
App Wants to Track Every Homeless Person in San Francisco - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-04/one-system-wants-to-track-every-homeless-person-in-san-francisco
======
samcday
> and last year voters approved a measure to raise $300 million annually to
> tackle the issue by taxing local companies.

> Yet there are about 7,500 homeless ...

Wait, what? 300,000,000 / 7500 is 40,000 per person.

Yes, I know San Francisco is expensive. I lived there for a couple of years
(as an entitled tech bro, of course). But holy cow, if you ever wanted yet
another metric to demonstrate the craziness that is SF living costs, here it
is.

~~~
aeturnum
As this comes up in most threads on how SF spends money on the homeless:

\- The SF homelessness abatement budget includes a lot of money to support low
income renters and other services that are used by people you might become
homeless if not for city assistance.

\- Considering that health coverage for a high tech worker with no chronic
conditions can easily run 20k+, it's not surprising that an unhoused
individual who may have many health conditions costs more to care for.

~~~
samcday
I wasn't trying to imply that the money is being misspent, FWIW. I was just
illustrating how inflated numbers become in the distortion field that is San
Francisco.

As to your points:

\- Sure, preventative measures make complete sense. Of course, even low
income, subsidized, budget housing is still stupidly expensive in SF, compared
to the vast majority of the US. And of course, even just being virtually
anywhere on the BART lines to SF/Bay Area are notoriously expensive. [1]

\- Again, totally agree. Health care costs be high, yo. But we can agree that
they're only artificially high because of systemic issues in the healthcare
system of the US, right? :) [2]

I understand that lucrative career opportunities exist in concentrated
industry meccas like SF/NY. Even still, I can't but help shake my head when I
try to fathom the orders of magnitude that folks in the SF reality distortion
field deal with. Especially when compared to ... well, pretty much anywhere
else in the world, really!

[1]: [https://venturebeat.com/2016/04/04/this-bart-real-estate-
map...](https://venturebeat.com/2016/04/04/this-bart-real-estate-map-shows-
how-costly-it-will-be-to-follow-your-silicon-valley-startup-dream/)

[2]: [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/health-costs-how-the-
us-...](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/health-costs-how-the-us-compares-
with-other-countries)

------
kevin_b_er
This is everything wrong with SF thinking. An app that can be as automated as
possible, as impersonal as possible, but solve nothing because it doesn't
actually facilitate anything. I suppose it could facilitate something:
Oppressive governments might want something like this to help track the
undesirables.

~~~
halbritt
I'm not defending the practice, but it's disingenuous to suggest that it
solves nothing. Ostensibly it's a means by which the city can determine which
programs are most effective at getting the homeless population off the streets
which I think is a laudable goal.

As illustrated by the article, there's no shortage of money, but that money
doesn't seem to be effective in addressing an issue that residents of the city
are very concerned about.

------
logifail
Read _Why some people will choose to sleep on the streets of Manchester this
winter_ [0] for a bit of background.

To me the key paragraph is:

> When professionals help try to bring some structure and organisation into
> the chaos, it can take many attempts to succeed and the biggest obstacle is
> not always about providing a roof

[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/housing-
network/2012/dec/31/home...](https://www.theguardian.com/housing-
network/2012/dec/31/homelessness-rough-sleeping-in-winter)

------
5440
I regularly volunteer in a shelter. I have had a few of the attendees go a
long paranoid rants about staying off the grid, big brother and so on...It
seems like a large number of people that I've met want to be on the street.
Anyone have any thoughts or data to support or refute that?

~~~
staticautomatic
Those people are psychotic (to varying degrees). You should take what they say
as true of how they _feel_ , now how things are.

~~~
philwelch
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
The paranoia being about being tracked, and then not want to give your
information to a tech company who's devoted to tracking you doesn't seem
totally unwarranted.

~~~
philwelch
Exactly my point :)

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mirceal
this sounds like big brothers + homeless people. while the intention might be
noble I don’t see it working. and i have to wonder how else are we going to
try to tackle this issue next. maybe microchip all the homeless and detect
them wirelessly so we can build a real time map? /s you know what? let’s do
that for all people.

~~~
ehnto
I can see why it would be helpful to be able to find someone with a history of
mental illness, who is likely avoiding help. But I agree that it crosses into
very murky territory, and the avenues of abuse are many. Couple of quick
meetings, maybe some legislation, and suddenly the police and councils have
access to a GPS map of homeless individuals. Then they can deploy security and
anti-loitering measures wherever a few too many show up.

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cheriot
> There are as many permanent housing beds as people who need them.

That does not match what I've read elsewhere.

------
ninju
Why do we need an application for each person to have installed.

What happened to good old-fashioned caseworkers who got to know each aid
recipient (homeless person) and understood the needs/issues for each person
and was the advocate for the person to help resolve the issues around
receiving the aid that currently available...maybe I being too naive

~~~
Kalium
You're right! Caseworkers are __absolutely critical __to a functional social
services system!

Perhaps they could use a records management system that helps them keep track
of everything across a sizable, and maybe not perfectly coordinated, series of
agencies? It might even make it easier to advocate for our vulnerable
neighbors and friends who need understanding, compassion, and assistance.

Right now I'm sure you're thinking "Surely SF caseworkers have something like
that!". And that's a very reasonable assumption to make - they certainly do
now. They didn't before, when care and aid for those who are unhoused was more
disorganized.

------
tomphoolery
I'm sure this is just the "beta" of a system that the creators wish to
implement on a larger scale. First it will be homeless people, because they're
barely even registering it as reality. Next, it will be prisoners, those on
house arrest, and people who committed a felony. Commit a crime, be watched
all the time. That's the future we're heading towards.

They just started with the homeless people and prisoners because those people
can't fight back.

~~~
briandear
Except that the program is voluntary. Nothing to “fight back” against.

~~~
cmsj
It's voluntary until it's not, like when valuable services become locked
behind it.

------
CodeSheikh
Are not some people homelss/nomadic by choice because they wanted to live off
the grid? Does not idea like this conflict with their ideologues and
individualism?

I am not discussing state of being homeless but one's choice to live
independent from the majority of the society.

Source: Once helped a college friend with her thesis by helping her conducting
interviews with homeless people living near our university campus.

~~~
drewrv
There are definitely some (mostly) young, carefree people who actually opt-in
to that lifestyle. They're probably overrepresented near a University. They
have friends and family they could go stay with to get back into society at a
moments notice. I feel like they get conflated with people who "choose"
homelessness because they have an addiction, or because the church that runs
the shelter abused them as a kid, or because their schizophrenia makes them
paranoid about social service workers. They need help to function in society,
the same way an asthmatic would need help running a 5K.

~~~
hopler
How do you help someone who does believe they need help? And what gives you
any right to do so?

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harlanji
I am homeless in SF and have been to the 9th floor of Silicon Valley.

NOPE. No way, no how, am I enrolling in this.

The data trail that this will create makes my stomach churn.

All I need to get off the street is $1500/mo to meet my needs and interview,
well enough to make a first impression. I am there as of Jan with fam and
friend support.

~~~
hopler
And for the other thousands of homeless people who aren't a haircut away from
a programming job, what do you recommend?

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jrowley
I’ve heard their vendor Bitfocus is really dropping the ball on this project.

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m_b
Wow! Another stupid project from tech geniuses.

In place of taking care of the initial problems (« soaring rents and the
difficulty of treating substance abuse, mental illness, and other health
concerns » as mentioned in the article), let’s create an app to track people
whereabouts! Everything is fine... At least the article tell us this shit
doesn’t work.

~~~
myspy
Yeah, better establish a great system of universal healthcare and built social
housing mixed with normal housing everywhere around the city. And get the poor
a small basic income to get them off the streets until they find a new
dignified job themselves.

Europe does stuff like that in case they need some examples to copy.

~~~
hopler
And we should ignore the plight of starving and dying people until those
systems magically appear here?

