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Comment by tpainton | Hacker News Reader

San Francisco has a homeless problem because it invited such. I guess it's total coincidence that the most liberal cities in the US also have the highest incidence of homeless population. As long as it remains a profitable and easy lifestyle, homelessness persists. Change those variables however you want and the problem goes away. This is not to say there are not those who are homeless due to bum luck. In many cities, this is the majority. Not so much in San Francisco where homelessness is a true profession.

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I don't know if there's a more recent version of this document, but pages 16-17 of http://www.sfgov3.org/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=4... claim that 61 percent of SF homeless were living and working in SF before becoming homeless. An additional 15 % are from nearby counties (Marin, Alameda, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Contra Costa), so at most a quarter of the homeless population could be said to be attracted there. Only 13 percent of those who moved to SF claim they did so because of the services there.

While undoubtedly, people move to places that are better for them, this is a minor effect, as the homeless tend not to have the resources to move around a lot and most people prefer to stay places they are familiar with. Either way, it's a shitty argument to make... homeless services should be provided regardless of whether or not it attracts people because it's the right thing to do. Perhaps the argument that should be made is that less of the financial burden should be placed on the city (i.e. more money from federal and state sources).

The article discusses all of these subjects with a great deal more thoughtfulness and evidence than you have mustered. Give it a shot.

> Change those variables however you want and the problem goes away.

Homelessness in Ulan Bator. Today it's -24 C (-11F?) in Ulan Bator, according to Google.

http://www.mikelaristregi.com/photo-reports/4096o-ulaanbaata...

That doesn't seem profitable nor easy.

"Liberal city" is almost redundant.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/11/red-stat...

> The gap is so stark that some of America's bluest cities are located in its reddest states. Every one of Texas' major cities -- Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio -- voted Democratic in 2012, the second consecutive presidential election in which they've done so. Other red-state cities that tipped blue include Atlanta, Indianapolis, New Orleans, Birmingham, Tucson, Little Rock, and Charleston, S.C. -- ironically, the site of the first battle of the Civil War. In states like Nevada, the only blue districts are often also the only cities, like Reno and Las Vegas.

> I guess it's total coincidence that the most liberal cities in the US also have the highest incidence of homeless population.

[citation needed]

I don't doubt this is true due to higher cost-of-living, improved services (and therefore more accurate counts... homelessness is severely undercounted in many places) and the trend that more liberal cities tend not to have the suburbs within city limits (or conversely, cities without suburbs within city limits are more liberal...)

Here you go:

http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_4_san-francisco-homeless...

That article does not seem to claim that point in it. Maybe I just missed it. But I checked all usages of high, population, city, and cities, so if the point is made in that article is is done so with different enough language to be difficult to find considering the article's length.

Edit: That all means I am calling bullshit on that being a citation for that fact (or 'fact' depending on your view of it).

The Manhattan Institute's mission is (I paraphrase) to make selfish rich people feel less guilty, so I would be wary of any claims made by the article.

That article is atrocious as any kind of source, it's clearly an opinion piece.

I'm asking for an actual study comparing homeless rates of liberal cities vs conservative cities. Also a list of which cities are actually liberal vs conservative would be nice.

From the article, since many people seem not to have read this far:

It doesn’t—not even close. “San Francisco is not by any stretch of the imagination the homeless capital of the United States,” says Jeff Kositsky, executive director of the nonprofit Hamilton Family Center, which provides housing and social services for homeless families. “We don’t have any more homeless, either families or single adults, than other cities.” The latest available numbers bear out his assertion: According to federally mandated “point-in-time” homeless surveys—city-specific audits conducted every other year on a single night in late January (and an admittedly controversial metric that many experts insist undercounts the true number of homeless people)— San Francisco had 6,436 homeless in 2013, out of a population of 837,442. By comparison, other large cities with exorbitant costs of living fared even worse. Washington, D.C., had a greater number of homeless, 7,748, out of a much smaller population of 646,449. Honolulu had 4,712 homeless out of a population of 374,658. Closer to home, cities like Los Angeles (34,393), San Jose (7,567), and Seattle (8,949) all tallied more homeless people than did San Francisco, though those numbers represent countywide, not citywide, totals.

I guess you missed this part?

> And whatever housing we do create specifically for the homeless soon fills up—in part because hundreds of new indigent people appear here every year

The article claims they took 20k people off the street and yet

> the homeless total hasn’t really budged for 25 years: In 1990, there were about 6,000 homeless.

In otherwords their policies have been a magnet for more homeless

> as long as [homelessness] remains a profitable and easy lifestyle

In what ways do you believe this to be true? There are NO homeless people who are in that position because they felt it was more profitable or easier than getting a job and living in a house. This is the same insanity that insists that people on unemployment benefits are somehow living an easy life, feeding cynically off the state, rather than trapped in poverty.

The article also dismisses most of your other points. In particular, noting that San Francisco has a minimal homelessness problem compared to such liberal cities as Washington DC or New York.

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