Silicon Valley man launches a hunger strike against housing the homeless
medium.com
medium.com
Proposition C will raise $300m per year.
Why not buy this cattle ranch and build all sorts of mental health, addiction treatment, job training, etc. facilities?
[0] https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/N3-Cattle-Company-...
[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/SF-Prop-C-homel...
Homelessness also has a mental health/substance abuse angle. It stresses local resources to address these issues and it is something like 43k/person allegedly when they are on the streets. It’s some super dodgy math that doesn’t inspire confidence in government.
One big issue I see is that homeless from the street being placed in sec 8 or affordable homes often end up back on the streets. I feel a certain percentage of them still need the community..while some of us see it as a dysfunctional relationship(I have had the opportunity to work with some homeless folks and this is my 2c), ..they still need their community. Sometimes they need their community with them so they don’t lapse back into homelessness and street living. Group homes and large homesteads with multiple small units which still have low skill jobs is also a solution. Solutions should include community preservation to be able to retain sheltered status.
Not true. From the article:
> The city of Fremont started developing a proposal for a new navigation center, and asked residents for input. Elected officials and staff organized three public meetings about the proposal, accepted comments online, and heard from hundreds of residents at city council meetings. Fremont residents wore white to city hearings to express support for the proposed center; others wore either red or blue, to express their opposition to specific proposed sites.
The article also talks about how we wants the houses people decide whether and where it's built. I think anybody will recognize the ridiculousness of holding a whole referendum on whether one small service center is getting built (especially with Grant money on the line, this will effectively kill the proposal)
Why is it ridiculous?
Here: http://www.ktvu.com/homeless/fremont-resident-on-hunger-stri...
[..]Sun said he’s not against a homeless navigation center. He doesn't care where it's built. He does care who has a say and feels it should be up to the voters.
It’s his first hunger strike over the city’s first-ever homeless navigation center. He said it should be a ballot initiative for the voters to decide and not city leaders.
“Only position I take is the decision making,” said Sun. “I believe this decision is so critical for Fremont.”
[..]
Sacramento is holding Bay Area cities hostage. The citizens pay for all of this.
Are you saying people shouldn’t get a say on how their cities are run?
It costs the city 4 more million and approximately 45% of the 2 million grant money is for administrative costs. It only serves 45 homeless people for six months(a bed and one meal a day and counseling) and grant money comes with strings that the city has to take in 45 people from other cities in alameda county.
That means 45 out of 608 homeless headcount in Fremont will get the ‘service’ of being directed to homeless services. Is that a good use of 2.4 million grant money? You can build a permanent group homes housing 50-60 people for the same amount in another part of CA that isn’t crazy expensive Bay Area.
Better uses for the grant money.
This is a narcissistic NIMBY.
What is more important to alleviate homelessness? Placing them in communities built in affordable places to deliver care and services ..or insist on keeping them in unaffordable tier 1 cities like Seattle and Bay Area cities?
All progressive politics seems to be geared towards strengthening and propagating a voter base rather than finding real solutions.
If there's one thing Bay Area cities have proven, it's that their citizens are incapable of running their cities. Putting NIMBY interests above regional interests are how they ended up in the current situation where any solution requires 7 counties, 22 regional associations and hundreds of so-called cities who can object to anything but are incapable of doing anything..
Regional government is Big Govt which is inefficient, bulky and expensive. Small units are efficient to run and tighter ships to maneuver. YIMBYism is too close to co-dependency rather than cooperation. Do we want a nanny state?
Fremont has to dip into its general and emergency funds and use city owned land to build these HNCs. That’s the commons.
The city council held public meetings but about location. They had already voted to accept grant money. Further, there are many shelters and homes in the city. The grant money doesn’t need to go to HNCs. Providing more services through the existing 6-7 locations and providing mobile services like health checks, laundry/showers/food while transitioning them to permanent housing are other options, but they are not being explored.
The biggest chunk would go to paying BACS, a non profit that would be managing the HNCs. The people also don’t want it near schools and residential homes.
I feel it’s all valid concerns. I wouldn’t doubt the cynicism and distrust expressed by the local citizenry when elected officials hurriedly pass measures without local input. When the commons are impacted, everyone gets to voice their concerns.
It was decided that a factory building modular homes will be built instead to maintain construction jobs locally. They still haven’t found a site to create this factory. Almost 4 years now and the homeless population has grown in SF and has spilled into neighboring Bay Area cities.
It’s easy to make scapegoats out of the productive tax paying, home owning, working class by branding them NIMBYs. Perhaps NIMBYism is the needed inoculation against chronic homelessness that is getting worse under inefficient state and regional governments.