
'Am I in the bad part of town?' - sverige
https://m.sfgate.com/local/article/is-san-francisco-dangerous-visit-sf-safe-crime-12995294.php#photo-15533767
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rahimnathwani
SF spends over 300MM USD per year on homelessness (equivalent to 40k USD per
homeless person per year):
[https://www.sfchronicle.com/aboutsfgate/article/Despite-
mone...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/aboutsfgate/article/Despite-money-and-
work-homelessness-in-SF-as-bad-11242946.php)

The homeless population is less than 8k people.

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random_user456
The perfect example of an incompetent government. They could literally just
pay each homeless person that 40k a year, or literally build the housing and
house each person. Instead they waste 300 mill in non effective programs.

~~~
kaybe
The question remains how many people they kept off the streets with the
program.

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bsaul
i confirm this strange feeling when visiting SF. You talk with your friend
about insane salaries and company valuation while walking on the street and
you're passing next to drooling zombies with crazy eyes probably still high on
drugs and no teeth.

then you hear about real estate prices and the insane tax levels and you
realize something has gone completely wrong in that region.

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nailer
As someone who grew up with yhe idyllic images of Full House and now travels
regularly to SF for work: San Francisco is awful.

You'll smell sewerage odors wandering up from a grate in Bangkok but you'll
see and smell human shit smeared everywhere in downtown San Francisco.

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dan_quixote
The situation is arguably worse in Seattle. We have over 11000 homeless with a
smaller total population. We also had a similar story in the news today ->
[https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/letter-to-seattle-
conventio...](https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/letter-to-seattle-convention-
leaders-your-homeless-problem-is-out-of-control/770150626)

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Latteland
i don't think these are easy problems that can be solved just by the city
being "less wasteful" and stopping doing stupid things, which seems to be the
common response to the problems.

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stuaxo
Housing the homeless seems to be more effective than a lot of alternatives.

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mitochondrion
In a more humane age, they were housed in asylums.

Then Reagan happened.

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rhapsodic
_> In a more humane age, they were housed in asylums.

Then Reagan happened._

No, the ACLU happened. Because of their efforts, it's much more difficult
today to involuntarily commit someone to an institution who thinks that aliens
are controlling their digestive system.

That's not to say that state governments weren't happy to empty out and shut
down their mental institutions, however.

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rdlecler1
Homelessness in SF has network effects which are entrenching it. The city does
provide a lot of resources so it makes it ‘easier’ to be homeless. On top of
that it’s quite centralized and so if you fall in because of mental health or
economic issues you’re likely to run into people who are doing/selling drugs.
With a less dense homeless population these probabilities are less. Then you
have sufficiently warm weather year round (unlike NY). I don’t know of a
humane way to solve this issue that doesn’t require billions and billions of
dollars, but we may be doing more damage than good by not taking a harder
stance like NY did.

~~~
Pica_soO
Creative citys have more homeless- disrupting, non-incremental creativity
relies on controlled schizophrenia, and those "useful" creatives have family
members or children who get the full hardcore life destroying side of a brain
on a runaway recombination trip.

I`m happy im living in germany. I have a brother, who studied engineering -
and he got hit hard by the "dark side of the family" with several episodes. He
is on a state pension now, he will not live the life of his dreams, but at
least he does not have to fear for his existence and roam the streets.

Several members of my extended family have similar issues to a varying degree,
and its the state pulling them through, the family carrying them - or spouses,
who basically steer them remote. The last type can be very bewildering for
others a grown up man, engineering great machinery, being basically ordered
around like a little kid in social life by his wife.

Do you really think, all those break-troughs grown on trees? Are made by those
normal, 9-5-5 a week, incremental cogwheels? Don't you ever wonder, who dreams
up all those paranoia and excitement drenched TV-shows you consume? All this
can be done by everybody, if you just show up and work really hard?

The homelessness you see, is a by product of the creative process. Get used to
it. Handle it like a grown up, stop trying to solve the problem by protest-
antics preachings to a reality who does not care about your moral outrage.
Grow up.

