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Comment by ska | Hacker News Reader

> clean the homeless up

I'm curious - what do you imagine that looks like?

One potential foundation is the tradition of reading the Riot Act. Normally citizens are allowed to move freely and gather. This is suspended during a riot for public safety. Homeless in general and encampments specifically can be seen as also a menace to public health and safety. Observe and record incidents of disruptive behavior, public drug use and pooping, and calls to responders and at certain level issue a warning then take action. These problem cases can cost communities hundreds of thousands. At some point something has to be done.

> These problem cases can cost communities hundreds of thousands

so let's continue to spend more on incarcerating them as a bandage rather than fixing the issues :)

> incidents of... pooping...

i'm sure they just do this outside for preference rather than utter lack of access to public facilities. why couldn't they be like me during my trip to SF where i could just patronize a business to use their bathroom when i needed to go?

> menace to public health and safety

love to see the intentional split between "public" and whatever group you'd put houseless people in (those "menaces"!)

https://nypost.com/2022/09/13/latino-sfpd-cop-branded-racist... : This smells like Cartel involvement at high levels of government.

Moving them to the shelters and telling them to stay off the street. If there’s no room in the shelter, providing them housing outside the city. If you have a shelter/provided housing it’s a crime to sleep on the streets.

Alternatively start up workhouses and sanitariums again. Government work in exchange for a safe, clean place to sleep and food for the day. Mental sanitariums for those people that are too far gone. That should provide enough of a disincentive over time to camp on the streets.

So, a form of incarceration?

An observation: most of the "simple answer" approaches to this seem to have failed badly in practice when/where they are attempted. There has to be some complexity, no?

And the current approach of leaving them to the streets is failing much much worse in practice. Of the politically and economically viable options, kicking them off the street and sending them to shelter (which they can refuse, but they can't stay on the street) is the best option I have seen. Long term we absolutely need to address the issues that cause homelessness, and I think we are overall heading that direction, but the problems of today need to be addressed with solutions for today.

Isn't that exactly what is being tried and currently failing in other places? I'm pretty sure I saw an article to that effect about Vancouver this year-ish (the one in Canada, not the one in Washington).

What is it about the shelters (other than lack of spaces) that is making people opt not to use them?

The whole area is one massive housing crisis there's barely space to put people with money for livable rates much less trying to house the entire homeless population.

Some of the replies point out that it's always more complicated than that.

One part of the problem is that the sheer cost of housing in San Francisco (and the surrounding) area is out of control. Some homeless people are simply priced out of the market. That generally is caused by a general lack of new construction in San Francisco and the Bay Area. But, I doubt that magically increasing the housing stock overnight will "solve" homelessness. (Because there are many reasons for homelessness.)

When I lived in the S.F. Bay area for almost a decade, I was shocked that the homeless problem was so bad. Where I'm from, the weather does put a sense of urgency on homelessness, because it's much more difficult to camp unsheltered in the winter. The Bay Area doesn't have the late October-November urgency to get people into shelters; nor do the homeless have the urgency to follow someone else's rules for a bit or risk freezing to death.

What I would suggest is to try to avoid seeing homeless as "others." Many people are homeless for different reasons; and it's important to empathize with the person who doesn't want the tent on their front door as much as it's important to empathize with the person in the tent.

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