Since I moved out of SF I’ve wondered if there will ever be some public epiphany that with their well-intentioned policies they’ve reinforced what they most wanted to destroy: a society of the haves and have-nots.
As a newly-former SF resident and worker, what I witnessed over the past decade confirms your sad summary. The unintended consequences of misguided yet well-intentioned political policies.
All American cities are anti-growth. The hippie legacy is pretty thin at this point and the cities are closer culturally to each other than the stagnant areas.
The Bay Area/California simply had more relativd demand for growth than many other areas, and better weather than the Northeast re homelessness on particular, and this is the inevitable result.
NIMBYism is Houston, Atlanta, etc. buying one-way bus tickets to Seattle and SF. Locals who want the problem solved are not NIMBY's.
We're seeing that all over the world, especially in Europe with the remains of the Lumières ideals, ideals which don't scale nor work in our globalized/capitalist world
I once looked at the SF budget for SFDPH and it showed all the roles, budget and costs. Payroll being the highest - but it also stated the number of homeless people in the city
I did the simple math of dividing the budget by the nu,ber of homeless and at that time the number would have equated paying every homeless person $12 an hour. or ~$24,000 per year.
Whichwould equate to UBI for such folks - and one could put stipulations on that such that it automatically made a savings account for the user with some % of that savings going into a fund which would be designed to, with the interest made on investment for that fund - be used to pay for more housing developments, job training etc...
regardless of my lack of expertise in developing homeless help programs (I have thought of several - here is the one I wanted to apply to YC with) I try, and compared to what the city of SF spends and how well their policies work, I think evaluating other options is critically needed.
Here was my concept for applying to YC (this is from ~5 years ago or so)
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'Care Fleet' -- Mobile hygiene and necessities vehicle:
A box truck with a built out full set of bathrooms with capability to self steam sterilize after each use.
A one-seat barber station.
A service of providing clothing to all homeless in the form of, effectively, Scrubs. And not some crazy embarrassing color. Offer them in grey, black, brown/khaki only.
Socks and Shoes.
Basic hygiene kit (tooth brush, shaver, soap, whatever, wipes, female hygiene stuffs)
Allow homeless to take a shower, get a cut, get some scrubs and help info and some hydration and help info.
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How I maintain compassion for the homeless is twofold; I have three precious beautiful children.
So whenever I see a homeless person, I see someones precious baby, a human who was once perfectly innocent.
Whenever I see homeless walking in absolute shreds of clothing, no shoes, or like one sock on, it breaks my heart.
If you have children, look at them - now imagine them walking through the streets filthy with shreds of clothing barely clinging to their bodies and being invisible to the rest of society aside from their disdain for your situation.
See your child in that person.
Addiction can be linked to dopamine regulation disorder e.g. ADHD and risky behavior like gambling addiction, drug addiction, alcohol addiction, etc.
We need to address the mental health problem underlying homelessness
If you imagine a society crippled by gambling addiction, perhaps the best place to start would be by closing some casinos.
Just because your experience is seeing rampant drug use in the homeless population doesn’t mean it’s the main reason they are on the street. Drug addiction is not mutually exclusive from having mental illness and from having a degree in neuroscience, I learned that being neuroatypical with an imbalanced brain chemistry, e.g. dopamine regulation disorders and other neurotransmitter issues can easily result in the symptoms of risky behavior and substance abuse and addiction, which further damages your brain and neurodegeneration, thus having more mental illness.
Being sober from substance abuse is a huge factor to achieving gainful employment and rejoining society. Having untreated mental illness is increasing the difficulty mode of your life because you are not in control of your full brain if it’s imbalanced and addiction is an emergent neurochemical response to reinforcing pathways in your brain from a hyper pleasurable activity that lights up your imbalanced brain. Sorry I’m rambling but mental illness and homelessness is never really talked about they are destined to be left out of society if they can’t utilize their full cognitive abilities due to untreated mental illness and psychiatric intervention.
Yes, a small part of homelessness is caused by drug issues (far more drug problems are the consequences of homelessness) but you only have to look at the absence of a proper welfare state, health system, and other essential safety nets, to see why things are so bad.
You want to live in a society without massive social problems, you have to pay a decent amount of tax to support the services that sustain a good society.
I've travelled all over America and Europe. The difference between attitudes to homeless people and welfare spending is vast. I've heard so many Americans describe homeless people as "bums".
> nor is lack of spending at all.
The small government and lack of a welfare and healthcare system are the principle criticism aimed at the US by Europeans. It's such a shame, as there are many things I admire about America but I wouldn't want to live in such an inequitable country without these now well-established essential components of a civilised society.
Having said that:
> just listen or read with an open mind.
As you wrote so reasonably, I will examine this material afresh, to see if it presents any convincing counter-arguments. The cold hard facts of US tax and government spending etc. will be hard to overcome, but I will be patient.
> this is about solving a problem that is destroying American cities.
This is certainly something we agree on, it is so tragic to see, it feels like another sign of America's downfall - a decline that has consequences for every western nation.
For our part, in the UK we are headed down the American path: slashing public spending, which has led to the closure of many of our homeless hostels, eradicating the welfare safety net so that many people live on the street for lack of housing, etc. The result has been soaring homelessness in our cities on a level I had not seen outside of America until the last decade.
I was particularly shocked when I came to the US by the sheer amount of poverty, disparity, etc. But I recently realized that the situation might not be that much better in Europe, it's just that poverty and disparity is usually moved to the suburbs and less visible.
I'm sorry, I don't think it's immoral for me to want to live in a neighborhood where all my neighbors are housed, and keep their feces and drug abuse indoors.