
Tolerant San Francisco fed up with dirty, smelly streets - spking
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Tolerant-San-Francisco-fed-up-with-dirty-smelly-12875527.php
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inostia
In the past week I've been assaulted and threatened twice by crazed homeless
men. The first grabbed a glass bottle from his cart and raised it up as if he
was going to hit me in the head (this was by Civic Center BART). The second
charged angrily at me near Lake Merritt. I'm really fed up personally with the
"homeless advocates" who are willing to overlook this violent and scary
behavior in the name of social justice... We all have the right to live in
peace.

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dokein
I've worked in homeless shelters and for public health. The major mistake
uninformed advocates (not all advocates) make is they think: this is a person,
just like me, down on their luck. It happens because that's how we naturally
sympathize with people -- we put ourselves in their shoes.

Unfortunately that only describes a small minority of homeless people. The
majority have serious psychiatric and/or personality disorders and/or drug
abuse and/or health problems -- there's a lot of collinearity here too so it's
hard to analyze the percent variance explained by each. Thus, their needs are
different. Instead of just more opportunities (and the requisite services to
bridge them to those opportunities), many are in need of a heavily structured
mental health-oriented program.

In the past there was instituionalization, which of course failed because we
treated these individuals as subhuman, rather than human with disability. I'm
not sure what the best solution is but providing free gyms and needles ain't
it.

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pascalxus
In China, in some parts, you can rent super cheap apartments for 80$ per month
in some cases: they may not be super lavish or durable or even have
electricity everywhere, but it's better than living out on the street.

I think SF should declare a state of emergency, throw the entire
Rulebook/lawbook out the window and work with several developers to build at
least 10,000 units as cost effectively as possible. We need more options
between the current 2 extremes: 2 million dollar condo vs 20$ tent. The 240
million dollars per year they're currently spending to help the homeless will
go a LOT farther that way.

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alexandercrohde
I'm glad people are finally speaking up.

It was a really weird situation. What scared me wasn't the homelessness, but
that nobody felt comfortable acknowledging it or saying anything about it
(positive, nor negative) for fear of being insensitive. I don't think anybody
actually thought the situation was acceptable, it was just an Emporer's New
Robes situation.

It disgusted me that so many people could disconnect themselves that much from
reality.

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oicu812
I think the photos and additional info in these links add some context:

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16893415](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16893415)
[2] [https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Breed-Wiener-
workin...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Breed-Wiener-working-to-
ease-destructive-12597752.php)

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parliament32
So SF's finally figuring out why "compassion" doesn't work?

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John_KZ
There's one small trick that makes homelessness disappear: Housing.

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wetpaws
San Francisco homelessness has almost nothing to do with housing. For the most
part, as people mentioned, it is either related to addiction or
deinstitutionalization that caused a lot of mental people end on the streets.

~~~
John_KZ
You can still provide some sort of housing to those people. Just taking them
off the streets will improve everyones quality of living (if it's as bad as
described in the article). Most of them would certainly be capable of some
kind of work too. However to me this article reads like a campaign of a
"conservative" candidate. "Look at what those tolerant liberals did to us, we
need to be more intolerant and start using violence and jails."

The solution clearly isn't to ignore the problem but they don't seem to offer
a solution to the problem, only a way to push it to someone else's back yard.

