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Comment by wolverine876 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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