> The city has six so-called “safe sleeping villages,” where homeless people sleep in tents and also receive three meals a day, around-the-clock security, bathrooms and showers. The city created these sites during the pandemic to quickly get people off crowded sidewalks and into a place where they can socially distance and access basic services.

> The department is now asking the city for $15 million in the upcoming fiscal year for a similar number of tents, which amounts to about $57,000 per tent per year.

The cost is for providing basic social services; one of them is shelter.

All you have to do is to get someone, who lives on the street, to agree to move to West Virginia. SMH

I think there is an interesting discussion of what is and is not owed to people, and where it is owed.

But my point is is there an obligation for society to not have to make people move if the economic conditions change and labor supply and demand curves move? What are the long term effects of these incentive structures?

Perhaps the answer is to just keep going more dense, if one’s position is that within a country, anyone is allowed to live anywhere, either via their own means or government assistance. But I do not see that being politically popular with many, and I can envision a few feasibility concerns with that approach.

Another option is that the location where you get a social safety net is not guaranteed, and so desirable land is distributed according to one’s wealth (which I know is highly dependent on one’s ancestry).

Homeless people move to places with mild winters, because they don't see housing as an attainable goal. Maybe they'd move somewhere with free housing -- or maybe they'd assume that any such program wouldn't survive an election cycle, so would rather stay put than get their hopes up.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/...

Sometimes returning people to their support networks in other states can be a solution, but “banishing” doesn’t sound legal or ethical.

If they were not helped, were they any worse off? That question wasn't answered.

Again, shelter is only one social service. The $60K covers all the other ones too. Could that be done more cheaply elsewhere? I wonder - cities have an economy of scale. They also have more opportunity for people to move out of homelessness, into jobs, apartments, etc.

So, they are spending 73% of the poverty line. This would be the same as a LCOL area spending under 9k to keep a person housed and fed. That seems entirely reasonable. I realize it's not apples to apples comparison,but I think it provides some perspective.

https://sfgov.org/scorecards/safety-net/poverty-san-francisc...

No, its not. $82k is the federal HUD “Low income threshold” for San Francisco, which is not even loosely analogous to the poverty line; HUD income limits are calculated from local median income, not costs, and the low income limit is 80% of the median (and its the highest of three limits; there’s also a very low and extremely low income limit.) Its not a location-adjusted poverty measure, and based on national income distribution to federal poverty line comparison, if you were to abuse it that way the least bad way would be to use the extreme low income threshold, not the low income threshold.

This is how it works in Belarus, and number of bums in prisons is absolutely negligible, and number of bums in the streets is zero.

Maybe not a felony. That makes the situation worse. I've been promoting the idea that: if you are arrested or arraigned (not even convicted) and don't have a permanent address you are transported to an unincorporated part of the state. Making it a misdemeanor to participate (either side) in begging/pan-handling would also help.

If you aren't going to participate, you are de-facto opting out of the community benefits. If you want social services to function, make sure you are willing to give then a perm address. Following rules and being functional in society is what this whole waste of resources has been about.

Note: One side of my wife family are these kind of people who don't follow "the rules" paranoid that the govt is watching them while being subsidized by the govt. They are living in filth from Needles CA to trailers (water trailer + living trailer) out in a flat, dead, parcel of desert near Bullhead AZ. At least they have addresses.

Anyway, it’s $81k a year to imprison someone in CA.

https://lao.ca.gov/PolicyAreas/CJ/6_cj_inmatecost

That changed in the 1960’s. Liberals convinced themselves and those in power that it was virtuous to let addicts and the mentally ill waste their lives away on the street.

Because of COVID, I haven’t been to SF in two years, but on my last trip it had reached absurd levels of dysfunction. Try walking 1 block down Market St to the Mikkeller Bar and you’ll have to jump over 5 spots of human feces, swerve around 3 people snorting god knows what off the sidewalk, and avoid 12 urinating bums. Very progressive.

That 60K/tent makes a whole lot of unionized gov workers, contractors and NGOs happy!