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Comment by nullc | Hacker News Reader

That's what the article was written for-- and it's one valid perspective on it.

To those whose lives have been irreparably harmed by the violent mentally ill people inhabiting SF's streets and parks while the police stand idle and billions of their tax dollars are spent annually failing to solve the problem-- it might hit a bit differently. That isn't the story here, but when you see people taking it differently than you it isn't necessarily because are in any way lacking in compassion.

The article paints the person in question as a harmless Garden Hermit ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_hermit ), perhaps he is but many of the support-resistant homeless are certainly not harmless.

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If a black person attacks you, does that mean that black people are then violent? All the statistics I've ever seen indicate that while the homeless and mentally ill are particularly prone to being victims of violence, they don't seem to actually pose a higher issue of safety than anyone else you encounter in your daily life.

It makes sense that would be the case when you think of it - do the rates of violence decrease as you move up the socioeconomic ladder? By all indications the rate of violence among the very wealthy is not dissimilar from those lower on the socioeconomic ladder. Why would you think homelessness is a cliff through which people suddenly become drastically more violent, especially considering how people like Putin and drug lords are extremely wealthy while paying people lower on the socioeconomic rung to do violence on their behalf to protect their economic interests?

If a black person attacks you, does that mean that black people are then violent?

That’s the playbook. Do they not do this with black people? Immigrants? Trans? China? Homeless?

It’s all they do. It’s their one play, and this playbook that they all subscribe to caused a lot of problems. That’s all.

We must look at the package of beliefs, none of this is isolated.

I’m not sure why this is downvoted. Blaming marginalized groups for social ills is indeed a very old political playbook.

Closet maga in the house, just cutting the tall grass to see the snake heads.

> they don't seem to actually pose a higher issue of safety than anyone else you encounter in your daily life.

Not sure what the studies say, but I don’t need a weatherman to tell me when it’s raining outside.

Facts schmacts. We should make decisions by what feels true.

Most policy is set by gut because we lack the data and lack a sufficient understanding of the limitations of the data we have. Sometimes we launder gut through truthy data strawmen, to our detriment.

If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. When you don’t, pound the table. Please stop pounding the proverbial table and stick to facts.

At this point it sounds like you'd just flip the board, not matter how many comparisons, studies, case studies, and anecdotes are noted. Can't make a horse drink.

If we imprisoned people for playing their music on speakerphone in public there would be a lot fewer murders

No, there wouldn’t be.

You may want to go see the doctor about your humor bone. It seems to have been amputated.

It wasn't a funny joke given the context.

It’s definitely funny along the lines of “A Modest Proposal” from Swift. If you can’t detect sarcasm that’s on you, not the author, especially for something so obviously sarcastic to drive the point home about the ridiculousness of the theory that jailing homeless people will somehow produce less violence in the broader community by making a similar comparison correlating murder and people playing music loudly in public which is a minor annoyance at worst.

The message you are responding to did not say anything about homeless people in general, nor anything about race, nor economic standing.

Being a victim of violence is entirely compatible with being a perpetrator of violence. I believe that is very often the case.

But if you ever have a person in a crisp tailored suit come out nowhere at you with a knife in an effort to murder you for no reason than delusion or perhaps a desire to steal your backpack, please let me know.

This isn't a remark on wealthy people being more or less capable of physical violence, but rather that untreated serious mental illness is usually incompatible with maintaining a high maintenance lifestyle. While headwinds probably mean that many of the violent people on the SF streets did come from unprivileged backgrounds, I'm sure people from all different starting points end up there too.

I was highlighting the logical fallacy being made with this provocative statement:

> To those whose lives have been irreparably harmed by the violent mentally ill people inhabiting SF's streets and parks while the police stand idle and billions of their tax dollars are spent annually failing to solve the problem-- it might hit a bit differently

The logic is that if your life is harmed by a violent mentally ill homeless person, then all homeless mentally ill people are more prone to causing such behavior. It’s flawed and I was purposefully making a provocative statement. A statement I might add that has actually been made in the past with much of the same emotional reasoning - I was hoping the jarring racism would resonante and share much of the same callous tone being displayed.

> This isn't a remark on wealthy people being more or less capable of physical violence, but rather that untreated serious mental illness is usually incompatible with maintaining a high maintenance lifestyle

I remember when Bob Lee was murdered in SF and everyone came out of the woodwork claiming it’s the supposedly violent mentally ill homeless people who clearly must have been responsible (it wasn’t). It’s important to separate the baseless narrative from the actual facts on the ground. Mentally ill and homeless make people feel uneasy and unsafe but the actual data suggests in reality they’re not so much different.

> I remember when Bob Lee was murdered in SF and everyone came out of the woodwork claiming it’s the supposedly violent mentally ill homeless people who clearly must have been responsible (it wasn’t). ... not so much different

We can go back through the threads if you like, but it certainly wasn't everyone. My bet was on it being related to the yet unresolved theft of a ~billion dollars from FTX using phenomenal amounts of mobilcoin.

Instead it was a less interesting story: A drug user under the influence killed another drug user they knew well over an interpersonal dispute.

People doing dumb shit attacking other people they know who are also engaged in dumb shit is enormously different from being attacked by a stranger out of nowhere while minding your own business. People rightfully feel less safe regarding risk that they don't have much control over vs risk they have more control over.

And we should treat it differently. No amount of policing can ever make you safe-- ultimately we all have to keep ourselves safe. FAFO is a law of the universe that we can't legislate out of existence, but we can adopt policies that increase or decrease the risk of random violence.

> San Francisco is home to much in the way of visible public misery, unnerving street behavior and overt drug use. Its property crime rate has long been high, and the police clearance rate for property crimes has long been minimal. But the city’s violent crime rate is at a near-historic low, and is lower than most mid-to-large-sized cities.

[1]

Seems like violence is at an all time low, meaning the city is actually safer than ever. In fact, in 2024 violent crimes fell another 14% [2]. So if the goal truly is safety, we should keep doing whatever it is we’re doing because we’re on a fantastic roll of making the city safer.

[1] https://missionlocal.org/2023/04/bob-lee-killing-arrest-made...

[2] https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/san-francisco-2024...

You know what also causes low police reports? Police dissuading people from making them or refusing to take them, and people not bothering to contact police because they believe (correctly or otherwise) the police won't do anything about it, or because they believe police response will be dangerous or overkill... also people self-protecting by avoiding dangerous areas or times, avoiding being alone, or leaving the city entirely (e.g. SF population decreased 9.42% in 2024 according to the internets).

Homicide rates are more reliable, since it's not something that can easily go unreported. But there is a lot of room for violent crime that is short of homicide.

https://sfstandard.com/2024/12/31/homicides-down-san-francis...

> The 2024 downward trend was evident early in the year and was clearer by July, when police statistics showed a 39% drop in homicides from the first half of 2023, alongside significant declines in some violent and property crimes.

Wouldn’t it make sense that if homicides are down then so is violent crime? It would be strange if they didn’t track together for the most part.

It’s interesting the kind of alternative explanations that you start bringing out when the narrative you have doesn’t agree with the data.

Oh and look:

> Between 2022 and 2024, chronic homelessness increased by 11% with 2,989 people experiencing chronic homelessness in 2024. Thirty-five percent of the total homeless population is chronically homeless, a rate similar to 2022.

Weird how the homeless population stayed the same yet violent crime decreased. It’s almost like they’re not the ones that are behind the violence statistics.

https://www.sf.gov/reports--september-2024--2024-point-time-...

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