[zests]

I struggle to figure out why the homeless are so visible in SF but not in other cities like Manhattan. My only haphazard guess is that it has to do with the weather. I could ask the same question about why SF is the only city that has to lock up soap in their grocery stores.

SF strikes me as the city with the highest highs and the lowest lows.

[woodruffw]

It's not the weather: NYC goes to great efforts to house its homeless, including renting hotels indefinitely[1] to house homeless individuals and families. It's one of the few pieces of city policy that I'm proud to publicize.

And, for what it's worth, many pricier essentials are either locked or behind sliding panes in NYC stores. The Duane Reade near me has panes that chime when you push them aside, alerting anyone nearby and also preventing you from swiping an entire row of items into a bag or cart.

[1]: https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/homelessness/2020/06/25...

[jonas21]

I think a lot of it is the weather -- acting as a forcing function to deliver the observed results.

If NYC, if you don't have enough shelter space, there will be large numbers of people dying in the streets in the winter, so the city's hand is forced, and they have to build enough shelters or rent hotels, etc. That's not the case in California.

And likewise, if you prefer to sleep outside instead of in a shelter, that's an option year-round in California. But not in NYC, at least for a few months a year. So your hand is forced and you have to get used to sleeping in a shelter.

[woodruffw]

> If NYC, if you don't have enough shelter space, there will be large numbers of people dying in the streets in the winter, so the city's hand is forced, and they have to build enough shelters or rent hotels, etc. That's not the case in California.

I don't know whether you intend it as such, but I hear Californians regularly bring up their mild weather as a defense of their state's failure to develop an adequate support system for the homeless.

Focusing on (most of) California's lack of four seasons ignores the brute facts of street living, namely: you're still exposed to the elements and weather (you don't need to be in a cold climate to get hypothermia), to street pollution, and to irregular sleep and disturbance by members of the public and police.

In a humane system any of the above is a sufficient "forcing function," which is why NYC doesn't close homeless shelters once it's "nice enough" to survive outside. California shouldn't need a bodycount to justify housing its homeless.

[randompwd]

> California shouldn't need a bodycount to justify housing its homeless

What percentage of housing should California allocate to homeless people? What conditions should have to be met before the state houses someone?

If I want to temporarily move to LA tomorrow, why don't I just say I'm homeless(which would be true) and force the state to house me somewhere for the duration of my visit?

[woodruffw]

> What percentage of housing should California allocate to homeless people? What conditions should have to be met before the state houses someone?

What percentage of the population should California force onto the streets? Framing the question around a "percentage of housing" minimizes the humanitarian aspect of the problem, at the absolute minimum.

Questions about sufficient conditions are policy ones, and they seem irrelevant (again, at best) to the material fact that SF already has thousands of people sleeping in the open. Focusing on them seems prudent.

> If I want to temporarily move to LA tomorrow, why don't I just say I'm homeless(which would be true) and force the state to house me somewhere for the duration of my visit?

I don't know if you've ever been to a homeless shelter. I have, and you really don't want to live in one unless you absolutely have to. The idea that individuals with means would willingly prefer and tax the resources of the shelter system is farcical.

[zests]

What happens to all of the people who are too mentally unstable to live in a hotel/SRO/shelter?

[woodruffw]

The same thing that happens to them elsewhere in the US: the overwhelming majority of them are taken in by the carceral system in lieu of actual care.

I'd like to think that NYC is at least slightly better, numbers wise, but it probably isn't.

[diogenescynic]

In California that doesn’t seem to be the case. I can take you to streets where there a half naked people out of their mind and no cops are coming for them.

[yardie]

I can say it's a lack of forward thinking policy. My city, for example, has a very small but visible homeless problem. The majority are housed in shelters and shared housing. The remainder are the mentally, pedophiles, and physically violent. There is also a quantity of pet owners, pets aren't allowed in shelters so they chose the streets, but will use the shelter's showers. Our chronically homeless count has gone down from 8,000 to just over 1,000.

SF strikes me as nice but not kind city. If you're destitute they'll give you a dollar. But building affordable housing is too far a step.

[thatfrenchguy]

> But building affordable housing is too far a step

Building any housing that's not a McMansion in SF is literally almost impossible. NIMBY politics run deep in California.

[yardie]

California has so many great things going for it the locals would rather it not change. So they’ll pretend it’s full. And aggravate people there to leave and convince outsiders it’s not worth going to.

That’s how I interpret the laws. They are dysfunctional for a reason. Because no rational government could run this way.

[bombcar]

I can understand affordable housing to help lower incomes - but couldn’t SF build housing for the actual unemployed homeless far away from the city, even unto another state?

[Seattle3503]

Is this serious? Why should other states import SFs homeless problem?

[u678u]

NYC is strict, if you see tents or mattresses you ring the city and they'll take it away within a few hours. https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-02253

[asdff]

Manhattan has orders of magnitude more homeless but shelters over 90% of them.

[darkhorse22]

Yep, and anyone who thinks SF's homeless situation is bad needs to take a trip down to LA. LA's a step away from favelas.

[mixmastamyk]

People in favelas typically have built their own home and often have electricity. LA is worse because having a tent is fortunate.

[rufus_foreman]

in New York City

where it gets colder

and they are hunted by their own

kind, these men often crawl under car radiators,

drink the anti-freeze,

get warm and grateful for some minutes, then die.

but that is an older culture and a wiser one

- Bukowski, 1973

[tayo42]

The tenderloin is right in the middle of the city, next to just about everything you would want to do in the city. That's where they all congregate. SF is also pretty small. The most visited areas of NYC don't have sros and homeless shelters

[woodruffw]

This isn’t true: NYC has largely eliminated SROs, but the most touristy neighborhoods are also frequently the ones with the most shelters and/or DHS accommodations. Off the top of my head: Chinatown, Midtown/TS, and the UWS all have a large number of shelters and accommodations. I grew up next to one on the UWS, volunteered at another, and currently live next to a third.

[tayo42]

Check a map of homeless shelters in sf and compare it to Manhattan. Manhattan has them scattered around, sf has everything in the tenderloin. It's like having a 10x10 block of only homeless related stuff right next to times Square. So it's very visible. NYC's poverty is pushed to the edges of city and boroughs

[woodruffw]

Three things:

* Manhattan alone has twice as many people as San Francisco, in less than half the space. It also isn't districted as cleanly as SF is -- even the office and business areas of Manhattan are heavily residential. Put another way: everybody lives somewhere in Manhattan, so it makes sense to scatter shelters and other managed housing throughout the island.

* If we're talking specifically about shelters, Manhattan's are not particularly scatted: the majority are in midtown (right next to Times Square!), and a sizable minority are on the LES/in Chinatown. It's hard to find an official reference for this (since so many of NYC's shelters are nonprofits), but here's a user-created map with some datapoints[1].

* As mentioned in the original comment, NYC aggressively attempts to house its homeless population, including with indefinite hotel rentals. Hotels are dispersed through the city, so it's no particular surprise that their use as homeless housing results in the homeless being somewhat less concentrated in particular neighborhoods. You have an independent (and correct!) point about poverty in the city, but I don't think your observation makes sense for homelessness itself.

[1]: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&ll=...

[tayo42]

I think your making the same point as me but not agreeing with the conclusion? Right nyc is more diverse in each area as far as types of buildings. Sf's tenderloin and mid market area is unique as it's a highly concentrated area of homelessness. It also happens to be right next to some of the busiest areas. All of this bleeds over to business, tourist and hotel areas so people see it all the time. Richmond, sunset, bernal, Glen Park are neighborhoods that are pretty far from the tenderloin and don't have homeless people in them. theres nothing in nyc thats compareable to the tenderloin area. what ive seen for visitors is they go to the moscone center for some event, only a mile away from the tenderloin, then their company puts them in a hotel downtown near Powell Street, only blocks from there. so people come to sf and are immediately exposed to dense concentration of the homelessness.

[woodruffw]

I think we're agreeing on most things, but there's one thing in particular that we're not: I'm saying that there is an area in NYC that is simultaneously (1) visited heavily by tourists and (2) has a large proportion of the city's shelter and homeless services capacity. That area is Midtown, which contains Times Square, Penn Station, Grand Central, Rockefeller Center, the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and most of the other major tourist attractions in NYC. That area is also home to the largest tourist and convention-oriented hotels (the Penn, the Waldorf-Astoria, etc.).

And, to be clear, the homeless are more visible in that area! But I wouldn't say disproportionately so, given the population and density of Manhattan itself. I consider that a testament to NYC's (relative) success at providing homeless services.

[stock_toaster]

It is fairly visible in Eugene, Portland, and Seattle too. Though, it doesn't seem to be on par with SF quite yet.

[whiskyant]

Probably because if you're homeless and sleep outside during the winter in NYC you'll die.

[scruple]

My father has told me stories about being around Washington D.C. in the 70s. How it wasn't all that uncommon to stumble across a dead body in the winter. Whether homeless or drunk, they'd fall asleep and die in the cold. One particularly bad winter, he found a dead body in the stairwell leading up to his apartment. I'm sure it still happens today but the way he spoke about it made me realize how quickly the world changes.

[baby]

Disparity is everywhere in the US, but it’ll be more visible in some places. The fact that we’re talking about this here is just the beginning, so many people can’t see that there’s a huge crisis coming up for the US.