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Comment by HlessClaudesman | Hacker News Reader

Getting accosted several homeless people in a short stretch feels unsafe, especially to the sort of out of towner who is not inured to it, in a way that driving does not. Both have a very low risk per unit of travel, but in the moment we have no way of qualitatively measuring that risk.

I stayed in SF for a few nights, it was pretty shocking to me the amount of homeless people (euphemism creep: temporarily unhoused) and the various tactics they employed to try and get money. One lady was just screaming at people in a fast food restaurant, I guess she was hoping to get paid in order to go away. This was 20 years ago and I hear the situation has only gotten worse since.

California treating homeless people like sacred cows is eventually going to wreck their inner cities for everyone.

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Maybe instead of complaining about homeless people we should complain about how capitalism creates homelessness.

Maybe instead of pretending homelessness is a strictly capitalist problem we should look at whether it’s been a problem elsewhere:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Russia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_China

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotjebi

You don't have a homelessness problem if you send the homeless to labour camps.

Why is capitalism only creating homeless encampments in San Fran and not generally in the US? Maybe it’s not capitalism at fault here but a government that is unwilling or unable to supply standard social safety nets like homeless shelters and addiction therapy.

> San Fran and not generally in the US

SF attracts homeless from all over the US, given its mild weather (great for living outside) and generous social services. It has been like that forever also, you can watch old movies from the 1920s about hobos jumping trains to get to SF (or LA, or Seattle, or Portland, or even Vancouver BC, choose any of the west coast cities, all for similar reasons).

People have freedom of movement in the USA, and they mostly take advantage of it.

> Maybe it’s not capitalism at fault here but a government that is unwilling or unable to supply standard social safety nets like homeless shelters and addiction therapy.

The issue is then how do you prevent one locality from having their resources swamped fixing what is really a national problem. SF can't fix the nations problems, so its voters/tax payers get jaded really quickly.

I encourage you to take a few days to walk around as a tourist in downtown San Francisco and ask how yourself: how could this situation be improved?

You’re right. For example in Soviet Russia – no one was homeless or unemployed, since everyone was guaranteed a place to live and a place to work. Granted, gulags did not have the most comfortable accommodations, and you had to work long hours for free to live there, and potentially could end up in a mass grave, BUT at least you didn’t have to be accountable for your decisions like in these pig capitalist societies.

Agreed, but we should also also talk about how the social left basically got mental institutions shut down in the 80s, and how there is literally no place to put people who are unable to mentally deal with life in america.

Mentally ill people are a massive part of the homeless population and we basically just yeet them out on to the street.

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