I don't get San Francisco

Okay somebody explain me please because this don’t make no sense. I heard SF has sky high property values but there’s also a massive homeless problem or something. At least initially it makes sense cause if you can’t afford a place you have to live on the streets. But since the property values are so high, shouldn’t the city be able to use the massive tax income from that to help the homeless or whatever?

It’s not really SF specific. NYC has the same amount of homelessness.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2022/fixing-san-francisco-problems/sf-homelessness-data

SF has a liberal reputation so it get shit posted by conservative news outlets.

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Interestingly it looks like NYC shelters nearly all of those homeless though

They are very visible. Due to fewer in shelters, less unused space (eg. overpasses), and I think less street-clearing. It’s not unusual to see tents popped up on a busy sidewalk.

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It is also “easier” to be sleep on the streets if you want to avoid shelters living in San Fran or LA vs NYC or Boston since the weather is much nicer. Compare sleeping in a tent/park bench in low 30s vs low 60s.

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The odds of dying of exposure in SF/LA/SD is quite a bit lower than NYC, Boston or Minneapolis.

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Yeah yeah but why is it always these cities full of mega rich people seemingly the ones that are always out of money to deal with their problems

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'cuz I was playing SimCity and once you get the skyscrapers you’re rolling in dough and everything is ez

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That question is explored in a documentary called “Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County” from 2010 (which, incidentally, was filmed by Nancy Pelosi’s youngest child). The stark contrast between Disneyland and the abandoned motels nearby is … I don’t know what the right word is, fascinating but in a sad/wtf way.

Interesting data. Not sure exactly what it means or how to fix it but interesting. Seems like the higher cost of living has a direct impact on homeless density.

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Clearly we should be bussing the homeless to Mississippi as they’ve done the best at solving the problem. /red

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I believe that the better metric is affordability: cost of housing vs earnings.

But I suppose this is one instance where Mississippi’s being dead last isn’t a bad thing.

It all makes sense now.

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Ehhh shelters work for homeless people who are down on their luck or poor

But shelters don’t let you do drugs or drink so lots of homeless folks with substance abuse issues choose to get drunk and high on the streets rather than submit to the tyranny of shelter employees

Most homeless people are well behaved and blend in with society, they work then go sleep in a shelter. It’s usually the homeless people who have mental health issues that are laying around in the streets with one shoe missing and holes in all their clothing

The more you try to take care of homeless people, the more there will be in your area. For obvious reasons. Why would a homeless person want to live in a state with no resources, vs living in a state with resources, for them? There’s no spending your way out of a problem. If you have enough money to take care of all the people who are in your area, more will come from out of your area to use resources. More and more people will come unless there’s some upper limit due to immigration controls, or due to your already taking care of all the people who are homeless in the US and willing to live in that area.

Year round warm weather probably has a draw too, as has been noted previously.

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NYC had this problem. They have much better options for drug addicts than some other states so drug addicts would travel to NYC knowing that they would be better off there than home.

I’ve heard people also avoid shelters because they are afraid of stuff getting stolen or of being hurt by the bad types of people many shelters have as some subsegment of their population

I can see DC hasn’t improved since I used to live there.

Hugely divided city.

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