The effects of trauma are lasting and real and I’d imagine there’s a healthy amount of trauma being created in homeless encampments.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/talking-about-trauma...
https://www.sftu.org/2018/06/five-myths-about-the-homeless-p...
According to that, 71% of people on the streets of SF used to be homed, and aren’t on the streets due to drugs.
"The vast majority of the people who are homeless today used to be housed – in San Francisco. According to the city’s 2015 homeless count, 71 percent of the people on the streets were living in San Francisco when they lost their housing. That means seven out of ten homeless people used to be your neighbors – before the tech boom and the eviction epidemic. "
So the presentation here is that average-joe-normal-churchgoer was minding his own business as a lifelong SF resident and was then evicted by an evil landlord, so his apartment could go to a techie, which sent him into a downward spiral to homelessness.
I have not done independent research into this myself, but I have a suspicion that the actual narrative is something like:
"borderline mentally healthy individual moves to San Francisco because it's interesting and fun and romantic (and warm) and, while still on their meds, manages to rent a room or an SRO or something, lives there for a month or two or six, runs out of either money or meds or familial support (or all three) and suffers their financial/emotional/mental breakdown here, on our streets, far from any support or family they have, if they had any at all."
If this suspicion is correct, it doesn't imply we shouldn't be compassionate or helpful or progressive in our responses, but it does suggest that we are importing problems and should consider how we might limit that tendency.
It also does not place some kind of moralistic "maybe they shouldn't be doing drugs in the first place" judgement on people - at the end of the day it is indeed a mental health issue. Just maybe it doesn't need to be our mental health problem.
(to be clear this is from 2015, so nearing 4 years out of date)
"Survey results show that 71% of respondents were living in San Francisco when they became homeless, and of those, 49% had been living in San Francisco for 10 years or more."
This sheds very little additional information. This statistic is often presented as if 71% of the homeless had their own apartment before they became homeless, but for all I know (and what I suspect) is that many of these people were "housed" in very tenuous, precarious situations that I might, personally, find indistinguishable from homelessness. We really need to know the specific definition of "housed" used in this survey.
That 49% of those 71% were physically present in SF for 10 years or more also tells us very little. I am led to believe that homelessness and the mental illness(es) that lead to it are cycles and that people fall in and out of ... the statistic, however, is presented as if individuals were happily housed in a plain old apartment for 10+ years before lightning struck and they were suddenly strung out on the street...
I guarantee if you spend a week working with the homeless in San Francisco, you'll meet at least some people more intelligent than you, people who at one point earned more money than you, people who are more mentally composed and happy than you. You won't meet all of them in the same person but you'll meet at least one example of someone who can disprove every single simplistic pet theory about homelessness ever proposed.
- I made no comments about homeless people being uninteresting or unintelligent or how much money they do, or did earn, etc.
- I have presented no pet theories about the causes of homelessness or the demerits of the homeless.
I have simply pointed out that a very, very commonly published and cited statistic is, in my opinion, very ill defined and probably misused. I also suggested a possible alternative narrative that I suspect is more correct.
Please don't put all of the things you hate into a box and then shove me in there with it.
"Seriously, get off the internet and go volunteer at St Anthony's for an hour."
I have done that all over the world.
Cheers!
According to that, 71% of people on the streets of SF used to be homed
There seems to be lots of people as you say, but I'm sure if rent was cheap, that would help out a lot. I dunno if you've ever been to the SF Bay Area, but rent is REALLY high. The only reason I stayed as long as I did was I had rent control.
The problems listed by this guy are real: the nimbyism of property owners is insane, and the city bureaucracy (pretty much everywhere in the area -Berkeley was particularly lol) is completely bonkers. I'd also point out that civic groups that should help things, like various homeless advocates, generally seem to make things worse. At one point there was an actual $1000+/month subsidy which paid people to remain homeless. You'd lose it if you got housing! I'm pretty sure Newsom got rid of it (to much howling), but it really stuck with me.