It Is Costing San Francisco $5k/Month for Each Homeless Tent

Re:It Is Costing San Francisco $5k/Month for Each Homeless Tent by noodlesUK on Friday March 05, 2021 @03:54PM (#26361972)

Seeing the horrible conditions homeless and desperately poor people face in the US is one of the deeply shocking things about coming from the EU. Even in poorer countries in Eastern Europe, you don’t see the kind of totally fucked up living situations that you do in SF and Seattle. What can a person do to help with this, as the government (at least federal/state level) seems to have no desire to do anything about it? Is it because there’s no medical care available? Is it because of housing? Wages? What? How do we fix this?

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Re:It Is Costing San Francisco $5k/Month for Each Homeless Tent by BitwiseFool on Friday March 05, 2021 @04:02PM (#26362062)

It's a really peculiar situation, and the cities you mentioned spend hundreds of millions on homeless programs and the politicians there have tried a slew of policies but to little avail. You could always argue the government needs to do even more, but it's wrong to say our politicians have no desire to do anything about it.

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Re:It Is Costing San Francisco $5k/Month for Each Homeless Tent by robertlagrant on Friday March 05, 2021 @05:07PM (#26362760)

I know this sounds cynical, but I really think that politicians' policies - which are just plans to spend other people's money - are no substitute for motivated people actually going out and making a difference.

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Re:It Is Costing San Francisco $5k/Month for Each Homeless Tent by lupire on Friday March 05, 2021 @04:09PM (#26362139)

Those cities have the most homeless people because they have the best weather and political support for homeless people to survive than anywhere else. They are better not worse.

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Re:It Is Costing San Francisco $5k/Month for Each Homeless Tent by supersour on Friday March 05, 2021 @05:51PM (#26363265)

There's a similarly tragic problem with Vancouver East side.

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Re:It Is Costing San Francisco $5k/Month for Each Homeless Tent by nessguy on Friday March 05, 2021 @04:28PM (#26362343)

Are you sure there’s not similar situations in Europe? I’m sure the healthcare situation over there helps a lot, but it looks like there’s still groups of people living in tents in some places. https://www.politico.eu/article/homelessness-qa-freek-spinne...

I know Japan also has a bunch of homeless people living in tents as well, I’ve seen them riding around collecting cans to recycle for money.

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Re:It Is Costing San Francisco $5k/Month for Each Homeless Tent by nickfromseattle on Friday March 05, 2021 @05:26PM (#26363020)

I spent 8 months in Belgrade, Serbia.

I only saw one crazy homeless looking person, and they were being actively treated by non-LEO services.

Europe, and Eastern Europe runs a tight ship when it comes to unsheltered homeless.

BTW, fun fact - Serbia has the 6th highest per capita gun ownership [0] and 173th lowest per capita murder rate. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g...

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

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Re:It Is Costing San Francisco $5k/Month for Each Homeless Tent by bsder on Friday March 05, 2021 @05:22PM (#26362957)

Dunno about everywhere in Europe, but the area around Gare du Nord struck me as pretty far down the scale.

Universal healthcare would sure be a good start in the US.

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