug addiction, this one would be to get people off the streets, Open rehab clinics, get them clean, and back into a functioning society.

camp 2 - mental illness, This one would be opening mental institutions(Reagan closed these in the 70's which led to our current culture of homelessness in alot of large california cities). Money would go towards either medication to get people in a functioning state or full time commitment based on severity.

camp 3 - Those down on their luck, this one would be the easiest as job skills could be taught along with temporary free housing and counselors to ease the individual back into a job, once a job is found a stipend towards rent can be given until the person is fully independent again.

camp 4 - Those that want to stay homeless. This is the most difficult group to deal with, and having them escorted out of the city would most likely be the only solution.

I wonder what the distribution is between these four camps? My hunch is solving for the first three camps as you've described would lead to a much higher quality of living for the average city dweller.

1,2,4 have a lot of overlap or are the same group (you need to be mentally ill to want to be homeless and drug addiction is a symptom of trauma that’s basically untreated mental illness).

Need to find ways to help the mentally ill, and shovelling pills won’t cut it, we need comprehensive programs.

I met a guy who fit all of the above. Did some drugs, had some mental issues (but not to the point of being insane), was down on his luck. He didn't exactly want to stay homeless, but he preferred it to his other alternatives (which included job skill program with free housing). After a while his luck turned and he found a job that suited him and a place to stay. He probably still has some mental issues and does some drugs.

Idk where I'm going with this except to say it's complicated.

It’s not so simple.

1 and 2 are either your largest groups or at least very large groups.

Getting addicts ‘clean’ is a sub problem at least almost as hard as the general, and it’s somewhere between hard and impossible to keep someone in a rehab or a mental facility against their will, and I doubt Reagan is to blame for that.

Basically, a large proportion of 1 and 2 are effectively in camp 4.

Reagan is to "blame" for it, but the unbelievable condition of homes for the involuntarily committed didn't make it a hard decision to make for him.

You forgot to include the ones who have 2 jobs and live in their car and bathe at an YMCA. They’re also homeless, maybe not as visible as the other categories and need help too!

I met a guy walking home in the TL, he had hitchhiked from a trailer park in North Carolina to SF. His neighbor in the trailer park made amateur porn websites, so he pretty much learned web development purely in the context of pornography. He was addicted to meth and came to SF looking for a job and the free methodone treatment. His laptop got stolen so I gave him an old Macbook I had lying around and told him to check out Codecademy.

I was hoping to get a feel-good story out of it after reading about Leo (https://www.businessinsider.com/leo-the-homeless-coder-2015-...), but the truth of the situation is he simply wasn't skilled or educated enough to actually learn computer science or even get past a phone interview (meth really ruins one's ability to maintain a train of thought). Somebody told him the legends of high-paying tech jobs in SF, and reality was a harsh teacher like it is to many people everywhere. He lived in shelters and on the streets for a while until he lost his phone, which was my only way of connecting with him. Haven't seen him on the streets for years and no idea what ended up happening with him.

My point being that people have really complex reasons for being homeless in SF and it's hard to put everyone into distinct groups, but for the most part your camps describe at least 90% of homeless people I've seen.

I am currently a web developer earning 6 figures in the Seattle area. I learned the skill in the Front End development course in Noisebridge—a hacker space in the Mission. They provided a free course, every Tuesday (or was it Monday) evening. I was living in a van at the time (what many people consider homeless). I know I might have learned the craft without this resource but I feel like this course made things significantly easier for me. And I definitely owe a dept of gratitude to the Noisebridge community (and Jeffrey in particular) for providing this to me.

Now just to be clear I’m not saying that any homeless person can learn how to code and get a job. I’m just saying that in my case I was what many people consider homeless, learned how to code, moved away from the city to Northern Europe, and then happened to get a job in the industry.

This is such a wonderful story, thank you for sharing it! I have plenty of stories of how Noisebridge has affected many people, it’s a truly wonderful place.

For groups 1 and 2, who gets to decide if a homeless person is to be committed? This seems like a non-trivial question, or am I missing something?

A person's social worker can make that decision. It is based on documented observations, interactions, interviews with neighbors, police reports, and hospitalization reports. Local and national laws provide a legal basis and rules for it.

> or leave the city

I would like it that we can as a society find ways to help homeless with their issues and manage their lives in a way that isn't just each city tossing them out.

That said, I'm not against someone's honest decision to say, well I don't know how, and in the mean time, I want them out of sight so kick them out.

But, and this is the but I feel is never discussed by those who propose that solution is HOW?

How do you kick them out? What if they resist? Arrest? Jail? Now who pays for that? Should we just fire gunshots at them? Force relocate them, and if they come back? Erect barriers? What else?

Jailing them would actually be cheaper than what they currently do, as long as they are jailed outside of California, which spends much more per prisoners than other states.

To clarify, I don't consider these ethical options. I just want to point out that without a concrete way to "kick them out", this solution is easier said than done. And so I feel it lacks a path forward.

>I used to live in the Tenderloin in 2013 and it has actually improved a lot since marijuana was legalized and public restrooms added in

The TL is a lot worse than in 2013. There are more needles, more open drug use, more break ins, and on and on.

>back then, there was a guy on every street corner trying to sell you something, and certain alleyways/corners where there was daily cleaning for piles of human waste.

Literally nothing has changed. This is still the reality.

I am so sorry to hear that. I got mugged by some of the corner drug dealers in 2013 and they were at least nice enough to throw my drivers license out while running away, presumably to save me a trip to the DMV. I was thrilled to see the legal dispensaries put those guys out of business, I had long moved out by then but the area felt way less dangerous to walk around in.

Plenty of people are still buying and selling weed. Dispensaries are not a great prospect when tax alone is 30%. There is a reason why there are more black market dispensaries than licensed ones, in LA at least.

We should talk and listen. They don’t want to be homeless. They want something else. What? Provide that.

In many cases? Drugs.

In that case Portugal and Sweden have show some success in treatment rather than the approach we have been taking. We should learn from evidence based outcomes rather than normative based appeals to tradition.

We really need comprehensive addiction treatment. Addicts should be offered jail or court ordered rehab, but in either case there is no option but to sober up and get well. It is just so depressing how often I see people slowly killing themselves on the street smoking crack or finding a vein these days, openly on the sidewalk, in broad daylight. This needs to be coupled with mental health treatment, which often leads to drug use in the first place.

Another problem is that SF shelters have schedules that exclude working people.

Shelters require folks to line up for entry in the early afternoon. Many unskilled jobs require late evening work (restaurant dishwasher, line cook, bus boy, janitor, etc). So folks leaving work at 11pm cannot get into the shelters.

Shelters kick everyone out in the early morning. Folks who work at night cannot get in to shelters at all. Night shift work is very important for unskilled folks (security guard, janitor, warehouse, etc).

Also, many shelters are run by religious organizations and require guests to spend time attending religious presentations every day.

I think 80% of the homelessness problem can be solved by providing free housing for these extremely poor people. Housing will not turn them all into successful citizens, but it will stop them from sleeping on the streets. Comprehensive health care (including therapy and long-term psychiatric care) can solve another 10%. The last 10% are folks who just prefer to live on the streets.

Unfortunately, free housing in SF is very expensive because of the housing shortage. The city already houses many formerly homeless folks, spending $200M/year. Housing the remaining 8,000 would take at least $200M/year more. This would be a 4% increase in SF's $5B annual budget.

"It's insane to me that the city with so many rich people and incredibly valuable companies is such a mess, your telling me that a small city with an incredibly wealthy population can't figure out how to keep the tenderloin from being full of tents and open drug use? Or get some form of functioning public transit? Pretty pathetic."

SF resident for 15 years until I left.

I walked around and talked to homeless. From the dozens I have talked with:

1. They are not from SF.

2. They were homeless somewhere else and it sucked.

3. Pan handling cash is easy. $100+ a day.

4. The SF programs kick ass. Suboxone clinics, Free cell phones, free bus passes, monthly stipends $$, even occasional housing

5. The police do not hassle much, you can shoot up on the street no problem.

It is a system designed to create more homelessness.

well, a system designed to attract the homeless to sf anyway

So we have:

1. A lot of rich residents and rich companies which supply the city budget with sweet sweet tax money

2. A lot of programs and NGOs that draw large budgets to helping the homeless

3. Political climate that encourages spending money on helping the homeless without requiring anything from them, basically free money

4. Generous programs providing various freebies for homeless people, and no consequences for any behavior short of major robbery (yes, shoplifting is allowed too unless it's over $900)

5. Mild weather that makes living on the street possible year around

And we're wondering why homelessness has not disappeared? There's nobody that is interested in it disappearing, that's why. Well, at least nobody whose opinion matters, anyway. There's a lot of people interested in allocating and spending budgets on fighting homelessness, these aren't people interested in doing something that will make it stop once and for all.

I downvoted this because as someone that has been what many consider homeless in San Francisco, I am a little insulted by this attitude. It comes across as someone that has never lived this life claiming that it is a good life and generalizing over the homeless population as freebies and criminals.

If there exists a complicated social problem that involves thousands of human beings and someone on the internet claims to have an explanation for it in 10 paragraphs or less, that explanation is probably overly simplistic.

I downvoted you because I am insulted by this attitude. As someone who comes from a country of starvation deaths, I can easily see how the homeless in SF would be considered the 1% of the world.

If the milk of human kindness is all about spreading the wealth..how about spreading the wealth to other countries?

Why should I pay for the homeless in SF when they live in the richest country in the world when I can send the money to Kenya or Vietnam or India and truly create meaningful impact. And so that’s what I do. My taxes already pay towards the healthcare, food and if in SF..smart phone and BART tickets for the homeless. No more tax hikes without an explanation for the $350 million dollars spent in just one year for SF homeless population.

I actually upvoted that because I glad you left this comment. It provides an essential perspective for the global distribution of wealth. USA is the richest and the most powerful nation in the world and it is a ridiculous power dynamic that has no justification. The USA cannot provide housing option for some of its population, but even worse, the USA consistently steals wealth from other nations leaving them impoverished just so they can provide cheap goods for their own citizens.

It is always good to get a reminder that for every USA resident the government leaves behind there are hundreds of impoverished non-USA citizen that still has to pay for it.

Thanks. I agree. But there needs to be no justification.

The USA does not steal wealth from other nations. Please substantiate this comment with an example.

Wealth is not an indicator of quality of life. I have seen this over and over again amongst the rich and the poor. All we can do is live well so we are not a burden to others. The next best thing to do is help when we can.

What I am against..on principle..is that we look to someone else for our happiness. Or survival. I am an immigrant too. I left my country of origin for one reason and one reason only..upper economic mobility. Many immigrants cause reverse brain drain. I have a better quality of life and I can uplift people within my circle of influence. I can do better as an American than as a citizen of my country of origin. And I enjoy the comforts of my new life. And that’s fine with me. I don’t believe we can heal the world by squeezing the hearts of the collective rich.

I don’t understand why I should support someone who doesn’t want to leave SF because it’s chill while I had to leave behind my native country, my family and friends and all things familiar because I wanted the same thing as them. Comfort and quality of life. Only..I was willing to make sacrifices and trade offs. It’s difficult to empathize because it would make a mockery of the sacrifices that I had to make because I wanted something. We can’t ask others to sacrifice their money because some people don’t want to make any sacrifices for their own desires.

We have seen that money doesn’t solve problems. In SF alone..350+ million did not solve homelessness or drug addiction or mental illness or despair due to poverty.

So what is the answer. If the pitchforks against the rich are laid down and the energy is properly channelized to find meaningful solutions, we will get somewhere.

My motto: Do what you have to do. Others are not a measure. What I am NOT is a fan of guilty self flagellation. If I am not going to flagellate myself, why would I allow others to do it to me?

> It’s difficult to empathize because it would make a mockery of the sacrifices that I had to make because I wanted something.

This is a really good and important point. I immigrated from one of the wealthiest countries in the world to the USA. Off course I made sacrifices while immigrating but those sacrifices were not nearly on the same scale as someone immigrating from a place of poverty. I can still visit my family regularly and they can visit me (even though they are of working class; if it were not for a global pandemic off course; for me it’s not that expensive even if it is a little expensive for them). If anything I should be trying harder to empathize with you.

In honesty me and my partner always had the option of moving to my place of origin, they could enjoy the free education we provide there and get a degree there instead. If I were not from a rich nation that would not be an option. In honesty we choice to live in a van. Sure we were underprivileged to the average San Franciscan, but as an immigrant I had it pretty good. And it wouldn’t have been the end of the world if we were forced to live in my country of origin.

We actually ended up moving there anyway. But it turns out that even though USA is officially pretty hostile towards immigrants, my country of origin is far more xenophobic then Americans are, so we ended up moving back (me being a white person probably has a lot to say about the acceptance though).

I know I didn’t really answer you in a meaningful way here. I really only said that your voice matters as much—if not more—as mine. After all I am a person of privilege by virtue of both my skin color and my place of origin (even though I’m born of working class). So to third party readers I guess I’m saying: Read the parent carefully, and understand their perspective. I might have a lot to say because of my experience of living in a van in San Francisco, but there are other people—like the parent—that also have a lot to say, and their perspective is just as valuable—if not more—then mine.

Thanks for your reply. Fwiw, I don’t think you are privileged as you feel from my perspective. I think I would have to know you better, but I hear that you feel privileged.

It cuts both ways. I can’t make any assumption about anyone’s privilege or lack of simply because it’s none of my business and your privilege(or lack of, as the case might be) doesn’t impact my life at all.

However your actions directed towards me and it’s impact on my life would be subject to observation. There are concentric circles of influence for every individual. Yours and mine might never meet.

I downvoted you because I am insulted by your being insulted by his attitude while being insulted. (I didn’t really downvote you)

We can do both. This post is not helpful or productive as it trivializes the argument it responds to and serves as a diversion rather than a productive response; it’s a red herring argument.

No, we can’t do both.

Imagine you walk into a theatre thinking it’s going to be a Hitchcock movie. After the 12th minute, they start showing Groundhog Day.

They ask you to come back the next day.

You return. Again, after the 12th minute, Groundhog Day. Again, they ask you to come back the next day.

And they don’t return the money you paid for your ticket. Or a credit. You have to pay for a ticket again. Everyday.

Now. How often are you going to keep returning to someone who steals from you and knows you will return. Meanwhile, any theatre next street is playing the Hitchcock flick.

What would a reasonable rational person do?

Your response doesn’t show that we can’t do both. We do have the resources and social science knowledge to accomplish both objectives.

I don’t really follow your theater analogy, perhaps you can provide an alternate argument so I, and others can understand why you feel that resources are scarce, limited, and the objectives are mutually exclusive.

1. Please define ‘both’

2. Please elaborate ‘..we can do both’

We don’t have ‘resources’. We have a mechanism for instituting punitive taxes on a minority just because they are wealthy for a spending plan that has no clear path to success.

And who is ‘we’? Peter and Paul want to tax Bob to hand over $$ to Jack and Jill.

if you spend some money one place, you can't spend that money elsewhere as well.

You could argue there's enough money to solve both problems, and a tax on the wealthiest would help accomplish that. that is a view I'm very sympathetic to.

But I think the comment you're responding to is making the first point, rather than the latter.

Yes, people from all walks of life may end up homeless but I'm tired of hearing stories of my friends being robbed at gunpoint/knifepoint or straight up assaulted for a phone and a wallet. People walk into stores and steal without impunity, shoot up drugs, shit in the middle of a street, etc. It's truly appalling. As far as being homeless goes, the homeless here are free to fuck things up for the rest of us.

Honest question why are you blaming the homeless for fucking up things for the rest of us? In my experience the rich are far more guilty (as a generalized group) of fucking things up for me.

The rich have polluted the planet, raised the global temperature up a whole degree. The damage is that now I can’t go outside in late summer, if it doesn’t rain the week before, because the air is poisoned by soot from forest fires. The rich are the reason I couldn’t afford a place to rent in San Francisco, their speculative housing investment and gentrification raised the marked rate so much that a working class person from one of the richest country in the world couldn’t afford to live there. The rich are the reason—unless you are one of them—that you are not making significantly more money from your current job, they consistently take away from your contribution to the wealth you generate in your current job without contributing anything of value.

I agree that the scale of damage is greater. I just caution anyone grouping people based on belonging to a category. Being rich doesn’t mean you polluted more than others. Al Gore is rich, but he was kind of focused on that issue.

So for every 100 rich folks that have screwed you over you have an Al Gore that doesn’t. Please have the perspective also that for every homeless person that mugs someone you heard of, there are thousands that wouldn’t even think of doing anything even close to that.

I do have that perspective which was my exact point. Don’t group people and make broad generalizations.

To be fair though, Al Gore likely has a a carbon footprint orders of magnitude higher than the average person.

> The rich are the reason—unless you are one of them—that you are not making significantly more money from your current job

Actually, for a significant part of Bay Area - anybody who is working in a startup or a company that has been a startup (including Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, etc.) "the rich" are the reason they have a job and a salary with which they can afford not being homeless. Who do you think makes up VC capital from which startup investments are made? I don't idealize rich people - as a whole, they have the same percent of assholes and criminals as any other group, and as people with many resources their assholery has an outsized impact sometimes - but claiming "the rich are the reason" for all problems and without them we'd all be paid tons of money of of somewhere magic - is just sheer idiocy. Sorry, I lived in a country where (almost) nobody was rich, at least legally - and it was shitty. I do not recommend it to anybody.

I lived in a country where almost nobody was rich and it was fine. Then in the nineteens regonomics happened national resources were privatized and we had millionaires popping up until they almost literlly bankrupted the nation in the great recession of 2008.

Sorry but in my experience nothing ever good comes out of K shaped economy. I have a good reason to be salty towards the rich. I know that currently they are paying my salaries, but I am also aware that I am contributing more towards the wealth they are retrieving then I am. So strictly speaking I don’t need them. But even so, I would be fine if my entire industry would collapse and would leave me unemployed if it meant that the wealth the rich folks are accumulating at record pace would be distributed towards the working classes of every nation. I would rather make minimum wage in a world where that was the norm then to be taken advantage of by a wealthy class who consistently adds to their own wealth while the rest either stays the same or gets poorer.

> up until they almost literlly bankrupted the nation in the great recession of 2008

Iceland I guess? If you like what you've got, don't try real actual socialism. Believe me, it sucks. You'd regret it.

> I have a good reason to be salty towards the rich

If my guess is correct, you experience is an unique result of a very bad situation which was manufactured by some dirty politicians, some PhD'ed idiots and some greedy bastards (see my comment about the assholes above). That doesn't mean everybody who is rich is a bastard. Having money is a wrong marker, and your saltiness is way off target.

> it meant that the wealth the rich folks are accumulating at record pace would be distributed

That never ever happens. I mean, even if it happened it would amount to tiny crumbs for you ("you livelihood and all you've done for living are gone and you have no means to support you family or procure food, but here's your check for $275, enjoy it!") - you can't both whine about "tiny number of people owning stuff" and expect taking their stuff would make you rich - "tiny number" means you only get a tiny part of it. Arithmetics is a cruel science.

But in fact there's no "distribution" ever possible. Never happened, never will. There's only destruction and desolation. It is possible to target Bill Gates's wealth and destroy it. Shut down Microsoft, make all its workers unemployed, blow up the campuses and wipe out the backups. Can be done. You won't be even $275 richer from that though. Nothing will be "distributed", just destroyed. This is the only way it has ever worked or can work. Revolutions do not make anyone richer, but they do make a lot of people starve and die.

> I would rather make minimum wage in a world where that was the norm

No you wouldn't. I lived in that world, and I haven't seen any single person who after experiencing both wanted to remain in the minimum wage world. Millions wanted to move out and took extraordinary efforts - often risking their lives - to do it. Remember the Berlin wall? Why do you think they needed the wall - is it to hold out the West Germans itching to experience the blessings of the East German minimal wage? How many South Koreans you think want to move to North Korea to enjoy the guaranteed rice rations?

> a world where that was the norm then to be taken advantage of by a wealthy class who consistently adds to their own wealth while the rest either stays the same or gets poorer.

But that's not true. The rest doesn't get poorer - in fact, the number of people living in poverty is declining steadily. Yes, I know you had a bad experience in 2008, but if you're willing to have a broader look you can easily see it: https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty

> The rich have polluted the planet

Rich people aren't tipping over trashcans or shitting on my sidewalk.

> raised the global temperature up a whole degree

This doesn't actually affect you, you've just been brainwashed into thinking it's the most important thing ever. Emissions are going down in all of the most highly developed countries. As technology improves, this will improve as well. You're complaining about progress that has lifted billions of people out of squalor to having powerful computers in their pockets and being able to transport goods across the globe.

> The damage is that now I can’t go outside in late summer, if it doesn’t rain the week before, because the air is poisoned by soot from forest fires.

Maybe they should do some forest management with the billions in taxes they take every year, instead of giving it to street-shitting, drugged-out hobos.

> The rich are the reason I couldn’t afford a place to rent in San Francisco, their speculative housing investment and gentrification raised the marked rate so much that a working class person from one of the richest country in the world couldn’t afford to live there.

When demand goes up, and supply doesn't, the price goes up. This isn't rich people's fault, it's basic supply and demand.

> The rich are the reason—unless you are one of them—that you are not making significantly more money from your current job, they consistently take away from your contribution to the wealth you generate in your current job without contributing anything of value.

They provide you with a job. You are free to start your own business. Rich people can't stop you.

No one owes you anything.

> Rich people aren't tipping over trashcans or shitting on my sidewalk.

Are you seriously equating globally warming the planet with littering? Yes the latter is annoying but the former is literally killing a significant number of people around the world every day. You can’t blame the fires solely on bad forest management. Yes forests in California could (and should) be managed better, but with the climate disaster fueling them I think those effort would be futile.

> They provide you with a job. You are free to start your own business. Rich people can't stop you.

Again, seriously? Reality check, if this were an actual option more people would do it. How many people get rich (or are able to at least make a living) after starting a business from a working wage? In the real world, normal folks can’t afford to start a business, and even if we could, the risk of failure is too great for us to risk loosing everything and ending up in debt for it.

> if this were an actual option more people would do it.

How much more? US has over 31M small businesses. How many do you need to conclude it's an option? 99.9% of businesses in the US are small businesses (obviously, since you only need one person to make a small business and 100K persons to make a Walmart). If normal folks can't afford it, who are all those? I know several people having businesses, in what way they are not "normal"? Not all of them are rich (in fact, most of them aren't, most are making a good living, some better than others, but none I know are billionaires so far) but how this is not normal? I think your picture here is very skewed.

I don't fear for my families safety just walking outside our front door because of rich people, I fear a homeless, drugged up person assaulting them.

Seriously? Do you have reason to be afraid of the homeless or are you simply experiencing prejudice? If the former is the case I recommend you move somewhere where there are fewer homeless.

But this dichotomy of homeless vs. the rich is really silly. You have less to fear around the rich because they are rich, the homeless might be in a desperate situation and behave accordingly, or as put in the Movie Parasite:

> Ki-taek: They are rich but still nice.

> Chung-sook: They are nice because they are rich.

The danger the rich pose is not something they do to you as you are walking home. It is something they do to the planet (like spilling oil or emitting massive amount of carbon), what they do through the legal system (like evict you), or even just fire you, paying you unfairly, stealing from or influencing your government, etc.

My last interaction with a homeless person, in the park next to my house: he yelled at me, and talked about grabbing his hatchet... while I was walking with my pregnant wife. So yes, I a have a reason to fear for my families safety around the homeless.

I live and work in the Portland, OR area. Homelessness is a real problem here, and they are moving out of the city into the suburbs.

No doubt there is substantial overlap between thieves / violent criminals and the homeless, but I’m not sure the bulk of the criminals are homeless. I’d also point out that often the homeless are the most likely to step in to help when needed - while people who’re busy going about their lives will often succumb to the bystander effect and continue going wherever they’re going.

I’d want to focus enforcement on criminals (homeless or otherwise) and people who are a danger to public health rather than the homeless in general.

I never claimed it is a good life. I never generalized anything. I am not sure where you found it. What I claimed is many of the people who spend billions of dollars on this problem have incentive to not have it actually solved (as in gone, no problem anymore) - for reasons both political and selfish. I also never claimed I have an explanation for the problem of homelessness. I only have an explanation for why the government of San Francisco does not appear to be able to make any progress in solving it despite spending a real lot of money on it.

Speaking as someone that lived in van in SF for 6 month before I left for immigration reasons:

1. I’m not from SF, I came there to live with my partner who was in school there but we couldn’t afford a place to rent.

2. I’ve never been homeless anywhere else and I wouldn’t have been homeless in SF if rent was fair.

3. I’ve never pan handled, but I didn’t need to. Dumpster diving is easy, there is plenty of free food options (including free farm stand with organic vegetables; I also cooked for food not bombs but that was more for the fun then the food).

4. Didn’t get any free phones, paid for my own bus fairs (or just jumped the muni).

5. Police never hassled me too much. Only one time when I parked near Dolores Park too see if they had their porta potties open all night (they didn’t). Police advised us to stay out of this neighborhood. We did and moved back to a friendlier neighborhood in the lower mission.

6. Showering is impossible for the homeless. I could really only shower and shave once a week. I had to wait in a line for a ticket at a charity and then wait there for an hour or two at a cramped space for my turn. Sometimes I would sneak at my the campus of my partner’s school and steal a shower.

Speaking from experience the only thing that is creating the homelessness in SF is lack of reasonable, affordable, and accessible housing options.

This is the best example of “speaking from experience” I’ve ever read.

The question how representative are you of the general homeless population in SF. I would guess not much. Am I wrong?

No, you are not wrong. I am not at all representative of the general homeless population in SF. I doubt anyone is. The homeless is probably one of the most diverse of any classifiable group in San Francisco. People are homeless for numerous reasons, and I bet any similarity you find is only superficial.

Note that I never considered my self homeless. My 1981 VW vanagon—which we named Sunny—was a plenty good home for me. It was the first home I bought with my partner and we had a really good life in it. We would have stayed in it longer if it wasn’t so difficult to immigrate into the USA. But I know—and understand why—many people consider that homelessness.

Do you realize that a tax paying citizen would have to pay a pretty hefty fee if they parked anywhere for an emergency?

Street parking everywhere because parking garages are being converted into affordable homes for people who can’t afford to live in one of the most expensive zip codes in the USA.

Homeless people who park their RVs and vans in public parks and open spaces are removing them from public consumption for those who paid taxes to maintain these spaces and commons.

The housing options are there, just not the city option.

I have hired people in the farm who were getting homeless benefits. I have also hired juvenile girls who lived in a half way house as part of their rehabilitation.

The homeless worker ..one of them..had more benefits than the young girls. I wish I could have worked more with them. People need help. The right help at the right time for the right people is more effective than blanket free for alls.

He was living in his grandmother’s two million dollar Mountain View home and the first thing he asked me was if he could smoke his pot because granny wouldn’t approve...while the girls were huddled and chaperoned at all times.

I would pay more in social taxes if I could choose the programs and if there were more transparency as to where that extra money went.

I read this as:

[The homeless worker] was living in his grandmother’s two million dollar Mountain View home

and I have a hard time imagining why anyone would consider that "homeless". Could you elaborate/clarify?

Definition of homelessness in California: California defines homelessness if you come out of an institution(jail in this case..but also includes substance abuse rehab, mental institution etc) after a 90 day stay and don’t have a place to stay. If you don’t have a utility bill in your name, then you can be called homeless.

Because he was in jail twice consecutively and was out on bail, if he could claim mental disability he doesn’t have to go back. But if he can claim mental disability and homelessness..citing them as a reason not to work, he could get benefits for life.

He skipped something legal and was at risk for going back to jail. So he just claimed that he was sleeping on the streets and didn’t have an address.

Look..he was really smart. At that point, I really wanted to help him and I can even appreciate some lateral thinking for problem solving. I didn’t mind that he was using a break to get back on his feet. If someone says they are mentally disabled, I am going to believe them and not question it.

But he was doing things that made me feel unsafe because he was setting up the stage for me vouching for his mental instability if I were questioned. Like fire. He would get the blow torch for everything..wasp, weeds, gophers. I have worked previously with the homeless and previously incarcerated. And the most harrowing, addicts. With the former, it’s easy to integrate them back into society. A lot of times you know when you are being lied to and that’s ok too.

But our loopholes are so gaping in CA that people who need help are not getting the right kind of help. And it’s nuts to keep doing the same thing again and again ..and keep expecting the same results. And just throwing more money at it is not doing it differently. A lot of organizations, non profits and sub contractors who win bids are making more money than what actually goes to the homeless people. Homelessness alleviation is an industry of its own. Without the homeless, there would be a lot of jobs that do homelessness outreach. Which by itself could be a way to prevent future homelessness. But that’s just creating jobs to give people money..those needing other kinds of help are not getting it. Because at the end of the day, money doesn’t solve the problem entirely.

https://www.provost.usc.edu/initiatives/wicked-problems/home...

I want to add another story. At my orchard farm, there was a homeless lady who’d come by to use the packing shed. She was an older person and had a dog with her at all times. She was clearly mentally unstable. She used the shed to hold meetings with her imaginary friends. After I pull in, I have to wait while she opens the swing door and tells each one of her imaginary friends at the meeting..’thank you. Please come again’. Like 5-7 times. Then she’d give me a withering look and leave with her dog.

I played along because I knew she was harmless. Then one day the dog disappeared and my general rule at the farm was not to leave any tools outside unlocked. Someone must have left a shears outside one evening. When I came back, she had gone on a rampage at the lavender field and shredded the greenhouse plastic. I don’t know if she was ill or she had lost her meds.

I had to call the cops and I had to check with insurance. I did not want her in jail. I only wanted her to get her meds.

But the cops(they were remarkably kind and they were already frazzled by this kind of issue in a semi rural area) said their hands are tied. They literally can’t help her or get her meds or even find out if she has any next of kin without arresting her. Because of fourth amendment and privacy issues. If booked, she could get fingerprinted. And then they can find out if she is a missing person or if she has any prior history etc.

This was difficult for me. I agreed that the next time I will file a complaint because I didn’t want her to be in the system and on police records. But she never came back. We’d never know what happened to her. She disappeared..just like that. Did I do the right thing? I don’t know! Did the cops have enough authority? I don’t know! There are homeless advocates.

Because I have a story for that too. There were a bunch of young homeless people who became squatters in my farm. They stole things. Used the place to sell drugs. Stole electricity. Destroyed my property and fencing multiple times. Again the cops couldn’t do anything. They had to go via the homeless advocates and non profits because cops are not allowed to deal with this issue. But are they drug dealers(and we are not talking marijuana here) or homeless people? Net net, I have to absorb the losses on a farm that was not making much anyways. Worse, they were cutting the trees by the creek, build bridges from the greenhouse lumber they cut, made make shift ‘apartments’ and cottages with plywood and tarp... and pooping in the creek and I would go every weekend and pick up poop, condoms, needles because I grow food. I can’t have stuff like this around. And the homeless advocates did nothing while they continued to trash my farm and made it their sales HQ.

And start ups. Don’t get me started. A billion dollar company that could have provided safe solutions to mentally ill and homeless population BACKED off from selling their product because they didn’t want to work with the police. Because it would affect future funding and the woke progressive climate in SV won’t look favourably on anyone who works with cops and law enforcement. The clowns had taken over the circus when the employees tender woke feelings matter more than delivering actual solutions to the needy. This is tragic. And I will not pay any more taxes to enable this lunacy that is The California Democratic Goat Rodeo.

Oh! And the time the squatters’s clients backed up their truck into my fence and the squatters offered to pay for it. With beer. For life.

Why did you feel the need to live in SF if you couldn't afford it?

I said it right there in the same sentence. My partner was in school there.

To provide a more detailed explanation. They were already renting a room when we met, and their landlord (who was them self subletting from another landlord because they couldn’t afford their own rent even though they have rent controlled price from the 80s) didn’t want us both living there.

My partner had a year left in school but they finished quickly because we didn’t want to push my immigration status.

In summation, you chose to be homeless by choosing to move to SF. This is exactly the problem.

In terms of showering, I've heard some homeless people buy gym memberships to access a clean shower every day.

Yep, unfortunately people living there are too dumb to see they create their own problems by excusing the elected politicians (same for decades). Maybe some people are so nice they would rather step on human waste than make someone else uncomfortable for some of the decisions they made.

Just as an aside, I don't know the stats for SF, but in Seattle the "invisible" homeless outnumbered the street-homeless 2:1. Street-homeless people tend to cause the most problems and put the most strain on the system, but there are a lot more people sleeping in cars, shelters, temporary housing, and couchsurfing, who are still homeless and need help.

I honestly think SF and Seattle need to be tougher on the street-homeless but IMO it's important to remember that there are a lot more homeless people than the obnoxious ones. Those are just the ones you notice, because they are obnoxious.

Its funny you should say this, I have a sibling comment providing an anecdote about my (non obnoxious) [generally perceived] homelessness in San Francisco, while currently living in Seattle (well Vashon Island). Generally I get the a little lacking vibe in Seattle then San Francisco. Never having lived without a house in Seattle I feel like it would be similar except for the superior weather in San Francisco. I also doubt that I would be able to find as welcoming neighbors in Seattle as I did in San Francisco (although that is just a speculation).

Do you have a source for the 2:1 ratio in Seattle? I ask not because I think it’s false, but because I was looking for similar data earlier and couldn’t find it.

Check out page 7 of this: https://regionalhomelesssystem.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/0...

Actually the ratio seems higher if you compare street/outside/tent/encampment/abandoned building vs. the other options.

To be honest I think there is a bit of semantic trickery here by homeless advocates. In colloquial parlance, “homeless” means “unsheltered” rather than “lacking a long term living arrangement”.

If you look at the link I posted below, people living in shelters and transitional housing and cars (not couch surfers which I think were not counted) still outnumber those sleeping outside.

Again, the people sleeping in homeless shelters are still homeless, you probably just don’t notice them because they aren’t causing trouble

Maybe it’s good to see these issues rather than pretend they don’t exist.

Government is a beast whose appetite is never satiated. Such is the consequence of Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy:

First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

Big Govt thrives on bloat. All unionized public sector employees rely on unfunded pension liabilities after their retirement. To continue with the pyramid scheme, you need more people to keep voting tax increases. That group is cultivated in public schools from when they are kids and then with social programs for the youth.

If we socialize education and then young people and then the middle aged who can’t find affordable homes and yet need to be home owners and then the retired public sector community. And then special groups. Who is left? I guess the ones who are actually paying more into the system than they are taking out. It’s like the oxen that plows an entire field with the poor farmer whipping it’s hide. Why not?

All the jobs out there except a handful are fluff jobs with no real production value. Yes, I am glad someone is making my latte at Starbucks but at the end of the day, I am also paying for that. To maintain jobs so that everyone can be employed. As the pandemic proved, we can do without Starbucks. The value of most of the non productive job is to provide the public a wage so they can be consumers to purchase from the producers. Like smart phones. Or a car. See the pattern?

So all this cultivated vote base need to be cared for and fed. This is when you bleed the tiny tech community by injecting them with guilt and self loathing for being b productive and wealthy. This is usually done with clickbaitey articles and outrage porn publishing farms and social justice yellers.

Now you have a large vote bank that will keep voting yes to taxing the tiny little taxable sector(many of whom probably don’t even vote if tech employees come as immigrants and are not voting citizens).

San Francisco keeps throwing money at problems that don’t get solved because it’s not their money. When there are 12 people in the room and the vote is yes or no for taxing just the top two wage earners in the group, why should it be surprising that it’s at least 10-12 for YES on taxation.

Jesus. There is a lot of elitism embedded in here.

For one, you’re not paying the Starbucks employee so they can be consumers out of the goodness of your heart. They’re charging what you’ll pay because that is capitalism.

If you don’t want to pay the Starbucks employee, you don’t have to. You can go brew your own coffee, but you probably figure $2 isn’t worth your time so instead you’d rather just pay them for the convenience.

The other great thing about all this is if you don’t like how San Francisco wants to tax you, you can leave. And it’s not even like leaving the country or even leaving the state. You don’t actually even lost anything of substance.

Yes. I think more people should strive to be elite than ordinary. Or not. It is the elite and the wannabe elites and those who want to be wealthy and powerful that make the world go round. Ambition that drives people to stand out is why they are motivated to Create. That’s why we are not an equal nation of peasants.

There is a reason tax havens exist. And why socialist Europe has Riviera and why we have Jackson Hole. It’s this jealousy towards elitism that’s creating WIDE gaps in inequality.

There will always be inequality. What we need to offer is opportunity for the willing and ambitious. Slamming it as ‘elitism’ is shaming the ones have what we don’t.

This is ruinous. We should instead create a more driven and ambitious society. Not one that wants a piece of someone else’s cake. Starting with..stop shaming the rich. And stop taxing them.

I want the rich to love obscene gorgeous insanely hedonistic lives. Because such a lifestyle will infuse spending and profit back into our economy.

It's much harder to repeal laws, remove committees, stop wasteful procedures etc. than it is to introduce those things.

This is a big problem at all levels of government, but particularly in California where the voters can (and do) directly create policies and programs via propositions.

If we were half as good at removing unhelpful laws and programs as we were at creating them, we'd all be a lot happier.

I think this is a common line of thinking that doesn't actually reflect the reality of how much the city is spending per year.

SF's spending in 2019 was 12b dollars (roughly $12,000 per resident).

Of that, 1.6b went to MTA ($1600 per resident, or 13% of total spending) and 360m went to addressing homelessness ($360 per resident, or 3% of total spending)

Comparatively, SF's GDP was 500b (500,000 per resident).

To conclude that we're spending all our money on this and getting no results seems wrong when we're spending so little of our budget, and our budget is so little comparatively to the economic activity.

*(these numbers are from http://openbook.sfgov.org/portalpagehelp.html#sfopenbook 2019 spending)

One number you're missing there is the total homeless population estimated in 2019 to be around 8000 people [1], which works out to around $45k per homeless resident.

1. https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2019HIRDRep...

Yes the point-in-time count is 8000, but a lot of homelessness services go to preventing people who are on the edge of homelessness.

If you use the estimate here (https://sf.curbed.com/2019/11/20/20973811/sf-homeless-count-...) that 18,000 people are homeless at some time in a given year then the figure goes down to 20,000 per homeless.

Also consider that an additional estimated 9,500 each year would be homeless if not for SF's existing supportive housing services (https://sf.curbed.com/2020/3/4/21152501/san-francisco-homele...)

Plus people being evicted. In 2019 there were 1600 eviction notices (https://sfrb.org/sites/default/files/Document/Statistics/18-...). If we assume that even just 25% of those are 4-person families, that's bringing us to around 10k a year per homeless/at-risk resident (and that's not even counting those who are at-risk of eviction but did not get evicted thanks to SF's existing eviction prevention resources.

This is a really good point, thank you for providing the links!

This is a misleading metric.

Say you had a $100k homeless budget, and 100 homeless folks. You’re spending $1k per resident.

But say your program REALLY works, and now you only have 10 homeless folks. Then, your program is spending $10k per resident!

the program didn’t get worse. As your program gets better, you should be spending MORE per resident, not less.

Another great point, it is entirely likely that happened in SF since I’ve heard the homeless population quoted as 20,000 a couple years ago. As the commenter above also pointed out, my original math was indeed misleading.

What do you think is the right amount of local revenue for a city to collect? SF by your numbers is collecting 2.4% of its local GDP which is about double what my cityseems to be doing. I also feel like having high state taxes would squeeze out what localities can justify collecting.

My understanding is that the city spends quite a bit of money on the homeless indirectly in various forms. The bigger problem is the growth in the budget:

2012: 7.3 billion for 829,027 people = 8805/resident 2020: 13.7 billion for 896,047 people = 15289/resident

Why did the budget increase 51% in 8 years when the population increased by 8% (1.13% inflation)?

The economic context has also changed a lot. In 2012 SF's total GDP was 350b, today it's 500b (a 40% increase). It shouldn't necessarily be that surprising that as the economy grows the government's spending does as well.

This does explain quite a bit! Although I'd assume there are economies of scale in running a city (or else they wouldn't exist in general).

That’s 51/40 in favor of spending more over those 8 years and in 2012 SF wasn’t frugal. Some increase is justified but not more than 1 to 1.

500 billion is substantially off, that figure is not for San Francisco the city, it's for the combined SF-Oakland-Hayward, CA metropolitan statistical area, which has a total population of around 4.7 million people.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NGMP41860

I agree.

And also in general I am not sure if it makes sense to tax millionaires or billionaires at the city or state. They'll just move some place else. Just ask New York[1]. After NY imposed a tax on the uber rich. All of them moved to Miami and maintain two residences. One in NYC and one in Florida. IF you tax its best to do it at the country level

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/07/nyregion/wealth-tax-budge...

If instead of taxing wages, we collect the rental value of the land on which their residences and businesses are located, it is highly unlikely that the land will leave town.

This isn’t a tax on the CEO’s individually, it’s a tax on the businesses that have high paid CEOs.

Part of the problem is the rich people don’t use the city services the way they do in New York. City services serve the underclass and the professional class uses private vendors.

Why is homeless people in the tenderloin so bad? Is there a safety issue? Do they Rob or murder? (Genuinely asking) If not, than why is it so bad? Because you don't like seeing the poor? I mean sure people forced to homelessness is a problem from their view point. This is usually related to their upbringing and could be avoided if you have a strong welfare state that don't let children grow in crappy situations with bad education and poverty, with a sense of security in the future.

When you don't have that, most of the time, you'll grow up and be homeless, or your kids will be.

But the homeless of today are just a symptom of deep rooted problems, throwning money on taking care of them now won't make them disappear.

> Do they Rob or murder?

Yes they do. Have you ever parked on the streets of SF?

Have you considered that the non-homeowner population might be voting for policies that increase the tent cities and open drug use, in the hopes of making the city unlivable for the rich and getting them to flee and put their properties on the market?

I once spoke with a woman who grew up in SF, and she told me about a warming shelter they spent a lot of money building for outdoors people. Once the money was spent, the building developed a crack, was closed down and never repaired or reopened...

> a small city with an incredibly wealthy population can't figure out how to keep the tenderloin from being full of tents and open drug use?

The wealthy people avoid walking through the Tenderloin. They spend their time in the Battery and the Modernist. They have no incentive to fix the situation there. None. Zero.

This isn't Europe where wealthy people enjoy a stroll downtown, and have some incentive to want to keep their downtown nice. The wealthy people in SF just go to Napa and take their stroll in a vineyard over there instead.

> Or get some form of functioning public transit?

The wealthy people don't use public transit, they just drive everywhere or Uber everywhere. Again, they have zero incentive.

To be clear, I really want these issues to be fixed, just stating the facts of the situation.

It is understandable that you want these issues fixed. But do you think those who don’t use these services should be burdened with the cost of fixing them?

In Europe, social costs are borne by the middle class to provide a safety net for the middle class. In the USA, we expect the wealthy to provide for all of society. It is highly irrational.

> But do you think those who don’t use these services should be burdened with the cost of fixing them?

Yes. In /most/ cases, the wealthy are only wealthy because they have (directly or indirectly) profited from the middle class. The wealthy should be paying a fair share of taxes in return, for upkeep of the public services the middle class use, and which the wealthy are perfectly entitled to also use.

The middle class should pay their fair share of taxes as well, of course, but for the most part, they do. They pay less taxes than the wealthy, because a significant fraction of their income does go toward basic necessities, whereas for the wealthy, basic necessities is a negligible fraction of income.

The middle classes are getting goods and services in return. The jobs for the middle class is also being provided by the big companies. Thereby creating a tax base for a govt whose only job is to maintain law and order, build infrastructure and maintain public utilities while conducting fair elections.

But we see so much bloat that they can’t ever get out of a deficit. That only keeps growing. A hungry maw that never shuts without ever solving any problem.

If 350 million dollars spent over 12 months can’t solve homelessness in SF. How much will it take? 600 million? 1 billion? 1.5 billion? What’s that “magic” number?

In a capitalist economy, we create Capital. It is capital that funds industry. You can’t take capital and make it spending money.

What do you think the wealthy spend their money on other than ‘basic necessities’? Why would anyone be wealthy and only spend on basic necessities? They spend on luxury. They spend on high living and expensive things.

So there are resorts. And staff that work in resorts. There are sports cars and people who work in those factories and mechanics who specialize in fixing them. There are private planes. And so pilots, stewardess, fancy cheese plates and catering services. If the wealthy aren’t allowed to be wealthy, we won’t have a whole swath of jobs.

If we want a healthy middle class, we should stop guilting the wealthy. We should allow them to spend their millions. It’s their money. Let’s hope and pray that they spend it and spend it well and spend it in all the stupid and obscene and wasteful ways. Because that would create a healthy working middle class.

Just allow CA zillionaires BE zilloinaires and watch the job markets flourish. Equality doesn’t mean everyone is equal, it simply means that everyone in their category is equal to each other. If we had economic equality for all, we’d be Cuba, not CA.

Instead of punishing the wealthy with higher taxes that go into Big Govt’s Maw, if we let them actually spend it...we’d have more circulation of money in the economy. Inequality of wealth occurs because there isn’t enough circulation.

Most money that wealthy people have is not spent on consumer goods. It is plowed into more investment.

Who spends more of their income? A paycheck-to-paycheck worker, or a wealthy person? The wealthy person puts most of their money into retirement accounts, college accounts, real estate equity, investment accounts, trusts, tax havens, shell companies... If you have 5 million paycheck-to-paycheck workers they will spend every cent; while if you have a single billionaire making exactly the same amount, almost none of it will be recirculated.

Once there's enough of it, it turns into political power. Which has a tendency to benefit the wealthy class, almost always at the expense of everyone else. At the other end of every single massive failure of government there is a very wealthy person reaping the benefits of the power their wealth has enabled: healthcare, military, housing, transportation, education... etc etc.

Just praying that they'll spend their money on charity or something that benefits everyone is not enough.

Let's also not forget that many wealthy people only pay at most 15% on taxes because the tax structure has more or less been lobbied by the wealthy in favor of the wealthy. Most middle class people pay 25-35%, and have neither time nor resources to lobby otherwise.

15% on a million net is more than taxes from middle class wage which actually goes towards negative tax if one takes the benefits of a living in an incorporated city and if there are children using public schools etc.

Money taxed from capital gains isn’t really the same as taxes levied on wages. This is very fundamental tax logic. Would you like me to explain why?

Investment does benefit other people. That's the primary point of investment.

Of course, it’s plowed back into investment. The prime directive of a capitalistic system is to create CAPITAL. Capital creates industry and jobs and money circulation. Taxes are the bloat in the beast called Big Govt. it sits there like inside the belly of a constipated beached whale.

Even pension funds and unions invest in the companies that make the profit. Chicago Teachers Union, iirc, has over 45k shares of AMZN. They also took a guillotine outside a Jeff Bezos building to make a ‘point’. It’s just hypocrisy if one believes it and ignorance if one parrots the ‘eat the rich’ line.

So when exactly do people start becoming responsible for their own lives? Social net is for those who genuinely need help. The weak, unfortunate, disabled and for those who need a helping hand. Society cannot shoulder the responsibility to take care of individuals whose are supposed to know better.

Political power does not benefit the wealthy class at all. This is absolutely untrue, but is often parroted over and over without people questioning the meaning of it.

A lot of the attitude comes from people without looking into the homes of people who have means and wondering why they can’t have what someone else does..what they don’t see is the countless hours of hard work and sacrifice and time away from family and other things that people take for granted. Why do they do it? To be wealthy is one of the goals. It is absolutely cruel to punish people for chasing their dreams. Taxes on the wealthy is punitive because they have to pay the troll under the bridge to cross it.

When I see someone railing against millionaires about the drug addicts and homeless on SF, I want to ask if they ever asked the parents of these model citizens? Their blood relatives? Their so called friends? Their community? Their high school friends?

If everyone took care of 1. Themselves 2. Their immediate family 3. Their extended family 4. Their friends 5. Their community 6. Their extended community FIRST, we wouldn’t have to knock on the doors of millionaires. Who cares how the rich live...most of us should look at how we ourselves live and how our loved ones and those we care about live.

It’s like watching a child in a park watching a rich kid hack into an obscenely large cake. Another parent who is feeding his own kid a modest snack drags the starving kid to the rich kid’s parents and demands that they share their big fat cake with the starving kid. Hey! Isn’t it always easier to make plans for how others should generously share their wealth?

The problem is not ‘the wealthy’. The problem is lack of healthy community and healthy supportive families. No amount of wealth sharing or stealing from the rich or taxes or plain old money will fix it.

An institution can both grow revenues and increase efficiency at the same time.

The ideal solution to being more efficient is also usually not by cutting budgets.

Fixing policy issues especially doesn’t come from changing budgets.

I pay more in taxes than most of my friends and SF has little to show for it. How many times does one have to call 311 to have garbage cleaned up or a disturbance investigated?

Who buys products when 1% of the population has most of the resources? Henry Ford was a capitalist, be he recognized that production required buyers. Buyers need money. Income inequality concentrates that money.

I am excited to see a new generation of corporate leaders rediscover stakeholder capitalism and reject shareholder primacy. Pay employees more, reduce leadership pay and watch markets expand as a result.

I keep hearing this, but I live in SF and I never felt that the taxes were that annoying, and considering the misery in the streets I'd be willing to pay much much more for things to improve.

People need to see taxes as a monthly subscription that makes life around you better

Once, there was a French city planning department that couldn't decide what to do with all the fresh water that they had. So they voted to BURy the WATER, which was CRAzy.

Bur + eau + cracy

It's this way because American individualism is a cult of selfishness. People are dogmatic when they need to be logical.

This isn’t rocket science. When taxes were high American Main Street did well.

What’s pathetic is social media’s projecting ignorance and air gapped criticism. I see little to no alternative options offered, despite all the economic huff and puff and engineering wisdom supposedly possessed by that community. Same banal political speak.

A little less “Monday Morning quarterback” and a bit more connection to facts would be great.

America is a bit into sitting on its butt complaining at the screen though. IMO that’s the real credibility issue in this nation; so called exceptional, gritty people sitting around complaining about systems from afar.

You think they can’t figure it out? Or do you think more people are pushing protectionism of their luxury.

Portugal showed us how to deal with a number is drug issues. Where are the sustainable programs? Mired in American identity of absolute free choice, despite a heavily gerrymandered electorate.

How come the residents of CA voted to legalize drug use?

As upper-middle-class professionals we tend to assume that city institutions are here to serve us, and that the things we find unpleasant must be failures.

The ability to pitch a tent almost anywhere, free from police harassment, is pretty great if you’re homeless.

Likewise the public transit system is pretty great if you’re a transit worker, or someone who wants an indoor third space but whose appearance/behavior/smell would tend to get you thrown out of Starbucks, or if your best alternative is to walk.

San Francisco isn’t failing. It just values these people and their needs a lot more than it values the comfort and convenience of tech workers. If you don’t like it, vote for a moderate instead of a progressive in your next BoS election.

> Likewise the public transit system is pretty great if you’re a transit worker, or someone who wants an indoor third space but whose appearance/behavior/smell would tend to get you thrown out of Starbucks, or if your best alternative is to walk.

A public transit system is a huge advantage for upper middle class professionals, and even more so when them homeless are housed. This can be seen in developed countries that have good public transit systems.

I for one is not content with my city having enough money to build and maintain expensive infrastructure. I care more about living in an equal society where the rich don’t constantly dunk on the less fortunate, where the rich don’t hold disproportionate power and are frequently causing issues that disproportional effect people like me.

I want to tax the hell out of the rich, not just to get money to manage our shared spaces, but also to take their money away from them. In my eyes they don’t deserve this money. Me and my fellow laborers worked for that money, but they get to keep it. For me this is unfair, and unjust. In my perfect world the rich would not only pay marginally higher taxes, but they would pay most of their income in taxes. A person making a million a month should receive less after taxes then a person that makes a thousand. That for me is a fair economy. And that is the reason why I—and many like me—want to see the tax rate of rich CEO raised to 100%.

How much will you be willing to see your tax rate go up?

If I make the mean wage I wouldn’t mind seeing it go to 50%, provided that if someone that makes one standard deviation above the mean wage go up to 73.1058579%.

I hope you see which taxation function I prefer from this ;)

You can always pay more in "taxes" if you want. The government is not going to refuse your money. If you want to donate money to the city and county of San Francisco, go here: http://sfgov.org/give2sf

To reiterate: “I want to tax the hell out of the rich, not just to get money to manage our shared spaces, but also to take their money away from them”

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