original HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16799107
Consider carbon footprint, accelerating “progress” toward ecological collapse, building tech used by authoritarian governments, etc.
People of all classes come to SF for similar reasons, the resources.
Instead of being afraid of solving the homeless problem for fear of attracting more homeless, SF Ought to focus its creativity on solving the problem in a way that works for everyone.
The best solution is, give the homeless free housing.
Since SF industry is extracting / creating wealth (depending on your political slant) from all over the world, then it should be ok with people from all over the world coming in to have basic needs met.
Create shipping container / tiny home villages; provide robotic grown organic foods; deploy scalable mental health and community building tech; etc.
Deploy that tech to other surrounding cities which would alleviate some of the pressure for folks to move to SF if they are homeless.
Repeat the process across the USA.
Repeat the process around the world and alleviate the resource gradient.
You want to take a dent out of the universe? Solve homelessness and resource scarcity.
Often highest leverage in our own lives and in reflecting on our own successes.
There are many possible solutions to what is a horrible and obvious problem. Throwing billions more down the SF government money maw is not one of them.
Not saying that SF is well-run or not, merely that the homeless problem isn't simply due to the city's response.
69% of people had housing in San Francisco before they became homeless and 72% of those people have been in San Francisco for at least five years.
https://atthecrossroads.org/news/myths-facts-about-homelessn...
The "man shooting heroin on the street" sorts of homeless folks are, in my limited experience volunteering, generally not from SF but some other part of CA.
[1]: http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017-SF-Poin...
With that understanding there should be more national funding going toward the homeless issue - and if there's one local economy that could actually afford to fix the problem it's SF.
This would probably be much cheaper.
Notice the large difference in the size of Chicago's enterprise budget [2] and San Francisco's enterprise budget [3]. SFO is considered part of the enterprise budget of the City and County of San Francisco, but it's a separate fund entirely for Chicago.
(As an aside, this setup means that the mayor of San Francisco doubles as the CEO of the SFO airport, which is also unusual.)
[1]: https://www.flychicago.com/business/CDA/factsfigures/Pages/f...
[2]: https://budgetblog.ctbaonline.org/chicagos-city-budget-101-5...
However, Chicago has significantly more debt, and is on the verge of bankruptcy. SF is not.
Definitely not arguing that SF doesn't have its share of management problems, but this feels like a pretty poor example.
In the end she left psych and went into tech. Problem solved!
For example, what if some of the money used by Google et al, went to lobbying the government to change its stance on healthcare ?
https://lobbyfacts.eu/articles/29-10-2015/volkswagen-top-10-...
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-influence/2019...