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Comment by setpatchaddress | Hacker News Reader

SF’s homeless problem is out of control in a way that it isn’t in most large cities. You can’t say “that’s just life”.

SF's homeless problem is the US's homeless problem. Talk to people camping on the sidewalk and each one will tell you a different story, but with common themes: horrible home situation in a different state, crime -> prison -> loss of work opportunity, depression & drug abuse. These are suffering people that the American People have decided to let suffer. Yes, SF has enough money to get them all off the streets and into housing and only does that for half of them. But SF doesn't deserve all the blame.

I certainly never said that homelessness is “just life.” I’m just realistic. San Francisco will probably always have this problem to some extent, and it’s our responsibility as San Franciscans to help alleviate it as much as possible.

None of this has to do with my original point about San Francisco’s recent changes, which I have personally experienced as having a much higher density of artists.

> San Francisco will probably always have this problem to some extent

But why?

Other cities don't. For example Liechtenstein has literally no homeless people in the entire country. They had to close their last homeless shelter... because it was empty.

Many other global cities have single-digit homeless per 100k population. Why does San Francisco have literally ten thousand homeless people and why are the numbers still growing?

"will probably always have this problem" is bat-shit insane.

As a country we've decided that the suitable response to children regularly being mass murdered in schools is to train children to expect being mass murdered in school. A similar abandonment on the subject of homeless is hardly surprising.

To a certain extent, housing is a statewide problem (prop 13) which the city has limited power to address. To another extent, the lack of a National affordable healthcare program and support for people in duress amplifies the problem even further.

The city has also taken a more humane approach to dealing with the homeless rather than incarcerating or throwing them elsewhere. Most of the homeless suffer from drug/alcohol related issues and the city has tried different approaches to solving this problem.

Overall, it’s a confluence of many problems that makes it very difficult to “solve” the homelessness problem. Comparing to another city with different circumstances isn’t really helpful; they’re not facing the same situation.

Liechtenstein has a population of 38,000. The median income is about $60,000. GDP per capita is $165,028.

In their entire country of 38k people, which has the second highest GDP per capita in the world. There are a lot of comparisons one could make here, but this is not the strongest one.

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