
SF tourist industry struggles to explain street misery to horrified visitors - dsr12
http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/amp/SF-tourist-industry-struggles-to-explain-street-12534954.php
======
meri_dian
It's actually very easy to explain.

Homeless people are attracted to places with nice year round weather. SF
provides that.

They are also attracted to places where they are tolerated or accepted. The
people of SF are very tolerant of the homeless. As one of the commenters here
says: "I bring cash, you run out after just a block or two." Sounds like a
great place to be homeless.

As for root causes, homelessness is mostly caused by drug addiction and mental
illness. According the the National Coalition for the Homeless:

"A 2008 survey by the United States Conference of Mayors asked 25 cities for
their top three causes of homelessness. Substance abuse was the single largest
cause of homelessness for single adults (reported by 68% of cities).

Substance abuse was also mentioned by 12% of cities as one of the top three
causes of homelessness for families. According to Didenko and Pankratz (2007),
two-thirds of homeless people report that drugs and/or alcohol were a major
reason for their becoming homeless."

As for mental illness, according to a research summary compiled by the
Treatment Advocacy Center:

"Approximately one-third of the total homeless population includes individuals
with serious, untreated mental illnesses"

More affordable housing will not offer relief to the homeless because their
state is largely caused by addiction and mental illness, not by high housing
prices.

~~~
habosa
[http://sfist.com/2016/02/11/71_of_sf_homeless_once_had_homes...](http://sfist.com/2016/02/11/71_of_sf_homeless_once_had_homes_in.php)

70%+ of homeless people in SF were previously housed in SF. Yes they are
attracted to SF but it's in the same way that you and I may be attracted to
the city. They came for the weather, the jobs, the culture, and they got left
behind.

You're right about drug abuse and mental illness, but neither of those should
leave someone to a life on the streets. Treatment is the answer for people
with mental health issues or addictions.

~~~
chrissnell
Speaking as someone with multiple addicts in his immediate family (some with
40+ year addiction histories), I promise you that treatment is rarely the
"answer". Most addicts don't want to go to treatment. They want to maximize
their draw from society and minimize their effort to get that draw so that
they can continue to use drugs as much as possible.

~~~
tcj_phx
> I promise you that treatment is rarely the "answer". Most addicts don't want
> to go to treatment.

Most addicts don't want to go to treatment because treatment doesn't work -
mostly it gets people to focus on their failures and feel bad about
themselves. Someone responded to my previous quip about AA's miserable success
rate with...

    
    
      I'd say 12-step is closer to "takes credit for the 
      ~10-15% of people who'd beat their addictions anyways".
    

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15024780](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15024780)
(168 days ago - above quote is from the response to this comment)

My girlfriend was doing fine with her addictions. The main factor was that I
did not approve, and she liked me more than the drugs. She's spent the last
two years getting 'treated' by the mental health professionals, who have
reversed cause (self-medicating) and effect ('mental illness').

Some months ago her treatment provider did a genetic test, and decided she'd
benefit from Vitamin B-9 - grains fortified with folic acid doesn't work for
poor methylators. It's too bad the treatment providers don't start with
healthy diets and supplements for all their patients.

------
habosa
Justify it to tourists? How to we justify it to ourselves.

Richest city in the richest state in the richest country in the world and we
can't even provide a place for people to live. It's a failure at every level,
there are too many culprits to list.

Aside: I thought it was a great touch that in this article each homeless
person pictured was mentioned by name. Humanizing these people is something we
can all do without spending a penny. If someone stops you on the street asking
for a dollar, at least have the courtesy to look them in the eye and politely
decline. I've had a number of people thank me more forcefully for that small
gesture than actually giving them money (of course, give if you can!).

~~~
GuiA
Thanks for this comment.

I live in the Mission. When I have a friend come over from out of town, their
first shock comes from the large number of homeless tents literally on my
doorstep, a few blocks away from a major street (Valencia).

I then take them for a walk. As I pass the empty block at 22nd and Mission, I
tell them how it used to be a tall apartment building where poorer people
lived under rent control for a long time, and the landlord burned it down
because he couldn’t evict them and wasn’t happy with the money he was making.
Second shock. [https://missionlocal.org/tag/22nd-street-
fire/](https://missionlocal.org/tag/22nd-street-fire/)

Finally, we take a stroll to Dolores Park, and I point to them the house that
Zuckerberg bought. There’s usually a homeless person hanging around, so one
can provide a little verbal comment: “this person survives on a few dollars
day, and a few floors above you have someone worth $80B“

There are no words to describe how screwed up things are.

~~~
olivermarks
@GuiA I know your neighborhood well - until recently I had space below SF
autoworks on 21st & Valencia. What you didn't mention about the Zuckerberg
mansion is the constant security detail around it - private security in black
full size Suburbans. Regarding 22nd & Mission it is amazing how quickly it all
got torn down so an expensive apartment building could be erected. Corner lots
and gas stations seem to have a lot of accidental damage in SF that results in
them being quickly demolished.

In my experience the vast majority of SF homeless have substance abuse issues
overlaid over mental health problems. The streets are dirty and dangerous, but
the dumpster diving behind restaurants and food stores are rich pickings
compared to other west coast cities, according to street people I befriended.

------
henrikschroder
Other countries, other states, other cities have "solved" this problem in a
bunch of different ways, it's not a unique problem. What's unique is the
city's unwillingness to actually solve it.

At the core, you need to spend more money by basically giving these people
healthcare, mental health care, and a place to live.

"But that's not fair, what about all the good, honest citizens of the city who
work their asses off to pay the exorbitant rents and exorbitant health
insurances and still struggle to put food on the table bla bla bla"

No, it's not fair, but as long as that mentality rules, SF will have a
homeless problem. The city sure as fuck doesn't lack the money to solve it, it
lacks political will.

"But that's socialism!"

Yes. Now do you want to solve the problem, or keep sticking your head in the
sand and hope it goes away through the magic of capitalism and the free
market?

~~~
topmonk
The article itself points out that SF is already spending $305 million a year
on homelessness. The number of homeless people is only officially 6500. It's
probably closer to 12,000 but how much more do you want to spend? That's $46K
per person!

You prop up this solution of something vague but close to socialism as a
silver bullet, but with no evidence. If $46K per person doesn't show that
socialism is failing to work, then what will?

~~~
querulous
their spending is inefficient largely because of anti-socialist attitudes.
it's not politically viable to just give the homeless $30k a year tax free but
it's almost certainly the cheapest and most effective way to solve the problem

~~~
topmonk
Giving anyone who shows up and claims they are homeless $30K is the cheapest
and most effective way to solve the problem? It sounds like the most effective
way to rob SF of its treasury.

~~~
viraptor
As parent pointed out, they're already at 40k+ per person at the moment. Why
would lowering that rob them?

~~~
topmonk
Because more people would apply. Giving away money doesn't just attract people
within your city's borders only.

~~~
loorinm
"30k spending per person" does not mean each homeless person gets 30k. This
money goes to all the workers who go through papers, work at shelters, office
people to write papers to try to get more money from the federal government,
and all sorts of other bureaucracy.

Almost none of it goes to the homeless people themselves.

------
tzhenghao
This is sad and depressing to read. I was out in SF last week for a tech
conference. A great time to escape the cold Chicago winter for arguably good
SF weather all year round. Unfortunately, politics and poor city management
has made this city much harder to live in. I would hop off the BART at Powell
station and smell the strong stench of human excretion, or tents right outside
the 16th Mission St station entrance. I feel bad for the homeless, but I don’t
think the city is doing a good job is helping their situation either. I love
SF for all the opportunities it brings, but hate the fact that it isn’t well
distributed to all its residents, both the rich and the poor. SF highlights
what’s good (and bad) about America’s current situation imo.

~~~
a_cactus
Many of the homeless people in SF probably escaped the cold Chicago winters
too.

Due to nice weather, California cities have to support many of the Midwest’s
homeless population. To compensate, there should be a lot more federal funding
for homelessness.

~~~
tptacek
This is a myth. LAHSA does an annual homelessness census in Los Angeles. The
overwhelming majority of the homeless are native Angelenos; 73% of them have
been in LA for over 20 years.

------
prepend
When I first traveled to San Francisco I was amazed by the homeless problem.
And I lived in NY where there’s a substantial number of homeless.

Sadly, each time I travel back, it seems worse and I’m jaded. I bring cash,
you run out after just a block or two. I was staying in the Embarcadero and
every restaurant and shop had a homeless person outside the door. Do even if
you just gave a dollar or your change, I ran out.

This is a difficult problem and I don’t even know how to measure it, much less
solve.

------
legostormtroopr
> You may ask, “Who cares what some dad from a flyover state or some
> businessman from another country thinks of us?”

Do people really ask that? I'm sure they do, but the lack of respect for the
"fly-over states" from America never fails to surprise me.

~~~
dionidium
Do you spend much time on Hacker News? Such opinions are expressed here
regularly. More seriously, it's not unusual to see, say, Florida casually
compared to, say, Eastern Europe without any sense of how absurdly one-sided
such comparisons actually are (e.g. on measures like GDP, standard of living,
number of jobs, etc).

Opinions are opinions. That's fine. But what I find as a Missourian living in
NYC is that people on the coasts (who didn't move there from somewhere else)
are largely _ignorant_ of important _factual_ properties of the South and the
Midwest. It's not uncommon to see someone off by an order of magnitude about,
say, GDP or population or whatever (expressed with extreme confidence, of
course).

~~~
dylanh
I'm from Florida -- and have deep roots going back more than 100 years.

Florida is significantly less developed than it has any right to be, on a
range of measures.

~~~
dionidium
Yes, that's right. It's well into the bottom half of U.S. states by GDP per
capita, which still puts it at around 4-5x the GDP per capita in most Eastern
European countries (which was my point).

The United States is _ridiculously_ wealthy, even in places Americans love to
denigrate. That's worth remembering whenever you feel like comparing Florida
unfavorably to this or that other place.

~~~
maym86
GDP isn't really a great measure of how well a population is doing if
inequality is high and wages are stagnant for low paid workers.

Florida has one of the highest levels of inequality in the US and the US in
general had more inequality than most European countries.

Are the working poor in the south really that much better off than most of
Europe where healthcare and social housing are more readily available? GDP
alone is a bad measure of success for individuals living somewhere if the
benefits are not shared.

------
jimrandomh
As long as California's home construction continues to be below population
growth, it will keep getting worse. There are a lot of causes you can point
at, but until there's actually enough housing getting built, they're all red
herrings.

~~~
baseethrowaway
Yeah, this is point on... no.

Unless a price of a home is ridiculously cheap (under $100 a month?), and even
then, people without any income and/or mentally unwell people will not
magically become non-homeless. Next time, read your post two times after
writing and check for logical errors.

~~~
sorenbs
In Berlin you can live in a decent apartment in the city center for 400 $ per
month. The only reason this is not possible in SF is that you have so much low
density crap even in walking distance of the center. This is insane.

------
ENGNR
I took a trip to SF with the intention of later moving there for work. The #1
thing that prevented me from following through was the street issues. Not just
from sympathy for the people who aren't helped after falling through the
cracks (although that's also a big part of it), who wants to live in a place
where you're one desperate decision from being mugged or attacked.

Very glad the tech scene is spreading out around the world rather than further
concentrating

------
Animats
SF spends about $214 million per year on homelessness. About half of that is
for housing.[1]

Dallas considered building a concentration camp.[2]

[1]
[http://sfist.com/2016/04/12/no_san_francisco_does_not_spend_...](http://sfist.com/2016/04/12/no_san_francisco_does_not_spend_360.php)

[2] [http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/even-the-idea-of-
homeless...](http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/even-the-idea-of-homeless-
concentration-camp-is-mischief-in-the-making-8269330)

------
jtmcmc
SF's homeless problem is a direct result of so many negative federal policies
and so many positive SF policies that it's so funny that people come out of
this with a negative opinion on SF.

SF spends so much fucking money on the homeless, including 112 million on
supportive housing for the formerly homeless and 27 million spent on eviction
prevention.

The problem is that the issue of homelessness is a FEDERAL issue and that no
one city, even SF has the resources to combat it.

As some have said SF and many other west coast cities are extremely attractive
to the homeless because they have relatively lenient laws regarding them,
ample social services (relative to any other city) and moderate temperatures.

SF is also a mecca for sending your queer/trans child that your religious
beliefs can't bear to have around you.

There are many obvious solutions to mitigate homelessness. Provided government
housing, decent physical and mental healthcare, job training.

San Francisco does all of those things. However, the fact is supply and demand
is totally out of whack because SF is a sink for homelessness.

This needs to be addressed federally and until then all west coast cities will
continue to be filled with homeless and have their social services over run.

~~~
WkndTriathlete
> As some have said SF and many other west coast cities are extremely
> attractive to the homeless because they have relatively lenient laws
> regarding them, ample social services (relative to any other city) and
> moderate temperatures.

[citation needed]

I'm skeptical of the weather argument. I would expect the homeless to move to
Los Angeles or San Diego first.

Of course, that's assuming the homeless have the mental capacity to even make
the conscious decision to move there. I don't think most addicts or mentally
disabled people have the wherewithal to make a move from, say, Chicago to SF.
(I.e. how do you make a planned move with (a) no money and (b) no Google to
figure out the commercial train line routes you can hop a ride on for free?
Hop a train in Chicago and maybe end up in Lansing, Michigan or Toronto
instead!)

~~~
jtmcmc
There are lots of homeless in San Diego and LA, however, they don't have the
same level of density that SF is nor the same level of social services.

>I don't think most addicts or mentally disabled people have the wherewithal
to make a move from, say, Chicago to SF.

There is a distinction between people with mental health problems and mental
disability. Things like addiction and mental health exist on a pretty vast
spectrum and have massive variations day to day.

As to how homeless people get around - well I see you haven't been on the
greyhound much but that's a major way to travel for homeless both with their
own money or with tickets paid for by various cities.

------
mirimir
Shortage of housing that's affordable by minimum-wage workers is the
fundamental problem. Plus lack of workable public transportation to places
where housing is affordable.

I imagine a meat grinder something like this. First you get evicted because
you earn too little to pay the rent. Then you lose your job because you can't
stay presentable. After a while, it's pretty much irreversible.

So yeah. We need affordable housing. And we need fair wages.

~~~
im3w1l
> First you get evicted because you earn too little to pay the rent.

> Then you lose your job because you can't stay presentable.

Then you lose your health because you aren't insured.

Then you lose your sanity because you take drugs to cope.

~~~
mirimir
Thanks. I forgot those.

------
hprotagonist
Lest we think that “eat the rich!” is a particularly new critique of states
which fail to address the needs of their citizens:

 _WHAT keeps you from giving now? Isn 't the poor person there? Aren't your
own warehouses full? Isn't the reward promised? The command is clear: the
hungry person is dying now, the naked person is freezing now, the person in
debt is beaten now-and you want to wait until tomorrow? "I'm not doing any
harm," you say. "I just want to keep what I own, that's all." You own! You are
like someone who sits down in a theater and keeps everyone else away, saying
that what is there for everyone's use is your own. . . . If everyone took only
what they needed and gave the rest to those in need, there would be no such
thing as rich and poor. After all, didn't you come into life naked, and won't
you return naked to the earth?

The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry person; the coat hanging
unused in your closet belongs to the person who needs it; the shoes rotting in
your closet belong to the person with no shoes; the money which you put in the
bank belongs to the poor. You do wrong to everyone you could help, but fail to
help._ \--Basil, 4th century

 _THE large rooms of which you are so proud are in fact your shame. They are
big enough to hold crowds-and also big enough to shut out the voice of the
poor. . . . There is your sister or brother, naked, crying! And you stand
confused over the choice of an attractive floor covering._ \--Ambrose, 4th
century

------
RickJWagner
"You may ask, “Who cares what some dad from a flyover state or some
businessman from another country thinks of us?” "

I can't even believe the author had that thought. Amazing.

------
staunch
Pretty soon the US could afford to _give_ every person 1 x autonomous cars, 1
x off-grid solar paneled home, 1 x unlimited low earth orbit (low latency)
satellite internet.

------
pmoriarty
_" I actually think it’s the worst it’s ever been," said Handlery, who’s been
in the San Francisco hotel business for 38 years._

I don't know. I remember 20 years ago, around the first internet bubble,
seeing literally hundreds of homeless people along Market St. It was like an
army of homeless people.

There are far fewer these days, at least in the fancy shopping districts and
along Market. There are more tents around other parts of the city, though.
Maybe it's more of a case of gentrification pushing the homeless to other
parts of the city so they're "out of sight, out of mind".

It reminds me of a plan I once heard about, of rounding up all the homeless
and shipping them off to Treasure Island. That plan was never put in to
practice, but I was shocked it was ever seriously considered. Still, in many
ways what's been achieved is something similar, with the effective eviction of
many homeless from the shopping areas and in to tents outside of it.

The whole subtext of this article is kind of troubling. It's like the only
reason that homelessness is a problem is that the tourists are seeing it, and
that it's hurting the tourist industry's bottom line.

I'm glad people are seeing it. If they weren't much less would be done to
help.

~~~
williamstein
I just spent the last three days around Market street in San Francisco (near
City Hall), and the degree of disturbing clearly miserable homelessness was
really shocking to me. I live in Seattle (with a big homeless problem as
well), and I _also_ lived in the Bay Area 20 years ago (for five years), and
it definitely appears worse to me now. It seems worse nbow in the sense of
just plain misery/drugs/violence... It's really sad.

------
loorinm
I'm tired of all the "How can they let this happen?!?!" as if we don't know
how capitalism works.

"Political will" is just code for financial incentive.

The fact that this problem isn't being solved, tells us very clearly that this
isn't actually a problem for the majority of the city's income.

The tech industry is strong enough that people will still show up to collect
their $120k salaries, even if they have to step over people and feces to do
that.

Obviously tourism must not be a big income for the city. Which is why no one
cares what "Mr. Hotel owner" has to say.

SF will continue to become a tech dystopia, because no one comes to San
Francisco to stay or to make a home or a community. Everyone is passing
through, there to make their fortune in tech, and then leave. No one has kids
there. That's why this isn't solved. San Francisco is not a community. Until
it is, this problem will never go away.

The recent shady "election" of the new mayor - a white male tech VC, would
seem to support this. Apparently a black woman who was willing to go along
with the rich white men wasn't enough.

------
dredmorbius
Thinking through the dynamics a few weeks ago, the thought occurred that at
least _part_ of the homeless crisis in the US, which really didn't start until
the 1980s, may be attributable to the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo and subsequent
changes to the U.S. financial system.

California's Proposition 13 and massive constraints on housing don't much help
either.

Drugs, stress, climate, mental illness, and various social safety net
breakdowns are, of course, other (and significant) factors.

[https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/eDscpi6K...](https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/eDscpi6Kg7L)

------
KeepTalking
This is the problem of our generation. Shame on us.

Is this an Area where YC can help ? I challenge YC to consider Request for
Startups that will consider ideas to fix this problem. I envision someone as
powerful as YC and its network partnering with the city of SF,SJC,Oakland to
allow for experimentation in finding long term fixes to this social issue.

here is a NPR report that shows the impact of fixing the homeless problem.

[https://www.npr.org/2018/01/30/581778796/er-use-goes-down-
as...](https://www.npr.org/2018/01/30/581778796/er-use-goes-down-as-hospital-
program-pays-homeless-peoples-rent)

~~~
bitL
C'mon, you can't make money off homeless. VC-backed startups are about 100x
ROI and not guaranteed cash burn...

------
loorinm
It actually seems plausible that SF might have the worst homeless problem as a
direct result of actually doing the most to help the homeless.

SF literally gets punished, the better job they do.

As they provide services, the city only attracts and retains a bigger and
bigger population who become accustomed to relying on just enough services to
continue living on the streets.

San Francisco is creating its own problem here due to its own altruism.

------
apple4ever
Its actually easy to explain. Government regulation. End of line.

