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Comment by levzettelin | Hacker News Reader

I think the problem is when people are incapable of grappling with their demons even in the privacy of their own homes. If given a place to stay, many people _choose_ to use it for non-productive things. Surely, exploding housing prices make things worse, but it's also easy enough to see why productive members of society want to distance themselves from this destructive behavior. After all, even the excellent shelter that you claim for NYC doesn't really seem to have resulted in paradise.

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If you're talking about initiatives to house the homeless, I don't think it's just about "being given a place to stay". People who have gotten to the point where they lose their place in the first place are already traumatized, and likely to lose any sense of security from having another place.

Add to that, housing designed for recently-homeless people is not conducive to improving oneself, and the other resources they need in conjunction with that are often absent, or scarce.

> but it's also easy enough to see why productive members of society want to distance themselves from this destructive behavior.

Classic game theory: "fuck you, got mine". When everyone in a society just looks out for themselves instead of for their fellow citizens as well, you get precisely what happens in SF - although there are external factors making the issue worse, such as Republiqan mayors busing out the homeless to Democrat/progressive areas or harassing and demonizing them until they leave on their own.

No, but NYC has far, far better street-crime situation than SF.

Understood. I'm not arguing against providing housing for the homeless (although I'm also not sure I'd argue for it). My point is more that (as with everything else) one can look at "strongly rising rents" as either a cause or an effect. The left-wing point-of-view is that it's a cause, which then leads to homelessness and the problems associated with it. On the other hand, right-wing folks might be more inclined to think of it as an effect of some other problem (e.g., a populace in which an increasing percentage of people is unproductive). Both points-of-view strike me as having merit.

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