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Comment by edm0nd | Hacker News Reader

>In fiscal year 2023–2024, San Francisco spent $690 million on homelessness, notes the San Francisco Chronicle. This is a 142% increase from five years ago.

Spending $700M/year on homelessness crisis is straight up insane. There has to be a better way that doesnt cost as much. SF is kinda fucked.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/homeless-questions-an...

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When there is an enormous budget somehow used up but with barely any noticeable effect (and frankly, without much of an expectation that there’s noticeable effect), you can bet there’s someone or a lot of someones siphoning from it.

Btw even $690m isn’t the full picture:

> While that amount does not include what the Department of Public Health or SF Public Works or many other departments spend related to the crisis

They could just take that $700M and divide it up among the ~8000 homeless in the city. That $87,500 per year would be enough to help get someone on their feet pretty quickly. Probably more effective than whatever the hell they’re spending it on today. Salaries for administrators administrating other administrators?

There’s got to be some Appalachian town that would love to get paid $700m/yr to house and care for 8,000 people.

Maybe its facetious, but I also do not understand why they have to be accommodated in a top 5 most expensive place in the world to live in.

It's half facetious but also half serious, as the amounts of money are simply staggering.

There has to be some middle ground between "homeless in a park" and "living their own life with a job" and "locked up in prison at great cost" that would be satisfactory to everyone.

I think it's impossible for everyone to be satisfied no matter what the solution is.

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