Comment by m0llusk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by m0llusk | Hacker News Reader

San Francisco empowered some of the most wealthy people not only in the US currently but in all human history. When working from home became not only possible but necessary many left. Most of those who left ended up nearby in other less dense parts of the roughly eight million strong metropolitan area of which San Francisco is merely a central part.

The failure comparison context that saturates this piece is based on analysis that is mistaken about the composition and goals of urban areas. This is because this piece is not about analysis, but political slant. The Hoover Institution has a very strong agenda and beliefs that drive its actions. This is perhaps most clear in the final sentence that explains that all these problems can be changed by voting differently. This conclusion is not clear and not supported by the piece. Much of what is going on in and around San Francisco is driven by the population and commerce there over which the government has limited control.

It is difficult to make progress with complex social programs when one's agenda is preset in long static beliefs and prevents taking the situation seriously.

"Much of what is going on in and around San Francisco is driven by the population and commerce there over which the government has limited control."

Why don't cities like Miami and Houston have a homeless problem like San Francisco's?

Between weather (Miami and Houston both regularly suffer weather conditions that can kill from exposure), geography (SF is uniquely constrained, it's almost like an island), and reputation (SF has historically been considered both a cultural and queer refuge, and queer people make up a large amount of the unsheltered), you have a series of unique factors that make SF an ideal destination for homeless people, or people on the brink of homelessness.

Now, add Regan's removal of mental health services (something we're still dealing with today), skyrocketing rent (removing the bottom rung of renting), and a sudden population pressure, and you have a uniquely awful set of circumstances.

And no, this does not absolve SF and Bay Area leadership. They have repeatedly thrown money at the problem without any accountability whatsoever, but if the unique factors that affect SF were to hit Miami or Houston, they'd probably find themselves with the same problem overnight.

> Regan's removal of mental health services

You know, for many years I also echoed this point but then I realized that it's been almost 50 years since he gutted mental health services. That's plenty of time for the largely democratic leadership in Sacramento to reinstate those services. Why have they not chosen to do so?

Because, it really wasn't an issue until relatively recently. It's more fair to say, why haven't they done it in the past 10 years? And the answer is, they are.

The state has been pledging increasing amounts of money into the system, and has been working to draft legislature that allows for extended holds.

Spinning up an entire new hospital system is difficult. It's not something you can do in a year or two, and expect to have positive long term outcomes from.

Implementing longer holds past the 72 hours is difficult to do, unpopular legislation (because of potential for abuse), and fraught with legal challenges. The laws required basically have to say that the state has the right to hold someone against their will, and force medication upon them. That is a very difficult thing to write, implement, and monitor.

Furthermore, implementing these facilities and conservatorships in a humane and ethical way is difficult - Reagan was right to shut down the facilities, but wrong to not instead spend the money and effort to improve and overhaul them.

It seems that those unique factors also include a lack of law enforcement, a reluctance to allow new housing and an unfriendly business climate.

If the leadership in Miami or Houston decided to behave the same way toward the communities they govern; I'd expect similar results as well.

Reagan signed the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, but it was initiated by 2 Democrats and one Republican. There was this well-meaning effort to curb the abuse of involuntary committal (mental asylums) that was unfortunately completely disconnected from reality that some people do need to be committed for society and their own safety. Perhaps this was due to the romanticization of mental illness as in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (released a decade after LPS but partaking of the same zeitgeist).

Curious about the homeless rates in Miami vs SF, I used the links at the bottom of this comment to estimate 1570 homeless living in Miami city limits vs 7754 living in SF. With SF's larger population, this corresponds to a 0.35% homeless rate in Miami vs 0.95% in SF.

Trying to capture more of how the homeless problem would "feel" from the perspective of someone walking around the city, I also calculated the homeless people per square mile of the two cities as Miami: 43.61, and SF: 165.33.

By either metric, SF does measure out worse than Miami by 3-4x

[Current Miami-Dade county homeless counts: 3738](https://web.archive.org/web/20220827094121/https://www.miami...)

[Miami city population: 439,890 at time of posting](https://www.google.com/search?q=miami+city+population&sxsrf=...)

[Proportion of Miami county homeless located in the city proper: 42%](http://ci.miami.fl.us/communitydevelopment/conplan/content/0....)

[SF homeless population: 7754 people](https://sfgov.org/scorecards/safety-net/homeless-population#....)

[SF total population: 815,201](https://www.google.com/search?q=san+francisco+city+populatio...)

[Miami land area: 36.00 sq mi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami)

[SF land area: 46.9 sq mi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco#:~:text=It%20cov....)

A quick peek on Zillow for houses under $200,000 in Miami shows a lot of availability. Same thing in SF basically shows literally one unit.

Houston also has a pretty effective, progressive program for the homeless.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-...

Now it empowers the most prolific shoplifters in human history.

And a place where you can lose money at record speed.

> San Francisco empowered some of the most wealthy people not only in the US currently but in all human history

Bullshit, they could've done it anywhere else, it just happened to be there. The idea that "San Francisco" empowered anything is just complete delusion, it was the people that did it.

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