
San Francisco's homeless problem: A civic disgrace - thanatosmin
http://projects.sfchronicle.com/sf-homeless/civic-disgrace/
======
breatheoften
I was in sf for wwdc a few weeks ago - as a separate notion to humanitarian
ideas, the mental ill and homeless in the streets really struck me as having a
very adverse effect on the vibe of the city -- worse than my impressions as a
visitor during previous experiences in the area.

\- if you are in the city and need to find a bathroom, good luck -- hearts and
minds of the people are closed to you and there is nowhere a restroom
accessible as service jobs are constantly under assault from the mentally ill.
It's extremely dehumanizing -- I would invite anyone who wants to feel the
homeless experience to put on some decent but non fashionable clothes, wait
until they urgently need to pee while in an unfamiliar area of the city, and
then see how the city feels to you. \- the battery in my phone died and I
asked a random passerby if he had the time -- he said "no".

Just an isolated sketch -- but the people in that city generally struck me as
terrible and generally very close to depressed -- and I attribute at least
some of that to the fact that they are constantly barraged by the souls of the
crushed masses dwelling all around them.

Cities have psyches, and sf strikes me as very sick right now.

~~~
partycoder
I was in a restaurant in SF near embarcadero. A 70+ year old woman eating in
another table got her check, about $18, but realized that left her purse at
home. She wanted to leave to get her purse in order to return, and pay. But
the lady that runs the restaurant started yelling "where is the money?". There
were also some cops eating at the restaurant, and asked if there was anything
wrong, and then proceeded to arrest her.

The restaurant was full of people. Many of them seemed to have a good living
standard. But nobody got involved in helping an honest senior person in
distress.

I got involved. I paid the bill and the cops set the woman free. Even if it
was intentional (unlikely), if you are stealing food then you probably need
help anyways, especially if you are old.

I was horrified to see how a society so prosper can be so dehumanized. Shame
on you people.

~~~
ohnomrbill
"I was horrified to see how a society so prosper can be so dehumanized."

In fairness, where should their morals come from? I'm not religious myself,
but it seems that for all their faults religions provide a shared morality.
Why should a society without a fixed set of morals be humane? There's no
source of truth as to what humane even means. Why is helping an old woman
humane? Why should I believe you, or feel shame when something like this
happens?

~~~
eeeeeeeeeeeee
Because most humans feel bad when they see situations like this, even the ones
that weren't taught "this is bad" by a religion. Religion just has better
marketing.

I believe it is part of our human nature to care for other humans. Why else do
people give money away without getting anything in return (even if you count
it as an altruistic act)?

~~~
ohnomrbill
"I believe it is part of our human nature to care for other humans."

That only works for some people. Where do sociopaths fit into your worldview?

~~~
zzalpha
_That only works for some people. Where do sociopaths fit into your
worldview?_

s/some/the vast majority of/

Sociopathy is incredibly rare. The existence of it doesn't affect the
substance of the parent's (or my) comment, which is about society as a whole,
not a tiny fraction of outliers.

~~~
ohnomrbill
But it's a critically important minority - it's well researched that CEOs,
bankers, and other highly successful types in business have sociopathic
traits. (I attach no moral judgment to that - just stating it.) Full,
diagnosable sociopathy and psychopathy are rare, as you point out. People with
a decreased ability to feel empathy are a minority, but they have a
disproportionate ability to shape society.

For that reason, I'm always somewhat annoyed when other atheists (I'm an
atheist myself) rely on some shared sense of human empathy and argue from it -
it's only convincing in a society where empathetic people wield power. We
don't live in such a world. To convince people to act humanely even if they
don't feel empathy, we need to appeal to a higher objective source of truth as
the religious do, or find an argument for humane acts that doesn't rely on
appealing to people's consciences.

------
JPKab
The programs that SF puts in place as part of the "non-profit industrial
complex" that's risen up worsens the problem in two ways:

1) Too many of the programs enable, rather than help the root cause, of
homeless folks.

2) These enabling programs are very efficiently communicated among the
homeless population, drawing them from all over the state and the country.

I'm not some asshole who hates homeless people. I was raised by a single
father because my mother was a mentally-ill and drug addicted person who was
homeless or in and out of shelters for the majority of the last 25 years
before she died in 2014.

I watched as numerous programs did nothing but enable her addiction and
undermine me and my siblings efforts to eliminate her addiction and get her to
work.

~~~
yeahwhatever10
Interested to hear what from your perspective is the root cause and how these
programs enable it.

~~~
JPKab
Not having a job or some collective sense of mission is bad for people,
period. We are, at our evolutionary root, not designed to be idle or not tied
up in some sense of collective effort to survive.

ANY PROGRAM that doesn't provide this very much needed element of the human
condition is going to fail.

My ideal drug rehabilitation program for homeless addicts is this: give them
drugs, and make them work at some kind of job to continue to receive them, as
well as a basic income. This is based on a more recent theory of addiction
(that I wholeheartedly embrace) following the "rat park" model of
psychological isolation and emotional injury being a bigger contributor to
compulsive drug use than the chemical dependencies.

Edit: Forgot to say that the above would likely result in the majority of
folks in the program to quit drugs in a few years on their own as they became
happier and more socially connected individuals.

All the programs my mom ever had available basically treated her like a
helpless victim: stay away from drugs, take your lithium, and "of course we
don't expect you to work. Just sit around and do nothing all day and here's
your disability check".

And let me add this: most addicts are actually pretty functional and capable
of work if provided some amount of drugs. The cases where an addict won't be
able to work are going to involve folks who are in withdrawal and need their
fix. They aren't going to be doing clerical work or anything, but day labor
and other basic work like that is 100% doable. This is the kind of work that
cities like SF have available in large quantities for their public
infrastructure.

------
hiou
The reality is that most mid to long term homeless are 100% unemployable.
There is no solution for most of these people in our current system. This is
not a San Francisco problem but a national problem as it is a direct side
effect of our chosen system of resource allocation. We as a country need to
either change our current methods of allocating resources or accept it as a
price we are willing to pay.

~~~
ethanbond
There actually is a solution: employing them or incentivizing the employment
of them.

~~~
sidereal1
It's not just about money. Someone who is severely mentally ill isn't going to
able to perform tasks, let alone function without a caregiver.

Living on the streets is very dangerous and stressful. Somewhere around 25% of
homeless people have traumatic brain injuries. Not the sort of people you can
put in a cubical to do data entry.

~~~
ethanbond
Mental illness is a huge component to this, I agree. I think it's pessimistic
to say that a sizable portion of this group couldn't become employed in some
way. First, not all of them are mentally ill to begin with. Second, a lot of
mental illnesses are quite manageable with the right care. Care requires
money, and money is acquired by working.

Further, no mental illness has ever been alleviated through boredom,
malnutrition, lack of sleep, social exile, and maltreatment.

Also, not every job involves sitting at a computer ;)

------
powera
I think "people who are homeless because they can't afford homes" and "people
who are homeless because they voluntarily enjoy living on the street" are two
different problems and should be addressed differently.

In particular, I have no problem criminalizing the latter if we can address
the former. Criminal laws are _supposed_ to prevent mass unpleasant behavior
in public. Pooping in the street is not a lifestyle choice we should encourage
or support. (though "having public toilets" might be a better solution)

------
sixQuarks
I never realized the San Francisco Chronicle has two versions of its site. I
always used to go to [http://www.sfgate.com](http://www.sfgate.com) (which has
become like a gossip site). I now realize the more traditional newspaper is at
[http://www.sfchronicle.com/](http://www.sfchronicle.com/) (although they have
an overlap of articles).

Why would they do this?

~~~
bzalasky
sfchronicle.com is their premium, subscription-based offering. I suppose it'll
only allow you to read 10 or so articles before putting up a paywall.
sfgate.com is their free ad-based offering.

------
FussyZeus
In one of the most left-leaning states in the union, in one of it's richest
cities, all the most well-meaning welfare programs have failed to make a dent
in the problem.

If that isn't a fantastic argument for Basic Income I don't know what could be
more persuasive.

Edit: Commenter below summarized my (admittedly poorly phrased) point better
than I can:

> The current programs are focussed around spending the minimum amount of
> money possible on as few people as possible, which is an expensive and
> inefficient proposal. The parent's suggestion is to give people the power in
> their own lives, which studies have shown can result in huge turnarounds for
> people in unpleasant situations.

> So OP is suggesting that overly complicated, byzantine, and underfunded
> welfare programs aren't working, so maybe we should give up and do what
> experts have been suggesting, and studies have shown results from, instead.

And no, this does not address the problem of mental illness but if we're going
to continue to ignore this problem until we can find a solution that works for
all homeless, just shoot them now and limit their suffering because it will
never happen.

~~~
lostlogin
Is anyone able to explain what this view is being down voted? I'm picking that
the second paragraph is the problem - there must be hard data on that thought
somewhere?

~~~
yeahwhatever10
He says well-meaning welfare programs aren't working, and then suggests
another well-meaning welfare program.

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
I think we need Basic Housing in addition to Basic Income.

~~~
mdorazio
The two are largely the same thing. If you have basic income, you can spend it
on cheap housing and effectively have Basic Housing with no additional
administrative overhead. If you're saying that we need to specifically provide
free housing to the homeless and/or poor then that's a program that some
cities have already tried with mixed results. Homelessness is often tied to
drug addiction and mental health issues, neither of which are really directly
helped by free housing or free money.

~~~
stcredzero
_If you 're saying that we need to specifically provide free housing to the
homeless and/or poor then that's a program that some cities have already tried
with mixed results_

Where can I read about these mixed results?

~~~
ItsDeathball
Assuming that's a serious request, this is a decent summary and starting
point:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_the_United_S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_the_United_States)

~~~
stcredzero
_" Concentrated poverty"_

This seems like a bad idea. Any culture that contains something of value needs
to absorb new members a little at a time. A culture or scene that tries to
absorb many new members all at once is going to be damaged or at least
significantly changed in the process.

So it would seem that scattered site housing is the new norm. Now, the problem
is that it's harder for such residents to become part of the local community
networks. (Often suburbia is distinctly isolating.)

Some social organization similar to a church would seem to be the idea method
of providing the residents a social network.

------
dragontamer
Can we seriously not have an article that enlarges specific text as you're
scrolling? It completely distracts me from reading the article.

Please stick with the tired-but-true way of making headlines or pulling text
to the side to break-up text.

Don't dynamically resize text while you're scrolling. This has to be the
dumbest web design I've seen in a while.

~~~
stephenitis
I found it somewhat useful or similar to asides and enlarged quotations. I for
one am fine with publishers trying to experiment with the creative display of
their work al la New York Times so long as they don't paywall it off. free
content is free content.

------
gtf21
Very anecdotally, this was something that I noticed not just in SF, but also
LA. The marked difference for me as a Londoner between the huge homelessness
problem we have in London and what I saw in SF/LA was the levels of mental
illness coupled with dehumanising levels of despair that I saw in the homeless
populations of SF/LA.

Does anyone have a good idea of why SF/LA (the US in general?) exhibited this
characteristic of homelessness more markedly than in London (where I almost
never see the sort of extremely obvious health issues that I saw in SF/LA
every time I've been there)? Is it because of the US healthcare system,
perhaps?

Incidentally, there is a good episode of the BBC's "The Inquiry" which asks
about one route of dealing with this:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03rh5my](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03rh5my)

------
e40
The fact is it can't just be SF's problem, because SF is a magnet for homeless
people from all over CA and the US. That makes it a US problem, and yes, it is
a disgrace.

~~~
mdorazio
But isn't SF a magnet because of its policies and programs making it a
desirable destination for the homeless? Homeless _ness_ is definitely a
nation-wide program with all kinds of root causes that need to be addressed,
but the city of SF is somewhat unique among other "top tier" US cities in the
scope of its homeless "problem".

~~~
brown
The unique part of SF is our extreme inefficiency. We spend huge sums of money
without much to show for it.

Homelessness is a crisis that is growing all over the US.

Homeless crisis in Hawaii sparks state of emergency
[http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/homeless-crisis-in-hawaii-
spar...](http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/homeless-crisis-in-hawaii-sparks-state-
of-emergency/)

L.A. County supervisors call for a state emergency declaration on homelessness
[http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-homeless-
emergen...](http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-homeless-
emergency-20160614-snap-story.html)

Mayor, county exec declare ‘state of emergency’ over homelessness
[http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/mayor-
coun...](http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/mayor-county-exec-
declare-state-of-emergency-over-homelessness/)

------
hnbroseph
are these "legacy inhabitants" or whatever the gentrifiers refer to them as?

~~~
brown
Not all of them. As the article states, SF "gets an influx of about 450
chronically homeless people a year".

Part of the problem is that SF has become known as a sanctuary city for the
homeless. People come from all over the US. That is good, from the perspective
that we have some positive karma for treating people better than other cities.
It is bad, from the perspective that we bear more of the burden.

------
jkot
> _The city needs to evaluate and track people in homeless programs_

> _San Francisco, which gets an influx of about 450 chronically homeless
> people a year, needs to shed any perception that it is a sanctuary for
> people who are unwilling to participate in programs designed to get them
> off,_

> _It is neither inhumane nor “criminalizing poverty” to enforce laws against
> aggressive panhandling, tent encampments or defecation and urination in
> public places....are no longer afforded the option to flout the law with
> impunity._

So plan is to build a few houses and put everyone who is left into jail.

~~~
sp332
Yup. SF has a dearth of public restrooms (and almost no public showers).
Criminalizing public urination is criminalizing homelessness.

~~~
sidereal1
This is becoming an issue in Sacramento as they continue to shut down public
restrooms. There's is talk of setting up port-a-potties with full time
attendants, so we will see how that goes.

------
ksenzee
Can we s/Fransisco/Francisco/ in the headline?

