[mattlondon]

I visit SF and Silicon Valley fairly regularly from London (where I live so potentially biased).

I am always, always, always shocked by the homelessness (and the mental state of those poor souls) in SF. People call London a dirty, unfriendly city but I've NEVER gotten any trouble from any of the homeless people in London apart form the usual begging, yet in SF its pretty much guaranteed you're going to get hassled/shouted-at/shoved/threatened by one of the homeless people once or twice per visit as you just go about your business.

I was considering moving to SF to work a while back. Housing is not cheap for sure, it is probably around about the same as London ... except in London if you pay $4000/month you dont get a vagrant shitting on your doorstep.

It is a genuinely shocking situation in SF. I am permanently shocked by the homelessness. It is terrible but no one seems to want/be able to do anything about it.

[scarmig]

We do manage to spend a quarter billion dollars a year on homelessness in San Francisco, amounting to tens of thousands per homeless person. And that doesn't even count costs that hospitals and medical centers have to spend on ODs, various stabbings, etc. So finances aren't the issue.

If I had to identify the issue, it's that there's a lot of status quo players who comfortably exist in the current state of things (after all, that's a lot of money floating around). The people who suffer worst from the state of affairs (the homeless themselves) pretty much have no political pull or people looking out for their well-being, and the rest of us get shouted down if we complain about having to step over used syringes and human shit as we open the door to our apartments every day ("you think you have it bad? Think how bad they have it!")

Last month, I was walking through SoMa with my boyfriend, and a homeless guy literally came up and punched him in the back of the head for absolutely no reason at all. He walked off, we called the police, an officer came, and his response was basically.. "well, what do you want me to do about it? There's no point in arresting him." Even though the perp was standing on the corner like half a block away.

As a city, we need to decide whether the homeless are autonomous people who can be held responsible for their actions, or whether they are desperate souls who really can't be expected to care or look out for themselves and really don't have any "rights" beyond being treated humanely and compassionately. Only the latter really makes sense in my view, but this in between place of "they can do whatever they want no matter the ill effects on the community, but we're morally required to continue to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at their self-described champions every year with no improvement in the situation" is ridiculous.

[AJ007]

Is homeless the right word to use here?

This word is used to describe a very wide range of people, some of who are not homeless. Americans are very tolerant. Many have no problem handing a heroin addict cash and actually feel really good about themselves after doing it.

I've walked Manhattan alone at all hours, I've been in the worst neighborhoods of Chicago, bad neighborhoods in Brooklyn, major cities in the developing world alone on foot at night with no other caucasian in sight, all over Mexico, along with many other places and the one place where I am very aware of my surroundings and concerned is SF. I do not live there and never have, so that is as much opinion I can give.

[wozniacki]

Without repeating the same oft-repeated policy wonk points from either side of the debate, could we NAME / LIST the PRIMARY STAKEHOLDERS who BENEFIT from the PREVAILING HOMELESSNESS INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX and thus benefit from undergirding the STATUS QUO?

Anyone know who owns the majority of the city's SROs?

I'd start there.

Look, as we speak the DPW trucks are dismantling some of the tents on Division St. [1][2] However longtime residents of SF will tell you that it doesn't even merit a small applause. SF's homelessness problem isn't even dinged much less dented.

The city hall's money purses aren't kept overflowing by the likes of you and me - at least not yet in any meaningful way, although the likelihood of the emergence of a strong technology voting block / interest group isn't far away.

Until then identifying the key players who sustain this very flawed complex, is in itself a great first stab.

[1] https://twitter.com/amyhollyfield/status/704657181665169408

[2] https://twitter.com/VaughanChip/status/704702716484825088

[T2_t2]

Because they care. In the USA, (non-resident) I find that almost every bad thing usually has a really nice, positive flipside.

SF spends so much on the homeless that, ironically, it attracts them. In fact, Las Vegas has sent homeless there: http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/09/11/2602391/san-franc...

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-record... shows that $241 million was spent - that's so very much for a metro area of 8 million people.

In a country of 300 million, you only need a very slight incentive and things get weird, and the SF attitude to homeless, the food they give out, the shelters, the climate, all encourage homeless to move there or, worse, get sent there by less scrupulous states.

I am never sure if this is a really nice or a really bad thing for SF. I'm kinda thinking both.

[simonebrunozzi]

London is a real city, an Alpha++ City even [0].

San Francisco, and Silicon Valley, have millions of inhabitants but they are not a proper city. They are a collection of a sizable provincial city (SF) and many "suburb" cities.

This, in my mind, makes the most difference.

By the way, the homelessness issue is mostly in SF and East Bay. If you go down the peninsula, you don't see it much.

Oh, last but not least: the weather in the Bay Area is generally nicer.

[0]: http://www.spottedbylocals.com/blog/alpha-beta-and-gamma-cit...

[whybroke]

Doing something about it would require more than token governmental policy benefiting the poorest of society and an admission that the current insufficiently controlled system will always destroy some lives. Both ideas are deeply contrary to the current American narrative.

Instead you will get a vocal minority of people saying the homeless choose to live that way or that they are made homeless by rent control or public housing or excess regulation. Since this matches most American's world view, it is accepted without evidence.

It is a society that will always strive to raise housing prices not lower them, more willing to give handouts to defaulting mortgage holders than to give housing to the homeless, and more willing to jail the homeless than to house them. And so the situation worsens as it has for 30 years.

The best SF can do is put endless bandaids on a small part of a national problem.