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Comment by latchkey | Hacker News Reader

I think we need to give the homeless more money, that should solve the problem.

No. YIMBY has the better plan. We need more housing appropriate to the needs of our people.

Money can't buy you what isn't being built.

the problem being that a large majority of the homeless in SF aren't "your people". They aren't SF locals, they move there for the benefits and the nice weather.

Yeah, I'm aware. In one of my comments here, I link to a piece I wrote with a title along the lines of "I believe California is the dumping ground for the nation's homeless."

We have a nationwide shortage of affordable housing. The fact that the homeless flock to someplace temperate and relatively dry with soup kitchens and such in no way changes my point: Money cannot buy what does not exist to be bought. Anywhere in the US.

We need to fix our housing supply issues. We need to fix it across the nation, not just in SF. SF is suffering disproportionately, but my point stands: Throwing money at the homeless won't fix this. The solutions they need aren't out there. They need to be built.

SF has spent over $3B on the homeless over the last 5 years, and the pop continues to skyrocket along with rampant crime and drug use. Money isn’t the issue, at least in this case

The point about closing institutions because of abuse is not wrong. The solution isn't to close them and push the mentally ill out on the street, it's fix the institutions!

^ 100% agree, some mentally ill people just need to be in an institution, where they can either get the care and treatment they need - and hopefully be cured and become a functional member of society - or at least where the amount of harm they are able to cause to themselves (and society) can be minimised.

Giving money to bureaucracies whose nominal mission is to serve the homeless is not the same as giving money to the homeless.

Cool wheelchairs!

>@ShellenbergerMD

>MD = my initials. Not a doc

Classy…

You’d have to be a real piece of shit to pull out your iPhone pro max 13 to film a hobo brawl to further your agenda on twidder.

TBH I didn’t even notice the fight for most of the video. I thought the subject was the heroin hangers, the guy beating the sidewalk with a broom, and people otherwise not knowing what planet they’re on.

So you would have stepped in and broke it up?

Or called the cops? Good luck with that. When I lived in SF, I called 911 to report someone violently attempting to break in to a house down the street from me. Cops never came. You think they’ll come for a bum fight?

Counter anecdote: I’ve called 911 twice in San Francisco. (One for fire alarm, another for an impending street fight after I witnessed a car crash). In both instances, first responders were on the scene in mere minutes.

I’d probably have just kept on walking and not contributed shittiness to the situation.

I don’t like junkies and tweakers but I’m not gonna use them or punch down on them. You do you though, I could care less.

You’d have be completely spineless and without a moral compass to watch that cluster fuck of a situation and walk in by and do nothing.

Call me a coward if you wish, but the wise thing to do is to distance yourself from the situation and contact the authorities. I would be in no way equipped to intervene and would probably end up getting hurt. This isn’t some situation where all it takes is a good samaritan to swoop in and save people.

The most reasonable thing to do is to call the police and leave it to those who have the official capacity to get involved.

Police hardly care. They'll arrive 15 minutes after someone has been beaten within an inch of their life, take a report, and do no investigating. CCTV that captured the whole thing? They won't even bother to collect it. That's too much work. Have seen this first hand. A good samaritan can make a real difference in the moment, with some large personal risk to themselves of course. The least you can do is make noise and make it clear that the police are coming.

I disagree.

Regardless, recording it for social media is beyond spineless- it’s downright dystopian. I think you know this though ;)

I couldn’t walk past a scene like that and not be compelled to take some action. Honestly I’d probably do something similar: document it in someway, involve the authorities, try to enact change.

What a appalling representation of humanity.

I’ve been to SF around 8x in 10 years. I remember SF locals literally stepping over homeless people lying on the ground as they exited a Starbucks.

Documenting it is the least someone can do.

> Documenting it is the least someone can do.

Not only is pulling out your cellphone at the sight of violence so you can post it on twitter not deplorable, it's actually heroic. Now I've heard it all.

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