Hacker News Reader

Comment by henrikschroder | Hacker News Reader

> But people just kept screaming that he didn't care about homeless

JFC, it's not because of a lack of money that SF has a problem with homeless people, and it's not that more money would make the problem magically go away.

View on HN

It’s a national issue and SF is a symptom. Instead of pushing for healthcare, housing, more aids, and so on, people are just blaming it on mental health.

Your premise doesn't align with the facts.

Poverty and homelessness are near all-time lows in the US right now, comparable to Canada. You wouldn't know that by looking at the streets of San Francisco (or Los Angeles for that matter).

At a national level homelessness has declined dramatically since 2000. While San Francisco's problem has only kept getting worse. The US as a whole isn't seeing the homelessness problems that San Francisco is.

While San Francisco was doing nothing, the US implemented the Housing First program under the Bush Administration. That policy was continued and amplified by the Obama Administration, to extraordinary results: homelessness declined through the great recession, rather than skyrocketing as would have been predicted (especially coming out of a housing bust).

Unsheltered homelessness is down 20% since 2007. Total homelessness is down by 15% since 2007.

https://www.hud.gov/sites/dfiles/Main/images/hudno.18-147.jp...

2010 > Obama builds on Bush success to help the homeless

https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2010/...

2013 > The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development reported that the number of the chronically homeless declined by 30% between 2005 and 2007. You might have expected the numbers to spike again when the financial crisis hit but no. Since 2007, the number of chronic homeless has dropped another 19%.

https://www.cnn.com/2013/04/29/opinion/frum-less-homelessnes...

2008 > On a cold January morning in 2001, Mel Martinez, who was then the new secretary of housing and urban development, was headed to his office in his limo when he saw some homeless people huddled on the vents of the steam tunnels that heat federal buildings. "Somebody ought to do something for them," Martinez said he told himself. "And it dawned on me at that moment that it was me." So began the Bush administration's radical, liberal — and successful — national campaign against chronic homelessness.

https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article...

2013 > The Astonishing Decline of Homelessness in America

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/the-ast...

There's a lot I disliked about the Bush administration, but the HUD programs changed homelessness immensely. You wouldn't know it in California, but they arrive there by the busload daily. It's unfortunate. The SV echochamber of HN isn't exposed to the massive changes of the last 20 years.

Very oddly doesn't align with my eyes.

Along the i5 from Seattle to San Diego the encampments have been growing. There are a few places where it goes away but mostly because of individual city efforts to do something. Source - been driving the route very actively last 5 years.

Your missing the part where many states chose not to accept the housing funds, like Texas under Rick Perry, and instead just bought their homeless bus tickets to California.

Texas still just buys their homeless bus tickets to California. When I ask homeless people in LA where they are from, Texas is the #1 response. The LA Times just ran an article this week about people who to come LA seeking stardom and are homeless within a few weeks because they didn't bring enough money to pay rent because they thought they'd be a rich megastar within a few days.

It's truly fucked up for LA and SF to get blamed for having a homeless problem when most of the homeless in CA aren't even locals.

Please do some actual research here. Busing occurs, but everywhere does it (including SF) and it doesn't largely affect homeless population level in cities (because everyone is doing it). The vast majority of the homeless population in SF is from SF.

What you're portraying is a myth.

There are different homeless populations which comprise the greater phenomena, and the mentally ill population is absolutely part of it.

I agree with you that homelessness isn't as simple as just saying "mental health".

However, when people talk about homelessness being such a big problem in SF, I think a lot of what they are talking about is the subset of homeless people who are "violently mentally ill". That's something that I saw a lot more of in SF than in cities in the Mid West. By "violently mentally ill" I mean things like:

- Yelling at pedestrians that they are the incarnation of Satan and were going to use their demonic powers to strike them down.

- Using racial slurs for minorities that walked past.

- Purposely invading people's personal space.

I don't know why this would be a greater problem, or a more visible problem, with the homeless in SF compared to other places. Maybe in the Mid West it is difficult for people who are too mentally ill to survive the winter. Maybe other cities use anti-vagrancy laws to round them up.

It’s not “national issue.” Aid and housing are local issues. San Francisco and California in general have much worse homelessness problems than many other places in the country. (For example, Mississippi has one of the lowest homelessness rates in the country.)

Mississippi just throws them in jail.

It’s a national issue because people are mobile and will go to wherever the services are best. If San Francisco decides to house every homeless person who appears on its streets, it’s going to have to house every homeless person in America.

Coordination at the federal level could even out geographical imbalances in services and also prevent all services from having to be delivered in the few places where it’s most expensive to do so. Doing all the free housing in the most expensive market is crazy.

I used to live in Chicago and it’s huge problem there too. It’s national.

It's a national issue. That many states solved by shipping their homeless to California (like Texas, Oklahoma, and most of the Midwest do) or to their own local private prisons (like Mississippi and the rest of the South do).

I’ll be honest though. I’m not sure new housing can actually work to lower prices, with all the incentives for real estate locked towards ever increasing prices. Maybe over decades, while losing the entire feel of the city?

They'll be plenty house as talented people continue to flee. Meanwhile juniors flock. If a CEO of a sizable Corp can't get by without a roommate something is wrong. I certainly wouldn't work there for less than a half plus million a year. Shit weather and fog I'd rather work in North Dakota.

This is surely exaggerated right ? I know CEOs of large startups who live in mansions in Woodside, Berkeley, Mill Valley etc

My sample size is small but a company that raised 40 million and the CEO is considering leaving sv because his wife need to make rent with a roommate is not a great sign of the real estate. Sv isn't special. People are going to other tech hubs which are sprouting like crazy. Sv was when it made products. But sass can be done anywhere.

People are leaving sv and housing prices are the reason. It's going to lead to brain drain. Why bother with that congested hell hole when you can live anywhere else and cut your cost of living by 50 percent. Your average founder is 30 and they are not into partying. Sv is for 20 year olds

I doubt that prices lead to brain drain. Sure there is a guy or two who will walk away. But I know more then a few people who are like: more then 2/3 of my pay to live in the city? No. Problem! Living in the city is super important!

I've seen it first hand with incredibly talented people that hated living in the city. There are plenty of tech hubs elsewhere. Sv isn't special. 2/3 of your pay is a bad decision unless you are being paid 600k+

Sounds like that CEO might be paying himself too little.

Fwiw, housing prices (rents) have barely budged in much of the Bay Area for the past 4 years. If the exodus hasn't already happened, I doubt it will.

I have a hard time believing this story. You can get 1-bedroom apartment around 3k in SF or neighboring areas. You can afford that with entry level wages

Well it's true and why he wants to move out of sv. There are plenty of better and cheaper places to live. Sv is no longer special.

I would believe that a random startup employee might be considering leaving SV due to rent.

I wouldn't believe that a CEO of a company that has raised $40 million is leaving because his wife needs a roommate to make rent. His wife should probably live with him if she needs to save money.

I'm sure there are "startup CEOs" in that situation. I doubt there are many whose firms have office space and employees.

In my experience, the serial startup execs mostly don't live in the city. In the 90s, I knew several who also had an apartment near the office, but that's much less common now that the sort of place they'd want is going for $8K/mo.

The feel of San Francisco is already lost, when a small single apartment runs $3000 a month.

And homeless are everywhere.

> > The feel of San Francisco is already lost, when a small single apartment runs $3000 a month.

> And homeless are everywhere.

Maybe a $3k per month "small single apartment" contributes to "homeless are everywhere."

When people say “homeless are everywhere” regarding SF, they’re probably referring to the extremely troubled people who are conspicuously doing drugs or screaming incoherently on the streets. I don’t think those people would suddenly be fine if only the SF apartments were $500 a month instead of $3000.

Of course, there are a lot more homeless people in SF than the very conspicuously unwell people I mentioned. There are also probably larger scale effects that together contribute to high rents, high income inequality, drug abuse, lack of medical care, etc. But there’s a lot more to say than that SF’s homeless problem is because rent is too high.

Homelessness is a very complicated issue, but it would absolutely be better for all people currently without homes if rent was that cheap. Many people who currently are living on the street or in shelters would be able to find stable housing. This would free up resources and care which could focus on those people who need it most.

I'm curious about the ratio of those unwell folks who are native to the area compared to those who are transplants.

I can certainly imagine a 'homeless pipeline' where the children of the parents who get priced out of housing end up doing drugs on the street, but I also know about bussing the homeless and homeless moving to SF because they don't want to deal with a serious winter.

According to Wikipedia: As of 2014, the city is believed to have approximately 7,000 homeless residents. As of 2015, approximately 71% of the city's homeless had housing in the city before becoming homeless, while the remaining 29% came from outside of San Francisco

I'm not from US and I'm not very informed about the homeless problem.

But I wonder why homeless people don't move to another city. If I'd be in their situation (living in a city where I can not afford to rent a house and live a normal life) I'd go to another city where with a regular job I can afford a normal life and just build my life there.

Sorry if it's a stupid question.

They get free services in San Francisco that they wouldn't in other cities. Also, many of the folks on the street during the day are actually housed, in public housing, and leave to do drugs since they will loose their housing if they do drugs at home.

> But I wonder why homeless people don't move to another city.

Because there are few cities in the country that are as accommodating to the homeless as SF. And I'm not talking about weather, I'm talking about services, aid, lack of police harassment, etc.

If you're homeless it's certainly the best place in the country to live.

Oh, they do move to another city. They move from homelessness in their original town, to homelessness in San Francisco, often with transportation paid for by their origin city/state's government, because SF has extremely lax drug and vagrancy enforcement, a mild climate, and easy access.

As mentioned elsewhere, this is simply not true, and you can do some very quick research to learn that it's not true. The vast majority of homeless people in SF are from SF. Stop being part of the misinformation problem.

People who tend to think like you, who can plan in advance, are willing to get a regular job, don't do drugs etc, rarely end up homeless, even in the US. Most of the visible homeless on the streets of large US cities are deeply dysfunctional people, and lower rents or public housing won't make them more functional. Getting them out of public sight would be improvement for the public, to be sure, but the policies of the US cities ran by liberals tend to be extremely ineffective with respect to getting them out of public sight.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com