
Why Silicon Valley hates the homeless - BenStroud
http://www.thewhatnoise.com/2013/12/why-silicon-valley-hates-homeless.html
======
gjmulhol
I don't think this is really accurate. There are many reasons that the people
who live in SF might not love the number of homeless that are in the city, but
I don't think most of them are thinking "That could be me any day now."

This is conflating two groups in SF: startup people and big company techies.
The people who are driving up rents (and seem to be the focus of recent
controversy) are the big company techies. I do not think that those people
that work at Google are worried about being homeless any time soon. Similar
for Facebook, Genentech, Apple, and other bus-providing companies. People
working on startups full time _may_ feel more at risk of being homeless, but I
don't think that even they are actively worried about being homeless -- though
everyone is different, so maybe some are.

~~~
prodigal_erik
Homelessness is scary, especially in this society. But there is not some
number of startup failures after which I'm at risk of spending every day
yelling gibberish and spitting on passers-by. And that stuff doesn't seem to
happen in the valley, possibly because they were all drawn to the city where
not so many people drive everywhere.

------
gkoberger
I disagree with the conclusion of this article. I think the hate has little to
do with the actual people, and more to do with how bad SF streets look and
smell.

Yes, these issues are because of homeless people and homeless people deserve
our sympathy and help. However, for better or for worse, I think most people
complaining aren't complaining about their fellow humans. It's easy to try to
turn this into an "us vs them" class war. Rather, I think most people are
simply upset by the resulting aesthetics.

SF right now reminds me of Times Square before it was cleaned up:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Square#1980s.E2.80.93pres...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Square#1980s.E2.80.93present)

~~~
paul_f
"homeless people deserve our sympathy and help"

San Francisco is the most sympathetic and helpful city on the planet for
homeless people. Yet also seems to have more of them than any city I have ever
been too. I wonder why?

Actually I don't. "Sympathy" and "help" exacerbate the problem instead of
resolving it.

~~~
Mithaldu
> San Francisco is the most sympathetic and helpful city on the planet for
> homeless people.

Unless San Francisco actually picks them up, gives them a clean, maintained,
regularly inspected apartment with heat, hot water, electricity; pays for
that; gives them every month enough cash to pay for necessities of life with
enough being given that a reasonable interaction in society and culture is
possible; puts them in a program designed to find them useful and respectful
work, or with none available, provides them with training courses; and lastly,
provides free full health and dental coverage ... unless all that is what SF
does, there's 2000+ german cities and who knows how many more cities in other
countries who'd like to have a word with you about that claim.

~~~
rdl
SF actually sort of attempts to do that, and spends more than enough money to
do that, but is ineffective to the point where the homeless are either
disincented to participate, or are stuck in a weird limbo where the
city/state/fed/charity give them enough to survive indefinitely, but not to
actually improve.

In fairness, well over half of the SF homeless population are mentally ill or
drug addicted, which would probably be covered by other programs elsewhere;
some of which (on the mental health front) is missing because the US had a lot
of issues with horribly run institutions until the 1970s, so they shut most of
them down, but didn't provide an alternative.

------
mhofstadt
This article's thesis is way off. I'm pretty sure, when someone complains
about "crazy, homeless, drug dealers, dropouts, and trash", their concern is
not about the possibility of themselves becoming like that.

Ben Stroud, you live in London, why are you writing about San Francisco
anyway?

------
mistakoala
It seems he perhaps has a grudge against the West Coast and/ or the US in
general - [http://www.thewhatnoise.com/2013/05/500-startups-and-not-
goo...](http://www.thewhatnoise.com/2013/05/500-startups-and-not-good-idea-
between.html)

On behalf of an embarrassed island on the other side of the Atlantic, I offer
my sincerest apologies. We try to confine self-righteous bores to north
London, but with the advent of the Internet, they've taken up jobs in social
media, enabling them to amplify their boorish dinner party cockwafflery.

~~~
stefan_kendall
Upvoted for "cockwafflery".

------
jbaudanza
You don't need to be an entitled techie to be disgusted by people openly
defecating in the streets.

------
ramsaysnuuhh
SV and SF techies hate the homeless b/c they think they are all self-made.
They walk out of Philz with their $4 coffee, look down at a bum, and think to
themselves "Why doesn't he learn Ruby on Rails and become YCombinator
millionaires like us?" At least in "third world" countries cited by the
author, the wealth disparity is much older and there is a social contract
between the serfs and lords.

~~~
kevinpet
I'd rather live in a world where it's socially acceptable to look down on
someone for a lack of abilities and work ethic than the 90% of the world where
it's socially acceptable to look down on someone just because their ancestors
came from the wrong region.

------
pron
San Francisco is a beautiful city. But if there's a place that could do with a
bit _more_ shit on the streets it's SF. Homeless people are terrible. They
remind us that we, as a society, fail to provide for the weak among us. On the
other hand, they're great. They remind us that the world, is a cruel, messy,
hard place, and that we're all, quite literally, full of shit.

Unfortunately, I wasn't yet born when San Francisco was a Mecca for those who
wanted to live a different kind of life. But I was fortunate to live in the
Castro for a few months during YC, and the sight of those naked guys – or
those in tight leather skirts – always made me smile. I thought, hmmm, that's
what _disruption_ looks like; that's true _hacking_ – really going _against_
the grain rather than pretending you do because you're like, totally ignoring
_regulation_ , while, in fact, you're just screwing cab drivers over and
serving nothing other than the same old boring consumerist culture, being
_manipulated_ to serve the man with _true passion_ , rather than trudge along
with quiet desperation but true rebellion in your heart.

Many of the homeless are mentally ill; most of them live a nightmare. But if
we can't help them, let them at least help us remember how crazy this world
is. So go ahead you wonderful, destitute, unwashed people: save this beautiful
city's soul by shitting all over it. Make the streets of San Francisco your
toilet! And when you're done, see if there's a way some of you could get back
into New York again. God knows that city needs your help, too.

~~~
ahomescu1
> Many of the homeless are mentally ill; most of them live a nightmare.

The best solution in such cases might be to put them in institutions (where
they could also get help), rather than let them free on the street.

~~~
pron
The best solution is to take care of them in one way or another. You can't
"put" them in institutions because they don't pose a danger to themselves or
to others. You could _offer_ them some arrangement, though.

~~~
ahomescu1
If they're mentally ill, can they really choose by themselves? There's not
much point in making offers to someone who can't distinguish or understand
their options. People with limited ability to make decisions or take care of
themselves shouldn't be out on the streets.

Now, you can either give them a home and a caretaker individually (let's say,
each of them gets a full-time social worker), or put all of them in the same
place where they're taken care of as a group (aka an institution).

------
mixmastamyk
> considering that he got a certain distance in life actually thinking in this
> way

Apparently we are not allowed to have differing opinions to the author.

His main point is a bit silly as well. The majority of the people we are
talking about are mentally-ill and/or addicts, not laid off project managers.

Actually, _they do_ need shelter, treatment, and a chance at work. That the
second post was pandering and poorly written doesn't change that fact. It
doesn't help anyone to have people shitting in the street.

~~~
BenStroud
Of course you are allowed a different opinion to mine. It doesn't mean that I
won't think it's stupid though.

~~~
mixmastamyk
He merely asks why the city has to be filthier than it should be. Why do you
defend filth and danger? There could be any number of solutions to the
problem, but your primary concern is to attack the messenger for noticing.

Unless there is further info I'm not aware of, your character judgement here
is unwarranted. That he got "a certain distance..." is the part that bugs me.

------
jupiterjaz
Disrupt all the nimby's who lobby against building additional housing.
Landowners hate new housing because it drives down the value of their assets.
If anyone's truly despicable in this culture it's the landowners who refuse to
let more housing come into the market.

------
verteu
This armchair psychology fails any basic sanity check. If the SV rich worry
they'll become poor, why wouldn't they support more public safety nets? And
why anyone fear a day when they are "not white"? A startup failure does not
change skin color.

------
rdl
I just got back from SE Asia, and SF actually is the only place I've visited
where humans shit on the main commercial streets.

I have some compassion for mentally ill/drug addicted/etc. homeless, but zero
compassion for the $100-300k/yr SF city employees who are at best worthless
wastes of oxygen and are given a by-world-standards huge budget, in a city
with massive inherent advantages, to try to make the city a decent place to
live. And fail spectacularly to do so.

------
nilkn
I rode the light rail in Houston once and a homeless man got aboard. His
stench was so strong that my only conclusion was that he had been defecating
in his pants for at least a few weeks without ever changing clothes or
cleaning up at all. Everybody on the metro got up and moved as far away from
him as they could until he was the sole occupant of his end of the train.

I felt extremely sorry for the man. I also couldn't blame the people moving
away as the smell was so bad.

I think non-homeless people in general just don't know how to respond to
homeless people. I'm no exception. But I really don't think "hatred" for the
homeless is any more prevalent in Silicon Valley than elsewhere; San Francisco
simply has an unusually prominent homeless population.

------
jbaudanza
If you would like to help some of the low-income youth of San Francisco,
consider donating to the education of one through Wishbone:

[https://www.wishbone.org/campaigns?location=san-
francisco](https://www.wishbone.org/campaigns?location=san-francisco)

------
rayiner
What community, anywhere in the world, doesn't hate the homeless? Certainly
not Dhaka, where I spent a portion of my childhood, or for that matter
anywhere I've. Even in Asia. Not New York or Chicago or DC. The town I grew up
in Virginia even extends the hate to lower middle class people, objecting to
better public transit on the grounds that less wealthy people will be able to
shop at their upscale malls.

------
wismer
Some time ago I saw someone post this on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6816649](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6816649)

It left me questioning the authors motives. On one hand, if the author
intended the event to be about business networking (as he, being a ceo of a
startup, are wont to do) then the choice of having it done on thanksgiving to
be an odd one, but ultimately harmless.

If the offer was more of making meaningful social connections then I would
have found that to be troubling. I was particularly convinced of this when I
saw in a bold faced declaration, the author stated that "No one should be
alone for thanksgiving". No one should be alone for thanksgiving but it seemed
targeted at the members of the tech community and not the community at large.
You know, the people without a home, people with fractured families.

I could be wrong. Perhaps he advertised on the street. But if he pointed
people to upvote it on HN, then it just reinforces my opinion.

~~~
protomyth
In college there were groups that would throw a thanksgiving dinner for
students that couldn't make it home to be with family. Were they wrong or
elitist or uncaring? It is a common group tradition in the US to throw
thanksgiving for some group you belong to. Besides the fact even a CEO of a
startup cannot afford meals for every homeless person or just everyone off the
street, it makes it no less nice if it happens to be for a social group and
maybe some business is done. If the Churches[1] in SF weren't serving a
thanksgiving dinner for the homeless then I am surprised.

1) Churches generally do this regardless of belief of the homeless. It is
about the beliefs of the church not the served.

------
hkmurakami
The thesis seems way off. I fit the bill of the typical tech industry asshole
(though I'm quite aware of my instinctive attitudes and have qualms about
them) and I've never even considered the possibility of becoming homeless. If
anything I feel that no matter what happens in my life I'll be able to get
_some_ job somewhere.

My pet argument is that "we" [1] don't understand the poor, the homeless, and
the uneducated. I grew up in a leafy SV neighborhood, went to good schools,
and literally never interacted with anyone from the lower half of the economic
spectrum through HS. Even in college, my friends were middle class and above.
We've largely grown up in stable homes with supportive parent(s) and think
this is normal.

Even when we read about the poor, we tend to try to forget it. It's like
pushing stuff under the carpet or putting a lid on the unpleasant stuff.

Earlier this year I volunteered at Junior Achievement and taught a few classes
at a low income neighborhood in LA. This was literally my first in person
encounter with a group of people from this socioeconomic segment. Having this
exposure and interaction with them gave me a better sense of the good nature
of the kids, the disadvantages they face, and how ridiculously lucky and
privileged I have been throughout my life.

With this understanding, I have a bit more empathy for the less fortunate. I
understand that a lot of what they face is a matter of circumstance than
laziness or delinquency.

If our gentrification and socioeconomic satisfaction were not so pronounced, I
suspect that we'd understand the less fortunate better and would no longer
"hate the poor" as much as we do now.

\----

It's hard though. Gentrification and being around like minded people is
comfortable. It's pleasant.

[1] I'm going to generalize by using "we" but obviously there will be
exceptions among us. But I imagine at least 80% of us -- or at least the ones
guilty of "hating the poor" mostly fit this description.

------
matchagaucho
While I would agree this attitude stems from fear, I'm not so sure it's rooted
in fatalism; or the idea that homelessness represents some "bad roll of the
dice" that could happen to anyone. It more likely stems from not understanding
the circumstances that led people to being on the street.

One of the first things learned when volunteering with a social services non-
profit organization is that many homeless are there by choice; the result of
their own actions and decisions. Drug and alcohol abuse are almost always at
the root cause.

Fortunately, the culture in SF tends to approach this problem as an illness,
and doesn't assume every homeless person is a criminal.﻿

------
andreasklinger
In the USA i can think about a lot of very expensive cities (eg nyc, sf, etc).

But i don't know even one i would consider "wealthy".

In europe a few would come to mind instantly. Eg. Zurich, Frankfurt, Vienna,
Munich, etc

------
nza88
it's mostly a consequence of arrogance and too much money. after all, this is
the same geographic region where you have anarchocapitalists microchipping the
homeless and less well-to-do under the guise of "we're perfect; everyone else
is flawed."

------
rmrfrmrf
> By all means come on in, serve us our coffee, drive our busses and clean our
> toilets – but wipe your feet before you come in, and close the door on your
> way out.

Wait, what? _COFFEE?!_ No, I'm allergic to coffee. If they're going to make it
in the Valley, they should only be serving Vyvanse.

------
al2o3cr
Um, 'cause they're dicks?

Would've been the shortest article EVER. ;)

------
mistakoala
The bile, it burns, it burns!

------
michaelochurch
Off the mark. They don't have enough insight to think, "Hey, that could be
me". No, they hate the poor because anything else would force them to give up
their treasured (although, entirely misguided) belief in the justice of the
status quo.

They hate the homeless and poor because their narrow worldview requires it.
Nothing more to read into it.

Fuck, these VC darling assholes are uncouth. When people posted that elitism
shit on Xoxohth in 2005 it was a fucking joke. These wankers are serious when
they gripe about "the poors".

