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Twitter was given a famously sweet deal by the city to occupy that troubled stretch of Market St. In the time I lived nearby (until the pandemic) the area never really improved. San Francisco has an odd tolerance for the tent communities, no just that it largely allows them, but that it allows them in and around the busiest and most publicly-utilized transit hubs and the city center.

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> San Francisco has an odd tolerance for the tent communities

When I visited SF for the first time in 2019, it felt really weird that such a rich place would have so many people living in tents in public spaces. Being naive, I saw dozens of tents in Sue Bierman Park and thought they were having an event or something. Then it dawned on me what I was seeing and it never made sense because certainly it doesn't take a lot of money to give these people something so they don't have to live in tents.

Where I live (South America), the city had this situation about 20 years ago and what they did was buy a bunch of cheap land in the outskirts, build small houses and relocate these people. To avoid it being called charity, they "lent" the money that these people could pay in >50 years without interest. And this is a place with no tradition of philantrophy or billionaries. So I'd imagine a single billionarie could fix SF's situation in a blink of an eye, no?

> So I'd imagine a single billionarie could fix SF's situation in a blink of an eye, no?

There's no money in that though, and there's lots of money in keeping Americans divided.

I don't think it's a resource allocation issue. SF government alone spends almost a billion a year[1] on trying to improve the situation. That's not including the non-profit spending. Money won't buy the city out of this situation as long as there exist people who don't want to live in homes and play by the rules.

1: https://hsh.sfgov.org/about/budget/

Seems you need to evaluate the effectiveness of that spending to conclude that it can't be a resource allocation issue.

Maybe a problem could be on the allocation side rather than the resource side.

They cleaned it up for President Xi's visit.

https://sfstandard.com/2023/11/14/city-clears-homeless-encam...

1 billion dollars / 8500[1] homeless people = 117 thousand dollars. The median household income in SF is 119 thousand[2]. I get that you wouldn't want to just pay them a salary because of second-order effects, but that kind of spend without even getting them sheltered strongly suggests resources are not being allocated well.

[1] https://www.sfgov.org/scorecards/safety-net/homeless-populat...

[2] https://smartasset.com/retirement/average-salary-in-san-fran...

If you gave them $117K a year they would be dead within a month ODing on the mass quantities of drugs they can now afford. Money is not the issue with homelessness, and until people get that out of their heads the problem will not be solved.

> spends almost a billion a year

That sounds like an allocation issue. There aren’t enough beds. If you became homeless in SF tonight, you would be on the street.

If the problem were literally that "these people want houses and just can't afford them," I think that'd work. But that's not the issue in San Francisco.

I imagine most in the US would be more interested in reducing homelessness by producing soylent green than by producing housing - especially the billionaires.

The number of people in the comments blaming homelessness solely on homeless people is embarrassing. Sure, mental health, the economy, drug use, and housing costs have no effect, apparently.

That probably works when people have no money and no place to go. I used to live near Portland OR, and in that case many or most choose to be there, they wanted drugs and ANY house they lived in would soon be trashed.

I think it's mainly corruption. A significant amount of budget (hundreds of millions) is allocated to "deal" with homelessness in SF, so efforts to actually solve the problem are going to face significant challenges from existing beneficiaries.

The so called "homeless industrial complex" [1].

1 - https://www.nationalreview.com/the-weekend-jolt/californias-...

> the city had this situation about 20 years ago and what they did was buy a bunch of cheap land in the outskirts, build small houses and relocate these people.

That will never work in SF because it involves moving the homeless someplace else involuntarily and moving them all to a singular place.

So the homeless “advocates” will accuse you of being a Nazi who is trying to create a literal concentration camp.

It doesn’t matter how nice the community is, nor that the people would own their space, nor anything else about your plan.

As a meta-consideration, part of the problem is that many of people who work “for” the homeless really enjoy living in SF. Threatening to move their jobs to someplace less desirable is the reason they will call you names.

Also, if you fix homeless, you no longer need homeless advocates. That goes to the core of their identity, so of course they will fight you.

But why are the homeless "advocates" such a force? Don't the rest of the people living and voting in the city outnumber them by multiple orders of magnitude?

In politics generally, there's much more incentive for a small interest group to lobby[1] or advocate for a policy that provides a concentrated benefit to the group, than there is for the whole population to fight back to eliminate the small per-capita cost of the policy to the population. Also, many of the voters in SF have at least progressive sympathies, which include not "oppressing" groups that are seen to be "oppressed", even if they happen to break the law or make life unpleasant. So lots of money is spent in an ineffective but superficially compassionate way.

[1] In the broadest sense, not at all restricted to professional political lobbyists.

Sounds like the sympathies of the majority of the voters play a significant role, and not only the "advocates", as the other commenter suggested. Or at least as I understood it.

The people of SF think that solving the problem as you have described, relocating the street junkies into cheap homes in the outskirts, is "literally fascism" because "how dare you tell these people they're not allowed to camp and shoot up heroin anywhere they like?"

It allows them because of a court case that said they can't take them down unless they can provide shelter, and they've refused to build enough shelter space.

The supreme court invalidated that decision, and so now they are allowed to tear the tent cities down again without having to actually find people shelter space. I imagine a lot of these encampments are going to be torn down (which will just cause them to relocate until they end up at a place where no one cares).

Mostly agree, but there are few places no one cares. The pattern is generally that they just get chased around from one place to another, forever.

San Francisco was ignoring this problem for at least 10 years before that judgement happened.

Not to mention the issue there wasn't exactly that the city was trying to do something but the fact that they were fining them and plaintiffs claimed the fines were so large that they were "cruel and unusual punishment" which is non-constitutional.

So no, it's 100% political and bureaucratic apathy over many years, not one court case.

I recall seeing some stories years ago was that one issue with Twitter (and most Bay area tech companies at the time) was that due to the presence of an on campus cafeteria, surrounding areas never got much benefit from Twitter's presence.

That is, workers would show up to the building, and then essentially never leave (and spend money at nearby businesses) until the day was over and they went home.

Yes, that's how politicians and activists are shifting blame from their lack of interest in solving the issue to sacrificial goats.

The streets are full of homeless and drugged out people? That's not the reason restaurants are failing, it's the tech bro's cafeteria!

The house prices are sky high? It's not single house zoning and politicians blocking any house building, it's the rich tech bros gentrifying your neighborhood!

What do you think the city should do with the tent communities?

Designate areas outside of the densest neighborhoods for tent communities to exist and clear out areas that have the highest public utilization.

For starters, tents shouldn't be allowed in the downtown area, which is the heart of business, shopping and tourism in San Francisco. It is one of the most expensive areas to live, so just like most residents cannot afford to live there, it is only fair that homeless people don't live there as well.

Remove them. It is an abuse of the commons that creates a vicious cycle that will only exacerbate the problem. And for your next question, San Fran already spends $141k per year per homeless person. That’s 7x LA. It isn’t working because of the lack of accountability and oversight in the use of those funds and San Fran’s lax (even favorable treatment) of public drug use, public camping, and general lawlessness. Send them to a shelter, treatment, or jail. “Harm reduction” doesn’t work. Full stop.

Freakonomics have done some interesting coverage of the opioid epidemic and how spending more money on it doesn't necessarily lead to better outcomes. Having listened to what different people say about it, I'm not so sure that "harm reduction doesn't work" is something I can agree with. Addiction and homelessness just aren't trivial problems to solve. Sending people to jail sure doesn't help anything, does it?

That being said, seeing it first hand is pretty shocking for sure. We stayed a couple of blocks from Tenderloin a few weeks ago and at one point drove down a side street that was just full of people doing meth (I think). Whatever SF is doing, it sure seems like it needs a course change.

Remove them, many are causing ADA violations. You don't get to break the law because you feel like it.

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