Hacker News Reader

This doesn't track. San Francisco has arguably the most generous social safety nets in the entire country. The city is spending upwards of $100k per homeless person. (https://www.hoover.org/research/only-san-francisco-61000-ten....) The more San Fran spends on social services, the worse their crime becomes. I don't think this has anything to do with social safety nets or disenfranchisement.

View on HN

Just because you spend a lot of money, it doesn't mean you are doing something well. I could spend $10 million to have my front door changed, does that automatically mean I now have good security?

That's a fair argument. Current policies are clearly not working. What do think San Francisco could learn from much safer cities like Carmel, Meridian, Provo, Sugar Land, McAllen, and Pearland?

They are spending 100k per homeless person but probably cents actually reach the end person after every grifter in between have had their cut.

I think it's even worse than that: that whole system is benefitting from the situation, so has no incentive to actually do anything meaningful about the problem, just to pretend that they are. It's a variation on the Iron Law of Institutions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com