[voldacar]

As someone who has never lived in SF but vaguely heard of their issues with homelessness, that article is super eye-opening. It talks about city bureaucrats and homeless advocacy organizations, but not so much the attitude of the general public. Aren't democracies supposed to have feedback loops that will eventually solve this problem? If they haven't gotten there already, at what point will the general SF citizenry get pissed off enough to elect leaders focused on fixing this?

[asdff]

The feedback loop works if you assume most people's opinions are rooted in facts. They are often not grounded in reality, especially at the local political level where awful inflammatory opinions readily circulate on social networks like nextdoor and Facebook. People in SF and other cities frequently oppose construction of homeless shelters, with the thinking that this will attract homeless to the area and make the situation worse. Guess what, the homeless are already there, that's why that site in particular was chosen for the potential shelter. At least in LA, when a shelter goes up, cleanings in the area happen much more frequently and it becomes a less attractive place to camp if you need to move all of your things every day. People don't bother reading the details of these plans to see these things.

This degenerate logic against shelter construction ignores the fact that the only alternative to not building shelters and mental health facilities is to allow the homeless population to grow and fester and continue to trash the streets, since thankfully we are not a society that just removes undesirables from existence.