Comment by mrobot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrobot | Hacker News Reader

I think the article is implying the answer to the failed 'left' policies is to replace them with more 'right-wing' policies. I've seen bills popping up that involve criminalizing the homeless or making camping illegal except in designated areas [1], [2]. These are really just 'out of sight, out of mind bills'. Homeless will not respond to criminalization of being homeless just as addicted people don't respond to legislation criminalizing drug use. We are even wasting money on Boston Dynamics robot dogs in Hawaii to patrol the homeless [3]. The right-wing policies almost always seem like they will just end up being violent. However, i do agree the 'left' policies are insufficient. They are bandaids on the real problem: that rental housing is not 100% public and that even mentioning this gets you laughed at and shunned. Public housing could easily work and be healthy, well-maintained, and great, really. The only thing preventing it from working is the forces of private real estate. Any mention of it, everyone will respond with just random pictures of housing they claim to be some socialist country's public housing, saying "is THIS what you want?!?!?". The idea that you couldn't build and maintain excellent public housing is laughable. It's fine, we should seek it.

[1]: https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2021/10/13/bill-calls-for-stat... [2]: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/using-new-law-la-city-coun... [3]: https://www.civilbeat.org/2021/01/honolulu-police-spent-1500...

SF is simply too expensive for 10k homeless people (~1% of the population). You could care for a quarter of the homeless population in the US (~145k) for just the shelter-cost of 10k homeless people in SF.

Why should the ones in SF get such special treatment and massive sums of money spent on them over other homeless people? The majority of homeless people in SF aren't from SF, and >30% of the homeless population in SF moved to SF already homeless.

Why should SF residents pay exorbitant amounts of money to house them when it's the most expensive city for housing in the US?

SF already spends > $100 PER month PER resident - ~$300 PER month PER taxpayer on homelessness. The budget has swelled since 2018 - and yet the problem has almost doubled in the same period.

It's almost as if pouring money on the problem doesn't solve it.

I'm sympathetic to a leftist solution here, but let's not ignore the reality of what happened when we built huge public housing buildings in the 50s and 60s. They were a failure for everyone involved, and there aren't any easy solutions.

What is a good source on it that is not written by a bourgeoisie economist or other agent of the wealthy?

Go take a walk through a housing project in Baltimore or Brooklyn and you won't have any doubts about the situation or have to trust the opinion of someone else. Just make sure you get your affairs in order first.

This doesn't help. I already know "the projects are bad".

If you think "the projects are bad" means "public housing can never work" and you haven't looked at who benefits from public housing failing and how they would control legislation and would alter the course of any project you planned, and how a good example would certainly cost them a lot of money, you aren't really taking the question of developing working public housing seriously.

How would you avoid those same issues happening yet again to the hoped for shiny new effort?

> How would you avoid those same issues happening yet again to the hoped for shiny new effort?

Maybe i am getting your tone wrong, but in saying 'hoped for shiny new effort' i think maybe you are dismissing an effort from ever working, which seems it would be defeatist for anyone who genuinely believes public housing could be good. I guess i just don't feel like you are asking in good faith. If you wanted to do it, you would have to believe you can overcome these challenges by becoming aware of all of them, and then organizing to make it happen.

Just to understand what we are up against if we actually try to make it happen, look to the Philadelphia MOVE bombing of 1985 [1]. People organizing fully within their rights yet Philadelphia bombed Philadelphia. Smears all around of course. Anything but admit bombing your own city is bad, i guess.

[1]: https://billypenn.com/2020/05/11/move-101-why-30-years-ago-p...

This is about as sympathetic a documentary as you're likely to find. It deals with the Pruitt-Igoe complex in St Louis. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_articl...

Bulldozing the Fillmore and public works back then were not leftist solutions, they were thinly veiled racist policies.

That changed somewhat later, and the left is fine with funding as long as it’s not in their back yard.

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