Billionaire Tech Investors Support Divisive Plan To Ban San Francisco's Homeless Camps (techcrunch.com) 271
An anonymous reader shares a USA Today report: The images are startling: Homeless men, women and children huddled on the streets of the San Francisco Bay Area -- often in the shadows of start-ups and high-tech behemoths generating billions of dollars in wealth. It's a stark contrast that has gripped the region, and prompted four county measures on the Nov. 8 ballot to generate $3 billion over the next 25 years for affordable housing and services. Under the most-ambitious measure, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has proposed a 0.75% increase in the sales tax, to 9.5%, to raise $50 million a year. Propositions J and K would generate $1.2 billion for the next quarter-century via a simple majority. "There is clearly not enough affordable housing, or housing at any level," says Kevin Zwick, CEO of Housing Trust Silicon Valley.TechCrunch adds: The debate over what to do about San Francisco's homeless population has been building for awhile among the many startups and residents here. But now tech billionaires Ron Conway, Michael Moritz and well-to-do hedge fund manager William Oberndorf have each thrown about $50,000 behind a measure to rid San Francisco of its homeless tent cities. Other notable investors, including Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's husband and venture capitalist Zach Bogue, have also donated. Bogue reportedly gave about $2,500 to support it.
Is This a Joke? (Score:4, Insightful)
Are they trying to do a Montgomery Burns impression?
How about a plan that raises taxes on these ultra profitable companies in order to fund the construction of housing for people who can't afford to back a political campaign themselves?
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No, they are not trying to do a Monty Burns impression. This is a deadly serious issue, as anyone living in Seattle or Portland can tell you. You do not want to give the so-called "homeless advocates" any influence in your local government. They will utterly destroy your city's quality of life.
It's a perfect example of getting more of what you subsidize.
Re:Is This a Joke? (Score:5, Interesting)
Speak for yourself.
I live in Seattle, and I am more than enthusiastic about any plan that will help shelter our homeless neighbors. If I could vote a 10% income tax on myself to pay for making sure that everyone here has a safe place to sleep at night and to leave their belongings, I would.
I believe that mayor Murray's proposed plan announced yesterday is insufficient, but better than the status quo.
(In response to "well why don't you donate your money then" - first, I do, and secondly, one person's funds only do so much).
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You'll never be a billionaire with that attitude. Sympathy for the homeless and willingness to pay taxes are not trendy opinions to hold. You're next to be laid off because you're so far out of touch with your social peers. Share the plight of your homeless buddies, loser,
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Here [wikipedia.org] have yourself a good time donating to a cause you believe in with that extra you plan to spend on a tax. Personally, I prefer children's charities, since they are truly innocent, every time, and not disparaged due to some drug addiction, and are truly self-helpless. But to each their
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Now the more realistic problem: while there are a very
Re:Is This a Joke? (Score:4, Insightful)
So, are you actually claiming that you currently donate 10% of your income to combat homelessness every year?
And that's the problem with good intentions - almost everybody has them, and almost nobody follows through. Worse, the people least likely to follow through tend to be those who are most advantaged by the current status quo. Keep in mind that there's nothing natural about our economy, it's entirely an artifact of human construction, built by those with power and wealth to help them accumulate more of it, usually at the expense of everyone else. Taxes can be one way to moderate that excess, especially when more direct methods are out of fashion, as they are in the US thanks to 50+ years of extensive PR efforts.
Re:Is This a Joke? (Score:5, Insightful)
Taxes can be one way to moderate that excess, especially when more direct methods are out of fashion, as they are in the US thanks to 50+ years of extensive PR efforts.
To be clear, the US also used heavy taxation at the top end (90% in the top bracket!) in the past. From the Reagan era onward, we have continually decreased the top rates until you get what we have now - a very slightly progressive income tax scheme alongside a capital gains tax rate that ensures the top of the top wealthiest individuals pay less as a percentage of income than the average person does.
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To be clear, the US also used heavy taxation at the top end (90% in the top bracket!) in the past. From the Reagan era onward, we have continually decreased the top rates until you get what we have now - a very slightly progressive income tax scheme alongside a capital gains tax rate that ensures the top of the top wealthiest individuals pay less as a percentage of income than the average person does.
Not much point to a 90% bracket when almost no one ever paid that marginal rate due to tax loopholes such as trusts.
a very slightly progressive income tax scheme alongside a capital gains tax rate that ensures the top of the top wealthiest individuals pay less as a percentage of income than the average person does.
You have evidence for that? I see stuff like this [taxfoundation.org] or this [taxpolicycenter.org] or this [pgpf.org].
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What the fuck are you talking about? Vote yourself a 10% tax? Why not donate that extra to a homeless cause?
(In response to "well why don't you donate your money then" - first, I do, and secondly, one person's funds only do so much).
Re:Is This a Joke? (Score:5, Informative)
Thank god. On Seattle's subreddit, it's nothing but homeless hate. They do nothing but complain about the homeless and want all the tent cities gone.
Seattle's homeless problem is a total crisis. When it's this many people camped out on the street and in parks, they don't chose it. Even people I know with normal/non-tech jobs are in a constant struggle to just make ends meat.
Re:Is This a Joke? (Score:4, Insightful)
The crisis is self perpetuating. We have people coming from all over the country now because of the lax laws and generous public assistance. At this point we have more homeless here because they choose to be here than we do because they are down on their luck. I've been patient I've talked to people on the street.
And by Homeless hate on reddit you are talking about the people complaining of being assaulted in their own homes the needles in the parks or the aggressive and sometimes verbally sexual comments that people now have to live with on a daily basis because of the massive increase of homeless people in Seattle that have flooded here from all over the country.
People say they care about homeless.. you have a home let some homeless people stay there.
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And this is due to a Supreme Court decision in the 1960's that said a city couldn't have a residence requirement for General Assistance. Ever since then it's been a race to the bottom.
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True. But where I am in south bary area it feels like there's no policing of the camps. That doesn't necessarily mean shooing them away, but it does mean dealing with the few who are stealing from nearby homes or stores. There was one couple who set up a home on a side walk, plopped down a sofa and dresser and took over. There are definitely some drug deals going on in some of the camps near me.
This feels different from the homeless situation even from a couple of years ago. Camps seem to spring up sudd
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I live in Seattle, and I am more than enthusiastic about any plan that will help shelter our homeless neighbors
Great. How many can your back yard hold?
Because that's basically the current plan.
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Then pay your generous (LOL!) 10% tax voluntarily. Nobody is stopping you from doing it except you. Put YOUR money where YOUR mouth is, and shut up about taxing other people who probably need every penny they can get just to keep from being homeless..
("well why don't you donate your money then" - first, I do, and secondly, one person's funds only do so much).
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It's very nice of you to offer but really, how far is your money going to go? Unless you are really rich but then since you are offering I'm going to assume that you aren't as you aren't that useful.
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If you believe in liberty and freedom and are against the use of violence to achieve political goals then you should move to New Hampshire to take part in the Free State Project and other liberty oriented organizations that have sprung up.
Sorry, I believe in taxes - no scare quotes necessary. But you have fun in New Hampshire!
Re:Is This a Joke? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they are not trying to do a Monty Burns impression. This is a deadly serious issue, as anyone living in Seattle or Portland can tell you. You do not want to give the so-called "homeless advocates" any influence in your local government. They will utterly destroy your city's quality of life.
Amazing - so this is the attitude of the average citizen in God's own nation, where a higher percentage of people claim to believe in God and Christ and all that? "I want my quality of life and to hell with those worse off"? But of course, once it gets to be your turn, you will start whining about how unfair it is; and the risk of the average American losing everything and ending up on the street is a lot higher than in most industrialised nations. Your attitude is not only despicable, it is stupid and pathetic.
If society - that is the ordinary members of society, not the state - does not care about those in need, then you will end up, like now, with a growing mass of people who are desperate and bittter against all those smug, well-fed idiots, that turned their back with some lame excuse. This is exactly what Karl Marx went over in excruciating detail in his works; even if you don't agree with the ideologies of his various followers, common sense tells us that he was right in saying that unfettered capitalism breeds inequality, which breeds revolution. I'm not saying that naive communism is The Solution, or even a solution, but it is blindingly obvious that society must care for its weakest members - it is simply a good investment in stability, which is a crucial element in creating a productive business climate. Even hard-nosed businesses like Oracle, Microsoft and Google know this and have on-going, social projects.
Re:Is This a Joke? (Score:5, Interesting)
Amazing - so this is the attitude of the average citizen in God's own nation, where a higher percentage of people claim to believe in God and Christ and all that? "I want my quality of life and to hell with those worse off"?
It's one thing to say that we should care for our homeless, which we absolutely should. It's another thing to say that a handful of cities should bear the load for the entire nation. California, Oregon, and Washington have to pay for the bulk of the nation's failure to care for its people? That seems grossly unfair, especially since all of them already depend on us for food and culture and half of them depend on us for seaports.
If society - that is the ordinary members of society, not the state - does not care about those in need, then you will end up, like now, with a growing mass of people who are desperate and bittter against all those smug, well-fed idiots, that turned their back with some lame excuse.
We The People of The Western States are seriously fucking tired of dealing with the rest of the country's cockamamie bullshit. California is one of the states that gets raped on taxes by the federal government; our income taxes go to pay for stuff in other states that we can't afford, like freeway dots that don't get scraped off by plows (we have snow in the north, whatever you may have heard) without being located in deep wells that catch rocks and draw vehicles off course (into the oncoming lane!) when drivers stray onto the lines. And then those states literally have the audacity to put homeless people on buses to California? Well, fuck that.
As a nation we can handle the tired, poor, and huddled masses. But California cannot foot the bill for the rest of the country. Which, by the way, is the part that's claiming to be so fucking godly. We especially can't do it while paying your taxes.
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It is a privilege under socialism, to have your unneeded excess wealth siphoned off and transferred to people who can use it better than you can. Spread the wealth. But suddenly it's "let's cut off those freeloading bastards" when it comes to your own money.
That's one way to put it, if you are a thieving assbag who is trying to justify not making his contribution. In socialism, California wouldn't have to pull all the weight. The rest of you would be pulling your fair share. But that's not what's happening now. What is happening now is that the electoral college, a system designed to prevent the majority from getting what it wants because that would be inconvenient to bankers and lawyers who write and buy laws, is being used to rob and steal from California, T
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It's no coincidence that most of the top countries for quality of life and general happiness are socialist leaning, with strong social protection programs.
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Just demanding that state force be applied to people who annoy you is so...luddite. Not disruptive at all.
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that's because they actually want the problem solved because it affects them. the usual snake-oil salesmanship isn't that useful when you actually need the product.
Re:Is This a Joke? (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't want the problem solved. They want it hidden from view. Putting people in shelters doesn't solve their problems. Getting them into an apartment starts to help. Then they can worry about eating properly, their health, getting a job if they don't have one, and a whole list of other things that will improve their lives.
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Being in view is the problem.
Nobody wants to be reminded of all the people who have worked as hard or even harder than themselves but just failed to win the lottery of life. We are self-made men, dammit! Our prosperity is proof of our industriousness and good character, their poverty is proof of their moral turpitude.
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How about a plan that raises taxes on these ultra profitable companies in order to fund the construction of housing for people who can't afford to back a political campaign themselves?
Funds it where? If I were a SF resident I would shit purple twinkies before I would pay taxes which paid for someone else to have a home there without even working for it. There is only so much SF to go around. By all means, let us house the homeless. But why are they entitled to live in San Francisco? This is a problem that we have to solve at a national level, not just keep pushing it off onto states which have demonstrated some success at managing it.
Here's my proposal: at a national level, declare emine
Re:Better: jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
t's their own fault for being unemployed because they didn't keep their wages down .
You had a typo in there, I fixed it.
Re:Better: jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
The ignorance is strong in this thread.
You can only live so far from work before the cost and time of commuting are unmanageable.
Cheapskates (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh dear, what a bunch of cheapskates. Surely a billionaire can afford more than $50,000. That's the equivalent of a normal person donating maybe $5 to a cause. They might as well have also said to let the homeless eat cake.
Re:Cheapskates (Score:5, Insightful)
Or to paraphrase the famous quote, "If they cannot afford apartments in San Francisco, they should just move to their summer homes in the Hamptons...."
I think the phrase you're looking for is "completely out of touch".
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The misunderstanding of that quote always bugs me.
The cake mentioned id not the confection you think it is, it's the flour spread on to the inside of the brick oven to keep the bread from scorching.
"Qu'ils mangent de la brioche." That quote? Not sure where you got flour spreading from, but this is brioche https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Revoke their Linux Licenses (Score:4, Funny)
These "tech" billionaires made their billions by exploiting the community-built Linux project. Now they want to destroy communities. The community should strike back by banning use of Linux for commercial purposes. Oh no! The free software license can't be revoked. The free software movement enabled "tech" billionaires, see now how the free software movement has backfired.
Re: Revoke their Linux Licenses (Score:2, Funny)
I think you're mistaken in what you've said. Unlike what you said, if you're wealthy, you can afford a real operating system such as Microsoft Windows. People who actually have money don't eat their meals at soup kitchens. And people who actually have money don't use second rate free software like Linux. Hope that helps!
Not enough affordable housing? (Score:2, Insightful)
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The people in SF and surrounding areas don't want their property values to drop because they're deeply in debt for those properties. Your implied desire is kinda a Robin Hood solution, really, except that in SF that's actually the middle class, not the rich.
If you're lucky.
Re:Not enough affordable housing? (Score:4, Insightful)
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How about just take the money and build more damn houses and apartment complexes. Of course, all those people that already have housing in SF don't want their property values to drop or lose the "lifestyle" of living in hip little neighborhoods.
Subsidize demand, not supply. Housing vouchers that go with an individual, not with the unit. Right now, some housing subsidies are tied to units and some are tied to individuals. So if the individual has a bad month and can't make rent, they have to scramble trying to find help, e.g. from the Salvation army. That not only feels degrading to many people, but it takes time they could spend working or looking for work, and they don't always get the help for that month, so if they have a unit-based subsidy the
Re:Not enough affordable housing? (Score:4, Insightful)
.. and this is exactly the problem.
The whole housing shortage in the bay area is entirely self-created. If the city would allow developers to come in downtown and build a few giant condo buildings they would do so in a heartbeat, because the market is obviously red hot. But the city does not want to allow the market to solve the problem.
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Re:Not enough affordable housing? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is exactly the problem. Prices are a fairly straightforward function of supply and demand. Even look beyond the homeless in the city to other towns, such as San Jose around Tully/101/280. Go driving around those neighborhoods in the evenings and you see cars parked absolutely everywhere: lawns, sideyards, crammed and jammed up into garages and driveways and sidewalks, and of course good luck ever finding a spot on the street. Because San Jose, like San Francisco and the rest of the SF Bay Area, doesn't want to allow enough new residential units to be built each year, the supply of housing ends going only towards the wealthy or those who have a home and can afford to re-fi and use the cash as a downpayment. The rest, including the "working class,", have got nowhere to go because developers all but stopped investment in building anything they can even afford to rent, unless with a large group of strangers.
The better solution is don't "take" the money, just let developers choose how many units they want to invest in and they will remedy the problem, profitably, without stealing anyone's money.
I am really hoping the measure fails because the SF Bay Area has a pathetic history of wasting money on similar efforts (VTA doesn't go to SJC or connect to BART, there is a train that goes from Novato to Petaluma WTF) and the officials need to not have such a convenient cop-out every time this issue gets brought up. What is happening right now is a caste is forming with the landowners becoming a smaller percentage, huge swaths of the population being crammed into miserable housing that eats up all of their income, and I'm not sure this has a happy ending.
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San Jose, like San Francisco and the rest of the SF Bay Area, doesn't want to allow enough new residential units to be built each year,
Like every other place. Every place from giant cities to small country-side towns wants no change in their town.
We have some kind of weird neurotic attachment to things never changing. Even if it's that incredibly ugly old brick building down the road, don't put people in it.
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Yep. Around here (Placerville), the public went insane over a proposal to turn a dangerously confusing nearly circular 3 way intersection into a traffic circle because they feared the traffic circle would enable the intersection to handle more traffic, and it thus must be an evil plot by developers.
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Oh i guess you haven't been to vancouver and surrounding suburbs where the developers are in the pockets of the government and love to choose towers full of one bedroom and bachelor condos.
Letting the developers choose what to build has ruined this city for families. 2 bedroom condos are 400k in the suburbs (more like
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Because San Jose, like San Francisco and the rest of the SF Bay Area, doesn't want to allow enough new residential units to be built each year, the supply of housing ends going only towards the wealthy or those who have a home and can afford to re-fi and use the cash as a downpayment.
Where do you imagine that these homes are going to be placed? The only thing that makes San Francisco not a complete shithole is its green spaces, and its increasing population has been its greatest downfall. You cannot reasonably build upwards for reasons which should be obvious, though some assholes without any stake or interest in the issue are suggesting otherwise in this thread. Meanwhile, increasing population has driven people to move into neighborhoods which formerly had a culture of their very own
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Re: Not enough affordable housing? (Score:2)
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You ain't wrong there, buddy. That's another issue, in addition to my other post.
http://www.sfchronicle.com/bay... [sfchronicle.com]
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I hear this argument a lot, and it's insane to me that people -- even our own politicians -- can't get the idea into their heads that San Francisco is not, and cannot be, Manhattan.
Where is the rest of the infrastructure going to come from to support all the people living in the high rise apartments you propose? Come to San Francisco and look around. The BART train system is already crumbling under its own weight, serving something like 100 times as many people as it was designed to. Buses on major commute
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So dont build up in San Francisco, build the apartments elsewhere in the bay area where it IS possible to put the needed infrastructure in place.
Solves the whole "building on earthquake rubble" problem too.
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If you're not going to build the affordable housing in SF, you might as well just build it all in Stockton where it's 5x cheaper. But then you have to convince people to move there.
Lots of cheap housing in US, just not in San Fran (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Lots of cheap housing in US, just not in San Fr (Score:4, Insightful)
Entitled? What if you grew up there; lived there all your damn life. People who like moving can go -- and if they have family somewhere they often do. But there are a lot of people who don't like moving. They want to be near their family and their home.
At one time they could live out on a BART line and afford a single one bedroom for under $1k like so many other cities in the US. But that was decades ago. The tech market emerged and created a totally different social environment. Housing sky rocketed and people in normal jobs struggled to make ends meat.
Who are you to say who should and shouldn't live there. And if all the people who couldn't afford to live there left, who exactly is going to work in your coffee shops, your corner stores, drive your buses and man the rail stations? Just because you don't have a fancy-ass tech job means you should have to commute over an hour each day to work shit wages in live in shit overpriced housing?
George Carlin said it best: they call it the America dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.
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> Entitled? What if you grew up there; lived there all
> your damn life.
Actually, what's going on is that other states are "dumping" their homeless on California in general, and San Francisco and San Diego in particular (LA used to be a popular one too, but they engaged in their own anti-dumping battle a while back when "skid row" became unmanageable.). Most recently, Nevada was caught red-handed shuffling their mental patients off to California with one-way Greyhound tickets:
http://www.motherjones.co [motherjones.com]
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Im not sure what the solution is. But the reality is that there really is a metric crapton of unpopulated land in the US where people could be housed cheaply.
It's not a question however of finding some accommodation literally anywhere, because that doesn't work. You actually need a town or city with infrastructure and jobs, otherwise how are those people going to afford to eat after you've housed them?
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nonsense. would you expect to be able to afford an appartment in Beverly Hills, or the upper west side? or how about renting a room at the Connaught?
why not? because those places are fucking expensive.
guess what? San Francisco is fucking expensive too. want somewhere cheap to live? find somewhere else.
or sleep in your own shit on the streets in San Francisco and shoot heroin all day long.
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Entitled? What if you grew up there; lived there all your damn life.
Tell the natives, asshole.
People who like moving can go -- and if they have family somewhere they often do. But there are a lot of people who don't like moving. They want to be near their family and their home.
I want a pony. So what? It's been firmly established that money is power, might makes right, and you don't have a right to live somewhere just because you got there first. Everything from getting away with murder because you're rich to eminent domain suggests that any such notional right is purely fantasy.
And if all the people who couldn't afford to live there left, who exactly is going to work in your coffee shops, your corner stores, drive your buses and man the rail stations? Just because you don't have a fancy-ass tech job means you should have to commute over an hour each day to work shit wages in live in shit overpriced housing?
No. That you're willing to do it for the privilege of working in and living near San Francisco means that. There's still plenty of America out there, and virtually all of it is ch
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Offer a free valley home to homeless people in SF and almost all of them will move. If you're going to be homeless wherever you are, though, it makes a lot of sense to go to SF where you don't have to worry about extreme heat or cold and everything is close enough to walk to. Being homeless in the valley where you need a car to get anywhere and will be uncomfortable outside most of the year doesn't make much sense.
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Problem is that the valley is every bit as expensive as the city, moreso in some cases. According to city-data.com, the median home price in San Francisco in 2013 was $778,000. The median in Palo Alto and Cupertino were over $1 million. San Mateo was $765,300. And even San Jose's median is a hefty $599,700.
So it'll be no easier to find and subsidize space for the homeless down there than up here. What really just needs to happen is for people to get it through their skulls that you can't build *out* on
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A world where entitlement is the deciding factor, you will be evicted from your home the moment someone else offers to pay more.
what are we trying to do here? (Score:3, Insightful)
Regardless of how charitable it is as a human duty to take care of displaced and unfortunate people, what is San Francisco's goal and strategy about homeless people? We seem to actively attract homeless people to our city -- because of our policies that seem to say, come one come all, we will take care of you. Or at least we look the other way as they're left to their own devices on the streets, and don't discourage the homeless population. So much so that other states have sent us their homeless in the past.
Is this our strategy? Be the city that actively attracts homeless people to us? Is that our brand, and our role? Are we being deliberate about this problem or just status quo because policymakers in our city are neutered far-left knee-jerk reactionary against anything effective, but which could be perceived as insensitive?
As a result we're flooded with homeless people that you have to step around on your way to work, home, BART, MUNI, etc. And each of us pays a price in the vehicle breakins, stores that have to wash/clean their steps of filth each day, areas of the city that are no-go zones, and higher housing prices in support of people who contribute little to our city. That's a hidden tax that somehow the most liberal sectors of our voting population seems happy to impose on the rest of us, because they don't live close to Civic Center / Tenderloin, SOMA where all this shit happens.
Sometimes, I long for a Rudy Giuliani in the 1990s to clean up our city and take a hard line and be a little insensitive for a change. Not everything should be done through collaboration and feel-good democracy. [/end rant]
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Except of course, if you are on the receiving end of that insensitivity, to what, your continued existence. What do you suggest a little culling? So clean up your city by eliminating the undesirables, lovely chap that you are.
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Dude, the homeless are only in SF becaue every other city and state SENDS THEM HERE.
San Francisco has turned into the homeless dumping ground of America, and we're drowning in it and don't know what to do.
And you call us callous and insensitive? What about all the other states that just put their homeless on a bus to California? :/
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A bunch of fools. (Score:2, Informative)
The summary could mean two quite distinct things (I had to click the article to find out which).
1) Rich people don't like seeing homeless people and want to help them (unlikely).
or
2) Rich people don't like seeing homeless people and don't want to have to see them (more likely)
Unfortunately, it's number 2. They want to move the problem away from them so that it becomes someone else's problem.
That obviously does not help anything other than furthering class divides.
(I live in the next most similar place to S
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Seriously though, nothing good is going to happen at the city level. This is a symptom of a much bigger problem.
The whole Bay Area (Score:3, Interesting)
SF gets the attention, but the whole BA has homeless. When you look at that larger picture, you realize the arguments about not having enough space aren't up to snuff. Water rights arguments would make more sense--except that it hasn't stopped development during boom times. No, it's really just that the equilibrium price of housing is too much, so you get working homeless/van dwellers, couch surfers, etc. Then of course there are the mentally ill homeless who want help and aren't really getting it, and then finally the hard core of mentally ill and/or obstinate people who are really hard to move off the streets.
Anyway, I digress. The solution needs to involve the whole BA, not just SF, and these guys aren't helping. They claim to be capitalists, but what would they say about getting rid of the restrictions on SROs, aka "flop houses" that you used to see all the time back in the 40s and 50s? Oh NOES! They'd say. That was when we were still living in a somewhat free country. Bring back the cheap flops, that would probably house most of the working homeless. Ditto for RV/trailer parks. That would be an affordable option for most working homeless, and it might even make the non-working homeless realize that it's worth cleaning up and flipping burgers so they can flop.
The mentally ill problem is a whole different ball game, and not enough time to rant here... but hey you big capitalists, until we actually have some REAL CAPITALISM, why don't you just stuff it?
Re:The whole Bay Area (Score:5, Insightful)
They claim to be capitalists, but what would they say about getting rid of the restrictions on SROs, aka "flop houses" that you used to see all the time back in the 40s and 50s? Oh NOES! They'd say. That was when we were still living in a somewhat free country. Bring back the cheap flops, that would probably house most of the working homeless.
I live in Frisco. We still have plenty of SROs. In fact, one of the things that the pro-gentrification folks get absolutely up in arms about is that because years ago we entered into a deal with the federal government to get federal money to help support the SROs, the SROs can apparently NEVER be converted into any other form of building unless the federal government says so. Build all the chrome and glass towers you want, that SRO will still be sitting there at the end of the block.
But if you think those SROs house even a tenth of the otherwise-would-be-homeless population in SF, you're kidding yourself. Even the shelters, sponsored by every kind of charitable organization you can think of, don't have a fraction of enough beds.
And yeah, the rest of the Bay Area could maybe do a better job of building SROs and homeless shelters outside of the City, but how would that work, really? A lot of the people who find themselves on the street have real problems. They have mental health issues, they have problems with drug addiction, they have medical problems like diabetes. Is San Leandro going to build free health clinics to handle those issues? Are they going to build drug treatment centers, are they going to hire mental health professionals? On the last one, the answer is plainly no -- we know from experience that what happens to people who suffer schizophrenic episodes in suburban, upper-middle-class areas is that they get thrown in jail and abused, sometimes killed, because there's no infrastructure to treat them.
That's what I don't get about this influx of fuckin dicks who have moved to my City. The only way the economics of dealing with poor people who have medical and mental health issues even start to work is when you have the population density of a major city. A guy living in a tent in San Francisco cannot just up and decide, "Welp, I can take a hint, they don't want me here" and go live in a tent in Castro Valley. If he was lucky, six months from now he'd be locked up on a long-term sentence, if he was unlucky he would be dead. But all these rich assholes, on the other hand ... they can AFFORD to go buy a house in San Ramon! They can afford a car to drive in from Danville or Fremont or Orinda, and when they open the Venetian blinds in the morning they won't ever need to see a poor person! So why can't they go live where the rich people live and let the poor people live in the only model of society that can support them? Why would they spend $2 million on a house that would cost $150,000 in Michigan and then complain that there's garbage everywhere, graffiti on the walls, homeless in the streets, and everything looks like shit? What ... am I meant to be sorry for them because they took a sucker's bet and got suckered?
And, might I add, to you rich assholes, please move along let us people who have both a little money and enough compassion to understand that in this life you're going to have to live ALONGSIDE poor people, let us live in the City, pay our taxes and vote for how they're spent without hearing narcissistic douchebags talking about washing the poor off the streets. You're disgusting and you make this City look even worse than the people you complain about.
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It's been about 50 years since and 'working homeless' could afford to live in SF.
SF's problem is with 'crazy drug-addicted unemployable homeless'. Working homeless have the sense to move.
And in other news... (Score:2)
... Proposition Z proposes building a new island in the middle of the Bay to make room for more housing.
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You joke, but that already happened: treasure island. It wasn't originally for civilian housing, but it is now.
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I know. :)
50k or 2.5k is highly insulting (Score:2)
Are they trying to add insult to injury to those affected? Or are they completely and utterly disconnected from reality?
Outlawing poverty does not make it cease to exist (Score:4, Insightful)
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Or you could, you know, simply allow some developers to come in and build some decent high rises in this city, thus loosening the market for quality real estate and in tandem causing rents across the board to drop. But no, that is too easy.
Blame Zoning, Not Tech, for San Francisco's Housing Crisis
http://www.citylab.com/housing... [citylab.com]
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loosening the market for quality real estate
It's all about ROI. "quality real estate", as defined by the developers are units that rent for $5000 or more a month. Or sell for a couple of million minimum. So the homeless are out of that market. And that empty lot they were camping on is now a pricey high rise.
In Seattle, the building regulations have persuaded developers to provide a percentage of 'affordable' units in their plans. But some loopholes have allowed them to bundle development projects. One expensive high rise in town with one cheap rent
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So let's see. You want to build taller buildings on flood plains in a quake zone. How's about they just start mandating that businesses provide a certain amount of parking? That would be the actual free market solution — not permitting people to create dangerous situations for others, which is not freedom, but slavery. You get to live in danger for my profit.
The fact is that you can't make more San Francisco without making it worse. The focus should be on reducing the population there. Most businesses
Star Trek called it (Score:5, Interesting)
As usual the press distorts the story (Score:4, Informative)
The billionaires respond:
[Ron] Conway initially declined to comment but wrote back pointing out he’d been involved in projects to help the city’s homeless before and telling TechCrunch, “Prop Q only allows for encampment removal when real housing or shelter is offered and that’s why I support it. It’s not healthy or compassionate to let human beings suffer in tent cities and we shouldn’t allow it when there’s real housing, shelter and supportive services we can provide for people instead.”
[Zach] Bogue, who served on the board of the Bay Area homeless outreach organization the Tipping Point for the last several years, said he supported the proposition “because it would provide more resources to help get the homeless off the street and into sheltersThe encampments are unsafe and inhumane, and frankly, I hope that this is not our solution to homelessness in the city.”
Speaking on behalf of [Michael] Moritz, Nathan Ballard, spokesman for the campaign to support Proposition Q said it was, “inhumane to allow people to live on the street when shelter is available. Mr. Mortiz and Mr. Conway have joined San Franciscans from all walks of life who support Prop Q because they urgently want to see an end to the human suffering on our streets.”
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Ah, I see. So for those who have not taken advantage of these oh-so-humane options that you mention, it's their ignorance and stupidity for which they're being punished.
Status quo can not be the answer (Score:2)
Anyone homeless needs to be offered reliable shelter, food, medicine, clothes and a plan to get out of their predicament towards a productive lifestyle. The places where these things are offered does not have to be in San Francisco. However, they should be close enough for an individual to be able to stay in touch with their friends and family.
But, this does not entitle one to sleep in a tent on a sidewalk and create obvious problems for the residents. Not that this is a great lifestyle for the homeless per
Re:Status quo can not be the answer (Score:4, Informative)
Anyone homeless needs to be offered reliable shelter, food, medicine, clothes
It's been tried. And with the food, shelter, etc. usually come rules of conduct. No thanks say the heroin addicts and people with mental problems. They live under the freeway off-ramps because the rules most closely match their lifestyle. To be precise: none.
and a plan to get out of their predicament towards a productive lifestyle.
They are happy with the lifestyle that they have. Want to give them some handouts? Fine, thanks. But that isn't going towards a better lifestyle. Sometimes it isn't even going toward food. Gotta have that meth or cheap booze.
We had a program in Seattle some years ago that involved participating businesses to accept meal coupons which the public could buy and hand to the cardboard sign guys. It didn't work, unless you actually liked being screamed at by winos for not handing out cash.
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We already have Medicaid, food stamps and other kinds of aid for the poor. Short term, extending these services plus shelter to homeless is not fantasy or insanely costly, since there are many more generally poor than homeless. Long term, I would prefer daily dispersement of universal basic income.
I do not think we should limit ourselves to Roman Empire.
0.000042% of income donated (Score:2)
I think it's only fair that, though we may not be billionaires, we should give an equal percentage of our income. Putting my money where my mouth is, I am willing to give $1.26 to house the homeless.
Read the update to the article! (Score:3)
Update: Conway initially declined to comment but wrote back pointing out he'd been involved in projects to help the city's homeless before and telling TechCrunch, "Prop Q only allows for encampment removal when real housing or shelter is offered and that's why I support it. It's not healthy or compassionate to let human beings suffer in tent cities and we shouldn't allow it when there's real housing, shelter and supportive services we can provide for people instead."
Bogue, who served on the board of the Bay Area homeless outreach organization the Tipping Point for the last several years, said he supported the proposition "because it would provide more resources to help get the homeless off the street and into sheltersâ¦The encampments are unsafe and inhumane, and frankly, I hope that this is not our solution to homelessness in the city."
Speaking on behalf of Moritz, Nathan Ballard, spokesman for the campaign to support Proposition Q said it was, âoeinhumane to allow people to live on the street when shelter is available. Mr. Mortiz and Mr. Conway have joined San Franciscans from all walks of life who support Prop Q because they urgently want to see an end to the human suffering on our streets."
I wonder (Score:3)
How many of the homeless people they want to hide are homeless because one of these people had to keep a share price up and made a bunch of cuts?
Move underground (Score:2)
Does SF have a sewer system? Old subway tunnels? Underground ANYTHING?
Makes the resident yuppies happy, they don't have to see their greed personified
Makes homeless happy, They don't have to sneak onto rooftops to sleep.
Makes police happy, homeless have "moved on", as they say. Out of sight out of mind.
Why is this not a thing? Its no less in-humane than say.... not allowing humans to live in piece on account of the rich finding them...distasteful.
Demolition man.
Rent free living with a catch. No grid, no eme
By definition (Score:2)
There are no homeless in san fransicsco.
A Very Partial Solution (Score:2)
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They vandalize, generate crime and are a blight.
Funny, I thought you were describing middle-class suburban kids aged 12-19. Of course, they get kicked out, too ... only it's to university.
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That already happened near the end of the Roman Empire. Many times SciFi is just projecting past events into a future scenario.
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"men" "Men", "men", found the feminist!