S.F. spends more than $60K per tent at homeless sites | Hacker News Reader

S.F. spends more than $60K per tent at homeless sites

sfchronicle.com

32 pointselsewhen45 comments

The title is misleading. They aren't being billed $60K each for tents, but for a whole range of services for a year, including shelter, food, hygiene, and security. I'd think the total ($15 million) should be divided by resident, not by domicile:

> The city has six so-called “safe sleeping villages,” where homeless people sleep in tents and also receive three meals a day, around-the-clock security, bathrooms and showers. The city created these sites during the pandemic to quickly get people off crowded sidewalks and into a place where they can socially distance and access basic services.

> The department is now asking the city for $15 million in the upcoming fiscal year for a similar number of tents, which amounts to about $57,000 per tent per year.

Homes can be purchased in other parts of the country for less than $57K.

I can imagine the political fallout of SF purchasing those and sending homeless people there would not be pretty.

It could revitalize depressed areas under the right circumstances. Vacant homes aren't desirable either.

I've had this idea as well. There are plenty of run-down rural communities that are deteriorating just because people move out and don't want to upkeep the town. Housing is cheap there and businesses need people to grow in these communities. It would also be helpful if we had more manufacturing and low education jobs in the US instead of using other countries cheap labor. That would incentivize people to move to these areas because there would be stable work for them.

But you can’t move these individual’s support networks also. Their friends, family, doctors. They might not have a permanent living space, but they may have a city they grew up in, a place they call home.

My parents immigrated to the US, and we moved 8 times by the time I was in 9th grade, away from friends and family (affording doctors was out of the question). Not to highly desirable places with CA coast weather, but to rural places in the south with heat and bugs, and rural places in the north with the cold. And my parents slowly moved up the ladder in each place doing whatever was in demand and had to be done to establish their footing.

I think there is an interesting discussion of what is and is not owed to people, and where it is owed.

I’m also an immigrant and often lament the difference in attitude between immigrants and natives in any country. But it’s not a fair comparison because immigrants as a group self select. If you had the motivation to move to a different country, often one that doesn’t speak your language, you’re naturally more driven and motivated.

Rewarding the motivated and driven and not rewarding the unmotivated and non driven seems like the ideal incentive structure for society. Obviously, easier to write than implement and execute.

But my point is is there an obligation for society to not have to make people move if the economic conditions change and labor supply and demand curves move? What are the long term effects of these incentive structures?

The government shouldn’t be in the business of “motivating” anyone (that’s propaganda). Having a social safety net so we don’t have an army of homeless people has nothing to do with “reward”, it raises the quality of living for all of us.

I am a proponent of certain social safety nets, but I am not sure the feasibility of one of them being that you can live wherever you want. We already enforce a barrier at a country’s borders, but even within a country, what would mitigate the effects everyone wanting to live in the most desirable areas?

Perhaps the answer is to just keep going more dense, if one’s position is that within a country, anyone is allowed to live anywhere, either via their own means or government assistance. But I do not see that being politically popular with many, and I can envision a few feasibility concerns with that approach.

Another option is that the location where you get a social safety net is not guaranteed, and so desirable land is distributed according to one’s wealth (which I know is highly dependent on one’s ancestry).

Mixed income housing is a good thing and leads to healthier communities. We need more public housing, low income housing and density in all metros. I think London does a good job here. It’s expensive to buy, but they have vibrant communities with public housing mixed in and to the benefit of everyone, you don’t step in human excrement every time you walk outside (opposed to SF).

Being unmotivated, undriven is hand in glove with depression. Rewarding the mentally healthy while scorning the mentally ill doesn't strike me as "ideal."

Homeless people move to places with mild winters, because they don't see housing as an attainable goal. Maybe they'd move somewhere with free housing -- or maybe they'd assume that any such program wouldn't survive an election cycle, so would rather stay put than get their hopes up.

If the conversation is going to head into spreadsheet territory then it needs a more comprehensive look at costs and benefits. Homeless people often commit minor crimes and cause calls to emergency services. These interventions are expensive and add up. It may be more cost effective to get people homes and some assistance than to have them living on the streets where they constantly cause trouble. This points toward a situation where the issue is making society work reasonably well and not simply adding up who owes what.

> Homes can be purchased in other parts of the country for less than $57K.

All you have to do is to get someone, who lives on the street, to agree to move to West Virginia. SMH

> Homes can be purchased in other parts of the country for less than $57K.

Again, shelter is only one social service. The $60K covers all the other ones too. Could that be done more cheaply elsewhere? I wonder - cities have an economy of scale. They also have more opportunity for people to move out of homelessness, into jobs, apartments, etc.

How many tents house more than 1 person? Even if each tent had 3 people, 20k per person is still a lot.

You're misunderstanding: The money goes to many things, not just tents. The article doesn't even indicate that tents are the majority of the cost.

The cost is for providing basic social services; one of them is shelter.

It's worth pointing out that the poverty line is S.F. is 82k while the federal level is 12k. As others have pointed out this includes shelter, food ...

So, they are spending 73% of the poverty line. This would be the same as a LCOL area spending under 9k to keep a person housed and fed. That seems entirely reasonable. I realize it's not apples to apples comparison,but I think it provides some perspective.

https://sfgov.org/scorecards/safety-net/poverty-san-francisc...

The poverty line is so high primarily because of housing prices, right? Costs of tents, food, etc. don’t really scale in the same way that housing prices do, so I don’t think the comparison is worth much.

That number includes a tent set up somewhere, so rent is definitely a variable.

> It's worth pointing out that the poverty line is S.F. is 82k while the federal level is 12k.

No, its not. $82k is the federal HUD “Low income threshold” for San Francisco, which is not even loosely analogous to the poverty line; HUD income limits are calculated from local median income, not costs, and the low income limit is 80% of the median (and its the highest of three limits; there’s also a very low and extremely low income limit.) Its not a location-adjusted poverty measure, and based on national income distribution to federal poverty line comparison, if you were to abuse it that way the least bad way would be to use the extreme low income threshold, not the low income threshold.

That's more than my living expenses for an entire year in Manhattan... wtf

I can't see a real alternative to this (well at least knowing that S.F. is a liberal city, for conservative one, alternative is obvious). If they are given apartments instead, they will trash them. These people are bums after all.

There are a range of programs that grant apartments, many of them linked to work obligations. Some of them do get trashed while others are appreciated. The homeless are a complex and diverse group including many with serious problems and others who simply slid into destitution. The current crop of homeless are remarkably old and sick relative to what has been seen in the past.

They came to right understanding that reduction of city income from property tax due to reduction of value of property if you move in ~1000 bums into city apartments, will be more than $15M a year...

What is the obvious conservative alternative?

Giving them one way bus tickets to a liberal city.

This reminds me of the South Park episode "Night of the Living Homeless".

Exactly! But real long-term solution is of course, make it a felony to not have a provable permanent address. Bums' perception of life varies, but main reason people become bums is that they love freedom too much - they don't want or due to mental health reasons, can't follow any kind of rules at all - being a bum, your life sucks but you are the most free a person could be. Prison scares them, because in the prison, they'll absolutely make one follow a lot of rules. Once it is really punishable by prison, these people will make up their minds and stop bumming.

This is how it works in Belarus, and number of bums in prisons is absolutely negligible, and number of bums in the streets is zero.

The cost per prison inmate has to be close to $60k per year in the US also.

It’s way higher. This person has no idea what they’re talking about. “Bums” love freedom? Apparently this person has never interacted with a homeless person.

Anyway, it’s $81k a year to imprison someone in CA.

https://lao.ca.gov/PolicyAreas/CJ/6_cj_inmatecost

California also has one of the highest concentrations of people in prison, it might be cheaper in other parts of the country.

This must be tackled just as healthcare should be: supply side. It doesn't matter if prisons are public or private, there must be a lot of them for them to be cheap. Simplify regulations, build something like good old gulags, they are proven to work and dirt cheap.

> But real long-term solution is of course, make it a felony to not have a provable permanent address

Maybe not a felony. That makes the situation worse. I've been promoting the idea that: if you are arrested or arraigned (not even convicted) and don't have a permanent address you are transported to an unincorporated part of the state. Making it a misdemeanor to participate (either side) in begging/pan-handling would also help.

If you aren't going to participate, you are de-facto opting out of the community benefits. If you want social services to function, make sure you are willing to give then a perm address. Following rules and being functional in society is what this whole waste of resources has been about.

Note: One side of my wife family are these kind of people who don't follow "the rules" paranoid that the govt is watching them while being subsidized by the govt. They are living in filth from Needles CA to trailers (water trailer + living trailer) out in a flat, dead, parcel of desert near Bullhead AZ. At least they have addresses.

That’s the way it used to be in the US. Vagrancy was a crime but not a felony. Bums were sent to “the farm” to sober up and work hard for a few months.

That changed in the 1960’s. Liberals convinced themselves and those in power that it was virtuous to let addicts and the mentally ill waste their lives away on the street.

Because of COVID, I haven’t been to SF in two years, but on my last trip it had reached absurd levels of dysfunction. Try walking 1 block down Market St to the Mikkeller Bar and you’ll have to jump over 5 spots of human feces, swerve around 3 people snorting god knows what off the sidewalk, and avoid 12 urinating bums. Very progressive.

Randian? Leave them on the streets. Provide them no services, no food, no healthcare. At least not with tax money.

Don’t feed the pigeons.

We only feed them legalized heroin - it's good for the economy /s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No,_They_Can't

That's the whole point of a bureaucracy: grow, which means spend as much as possible.

That 60K/tent makes a whole lot of unionized gov workers, contractors and NGOs happy!

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