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Comment by jernfrost | Hacker News Reader

Good example of how private charity doesn’t work. The US has gotten ever wealthier, or primarly the 1% the exact portion of the population who should have been most capable of funding charity. Yet this problem grows. Charity is able feed people but not turn around people’s lives. You need comperhensive government programs for that.

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The economically disadvantaged are the easiest to help as they cling to every opportunity to get their life back in shape.

But then you have the mentally ill, mentally disturbed, drug addicts and the criminals to abet them. A coordinator for a local charity in Santa Ana had a post on a local NextDoor mentioning that their charity was running below capacity. Few reasons people would refuse any help and continue tenting by the river included:

* general requirement by the charities to have drug- (which includes alcohol-) free zones

* people didn't want to be "in the system" whatever that meant, many did not want to be tracked by government or agency of any sort

* some homeless objected to the religious nature of some charities

* for some easy access to drugs was paramount (and concentrated encampments enable this to great degree)

* other mental issues

Not sure these can all be solved by more money.

SF spends $150M on homeless and it's one of the worse cities for homelessness.

You really think money is the problem?

Am I alone in thinking that 150 million is not that much? When I was in SF i saw so much poverty and suffering I could not believe my eyes and I have seen homelessness plenty before. Build more affordable, high density homes and give them to the homeless for free for a few years with high amounts of care if you want to solve the problem.

I don't have the exact number, but if you divide $150M by the number of SF homeless it's more than $30,000 per person.

I would argue it's what we're doing with the money that's the issue, not how much money there is.

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