I don't know enough about the causes of this phenomenon in SF to suggest what can be done about it; I'm sure they are complex, multi-factorial and politically fraught, but the level of homelessness in SF and (almost) everyone's blase acceptance of it shocks me every time I visit.
SF is bad, but I'm always a little surprised when people say it's somehow unique. There does seem to be a more seriously mentally disturbed element to SF, though, I will give you that.
I've heard NY has cleaned up, and I didn't get spanged last time I was in Paris as far as I remember (though someone did try the old trick of pretending to "find" a ring, ask if it belonged to my wife, insist on handing it to her, and then asking for money).
One of the thing which surprised me when I first used the montreal subway was that the 'musicians' were actually real musicians, played only at some places, and did not try to get money by playing so bad that you only wanted them to stop. When I came back to Paris during holidays, it was horrible to see again these guys with their horrible speakers, horrible musics and horrible voices.
tl;dr Montreal is a very nice city. Why can't we find such nice behavior in other cities ?
The art of "busking" has a long history:
I don't understand this, and if someone did that to me, I would be utterly confused. What's the basis for giving someone a ring that they would know isn't theirs?
She tossed the ring on the ground so it clattered and jumped up, "is this yours? Oh, well you keep it...", you know, that kind of crap.
Sometimes they don't speak the country languages (or don't want to), so it's hard to say 'no'.
So the absence of homeless is usually not a sign of better humanity, it is usually a sign of cruelty. This is especially the case in the US. There are other countries where they have better treatment for poverty and mental illness (most homeless are mentally ill to some extent) where the absence of homeless on the city streets may mean actual absence of homeless. But this is not the case in the US.
Thus, even if the sight of homeless in San Francisco is so terrible, one should keep in mind that San Francisco provides the best treatment for them in America.
I'd love to see some numbers on that.
I countered that it could be due to Asian and Mexican cultures being more culturally inclined to take care of their own, but I haven't fully convinced myself that that's the case.
My friend who made this point happens to be black, and his explanation was that having grown up in a black neighborhood, he noticed that black and white people have a sense of entitlement that other races don't often have, both for reasons that don't need explaining, and that that type of attitude begets unfortunate circumstances. I don't know whether I entirely agree with this point either, but it certainly makes you think.
Edit:
I looked it up. You're right in that Latinos hold the second highest percentage of homelessness at 33%, but when you consider population size, it sort of becomes irrelevant. Latinos make up 47% of the total population in LA. Blacks make up only 9% however they're a full 50% of the homeless population. This means that per capita, Latinos are 5 times less likely to be homeless than blacks.
Apparently, San Francisco does stand out in the high incidence of hardcore homelessness. Supposedly SF and NY have the same number of "hardcore homeless", even though SF has about 1/10 the population (though any time you get into these ratios, you have to remember that SF is a small geographic region and population within much larger bay area - if you drew a 48 square mile border around an urban core in NY or LA, the numbers probably wouldn't look so dramatically different - my guess is that SF would still look bad, but not by anywhere near this order of magnitude).
What brought us here, and how do we fix this?
"Yet there are homeless Asians. Isabelle Hsu reports in the Pacific News Service that in San Francisco alone there are approximately 6,000 plus people living in the streets. She quickly adds that this is a very rough estimate. Ed Jew (the only Chinese American on Mayor Gavin Newsom’s committee to end chronic homelessness) explains that the official estimate of Asian homelessness is probably low because of cultural sensitivities. It is also a matter of saving face: homeless Asians refuse to go to shelters and admit to their homelessness."
[1] http://erwinsdeleon.blogspot.com/2008/07/homeless-asians.htm...
Stereotypes about their ethnicity will probably be a a factor.
Mental disorders prevent people from carrying out essential aspects of daily life, such as self-care, household management and interpersonal relationships. Homeless people with mental disorders remain homeless for longer and have less contact with family and friends. Any type of help from friends and family can be misinterpreted and further pushed towards the cycle of poverty.
[1]http://tinyurl.com/bwg38ab - National Coalition of Homelessness, July 2009
> homeless
> police
recently the former, most retarded, mayor of Sao Paulo used police on the city's 'tenderloin' (called cracoloandia ...literal translation to crack-land... you get the idea) it resulted in a city wide chaos as those figures, usually restricted geographically and living with their own morals and codes, scattered all over the place and freaked out when found in a situation worse than they were already at, resulted in far worse crimes than the littering they were committing before.
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/SHAME-OF-THE-CITY-HOMELES...
This problem is in no way unique to San Francisco; our engineering team has offices in San Francisco, Seattle (Pioneer Square) and Vancouver (Gastown) -- and we can collectively report that there are large, hardcore homeless populations in all three cities.
http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_4_san-francisco-homeless...
The tl;dr; version: The homelessness industry of charities etc has a vested interest in the problem continuing.
I haven't actually compared against other places on the continent that have year-round temperate climate, so this is just conjecture.
A few years ago, the local PBS station had a TV show about SF's homeless problem. People migrated to SF because the city (until "Care Not Cash"?) handed out monthly cash stipends. Emergency rooms would be crowded with drug ODs on the first day of each month. PBS also spent a few days with one panhandler in particular. He received handouts that would have added up to $70K/year, if he didn't spend it all on heroin.
"Hope on the Street" http://www.kqed.org/w/hope/
btw, I must note that was impressed at how much old web content KQED has archived!
SF is unique not in the size of the homeless population, but in its distribution.
The linked study refers to metropolitan areas (thus including Oakland as part of the SF Bay), but SF ranks 12th in the nation behind Tampa, Seattle & San Jose among others [1]
In both DC [21] and to a lesser extent Seattle [8], for instance, you could quite conceivably live, work and play in areas without visible signs of homelessness (including the commute in between).
In SF, of course, this is impossible. Certain parts of Market street (bordering on the Tenderloin) are about as run down as a major downtown area gets in the developed world.
I was born and raised in DC and have lived there for the last 6 years, working and living downtown. Of course there are homeless people (as opposed to the bizarrely antiseptic Palo Alto, for instance), but the level of visible homelessness is not in the same zip code (let alone ballpark) as SF. Honestly, it's not even close.
I spent a lot of time in Montreal. There are homeless people, but they tend to be more organized. You don't want to weather a Montreal winter unprepared. I've always wondered how many of them die in the cold every year.
People wonder what happened to all the crime and homeless in NYC? They were flown out west.
For what it's worth, the plane ticket seems suspect to me too, as you usually require an ID to fly, which most homeless are without.
I believe the solution to the homeless problem lies somewhere between a mental institution and a halfway house. A place where the homeless can receive ongoing care in a safe but controlled environment. But as a sacrifice, they lose freedom. These people need care and help, but some of them can also present a danger to society. That's the reality of it. I don't think people mind too much a person asking for a bit of help on the street, but when they accost you, they need to be managed.
Of course, if someone was willing to take them in and assume full responsibility for them, that'd be even better.
my bet is that we have mild winters in California that are much less Darwinian.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Canada#Cuts_to_...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/29/new-york-homeles...
NYC also gets its share of people from outside the NYC region who actually fall for the myth of NYC as ultra-socialist nirvana.
Here's a picture from East Hastings Street in Vancouver: http://jamesdanderfer.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Ea...
This is what that spot looks like every day, except the lines of homeless stretch much further then the picture shows. After that section of the street you get corners filled with hookers and junkies.
1. No public transportation.
2. Unreasonable distances between gathering places (e.g. grocery stores) and often long stretches of no sidewalks.
3. Public park curfews with police sweeps of said parks at night.
No way to get in, no way to get food, no way to stay. When I realized, as a teenager, that this was why I was not used to homeless people, I was a little perturbed.
As a visitor to the US, I find the homeless there very emotionally saddening.
I had a morning routine in LA where the same guy would greet me and everyone around. I just started buying him breakfast each day and he was always very appreciative. Saw a lot of people grabbing food out of garbage cans. Another guy with no legs crossing 10 lanes of traffic. Just a painful reminder of how much harder life could be.
I wasn't as regular with my routine in SFO and admittedly moved apartments further from the tenderloin. I ended up scaring more homeless whenever I walked through the tenderloin than scared me. But I still found it depressing to have to face that each day when I knew I could make a meaningful difference to many of the people I saw.
There is absolutely no comparison between the two places. Even in Westwood Village you could go months without being hit up by a homeless person for change. Now, maybe you were in a hot spot where a few hang out regularly, but they are not everywhere by any stretch of the imagination. They're also nothing like the aggressive homeless population in SF. The police here are very quick to crackdown on any kind of aggressiveness.
If you lived in rural Idaho I could see how you might think Westwood had a lot of homeless people -- anyone from SF would think there were none.
[1] https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/about/overview/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Sta...
I am not sure if this is "accepted" or not but everyone seems to just ignore it completely.
17th has become worse in the recent months/year
London also has quite fragmented social ghettos. In most cities you have richer areas and poorer areas, London broadly has this, but has pockets of wealth in the poorer areas and pockets of poverty in the rich areas. To a much greater extent than I've seen in any city I've been to.
I've always assumed it has something to do with the climate being more amenable to homelessness. But thinking about it now there must be some other political or structural reasons at play.
--edited syntax