S.F. pays $61k/year for one tent to shelter the homeless
sfchronicle.com
sfchronicle.com
And I'd wager most families in the US and Canada live on less.
How is that in any way possible and who is the moron working for the city who approves that.
I mean ownership. The house and land would belong to you for that price.
So this is like buying a new house every year.
Be glad that we’re not spending our resources on that.
These costs don't make much sense. You could rent the homeless apartments for this. You could just rent them a nice hotel room. How does it cost more to rent a hotel room for a homeless person than it does for a home-ful person? Shouldn't the city be getting some kind of discount and just pass out keys and rooms in bulk?
"The security guards personally knew many of the people who walked in. They screened everyone for COVID-19 symptoms with a temperature check and reminded to keep their masks on at the site."
What do you do if you're homeless and have covid? The security guards stop you from going to your tent?
So San Francisco is spending $100K a year per person and billing that to the federal government / everyone else in America. Meanwhile, median income in the U.S. is $31K a year, or 1/3 of that.
No. Given the rates of mental illness and drug addiction in the homeless community, I would expect a higher than normal number of issues. It's also bad for brand; no one wants to be "the homeless hotel", so there's going to be an upcharge for that loss. And lastly, the homeless aren't likely to be responsible for their incidentals (I can't imagine the hotel would allow that), so damage is more likely. I don't think that's anything related to being homeless, just that people are less careful with things they won't have to pay to replace. I doubt police would do car chases if they had to do it in their own car (not a comment on police, just government workers generally).
So no, I really don't think anyone will rent the city all of their rooms to house the homeless, and especially not at a discount.
A big part of the problem is that people don't want to be near the homeless, so they tend to devalue anywhere there are a lot of them. This is why the Navigation Centers are so unpopular; no one wants their home/business to lose value because it's near a shelter. Everyone agrees we should build them, and everyone agrees we should build them somewhere not near them. So they just don't get built.
And unfortunately, having good services for the homeless can end up attracting more homeless people. If you start offering a nice hotel room to all the homeless people, what homeless person in their right mind wouldn't head to SF?
Homeless people are probably more likely to cause damage to the hotels, and hotels are less likely to recoup their costs from the person responsible. There's also been ~20 deaths (mostly overdoses) which I imagine puts extra strain and costs on the hotels.
I don't know if they're still doing it, but at least for a while SF had a program where they supplied Project Room Key participants with drugs and alcohol so that they'd be more likely to self-medicate in their hotel rooms and less likely to be out and about. I think that might also end up leading to more property damage + smoking fees
hotels are less likely to recoup their costs from the person responsible
It's not the money. It's that doing the right thing is illegal.
For a possibly off-key analogy, it seems much like the issues with the US healthcare system. The money just gets sucked into a thousand little diversions that have little to nothing to do with actually providing healthcare. But legally, there has to be an environmental impact assessment on replacing that window. And management must have their training updated twice a year at a conference. And there's legal compliance training. And I haven't even touched intellectual property. Or the fact that many of these are for-profit interests, that benefit financially if they get latched into the system permanently like that.
Even without a profit incentive, I think this can happen. We see this same problem in some private charities. Even if they have the best intentions, they are so entangled by yellow tape, the status quo, box-checking, and "that's just how things are done" that it strangles them. It seems to be a particular peril for "awareness" charities which can end up existing almost solely to advertise their existence in order to raise funds for more advertising, endlessly. It's for a good cause! And I'm sure this kind of dynamic happens even in the church.
This gives churches the chance to try to convert people they otherwise wouldn’t. I think this is bad because it is manipulative and discourages some people from getting help.
We need government safety nets so that they can be applied fairly to all people, and so that everyone is comfortable claiming them if they qualify.
Or in the case of an evangelical mega-church to help pay for the tax free mansions and private jets, essentially charging the taxpayers twice.
Olstein closed the doors of his church and went on vacation. He got a massive government bailout afterwards.
He also received a massive bailout during the pandemic and stull isnt helping the homeless.
Religion generally does nothing but takes credit. Even mother theresa built a billion dollar “medical” empire while letting patients die of gangrene after breaking bones.
A few months ago I watched a video from sometime in the early-2010s. I believe this was in LA. There was a punk guy who had in his youth experienced homelessness and decided he wanted to help people in that position. He begun crowdfunding for a project that would involve constructing small shelters that had locks, power outlets with a solar panel, etc. to help some people on the street. The project started out rather successful and some of the people receiving the shelters were very thankful and express the helpfulness of this.
Not too long later, the city came back livid. Some people were complaining about their property values dropping due to these shelters (which I don’t particularly get, is having unhorsed or tented people around you going to do better anyway) and the city brought up concerns about these being on the sidewalk taking up space. They offered to relocate the shelters somewhere where they weren’t a safety hazard but the city kind of just told them to fuck off and had them confiscated and destroyed. One of the recipients of one of the shelters commented about a police officer scoffing at him and making a comment a how he should “just get a job”. All the time, there was a city bureaucrat talking about hoe the man organizing this project was helping no one and how his grand plan to “end homelessness was the real solution. I imagine that worked out great.
It's the processes around it that need solving.
For instance how do you secure a mix of people with mental health issues and drug addictions. Even if you reduce sexual assault, if it happens on your watch you are responsible.
It's similar to the inability to invent self cleaning toilets. This commentary about $30 a flush sounds a lot, but dealing with human feces on the street would cost more.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/san-francisco-public-pit-...
Reasonable airflow, Less chance for Covid spread compare to indoor hotel.
Most of them likely has roof over head also.