There are more homeless people in NYC than in SF. The key difference is that in NYC most of the homeless is sheltered, but in SF we just dump them on the streets. We need to drastically increase the number of temporary shelter beds.
If you arrest the homeless and put them in jail, you are also providing them with shelter, but at an astronomical price. The prison guard industrial complex would love your generosity though.
Some of the mentally ill need to be institutionalized. No doubt about that. But that too costs money.
Absolutely true. But definitely the situation could get turned around tomorrow if someone decided to crack down. The unfortunate part is that because of covid, there are fewer jobs and less tax revenue, so this is the worst time to try.
You’re right that shelter would be cheaper than prison. But it’s still better than drugs on the street. Unfortunately with drugs, you have to get a person clean. That’s one reason to arrest someone on drugs. It forces them to get clean and sober. It’s kind of a deal with people - you stay off drugs, (maybe) you can live on the street. You go on drugs, we’re going to get you off the street and off the drugs.
You don’t listen. It is triage. Jail the criminals. Institutionalization for the crazy. Drug rehab for druggies. Move families and the legit poor to cheaper places to live. And send the fakers back to their homes in the East Bay. We all know there are a lot of “homeless” commuters
The system is fucked up. They just want to give money to the homeless industrial complex. The city is riddled with fake nonprofits. They pay off the homeless with liberal guilt.
Does not work. SF is already spending $500m per year. The money just needs to be better spent.
There is no cheap shelter available in SF . Fresno is the closet place with affordable housing.
This makes you wonder what the hell these people are thinking. The way to clean up drug dealing is to sue to block the known dealers from entering the neighborhood? They call it a novel approach. I’d say they lack common sense. Or maybe SF liberals have a different kind of common sense.
Maybe the next time the city should just buy the drugs from these known dealers in order to prevent these drugs from reaching the hands of the homeless. Anyone second my idea? It’s brilliant, I know.
One of my best friends is a retired SF police officer.
He has shown me many pictures of the homeless… having sex, injecting drugs, pooping on the street. The cops are helpless. The city has told them to do nothing. It is disgusting. And yet people like Manch look the other way because they not are outside his door. Don’t worry they are coming.
They are not outside your door either. All the people complaining about SF do not live in SF. Heck, you guys don’t even work in the city. I don’t get what the rage is about. Doesn’t conform with your worldview therefore it must go to hell? And yet head over to the 10x stock thread and count how many of the companies being talked about were created and continue to be based in SF. It’s literally a goose laying golden egg after golden egg.
manch, they’re everywhere. It’s not confining itself to SF and Oakland, it’s spreading out to the entire Bay Area. We now have tents along the roadway in RWC, and drugs and needles littering the area near the Caltrain station–people say it got worse in the last 18 months. It’s not like the people who want to avoid this can just avoid SF. It’s like a cancer that spreads out through the body.
SF has already lost a large amount of tourism because the homeless in SF are aggressive and dangerous (and they are–I’ve talked to homeless in many different cities, and SF’s homeless are uniquely in-your-face and refuse to take No for an answer). It’s just a matter of time before the Tech companies go elsewhere as well because their workers get assaulted.
I have friends who live in SF, and after the SIP, the mom commented on how the city felt like it had slipped downhill during the SIP-- that there were more tents in the open. Even people who’ve chosen to live there–and live in the nicer parts of SF–are commenting on it.
If it happens maybe it will jolt the city government to try something new.
If you guys are talking about homeless problem in your respective town, then why keep crapping on SF? SF city government doesn’t run RWC or Tahoe or anywhere else.
Because SF is the worst. If SF could demonstrate how to really deal with the problem, others could follow. All we’re seeing is SF failing to deal with it. The other cities are now seeing the ramp-up. Maybe RWC will be the leader in solving the problem–we’ll see, but RWC is still run by democrats.
The second reason is that if any other place does solve the problem, they’re going to be inundated with SF’s homeless. SF needs to man up and fix things for their own population so it doesn’t end up being somewhere else’s problem.
also, you don’t hear elt1 complaining about homeless in Tahoe.
You are assuming RWC’s homeless problem comes from SF?
I don’t know much about RWC’s homeless problem but from all the hatred towards SF I guess it’s a smaller problem than SF’s? Shouldn’t you try your solution on the easier problem before you export it?
My philosophy is that other people’s jobs always look easy because we don’t know the constraints they have. Sure, solving homeless problem is easy. We just triage. Or we just absolve ourselves of liberal guilt. Snap a finger and problem solved. We don’t know the politics involved. The laws involved. The residents’ reactions.
Good Point. Only if SF way of life is not projected on the entire state.
And second, those who have left SF, or visited and seen its worst, will still complain. One does not have to be living there to earn right to complain.
Most people do not care what SF does, but they do not want their own neighborhoods to become like SF.
I have heard a tent city has come up at the intersection of 280 and Wolf in Cupertino, barely 1/2 miles from the Spaceship Apple Campus.
This is illogical line of reasoning. I don’t need to live in Antarctica to state that it’s cold there. I don’t have to live in Syria or Iraq to state that it’s unsafe. I don’t have to live in filth to state that SF is a slum.