Largest Homeless Camp In US is in Silicon Valley
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
edit: (Yes - another one) For the record, I agree with most of the suggestions that have been provided in responses. I think these are avenues worth further investment and exploration. My only point here is that it's not just a case of the 1% in Silicon Valley being selfish.
There are much deeper and more complex problems PER INDIVIDUAL that you don't know about. Personality traits, undiagnosed mental disorders, a horrible upbringing, etc., etc., etc.
To summarize all these people's problems as stemming from a singular cause does nothing for anyone. I think we can show that helping a particular individual does way more good than trying to solve a whole "group of people's" "problems".
That's why when you read stories about a single guy helping a single homeless person/person in straits it truly does mean more for us as individuals than just a charity wanting us to throw money at them.
Case in point: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/york-city-programmer-homele...
The issue is deeper than you're acknowledging. Evolution by natural selection works only because of perpetual shortage, and because nature doesn't waste anything. If we artificially remove any appearance of shortage, of a need to struggle, we remove the incentive to work. So we need to imitate nature at least in some respects. But that goal cannot be achieved if we "improve the circumstances" of everyone in need.
In short, if we try to fix the problem of poverty, we will make everyone poor. That's history's lesson.
Locate your evidence for this claim. I never suggested that there is a solution to poverty, in fact I clearly said the opposite. Eugenics is on the roster of ideas that society rightly rejects as a failed non-solution and a disaster, along with communism, socialism and a dozen others.
> I would have thought it was a little out of fashion in 2013, but I guess not.
Misrepresenting the views of others? No, you've proved that idea false.
So your idea that we can make things harsh enough to kill off all the addicts / "defunct" people isn't actually going to work in any sane span of time.
It may be that through science we will understand what combinations of genes cause different behaviours, and select those at birth, but even that's not easy. Genes have incredibly complex expressions, with multiple genes responsible for one feature, and "good" and "bad" features interacting.
In short your solution is brutish and doesn't stand up to reason.
You locate where I said or implied any such thing. If you can't locate the words you believe you are quoting, post your apology.
> It may be that through science we will understand what combinations of genes cause different behaviours, and select those at birth ...
Study history alongside science. What you have just suggested is called "eugenics" and it has a perfectly terrible history, one society doesn't want to see repeated.
> In short your solution is brutish ...
What solution are you dreaming about? I suggested no solution because there isn't one. Prove me wrong -- locate the words you believe you are addressing. And when you discover that you're posting a personal fantasy, apologize.
An appeal to nature (an untenable one at that) and a lack of understanding of scope on how natural selection works is just the beginning.
>If we artificially remove any appearance of shortage, of a need to struggle, we remove the incentive to work.So we need to imitate nature at least in some respects. But that goal cannot be achieved if we "improve the circumstances" of everyone in need.
Approaching this from a different perspective, it removes the need to do the bidding of others for sustenance. People don't, in general, want to fall to idlery. It opens an opportunity for organizations not solely fueled by the profit motive. The thing about society is that it doesn't necessarily have to model a romanticized return to natural order, especially when we have the ability to overcome obstacles like 'worrying about where next meal will come from' or 'having no clean water'. I will argue that today, we have the ability to eradicate the circumstances in which poverty develops either through minimum income initiatives or a more drastic change to how society is structured.
>In short, if we try to fix the problem of poverty, we will make everyone poor. That's history's lesson.
I'd absolutely love for you to provide some examples from history. I have one for you as well, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome
No, it's like examining reality, something people do what they can to avoid. But don't take my word for it -- try to erase poverty. Tell me how it works out.
But you know what? It's been tried. The experiment failed. You need to study history as much as the idealistic outlook of some political scientists.
> I'd absolutely love for you to provide some examples from history.
No, you certainly wouldn't. The histories of communism and socialism will do, but you have to read them with an open mind, and avoid saying "but the circumstances weren't right," or "the right idea but the wrong people," and similar explanations.
If you argue in favor of equality of opportunity and the eradication of sexism and racism, you will find me alongside at the barricades in common cause. But if you argue in favor of equality of outcome, that's where we differ -- and history favors my outlook, not yours.
> An appeal to nature (an untenable one at that) and a lack of understanding of scope on how natural selection works is just the beginning.
You may know 10% of what I know about evolution by natural selection, unless I'm being generous. And no, we can't contradict nature in human society and get away with it.
> I will argue that today, we have the ability to eradicate the circumstances in which poverty develops ...
This is quite false, and your inexperience is showing. Clearly you have never sat down with a woman and said, "you really, really don't want to have this next child. -- you can't afford it, and society can't afford it." Also, who would want to be placed in such a position? Based on the sentence I quoted above, apparently you do.
If we can't control population, we can't control poverty. It's as simple as that, and no amount of pontificating will modify that statement about reality. But the population problem is easy to state but impossible to address in anything resembling a fair way, and governments are the least qualified candidates to be in charge of it, as history shows.
You need to face the fact that, barring unacceptable measures, measures no civilized people would accept, the problem of poverty is insoluble because the problem of population is insoluble. You don't seem to realize that to "eradicate the circumstances in which poverty develops", as you put it, one would have to abandon any pretense of civilized behavior. That means you haven't thought through your position.
“Show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains.” -- Anonymous
When I was still considering moving to another country, one of the factors I used to assess the attractiveness of a country was the worst worst case metric. The worst worst case metric looks at what might happen if things get worse than what you think of when you hear the words "worst case".
Basically, I looked at how prisoners and the insane are treated. For instance, the metric allowed me to rule out Serbia pretty fast.
It also led me to rule out the US.
I rebutted with an example of a country with universal healthcare that still has a large homeless problem. I have no doubt that homeless residents of Vancouver have better access to healthcare. I'm just saying universal healthcare will NOT fix a lot of this.
Canada's healthcare system could be making the situation in Vancouver much better than it otherwise would be. The OP can be correct, even if homelessness is getting worse in Vancouver.
Thanks for bringing up the point about the homelessness and the health care. Its a solid thought to bring to attention.
Sincerely,
Guy who does not give a shit if its a rebuttal or not :)
Clearly there is a difference in the orders of magnitude. Now, Santa Monica has well funded program to help, provide shelter, etc. The city is very safe and full of tourists, making even panhandling an ok way to make a living. All this definitely attracts more homeless, BUT, according to the article above 24% have mental issues and 54% have drug issues (the two overlap). If we could get 54% off the street, it would make a huge difference not only to them, but to the community. I for one don't enjoy being harassed when trying to enjoy my weekend at the beach.
Unfortunately, this discussion is purely academic in nature. Long term homelessness is such a complex issue that there are no silver bullets. We can only hope to help on a case-by-case basis and an individual level.
When I volunteered with a few organizations working with homeless, I was stunned to hear make talk about personal freedom they enjoy. To me that seemed almost incomprehensible, but to them it was plain as day - if they conform to the society, they will lose the freedom to do whatever they want...
This perspective is often overlooked, but it is one our country is built upon - personal choice. We should always provide a way back to society, but if the person doesn't want it, and stays within the confines of the law, who are we to judge him/her for it.
Now, in some cases you can involuntarily commit people. However, the catch 22 is that in most of those cases, medications make them no longer a threat to themselves or others in a short amount of time and then the legal basis for holding them and compelling them to take medication vanishes. At which point, if they didn't want help in the first place, they leave and the cycle continues
The expression "reduce the number of untreated mental disorders" implies that there are treatments for mental disorders. There aren't. Talk therapy has been shown to be an example of the placebo effect, and the various drugs that exist have a checkered history, sometimes treating symptoms, but never treating causes.
If a mental patient is given drugs that prevent the disease's symptoms from manifesting themselves, that's not a treatment, it's a palliative, and the drug therefore must be used forever (which makes the drug companies happy). Many of the most popular drugs have serious side effects including anomalous weight gain, diabetes and heart disease.
In the long term, this may change as neuroscience takes over from psychiatry and psychology, a process that has begun in earnest, but that hasn't yet made a dent in the problem.
It's not always so easy to make the right decisions when you're poor: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6149/976.abstract
Is the problem mainly with people who fall from working class and could easily be pushed back up, or with long term hardcore homeless (with drug, alcohol, or mental illness issues?). Is it mainly single men (who I notice on the street the most), children, families?
Why is it so hard to get good data? Would a charity focused on collecting that data be more effective per marginal dollar than marginal dollars spent directly on naive solutions?
Regarding how I would use the total resources, I don't know, specifically (which is part of my problem). I think in general the best long-term solution is to get the values of personal responsibility, hard work, honesty, and genuine charity better ingrained into our culture. Again - how do you do that specifically? I don't know. But I think that's ultimately a root cause of a lot of the problems in society. That's where I would like to focus my attention more.
As for who it is that becomes homeless. In my experience, it's been pretty evenly split between men and women, and pretty evenly split between "fallen from working class" and "long term hardcore homelessness with ... issues", although I suspect my specific work has been more than usually biased towards the fallen-from-working-class folks. I very rarely see families with children fall from working class, actually. Of all the classes we're discussing - I think that's the most significant pattern. (edit: I can think of several individuals who had children and nearly became homeless - they've always been the most willing to do work that was "below them", accept help, and make the necessary long-term changes. I don't know if this is because they had kids, or related to why they had kids in the first place)
I think it's hard to get good data because it's easy for existing political biases to cloud the data (and I'm as guilty of that as anybody), and because so much of the real, underlying issues are very sensitive and / or subjective. Labeling people as lazy, crazy, unlucky, etc. is a very hard thing to do consistently and fairly, if it's even possible. Anyone who tries is likely to be disagreed with no matter what anyway.
It's probably a combination of various factors :
- The mild climate makes it much easier to face cold winters and hot summers for a homeless, as bad as their life is there it would be worse elsewhere.
- The local administrations are probably more tolerant than the ones in other parts of the US.
- The area is expensive (housing ridiculously so) by US standards, meaning that is way harder for people on minimum wage to save money, and losing their job can be a fatal blow.
I think the problem is at national level, it's just more apparent here, given also the contrast with so many people that are well-off.
I used to imagine, "What if Bob (or Alice) were homeless, maybe abused? Had to actively fight to stay afloat?" And guessed he'd probably sink to the bottom, because I couldn't see the part of his personality which would avoid it.
One 'Bob' I knew was in fact homeless in one country, but went back to his birth country full of sensible social programs. Now he lives in an apartment and lives frugally. It's worse than unnecessary — anti-human — to make such a person homeless and without decent healthcare.
Is Bob frustrating at times to friends who try helping him? Doesn't mean he should worry about homelessness or indignities.
When governments claim to spend $X million, that means nothing. The US has the highest incarceration rate, but that doesn't mean we're effective against crime. To the contrary. (The spending is effective in achieving its actual goals, but not the nice fuzzy propagandistic ones like "fighting crime".)
(BTW, about the 1% thing... that's just a slogan about wealthy elites, who have more power over policy than others. In another society, the 1% might refer to feudal hierarchy, a ruling party, etc.)
Kudos. I'm working my way up to 10% of my money. Mostly food banks and shelters.
(I do this, because apparently my taxes have already been fully committed to unnecessary wars and enriching cronies.)
... not shown any initiative or drive to seize opportunities.
Having had plenty of self-destructive behaviors, I only ask that you go easy on people who are on this path. Abuse (e.g., sexual, domestic, drugs, PTSD) very much warps people's brains. As in changes people brain chemistry and wiring. Very much an altered state of awareness. It takes a huge amount of effort for an individual to back away from the abyss.
my wife asked me to cut back for the sake of our family"
Agree with your wife here. We must cover our own needs before we have the excess strength, resources to help others.
I was simply unable to get most people to accept the help they needed.
I believe we're on this rock to help each other. More specifically, help people help themselves and help those who can't help themselves.
A truism from the addiction world is that you can't help people who don't want to be helped.
So that means you're opening the door for others to walk thru. And some people will walk thru.
An important point not to be underestimated IMO. It's not a lack of initiative, it's not being able to recognize opportunities when they present themselves due to skewed perceptions based on deep self-esteem issues, depression, anxiety, etc.
Shouldn't that be a mental issue? If you need housing, you go looking for a job. If someone is looking for housing, and doesn't look for a job: 1. Either he's physically incapable of doing it or 2. He's mentally ill (drug addict or any other thing related really).
Laziness is fine until you don't have shelter/food/healthcare. Otherwise, I'll put it as a mental issue, unless the person is happy about his situation.
And I'm far from a socialist. I would like many things in my country to be way more libertarian, and on a personal level I'm as selfish as the next guy.
But there's a line, a line of common decency and civilization, and this is so far beyond that it's obscene.
It would appear that the current solution is to throw them away like so much trash.
Lets have an adult attitude here. In general, this means accepting that:
- you don't have all the solutions, and if people just did it your way it probably wouldn't help much and would probably make things worse, since your armchair understanding of the problem is probably mostly assumptions and other bullshit.
- all the worlds problems are not caused because the people who disagree with you are evil and prefer a world where people suffer, or intentionally want to make things worse. In reality, almost no one is this way, if they propose a different solution or course of action it's because they see the world differently from different experiences and understanding.
- if there is a solution, it is very unlikely to be any of the things currently proposed or attempted, and will likely require innovative thinking and new solutions. If someone somewhere had figured out an effective and affordable solution, you could point to it and say "look, they figured out a great solution that we can afford and works well", and everyone would say "YEA!", and that's the end of it, assuming there isn't some non-obvious side effect that crops up later and makes the solution actually more harmful than doing nothing, which there usually is.
Some people will always be homeless.
Your reaction just seems... extreme.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_counties...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_places_i...
Palo Alto (#6), Cupertino (#11), Pleasanton (#18), Walnut Creek (#20), Mountain View (#21), and Sunnyvale (#30) are all Bay Area communities that are either in Silicon Valley or exurb bedroom communities for it, and rank higher than the Virginia counties you cite. The same pattern occurs on a smaller scale when you set the bar at >1000 households:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_places_i...
Woodside (#4), Portola Valley (#7), Hillsborough (#9), and Los Altos Hills (#14) are all in Silicon Valley; Atherton would rank ahead of Woodside according to the "population > 1000" list but apparently was left off for unspecified reasons.
http://www.businessinsider.com/former-business-owner-homeles...
She ended up homeless when she turned to California's
shelter network and hated it. ... Five years ago she moved
into The Jungle and says she has no regrets.
My home town has 20k people, and has winters with weeks of sustained below 0F temperature. Yet, there is a forested section behind a low budget grocery store where a 30-50 person homeless community exists perpetually. I know this is smaller than the 175 mentioned in the article, but its in a 20k person winter town in the middle of nowhere.
The causes of homelessness, and the things which lead to there being more or less homeless people in a particular region, are way more complicated than "the rich locals are selfish".
Funny enough, if you had scrolled a little further down you would see a business insider article talking about a SV exec trying to address this issue: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-jungle-largest-homeless-c....
Also if you have Googled a bit, you would have found out San Francisco spends over $200M on homeless issues, making it one of the largest city efforts to address the issue.
Please do not rely on link-bait from BusinessInsider to be your primary research source; there's a world of knowledge freely available out there through Google & Wikipedia.
The people that live in SV are VERY generous. The consequence is, we have a huge population of homeless people that moved here because the weather is mild and the people are generous, making being homeless here far less terrible than, say, New York or Chicago or Cleveland or Phoenix or even LA.
It's really easy to accuse a large and varying group of people of living purely for avarice, especially when you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. What are you doing about the homeless problem? Making snide comments on HN that scapegoat other people.
References:
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-08-20/national/41427...
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5221311
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Homeless-p...
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/the-asto...
(For the record, my original comment wasn't intended as a snide remark. This however is.)
And your comments about homelessness make me want to throw up. As if being discarded as worthless human thrash is in anyway less horrible when "the weather is mild and the people are generous".
How on earth do you manage to twist this so that it's the affluent denizens or Silicon Valley that are the victims here?
I'm sorry I'm not being constructive, this attitude just pisses me off. Like I said, I don't consider myself morally superior, far from it, I'm a selfish dick 95% of the time, but even I have limits. I couldn't live there and cheerfully ignore the problem.
Children are growing up homeless in one richest areas of one of the richest countries in the world. There's no nuance here, no deeper meaning that requires further research before one has the right to formulate an opinion.
There are many gray areas in life. Hell, at my age, almost everything turns out to be a grey area. But this isn't one of them.
I'm going to go to each homeless person I find, and buy them a ticket to your city, and give them directions to your house.
Then, when you wake up one morning, you'll have 500 homeless people living on your lawn.
Then I'm going to post to HN saying that you are a terrible person for letting the homelessness problem get so out of control at your house. "Don't you even care about them? How dare you throw them out like trash!?!"
Drug addiction and crippling mental illness effect over 95% of chronically homeless people. These are people struggling with things you and I can't even imagine coping with. I mean that, you and I can't fathom in any meaningful way what it means for our perceptions and judgments about the world to be completely unreliable. It's pretty much not possible to cope with hearing voices or having visual hallucinations or crippling addiction. You can't 'get them back on their feet', because they are not healthy enough to stand on their own, and we don't know (I mean the royal we, all of the medical and psychiatric expertise in the world is more or less helpless in the face of what they are suffering from) any way to make it better. In fact you can't merely offer them help, because they very often aren't mentally stable enough or responsible enough to accept it.
The best thing we can offer them is long term support. We can give them food and warm/clean clothing, offer medical care, and respond when they have an emergency. We can offer them safe shelter and mental health care, that is, when they are in a mental state such that they will accept it.
We can scrape them off the sidewalk when they OD, and we can temporarily put them in a hospital when they are so unstable that they are very likely to cause injury to themselves or others. Of course, there is a fine line in such paternal actions, at some point we are violating their humanity when we give them involuntary help. Sometimes the best systems we can create to do so end up being worse on the whole than doing nothing (institutionalization of the mentally ill for example).
That is the state of the art. Someday we, as a society and civilization, will be able to tend to the least fortunate in more effective ways, but what I described is literally the best we know how to do right now. Of course everyone, even us greedy Silicon Valley types, have a strong desire to make this better, but unfortunately nobody knows how to do it. We are spending HUGE amounts of money, and besides reducing suffering a little, we aren't able to achieve much more.
For all I know, you are profoundly mentally ill, and in a fleeting moment of coherence you went with a zuck joke.
I think, given a number N of people, there will be always a fraction of them who can't take care of themselves, mentally or physically ill, who gone through bad conditions (bankruptcy, depression...)
I know a relative which inherited a lots of money from his parents. Now he has nothing. It's not about giving money to people.
But I once worked in India for 3 months, in Mumbai, and I can tell you that on a global scale, this is nothing.
My commute in the morning consisted of driving, for 1 HOUR, through the largest slum in the world. 20 kilometers on a side big.
So while its terrible that this exists in Silicon Valley, on a global scale we have much bigger problems.
For me, that's the biggest reason I hope Bill Gates keeps on doing what he's doing.
There is no 'fixing homelessness.' You 'fix' it in India, or in the US or in Canada or in where ever. Sending money to 'fix' India or Africa is a decision to not spend it 'fixing' issues at home.
If you elevate 1000000 Indian people to the working class they will begin consuming a lot of stuff, some of which will be made in the US or having major part of its IP from US. Some of these dollars will come back home. After all what one person spends is another ones income.
There is nothing wrong of course with trying to help closer to home first.
We cannot solve the problems of the people by not knowing them in depth and that is major investment. We cannot offer one size fits all "learn to code" solution that earned the tech industry the recent mocking.
You can slice the world to arbitrarily small groups of people, making any problem someone else's. I don't feel the national borders are particularly meaningful in this context, especially considering the amount of Indians living in Silicon Valley.
I'm sure Rayiner feels deep sympathy for places that are not presently near to him (such as India, in this thread).
If every major problem in the United States were already solved, it would be more reasonable to then try to help others solve their problems. But that's not the case.
If you have people suffering right in front of you, it just makes sense logistically to help them first. Helping our own homeless and unemployed would aid in stimulating the American economy.
The bottom line is that there isn't any sane reason why an American would prioritize the needs of another country before his own. Nor would it be sane for an Indian to prioritize America's while she lives in India. It just doesn't make sense. You tend to your side of the street first.
> If you have people suffering right in front of you, it just makes sense logistically to help them first.
> there isn't any sane reason why an American would prioritize the needs of another country before his own
You're making several statements basically asserting that proximity is the only relevant factor when determining how easy it is to help one person or grow an economy. But we're not all paramedics. I'd argue that the American economy has already grown so much, and people are already given so many opportunities here, that making improvements here is going to be way more expensive in terms of natural resources and manpower, than improving an area where much simpler problems are still unsolved.
For example, spending $1M fighting malaria in Africa improves the GDP of Africa by $12M.[1]
> Helping our own homeless and unemployed would aid in stimulating the American economy.
This seems to be evidence of national bias. Why should I care about the American economy in particular?
1. http://www.rbm.who.int/cmc_upload/0/000/015/330/415680a_r.pd...
(Personally, I'd answer 'yes' and 'probably not', respectively. If you want to help people in bulk, you can probably get easier targets if you're willing to look in some of the poorer countries in the world. GiveWell's charity evaluations seem to confirm this: http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities)
"Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person."
You say "I don't want to downplay this" but then follow with: "we have bigger problems." How much more could you downplay it?
I hypothesize that folks (not necessarily OP) do this, consciously or unconsiously, so they can more easily justify inaction for themselves. "Well I could volunteer on Sunday at the Soup Kitchen but India has it so much worse. How could I/we be so selfish?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...
There is a greater relative disparity in wealth between the rich and poor in the US of A than India. (relative poverty) Out of the developed countries the US is easily one of the least unequal (if not the most unequal -- I haven't checked) places. This is, of course, because universal health care is communism and social security is for spongers and the lazy.
In absolute terms there is undoubtedly more extreme poverty in India than the US. Why that is so is not as simple as the country's broken social institutions, we're still talking about the world's largest democracy here. I would imagine the caste system plays a part. Colonialism too.
Wealth disparity is not what Rayiner was talking about. He was talking about social infrastructure. You're actually adding to his point here.
What he meant was that the wealthy class in India have about the same spending power as the middle class in the United States. They are sheltered away from the extreme destitution that is on display everywhere in their country and don't interact with the poor at all. It's perhaps 10x what you'd see from a rich person walking in NYC avoiding a beggar asking for change on the street.
Rapid urbanization and the slow collapse of the caste system has left a vacuum in India's culture that leads to stories like that of the poor woman we saw on Hacker News just last week or so. That is the lack of social infrastructure. Not enough is being done, and not quickly enough, to positively impact the society in a meaningful way. As it is now, India is in a state of culture shock that does nothing to help its economic system.
Waiting until everything is "easier to solve" sounds more like an excuse than anything else. Besides, every little bit helps the grander problem that you allude to so how could it not be helpful on every level? We can make excuses all day about why the problem exists: "Oh man, wait until I can vote again, then the gov't will be fixed and the big problems can be solved." "Once big banks and corruption are under control, then we can start feeding people and offering more services."
These kinds of attitudes that allow our complacency as Americans (or elsewhere for that matter) aren't intelligent as being part of solving some greater problem at the expense of others. These attitudes are part of the problem.
We owe it to ourselves and humanity to get past our own brains, see a problem in front of us, and do something about it.
I never said we should wait until everything is "easier to solve", only that solving big problems make easier problems easier to deal with. This mean we should prioritize the hungriest of individuals in this world, rather than just feeding the local homeless.
1) This kind of article is pure propaganda, intended to make money for Business Insider by "raising questions" and selling ad revenue against the pageviews.
2) "We" aren't responsible for the decisions of people who live within a 100 mile radius. If "we" are held responsible for their outcomes, financially and morally responsible, then "we" will also demand control over their lives to a degree you'd find unpalatable. This can be trivially solved by re-institutionalization and a Boston-Bombings-style sweep and cleanup of the camp. It won't be because the idea is to give them (and Business Insider) our money without giving us any control over their behavior or the use of funds.
3) The questions raised by BI are highly selective. For example, they put expensive homes on this map: http://www.businessinsider.com/homeless-in-silicon-valley-in...
But they don't talk about quantitative easing or Bernanke's 85B/month in mortgage purchases, which have the express intent of driving up home prices.
One could go on. But the right answer is that we didn't cause this, we're only paying attention to it because of BI's SEO, BI itself isn't going to dedicate its operation to donating money, you aren't going to dedicate your life to helping them, and so on. The right answer is no action on this issue that you heard about today, will forget about tomorrow, and is insoluble anyway.
Refuse to be guilt-tripped by cynical manipulators relying on maudlin sympathy, people who want to draw your attention to an issue, blame it on you, and then charge you (involuntarily via tax) a pretty penny for not solving it. For how many billions have been spent on "the homeless" to date? The result is only to subsidize them and build a permanent caste of homeless caretakers.
The real solution is to reverse de-institutionalization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation), but that would be fought tooth and nail by "homeless advocates" who'd see their budgets vanish in a trice. Public homelessness as we know it is subsidized, it is a government-and-NGO-caused phenomenon.
It's really difficult to comprehend how much worse off people have it in the developing world unless you see it firsthand. But it's still a false dichotomy to compare one population against the other as a form of argument. It's not as if we can turn our backs on the homelessness problem in this country because things are worse in the third world.
In many places, these resources don't account for all of the demand and have absolutely no chance of matching it.
America's situation is different; they have an idealogical opposition to social welfare and there is no system to opt out of. The homeless situation in SF is far worse than in any EU city I know of.
I don't know if I'd really call it a situation. Homeless people choose to go to SF because it's one of the best places for them. You won't freeze sleeping on the street, plenty of handouts...
Anyway, whatever the reason, I think it is actually a "situation". Many cities have homeless problems, but SF's is amazingly in your face. Most SF people I know would simply not walk through Tenderloin at any time, even in broad daylight. It's in the middle of the freaking city! That is not normal.
I've only been in the TL for three years or so, but I've spent the majority of that time wondering how regular working-class families with kids can afford to live in the area. I can't imagine how street-level pushers or prostitutes make rent. Maybe they rent places out in Hunters Point or Outer Sunset?
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-everyman-psychiatris...
I recently lived in the Tenderloin for six months, and my impression was the the majority of the chronically homeless there are crazy.
Union square has a lot more alcoholics and drug users, and 'talented' homeless people like street performers and pick-pockets. They may have some minor issues but they're clearly there by choice.
Like Copenhagen I believe it is extremely intermingled with substance addiction problems, especially alcohol. It's a hard nut to crack, that's for sure.
If you are a legal resident you will be offered a place to live, as well as money to survive, if you have the wherewithal to go to the social services. The ones who don't use this are usually mentally ill or too deep into substance abuse of one sort or another.
The thousands you are talking about are probably illegal aliens, who are obviously not offered the same services that residents enjoy. Can't really blame Copenhagen that thousands of people without resources or prospects stream into the city from other countries. In either case, they all reside in government or privately run shelters with beds and meals available, which is I guess is why we don't see them in the street the way you do in New York and San Francisco.
For example, in Manhattan which is where I live, the number of people in Manhattan has decreased from 2.3 million to 1.6 million or 700,000 fewer citizens with a corresponding increase in the cost of living as there are far fewer apartments. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/opinion/gothams-towering-a...
The best way to reduce homelessness is to reduce rent costs. The best way to reduce rent costs is to create more supply of rental homes.
And, in fact, many apartments have been built in Manhattan since 1910-- much of far northern Manhattan wasn't developed by then, and middle-class apartment houses were in their infancy.
That isn't to say that Manhattan (and its commuter-shed) doesn't need more new housing, and that the 1963 zoning code governing NYC isn't problematic: for example, inner Brooklyn, on top of tons of subway lines still has parking requirements, and many areas are zoned such that any new construction would be less dense than what it would replace. The problem isn't a supply that's been reduced, but rather a supply that isn't increasing along with demand, with zoning laws that often prevent any densification that would lead to increased supply.
The same problem holds in Silicon Valley, except that its zoning holds it to a suburban, rather than an insufficiently urban, form.
[0]http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/03/01/realestate/man...
Housing costs are crazy in the bay area because people refuse to allow more dense housing. With the homeless problem the way it is in the bay area we should be doing everything to decrease the cost of rent. Instead municipalities do everything in their power to prevent more housing from being built.
I don't see homelessness in the bay area as some kind of tragedy. I see it as a crime.
http://rt.com/usa/hawaii-one-way-tickets-homeless-824/
Now if only New York will offer airline tickets instead of bus tickets, the homeless can commute back and forth between New York and Hawaii forever. :)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/nyregion/29oneway.html
Also, SF has the Homeward Bound program, which is similar:
The Salvation Army told a friend of mine that there is no reason for people to be panhandling in Austin (there is a lot of that, too): the Salvation Army has never turned anyone away who wanted food. But, the Salvation Army has some annoyances, like bland food and (presumably) you have to sit through a sermon. So, why not just wait for the Mobile Loaves and Fishes truck from one of the Catholic churches to come around with free food, hot chocolate, and clothes, no strings attached, no questions asked, no sermons given, no lifestyles challenged?
The assumption that the homeless are homeless because of things outside their control is not true. Some are legitimately in need. But many have chosen it, often in part due to (alcohol) addiction. I've given a bag of food to homeless panhandlers who gave me a dark look because they wanted actual money. Why? If you talk with people who work with the homeless, often it is because they aren't hungry, they need actual money to buy alcohol.
Crime? I'm not so sure. I think cities and charities that enable this behavior might have some responsibility.
It's a crime that a person with a disease can be literally left in the gutter by society and then be told they chose to be there.
>I've given a bag of food to homeless panhandlers who gave me a dark look because they wanted actual money. Why?
There are many necessities a person will need that aren't just food and require money.
If you talk with people who work with the homeless the first thing they'll tell you is that there is, surprise surprise, not enough personal supplies (toiletries, clothing) nor food nor shelter to adequately address those who need their care. If no one is being turned down, it is because they are at maximum capacity.
First, SV has the economic ability to support a homeless population this large. If the homeless couldn't get basic necessities, they wouldn't be here. There are many reports that show panhandlers here can make $10-15 an hour. Highest anywhere in the world. SV people are extremely giving.
The second reason? Weather. The weather is mild enough that people can live in makeshift shelters year round. With a huge population to provide all the necessities, there's no reason for them to leave SV.
I have a friend who lives in Toronto. We got on the topic of homelessness and asked him how they deal with the homeless in Toronto. He said, "we have an amazing homeless abatement program here. It's called winter." If SV had snowy winters, there would be dramatically fewer homeless here.
Where did the people in this camp originate from?
I think putting people in the following statistical buckets would be enlightening:
Locals:
- Raised (attended k-12 schools) in Silicon Valley.
Transplants who arrived healthy and able to survive:
- Moved to the Valley to take a job, but were stranded when the job went away (no drug or alcohol additions pre job loss, no disabling psychiatric conditions pre job loss).
- Moved to the Valley for other reasons, were stranded (again, no drug, alcohol, psychiatric causes to homelessness)
Transplants who moved here because the conditions for transients are better here:
- Moved to the Valley having previously been homeless.
- Moved to the Valley, initially with a place to stay, but with substantial drug and alcohol abuse problems.
- Moved to the Valley with substantial mental health issues that had previously caused chronic homelessness.
There are probably much better ways to break this down, but hopefully that makes the idea clear.
This is important because there is a huge moral difference in having great wealth and allowing people to fall into homelessness VS becoming a national hub that attracts homeless people because of better living conditions. Either way, having people live outside is not acceptable, but the solutions we might pursue are very different.
If this is local-grown homelessness, it is our responsibility to address it and ensure that people aren't reduced to such conditions, regardless of what anyone from the outside contributes to the solution.
If transients from across the country (or world) are concentrating here, it doesn't reduce the responsibility to address it, but it does mean that it is not our sole responsibility. The places that are exporting homelessness to us should be liable to help fix it here, otherwise they have a perverse financial incentive to put homeless people on a bus headed in any direction to make it someone else's problem. The more benefits we provide, the stronger the attraction will be to homeless people everywhere, which will only make the problem here more insurmountable.
"Liable" is an odd word to use in a decision regime that has no incentives or feedback.
Edit: Similar in it's disarrayed outlook and temporary permanence.
Aside from that, it's basically like going camping -- except the density is too high to be safe.
One could argue that basically we (society) are merely failing to provide them with proper water, sewer, police, etc. because they're not doing this on privately-owned land and not doing it in a manner conforming to building codes, etc.
Instead we kick them off the land periodically, hoping that someone else will take care of the problem.
Is this camp here one example of the "99%-ers' flip side" of the "American Dream"?
I wonder how many residents know about the existence of these camps ?
I guess it's easy to forget that poverty exists if it's not screaming at you in the face.
A robo-car with shower, kitchenette, bedroom would radically transform the situation for poor people worldwide.
Edit for response: a robocar with all of these amenities would be an RV costing much more than $10,000; the land cost would just be shifted to the public as these vehicles take up all available parking. Not to mention that a shower and kitchenette would require utility hookups, meaning they would really need an RV camp...
Even in slums in India people are capable of affording low cost cars like tata nano's. And with the great efficiencies brought about by robo-cars, they would be even cheaper to manufacture and sell.
And the above doesn't factor in the value of land. Much of rent/mortgage goes into paying off the actual land-owner (usually a bank). Take away that exorbitant cost and robo-cars would actually be much cheaper than even a small apartment. At $700/month, $8,400 per year VS $10,000 one-time cost robo-car.
If one could convince legislators and voters that people should not be forbidden to live in cars, than the original ordinances against parking can be revoked.
(Admittedly, there may be some cheaper subsidized rates for charging electric cars today, but once everyone has one, will they be able to keep those subsidies?)
Also, it'll be awesome trying to drive anywhere with the additional traffic density.
The situation you described, 'build cheap apartments', is already the current situation. It hasn't worked has it?
Land ownership is a heavily regulated industry, and wherever you have regulations you get distortions in the market caused by political activity (electrician/plumber unions, local land owners etc).
It's time to talk about something you don't believe can happen to you, and that's urban decay. It has many causes, plenty more proximate than this one, but the first is the economic stickiness (technical term) of housing prices. People don't sell in a down market. They hoard. This price:liquidity correlation is toxic. Creating new housing (which requires regulatory change) is the only way.
If you don't take care of the poverty caused by the high housing prices, if you laugh it off as "not our problem", your city will not reach maturity but fall into urban decay and it will take decades for your municipality to recover both from the physical damage and disenfranchisement, but also from the damage to reputation.
Sincerely,
Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, D.C., Minneapolis, Atlanta, et al.