Hacker News Reader

Comment by infinity0 | Hacker News Reader

"not my problem" might seem like a reasonable position to take, but you can extend this argument and eventually conclude it's no-one's problem. or worse, some magical "other party's" (welfare state?) problem. this "not my problem" attitude is a big contribution to income inequality. it's "not my problem" to try to develop basic living conditions in those slums, all I give a shit is about this flashy shopping centre full of non-essentials!

not a very good long-term solution for a real problem. as the article says, a more productive approach is to ask, "how do you hack San Francisco's homelessness problem?"

View on HN

Yes, it's Noisebridge's problem, as well as everyone's problem: homelessness is a moral stain on our society.

But letting homeless people into Noisebridge to sleep, eat, and dispose of bodily waste is not a solution to the problem of homelessness. It just turns Noisebridge into an outpost of the Tenderloin. No one wants to work in that kind of environment, and suddenly the central justification for Noisebridge's existence would have been put aside to build an inadequate homeless shelter for the month or two before dues-money runs out and the space is closed up.

Building up communities isn't magic. It takes work, bonds of trust, responsibility, and more work. The resources used to build up an institution can't be deployed willy-nilly. Organizations centrally devoted to homelessness don't take the naive solution of letting homeless people sleep in all their offices and bedrooms: it's not only pointless but would destroy the organization. Why should Noisebridge sap its own capabilities to deal with problems that it's well-suited for solving in favor of doing something no homeless advocate would suggest?

I agree, but are you letting homeless people sleep in your house or in your office? Letting them sleep at noisebridge doesn't do much to help the problem in the large, and impairs it as a space to hang out and work on projects with like minded people, which as far as I know is the idea behind noisebridge.

letting them sleep won't help much, but kicking them out without thinking about trying to solve the issue in some other way just makes things worse. then, you're just brushing dirt under the carpet.

a more sincere argument would be, "it's not my problem or noisebridge's problem, but there ought to be something to solve that problem, so let's think about how to solve it - rather than simply stating 'it's not my problem' and burying our heads in the sand".

I have thought about it and I still haven't cracked it. The best idea I've heard is the whole basic income idea. I don't know what you want me to do though.

>I agree, but are you letting homeless people sleep in your house or in your office?

interesting how in future, when time will weather out a lot of details, people will look back at our time and see huge amount of dwellings - offices - going empty at night while some people would sleep under bridges, on the streets, etc... Was it a personal choice of these people, were they punished, banned from the society or was it a society without empathy? One can imagine various archaeo-socio-logical PhD-s.

Not sure what you're trying to say with your post. Solving homelessness is definitely not part of Noisebridge's mission.

> "you can extend this argument and eventually conclude it's no-one's problem."

Not really... it is undebatably the "government's problem" (certainly local/city, perhaps state and federal). Furthermore, it is the problem of any organization that has 'helping the homeless' in their mission statement, of which there are many.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com