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Comment by fortran77 | Hacker News Reader

There's money in homelessness, just like there's money in for-profit prisons. A great many people are employed in San Francisco working for publicly funded homeless programs.

> Between 2011 and 2012, SF spent $157 million on homeless services. By the 2015-2016 fiscal year, it was up to $242 million. In the most recent 2019-2020 budget proposals, the figure hit more than $364 million. But the consensus remains that more is needed.

(Source: https://sf.curbed.com/2019/12/19/21027974/san-francisco-home... )

That money's not going to the homeless people. It's going to the people who run the services to support them. You think they'd want to see homelessness end?

And, indirectly, the Police make money from homelessness because they can use it to get their budgets increased.

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$364 million is a staggering amount. In one year! Imagine if they put that money into an endowment and gave each homeless person a basic income from the interest...

But no, they can’t do that. It would piss too many people off. The problem with homelessness is that it’s always someone else’s problem. Everyone agrees that it should be dealt with, just that no one wants to deal with it themselves.

$364 million at 3% interest is like $11m/year. That'd pay something like $100/month to each of the homeless people in a city where studios are closer to $2000/month. Not to mention the health and psych problems many of the homeless have.

$364 million per year, so the endowment grows every year. After just 10 years, the endowment will have grown to $3.64 billion. Also you can do a lot better than 3% if you invest the money wisely.

You also don’t have to divide it equally among homeless people. You could start with a few and add more to the program over time, as the endowment grows. Those getting the money would be assessed based on potential to get off the streets permanently and find jobs, housing, etc.

The benefits of taxation is that you don't need to build up an endowment, you can just pay it today. You could spend $364M today, and then next year, and then every year. Why introduce random financial engineering to the mix?

Why introduce random financial engineering to the mix?

Because then it pays for itself. Look at the Nobel prizes. Look at Harvard University. Look at the Norwegian pension fund. These are backed by HUGE endowments which pay for themselves with profits earned on the market. They are also extremely stable.

On the other hand, look at Social Security in the US. Any sort of benefits program paid for by taxes is exposed to political interference. That makes them inherently unstable.

> The problem with homelessness is that it’s always someone else’s problem.

One of the problems with homelessness is that it's a systemic issue.

Another problem with homelessness is that it's dozens of problems, because different people have different reasons for being homeless.

A mother living with her two kids in a tent could see most of her problems solved with a monthly cash injection; she could get an apartment, make sure her kids have sufficient care while she works, or just take care of them herself using the stipend.

The guy who sits on a bench howling at the moon because he's convinced it's implanted digital worms in his teeth? If you cut him a check, he's not going to be equipped to spend it in a way that's beneficial for himself.

Also the lords of San Francisco's SROs quite like things the way they are, thank you very much. They are raking in guaranteed income and they get to pretend they care about solving societal ills.

This is some offensive garbage -- talk to anyone working in any of those organizations, of course they want homelessness to end. More than anything.

Seeing the most downtrodden people in society continually crushed is an awful experience for people on both sides of the table.

Wow! If you disagree with something, it's "offensive garbage."

This seems to be the way local SF politics works. It's no wonder nothing gets done.

I mean, you straight up said that the people working on homelessness in San Francisco are taking all the money and don't want to actually fix it, implying they'd rather have the streets full of homeless people than find something else to do -- "Offensive garbage" actually seems like a charitable opinion of your post.

I'd encourage you to talk to a single person actually working on the problem. Literally anyone.

Well, true or not, you did make some pretty serious accusations.

> That money's not going to the homeless people. It's going to the people who run the services to support them. You think they'd want to see homelessness end?

Yes, I think those people want to see homelessness end. Why else would you want a career in that field?

Climate scientists also want action to be taken to fight climate change, even if it might put them out of a job. Folks who work for the UN to tackle world hunger want world hunger to end, even if it puts them out of a job.

I don't think rank-and-file workers are psychopaths.

Do you think the Police would like to see crime go to zero?

> Why else would you want a career in that field?

The people who want a career in that field who actually interact with the homeless are pretty detached from the big decisions.

There's an estimate of 10.000 homeless people in SF. And the budget is in 400 million.

At 40k a year per homeless person..how are they homeless. Answer: they aren't getting 40k of benefits.

What's the homeless person to bureaucrat/middleman ratio? I'd be very curious to see a breakdown of what sort of organizations are involved, how many people are involved, and where all that money is actually flowing.

Its VERY high.

SF's budget is basically $40-50k per homeless person yet each person receives a fraction of that, maybe 10%, its incredibly inefficient. Its even been called "The Homeless Industrial Complex" by a variety of outspoken locals.

Much of that money is spent on housing and services for people who would be considered homeless if not for those very funds paying their rent.

A huge portion of that $400M is spent getting people off the streets - they aren't spending $400M on 10,000 homeless people. They're spending 400M on tens of thousands of housing insecure people and after all of the rent support, healthcare, and mental health expense, there are still 10,000 people that they haven't been able to get off the streets.

This is the SF housing project's self-defense argument. But the budget has doubled and homelessness has increased. It's also a sorry defense of the city gov to say that such a small city actually has much higher homelessness numbers that are masked by ludicrous spending.

I mean.. have you seen what has happened to rents at the same time? The core problem is that housing costs way too much here. Obviously more people are going to become homeless when rent prices increase by 20% per year, and obviously it is going to cost more to service homeless people when the prevailing rent has increased as much as it has. None of these things are mysteries.

The cost of housing isn't the problem, this has been proven over and over again in SF. Yes, housing helps, but its not a cure. During the CV outbreak SF has had a hard time getting people to go into hotels when offered, because people had to abstain from drinking/drugs and to take their medication.

There's a really interesting character from SF who posts on twitter (@MyTwolffamily) about his personal experience of being a homeless drug addict, it might be enlightening to read some of his posts.

If you cut a 40k check annually to every homeless person and handed it to them on Jan 1st, I would bet the majority would be back on the streets by April, most of them earlier.

> Do you think the Police would like to see crime go to zero?

Yes, any proper non corrupted police would love to see that.

For a while I was involved in the private sector with companies that earned money from the "Lifeline" program (you may of heard of it called the "Obama Phone") that has been around since telco deregulation in the 80s.

https://www.fcc.gov/general/lifeline-program-low-income-cons...

When Trump said he wanted to eliminate it, tons of politicians and whatnot defended it as essential to getting cell phones into the hands of poor people.

Trump did reform it rather than eliminate it, putting stricter requirements and adding things (less payment to the companies, must be a smart phone, must provide some data, etc.). But up until this, I knew of one company that had about 30 employees and earned over $200mil per year directly from the government operating as an MVNO. The industry was rife with fraud (and likely still is for all I know, it was absolutely shocking before which is why they reformed it, but hopefully it's better now) - recipients had to fill out a stack of paperwork, but they would pay independent contractors to go to methadone clinics, homeless shelters, etc. with pre-filled paperwork and get people to just sign their name and hand them a phone. It was also a scam for the recipients who were in on it somewhat, as they would switch providers every month or sign up for multiple, and get gift cards (or booze, cigarettes etc.) from the independent contractors for doing so. Companies I worked with would have churn up to 80% per month so they constantly had to refill with "new" people who the independent contractors found.

I have seen so much fraud in various government programs that have a veneer of "doing good" but the end result is legions of private companies that execute the mandate and collect the check. If you are an enterprising person and want easy money, government programs are a great place to look, which is sadly why it attracts so much fraud.

What's interesting about the "Obama Phone" was that it was George W. Bush who started the program!

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