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Comment by rm_-rf_slash | Hacker News Reader

Forgive my crass naïveté, for I live in a chilly northeastern college town where homelessness = death for half the year, but why are people so concerned about keeping the poorest of the poor living at the tiny tip of the wealthiest peninsula in America?

Homelessness and the situations that create it are great tragedies. But to me it seems completely absurd that this problem is dealt with a municipal level. Homeless shelters are good to have but there is so little space in the city of San Francisco for the working people, let alone the tech workers forking over several thousands of dollars each month in rent.

San Francisco is a tiny city. California is a very big state. I don't understand this problem at all.

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I agree with one of your points: that dealing with homelessness on a municipal level is problematic. It disincentivizes cities from providing extremely good care for its homeless population for fear that it will just attract more homeless people. There are already US cities whose answer to the homeless problem is to buy them a bus ticket to a city where they will be better cared for.

I do, however, think you are being a bit naive with respect to the notion that people are "keeping" the homeless in SF. The city's homeless population chooses to be there, for various reasons including SF's fair year-round weather and the fact that some have a connection to the city going back to before it was the tech-center it is today.

You do realize that this isn't a problem that can be solved with more money, right?

The City of SF's budget was 8.9 billion dollars FY 2015-2016[0], roughly 1.2 of which was earmarked on "human welfare and neighborhood development".

This isn't a "throw more money/resources at it and it will be fixed" type of problem.

It's a problem that needs to be restated in different terms, which requires a paradigm shift in how we view the homeless, mental illness, and addiction in the United States.

[0]http://sfmayor.org/ftp/uploadedfiles/mayor/budget/SF_Budget_...

There's plenty of space; the problem is that it's illegal to use it to build the kind and amount of housing necessary. With the right density levels and zoning regulations, you can basically build apartments for $200k/each at arbitrarily high land values.

I don't like having homeless people on the streets but even the homeless have freedoms and the same rights that you and I enjoy.

What you are saying is that SF is only for certain people, all others should be made to go.

No, he's not saying that at all. He's asking why this problem should be addressed at the municipal level, and why it isn't being addressed at the state level or federal level instead. It's a valid question: the State of California has a lot more resources to deal with a problem like this than any single municipality within the state, and the Federal government even moreso.

Given how much of a problem homelessness is throughout the state of California, why is the state government not addressing it?

Why not address it locally? Its easy to say "somebody else's problem" when dealing with your poor, dirty homeless neighbors. And its a problem all over - the reciprocal argument "the State can't fix everything for everybody" is valid too.

The real hangup in all this comes when temporary fixes (tents) are pulled out from under people, and ephemeral future fixes by indeterminate somebody are waved around. People have to be sheltered every day. Starting today.

Because it is extremely expensive to address it locally, and you could help a LOT more people by taking that money and building homes for people in less expensive places.

Every 1 homeless person that you help in SF is 10 people that you could be helping somewhere else

You can still do that without having the state run the program. The homeless problem in SF might looks somewhat different from Chula Vista, so it makes sense to have locally created programs in addition to state programs. Regardless, the state does run homeless programs, and earlier this year passed a two billion dollar program to build housing for the homeless.

It's more like this: San Francisco is very expensive. It is also a nice place to live.

Why not put shelters and programs to get people back on their feet in less expensive places so that eventually the formerly homeless can live in San Francisco by paying rent with the money they earn by working?

Just like everybody else.

> It's more like this: San Francisco is very expensive. It is also a nice place to live.

I don't care, I can be where ever I want as long as it is not someones property. Doesn't matter if I'm poor or rich.

> Why not put shelters and programs to get people back on their feet

Such programs and shelters do already exist all over the country. Do you want to force them to move to these places or camps?

> Just like everybody else.

Not everybody wants to be you or me.

Everywhere is someone's property. You're on private property or you are on government-owned property. Those are the only options.

I agree with this. The fact is that to live in the bay area now is expensive and many people (myself included) work hard to afford to live here. I don't understand why someone who doesn't or can't work should be guaranteed a place here. If I was injured or became a drug addict/mentally ill and needed to stop working I would strongly consider moving back to where I lived for the past few years in Eastern WA, life was exponentially cheaper. Problem is these places where living is cheap probably have little to no services for the mentally ill/ addicts. This is why I agree with your statement that the state should establish services in more cost effective areas. I guess this seems like shipping them off to camps away from rich people but at least the dollars spent on services and shelters can serve more people more effectively.

Oh you've got me completely wrong, I wouldn't guarantee anyone a place or service anywhere in the world.

What I'm saying is that people are free to go and stay where ever they want in their country as long as it isn't someones private property. That's a very basic freedom that we all have.

You don't have a mandatory responsibility to care for the homeless and homeless do not have a responsibility to accept any your care. Especially if your care amounts to basically forcing them to live in a different place.

When your property taxes (or your landlord's property taxes that you pay in rent) are used to pay for expensive public services that could be done much cheaper elsewhere, homelessness is most certainly an infringement of private property.

If a homeless person is robbed, your taxes pay for their police investigation. If a homeless person is stabbed, your taxes pay for their medical treatment.

As far as this "very basic freedom" for people to "go and stay where ever they want" goes - can you point out where this is guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution?

The costs for the examples you list are costs of having your own nation and your own set of laws.

There's no point in having either of those if we collectively do not enforce it.

Your position would allow to introduce arbitrary limits on freedom because you can always show a direct or indirect cost caused by having freedom. (it would certainly be cheaper to have everyone living in safe and orderly labour camps, wouldn't it?)

Regarding the U.S. Constitution: I'm in the EU but from my basic understanding the Constitution is a list of supreme laws limiting the governments power to interfere with citizens freedoms and not the other way around. Compiling a list of citizens freedoms would be senseless anyway as it would quickly approach an infinite list. Since I have not heard about a Constitutional law that allows the government to displace people internally it follows that the government does not have this power.

Your "private property" is not being infringed by a decision about how taxes are spent. You have taxation with representation, talk to your representative about how angry you are about being taxed so much when you see that money being spent on the homeless people you might trip over on the way to Whole Foods.

> This is why I agree with your statement that the state should establish services in more cost effective areas.

How's that supposed to work? The state builds a homeless ghetto in Salinas and trucks all the homeless there with promises of housing and services? Who is this supposed to be attractive to? The residents of the town now housing the ghetto? The homeless who are being shipped somewhere that they don't want to be, somewhere that can't actually support a homeless population on the street? If the program fails either wholesale or for that individual, will they truck them back to SF or just dump them on the streets in this town with no support for homelessness?

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