[watersb]

“The city is way too easy for people with nothing to get by,” she said. “That’s why I’m still here nine years later. You get by with doing drugs and suffer no consequences. I like it here.”

No doubt, chronic homelessness is a problem in San Francisco. And there's truth in this quote, from a fentanyl-addicted homeless person.

But I hesitate to base my entire view on the situation from a hot take of conversation with someone deep into drug abuse. They will feed the addiction first, and only then go on to address their other needs.

The article leaves me wanting to hear from people in recovery. Perhaps they are harder to find. Or perhaps (even more likely) I misread the article.

Nevertheless, I hang on to the real money quote:

The bitter joke of the story is that in San Francisco, the mother works full-time, drains her savings, but still can’t make ends meet and is forced to move away.

[bsder]

Agreed.

For example, a recent report on the SF homeless population flags 15% of them as having a traumatic brain injury.

You can spend as much as you want on other things, but those people need permanent, long-term medical care and nothing less is going to help.

[olliej]

And all of CAs public long term care facilities were closed in the 80s in order to save money, even though in reality it has ended up costing vastly vastly more.

[watersb]

I lived in Berkeley at the time, as yes the number of people on the streets that had been suddenly kicked out of long-term care facilities overwhelmed other public services, who were ill-equipped to provide anything more than crisis containment.

Teachers. Churches. Fire departments. Emergency rooms of hospitals. Police officers... God bless them all. God, what the Berkeley Police officers had to deal with in the 1980s...

(Then everyone got AIDS and died during the earthquake and the fire.)

My wife was a teacher at a day program for adults with severe developmental disabilities. A shoestring budget, subsistence wages, hard work. The program had been started out of necessity by an indomitable mother with a son who needed 24-hour care. Her son had his 21st birthday, and there was no longer a place for him in the public schools.

It's a horrifically expensive situation all around.

[novok]

At this rate the city could build a new long term mental care center and put all the severe chronic homeless in it and probably save money.

[olliej]

Yup, but you run into the same problem as housing other healthy folk, which is the lack of space for and general resistance to new housing or buildings :-/

It’s one of those things where once you remove it, resets listing it is really difficult and expensive.