Hacker News Reader

Comment by notch656a | Hacker News Reader

I've been homeless without using drugs and without being mentally ill. Honestly I don't see the big deal if you sleep in a tent and use appropriate sanitation. I was always careful to pack in pack out, to respect the community, to not become intoxicated, and to dispose of waste appropriately.

IMO the homeless issue is San Francisco is because they've practically incentivized being homeless by subsidizing the homeless and also making any defense against the crimes of homeless toothless (misdemeanor theft is barely enforced, it is illegal to use violent self defense to defend property, and weapons laws are among the most restrictive in the nation.)

You don't even have to incarcerate them. Just make city policies such that there's no advantage to being homeless in SF, other than maybe the weather.

View on HN

I know a guy who is currently homeless again. He works at Whole Foods and doesn't use alcohol or drugs, doesn't have a car and has a years rent in the bank.

He is one of the people I am very keen to help because he is literally sleeping in the park with screaming, violent drug addicts. He's told me he can't get section 8 housing or any other help as he has money. He has told me if he was an addict he knows he would be getting state payouts and 'help'.

He has lived in rented rooms in the past and I think a boarding house model for clean, sober low income workers is essential.

I was the first post on this thread. I feel we have to be extremely aggressive with the Honduran cartels who run the drugs into SF and sell them, and to triage people on the streets into appropriate facilities, including rural substance abuse recovery incarceration centers with appropriate services.

Once drugs have rewired your brain you are turned into a zombie that has been reprogrammed to do whatever it takes to keep the flow of your addiction coming. We have to break this cycle.

Why is he in one of the most expensive cities living on the streets when he has enough money to rent for a year?

I have lived in circumstances that I did not prefer but made decisions for safer/stable alternatives only because my survival instinct was stronger than my need to establish my need for freedom. I try to be empathetic but I can’t wrap my head around this kind of logic.

He's been here 10 years. I feel people who have a track record of living, working and paying taxes in place should have better access to resources than someone who just got off a bus from Tennessee with an advocate provided checklist of how to find resources to help support their drug habit.

OTOH: Thousands of immigrants on H1 visa have a track record of living, working and paying taxes in the United States, but will never get to vote or change a job or even leave the country. There is no guarantee that we will always get what we want.

We have a system where every individual has the freedom to live within the law of the land and using their own resources.

When living in San Francisco becomes untenable and yet the choice is made, the individual should accept responsibility for their decision.

Citizenship is a totally separate topic.

I agree. But you are claiming that the number of years having domicile in a location is an entitlement despite not being able to afford cost of living. How is that relevant/not irrelevant?

I'm unsure of the reasoning, but one plausible reasoning is that if one has been paying taxes to the most local unit (state/local) for the past 10 years or whatever by working at whole foods and buying things with his productive labor, that means that both he may have paid in enough society can help him and still break even, as well as provide some historical basis to presume the investment to help him get housed will pay in dividends in continuing taxes down the line.

One might argue if someone just shows up from afar in SF, you get them housed and their life back together, there's comparably (to the 10 year person) little reason to believe they're gonna stick around to pay back into the system and produce the kind of ROI on the localities investment that whole foods guy may give

I'm not saying this is a "good" argument per se, but it would one that would make sense to me. If someone put a gun to my head and said "figure out how to use taxes, and only taxes, to help the homeless" I would probably rank cities by unskilled income : cost of living, then build rehabilitation facilities in those areas and use a nationwide distributed tax model to offer people voluntary relocation and rehabilitation in partnership with local businesses which is jointly funded nationwide to avoid the situation seen such as in SF where the minute you give the homeless more benefits you get them coming from all around to benefit.

If you give homeless benefits just for showing up it's gonna end up as a race to the bottom, IMO, where whoever is the most 'helpful' sees a landslide of immigration of people needing help, which isn't practical when the load isn't shared. SF locals are probably not going to want to be the ones known as the person that foots the rehab bill for anyone who hitchhikes to town and then merrily walks away never to pay it back as soon as they get their heads on straight.

This person has enough money for a year’s rent in the bank and is still sleeping on the streets. That was my read. I have to confess that I am a little confused.

I confess I am also still a little confused as to how one can involuntarily be on the streets with a year's rent in the bank. In most cities that in connection with employment is at least enough to buy and maintain a van or something that runs well enough to not run afoul of the 72 hour street parking rules. I presume there are either ideological factors or some unique unusual personal situation at play. One wild idea is perhaps ideological opposition to landlords and belief that the automobile is bad for the earth, but that's completely speculative.

1/ There are no rooms to rent 2/ He doesn't drive and doesn't want to live in a vehicle 3/ He is not 100% mentally I suspect, and I would hate to see this functioning adult deteriorate on the streets

It’s a difficult situation for sure. Fwiw, anything that requires compassion and understanding, I am loathe to rely on state/govt for it. Here is where community needs to come together to find creative solutions.

Some suggestions:

1. Move to north bay or another area where it is more affordable. Whole Foods probably will allow transfers. 2. Can he upskill? Certificate courses or some such? 3. Can he get or can someone pitch in to get him a gym membership? 4. Will he be able to rent a room? 5. Room mate situation with someone? 6. Can he take driving lessons and obtain a license?

Perhaps you can help him get a license or a gym membership? If he has the money, it’s a small amount. Stability and community is very crucial for housing vulnerable folks.

There can be other jobs like house sitting or caretaking or pet sitting. There are many jobs online that also pay these days.

Best of luck to your friend.

> Just make city policies such that there's no advantage to being homeless in SF

I don't see any advantage to being homeless. Literally every human being without mental issues would prefer having a roof over their head. This is a market failure.

>I don't see any advantage to being homeless

You missed the "in SF" part of the sentence. In a sense you're correct, it is in part a market failure in SF for subsidizing homelessness.

>Literally every human being without mental issues would prefer having a roof over their head

I have a few times, on purpose. Not being responsible for a house can be liberating, depending on your life circumstances -- if you're not addicted, you're healthy and able bodied, and not mentally ill. It can be like an adventure where you see where you like to go, can get all the money you need for a week in only a day of day labor (which is trivial to get if you're able bodied and have an ID). Homelessness with serious personal problems is awful, but otherwise it can be an enjoyable lifestyle.

I would probably choose periodic homelessness still today were it not I have a child, whom CPS would probably take away if I enjoyed some of the liberties of my youth.

Good for you. The closest I've come to homelessness is renting a room so shitty that sleeping in the lab at my university was preferable. And I hated even that. I'd never be voluntarily homeless.

I think it's something you have to experience to understand. I wound up unexpectedly fired from a job when I didn't have much money. I rented a tiny room like you and hated it.

So I bought a shitty car and slept in the forest. The car finally broke down. I wound up homeless. I found out I really loved the forest and spending my time outdoors. I loved to spend months at a time in tents, coming into town to do day labor. Really it's a life I dream of nearly daily now that I have responsibilities to my family that keep me chained to a desk 5 days a week, and to a child during the weekends.

Only once you've been homeless you realize the problems of the homeless are typically the reason why they became homeless - drugs/addiction, mental illness, criminal record, lack of skills for employment. I had none of those problems really, so to me it was just a new adventure, except I could go practically anywhere I wanted and just enjoy travelling. I knew how to live outdoors and can easily adapt a tarp for inclement weather so for me it was just fun, for real! But I know it isn't that way for someone who doesn't want that life. I could always just pick up a day of day labor, and after a couple weeks of that afford to rent another room -- many people have personal problems that keep them from doing that.

> Literally every human being without mental issues

That's the problem right there.

Is there evidence that 100% of SF's homeless have mental issues?

Are you aware that mentally ill and drug-addicted people are often able to hold down jobs and afford rent? But that only works when rent is reasonable.

Apparently, people who would be successful and housed in cheaper markets do prefer being homeless in SF over moving.

> people who would be successful and housed in cheaper markets

Do you have proof that they would, in fact, be successful? Have you tried running an RCT? Maybe they would't be able to find jobs, or have childcare available from family nearby.

Even though I'm inclined to believe people have deeper issues that would prevent them from thriving anywhere, I find Yglesias persuasive on this one [0]. Drug abuse and mental illness prevalence don't predict homelessness rates... rents do. Obviously you want to lower the rents in the places with housing crises, but those crises exist for deep and persistent reasons. Meanwhile, if in fact some currently homeless people are capable of thriving under conditions of lower rent, getting them into those conditions where they actually exist today could be cheap and cost-effective. A corporate relocation package is like $5,000, and a permanent BMR unit is like $500,000-$1m. It's orders of magnitude. I would love to see someone do the RCT. Even if the success rate is low, let's help the people we can help. Hell, I'll pay for a few out of pocket.

But I doubt it would get past an ethics committee, and if it did there would be a huge scandal. We're pretty deeply committed that the huddled masses of the world must be housed within SF. Even as we're equally deeply committed that they not exist at any particular site within SF, and won't contemplate anywhere near the unit counts (from a budget perspective or a permitting perspective) that would be required.

[0] https://www.slowboring.com/p/homelessness-housing

Couldn’t it also be that high rent areas are desirable areas and so everyone heads there, homeless or not?

The advantage is that you save money by not needing to pay rent.

Not a ton of savings, tbh. You have to eat out every meal, deal with your shit getting stolen, lost sleep, probably lowered social status leading to less desirable jobs. Being poor is expensive.

Nah you don't. I bought an MSR stove that runs off gasoline you can fill up for $.10 at any gas station and then bought bags of rice and lentils that last a week for ~$10. Backpack on back, ask day labor place where to keep backpack when working, employer always had some place to tuck it away. I could earn ~120 / day and only need ~$80 a week to survive. Slept like a baby under my tarp.

If you do day labor all week you just made $500 and you only need $100 to survive the week. Pretty easy to sock money away that way... if you decide to rent a room a couple weeks of that gets you your first week in a weekly rental and from there you can clean up and get a regular factory job. I had a well oiled process that I ran that cycle quite a few times. AFter 1-3 months at a factory I would generally get a fork-lift job or something that paid even more and from there you're basically as rich as the average American.

Bonus: If you have HN skills your average wage from the fork-lift job will give you enough to buy a nice laptop, hi-speed internet and then a high-paying programming job -- although it's obviously not generally applicable (although I've done it).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com