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Ask HN: Why don't homeless people from SF move to another city?
25 points by Keloo on Oct 24, 2019 | hide | past | favorite | 44 comments
I'm not from US and I am not very aware of what's going on in San Francisco.

But I've been wondering why homeless people from SF don't move to another city where with a regular job they can afford a normal life.

At least this is what I would consider in their situation.

Sorry if the question is stupid.




I volunteer at a homeless shelter for the last 10 years.

* people can be mentally ill in some way or another.

* physical disabilities.

* just acceptance that this is their fate, why change it.

* they just can't see any plan that leads them out of the situation so why try

* they wouldn't be sure how to function in society if they re-enter as a member of the "working class".

As a country, I don't feel we do anywhere enough for not just the homeless, but those that are simply down on their luck. Some people just need guidance and advice.

Example: I am a foster parent of 2.

The birth parents don't know how to cook, pay bills, take care of babies, etc. But do classes exist that make them practice and practice and practice. No. I've tried to get cooking classes like this offered saying I'll pay for all the food and donate my time but nobody takes me up on it. If we can teach who are inexperienced at cooking and house keeping and personal hygiene they may stand a chance of improving their lives by believing in themselves. What a bootstrap.

Maybe my perception is wrong and education doesn't help either. I feel like it would.


Sadly we've been eliminating Home Ec, Woodworking, and Shop classes in high schools for the last 40 years, which would have been another route for people to learn some of those life skills if they didn't (or couldn't) from their parents. I agree it's hard to know if people would respond to 'remedial' classes on the basics, but it does seem like it might at least make them feel like someone cared.


I graduated high school in cough the mid-nineties and I had to take Home Ec, Woodworking and Shop.

My oldest son graduated in 2015 and had to take Home Ec only.

My daughter will graduate in 2021 but only had to take Home Ec.

My youngest son also graduates in 2021 and hasn't had to take any.


I graduated from high school in 2001. There was no shop class offered. There was home ec, but that was an elective and not required. I really wish there had been things like this required.


Graduated high school in 2003. No home ec available, no shop available, and they got rid of their computer programming classes after my freshman year. The only option anywhere close to these lines was Ag. I didn't live in a farming town.


>The birth parents don't know how to cook, pay bills, take care of babies, etc.

How is this possible? Especially in the era of Google. Are we talking about people who are completely uneducated or simply mentally challenged?


Both. Some are mentally challenged, but there are still people that just can't master the skill enough to make a "healthy meal" or otherwise perform the tasks that seem common to us.

Some high schools offer "life skills" classes those children that may need these skills due to disabilities. They cook, learn to manage money, make a budget, learn how to clean, how to interact, etc. I wish they were required.


There are many many people who don't know what a healthy meal is, hence the obesity epidemic. But in this day and age you can find all sorts of crap in the supermarket that you can just heat up. I don't know, it's just weird. Well, thanks for sharing your perspective.


Maybe they are in a food desert area? There was an article which talks about the cycle of poverty including the fact that healthy food is inaccessible and supermarkets are located too far away from poorer area because customer there can't pay.


Let's not forget the lack of any external support system (family, friends, etc.) who can help them out of the situation. For people without disabilities (including mental, physical, and addictions), this is probably the biggest factor, IMO.


this is also a good point. Help from those close is also important and is may not exist, bad blood, nervousness, etc.


1. The weather in San Francisco is nice (so you won't freeze to death).

2. The laws are friendlier towards homeless people.

3. San Francisco is liberal, so the people will be friendlier on average to the homeless.

4. America's public transport systems are terrible, but you can go quite a distance on BART and the city buses and it's easy enough to ride for free.

5. If you're stuck begging in order to live, better to beg from rich people.

If you're homeless in America, it doesn't get much better than this.


Most importantly, you forgot the wide availability of hard drugs.

Downtown SF is an open drug bazaar, probably the biggest in the USA if not the world. Police do not go after the sellers and the city has for years maintained and enabled this nonsensical anything-goes policy.


Well, you can put this same question to most of the larger cities on the West Coast, and the answers are pretty similar: 1) Decent weather: Most west coast cities have fairly mild weather, so you most likely wont freeze to death. 2) Lack of law enforcement: Most cities on the West Coast have taken a hands off approach to most of the homeless, so no need to worry about getting arrested. 3) Drugs: I'm gonna guess it's easy to get drugs here, being closer to Mexico where a lot of it comes from. 4) Sent there: A lot of other states/cities have been putting their homeless on buses to these areas with one way tickets. They are told either go to jail there, or go to $west_coast_city and not jail.


It would be helpful to share evidence on assertion #4, it is a claim that often appears but usually without proof.


This Guardian article is a good summary and starting point to look up stories about the cities featured. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/...

You’re right it’s not as well publicized as it should be.


Try a cursory Google search. It's not only well documented, but there have been several publicized court cases that cities in Nevada have lost and had to pay SF restitution for bussing their mentally unwell homeless over.

Here's an article about Las Vegas's "Greyhound Therapy": https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Homeless-patients-bus...


Not a stupid question.

The problem is that a lack of money is but a proximate, and not the ultimate, cause of the homelessness. For something like 85% of those on the streets of SF, the issue is mental or physical disabilities (I'm gonna be generous and classify a penchant for antisocial behavior as a 'mental disability') or substance problems that directly impact the ability to have a job and a dwelling or any sort of normal life.

If you are in that position, finding a warm-ish place with a well-developed support infrastructure for vagrancy as well as proximity to a wealthy population for panhandling from is a really good deal.


When you are broke, live on the street (which is a very tough life everywhere in the world), and possibly fight with mental illness or addiction, moving to a more affordable place (which will still be unaffordable for you, esp. in California) won't magically solve your problems. Without the right support, it will be difficult to find your way back to a normal life.


From a family member of mine who is heavily involved with the homeless community in his city, some activities of life are made up of 5-10 separate steps, any of which may take days or weeks to complete.

The first problem in the OP's question would be just having the funds to go to another city.

Once you arrive and are looking for a job, you will need a permanent address/place to stay and probably a bank account of some sort. In order to get those things you likely need proper identification and/or work history.

Some forms of identification might require additional documentation like social security card or birth certificate. If you don't have those you will need to make multiple trips to various offices to acquire them and they often have fees associated with them.

But don't forget that if you were born in another state and need a birth certificate you have to work with that state over the phone to acquire them.

Plus where will they send them when you may not have a mailing address.

Completing the entire list of items with no problems is time consuming, difficult, and if any of them fail the entire process grinds to a halt.


It's got nothing to do with the possibility of getting a job and affording a normal life. Most homeless people just want to be left alone. Mild weather and lower rates of confrontation make cities like SF ideal.


Another reason many unhoused people don’t want to move is that they have some family, friends, or existing support systems in the area. Moving away would mean they no longer have these resources.

Would you want to move away from your friends and family when you have little else? Some food for thought.


Not a stupid question to think on. You should consider offering a burger or a coffee to a homeless and ask them this question - you'll hear a more realistic answer.


In addition to other pertinent points being made here:

1. People who have lived someplace a long time and love that place may not want to leave. They may want to try to resolve their problems where they are.

2. Once you are homeless, relocating can be extremely challenging. You may not have the money to pay for bus or train tickets, you may have no means to line up a job elsewhere first, etc.

3. Big cities are where the services are. If you are completely destitute, being in a big city can help you stay fed and clothed.

So it only makes sense to leave the big city if you have some unearned income that will go further if you live someplace cheaper. If you are unemployed and destitute with no prospects, the big is a better answer than a small town because you can at least get a free meal regularly.


A few reasons:

1. Weather in most northern states will cause death

2. Transportation for poor doesn't exist in the US

3. If one can't find jobs in SF, forget about being able to find them in Tulsa. Reasons vary from number of employers, lack of transportation, lack of education, felony record, divorces/child support.

I think the easiest way for someone to imagine this would be to think os the US as a dense jungle. The bounty is plentiful but there are death traps everywhere. Only the death traps are man made.

You need to find the patch of this jungle where you are likely to survive. Which means living under a rock in region A is better than dying in a barren desert in region B.


You can dig up periodic articles where many cities have a policy of shipping homeless people out of their city to others where there are "more" services - and ignoring there are more services often because there are more homeless. I have a feeling the California cities are more often the destination of such policies than the originators. (Though I know LA for example does allocate budget to rounding up homeless and moving them around the city too).


A lot of homeless I’ve spoken to in sf are from sf or have lived there a long time before being priced out of their home, and don’t have family or friends who can help them, or just don’t want to leave the only place they know well.


There are a lot of reasons. Moving can be expensive, and they probably have no idea what they’d be moving into. I also knew one homeless person who stuck to a major city because he knew he’d have continued access to money, food and drugs in good weather. I don’t blame him for that decision because he didn’t have a lot of other options due to mental illness.


I think the premise of your question is wrong - you assume that homeless in SF would prefer to be or not be homeless in another city, I would actually ask the question as “what makes SF so appealing as a homeless person” or “what is it about San Francisco that creates/allows so many homeless people”


Many homeless are that way due to situations in their life beyond their control. Mental illness, physical disabilities, age, ect. Most people that do not have these problems could fairly easily get an entry level job and scrape by until they can get back on their feet.


Most are too sick/debilitated to move around searching for better places to live. And in the move they risk losing all (including their lives), because living on the streets is a real risky bet.


I think most of them have fallen so low already that they are unable to pull themselves up any more.

The solution, of course, would be to not let people fall that low. Provide them with some minimal housing and food BEFORE they become drug addicts.

But hey, apparently that’s a waste of money and for communists.


[flagged]


>capitalizing on what's become a statewide industry of administering homelessness.

How dare they live the good life, eating soup kitchen food and wearing donated clothing, all on my tax dime. Why, if those services didn't exist, they'd shave, get a job, and stop being a problem.


Human populations can never be entirely rid of undesirables opposed to clean-shavenness, and as an "enlightened" species we must provide for their sustenance. All I'm saying is SF bears the torch for these "huddled masses," and if SF got serious about cracking down, homelessness would be more diffuse, and OP wouldn't be asking about SF in particular.


> Yes, the question is fairly stupid.

Why would you say something like this?


OP wondered if his question might be stupid. I merely obliged him with an answer.


Pretty sure it was rhetorical and not soliciting you for feedback. Telling a person that their genuine, curious questions are stupid is a great way to continue propping up the perception that our community is full of pedantic jerks.


Perhaps so, but many other answers premise with "not stupid," and were not similarly ostracized. I suppose some questions, rhetorical or otherwise, can only be answered one way, regardless of the truth.


Interesting how everyone ignored the point you made about the homelessness in SF.


Hi, welcome to the English-speaking world! Sometimes we say things in a self-deprecating way as a sort of social lubricant. Those times are NOT an invitation to insult somebody.

Plus, the way you said it makes the rest of us think you prefer the "brutal" part of "brutal honesty" over the "honesty" part... You are welcome to interact with other humans that way, but you may find them to be less receptive to your ideas.

In other words, "manners are free."


This comment was dead so I vouched it.


Unfortunately we can't all be as smart and brilliant as you clearly are.


Living in the US, I've wondered that as well. I would not consider the question stupid, and it's an unnecessary start to an answer.


So is "not stupid" also an unnecessary start to an answer?




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