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Comment by steve19 | Hacker News Reader

Maybe spending $240m is the cause?

Hear me out, I am not a heartless bastard.

The social services provided, combined with milder weather, make SF a better place to be homeless than other areas. Surely homeless people, just like the rest of us, are attracted to cities that serve them better.

If you built every homeless person a house I don't think there would be any less homeless on the streets of SF. Homeless in LA who desire a house would simply migrate to SF. A Greyhound bus ticket is not that expensive.

So until you find a solution to homelessness in the entire USA, or at least the Western USA, I can't see any one city solving the problem (as opposed to moving the problem to a different city).

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You know what really works? Simply giving the homeless a house. Seriously. It works, and it's cheaper. Utah has proven it.[0]

[0] http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic...

It may not be cheaper in SF, although effectiveness is the main concern. http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...

Cost of living differences is irrelevant. You're still paying for this room and board regardless.

> Cost of living differences is irrelevant.

Until it's not. Unintended consequences abound!

That's the #1 myth about SF homelessness: http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/What-San-Francisc...

Cached version (non-paywall):

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mVDhDNv...

So, from your article 40% of SF homeless people self-reported moving to SF. Doesn't that support GP?

Where did you see that? I see 21%, and even then, only 22% of that 21% (or around 5% overall) moved to SF because they heard we have attractive homeless-assistance programs.

The issue of why you came and why you stayed are inter-connected. Some examples:

> Other reasons for moving to San Francisco cited in the homeless count were that they were looking for work

So they move for work, and a part of that, at least, is benefits if/when they don't find it. "If I go to SF, I can get welfare, which means I've got an extra month to find a job. I'll get one for sure in three months".

> that they were traveling through

And the benefits encouraged them to stay vs move on? Who knows?

I'm not saying it is true that stopping welfare would SOLVE the problem. Rather, homelessness in SF is at least partly a result of the benefits and caring, and that may not be a bad thing. An extra X homeless in SF vs in a less caring city may be a net positive for the USA. To say that SF's welfare options don't affect the total homeless population is overstating the case.

The deeper problem is EVERYONE is biased here, and the truth is hidden beneath 400 layers of guilt, emotion and in-group signalling, and no one is clear on what a "solution" means.

> Who knows?

Not you; you seem to just be making up a series of random reasons that people might do things off the top of your head, and using them as some sort of evidence that listening to people who actually spoke to and surveyed the effected people and the people who work with them is equally as worthless as what you're saying.

> The deeper problem is EVERYONE is biased here, and the truth is hidden beneath 400 layers of guilt, emotion and in-group signalling, and no one is clear on what a "solution" means.

This is not the deeper problem. We were talking about the homeless.

Not that that survey is completely worthless, but it's also very far from a peer reviewed scientific study. And even among those, 1/3 turn out to be wrong.

Several things are obviously questionable:

* Relying of people self reporting their motives and history is problematic even for sober and sane people.

* Who made the study? What's the methodology? What are their incentives?

* Etc...

A peer-reviewed scientific survey would reign supreme, but in the absence of one, we're left with a pretty-good survey that says one thing, and someone's gut feeling the says another.

How do you know it's pretty good? It doesn't even appear to be sourced (looking at the Google Cache, I suppose a footnote could have been lost in formatting)?

A non-peer-reviewed survey is just a gut-feeling with a budget, doubly so when we're reading about in a newspaper with an explicitly stated agenda on the subject.

But to put it in perspective, it was posted in response to a random person saying a random thing on the internet, citing nothing but what they thought that they might do if they were homeless.

"The social services provided, combined with milder weather, make SF a better place to be homeless than other areas. Surely homeless people, just like the rest of us, are attracted to cities that serve them better."

I'll bet there is an interesting analysis to be made with Minneapolis - a city that is, for the most part, as liberal and progressive as SF is - and comparing the "pull effect" of their funding with their weather, etc.

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