San Francisco has a homeless problem because it invited such. I guess it's total coincidence that the most liberal cities in the US also have the highest incidence of homeless population. As long as it remains a profitable and easy lifestyle, homelessness persists. Change those variables however you want and the problem goes away. This is not to say there are not those who are homeless due to bum luck. In many cities, this is the majority. Not so much in San Francisco where homelessness is a true profession.
I don't doubt this is true due to higher cost-of-living, improved services (and therefore more accurate counts... homelessness is severely undercounted in many places) and the trend that more liberal cities tend not to have the suburbs within city limits (or conversely, cities without suburbs within city limits are more liberal...)
That article does not seem to claim that point in it. Maybe I just missed it. But I checked all usages of high, population, city, and cities, so if the point is made in that article is is done so with different enough language to be difficult to find considering the article's length.
Edit: That all means I am calling bullshit on that being a citation for that fact (or 'fact' depending on your view of it).
The Manhattan Institute's mission is (I paraphrase) to make selfish rich people feel less guilty, so I would be wary of any claims made by the article.
That article is atrocious as any kind of source, it's clearly an opinion piece.
I'm asking for an actual study comparing homeless rates of liberal cities vs conservative cities. Also a list of which cities are actually liberal vs conservative would be nice.
From the article, since many people seem not to have read this far:
It doesn’t—not even close. “San Francisco is not by any stretch of the imagination the homeless capital of the United States,” says Jeff Kositsky, executive director of the nonprofit Hamilton Family Center, which provides housing and social services for homeless families. “We don’t have any more homeless, either families or single adults, than other cities.” The latest available numbers bear out his assertion: According to federally mandated “point-in-time” homeless surveys—city-specific audits conducted every other year on a single night in late January (and an admittedly controversial metric that many experts insist undercounts the true number of homeless people)— San Francisco had 6,436 homeless in 2013, out of a population of 837,442. By comparison, other large cities with exorbitant costs of living fared even worse. Washington, D.C., had a greater number of homeless, 7,748, out of a much smaller population of 646,449. Honolulu had 4,712 homeless out of a population of 374,658. Closer to home, cities like Los Angeles (34,393), San Jose (7,567), and Seattle (8,949) all tallied more homeless people than did San Francisco, though those numbers represent countywide, not citywide, totals.
I don't know if there's a more recent version of this document, but pages 16-17 of http://www.sfgov3.org/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=4... claim that 61 percent of SF homeless were living and working in SF before becoming homeless. An additional 15 % are from nearby counties (Marin, Alameda, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Contra Costa), so at most a quarter of the homeless population could be said to be attracted there. Only 13 percent of those who moved to SF claim they did so because of the services there.
While undoubtedly, people move to places that are better for them, this is a minor effect, as the homeless tend not to have the resources to move around a lot and most people prefer to stay places they are familiar with. Either way, it's a shitty argument to make... homeless services should be provided regardless of whether or not it attracts people because it's the right thing to do. Perhaps the argument that should be made is that less of the financial burden should be placed on the city (i.e. more money from federal and state sources).
> as long as [homelessness] remains a profitable and easy lifestyle
In what ways do you believe this to be true? There are NO homeless people who are in that position because they felt it was more profitable or easier than getting a job and living in a house. This is the same insanity that insists that people on unemployment benefits are somehow living an easy life, feeding cynically off the state, rather than trapped in poverty.
The article also dismisses most of your other points. In particular, noting that San Francisco has a minimal homelessness problem compared to such liberal cities as Washington DC or New York.
> The gap is so stark that some of America's bluest cities are located in its reddest states. Every one of Texas' major cities -- Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio -- voted Democratic in 2012, the second consecutive presidential election in which they've done so. Other red-state cities that tipped blue include Atlanta, Indianapolis, New Orleans, Birmingham, Tucson, Little Rock, and Charleston, S.C. -- ironically, the site of the first battle of the Civil War. In states like Nevada, the only blue districts are often also the only cities, like Reno and Las Vegas.
Thorough. As a city dweller for many years, you do get jaded. Although I give financially to charities and try to be compassionate I do get annoyed at the constant pan handling.
Interesting that the article is coming from a fairly upscale magazine chain
Apple rejected my app where you could give your lunch leftover to the nearby homeless person.
Apple told me the homeless person did not agree to be tracked.
Well shall we give them all an iPhone so that they could agree? (you smell sarcasm?) I mean it's not like they are safe and this app would jeopardize their safety more...
"While the homeless may always be with us, we need to ensure that we are helping them in the most effective ways possible. For the city named after Francis of Assisi, a nobleman who gave away everything he had when he saw a poor man on the street, nothing less is acceptable."
The article seems to imply that creating more housing will solve this problem. Such is not the case. "Homeless" is a euphemism. There are two types of street people: 1. Those who cannot take care of themselves. 2. Those who will not take care of themselves.
As a society, we should take care of the people who are unable to take care of themselves. I do not know how to define "take care", but it definitely should not include having schizophrenic episodes on the corner, intimidating panhandling, drug fueled benders, and shitting like animals on the city sidewalks.
One idea is to lock them up in an institution. This is expensive, arguably unfair, and creates an opportunity for abuse and corruption (one flew over the cuckoo's nest), and sets up a big liability - How long before violence or abuse causes a huge payout from the government?
For the others who _can_ take care of themselves but will not, they seem to me to be some combination of really bad choices and really bad luck, it is less clear to me what our responsibility to them is, and I wonder how much they can be helped. Consider Tap from the article. If he just wants to tap dance and get drunk all day, sleeping and shitting on the streets in my neighborhood, I am completely unsupportive. I will call the cops every time I find him passed out. Hopefully they will run him out of town. As much as he wants this lifestyle, it cannot make ends meet. He seems like a likable fellow during his stable periods, but I do not want to subsidize him.
If you don't want to make an honest living, you are going to have to break laws: dealing drugs, breaking car windows and stealing from them, stealing and selling bicycles. I have no tolerance for these layabouts and I cannot see why anyone else should either.
Your binary divide between worthy homeless and unworthy is simplistic. Why, for example, do some cities have far more homeless people than others.
The high number of homeless people really struck me when I visited San Francisco a couple of years ago, and it's worth as a city asking why. For a wealthy place, it was incredibly sad and surprising too.
I'd really like to see demographic statistics comparing the homeless from different cities. I'm especially interested in the mean/median distance a homeless person is from their home town (or at least the last town where they had a stable lifestyle.)
I suspect SF has a greater number of homeless per capita that aren't from SF. The city is very supportive and I reckon that it is an ideal place to be homeless if you have some means to travel.
It's probably difficult for we educated, generally well-off people who procrastinate by reading Hacker News to empathize with the homeless.
Perhaps you (I'm making assumptions here, but by you I really mean the streotypical reader of this site) know someone with drug issues or mental illness, but most likely, given the nature of the relations you're likely to have, they have a support system (health insurance that covers these things or family / friends with money) that provides access to treatment. We know people who have gotten fired or laid off, but they've been rich, connected, or skilled enough so that it can be overcome. Others are not so lucky and when those things happen, they end up on the streets. Once on the street, the potential barrier to getting off is not so easy to overcome.
We like to think it can't be us, and for lots of us, we're lucky enough that that's true. There probably aren't too many homeless people on Hacker News to give the alternative perspective.
34 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 76.0 ms ] threadAfter reading reddit.com/r/news , I found the following: http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2015/03/01/amateur-videograph...
So, one homeless disposal technique is to house them. Another is to consider them violent criminals and execute them.
[citation needed]
http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_4_san-francisco-homeless...
Edit: That all means I am calling bullshit on that being a citation for that fact (or 'fact' depending on your view of it).
I'm asking for an actual study comparing homeless rates of liberal cities vs conservative cities. Also a list of which cities are actually liberal vs conservative would be nice.
It doesn’t—not even close. “San Francisco is not by any stretch of the imagination the homeless capital of the United States,” says Jeff Kositsky, executive director of the nonprofit Hamilton Family Center, which provides housing and social services for homeless families. “We don’t have any more homeless, either families or single adults, than other cities.” The latest available numbers bear out his assertion: According to federally mandated “point-in-time” homeless surveys—city-specific audits conducted every other year on a single night in late January (and an admittedly controversial metric that many experts insist undercounts the true number of homeless people)— San Francisco had 6,436 homeless in 2013, out of a population of 837,442. By comparison, other large cities with exorbitant costs of living fared even worse. Washington, D.C., had a greater number of homeless, 7,748, out of a much smaller population of 646,449. Honolulu had 4,712 homeless out of a population of 374,658. Closer to home, cities like Los Angeles (34,393), San Jose (7,567), and Seattle (8,949) all tallied more homeless people than did San Francisco, though those numbers represent countywide, not citywide, totals.
> And whatever housing we do create specifically for the homeless soon fills up—in part because hundreds of new indigent people appear here every year
The article claims they took 20k people off the street and yet
> the homeless total hasn’t really budged for 25 years: In 1990, there were about 6,000 homeless.
In otherwords their policies have been a magnet for more homeless
Homelessness in Ulan Bator. Today it's -24 C (-11F?) in Ulan Bator, according to Google.
http://www.mikelaristregi.com/photo-reports/4096o-ulaanbaata...
That doesn't seem profitable nor easy.
While undoubtedly, people move to places that are better for them, this is a minor effect, as the homeless tend not to have the resources to move around a lot and most people prefer to stay places they are familiar with. Either way, it's a shitty argument to make... homeless services should be provided regardless of whether or not it attracts people because it's the right thing to do. Perhaps the argument that should be made is that less of the financial burden should be placed on the city (i.e. more money from federal and state sources).
In what ways do you believe this to be true? There are NO homeless people who are in that position because they felt it was more profitable or easier than getting a job and living in a house. This is the same insanity that insists that people on unemployment benefits are somehow living an easy life, feeding cynically off the state, rather than trapped in poverty.
The article also dismisses most of your other points. In particular, noting that San Francisco has a minimal homelessness problem compared to such liberal cities as Washington DC or New York.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/11/red-stat...
> The gap is so stark that some of America's bluest cities are located in its reddest states. Every one of Texas' major cities -- Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio -- voted Democratic in 2012, the second consecutive presidential election in which they've done so. Other red-state cities that tipped blue include Atlanta, Indianapolis, New Orleans, Birmingham, Tucson, Little Rock, and Charleston, S.C. -- ironically, the site of the first battle of the Civil War. In states like Nevada, the only blue districts are often also the only cities, like Reno and Las Vegas.
It's clear that the problem would be much, much worse had it not been for all that investment.
Interesting that the article is coming from a fairly upscale magazine chain
http://www.modernluxury.com/
Microempathic targeting of food pain points could be a healthily decentralizable dApp for Bitnation?
The article seems to imply that creating more housing will solve this problem. Such is not the case. "Homeless" is a euphemism. There are two types of street people: 1. Those who cannot take care of themselves. 2. Those who will not take care of themselves.
As a society, we should take care of the people who are unable to take care of themselves. I do not know how to define "take care", but it definitely should not include having schizophrenic episodes on the corner, intimidating panhandling, drug fueled benders, and shitting like animals on the city sidewalks.
One idea is to lock them up in an institution. This is expensive, arguably unfair, and creates an opportunity for abuse and corruption (one flew over the cuckoo's nest), and sets up a big liability - How long before violence or abuse causes a huge payout from the government?
For the others who _can_ take care of themselves but will not, they seem to me to be some combination of really bad choices and really bad luck, it is less clear to me what our responsibility to them is, and I wonder how much they can be helped. Consider Tap from the article. If he just wants to tap dance and get drunk all day, sleeping and shitting on the streets in my neighborhood, I am completely unsupportive. I will call the cops every time I find him passed out. Hopefully they will run him out of town. As much as he wants this lifestyle, it cannot make ends meet. He seems like a likable fellow during his stable periods, but I do not want to subsidize him.
If you don't want to make an honest living, you are going to have to break laws: dealing drugs, breaking car windows and stealing from them, stealing and selling bicycles. I have no tolerance for these layabouts and I cannot see why anyone else should either.
The high number of homeless people really struck me when I visited San Francisco a couple of years ago, and it's worth as a city asking why. For a wealthy place, it was incredibly sad and surprising too.
I suspect SF has a greater number of homeless per capita that aren't from SF. The city is very supportive and I reckon that it is an ideal place to be homeless if you have some means to travel.
Perhaps you (I'm making assumptions here, but by you I really mean the streotypical reader of this site) know someone with drug issues or mental illness, but most likely, given the nature of the relations you're likely to have, they have a support system (health insurance that covers these things or family / friends with money) that provides access to treatment. We know people who have gotten fired or laid off, but they've been rich, connected, or skilled enough so that it can be overcome. Others are not so lucky and when those things happen, they end up on the streets. Once on the street, the potential barrier to getting off is not so easy to overcome.
We like to think it can't be us, and for lots of us, we're lucky enough that that's true. There probably aren't too many homeless people on Hacker News to give the alternative perspective.