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Comment by Crito | Hacker News Reader

I suppose the elephant in the room is whether or not 'techies' are repulsed by the homeless because accusations like "...[they] spit, urinate, taunt you, sell drugs, get rowdy..." have a basis in reality.

I don't live in SF, so I can only go off what I hear (from the accused 'techies', so I'm only getting one side of the propaganda here..), but what I have heard is that 1) the homeless really seem to love SF, preferring it to perhaps any other city, and 2) there is at least a segment of the homeless population that engages in extremely anti-social behavior (specifically I have heard stories of BART escalators regularly being shut down because the homeless shit on them).

(For background: most of my experience with the homeless comes from my interactions with them while working at a soup kitchen in a small city in Pennsylvania (those interactions were universally pleasant), and my interactions with them in Philadelphia (where an aversion to the homeless and an aversion to being mugged have a very close relationship...))

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First, we need to distinguish between homelessness and poverty on the one hand, and crime on the other. The two may overlap for some individuals (just as wealth and crime overlap for some), but they're by no means synonymous.

The legitimate complaints about the homeless in SF seem to always revolve around criminal acts: Assault and vandalism, mostly. (The less legitimate complaints are usually a variant on "I shouldn't have to look at poor people.")

Not all homeless people commit these sorts of crimes. Those who do are just disproportionately visible. This provides fodder for the false narrative that the homeless are criminals who are undeserving of compassion and responsible for their own criminality.

So how can we discuss this issue without wrongly demonizing a whole demographic? Here's how. If you live in SF and you're bothered by street crime, complain about street crime. Advocate for community policing that a) keeps a lid on assault, vandalism, and other such crimes, and b) treats the public (including the homeless) as valued customers.

It's fine to say that street crime in downtown SF bothers you. That's a completely understandable sentiment. I think most everyone feels the same way about the neighborhoods they inhabit. What's not fine is heaping overbroad blame on an already marginalized group.

I guarantee you that San Francisco does not adequately prosecute people who poop on the street or shout dirty comments at passers-by. And I guarantee you that complaining about the homeless problem does not mean a lack of compassion for an "already marginalized group". And SF is so politically correct that prosecuting members of this "already marginalized group" is a political challenge (although California has no problem throwing large numbers of black guys in jail without adequate due process). Nor do SF police consider street pooping a high priority. You do not get a homeless problem with effective policing and effective social services.

I really don't know what you're trying to get at with your comment. It seems to consist mostly of straw-man arguments and a lack of interest in confronting a real problem.

I was thinking of more serious crimes. But before you start prosecuting people for the offenses you listed, you first have to make sure there are adequate options for the people committing them.

Across the country, the homeless are routinely prosecuted for relieving themselves in public, yet in many cases they're offered no places to lawfully do so. (I don't know about downtown SF; I'm saying if there aren't bathrooms available to the homeless, you can't fairly prosecute them for going in public.)

Similarly, it's unfair to prosecute someone for shouting at passers-by if that person suffers from a serious mental illness, and has been denied treatment, as is so often the case. Indeed, our country has been defunding mental health and bolstering prisons, with the result that many would-be psychiatric patients are now being warehoused in prison.

> I really don't know what you're trying to get at with your comment. It seems to consist mostly of straw-man arguments

The article quote an SF startup CEO who seems to be calling all homeless people "degenerates." So it's hardly a straw man I'm arguing against. In case it wasn't clear, I'll be quite explicit: My argument is directed against the attitude espoused by the startup CEO in the second and third paragraphs of the article.

> a lack of interest in confronting a real problem.

Considering I explicitly agreed there was a problem and proposed an admittedly partial solution[1], I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion. What is the problem I'm uninterested in confronting? The problem of homelessness? The problem of tech workers having to encounter the homeless?

[1] I proposed better community policing as a way of addressing legitimate complaints about street crime. I should have also discussed the dire need to address the root issue, which is homelessness itself. For those interested, "housing-first" is a promising model.

Yes, let's all come together and help the city tackle the problem of drug abuse, an often cited precursor to becoming homeless.

Together we can put petition Ed Lee and SFPD for effective non-political policing. Let's start by upholding the law in Dolores Park on the week-ends.

Er, hello, anybody there? Nobody interested anymore? Hmmm.

Yes, let's all come together and help the city tackle the problem of drug abuse, an often cited precursor to becoming homeless.

I think cost and availablility of housing might have something more to do with it, seeing as rich folks doing drugs doesn't lead to homelessness nearly as much.

I agree that whatever the situation, remembering that not all of the broader group are responsible for all of the publicly visible actions. It may be the homeless, bar hoppers, or students that are causing elevated crime in some area, but it is important to remember that not every homeless person, Friday night drinker, or student is a public menace by association.

Still, if we want to know why the general public is displeased with college students in some hypothetical town, we should ask ourselves if there really is a problem with bored college students lobbing beer bottles through windows for fun. The hypothesis "The general public is frustrated with the local college kids because a highly visible minority of them wreck up the place" should probably be examined before we jump on board with less... direct.. hypotheses.

Agreed. It's certainly worthwhile to look into that. The fact is, people with political influence (monied downtown tech workers) are upset. That's likely to cause some kind of reaction from government, eventually. Given that, it's better to analyze the situation rationally and try to steer the government towards the right solution, than to sit in denial until we get a botched, inhumane overreaction.

"The score is four/And next time more!"

Yes, I know it's a counterfactual, but I can never resist the opportunity to toss out that old chestnut, because just about every time I do so, it meets two or three people who not only have never heard of it, but never imagined it possible.

Oh wow, I guess I'm in your two or three this time. I am not really sure what to make of that.

Clearly not all 'mob grievances' are legitimate.

Now you're thinkin'! Homework: Define a function, of as many terms as you like, by which to evaluate the legitimacy of a given mob grievance.

I think that if we could do that, we would be well on our way to implementing an ideal society. ;)

Anyway, even if we take the 'techies' grievances with the homeless as not legitimate, I think it is important to remain honest with ourselves as to what those (not legitimate) grievances are. The author is proposing a theory of the origin of those grievances that I think discards the seemingly obvious origin.

So for example, I assume the issue the residents of Kent had with the college students was somewhere along the lines of "they were a bunch of unpatriotic smelly hippies who didn't spend enough time in class". Both of us agree that would not be a legitimate grievance. What I think is relatively unsupported and usefulness is an alternative theory that the residents of Kent thought that all the college students were "Pretentious educated snobs who, on their shoestring college student budgets, contributed little to local businesses", asserting that the hippy stuff was just a convenient excuse. I mean, that could be the case, but I would want to see a pretty solid refutation of the obvious theory before I accept that less direct one.

While the residents of Kent were obviously being hateful monsters, they were probably being straightforward and honest with their complaints.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes what the mob claims their grievance is (legitimate or not) really is what they think their grievance is.

Well, you were thinking, anyway, for a brief, shining moment. I misdoubt you will again, and for longer next time -- once you start to get a taste for the habit, it's all but impossible to kick, not least because you don't want to.

Now I have to come clean: I gave you a trick question, asking you to define a function which in fact is trivial. Do you know Lisp? Never mind, it's simple enough, not least because we can cheat by assuming the definition of 'legitimacy' -- here, I'll give it to you in Lisp, thus:

    (defun mob-legitimate-p (&rest args)
      nil)

Let's assume I feel, for whatever reason, that you done me wrong. Let us further assume I find it meet to express my resulting dismay by first blacking your eye and splitting your lip, and then aiming a loaded shotgun at your brisket and demanding that you put right my grievance, in the precise fashion I see fit, lest I splatter your thorax across the opposite wall.

Now, leave aside the question of whether you've given me cause for grievance, which you'll note was nowhere mentioned in your homework assignment. While I'm aiming that shotgun at your chest, how legitimate do you think you'll regard my grievance? How does it affect your consideration that I find it meet to back my demand for redress with violence and the threat of more violence? Regardless of how I might make or you might evaluate my case in the abstract, what effect do you consider my actions to have on the legitimacy of my claim?

And, finally: Can you define in rigorous terms why it should be in any way more moral, or less deleterious to the good order and conduct of any society, for many people to engage in actions analogous to those I've just laid out? It's not right or just or meet or permissible for me to act in that fashion, but the common theory seems to be that, if I go out and round up five hundred more who're pissed off just like me and we all come back with shotguns, or Molotovs, or what-have-you, the very same actions are somehow ennobled thereby. I've heard a goodly number of arguments for why that is, but none has managed to convince me; perhaps you'll be the first! In any case, I hope you'll attempt so to do, and look forward to studying the result.

I am sensing some combativeness which is leading me to suspect you have wildly misinterpreted my intent. It is not my intention to make any assertion on morality in this comment, or the previous comment.

Part of my point was that the legitimacy of the grievance is a distraction. Due to its subjective nature, it cannot be computed (most reasonable people will often find each other in agreement, but this is still a distraction (and itself depends on the subjective. What is "reasonable"?))

Furthermore, actions taken by either party are again a distraction. We can talk about appropriate ways to resolve disputes, (I would argue, and I think you would agree, that threatening me with a shotgun is an appropriate response to an exceptionally narrow range of situations) but that is not what this discussion is about. The article is not about how to resolve the tension between the homeless and the 'techies'.

What the article is about is classifying the nature of the grievance techies have with the homeless. The article asserts the grievance stems from a form of Puritanism; Puritan-esque ideas about the intrinsic value of labor and the forms that contribution to society must take. The author implies that this grievance would be "not legitimate", and in fact I agree with the author. Still, the 'legitimacy' of that grievance is a distraction in the context of this conversation.

I am not arguing that the authors judgement call on the legitimacy of this grievance is incorrect. Rather, I am arguing that the author has dismissed the possibility that the grievance techies have with the homeless is much simpler (which does not* mean 'correct', 'legitimate', or 'moral'.)*

I cannot fulfill your request (in the final paragraph of your above comment), because I do not believe that a grievance is legitimized by the size of the mob. Furthermore, I believe the 'moral legitimacy' of the a grievance is not relevant to ascertaining what grievances a mob has. In fact, we cannot even begin to discuss that until we have agreed upon exactly what that grievance is. Agreeing what the grievance is must be a prerequisite for discussing the merits of the grievance.

tl;dr: The mob is techies. Noreen Malone believes that the mob has been riled up by some form of neopuritanism. I consider that possible, but I do not consider it the simplest explanation, nor the most likely explanation.

dude, you rule! :D

public function getYourPitchforks($year, $money, $housing, $safety, $politics, $scapegoat) { if($politics[$year]['money'] > $politics[$year-1]['money']){ unset($scapegoat[$politics['id']]); ksort($scapegoat['money']); $scapegoat[0]['money']--; $scapegoat[0]['housing']--; $scapegoat[0]['safety']--; } $year++; $money--; $housing--; $safety--; if(count($scapegoat)){ $this->getYourPitchforks($year, $money, $housing, $safety, $politics, $scapegoat); } else { return array('money'=>$money,'housing'=>$housing,'safety'=>$safety); } }

Even the ones who do commit assault and vandalism are deserving of compassion, perhaps even more so.

Of course! They'll never have a chance to improve themselves if they're never shown the error of their ways.

Mostly they're discreet about pissing in recessed entryways, but somebody tried to spit on me at a bus stop completely unprovoked, and there's more than one guy on Market around 3rd or 4th who would wander around and yell incoherently at pretty much any pedestrian within twenty feet. Some nights there was almost a Mad Max vibe to downtown.

They didn't merely stop the Muni/BART escalators. Those huge machines were clogged with so much shit that they failed. http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Human-waste-shuts-down...

If you've been to the Tenderloin area recently, then yeah you would know "...[they] spit, urinate, taunt you, sell drugs, get rowdy..." is completely accurate. I recently observed a two days in a row a shop owner who had to wash the sidewalk outside his shop to clear off the human feces.

There is a homeless problem in SF, with as much money as the city spends on programs to help them I'm not sure why it's so much worse then other big cities, but it is.

".. with as much money as the city spends on programs to help them.." - that's pretty much the answer right there.

Facts, Citizen? How reductionist of you.

As to your first point, I gather San Francisco very rarely has weather so inhospitable as to render living outdoors dangerous or even particularly unpleasant. As to your second, I forget who characterized man as "where the falling angel meets the rising ape", but it's an apt enough metaphor, and we fail to encourage the former at peril of encouraging the latter.

If weather was the main factor, we would expect the homeless to flock to San Diego -- or even any of the southern states -- and not San Francisco. So there's clearly something about SF other than the weather that attract a large number of homeless people.

I grew up in Mississippi, and, believe me, brother, you don't want to be living outside come August -- it's nothing at all like San Francisco weather [1]. As for the rest, see my second point; if you expect nothing good of a man, that is precisely what you'll get.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco#Climate

Add "verbal and sexual harassment of women in the street" to that list.

Yes, some of these incidents even get national coverage (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/11/naked-subway-man-vi...).

I can't speak to whether these sort of incidents get an exaggerated or unfair amount of coverage, or if these really are common problems. Of course either way, these sort of incidents/articles surely shape public perception; I don't think we can make this as simple as "Techies are nouveau riche who like to kick 'em when they're down".

they are common

They do get an exaggerated coverage. It's really not that common. I've been riding BART to/from SF for my techie-job for 6+ years and I haven't seen anything like that. The most interesting thing I've seen in person is this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGkbJlmhI90

Oh and I did see a guy yell at and punch a window on the BART train once for no apparent reason. It was late at night so not many people on the train but the few passengers were definitely freaked out. Window didn't even crack and he punched it HARD.

That's not the elephant in the room.

The elephant in the room is the fact that tech companies and startups have been setting up shop in the very parts of the city where homelessness, crime and the behavior described have long been problems.

That doesn't mean that these issues shouldn't be addressed, but I cannot for the life of me understand why "techies" have been flocking to areas of San Francisco where the average person would likely not feel safe the minute the sun goes down.

As an example: I once went to an event at a venture-backed startup that chose to locate itself in an unsightly part of town in what was previously an auto body shop. It was literally right next door to an adult entertainment shop. Who in their right mind does this and doesn't expect to encounter unseemly behavior?

> I cannot for the life of me understand why "techies" have been flocking to areas of San Francisco where the average person would likely not feel safe the minute the sun goes down

Because the rent's cheap there! -- in a city where office space averages $500 per square foot per month [1], renting an ex-body-shop next to a porn store's going to be a lot easier on the ol' shoestring, don't you think?

[1] http://www.loopnet.com/San-Francisco_California_Market-Trend...

Eh, In Philly I used to do my grocery shopping at a Trader Joes, located directly underneath an upscale apartment building, and directly across the street from two porno theaters and a salvation army.

I don't think that it is fair to frame the situation as a problem of people not respecting some sort of informal 'urban decay quarantines'. That seems uncomfortably close to victim blaming to me (yes, the situation is not that simple as clearly the more impoverished are victims, but the well-off are nevertheless also victimized by criminal portion of the impoverished population. This is a difficult topic to discuss without appearing to lack compassion or be tone deaf)

As an employer, I have a moral obligation to do my best to ensure that my employees can get to and from work safely and without fear of harassment, assault, etc. As it relates to the topic at hand, this is the only reasonable consideration for management. Period.

If doing what I can to protect the physical and mental well-being of my employees requires that I make a judgement call to avoid certain areas of a city, I would make that judgement call every single time because it's simply the right thing to do.

I do not disagree, but I also do not think that is relevant to this discussion. Employers should be doing or not doing lots of different things, but this discussion is not about them.

If you are certain that location of employment is essential to this discussion, consider that not everybody who commutes through dangerous or vandalized neighborhoods works in those sort of neighborhoods. Some of them instead live in those neighborhoods. A company may choose to locate itself in a clean and affluent neighborhood, but that does not resolve the problems their employees may face.

It's natural to be repulsed by another person who will "...spit, urinate, taunt you, sell drugs, get rowdy..." in front of you in public.

But the key here is understanding the root cause and showing compassion towards the misguided.

...not constructing an us vs. them mentality, like Greg.

For better or worse, mental illness and/or long term substance abuse are behind many of these problems.

I'm from Vancouver where there's plenty of homeless. The Tenderloin's similar to Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (in which I worked for years), but one thing that I noticed that seemed more common in the Tenderloin was human faeces on sidewalks.

Search the SF Chronicle archives.

In a nutshell, the city doesn't have enough money to install public toilets which are deemed appropriate for use by the homeless etc. Not sure what the exact requirements were, but that's the nub of it.

Of course, the city is giving payroll tax breaks to Twitter and other tech companies because they threatened to leave the city (to Australia at one point!) if they didn't get it.

There's a link there somewhere...

Anyway, end result is that Twitter employees are going to have to cycle in shit, walk in shit, and stand on BART escalator shit. Karma is beautiful.

What baffles me is that these accusations and the subsequent discussions of "[they]" all treat homelessness as a homogenous problem. If we, as self-proclaimed as hackers and problem-solvers or whatever, want to discuss problems and solutions we have to understand what we're talking about first.

Sure some subset of the homeless population spits, urinates, taunts, sells drugs and gets rowdy, but so do a lot of rowdy bar hoppers on Polk St every Saturday night.

Homelessness is a complex subject with many causes and effects -- I don't claim to understand it; in fact, I'd like to learn more, but episodes like this don't seem to engender that kind of discussion, unfortunately.

I do live in SF and can confirm that we have a serious poop problem.

I remember it being a big problem in public parks too. (Perhaps more dogs than people)

I live in Seattle, not San Francisco. This is not my experience whatsoever in Seattle. Perhaps this is the experience in San Francisco, however.

In that case, to what do you ascribe that behavior?

And

What is the appropriate response to it?

I also currently live in Seattle. My experience with the homeless in Seattle is characterized best as a lack of experience with the homeless in Seattle. They seem to rarely bother people, I have never been harassed by them.

If there really is a stark difference in behavior, I don't know what to ascribe that to.

The "Seattle Chill" is embraced by even our homeless it seems.

seattle doesn't have good homeless weather.

But yet, there are a lot of homeless people in Seattle...

accusations like "...[they] spit, urinate, taunt you, sell drugs, get rowdy..." have a basis in reality.

Sounds like a stereotype of students as much as of the homeless.

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