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Comment by s1artibartfast | Hacker News Reader

I think there are a number of partial solutions that would help, at least in the long run.

A couple realistic policies are:

First and foremost is addressing the affordability crisis. Roll back zoning regulations. Allow smaller housing spaces, reduce building costs, and streamline the building approval process.

Crack down on drug dealing and theft. These issues perpetuate and feed into the homelessness problem.

A less realistic possibility that would be dead on arrival is converting some of the copious green spaces in SF into low income housing units. Converting half of the presidio of GG park to SROs and RV camping would drastically improve the stable housing options for homeless.

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A lot of people would disagree with those proposals, though. They're not new ideas. The most recent DA did exactly what he said he was going to do, which was (essentially) work at fixing the underlying problems, and not promote a system of spiraling inequality by ruining people's lives (and preventing them from ever getting ahead) by criminalizing them for pretty crime.

Some people see that as humane. I think SF has rebuked the idea. Still, I don't know that fixing theft and drug dealing is enough to fix tent cities.

And the affordability crisis is also equally unclear. It's easy as an outsider to say "make things more affordable, build more!" but it also requires ignoring a set of stakeholders' wishes and desires in favour of someone who might have less basis in the city.

Who is more entitled to a discussion about what gets built: someone who has lived in the city for 40 years, or someone who just arrived to work, or someone who lives in the city but without a home? What about the peole who own property and pay taxes, but can't legally vote? a

There's lots to consider here.

>A lot of people would disagree with those proposals, though.

Disagree that the proposals would work, or disagree that they want execute them?

I agree that there are complex stakeholders for issues like building more homes, but I think that underscores my point.

It is not that this solution to homelessness is unknown or impossible, it is that people generally don't like it and don't want to do it!

> Converting half of the presidio of GG park

There is no “presidio of GG park”; Golden Gate Park (a city park, and the third most visited urban park in the US) and the Presidio of San Francisco (a national park on the grounds of a former Spanish, then Mexican, then US military base) are different things.

Converting the Presidio is outside of San Francisco’s scope of legal options, converting half of GG park to low-cost housing is legally possible for the city, but fiscally dubious.

> Converting half of the presidio of GG park to SROs and RV camping would drastically improve the stable housing options for homeless.

uhh how about we start with ugly things like parking lots and urban freeways rather than destroying the priceless parks that make san Francisco beautiful and materially wealthy?

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