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Comment by abeppu | Hacker News Reader

Just as a point of comparison, one of the programs San Francisco introduced during the pandemic was "safe sleeping sites", which are parking lots where homeless can have their tent without it being periodically swept by police. To that, they add chemical toilets, a water supply and (I'm not sure why) 24/7 security staff. For this, the city pays around $60k per tent site per year. I'm not sure if this is in part due to some unsavory relationship between the org administering the program and some city official. Recently the program was extended. It would be cheaper to rent apartments at current market rates, even in San Francisco.

Our revealed preference seems to be that we'd rather have homeless people live in tents than have poor people get free or nearly free housing.

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> and (I'm not sure why) 24/7 security staff

You can lock your stuff in a house or car and walk away. You can't lock your stuff in a tent and walk away. This is the real reason for homeless people "keeping their life in a shopping trolley": they need to move their possessions around with them because there's nowhere secure to keep them.

Security staff, preventing randoms from stealing these people's possessions out of their tents (or especially, discouraging them from stealing from each-other) makes a tent into something much closer to a home.

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An alternate approach I've seen applied to my local area (downtown east-side Vancouver) is to offer something half-way between "safety deposit boxes" and "storage units" as a free/cheap service — where each homeless person gets their own assigned 53-litre storage tote, with mediated check-out to ensure nobody has access to your tote but you.

This doesn't solve exactly the same set of problems — you can't usefully store your food and cooking implements in a place that's only open 9-5 — but it at least allows you to trust that your sentimental objects, small collectibles, etc. are being kept safe.

I knew someone homeless who told me his tent had been attacked twice - slashed, and set on fire one of those times - while he was sleeping in it.

That sounds like enough of a reason for 24/7 security to me.

And, sadly, to prevent random people from attacking the homeless people.

And to prevent homeless people from attacking each other.

Parent comment was down voted but AFAIK it's correct, many homeless people avoid shelters because they consider them unsafe due to other homeless people, some of which are dangerous to others.

And that's why programs that segregate homeless people (put them on shelters, or put them on government-designated parking lots) won't ever ever succeed. You need to properly integrate the homeless into society, which in our society generally means having an apartment for each family unit.

Wouldn't lockers be a relatively affordable option?

If your possessions fit in a locker. But I think security here is to prevent or react to violence, not necessarily theft. I’ve heard stories of homeless people avoiding shelters because you can get raped, for example.

> But I think security here is to prevent or react to violence, not necessarily theft.

Perhaps I'm quibbling, but I suspect that violence and theft aren't necessarily separate categories of incident.

I was just thinking that it’d be really hard to avoid theft in a camp settlement.

The reasons I've heard for avoiding homeless shelters were theft, robbery and lice.

The city is still giving out lots of housing. Except when the city tries to build housing, it takes many years and $800k per unit.

The city has put up so many regulatory hurdles that make it almost impossible to build anything. Consider this project that would've added 19 housing units https://twitter.com/samdman95/status/1415839145386196993. It was blocked because it would've increased shadow cover on Delores Park by .001% (as if SF has a shadow problem instead of a housing problem).

There really is no point in the city trying to build housing for the homeless without addressing the regulatory issues first. If the city were to try to build housing for all its (by the official count) 8000 homeless people, it would cost >$6 billion.

Relative to pretty much all other markets, it's practically impossible to solve homelessness in San Francisco. There are at least two major considerations. The first is the one you pointed out that there are far too many barriers. The second is that San Francisco is a fundamentally hard city to succeed in. Even competent folks with good educations and no real personal problems struggle to do well in San Francisco. If it is hard for such people, it's only going to be far more difficult for people without the same education and with many personal problems.

With these two major constraints in mind, it boggles my mind that we continue to try and solve the problem in San Francisco, instead of directing all the resources to other markets without these constraints.

Providing resources elsewhere and removing support in San Francisco will serve to incentivize the homeless to relocate to places where programs like housing first can be tried and where they have a chance of actually getting on their own two feet because they aren't in a hyper-competitive local market.

Last time someone asked me to donate money to the homeless problem in San Francisco, I told them no, but then proceeded to donate money to a homeless program in another city (at the time I chose a program in Sacremento) because it's beyond stupid to keep putting money into trying to solve the problem in San Francisco if you actually want to see results from the money you spend on the problem.

People working on this problem in San Francisco either have more heart than brains or they are part of the San Francisco homelessness industrial complex and have a vested interest in keeping these programs in San Francisco because they want to live in San Francisco and are employed in this industry.

Social worker salaries in San Francisco are $60k to $100k a year. If you can pay for two to three social workers in other markets instead for the same price, why pay for such people to work in San Francisco.

San Francisco can change! But only if people demand more housing to be built and stop the nonsense linked by previous comment. Its up to the people of SF to fix this.

And solving the regulatory hurdles might also might start to reduce the homelessness problem before the city even starts giving away free units to anyone in need.

You can’t give apartments away at market rates to fix homelessness because about half of the homeless people are too mentally troubled/addicted to be able to handle an apartment. So you still have to pay for security and now you also have to pay for people to come and clean the apartments.

Also, SF has indoor shelters and such. Including putting people in hotels. The tents, AIUI, are for people who wouldn’t be allowed in the shelters for whatever reason (like people with dogs or people who are using drugs very frequently, not allowed around children, etc.)

Incredible that you’re down voted for simply speaking the truth. There are literally people who fling their HIV positive blood or feces at anyone who approaches them and carry machetes and axes. They need conservatorship not an apartment

I guess what I said just sounds callous to people who are aware of homelessness but don’t have direct experience trying to help them. It’s a complex problem and there’s a reason beyond graft that it hasn’t been fixed.

As with many things I’m sure 80% of the resources are going to the 20% of people who are the most difficult to handle. Many homeless people are normal people who are just very down on their luck. But those homeless people are often “invisible” to the general public since they usually don’t sleep rough, yell at people on the street, etc.

Finland can probably solve it because they fund “inpatient mental health services” which is what can actually fix homelessness for the most difficult people suffering it. That is super expensive though.

On the other hand, you cannot force people into the wards unless they pose grave danger to themselves or the society.

And the current sentiment is that yelling slurs or urinating in a subway is not grave enough to justify involuntary confinement.

Not quite true in California - being "gravely disabled" also justifies involuntary detainment and treatment: "A condition in which a person, as a result of a mental health disorder, is unable to provide for his or her basic personal needs for food, clothing, or shelter."

In reality though, the lack of funding for such people means that only the most severe are treated under this category. What's required is the funding and political will to enforce it, the necessary legal structure is already in place.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

From what I’ve heard from mental health professionals, in practice simply being able to answer some very basic questions (like “Are you hungry? If so, what should you do?”) with plausible answers (“I should eat”) is sufficient to pass the “gravely disabled” test.

> "A condition in which a person, as a result of a mental health disorder, is unable to provide for his or her basic personal needs for food, clothing, or shelter."

Wait a minute. Does it also apply to all these infamous unemployed college graduates who still live with parents?

This really isn’t funny or comparable. Unemploymed college graduates do not lack the capacity to do these things, they have a choice to do them or not do them.

People with mental health issues that compromise their ability to care for themselves don’t have a choice.

Not funny, indeed, but how do we tell people who "can, but don't want" from those who want, but cannot care for themselves?

In most cases, that’s fairly easy to tell by looking at their history, current living situation, and cognitive abilities.

Also, are those who are lazy really the majority case here? Or a straw man being used to justify ignoring the problem?

The difference might be that mental issues are identified and cared for much earlier, before people end up on the streets and things worsen more and more. Locking people up into wards is not the only option.

Not at all an expert in this, but it sounds like there are much more mentally ill people in the streets in the US compared to other places.

I'd bet more American families kick their problem relatives out instead of caring for them within the household. "Not my responsibility."

The article shows that Finland is spending less money solving the problem. The complete opposite of what you are arguing. Does that in any way make you consider, even for a second, that your pre-conceived ideology/religion might get in the way of you understanding what the reality is?

Sounds like those people belong in an asylum then, not an apartment.

I know some asylums are mismanaged and let’s just pretend they’re not here and that states properly fund and regulate them.

It's a gray area. There are people who, with care and looking-after, can be useful-if-weird members of society, but who without that support would spiral out of control. "Crazy"/"not-crazy" isn't a binary.

"""about half of the homeless people are too mentally troubled/addicted to be able to handle an apartment."""

citation needed

You're simply expressing your prejudice about a huge group of people and you have immediate experience about a very few of them that you noticed (probably because they were loud).

Are some people too troubled for easy housing? Absolutely, but you've made this huge step into "about half" and you are expressing a prejudice which keeps the problem from being solved because it becomes seemingly impossible with this hurdle you've invented.

An over estimate, but not too far off the mark:

"In 2019, 36% percent of the chronically homeless suffered from a chronic substance abuse problem, a severe mental illness, or both" [1] For the published data used to come to this conclusion see [2].

This doesn't include less sever mental illness which almost certainly contributes.

[1] https://sunrisehouse.com/addiction-demographics/homeless-pop...

[2] https://files.hudexchange.info/reports/published/CoC_PopSub_...

That statistic doesn't come near to supporting OP's claim. There are plenty of people with substance abuse problems or mental illness who could "handle" living in a free apartment if it were provided to them. The fact that they can't afford market-rate housing doesn't necessarily mean they'd destroy any home they lived in.

The US isn't the only country with homeless people. In much of Europe where people actually can literally go and obtain free social housing there are still sizeable homeless populations for exactly the reason OP pointed out, they cannot manage their day-to-day affairs because they are drug addicted or mentally ill.

In Germany we have about 50k people living on the streets. Technically none of those people need to be. They could all get the necessary financial aid.

The article demonstrate that the only country in Europe that successfully reduce homelessness is Finland. And they do it by providing free housing. In other words, real world imperial proof that your argument doesn’t hold water. Now there is a 99.99% chance that my point will just make you believe what you say even more. However there is always a tiny chance that it might make you reflect on your core believes and help you readjust those believes to be closer to reality.

The quote you provided states that:

"In 2019, 36% percent of the chronically homeless suffered from a chronic substance abuse problem, a severe mental illness, or both"

The key word here is "chronic." According to the National Alliance to End Homelessnes[0][1] (based on data, including the link you cited, from HUD[2]), less than 20% of homeless people are chronically homeless. As such, less than 10% of the total homeless population "suffer chronic substance abuse problem, a severe mental illness, or both"

So you're projecting the traits of a (relatively) small group onto the larger whole. An assertion which seems problematic at best.

[0] https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homeless...

[1] https://public.tableau.com/static/images/20/2020SOH_PIT_bars...

[2] https://www.hudexchange.info/programs/coc/coc-homeless-popul...

> > about half of the homeless people are too mentally troubled/addicted to be able to handle an apartment.

> citation needed

To fully qualify the statement made by the person you're replying to:

I would argue that it is indeed clear that around half of the individuals facing chronic homelessness urgently require mental health and addiction support.

for those people, they may likely face crisis and be consequently unable to upkeep any dwelling that is freely provided to them unless they have extensive support and possibly even in-patient care.

* About 30% of people who are chronically homeless have mental health conditions.

* About 50% have co-occurring substance use problems.

https://www.homelesshub.ca/resource/individuals-experiencing...

You're not wrong except when you say "about half". Unless you have hard statistics it's better to refrain from throwing numbers up in the air.

So how do you explain the real world facts of the Finish success? I know it goes against your preconceived ideology/religion but perhaps reevaluate what you think is true given counterfactual real world events?

"(I'm not sure why) 24/7 security staff."

Despite your doubts - homeless folks are not idiots. I live near a similar site. It has a no visitor policy, 24/7 security etc. I would call it a huge success relative to the surrounding homeless impacts.

The issue for the homeless and many govt run programs is that it's often easier for govt to do nothing. Ie, your stuff is stolen, visitors etc cause problems etc. A huge amount of public housing really suffered from this - despite being govt run it was worse, not better.

If you can carve a (small) space, no zoning issues, tent on pallet, secuirty for your stuff and yourself, no visitors causing trouble - you can give people some basic stability in sleeping etc.

As to the $60K - you need to be comparing to costs in SF generally for services for a homeless person - I'd estimate $110 - $150K (higher end is if you include the excess ambulance runs etc). So this is relatively competitive.

Yeah getting your stuff stolen is a huge deal for homeless people because they don’t have much to begin with. So they value a lot the possessions they do have. Ever see a homeless camp or person with tons of black trash bags? That is everything that person owns. And the police probably can’t/won’t get that stuff back if it’s stolen.

You may be thinking “who would steal stuff from homeless people?” Other homeless people, so in a camp where they’re concentrated it’s a real concern.

There’s also the concerns that drug dealers will hang out at the camp/shelter since many of the homeless are addicted, and the ones that aren’t are vulnerable. Same with petty crime rings like shoplifters/fences.

Something is seriously wrong if it costs $150k per year to be homeless in SF.

6 years ago, I lived there quite comfortably making only $70k BEFORE taxes, and was able to save a decent bit per year on top of that.

Even now, I /only/ spend $90k per year - and my lifestyle is quite extravagant.

It's just out of control if it costs almost twice as much money to have almost nothing.

SF does $600 million to $800 million per year just through DHSH.

My guess is around 300 - 400 million through other depts (SF DPH etc). Behavioral health services alone run $500M and DPH is at $2.4 billion in their budget.

I'm excluding Fire / Police / MOCD / other services (there are a ton).

Rough numbers maybe $1B/year? for 8-12,000 folks?

This is both very large, but SF probably only spends around 8-10% of budget on this - the SF budget is very large.

That's crazy! I know american cities handle services that are handled at a provincial level here in Canada but the budget for the city of Montreal is only around 6B$ in Canadian dollars. And that's with all the costs that come from snow removal and the never ending repairs our roads need due to winter damage.

Montreal is much larger though I think? Sf is 800K or so in population

You also presumably were able to manage your own affairs, had a reputation and connections that meant you could get safe living quarters without being assaulted or having your stuff stolen, weren’t leaving dangerous biohazards around someone else needed to be paid to deal with - all of that adds up.

> It would be cheaper to rent apartments at current market rates, even in San Francisc

Indeed it would, but that is not a realistic option. These are high needs groups, many with severe mental disorders and drug addictions.

It is an embarrassment that we don't have better infrastructure to serve these groups, but it's tough renting out market rate apartments to serve them. Landlords of course have to agree.

SF is able to do this with custom-built housing, or Project Roomkey, but it's not like we can find 4,500 private apartments where landlords will happily put up a schizophrenic guy with a meth addiction.

It's also worth pointing out that $60k for these sites is not just payment for shelter. It includes three meals a day, social services, security, sanitation.

May be for some of the houseless but many don't have mental disorders or drug addictions, many people are just down on their luck. Also, pretty sure Finland has people with those issues as well.

"but many don't have mental disorders or drug addictions, many people are just down on their luck"

Be out of luck for a while and chances are high, that you develope mental disorders as well as drug addictions.

Do you live in SF? It’s quite apparent that a huge percentage of the homeless, if not the majority, have a mental disorder, drug addiction, or both.

That’s just for the visible chronic homeless. There are plenty of homeless people living under the radar in their cars and such that really are just down in their luck, and don’t get noticed them because they aren’t chronic cases.

Sure. But they do get captured here: https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/ExecutiveSu...

69% are reporting being disabled in some way that’s preventing them from being housed (read: addiction, mental illness, health issues resulting from these, etc). 42% are self reporting current addiction, 39% have self reported current psychiatric/emotional disorder of some kind, and 37% with PTSD (apparently getting separately reported from the prior stat). These numbers are likely higher in reality.

Of course there are some that lost their job, don’t make enough, etc. That’s the population that you could expect to make a come back with support. But a very significant portion are beyond tractable. Drive thru the tenderloin and tell me what you see is rehabilitatable.

Seems to me the easier story would be preventing homelessness in the first place, which would involve making our society kinder for all, not just the homeless. It got significantly worse after Regan defunded the mental health wards. Many progressives support this cause of holding people against their will — I’m not sure being homeless and mentally ill is more humane. At some point it’s easier to centralize long term care than to ad hoc beds and social services.

That isn’t a given. It could be that the standard strong social safety net is enough to keep people without substance abuse or mental illness problems out of homelessness. It would be interesting to do an honest accounting, at any rate.

Are you saying talking about the social safety net in Finland or the US? I don't understand the argument you're making, if anything the weakness of the social safety net in the US bolsters my argument that a larger fraction of homeless people in the US are just down on their luck relative to the fraction of homeless people in Finland.

EDIT: In order to avoid deepening the thread, may you restate your point so that I can understand what you mean?

Finland.

Also I’m not sure how to evaluate “a large fraction of the homeless are just down in their luck.” Those are the easy cases that are more likely to get effective help already, even in more dysfunctional American cities. And if they aren’t, we have a much better chance of doing a better job there, since their problems are much easier to solve than those of the more chronic homeless.

In fact, our first priority should be to prevent “down in their luck” homeless cases from becoming chronic “substance abuse/mental illness” homeless cases.

> where landlords will happily put up a schizophrenic guy with a meth addiction.

Isn't this a discrimination under the Fair Housing Act? My understanding is that both mental illness and drug addiction can constitute a disability.

Neither the mentally ill nor drug addicts are protected classes. The best protection they will get is under the ADA, and I’ve never seen it be used to argue for access to housing for non-physical handicaps.

That is not correct. I'm sure mental illness would qualify for ADA protection with the correct doctor's note and filings. Drug addiction is definitely protected under the ADA.

(Pdf) https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/drug-addiction-aand-...

Not for housing. Protection yes, but landlords are not required to not evict a paranoid schizophrenic that has threatened violence on other residents (and the eviction sticks when they try to rent later). The ADA also doesn’t prevent landlords from ignoring drug convictions from someone a substance abuser. They can’t ask you for your status, but they won’t ignore any other signals that are a consequence of that status.

Maybe… but most localities will allow you to do a background check.

As a former landlord, I can almost guarantee someone with the problems you mention will and felonies, poor rental references, and/or evictions. You can easily use those to legally disqualify a prospective tenant.

My revealed preference is that, due to the economic surplus produced by economic liberty, we have the luxury of being able to allocate resources to individuals in need. A luxury, mind you, in no way guaranteed by the conditions of nature.

Now, given that we have the resources in order to allocate some resources to individuals in need, I think it's a perfectly serviceable objective to provide housing for those unable to house themselves. I don't, however, think it's a perfectly serviceable objective to provide housing for those unable to house themselves by saying that they have a right to remain on an extremely space-constrained peninsula which has led to one of the most competitive and expensive real estate markets on the entire planet.

So to reiterate my revealed preference: no I don't think the homeless should be housed in tents in SF, and neither do I think that they have a right to be housed anywhere in SF. I think that we have the luxury of surplus resources to provide housing for those in need, but I think that this housing should be built in an area that is not space constrained, and is as economically viable as possible.

So send all the homeless people to Bakersfield then? I wonder how the current residents of Bakersfield would feel about that.

There's a lot of space in this country.

The majority sentiment appears to be that homeless people deserve to suffer to some degree, and that without pain they’ll never be properly motivated to get a job and rejoin society.

The fact that this never works doesn’t really seem to dissuade anyone. No city has managed to solve the homelessness problem with anti-sleeping architecture and police crackdowns, but they’ll keep trying.

The majority sentiment in our large US cities, especially on the west coast, seems to be that tens of millions of people ought to have significantly reduced quality of life rather than thousands of people have their freedom curtailed. Even if that freedom is being used in ways that are not only degrading quality of life for the tens of millions but not even creating especially great quality of life for the thousands.

We’ve prioritized autonomy so much that we’ve ended up in a miserable equilibrium for all involved.

The only things progressives have to offer is maybe if we spend just a few more tens of millions; maybe if we throw just a few hundred more well intentioned social workers, drug counselors, and psychologists--then those few thousands will choose a different path. Because obviously the universe is a just one and there’s never any tough tradeoffs to be made. If only everyone cared as much as we progressives (aka good people) wouldn’t life be so glorious?

It's not simply a matter of public sentiment. Federal courts have consistently ruled that cities can't criminalize homelessness, or involuntarily commit people to mental institutions if they don't present an immediate risk. Changing this might require a Constitutional amendment.

What is the “non-progressive” solution to homelessness? As far as I can tell, it’s “I don’t care where you stay, but it can’t be here,” which is obviously not an actual solution in a global sense.

Enforcing basic property rights is a good start. “I’m sorry sir or madam, but this is some of the most expensive real estate in the entire world, and you may not just pitch a tent here on the sidewalk. If you refuse to remove yourself then we will remove you.”As you say, this is not a total solution to the larger problem, but it’s a start.

Any difficult problem needs to be broken down into pieces and analyzed piece by piece, and I posit that this is the clear and obvious part of any serious solution. Logically, I can only see two other possibilities.

1) We solve homelessness and criminality once and for all, such that nobody would even attempt to pitch a tent on property that isn’t theirs without permission, or else would willingly remove themselves once their error were pointed out to them. I hold that this is impossible, and though we should always strive for perfection, we must recognize and account for our limitations.

2) We keep the status quo, where vagrants are not forcibly removed and instead are allowed to live dispersed throughout the city.

If I’m missing another possibility here, then somebody please point it out to me. Note that I’m purposefully leaving out any discussion of where those that are forced to leave should go, which admittedly must be a part of any solution but is not the part that I’m interested in for now. Additionally I accept that there is plenty to debate regarding precisely how enforced removal should be carried out; for the sake of discussion, let’s assume that everyone should be given fair warning and a chance to leave at their own accord, and violent force should be kept strictly to what’s minimally necessary to enforce the rules.

Am I wrong to think that enforced removal is necessary to any serious solution? And if so, can somebody explain to me why I’ve never heard of a “progressive” solution that grants this point and incorporates it into its plan?

Police will generally enforce private property rights by forcibly removing trespassers (although it sometimes takes a while). The problem is that homeless people usually occupy public property. Police can prevent them from doing certain things like blocking sidewalks but otherwise they have the same legal right to be on public property as anyone else.

Even for occupation of public property, the application of state power is extremely selective. Abandon or live in a beat to shit tent on public property, get arrested and have your private property destroyed by the state. Leave a $50,000 BMW in a bike lane because you're too self important to find a legal parking spot, and at best you'll get a ticket. Most of the time you might not even get that much.

The fact that only one of these will be on the receiving end of state violence really underscores how little the excuse of "you're occupying public property" has with the expected outcome.

> “I’m sorry sir or madam, but this is some of the most expensive real estate in the entire world, and you may not just pitch a tent here on the sidewalk. If you refuse to remove yourself then we will remove you.”

I mean, this is what they do in a lot of cities (albeit not San Francisco), except it’s usually far less polite than this. It’s not uncommon to see LAPD breaking up homeless camps and destroying their possessions (funny how selective property rights are), and it’s not exactly fixed the problem in LA.

At best it tends to push them towards cities that’ll not abuse them arbitrarily, at least until the voters in that area vote in a police chief that’ll be “tough on crime” and they’re turned out, repeating the cycle.

> Am I wrong to think that enforced removal is necessary to any serious solution?

Yes, because it’s what we’ve been trying for about half a century and it has failed miserably. At best it results in us playing hot potato with them between different cities. At worst it involves illegal application of state violence against the poor and powerless.

It’s genuinely hard for me to understand how “enforced removal” could possibly be seen as a solution for homelessness. Maybe if your goal is to stop seeing the problem, perhaps. But it’s not exactly a solution; are the homeless going to stop being homeless after you’ve “removed” them? Or are they just going to be dumped somewhere else after getting roughed up by the cops a bit?

> If I’m missing another possibility here, then somebody please point it out to me. Note that I’m purposefully leaving out any discussion of where those that are forced to leave should go, which admittedly must be a part of any solution but is not the part that I’m interested in for now.

There’s a good reason why I accuse a lot of people of not actually wanting to solve the problem, but rather make it happen out of sight. It’s rare to have someone say it so nakedly though.

Maybe you should focus less on where they should go, and more on rehabilitating as many of them as possible back into society? If they had homes in which to secure their possessions, maybe fewer of them would feel the need to camp out on the property you seem so concerned about? Or better yet we can take a look at what policy changes have caused the homeless population to grow and change those, so that fewer of our fellow human beings end up on the street? Just a thought.

Institutionalization. I’m all in favor of nice institutions and every effort at rehabilitation but if you are in such a condition that you can’t go about your life without ruining those of everyone around you, then society is entitled to protect itself by removing you.

No way that power will be abused, nosiree…

I am also extremely dubious that there are anywhere near as many untreatable cases as people seem to think.

You’ve had fifty years to work on it and made no progress.

This is exactly the “few more tens of millions of dollars and a few hundred more well intentioned social workers” argument I predicted.

I certainly haven’t seen my preferred solution, just building them houses, done for fifty years. Sure sounds like you’re asserting that my preferred plan hasn’t worked despite it not having been tried at all and therefore asserting that the only choice is your plan.

What I’ve seen is fifty years of increased incarceration, police spending, and soaring housing prices.

I don’t think the sentiment is that they “deserve to suffer” so much as “why should I be subsidizing the comfort of a group that is so aggressively antisocial?”.

I think it is fair to categorize the majority of interactions the public has with the homeless as negative. With most falling somewhere between simple harassment (aggressive panhandling) and serious crime (mugging, assault, property damage, etc).

Of course, this is a huge generalization and #notallhomeless blah blah blah… But I think even those that advocate for homeless would have a tough time arguing that they increase the quality of life in the neighborhoods they inhabit.

> I don’t think the sentiment is that they “deserve to suffer” so much as “why should I be subsidizing the comfort of a group that is so aggressively antisocial?”.

What is the effective difference between believing someone deserves to suffer, and purposefully withholding aid that could be rendered? One might be dressed up in more comfortable language, but they both result in homeless people not being helped on purpose.

Homeless people have objectively been let down by society, of course they're antisocial. They're hungry, exposed to the elements, and treated like garbage by most people they interact with. Every single one of us would behave in antisocial ways if we were in that situation. If you want them to change, you have to begin changing the circumstances that motive their current behavior. Denying aid until they change is just a polite way to deny aid permanently.

> What is the effective difference between believing someone deserves to suffer, and purposefully withholding aid that could be rendered?

This is silly. By your logic we in the Western world are essentially causing the suffering of the Uyghurs in China because we haven't started a war to stop their oppression.

You aren't complicit just because you don't try to fix every wrong in the world.

The real world is difficult and involves suffering, pain, unfairness, etc. Our resources to limit these negative aspects of existence are finite. When we view someone "suffering" and see it as the result of their own actions, yea, I think we are even more reluctant to do anything.

All that to say: Good luck convincing people that they should allocate scarce resources to help out the people who throw containers of urine at them and defecate on the sidewalk in front of their apartment.

> This is silly. By your logic we in the Western world are essentially causing the suffering of the Uyghurs in China because we haven't started a war to stop their oppression.

The last time we invaded a country to liberate people went so well, right? Clearly we should always be doing that, since it consistently reduces human suffering in the regions we invade with no risks whatsoever. Given the consistent good outcome of invasions, it's obvious that not giving people houses in our cities and not being willing to risk WW3 in order to help out the Uyghurs are morally equivalent things, good argument.

Dripping sarcasm aside, we should absolutely do something about the Uyghur genocide. But trying to draw a moral equivalency between inaction on both these things is pushing the "good faith" rule to the limit. One of them has obvious avenues for harm reduction right now, while the other is a messy thing with plenty of avenues for us to accidentally end up making things much worse for the people we're trying to help and potentially get a bunch of other random people killed to boot. These two things are not the same, at all.

Also, America created its own homelessness crisis. Surely we have a moral obligation to resolve any issues that we ourselves created, no?

> Our resources to limit these negative aspects of existence are finite.

Come now, you can't possibly think that the reason why we don't house the homeless is because of resource limitations, can you? That's just a ridiculous argument; we've magically run out of resources and coincidentally the limit was helping the homeless in our cities. Please ignore any increased consumption anywhere else, we're just absolutely out of resources, and are powerless to change that.

I'm sure you've calculated the cost of sending the police around to harass homeless people, right? Sure would be unfortunate if you make an argument about us being unable to help while we end up spending more money harassing and abusing the homeless than it would cost for us to give them homes[0]. That would make it look like we're just being cruel for the hell of it, rather than because this is the cheaper way forward.

> You aren't complicit just because you don't try to fix every wrong in the world.

You literally said above that people don't want to subsidize the homeless because they're angry at them. That is worlds apart from "terribly sorry, can't help". You’re absolutely moving the goalposts from “too angry to help” to “not my duty to help”.

And that's before we begin to discuss the circumstances that have made homelessness a thing. They didn't just appear out of nowhere, you know. Homelessness is a policy outcome, not an act of god. We absolutely are complicit as a society for homelessness in our society, because it is a consequence of the decisions we’ve made as a society. We have a moral obligation to fix the problems we have ourselves caused at a minimum.

> Additionally, good luck convincing people that they should allocate scarce resources to help out the people who throw containers of urine at them and defecate on the sidewalk in front of their apartment.

Maybe if we send in the cops to tear up their tents and beat them up it'll solve it this time. Hasn't worked for decades, but maybe this last time will be the trick! Heaven forbid we try something new.

Also, maybe we should install some public toilets. Just a thought. Humans have to defecate, if you don't give people a place to do it they will do it in the streets. It honestly seems like a lot of people would rather see their cities literally covered in feces rather than give homeless people a toilet.

0 - http://endhomelessness.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Cost-S...

If you agree homelessness is an issue than the right attitude to have is to reduce it no? The Finland solution actually works, so do it regardless of how you feel about it? Anything short of that means you actually don't want it to get better.

>If you agree homelessness is an issue than the right attitude to have is to reduce it no?

Back in the mid 1980s, the Village Voice[0] ran a feature article entitled "What do homeless people want?"

The author helpfully provided an answer in the first sentence of the article: "Homes, mostly."

Given the very visible homeless population in New York City[1] at the time, and that more and more of those folks were families with children, it seemed a reasonable question to ask, with a readily available answer.

And in 2000, there was a piece in the San Jose Mercury News[2] about full-time school teachers working in the San Jose public schools who were living in homeless shelters because they couldn't afford housing on their salaries in the South Bay.

And yet, 30+ years later the problem is getting worse -- due to the lack of affordable housing stock, increasing economic insecurity and inequality, among other, lesser, issues.

So let's not continue to believe the Grimm-esque fairy tale that poor people are poor because they're lazy or stupid. And that all homeless people are drug-addicted, mentally impaired losers.

So what is it that homeless people want? Homes, mostly.

Yet our zoning and housing policies make increasing housing stock to meet demand and effectively difficult, if not impossible.

Yes, homelessness is a serious issue. And something I experienced back in those fabled 1980's. And I did have a drug (cocaine) problem while I was homeless. Then again, I didn't start using those drugs until I was already homeless. Hmmm. Correlation isn't causation, but...

[0] https://www.villagevoice.com/

[1] https://citylimits.org/2013/03/11/a-brief-history-of-homeles...

[2] https://www.mercurynews.com/

> So let's not continue to believe the Grimm-esque fairy tale that poor people are poor because they're lazy or stupid. And that all homeless people are drug-addicted, mentally impaired losers.

Also, substance abuse can be an outcome, not just a cause. People go homeless after getting addicted, yes, but people also get addicted in order to numb the experience of being homeless too. Using drugs is a reasonable response to a loss of hope; I’m sure every single person here has some experience with increased alcohol consumption as a response to stress. It’s perfectly human, and most of us wouldn’t do any better if we were homeless tomorrow.

Also, this attitude is never applied to the rich and powerful addicted to things like cocaine. Which is kind of curious. It makes you wonder if the issue isn’t drugs at all..

I’ll go back to what I noted in my original comment: “why should I subsidize the comfort of people who are so aggressively antisocial?”

This group has generated so much negative goodwill with the general public that any “logical” solution that requires public $ is going to have a difficult time prevailing.

The easiest and intuitively cheapest solution in the minds of most people is: make them go somewhere else.

My point is you subsidize them or the issue is not fixed and the issue persists including the aspects you don't like. Making them go somewhere else doesn't work because somewhere else will make them go back to you.

I get that it's not popular with the public, that's why we have these debates, because the public needs to figure out whether it really wants to solve the issue by partially getting over itself or it doesn't and prefers to live in the bad situation that current exists.

EDIT: usually these arguments from the progressives appeals to morality or whatever, but in this case, it's literally an effectiveness argument. It works, regardless how one feels so it should be done.

Now, if one argues "well, it might not work here," that to me is a more interesting and worthwhile discussion. But if one's point is "well, I don't dispute whether it works or not or whether it won't work here, I just hate the homeless so much I don't want to do the thing that would actually fix it," leads me to question whether one hates it enough to actually address the issue or not.

> Making them go somewhere else doesn't work because somewhere else will make them go back to you.

Not really true at all. If you are a Midwestern city with a homeless "problem", giving them a one-way ticket to San Francisco (or somewhere else that is hospitable to homeless) seems to be a good way to get rid of them for good.

If one is able to look at this situation objectively, this is a really interesting and complex problem to consider at the level of the municipality. Different cities will have different strategies.

...and like in my example above, a change in one city's strategies might actually change your strategy. If San Francisco starts cracking down on tent cities and tries to prohibit panhandling, open drug use, etc. then those Midwestern cities may have to start sending their homeless to another place, or just deal with them in-place.

The equilibrium that this game reaches may be the place that has the most reasonable, humane and probably expensive solution to homelessness actually increases the number of homeless they have to accommodate as they become a permanent draw.

So your proposed outcome is that nobody has homeless services?

If they’re going to suffer, it seems like making them suffer somewhere else is incredibly popular.

I don’t think homeless people should suffer but there should be rules. Instead of allowing people to ruin a sidewalk by storing 100 stolen bicycle scraps and other trash, they should be relocated to safe sleeping sites. Should tax payers have their view ruined, live in stench, and have HIV positive schizophrenic folks with an ax running into their place of business? My friend owns a business and had to stop selling merchandise due to theft. This literally happens daily here. The mayor doesn’t want to place some of these people in conservatorship which is what’s required at a certain point.

(I’m aware I’ll be down voted by people who do not live here, haven’t had to call the cops for help themselves, and think I am just exaggerating)

Your comment seems to suggest you don't actually want the situation to get better, you want people to suffer for some reason. The point is the Finland solution actually works and that's why it should be done.

I literally stated I do not want them to suffer. I am not arguing against sleeping sites I clearly stated I am in favor of them

I am just stating if someone refuses the safe sleeping sites and continues to break into yoga studios and throw feces and blood at people, maybe there ought to be a backup “solution”.

Why does homelessness become an excuse to commit crimes? We can both help homeless people and also not make them immune to laws.

Why should my neighbor who is wheelchair bound have no access to her sidewalk because a homeless guy is storing 100 stolen bicycle wheels on the sidewalk?

I specifically want more safe sleeping sites, but I also want people arrested if they refuse the safe sleeping site and choose to be a menace to a society.

Very cool application of the "Principle of charity".

May be I can clarify, when I said, "it suggests..." I probably should have said that if you follow the logic all the way through, they don't want to actually solve the issue. Who cares about how you feel? Do you want to solve homelessness or do you not? What other alternative is there?

> No city has managed to solve the homelessness problem with anti-sleeping architecture and police crackdowns, but they’ll keep trying.

That isn’t true, of course they’ve solved their problem using such measures…by pushing them to another city. For example, Bellevue WA will have the riot squad out pretty quickly if you so much as lay down on a bench, and it works since Seattle WA is right across the lake.

> The majority sentiment appears to be that homeless people deserve to suffer to some degree

As far as I can tell, San Francisco doesn't seem to believe this. San Francisco does seem to collectively believe that adding housing is an abomination to avoided at all costs and that helping the homeless is a moral imperative.

> The majority sentiment appears to be that homeless people deserve to suffer to some degree, and that without pain they’ll never be properly motivated to get a job and rejoin society.

I don't think this is true at all. Citation is needed for this.

Majority among who? People in SF?

> Our revealed preference

Is this revealed preference? It's clearly due to political drag, corruption, hubris, or something that is not necessarily preferences of individuals in SF.

It's not like people aren't trying. IIRC Marc Benioff (who I have no particular love for) donated 30 million to homelessness "research" to UCSF, and 17 million to various direct programs. Last homeless point in time count estimates 8k homeless in SF; let's round up to 10k; leaving aside the soft corruption that might have gone into that grant (come on, we have a probably 80% correct model of what causes homelessness), that's TWO PEOPLE who could have given enough money to go a third of the way to paying $1500mo/homeless person rent. estimating that the all-in cost for social services per person is a generous $1000/mo.... it seems that this situation is eminently solvable.

In any democratic system the government exists with the consent of the majority of people. If solving the homeless is a priority for the constituents, they can vote out the ruling government as punishment. That hasn't happened yet, indicating it's just not a high priority for most people living in SF. The gap between voicing an opinion and taking action is large.

Of course voting out the ruling government might mean voting in someone they disagree with on other issues, but this is why single issue voters get more things done politically than their "wiser" counterparts who try to consider all the variables.

It's the same with the various opinion polls that make headlines showing "75% of Americans want X, so why is the government still refusing?" The simple answer is far less than 75% are willing to base their vote solely on X, whereas the opposition often is.

> In any democratic system the government exists with the consent of the majority of people.

This is incomplete to the point of being incorrect. The correct version is:

> In any democratic system the government exists with the consent of the majority of people who happen to have the time/energy/intelligence to research candidates and physically cast a vote in spite of various barriers to voting, choosing from among the small number of candidates who happen to be running.

Sure, but so long as the democracy is still technically functioning those laws can be changed with enough support. Most of the barriers in place, whether they should be there or not, are not insurmountable.

I guess I'm defining consent as "anything less than a desire for violent overthrow of the government" because that's the primary problem democracies solve. Things can still get bad to the point where in any other system a violent rebellion would take place, it's just that in a functioning democracy there's a bloodless rebellion at the ballot box instead of a civil war.

This is really a curse of the two-party system, although California has open top-two primaries so you'd think they'd be less susceptible to this issue.

Even multi-party systems suffer from this. You will never have enough parties to satisfy everyone on every issue. It's also worsened by the multiple years between elections, the feedback cycles are very slow, and too much is muddled together when there's an election.

I would have said the solution is referendums, where the population can regularly vote on some specific issue. But as far as I understand California's "proposition" fit this, and they don't really seem to work.

Referendums are flawed because

* referendums, as a single-issue-only vote, suffer when an electorate is only thinking about immediate first-order effects, and due to how many issues are happening at the same time it's also very easy to get voter fatigue. WA has been through a few cycles for lowering car tab fees to $30, it ends up being ruled unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court due to procedural errors, and in the meantime it totally wrecks budgets. But who would vote down a tax cut for themselves even if the final figure has no bearing on reality? Similar story with Prop 13 and all the nasty knock-on things it has caused.

* referendums only represent a snapshot in time, but due to inertia it is hard to change it. Is Scotland going to get a second vote after Brexit? Who knows? New Caledonia is trying a third time in three years for an independence referendum.

California has been single party for quite some time. Much like “united russia” in Russia.

If different factions in a party can put forward different people who can make it to the top two, the open primary makes the point moot as long as they disagree enough.

The religious and more recently nativist turns that the GOP has taken nationally have made them uncompetitive in California; it's notable that the last Republican governor of California was neither of those things while that transition was happening.

> Of course...

so, in short, it's not revealed preference.

Depends on how you define "preference". Any number of people would "prefer" any number of things in a vacuum that fall apart when put up against the real world. That's not a particularly useful definition of "preference". I'd argue what people truly "prefer" is revealed by what they are willing to take action on.

Many people prefer that china not torture uighurs, but they are, understandably, not willing to take action on it.

Preferences are not 'revealed' by action because even if we were hyper rational, action would take into account expected success, which may be depressed by factors that have nothing to do with our preferences.

I reject your operational definition of preferences. I Think most people would be with me on this one.

I'd argue most people would be willing to take action on it, they simply don't have to power to do so and can't be reasonably expected to achieve that power. Whereas people in SF who have voting rights DO have power over what politicians do about the local homeless situation.

When a group has the power to change something but chooses to prioritize other things instead (which may be a valid response, depending on circumstances), it's clear that the group "prefers" the thing they do over whatever they might say.

This is all a long-winded version of "Actions speak louder than words", or more in context: "votes speak louder than opinions".

I reject your purely theoretical definition of "preferences". I imagine most people would "prefer" to eat and drink whatever they want, never exercise and still maintain perfect health. Unfortunately in the real worth that "preference" is completely irrelevant, and plenty of people (myself included) don't "prefer" health all the time for any number of reasons.

You're contradicting yourself.

> Whereas people in SF who have voting rights DO have power over what politicians do about the local homeless situation.

But they don't. Politics is a winner-take-all system, as you said yourself: "voting out the ruling government might mean voting in someone they disagree with on other issues"

As we know from arrow's theorem, a sufficiently complex schedule of multiple choices (in this case competing policy issues that must be represented by a slate of government officials) can wind up misrepresenting group preferences no matter what the preference selection criteria.

The answer of course could be to fix the homelessness situation outside of the political system, however as the tiny homes for homeless in LA guy found out, often people are powerless to go outside the system, too, they will find themselves shut out for trying to do some good.

An important difference is that Helsinki regularly has temperatures down to -7°C or 19.4°F in the winter, on average. While you can live in tents at those temperatures, given well insulated sleeping bags and clothes, it's not exactly comfortable. And for people with drug or mental issues it can be deadly, say, if they're too far gone to take the proper precautions. Meanwhile San Fran winter temps are as far as I can see about 14°C or 52.2°F on average. But yeah, if the cost you're indicating is true, then it's completely outrageous. Though it's not the first time I've heard about high costs involved with social cases in the West. I suspect some of it is political, but some might also be due to simple profiteering since these people doesn't exactly present a strong political lobby themselves.

> and (I'm not sure why) 24/7 security staff

Are you trying to make some sort of point with a show of feigned ignorance, or do you really not get it? Security is the second rung on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, one of the most basic needs.

You may as well write "and (I'm not sure why) water". Baffling. Any human being should be able to understand this need without having it explained to them.

The causes of homelessness may be different in SF vs. Finland. Mental health & drug addiction are common problems among long-term homeless in the US. Resolving homelessness requires better solutions to those issues as well.

You need both, like here in Finland. E.g. see info on housing under https://www.espoo.fi/en-US/Social_and_health_services/Health...

Thanks for the reference, pretty much as I would expect things to be. Homelessness doesn't just happen, there's a cause that must be dealt with.

As far as I can see, Finland has some of the lowest drug abuse in the world, so it stands to reason that providing homes is more affordable for them. As far as I remember, they used to have a bigger problem with alcohol than their Nordic neighbours, but I'm unsure if this is still the case.

Renters would rather have empty rooms than homeless. No commercial renter references, no full time employment, even a hint of "homeless" = no apartment.

Friend in Canada is purely disabled along with their relative, and lives on disability - which is guaranteed rent. Renters wanted nothing to do with them. They had to go to a government agency that locates housing based on income, and they only got that because their parents cosigned and the landlord was nice.

The hardest part of dealing with homelessness in America is that homeless people will migrate to the best areas to live and beg, which unfortunately also means that certain cities become targets to bear the brunt of the nation's homeless expenses, which incentivizes them to try to push out homeless to make other city's/state's problem. Finland is smart by making this a nation-wide solution.

Why don't all of EU's homeless simply migrate to Finland then?

There's a bunch of complexity in EU law around certain benefits, housing and unemployment benefits among them.

Those who weren't already resident in Finland, Finland doesn't have any responsibility towards.

unfamiliarity of culture and language probably plays a big role compared to the US, where everything is available in English by default. A large amount of Finns speak English, but then that would require a person moving there to also speak English well, which I wouldn't say is a given.

Also, compared to the moderate Mediterranean climate of, say, SF, Finland has very harsh winters, which would make it very unattractive for sleeping outdoors.

Language and cultural barrier. Moving between EU countries is a much bigger psychological deal than between US states.

Also, Finland’s weather is a negative if you are homeless.

"You cannot secure your means of support with benefits paid by the society."

See more info under "income requirement" under https://migri.fi/en/residence-permit-on-other-grounds

Sure, you can apply for e.g. political asylum, but even then some restriction apply.

Freedom of movement is conditional, you cannot be an undue burden on social assistance system of the host member state, which you are if you are homeless and don't have any job.

> For this, the city pays around $60k per tent site per year. I'm not sure if this is in part due to some unsavory relationship between the org administering the program and some city official. Recently the program was extended. It would be cheaper to rent apartments at current market rates, even in San Francisco.

60k per tent site, as in - multiple, like a dozen, tents? Or 60k per tent?

60k per single tent

Wow, that's almost double the median individual income.

Consider whether you would be safe sleeping there in a tent? And how about keeping all your stuff there too? Some neighbors may have mental issues, there may be a criminal element (crime is high in San Francisco), and others (who aren’t dangerous, or even if they are) need to be protected from them.

So I’m not sure this is best thought of as similar to normal housing or similar to a campsite where they can easily kick out anyone dangerous since they’re far away from the city. Instead you might compare with hospitals, nursing homes, or even prisons, but in primitive conditions and without the necessary security infrastructure. The costs aren’t going to be similar.

Actual walls and doors with locks would probably help a lot to reduce the staffing needed.

I think you are absolutely right. The difference is culture. The US culture is anti-poor while the Finish culture is pro-human. The US culture is “only these tools are allowed to solve problems” and the Finish culture is “do what works”. The US culture is “better to spend 10x more money than give people free money - even if spending 10x more money doesn’t solve the problem” while the Finish culture is “that is just silly.”

Currently people experiencing homelessness can effectively sleep anywhere without being sweeped by the city. The police department lets me know they cannot physically move the tents without an eviction process and can only issue a misdemeanor which only entails fines that these people most likely will not pay anyway. The police department lets me know this is Chessea Boudin’s policy and that all they can do without a court order is ask the homeless people to move nicely. By Fulton and Great Highway there are often lines of cars to buy drugs from people living in this one RV who apparently have a “right” to be there. Police state the individuals turn down the help offered by the homeless outreach team. The individuals turn the area into a literal dump, junk yard, and trap.

(I’m aware I’ll be down voted by people who do not live here, haven’t had to call the cops for help themselves, and think I am just exaggerating)

For the record, this kind of thing is absolutely happening in San Francisco, and it’s happening in other West Coast cities as well, like Portland. The OP is a little off in their attribution. The biggest cause of this is the 9th Circuit ruling in Martin v. Boise, which dictated that cities cannot force a person not to camp on public land unless they can offer a meaningful alternative. Cities have built their own policies to deal with this, and then multiple cities on the West Coast also elected progressive District Attorneys, who explicitly consider things like what the OP is describing to be “non-violent” crimes, and therefore not a priority. Here’s what San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin said about this:

“We will not prosecute cases involving quality-of-life crimes," he said. "Crimes such as public camping, offering or soliciting sex, public urination, blocking a sidewalk, etc., should not and will not be prosecuted. Many of these crimes are still being prosecuted; we have a long way to go to decriminalize poverty and homelessness.”

That’s a noble goal, but it comes with a HUGE blind spot - namely the intersection of homelessness and criminality. The apparent implication is that the citizens impacted by these “quality of life crimes” can go pound sand.

How many tents fit in one of those sites? $5K a month for maybe 50 people seems pretty affordable ($100/mo)?

It's 60K PER tent!

It's 5k/mo/tent, not 5k/mo total.

"Our revealed preference seems to be that we'd rather have homeless people live in tents than have poor people get free or nearly free housing."

Well, I'm sick of your preferences; they make no sense to me.

I'm being facetious, but why talk that way? You are an individual. If you have an opinion state it.

Government and its decisions are not you, you do not need to pretend that you agree with these decisions, or that they are somehow the result of a benign expression of voting decisions that you are bought into.

> I'm being facetious, but why talk that way? You are an individual. If you have an opinion state it.

This phrasing makes clear the policy preference of the polity of San Francisco while also implying that the author does not agree with it.

As you say, the author is an individual and does not need to pretend to agree! This author seems to agree with you. They have expressed their opinion as well as noted that of of the polity.

Presumably this is the source for that number, for those who might be interested in digging further:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/S-F-pays-61-000-a-...

> the city pays around $60k per tent site per year

Is this number missing a zero? That sounds very reasonable for use of land and 24/7 security. And at $5k a month I'm not sure how many apartments you can afford. Or is that meant to be $60k per tenant? How many people can you house in one of these sites?

It’s $5k per tent per month - you can rent 2-3 studios for that, even in SF. A similar program in LA is coming in at $2100 per rent per month, definitely enough for at least one apartment: https://ktla.com/news/local-news/east-hollywood-tent-village...

That’s the point the original article made - they were throwing money at short-term shelters and other things, just like everyone else and the problem got worse not better. Instead, doing stable housing first and applying conditions later allowed people to adapt. I suspect that they also get to re-use units the NGOs bought to house next set of people once the initial occupants have improved their situation enough.

If one were to use the $2100 for mortgage payment as well, with taxes/hoa/insurance included, that would finance over $400k worth of unit.

Landlords aren't going to be so keen on letting the homeless be shoved in their rentals when they'll likely be filled by non-homeless soon enough.

Have you heard of Section 8? There are landlords who specialize in such programs - the benefits are quite compelling for the right cashflow setup, taking the Finnish model as the example: you rent to the NGO that has government backing (e.g. risk of nonpayment goes to near zero), the NGO assumes all risk and is responsible for the unit. That’s a pretty great deal compared to the Landlord being responsible for vacancy, individual tenant management, etc.

Plus here in Finland the city owned apartments etc. are distributed around the city (not the Manhattans but the rest). Thus there are no slums in Finland and thus there's practically zero gang problems: there's exactly two city districts in the entire Finland I would not feel safe walking at night. So individuals renting to NGOs, city buying apartments etc. benefit both the community as well as the individual who gets out of the crayfish trap.*

*There's a popular analogy with crayfish traps here in Finland wrt. one individual finding their way out of the trap, only to have the other crabs pull them back in.

Sorry, I was speaking specifically with regards to San Francisco w/the parent. And yes, I believe there is some Sec 8 in SF, but not exactly the point of the current issue.

We have to structure the incentives to drive the outcome. Sec 8 is one program that (for all its faults) has shown effective and manageable. The door swings both ways - need to ensure good landlords want to provide housing and the “slumlords” are identified and punished/removed from programs.

SF also has the BMR program that’s designed to provide ownership opportunities for low income people. If NGOs with State backing could be involved, BMR inventory could be an interesting starting point. Then you could provide additional incentives to developers to include even more BMR units, etc.

"Tent site" usually means "place for a single tent". If grandparent has the usual usage, it's $60k/tenant, unless people are sharing tents.

Thank you for the clarification, that makes much more sense.

is per tent site === one single 'parking space' for one homeless person's tent? if so it's outrageous.

Even if it means say a parking lot for 20, that seems pretty crazy. You can just give $2k to buy an apartment, if you are puritan and have to control whether or not they spend it on substances just pay the landlord directly. Probably has to be a place that can get cleaned up easily though after they move on.

It can't possibly be $60K just to provide 24/7 security for a year for a whole location, right? That's a bare minimum of 5 full-time employees, but more likely 6 to 8.

How much does a set of bullet proof window for a tiny one-bedroom apartment, and a security door cost? Guarded tent-site sounds like pouring truckloads of money to the sea.

That amount of money buys a lot of tiny houses - maybe 2 for $60k.

$60K per tenant

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/S-F-officials-w...

> For this, the city pays around $60k per tent site per year

Is that 60k per tent site or per tent?

A lot of them don’t want the free housing because they are not allowed to do their vice indoors. Can’t smoke or shoot up illicit drugs so they opt to not take the free housing.

How does it only cost $60k when 1 individual security guard would be homeless earning only $60k themselves in a year in San Francisco?

people living in tents in SF are not just “poor” - many have severe mental health issues and drug addiction. In fact, many are there because of SF’s open-air drug market.

My point is that the program you mentioned is even crazier and more cruel and wasteful. We need many of these people booked into the rehab (mandatory if needed) and then subsidize cheap apartments for them.

With that 60k number on the table Im wondering where people think a universal basic income might fit into this discussion?

UBI would work well for some homeless and would be a disaster for others (those with severe substance abuse issues).

What's the actual percentage of homeless people with severe substance abuse problem (i.e. one where its ~daily and they wouldn't agree to treatment)?

This comment makes it sound like it applies to something like 50% of SF homeless and that can't be right.

It actually is about 50%:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...

I'm sorry, where on that 23 page document does it say 50%?

On Page 2 it says "On a given night in January 2010" --

"26.2% of all sheltered persons who were homeless had a severe mental illness"

and

"34.7% of all sheltered adults who were homeless had chronic substance use issues"

of course that was 10 years ago, so I wouldn't be surprised if it has increased but still, I'd prefer more accurate numbers. Did I look at wrong page?

Page 4

Ah, very good, thanks! So yeah, half of the chronically homeless. That's extremely bad news. But let's remember that doing drugs to forget your life has been a mess for a long time is not a lifestyle choice decision.

There's no study on this so we can't be sure how many will say yes, but given a "Finnish opportunity" of free housing if you agree on medical treatment/rehabilitation for the drug problem, free debt debt counseling, and a state-supported employment, I suspect not many would say no to what's essentially a fresh start.

50% actually seems way too low to me, and I wish I had some time and resources to look at their methodology.

The other number that would seriously affect solutions is whether homeless in general travel to cities that better support being homeless or not. That is, how much of the problem is homegrown and how much is just because Seattle, LA, SF have good resources and weather? Because if mobility is an significant option, the better any one city does at solving their homeless problems, the worse their problem will become.

All the studies I’ve seen so far have been really flawed (eg most Seattle homeless living in pioneer square before they became homeless).

> doing drugs to forget your life has been a mess for a long time is not a lifestyle choice decision.

That's a bold statement. Choice and compulsion occupy the same place in hell.

Youtube is actually a fantastic resource for the average Joe (like me) who wants to hear how it is straight from the source:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6ZFzEW7_Q4

For the long term chronic homeless, pretty high (that and/or mental illness). For the less chronic short term homeless, not high at all (or they wouldn’t be short term).

It is nearly impossible for an entity (city or state), with a limited budget and no borders to enforce, to provide a perfect solution. The “country” on the other hand is a completely different matter..

> Our revealed preference seems to be that we'd rather have homeless people live in tents than have poor people get free or nearly free housing.

The reason why such programs exist in the first place is because of San Francisco's highly liberal government. There is no doubt that the politicians would absolutely love to give people houses for free, but they can't because that would be even more expensive.

The San Francisco system is flawed by design. It's not economical to support people with welfare because America is not a communist nation. Homelessness should not be considered to be primarily the government's problem. If the economy is strong, homelessness as a problem will largely disappear and charities will take care of the rest of them.

> To that, they add chemical toilets, a water supply and (I'm not sure why) 24/7 security staff. For this, the city pays around $60k per tent site per year.

This is ridiculous, it's more than enough for annual rent of a very decent apartment.

The fact that a mighty country of America can't fix such a trivial problem shocks me.

With countless billions thrown onto the problem, they can equally well build a few blocks of luxury skyscraper apartments, and give them away.

Literally, for these money you can build an apartment block somewhere in Dubai.

You going to put a parking lot full of people into an apartment?

I mean such money will be enough for multiple apartments.

And with West Coast states allegedly spending countless billions on "doing something" about homelessness, just giving away luxury apartments doesn't sound that crazy in comparison to these digits.

> $60k per tent site per year...It would be cheaper to rent apartments at current market rates, even in San Francisco.

That's $5k per month. Absolute best case, that's two one-bedroom apartments, so 6 people? Surely there are more than 6 people at the tent site.

No, the price seems to be $5k per _person_ per month: https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/sf-homeless-department...

At those prices some consultant/contractor/vendor must be getting outrageously rich.

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