A cruel experiment that will neither relieve suffering nor address its cause. America is insane.
People need support. This support requires funding. This funding comes from taxes, which requires business operations and such. Business operations are impacted by perceptions of safety and cleanliness, which also requires funding and scales with the number of people who need support.
And people on HN make it sound like the Bay Area is full of workers making several hundred of thousand of dollars a year, buying houses worth several million dollars, so income tax and property tax revenue should be off the charts too.
Isn't the bay area be absolutely swimming in tax revenue already?
If SF raises additional taxes, the few companies left will simply decamp to other places in the Bay Area like San Jose. The crime and quality of life issues are already pushing them to do so. They only set up shop in SF after 2000 because that was the only way to attract talent from Berkeley or SF who were not willing to commute to the South Bay, but in the new job market environment that is no longer an issue.
https://www.slowboring.com/p/they-have-homelessness-in-europ...
So you mean, they should be allowed to keep their stuff (e.g. lots of stolen bikes) strung out in the middle of a park during a day, and they shouldn't have to move into shelters because they can't deal with their drug habits?
If this were Switzerland (or specifically, Lausanne where I used to live), the Swiss police would really not take any of that crud. They would apply lots of tough love, swiss style, before it got to that point.
Portland is literally filled with bleeding heart liberals in comparison (and actually is, people are just losing patience).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...
It's this. America does not invest in its social problems.