
A Window onto an American Nightmare - blendo
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/01/a-window-onto-an-american-nightmare
======
golf1052
The line that stuck out the most to me

> In San Francisco today, people who earn less than [$82,000] a year—or a
> [$117,000] for a family of four—are considered low-income.

Most people outside of San Francisco would consider that a lot of money. Would
a barista working at a Starbucks in the city ever earn that much? What about a
public school teacher or cleaning staff? Essential services that need to be
filled are worked by people who need to live somewhere.

------
cousin_it
EDIT: ignore this comment, the reasoning is wrong, see below.

> _San Francisco officially reported 8,640 homeless residents in 2002—a
> peak—and almost as many in 2019 ... San Francisco spends more per capita on
> homelessness solutions than nearly any other U.S. city—three hundred and
> thirty million dollars a year._

330000000 / 8640 = 38194

> _the median monthly rent for a one-bedroom in the city is now, by one
> estimate, about thirty-five hundred dollars_

3500 * 12 = 42000

These numbers are surprisingly close. Moreover, 1) you need one apartment per
family not per person 2) you can pay below median if you buy in bulk and
aren't very picky 3) many homeless have jobs.

~~~
spaced-out
Most of that money goes to getting people like the guy profiled in the article
into housing, after which they're no longer considered homeless.

In other words, not all of the $330 million is for that 8,640 people, most of
it is going toward housing people who would otherwise be homeless.

~~~
cousin_it
Wow, I'm stupid. Won't remove my comment, let it stay as a monument. Thank
you!

------
fortran77
Of course I'm sympathetic to the plight of the homeless, and I think it's
outrageous that SF isn't building more housing as as fast as possible to try
to bring the prices down.

However, there's a dilemma where cities that have the best services (and
climate) for people who are happy camping anywhere will attract folks who come
there just to be homeless, like the subject of this story.

> He made money by hunting exotic minerals and rocks.

Did he? Or was he stealing exotic minerals and rocks from the National Parks
in 48 states he camped at? (See
[https://www.nps.gov/subjects/geology/permits.htm#CP_JUMP_547...](https://www.nps.gov/subjects/geology/permits.htm#CP_JUMP_5479119)
) Shame on the New Yorker fact-checkers for not confirming where he got those
minerals.

~~~
carapace
> SF isn't building more housing as as fast as possible to try to bring the
> prices down.

If every construction company and contractor in the entire state of CA came to
SF and started building apartment buildings as fast as they could, they would
still only add enough capacity to prevent rates rising, at best.

No human agency can actually bring the prices down.

~~~
erik_seaberg
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Contractors_State_L...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Contractors_State_License_Board)
says California has 104K licensed building contractors. Couldn't they build
200K duplexes housing 800K people (roughly the current population of SF) in a
couple of years?

~~~
carapace
I'm exaggerating, here's the article I'm drawing on: [https://experimental-
geography.blogspot.com/2016/05/employme...](https://experimental-
geography.blogspot.com/2016/05/employment-construction-and-cost-of-san.html)

He collects and analyzes historical data going back to 1948.

Punchline: "Today's outrageous prices are exactly in line with the 6.6% trend
that began 60 years ago."

Rent in the Bay Area has gone up 6.6% per year for sixty years.

> In conclusion

> San Francisco is an expensive city because it is an affluent city with a
> growing population and no easily available land for development. Sonja
> Trauss is right that building more housing would reduce rents of both high-
> and low-end apartments. Tim Redmond is right that building enough housing to
> make much of a dent in prices would change the visual character of most
> streets, although the result could be more like Barcelona than like the Hong
> Kong that he fears. The unsettled question is which of these is the higher
> priority.

> Building enough housing to roll back prices to the "good old days" is
> probably not realistic, because the necessary construction rates were never
> achieved even when planning and zoning were considerably less restrictive
> than they are now. Building enough to compensate for the growing economy is
> a somewhat more realistic goal and would keep things from getting worse.

> In the long run, San Francisco's CPI-adjusted average income is growing by
> 1.72% per year, and the number of employed people is growing by 0.326% per
> year, which together (if you believe the first model) will raise CPI-
> adjusted housing costs by 3.8% per year. Therefore, if price stability is
> the goal, the city and its citizens should try to increase the housing
> supply by an average of 1.5% per year (which is about 3.75 times the general
> rate since 1975, and with the current inventory would mean 5700 units per
> year). If visual stability is the goal instead, prices will probably
> continue to rise uncontrollably.

> If you want to do your own analysis, the data is all available to download
> on Github. Please let me know what other explanations you find for the
> patterns!

------
blendo
Despite the alarmist headline, the story is seems nuanced and even-handed.

~~~
everdrive
Not sure if this is the case here, but apparently writers often don't choose
their own headlines.

[https://archive.thinkprogress.org/why-writers-dont-write-
hea...](https://archive.thinkprogress.org/why-writers-dont-write-
headlines-558decd956d4/)

~~~
ghaff
That is correct. Writers will usually write one (or may use one an editor
provided when they gave the assignment), but typically an editor will decide
on the final headline/subhead/etc.

~~~
vwcx
At both TIME and NatGeo, it wasn’t uncommon to focus group different headlines
and covers before going to print.

This coverline caused particular rage internally amongst staff:
[https://images.app.goo.gl/cGhZ8usRNCBqhcp49](https://images.app.goo.gl/cGhZ8usRNCBqhcp49)

------
ur-whale
[http://archive.is/hm7Vd](http://archive.is/hm7Vd)

------
samirillian
> The mayor opposed the idea, but it gained support from local powers such as
> Benioff and Pelosi, and passed as Proposition C. The tax has raised three
> hundred million dollars annually. But, for now, that money remains
> unavailable, ensnared in legal challenges from the business world.

Does anybody know about these legal challenges?

------
magna7
Serious question. Why don't homeless people in SF and NYC go look for work in
cheaper cities across America? It seems like these people with degrees and
work experience can find work elsewhere and affordable housing, so I don't
understand why they would continue to live in the most expensive cities in the
world... I'm not American, so maybe I'm missing something.

~~~
dehrmann
The bit the piece touched on was that the couple it followed came to SF
because it has a support system for drug addicts and the homeless. What it
didn't say is that any local solution will just improve the conditions in SF,
attracting more homeless and drug addicts.

SF and NYC would be better off finding those cheaper cities that need workers
and showing them how to run services for the homeless. They might also want to
connect the marginally homeless with these cities early.

That said, I doubt there's much work for the SF homeless. Between addiction
and mental health problems, most aren't employable.

~~~
epistasis
This is not a significant source of homeless people in SF. The vast majority
have been living in the area, just struggling to get by. There are so many
people that are one financial crisis (eg car repair) away from being evicted.
It's no surprise that 1% of the population is homeless in a city where rents
are not covered by entry level jobs, and where cheap rental options like SROs
are being eliminated.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Is that true? Both the top people profiled in this article moved from out of
state into SF and appear to have immediately become homeless.

~~~
throwawaysea
It’s not true. Many homeless are coached to respond to surveys (like the
annual point in time count) with a claim that they’re long time locals, since
it garners more political sympathy and support. But if you talk to homeless in
SF or Seattle or view news clips interviewing people in camps, it seems the
majority have moved in from elsewhere due to laws that permit permanent
nomadic lifestyles and open drug abuse. It is just “induced demand” in action.
Incentives and disincentives have effects on behaviors.

The only statistics that should be trusted are ones that have _verifiable_
records proving the historical residency of homeless populations. Everything
else is easily manipulable and not trustworthy.

~~~
epistasis
> It’s not true. Many homeless are coached to respond to surveys (like the
> annual point in time count) with a claim that they’re long time locals,
> since it garners more political sympathy and support.

This is at the very best a conspiracy theory. Poll takers intentionally trying
to get the wrong answers to garner political support? And what has that
supposed conspiracy garnered, politically? Who gains in this conspiracy and
how?

Such claims require at least some substantiation. Is there anybody who is
willing to put their real name out there that has observed this?

My personal experience, in Santa Cruz, does not match what you claim. There
was a recent vicious attack by a homeless person, and the police found the
attacker hiding in his mother's house in town.

~~~
techsupporter
> And what has that supposed conspiracy garnered, politically? Who gains in
> this conspiracy and how?

At least where I live, I've heard a _lot_ of conspiracy theories, many now
openly discussed and not just in whispers, of a "homeless-industrial complex"
where people are supposedly making bank on faux solutions to homelessness and
non-profit providers are just funneling money off to the wealthy people who
run the non-profits and leaving clients and volunteers hung out to dry.

As an occasional volunteer for some of those groups, I do not see this.
Granted, I may not be anywhere as involved in Deep Homelessness as I might
need to be in order to pull back the veil and expose the bitter truth. From my
point of view, I see a shitload of people who have been dealt a terrible hand.
a lot of them were people who were doing just fine before, maybe not great but
were getting by and then a life event happened that, sure, from our
perspectives on HN of most of us making in the low six figures to start, would
have seen coming and could have planned for. But, for whatever reason, these
people didn't and damn, once you fall out of "normal society," climbing back
in is hard. as. fuck.

One person I helped was technically literate--we set up Yubikey auth for his
Google account, for goodness sake--and had no vices besides posting up at the
library to play Clash of Clans on his aging Android phone. But it still took
an inordinate amount of time to get together all of the identity and proofing
documents he needed to get an ID to go onto a military base to take a
specialty job. In one case, he only got one of the documents because he knew a
notary (me) and could have a form sworn to and stamped in under a day at no
cost.

I don't think people truly appreciate just how fragile modern life is if
they've never fallen out of it.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
But the point is that you don't see this. SF has a $364 million dollar
homeless budget, double what it was a decade ago, so the programs you
volunteer for _should_ be swimming in cash to provide their services and make
sure the homeless have opportunities. If they're not, then where'd all the
money go?

~~~
dehrmann
SF spends $45k per homeless person?!

~~~
epistasis
No, not quite. The 'point in time' count of 8,000-9,000 people is a
measurement of flux; people enter homelessness and leave it all the time. A
huge chunk (most?) of SF's spending goes to emergency assistance to prevent
people from falling into homelessness when they have a financial emergency,
which is by far the cheapest time to stop homelessness.

------
xwdv
Stuffing as many homeless as possible in close quarters at Moscone gives the
impression San Francisco is hellbent on killing off its homeless population
using COVID-19.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Do you know of a better spot to shelter them? The city only owns so much
property.

~~~
jeffbee
There's an entire legal process for solving the fact that a city owns too
little property: they can simply buy it with eminent domain, and that is
precisely what they should be doing. They can ED single-family homes, rezone
the properties for multifamily dwellings, and either auction them off or build
on them through the housing authority. Everyone would win: the city could
clear out lots of under-assessed junk, people who need housing wil get more
supply, and even the owners who get bought out in the ED proceeding will get a
huge paycheck, and the city needs no additional powers nor deliberations to do
this, they can simply decide to do it at an ordinary supervisors' meeting.
That they have chosen not to exercise such powers for the last 40-plus years
tells you everything you need to know about why this problem persists.

~~~
dodobirdlord
> They can ED single-family homes, rezone the properties for multifamily
> dwellings

On track, but the process you describe is overcomplicated. The whole process
can be collapsed to "SF needs to upzone most of the city".

Land zoned for multifamily dwellings is worth a lot more than land zoned for
single family dwellings, so the owners would have reasonable grounds to sue if
the city used eminent domain to seize their property under single family
zoning with plans to upzone to multifamily zoning. They would probably win and
be entitled to fair compensation for assessed value as of the later zoning. So
if the city were going to pursue this route it would need the upzoning first,
which the city has always been able to do and has refused to do anyway.

~~~
jeffbee
Yes but a neat workaround is to simply ED the properties of all the people who
have been lobbying against the upzoning since ~always. They demonstrably were
not in line to gain from the zoning change, since they personally prevent it.

~~~
bhawks
If you use previous political views as an input into the eminent domain
decision I am pretty sure the courts are going to give you a hard time
(justifiably so).

~~~
jeffbee
It's actually settled case law in California that you can declare a
neighborhood a "slum" and subject it to "urban renewal" based, in part, on a
high concentration of "communists". Yes that is bananas, but there you go.

------
nootanond
I see a story about man who deliberately made a series of selfish high risk
decisions and continued to do so with no regard for his future or his role in
society.

I've done the same, to an extent - but if I ended up homeless at any point I
would not have expected society to pay for my continued foolishness.

There's no doubt that welfare in some form is ideal for a modern society, but
people should recognize that willingness to work is tied to desire for
survival/comfort and willingness to work for most people decreases as the
welfare floor increases.

Forcing someone to work for those who do not contribute to society is theft.
There is no reason to believe that the average person will commit to pursuits
beneficial for the collective if his needs are guaranteed to be met regardless
of his willingness or ability to participate.

~~~
Pfhreak
> Forcing someone to work for those who do not contribute to society is theft.

This is a terrible way to think about a functioning society. Taxes are not
theft, and we absolutely should be supporting those who do not 'contribute to
society'.

What about folks with mental illnesses, physical impairments, advanced age,
pregnancy, recovering from injuries, drug/alcohol addiction, or any other
number of reasons why someone might need to have us all cover for them? Why is
it any different in this case?

~~~
apta
> What about folks with mental illnesses, physical impairments, advanced age,
> pregnancy, recovering from injuries, drug/alcohol addiction

Drug and alcohol addition are definitely not in the same group as the rest.

~~~
danShumway
Given how much we now know about the history of the opioid epidemic, how much
we now know about how cigarettes/alcohol have been advertised throughout
recent history and what the motivations were behind those advertisements, I
feel like this is a particularly naive comment.

Nobody gets up in the morning and says, "gee, I'd really like to introduce a
high-cost, crippling dependency in my life." Understanding that and treating
drug abuse like a physical/social disease has turned out to be a surprisingly
effective social policy.

It's not clear to me why addicted people should be treated differently than
anyone else in any other challenging situation. Certainly once someone is
addicted to a drug, there are obvious biological forces preventing them from
quitting cold-turkey.

~~~
apta
> Nobody gets up in the morning and says

They don't, yet they "drink casually" or "do drugs casually". There's a reason
certain religions ban intoxicating substances. Alas, people like to play with
fire, then things go wrong, yet society still thinks that it's ok to keep
marketing those dangerous substances. If society actually wants to fix the
issue, there is a solution, but it doesn't sit well with the greedy and
foolish.

~~~
danShumway
Again, you're ignoring nearly a decade of modern research into how addiction
happens, and the social infrastructures that have been deliberately set up by
both dealers and drug/alcohol/pharmaceutical companies to get people addicted.

You say yourself:

> yet society still thinks that it's ok to keep marketing those dangerous
> substances

If you're acknowledging that society is pushing people into drugs, doesn't it
kind of make sense to hold society responsible for getting them out?

\----

But even ignoring the causes of addiction, your suggestion that we ban
alcohol/drugs also doesn't have anything to do with whether we should help
people who are physically addicted now.

Okay, cool, let's ban heroin. It already is illegal, but whatever. We'll
super-ban it. Even after the super-ban, we're still going to need to help the
people who are addicted right now -- people who are suffering from both a
biological and psychological dependency that is outside of their control to
fix on their own.

> people like to play with fire

If you ride your bike without a helmet and accidentally suffer a brain injury,
should society help you, even though you ignored safety advice? If you get
distracted in your car and crash, should society help you, even though you
weren't paying attention? Is your position that only people with birth defects
have a legitimate claim to support/grace?

When I was a young kid, my brother and I use to go out in the woods and
pretend sword fight with sticks, even though our parents told us this was a
stupid, dangerous thing to do. We got lucky, nothing ever happened. But if one
of us had accidentally stabbed an eye out, would we have been entitled to any
kind of social support?

I still don't see anything that would make a drug addiction different from
those scenarios.

~~~
apta
> and the social infrastructures that have been deliberately set up by both
> dealers and drug/alcohol/pharmaceutical companies to get people addicted.

I indirectly mentioned that in my post. There is a solution to this problem,
but it doesn't sit well with the foolish and the greedy. There is a vested
interest that it doesn't get solved.

> Okay, cool, let's ban heroin. It already is illegal, but whatever. We'll
> super-ban it.

Should also add alcohol to the list.

> I still don't see anything that would make a drug addiction different from
> those scenarios.

It's very different. In the activities you mentioned, there is a positive
outcome involved, or it is a natural part of growing up (kids do stupid
things, but that's where the role of the parents come in). Whereas in doing
drugs and alcohol, the risk/benefit ratios are so skewed, it's irrational to
engage in them in the first place.

~~~
danShumway
But none of what you're saying solves the problem of what we're going to do
with all of the people who have a physical addiction right now: people who
can't fix their own problems without external help.

You keep on kind of dancing around this "but they deserve it" argument. But
who cares if they deserve it? They're not going to go away until someone else
helps them. You can't just pass a law that people will stop being addicted to
alcohol, that's not how biology works. How people got into a situation where
they can't help themselves doesn't matter. They're still in a position where
they can't fix their own problems.

And on moralization, to go back to your own point:

> There is a vested interest that it doesn't get solved.

Do you have a plan to get rid of that vested interest? How long is that plan
going to take to implement? A year? Two years? Should we just let addicts die
on the street until you get around to getting elected to Congress?

If society is at least partially (and arguably largely) to blame for these
people's addictions, and if changing society is a difficult, long-term process
that requires battling multiple vested interests, then why is it unethical for
us to use social resources like taxes in the meantime to help people that
society is hurting?

You can't have this both ways. You can't argue that society is obsessed with
drugs and that's why we have addiction, while simultaneously arguing that
every addicted person is specifically getting what they deserve and isn't
worthy of our help.

> It's very different. There is a positive outcome involved, or it is a
> natural part of growing up

There's a positive outcome involved in glancing at a phone while driving?
Riding a bicycle without a helmet is a natural part of growing up?

I strongly agree that kids often do stupid things. Trying drugs and alcohol is
one of those stupid things. And to be honest, comparatively, riding a bicycle
without a helmet is way more stupid and way more irrational than accidentally
getting peer-pressured by a drug-obsessed society into a debilitating
addiction.

I don't see a difference here except that one of those activities is being
labeled as harmless stupidity, and one of them is being labeled as a moral
failing.

Getting addicted to painkillers coming out of surgeries with badly dosed
prescriptions is still a common worry for many people. I have friends that
refuse to take any painkillers in a hospital specifically because they're
frightened of that exact scenario. The best case scenario for people who get
addicted to painkillers is for them to get 3rd-party help before they become
addicted to more serious drugs. It's absurd to me to argue that their problems
were caused by them being stupid or immoral, when I can directly see the role
that doctors and the medical industry played in their addictions. Are those
people worthy of getting help from society?

~~~
apta
Thank you for the thought-provoking discussion.

