
Silicon Valley man launches a hunger strike against housing the homeless - Quanttek
https://medium.com/@anirvan/engineer-protests-against-housing-homeless-9609fab0d026
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SeeDave
N3 Cattle Ranch with 50,000 acres of land is on sale for $72m.

Proposition C will raise $300m per year.

Why not buy this cattle ranch and build all sorts of mental health, addiction
treatment, job training, etc. facilities?

[0] [https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/N3-Cattle-
Company-...](https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/N3-Cattle-Company-
ranch-larger-than-San-Francisco-14069717.php)

[1] [https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/SF-Prop-C-
homel...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/SF-Prop-C-homeless-tax-
measure-to-raise-300-13369555.php)

~~~
innagadadavida
Building this will increase homelessness as more people will migrate here.
This is not a solution. Instead it is better to give housing near farms and
other areas that need unskilled labor. Why not build more schools and
libraries there instead? It’s a shame that we neglect our future generations
at the cost of housing the homeless. There has to be set ratio on how much
commercial vs housing a township can have. Endlessly building office space
will make all of our lives more difficult.

~~~
jelliclesfarm
I am with you on farms and even food industry jobs. It’s short time to train
them. I have worked with juvenile girls from half way homes. Working in the
orchards and gardening is therapeutic and fills a labour deficit. With more
automation and tech, it can also become less physically demanding. It can be a
skill based job rather than manual jobs. My goal to automate farming: If you
know how to use a smart phone, you can farm.

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jelliclesfarm
This is misleading. He went on a hunger strike to protest the City Council
making a decision to build low barrier Navigation centers next to residences
and schools without public input. He wants them to hold something like a
referendum and let the people decide location of the HNC if it were to pass.

~~~
Quanttek
> without public input

Not true. From the article:

> The city of Fremont started developing a proposal for a new navigation
> center, and asked residents for input. Elected officials and staff organized
> three public meetings about the proposal, accepted comments online, and
> heard from hundreds of residents at city council meetings. Fremont residents
> wore white to city hearings to express support for the proposed center;
> others wore either red or blue, to express their opposition to specific
> proposed sites.

The article also talks about how we wants the houses people decide whether and
where it's built. I think anybody will recognize the ridiculousness of holding
a whole referendum on whether one small service center is getting built
(especially with Grant money on the line, this will effectively kill the
proposal)

~~~
jelliclesfarm
That’s a Medium opinion piece. It is not a news article. A biased and ill
informed one, in my opinion.

Why is it ridiculous?

Here: [http://www.ktvu.com/homeless/fremont-resident-on-hunger-
stri...](http://www.ktvu.com/homeless/fremont-resident-on-hunger-strike-over-
proposed-homeless-center)

[..]Sun said he’s not against a homeless navigation center. He doesn't care
where it's built. He does care who has a say and feels it should be up to the
voters.

It’s his first hunger strike over the city’s first-ever homeless navigation
center. He said it should be a ballot initiative for the voters to decide and
not city leaders.

“Only position I take is the decision making,” said Sun. “I believe this
decision is so critical for Fremont.”

[..]

Sacramento is holding Bay Area cities hostage. The citizens pay for all of
this.

Are you saying people shouldn’t get a say on how their cities are run?

It costs the city 4 more million and approximately 45% of the 2 million grant
money is for administrative costs. It only serves 45 homeless people for six
months(a bed and one meal a day and counseling) and grant money comes with
strings that the city has to take in 45 people from other cities in alameda
county.

That means 45 out of 608 homeless headcount in Fremont will get the ‘service’
of being directed to homeless services. Is that a good use of 2.4 million
grant money? You can build a permanent group homes housing 50-60 people for
the same amount in another part of CA that isn’t crazy expensive Bay Area.

Better uses for the grant money.

~~~
umeshunni
> Are you saying people shouldn’t get a say on how their cities are run?

If there's one thing Bay Area cities have proven, it's that their citizens are
incapable of running their cities. Putting NIMBY interests above regional
interests are how they ended up in the current situation where any solution
requires 7 counties, 22 regional associations and hundreds of so-called cities
who can object to anything but are incapable of doing anything..

~~~
jelliclesfarm
I have never understood why NIMBYism is a bad thing. It simply means that one
is involved with local governance and wants to voice their needs. It’s a good
thing, yes?

Regional government is Big Govt which is inefficient, bulky and expensive.
Small units are efficient to run and tighter ships to maneuver. YIMBYism is
too close to co-dependency rather than cooperation. Do we want a nanny state?

~~~
SamReidHughes
You could draw a distinction between nimbyism that infringes on people's
ability to do what they want with their own property, and nimbyism in regards
to what the government does with its money.

~~~
jelliclesfarm
Right. I think those people are only asking that their voice be heard before
the elected city council members pass motions to accept grant money with
strings.

Fremont has to dip into its general and emergency funds and use city owned
land to build these HNCs. That’s the commons.

The city council held public meetings but about location. They had already
voted to accept grant money. Further, there are many shelters and homes in the
city. The grant money doesn’t need to go to HNCs. Providing more services
through the existing 6-7 locations and providing mobile services like health
checks, laundry/showers/food while transitioning them to permanent housing are
other options, but they are not being explored.

The biggest chunk would go to paying BACS, a non profit that would be managing
the HNCs. The people also don’t want it near schools and residential homes.

I feel it’s all valid concerns. I wouldn’t doubt the cynicism and distrust
expressed by the local citizenry when elected officials hurriedly pass
measures without local input. When the commons are impacted, everyone gets to
voice their concerns.

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jelliclesfarm
Fun fact: when London Breed, the mayor of SF wanted to build homeless units
that are modular units made in Mare Island(in nearby Vallejo), the unions did
not approve.

It was decided that a factory building modular homes will be built instead to
maintain construction jobs locally. They still haven’t found a site to create
this factory. Almost 4 years now and the homeless population has grown in SF
and has spilled into neighboring Bay Area cities.

It’s easy to make scapegoats out of the productive tax paying, home owning,
working class by branding them NIMBYs. Perhaps NIMBYism is the needed
inoculation against chronic homelessness that is getting worse under
inefficient state and regional governments.

~~~
throwawaynihil
Whenever I read "NIMBY", I already know the person is a caucasian, male, 20-40
something white tech/finance bro complaining about rent, spewing out wildly
inaccurate numbers (some YCbros claim that rent is $7500 per month for a 1br
in the tenderloin), and expressing their sense of entitlement for San
Francisco to be exactly like whatever boring town they migrated from.

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patthebunny
Awesome, lets help him out. Nobody let him have any food.

