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Comment by triceratops | Hacker News Reader

> This has little to do with the availability of housing, or the cost of housing.

This is a startlingly ignorant take. Shelter is among the basic human needs. If people were starving to death, would you blame mental illness or food prices?

> Progressive attempts to solve this problem have all failed

Yes. Because they don't focus on creating more housing. Not "affordable" housing, just housing.

They're called "progressive" attempts because the city's politics is dominated by progressives. But every property owner and voter, regardless of political stripe, is responsible for this state of affairs.

There is exactly 1 solution to California's "housing crisis". More housing. Not "affordable" housing. Not mass transit alone. More. Housing. Moar. Build baby build. If that doesn't work, you know what you do? Build more housing. Beat those prices into the ground with construction cranes and hammers.

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If there were a million empty houses in San Francisco that were available free of charge, there would still be a massive homelessness problem because the real issue is not lack of housing, it's drug addiction and mental illness.

Why do you think so? What makes SF have so many more drug addicted or mentally ill people, compared to cities with sane housing prices?

Because everyone knows that SF will tolerate behavior that other cities will not, and that attracts the most problematic homeless people from all over the country. It's practically a network effect for homeless encampments.

> attracts the most problematic homeless people from all over the country

Here's a study someone else posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33010913

"The data shows that over 70% of all of SF's unhoused people became homeless while living in San Francisco"

So about 1/3 of them came from somewhere else! That's not normal. That's actually evidence of a strong attraction drawing people from other places.

And half of the 70% are "recent transplants."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33011351

Good weather, good services, no law enforcement harassment.

You're saying mentally ill, drug addicted people are capable of making rational decisions such as this. But in another thread, you also claimed that regular people who "would be successful and housed" in cheaper places don't make the seemingly rational decision to move away. How?

Something about SF is a draw for homeless people.

According to a 2019 survey [0], only 70% of people were living in SF prior to being homeless, and of those 70%, approximately half had lived in SF for less than ten years.

To me, that's staggering if 30% of the homeless population was already homeless before they moved to SF, and if another 30% became homeless within 10 years of moving to SF.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_San_Franci...

Rationality is not required. Someone sleeping rough in a place like my hometown is going to be moved along if they're in a highly visible area, driven to a shelter if it's dangerously cold, or killed by the elements if they don't get to shelter. Someone in San Francisco can sleep in the same spot right in the middle of everything, undisturbed, for years. Of course you're going to see more homeless people here.

The real issue is both. As I see it there are two types of homeless. There are the people who have a low wage job and for whatever reason get kicked out of their place. Maybe they're couch surfing, or maybe they're on the street. But they do have a desire to contribute, circumstance has just got in the way. These people would not be homeless without the housing affordability crisis since they would be able to save extra money or find a cheap place while they're down.

Then there are the chronically homeless. Those with no desire to become productive. These are the people that imo would be helped by forced rehab programs. But make no mistake, many, many homeless are the first type, not the second.

Any serious examination of the overall homeless problem also needs to take into account that for decades now, Republican governors in other states have been allowed to export their own social problems and homeless issues by busing the homeless to San Francisco and other liberal enclaves.

Should this be allowed? It's morally complex. For instance, if those people were in Nevada or Arizona, they'd likely die of exposure. San Francisco is a uniquely good place to survive being homeless, at least climate-wise.

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