Why San Francisco Is a Homeless Mecca
wsj.com
wsj.com
> The city of San Francisco released data last week showing that 55% of homeless individuals rejected shelter when offered it
I think it's very important to understand why people turn down the beds. There are several reasons-
* Shelters have very restricted hours, so if someone has a job that includes nights they likely can't use a shelter. A large number of homeless people are employed.
* To accept space at a shelter homeless people often have to abandon their belongings. If they have a tent, for example, these normally aren't allowed.
* Getting a bed for one night does not mean that they'll have one the second night. So throwing away their tent for one night in a bed just doesn't make sense.
* Shelters often don't allow pets, and a lot of homeless people have dogs.
> She’s right. San Francisco is under a federal injunction that bars officials from enforcing laws against camping or sleeping in public spaces as long as its homeless population exceeds available shelter beds.
There's a really, really important point here. If every homeless person accepted a bed, there still would be no where near enough to cover the homeless population. This is part of the reason people aren't willing to accept temporary shelter, as they know it's temporary (since there isn't enough for everyone the city basically rotates people around)
It's also really important to note that SF has, per capita (of population, not of homeless population), the lowest amount of shelter beds of any major city in the US. The bay area itself is even worse, as some cities don't have any shelter space at all. A huge part of this is because housing is so expensive, as is building.
This article tries to play it off as people just choosing to be homeless, but the reality is a lot more nuanced than that.
* Drugs and alcohol are not allowed
I know this is anecodotal (as is your comment), but I've spent a lot of time around the homeless population. I was "housed homeless" for a year, and my sister was homeless for several years due to mental illness.
The rate of drug use amongst the homeless does tend to be higher than the average population, and I don't think there's any denying that. However, it isn't nearly as universal as people seem to think. The average homeless person is homeless for less than two years, and it is normally due to financial reasons. Given programs that provide housing these people can normally come off the streets and live great lives. The simple fact that so many people manage to bounce back shows that what the average person things of homeless people isn't the actual reality.
The other thing, and this might sound obvious, is that the people who do drugs or drink simply take their stuff before they go to the shelters. These aren't people with hundreds of dollars to blow on their addictions. They often panhandle, eat, drug/do drugs, and then look for a place to crash. This also isn't the entire homeless population, just a smaller portion of it (that people use to justify not helping the larger portion, even though the whole population does need help).
I recognize the solutions are more complex than just force people to give up their pets, but most of those solutions involve some application of coercive force.
Edit: I did not explicitly spell this out, but clearly if you take away the dog it should be put up for adoption, not executed on the street while the owner is forced to watch, for maximum cruelty. Some people seem to think I was advocating something like the latter.
Sorry, but there are worse things in the world than putting down animals.
And don’t even try to come at me if you eat meat! Every one of us who eats factory farmed meat (y.t. included) is participating in far worse atrocities than a shelter humanely euthanizing a relative handful of dogs.
(EDIT: 5 minutes after and the killing was advocated. I rest my case.)
Imagine being a young child, already traumatized by ending up homeless, and now the pet you've been growing up with gets dragged off by the authorities to be executed.
It's absolutely the case that difficult problems can require the state to exert force to solve them, but I'm also just not convinced that forcing people into shelters is going to fix everything. Especially in this case where we know the area does not have enough beds for everyone, and the constraints enforced to get a bed are onerous (throw out your belongings, get rid of your pets, etc)
Some of the people who reject housing also cannot realistically be in a shelter because they will just cause trouble for everyone else if you force them to go. My brother used to work in law enforcement and this was an issue with the most troublesome homeless people in the area - as a law enforcement officer he really didn't have any workable tools. If you take them to a shelter they'll get kicked out because they're troubled, and if you take them to jail their condition will not improve (only deteriorate) and then they end up back on the street again once they're discharged.
> Imagine being a young child, already traumatized by ending up homeless, and now the pet you've been growing up with gets dragged off by the authorities to be executed.
Im sorry but pets die, it’s a part of life. It can be traumatic no matter what the circumstances. But so is living unhoused on the street, I’d imagine.
And this is exactly the attitude I mean. You, a well intentioned liberal, like to think that we can regulate society and enforce laws without causing any trauma to anyone involved.
Sometimes you have to take away a pet from a family in the name of the greater good for society as a whole, for instance if that pet is a danger to others.
And I did not say that forcing people into shelters will fix everything. There are a lot of other problems including drug addiction and mental illness. It’s incredibly sad how far we’ve allowed the situation to degrade, and the climb out of here will be difficult.
Just an utter lack of empathy. People like you should have no say in how a society is run.
And stupid cruel people with power make others suffer and some of them will end up homeless.
The homeless needs a lot of nurturing to get back on their feet.
If the choice is between them getting back on their feet but having to put the dog up for adoption (which is what I meant, not executing the dog on the spot), vs being stuck indefinitely homeless, I know which one I'm picking.
And again, I don't think "dogs" are the main impediment to homeless rehabilitation, the whole discussion is a sideshow. It was an illustrative example about well meaning intentions gone awry.
I am skeptical the choice you presented was illustrative. Temporary shelter is not enough often.
The supply of dogs exceeds demand. Have the honesty and courage to acknowledge the consequences of your proposals.
Life can be very cruel. And when everyone and everything failed that man, and nothing left for him but that dog, he is then faced with a choice of between leaving the dog to try to fit again in a world that hurt him. No wonder many are stuck in this situation.
I think letting people build the housing that people need would be 1000x the life saver compared to letting them have a dog once they're already out on the street. This is like the "let them eat cake" of homelessness policy.
It's a complete non-starter politically.
We are in the current mess wrt housing because many of the solutions are political non-starters, but I am not trying to advocate the most politically acceptable solutions on HN, but instead encourage people to examine whether or not their genuine, well meaning intentions may be counterproductive in some cases.
And also, I am not trying to assert that but for euthanizing homeless people's dogs, all of CA's homeless issues would be solved. Clearly that's not the case.
But in the context of the discussion, if we take for granted that doing X for homeless people is good, whatever X may be (e.g. moving them into a shelter, attending an AA meeting, seeing a doctor, whatever), my point is that you may need to apply moderate, reasonable and proportionate levels of force and/or coercion in order to achieve X.
Fine and acceptable, even to most progressives I think, but also in my opinion entirely tangential until we have resolved what X is first. Moreover, I am of the belief that for effectively chosen values of X the required amount of coercive force will be substantially lower than what most people seem to think is actually necessary.
AND, the current law in place is that ZERO coercion/force can be applied to homeless people. Just read what Mayor Breed said, it sounds like they cannot enforce any type of nuisance, public safety, or sanitation laws against homeless people.
I think this statement is eminently reasonable. Although a monopoly on coercive force is one important defining feature of government, I think it's desirable to have its minimization as the highest priority. Moreover, I think in the US our baseline for appropriate levels of coercive force is far too high.
> the current law in place is that ZERO coercion/force can be applied to homeless people
As I was stressing earlier, if we don't have a reasonable outcome at the other end of the coercive force applying it anyway is unethical and ineffective. I don't believe that they are legally prevented from enforcing eg. noise ordinances (could be wrong here). They are merely prevented from throwing out someone's tent and kicking them to the next block.
> I think this statement is eminently reasonable. Although a monopoly on coercive force is one important defining feature of government, I think it's desirable to have its minimization as the highest priority. Moreover, I think in the US our baseline for appropriate levels of coercive force is far too high.
Agree to disagree. I think coercive force should applied where appropriate, not avoided at any and all cost (a very strong qualifier). For instance, releasing defendants with GPS monitors prior to trial, and then arresting them and holding them in jail if they violate the terms of the release.
Meanwhile, coercive force in the form of escalating fines and, eventually, imprisonment, is applied to people who would dare to build apartments on their own land and then rent them to others. Where is the outcry over that? It is truly a tragedy of our own making.
Most who rail against progressive elites make the opposite claim.
Maybe rethink why so many see the shelters as the worse option before you start trying to justify authoritarian approaches.
You're arguing for a cruel and authoritarian option no matter how much you want blame those you want to victimise.
Yes, if we took the pet away from them it would be more convenient for the rest of us. It would also be more convenient if they did not exist at all. Unfortunately that's not the reality we live in. We really like giving people agency in their own lives, and taking it away isn't something most of us are huge fans of. We can debate whether or not that's a good thing, but for now, people have agency, even temporarily unhoused people, and they don't want to give up their pets, their lifetime companion, in exchange for a few days of warmth.
2) So, the idea is that until the government guarantees a free rental unit that accepts pets and provides a storage unit for all of a homeless person's stuff, it should be prevented from enforcing any laws about camping in public spaces and preventing the public from using those spaces?
If you tell a homeless person you're going to shelter them for six months, the vast majority will take the shelter. If you tell them they have to move and you'll give them a bed for a night then many of them will see that as a shitty deal (which it is).
As for the legal stuff, you'll have to ask the supreme court as I wasn't the one arguing the case or making the law. That being said there are cities that have built out storage systems for homeless people. You don't even have to go that far for it, as Berkeley has been experimenting with this for awhile now. https://www.berkeleyside.org/2018/08/27/city-makes-available...
That said, giving the homeless a place to stay is cheaper than leaving them on the street. The vast majority of people in these programs end up getting jobs and paying their own way in the future.
> before it can take action on homelessness
Building the shelters is taking action. Without the shelters what exactly are you proposing to do? If there literally are no beds available, where are the homeless supposed to go in your system?
That's what the supreme court pointed out. They said that if there is no place for the homeless to go, if the city hasn't done it's job, then it has no right to tell people they can't sleep on public spaces.
What action would you take?
For the record, I'd be against enforcing the laws if it were the case that every homeless shelter was at full capacity.
How have we willingly ceded so much authority to bureaucratic busybodys who have nothing better to do than micromanage the size, shape, and even color of private housing? Regulating for safety is one thing, but the current state is absurd. California, and many other states like Texas, need to drastically deregulate their housing markets.
Also I hardly think the WSJ editorial board is really interested in solutions here. They just enjoy throwing punches.
Your premise is wrong; making rhe first kind of law has not been ruled unconstitutional, only enforcing it when there is no available shelter for the homeless population.
It would be an interesting test case to build an illegal dormitory for homeless on private land and seek enforcement deferment as long as the same conditions are met.
That 4xs the amount of dwelling spaces per property in theory. But of course the capital and will for a Californian who owns property to go through with it is a different story.
Allowing duplexes on smaller lots is great, but doesn’t go far enough. I actually think the momentum is in CA’s favor and they will be in a better position than, for instance, TX in 10-20 years, as it relates to housing affordability.
While I think apartments are fine, it would help immensely if the absurd setback and height requirements were revised to something reasonable.
For example, take a standard sized lot in Alameda County (Basically all of the East Bay Area):
A standard lot is 5,000 square feet. 50'x100'
- Front setback requirements: 20'
- Back setback requirements: 20'
- Side setback requirements: 5' per side
- Max building height: 25' (2 stories max)
Total setback square feet: 2,600 out of 5,000
Taken together, it's illegal to build on 52% of the land one owns! Another way to think about this is that one must buy at least 52% more land than necessary to build on. This is completely absurd, and is contributing to the housing shortage throughout the Bay, and the state.
Some setbacks are fine, but really, 52%?!
Source: https://www.acgov.org/cda/planning/ordinance/documents/R-2_D...
You could easily build a SRO sized fireproof, cinderblock room (e.g. 10x10ft) for less than $5,000 per unit in materials.
That's a case of BAD math if I've ever seen one. It's presented as if the goal of the homeless program is to corral homeless people into shelter and increase shelter occupancy (it's not.)
What are the number of people who has been rehomed? As a figure of speech, if a program rehomes a million people, and shelter occupancy goes up by a 736, is that still $609k a person?
I know WSJ writes from a biased place, but man, I couldn't read on after this sentence.
Just another example of how off-the-rails the WSJ opinion page is: repealing what law? You mean the eight amendment to the United States Constitution? Thing is, the opinion piece isn't wrong. But to just ramble on for a whole page, and then the offered solution is to repeal a law that is never mentioned in the opinion piece (unless the author truly suggests that we suspend the Constitution), well, I don't think "sloppy" begins to cover it.
(I would also argue the lede is a bit buried down in the penultimate paragraph, but it's still my misreading.)
So, I don't think that was the most important part of the article--he's not claiming SF is a Homeless Mecca because of Prop. 47. He was just asking a rhetorical question to point out that the dysfunctional Democrat-lead government will throw billions of dollars at a problem before repealing a soft-on-crime law that obviously contributes to the problem.
By the way, before anybody calls me out as some right-wing troll for saying the Democrat-led government is dysfunctional: I moved to SF as a D-registered liberal, and still am a liberal in the traditional sense (not a D anymore). But the left wing extremism has caused me to reassess my stance on many issues, especially as I start a family. I am absolutely appalled by the conditions in the city, especially in the Tenderloin, which many don't realize has the highest number of children per capita.
Really sad, it feels like I'm losing access to some really core, basic internet infrastructure.
Where's the breakdown of where that $896K goes?
With that amount of funding you may as well buy every homeless person a house
I think it would be an interesting experiment to try a planned project with high support, high requirements, and zero tolerance for crime. Instead of expecting the worst from people expect the best and hold them to a high standard.
Imagine a Gated community where everyone is expected to be in rehab, education, or employment and you get kicked out if you fail to follow through or commit crimes.
The point wouldn't be to a provide a catch-all support for everyone, but provide a safe space and support for those working to improve themselves.
Nevertheless, the current strategy does not seem particularly effective.
i.e. there's a big difference in sensible remedy for a family that's in a shelter for a few nights after fleeing domestic abuse vs. chronically unsheltered, mentally ill
Most of the negative interactions people have are with the unsheltered (i.e. someone street sleeping) rather than the homeless, and it is often unclear even how cities would/should spend money to address those people - that's what Mayor Breed is really complaining about.
It's like taking the entire school budget, dividing it by the number of first graders, and then saying that's how much we spend per student. It's stupid math that is only used to mislead.
Two-thirds of San Francisco's homelessness budget is spent on housing and prevention: https://hsh.sfgov.org/about/budget/overview-previous-budgets...
By definition, the best spent homelessness budget would be the one that resulted in zero people in shelters right?
Well, no, otherwise “have no shelters” would be the cheapest optimal strategy.
Fundamentally, the denominator that we ought to be using is "number of people diverted from being unsheltered", not "number of people in temporary shelters".
If a city spends $100M on homelessness and prevents 9,900 people from being unsheltered by housing them and only keeps 100 people in shelters, that looks like $1M per person on the bad metric.
But that situation is obviously better than spending $100M on sheltering 1,000 people (leaving 9,000 on the streets) instead of providing housing support, albeit that the cost looks only like $100K per person that way.
I think it's a (marginal) nitpick over your wording, not intended as a defense of the metric you were criticizing, though of course dragonwriter can correct me on that if needed.
(Now, building every homeless person a house might be more viable.)
Still doesn’t deal with the fact that much of that is nonshelter costs that would still be needs, even if they would move out of the homelessness budget.
What you need are a sort of anti-vagrancy law where the "punishment" is confinement in a very minimal security home where your basic needs are met, folks are nice and caring to you, and you're gently compelled to take whatever steps you need to put your life back together. Some people will stay indefinitely, be allowed to, and choose to.
From what I can tell, SF had about 18,548 shelter beds in 2022[0], which puts it at $36,230/bed/year. In 2016, there were 11,017 beds[1], which gets you $20,332/bed/year.
And of course not all help for homeless people is just paying for housing. Still seems expensive, but not nearly as bad as your math indicates.
[0] https://files.hudexchange.info/reports/published/CoC_HIC_CoC...
[1] https://files.hudexchange.info/reports/published/CoC_HIC_CoC...
https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/federal-judge-refuses-to...
At a certain point the blathering of these judges is completely irrelevant and simply not worthy of respect or obedience.
> She’s right. San Francisco is under a federal injunction that bars officials from enforcing laws against camping or sleeping in public spaces as long as its homeless population exceeds available shelter beds. As we recently explained, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment creates a right to vagrancy.
NYC has a ban against encampments because they provide shelter to homeless. Even after southern states have sent 100,000 penniless migrants to NYC, they still are able to find beds for people.
If San Francisco politicians can't create enough shelters, it's on them. There are hotels, parking lots, rec centers, etc if you have to deal with the numbers in the interim before you get housing up.
This is literally the opener to the article. The whole argument it is making is a complete mess.
If a place to sleep exists, you can demolish the encampments and force them the clear out. As the old saying goes, "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here."
These are, by and large, economic migrants who really just want to work and are therefore a very different profile from the unsheltered on typical city streets - for whom mental illness and drug dependency are almost ubiquitous.
But, even so:
> Even after southern states have sent 100,000 penniless migrants to NYC, they still are able to find beds for people.
NYC is ~10 times the size of SF.
> Many homeless prefer to live on the streets where they can freely use drugs
Says who? When I was there what I saw was (majorly) people with untreated mental health issues.
> San Francisco’s homeless epidemic is a result in large part of the familiar problems of drug addiction and mental illness.
Again, according to whom? If half of the issue is mental illness, why is this the only mention, while drugs are mentioned several times?
> Localities can’t use the threat of jail to induce addicts to receive treatment.
That's because putting someone in jail for stealing less than $950 worth of goods is bonkers. The problem is when the only response localities have for addicts is the threat of jail.
I really can't believe you still think that way. Have you been to a Walgreens/CVS in the city lately? Where everything's locked up, and security guards are shooting people on their own now? And you think it was "bonkers" before all of that started happening, wow.
In case you are not, then I am glad you don't get to dictate laws where I live.
We definitely need to reduce the social programs and put that $20bn somewhere else.
No matter how you slice it, $609,000/yr per homeless person is simply absurd.
Able bodied drug addicts should be arrested and put into jail. It’s in their best interests. For the rest we have shelters and free food and free skills development and free mental health. Incentive improving one’s condition.
It's not our responsibility to care for the homeless of the entire western US.
I don't think there is any hope for California, you need to wait for them to crash completely and then you can rebuild from the ashes.
Of course this is especially hard because a lot of profit is made and taxed in California which helps keeping the circus running.
Democracy is the theory that the people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
You can see the spend here: https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4640
Additionally, the NIMBY crowd goes against building anything, even with the new “builders remedy” in place. With a majority of homeless being from CA, this has affected everyone - homeowners can’t sell and “upgrade” because supply is too low, which doesn’t help mobility in the lower classes.
The other issue is the toothless law enforcement when it comes to actual crime. That I hope will change when residents of SF get tired of the shenanigans.
I’m against reducing social programs. We need it, especially if the income inequality gap keeps getting wider. We just need to be smarter about how we spend it.
It’s also important to remember that WSJ, and particularly their opinion pieces, are very much a right-wing mouthpiece and loves to dunk on SF and the “poors”.
Now if someone has a job, you can't move them, that much is clear, but if you move out the rest, you will have more shelter space for the rest.
And while you are at it, nobody wants to be in an unsafe or unclean shelter - a shelter is not an appropriate place for a mentally ill person, who is not properly medicated.
Of course none of this matters, because nobody is listening to a bunch of people on a messaging board, even though we are smarter than they are.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/727847/homelessness-rate...
This is flat out wrong. MANY shelters will alter their curfew hours based around a person's employment status. Talk to the actual shelters about this policy and you will realize most are more than willing to adapt hours around a person's legitimate employment status.
You cannot expect the severely mentally ill to "voluntarily" seek medical help - this is the current prerequisite for medical intervention in SF. If a child runs into the street, you don't ask for consent before moving them out of the way of oncoming traffic. The severely ill in this city have less mental capacity than a child and yet we expect them to consent like any other adult. If you truly understand these illnesses you will recognize the futility of throwing money, housing, etc. at this problem.
Take a scroll through the likes of some of the famous VCs who constantly complain about SF's homelessness and crime. They tend to be more mask off far-right in their likes vs tweets (some will straight up tweet it though).
If I had >$1B I would simply stop complaining and start doing something to fix the problem.
The selfishness on display is frightening.
Who is the one not giving back to the community, the billionaire VC who is funding hundreds of high-paying jobs, or the person who shits in the street and demands to be fed and provided with a host of other services at no cost to himself?
It's worth considering the context that if no business will allow an unhoused person to use the toilet (okay, totally fair - private property!) and we refuse to maintain a sufficient number of public toilets, where are they supposed to defecate?
During COVID this got really extreme. You could be going on a road trip (like when I moved cross-state) and be a paying customer at a gas station or restaurant or grocery store and they all tell you "sorry, no public restroom". What are you supposed to do? Obviously, defecating in public is uncivilized, but we're not giving people many options.
For example, a city as large as San Francisco has a grand total of 25 public toilets: https://www.sfpublicworks.org/services/public-toilets
“There are no libertarians in bank runs”
+
> encourage rampant gentrification
Something tells me any attempt to give back to their community would be unwelcome, and labeled as "rampant gentrification". I certainly see it in the Mission, where any attempt at renovating old decrepit buildings is stopped in the name of gentrification. Now there's rats in the ceilings of public schools: https://missionlocal.org/2019/06/rat-droppings-crumbling-cei...
It makes perfect sense to me why they aren't doing anything. Maybe it would be better if we didn't collect taxes?
If you have billions of dollars and you have some sort of problem, it's absolutely within your means to do something about it (other than whine on twitter).
No comment on the politics, just seems like an inconsistent and thin argument (probably one that has no business on HN).
>San Francisco is under a federal injunction that bars officials from enforcing laws against camping or sleeping in public spaces as long as its homeless population exceeds available shelter beds. As we recently explained, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment creates a right to vagrancy.
>San Francisco is under a federal injunction that bars officials from enforcing laws against camping or sleeping in public spaces as long as its homeless population exceeds available shelter beds. As we recently explained, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment creates a right to vagrancy.
I think the confusion might be that the strawman doesn't even follow logic, TBH.
Were did the Sacramento Democrats comment come in? I simply stated that the article highlighted federal decisions and blamed other governments for the consequences of those decisions. In that set of circumstances, Sacramento Democrats are equal to SF progressives, as they are both bound by a higher power (The Federal Government).
And to answer the question I think that you're asking, yes, I do believe the Federal government has a lot more power to solve homelessness than SF or California does. Do you think otherwise?
EDIT: I also think this fascination with Democrats vs. Republicans really misses the point here. This shouldn't be a competition to lay blame. That's the top symptom of broken government.
It should be a creative endeavor to solve the problems and it saddens me that so many people don't feel that way on this supposed "hacker" forum.
EDIT 2: >Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
I disagree that a city of 800k residents has the resources to solve a problem that's plagued every society ever.
I think the largest and wealthiest government in history is much better suited for the task.
I also think that SF being in the United States 100% makes it the Federal Government's issue, not some isolated thing that most people who live in other places can ignore. Like it or not, most homeless people are American citizens who happen to choose to live in SF right now. They can leave SF, but can't leave America.
SF has all the resources they need. They just need to use them.
"plagued every society ever" -- no, it hasn't, not to anywhere near the scale of SF. Even large cities within the jurisdiction of the 9th Circuit, like San Diego, Fresno, Spokane. San Jose.
>SF has all the resources they need. They just need to use them.
I guarantee to you the Federal government has more/better. But hey, let's play the game. What exactly does SF need to do? Step by step.
I guarantee to you that SF has possibly the worst problem of any city, except for some other West Coast cities. So why don't you explain why cities with equivalently good weather don't suffer nearly as much? Just luck?
https://www.sfhsa.org/services/financial-assistance/county-a....
Do cash payments help or hurt? Clearly, there are more than just federal policies at play. They have job and home placement programs, mental health and so forth. Are they understaffed or with limited opportunities, or does the cash payment act as a perverse incentive to keep people on the street?
In a country with complete freedom of movement (and relatively cheap long-distance transportation), the mainstream has been convinced that homelessness is only caused by the communities where those people live.
It's the Federal government's historical role to serves as a social safety net, not mid-sized cities with 'live outside year round' weather.
Like what does SF 'fixing homelessness' even look like? I can tell you what it looks like at the Federal level.
This is not true. Medicare, section 8 housing and social security are (relatively) new inventions, and Medicaid is run by individual states, with some funding from the federal government.
By volume, most social programs are either state or county run, from job training to mental health and food assistance and so on.
As for what SF can do, it can designate emergency shelter space sufficient to get out from under the federal regulations preventing them from breaking up permanent camps. They can make cash payments contingent on going through some service which pushes people towards getting mental health care, addiction treatment, housing / job assistance, etc.
So long as they are paying people to be homeless, and managing themselves into a corner where they can't stop illegal camping, some people will choose to stay that way for one reason or another, and they will choose to do so in SF.
I guess we just have different time horizons of what counts are historical, since Medicare is ~3x my age.
I see lots of statements like "many homeless prefer to live on the streets where they can freely use drugs", particularly in right-leaning media, but IMO these are kind of strawmen that elide a lot of the significant elements of the situation. Drug addicts don't just "prefer" to stay where they can use drugs, it is for all intents and purposes a biological necessity. Shelters which will stop people from using ex. opiates are going to be non-starters unless they an offer viable paths out of addiction, or embrace a harm reduction approach which gets pilloried left and right in the US.
The overall framing that "social services incentivize homelessness" also seems to run up against the fact that the largest driver of homelessness is obviously the rising price of housing. Presumably if social services (which in this article seems synonymous with money spent on shelters) were the cause of SF's homelessness problem you would see people using the shelters they moved there for. But as the article points out this isn't the case; engagement with the expensive services is far below the desired levels. If people simply wanted to live somewhere they don't have to pay rent and can use drugs freely there are a number of extremely accommodating rural areas for this lifestyle. It seems more likely to me that SFs housing market pushed a large number of people into penury, and some of them are coping with their extreme deprivation by using drugs. Not that SF has somehow become a national destination for homeless (who exist everywhere in the country, and every city seems to think that they are somehow a magnet for them).
I am sympathetic to people who prefer not to have encampments in the public space, but I think we need to be clear-eyed about the causes and potential solutions. Simply "cracking down" with aggressively enforced urban camping bans hasn't worked in pretty much any city its been tried in (see Denver, where the cops have spent the better part of two years pushing the city's 4K homeless from block to block, with overall levels only increasing). Presumably it would be better to (a) stop the flow of people into homelessness with a stronger social safety net and a better housing supply and (b) increase the flow out of homelessness with better rehabilitation programs.
A part of American capitalism uses people up and spits them out when they stumble and fall. Broken bodies and broken minds look for some sort of balm to try to numb the pain. It's just that many people don't realize that they do it too, with addictions to alcohol, games, social media, pornography, or hatred.
We're blindly rushing headlong into a massive crisis of environment, society, government, and people. Homelessness, mass murder, harmful drug use, and fascism are all symptoms of this and no one wants to think about it.
https://missionlocal.org/2014/09/homeless-encampments-here-t...