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Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

You're conflating 2% at world energy totals with $cost to anyone able to harvest the megawatts of heat energy close by.

At scale, this happens worldwide in shopping malls already and the loadshedding demand management in HVAC and chiller room is immensely valuable.

Sure. It's only 2%. Two percent of Musks net worth would fix homelessness in San Francisco applied annually. [edit: Actually, it's 2x too much]

2% of cost savings on inputs to a product could translate to a 50% increase in net profit. "oh well. its only 2% so why bother..."

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> net worth would fix homelessness in San Francisco

I know this wasn't the point of your analogy. But the ill-conceived idea that money can fix homelessness in San Francisco is exactly the reason why we got here in the first place.

    Richest city in the world needs more money to fix simple problems, says blameless local govt.

My point is that the "2% is not useful" statement, applies the wrong logic to the problem at hand. in fact, 2% of global energy is a significant single-change outcome, irrespective.

I used the homelessness problem because it has a $cost at scale which people see as intractable. The wisdom of fixing it by throwing money at it, rather than throwing money at lawyers to overturn the stupid planning issues is a different question.

Actually, throwing $1.5b to the homeless would probably work pretty well.

Nope - let's do the math:

Cost of a new affordable housing unit in SF ~$1.17M. [1] Number of homeless people $1.5B could house ~1,282. Number of homeless people in SF 7,754 people in 2022 [2].

So $1.5B could only solve ~16.5% of SF's housing problem or leave 84% unsolved. Which shows homelessness really is a "housing cost" problem in SF :)

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/It-now-costs-more-tha... [2]https://sfgov.org/scorecards/safety-net/homeless-population

"applied annually"

plus, solving 16% of the shortage of housing supply would be bigger than any other intervention at scale: it would probably force downward pricing in rent and sales overall.

https://sfstandard.com/public-health/homelessness/ending-hom...

...Ending unsheltered homelessness would require vast increases in housing, shelter and prevention services, according to the report from the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing and homelessness consultancy firm Focus Strategies.

That would cost the city another $1.45 billion over three years. And it would take over $410 million each year after that to keep the programs running. ...

So it’d be mostly solved over a 5 year period….?!?’

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