[aeternum]

The way 'housing first' has been implemented in SF is terrible. It is operated as a lottery helping a very tiny percentage of the homeless with a house/apt worth $1mil+. Those numbers will never solve the problem.

If I saw a reasonable housing first program where it actually provides cost-efficient housing for all that need it, I'd be a strong proponent.

The current system is not that, it's incredibly unfair, a tax-payer funded lottery in which residents provide accolades to homeless advocacy groups in return for inclusion on lists that make them more likely to win a spot in the residences. Huge amounts of tax-payer money is siphoned off into these non-profits throughout the process.

https://sfstandard.com/politics/san-francisco-nonprofits-con...

[8f2ab37a-ed6c]

It's unfortunate that some of the smallest, most expensive, most mismanaged and ideological 7x7 mile real estate in the US is being used as the dumpster for humans in need of serious medical attention and societal support.

SF can barely build a public toilet without it turning into a taxpayer trough feeding frenzy, so expecting it to be the Mecca of the homeless, the addicted and the downtrodden is comedic at best, and tragic at worst. Even if someone were to get back on their feet from addiction, SF is the last place where they would want to try to live, given the astronomical cost of everything, unless they're going to suddenly become senior ML engineers who can afford a downpayment on a $1M 500sqft cockroach shoebox.

Most people with regular jobs can't afford to live in SF... think school teachers driving in every morning from Sacramento, and that's without fighting every day against a crippling meth addiction.

There's practically infinite room in Bakersfield, Stockton, Lancaster, Fresno, housing is more affordable, the local governance more amenable, the cost of living night and day, but nobody in policy will ever be able to pull that off, so we'll be stuck with the current status quo that nobody is happy with.

[narrator]

There are a lot of public employees and contractors who would have no way to live in the bay area if it wasn't for the $300 million a year homeless budget for a few thousand homeless. They need those homeless to provide justification for their good government jobs, which is why they cater to them so heavily by allowing them to sleep anywhere, ignoring most crimes they commit and providing them with a safe place to buy and take drugs.

All that has to happen is tax revenue has to fall and the spending will decrease and the homeless will go to some other place where they can live a better drugs and camping lifestyle. Having lived for some time a few years ago in the Tenderloin, the idea that the homeless in S.F are normal people who have fallen on hard times is a complete simulated reality that has almost nothing to do with the actual situation.

SF is the solve everything with more money city because more money is always to the benefit of people working government jobs. For another example, look at the 1 billion dollar per mile recent subway extension, for example. That 1 billion went to somebody and employed a lot of people.

[8f2ab37a-ed6c]

Even Scott Weiner mentioned in the interview with Ezra Klein in April that he would have not been able to live in SF if he hadn't gotten lucky and found a 500sqft place 15 years ago. You know something is off when your state senator can't even afford to live in his own district.

[kangaroozach]

This is the case across most of the US. It’s also why our senators are wealthy people taking “bribes” and kickbacks, friendly business deals or benefiting from insider trading. Feinstein, Pelosi are good local examples.

[narrator]

They should pay top government officials multi-million dollar salaries like they do in Singapore. Then they could attract top talent to those jobs and they wouldn't have to engage in all these questionable side hustles.

[ipaddr]

You would have to find someone who has so much money that anything extra wouldn't matter. Those people do not exist and the richer high paying job it is the more it will attract the wrong type. Put Musk in one of those jobs and he will use influence to increase his wealth.

[jonhohle]

The same Scott Weiner who has an estimated net worth of $5M on a state senator’s salary?

Also, why would someone run for a district they didn’t live in?

[thephyber]

Estimated by allfamousbirthday.com? Pardon me if I am a little skeptical.

And nobody said he doesn’t live in the district. He moved to SF as a lawyer, then became Deputy City Attorney, then was elected to Board of Supervisors, then elected to state senate. His quote about not being able to afford to live in SF is most likely to point out that rent control in SF keeps qualifying rents affordable while market-rate rents are extremely unaffordable.

[guptadagger]

> the homeless will go to some other place where they can live a better drugs and camping lifestyle

They should just drive in their cars to those cheaper places, true

[seanmcdirmid]

Or their (meth) RVs or vans. Those are surprisingly common, but they tend to go to cities that don’t enforce parking limits for unhoused (LA, SF, Seattle)…

[mbgerring]

It’s not, 70% of unhoused people in SF started out housed in SF (source: every homeless count for the last decade, and my tenure as editor-in-chief of SF’s Street Sheet). People are unhoused here because housing is unaffordable. This is not complicated.

We already have a (very successful, uncontroversial) program that provides free bus tickets to unhoused people who came from elsewhere and have a support system wherever they came from. That leaves the other 70%.

[scarmig]

Leading question: suppose someone moved to SF, started out homeless, moved to supportive housing for a few months, and got kicked out and became homeless again. Are they counted in that oft-cited "70% of homeless people are SF natives!" figure?

ETA some additional numbers[0]:

Of that [71]%, the top six places they were housed before their most recent loss of housing:

With Friends/Relative (31%)

Home Owned or Rented by Self or Partner (21%)

Subsidized Housing or Permanent Supportive Housing (11%)

Hotel/motel (9%)

Jail or Prison (8%)

Hospital or Treatment Facility (4%)

So only 21% of that 71% actually rented their own place. Granted, the "with friends/relatives" can cover some situations where I'd agree they count as originating from SF, but also covers things like people moving here and crashing with a friend for a week before being kicked out.

Note also that any homeless who has become housed at any point of their homelessness (including jail, hospitalization, supportive housing) would then persist in the "has been housed in SF before" stat.

[0] https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/2022-PIT-Co... , see page 31

[mbgerring]

Love to get downvoted for stating extraordinarily well documented facts with which I have firsthand experience. Nice place you all have here!

[than3]

FWIW, I upvoted; but I agree this is an ongoing problem on HN and really any place that allows people to downvote based on how they feel.

You can state all the facts you want and some people downvote because they simply didn't like it; others downvote because your replied topic was about a downvote (against policy) and those same problematic people who downvoted may also have multiple accounts and/or be doing this to promote a certain propagandist narrative. There's really no way to combat it or tell given the site design.

Ultimately its a bridge too far and violates free speech by de-amplifying what you said (because it goes invisible once it goes under a certain vote, greyed out at 0, hidden -1, delisted/invisible -2) but that's mainly just my opinion that the vast majority of people (or more accurately bots) here don't hold. Its why I think most current social media should be outlawed (as its currently designed).

It interferes with communications which are an important signal over public discourse for our representatives to take action. They stop being responsive and representing when they can't receive meaning from their constituency because its an intentionally jammed/noisy channel and they so far have failed to take any action to remedy that jamming, which can have grave historical consequences.

When there's no effective representation, the rule of law eventually breaks down.

[scarmig]

It's down voted because it's a figure that people who follow the discussion closely know is misleading. The context it's usually used in (including here) suggests homelessness is because people were gainfully employed and renting in SF before being kicked because of greedy landlords, but that's a small minority of people actually included in the figure. It also includes anyone who's ever crashed on a friend's couch for a month, been jailed, hospitalized, or rented a motel room in SF.

Those people still deserve empathy, but they're a very different group than those who once were productive and housed in SF and then ended up on the streets because of a bout of bad luck.

[mbgerring]

> The context it's usually used in (including here) suggests homelessness is because people were gainfully employed and renting in SF before being kicked because of greedy landlords

No, that isn’t the context here. When I wrote this here, and when I put this figure on a Muni bus ad for Street Sheet’s ad campaign in 2015, I was responding to the often-repeated false assertion that SF is “a dumping ground” for unhoused people, that people “come here to be homeless”, that “other cities send their homeless here”, etc etc etc.

Claiming that “housed in San Francisco before becoming unhoused” should only include “productive” people who were paying their own rent with their name on the lease is moving the goal posts by an entire football field.

Cities are full of poor people. They ought to be — cities are great places to find opportunities to get out of poverty. And lots of people, self included, show up in cities with no money or plan, and crash on couches, in hotel rooms, in their cars, etc, until they land on their feet.

San Francisco has always been a place where people have done this. We didn’t have large-scale homelessness here until the second half of the 80s, after federal public housing was gutted and especially after the Loma Prieta quake wiped out a lot of affordable housing.

If cities don’t make room for poor people, those people will end up on the street. People try to make this more complicated than it is, but every serious study on this lands in the same place, every time — just provide housing.

[aeternum]

You did not provide any documentation. Whenever documentation is provided that supposedly proves this, is highly misleading. Like this one in which they've somehow managed to define everyone as an SF resident (see footnote) https://i.redd.it/omvx0d36ng1b1.jpg.

[b33j0r]

I am not serious, completely. But you called it a dumpster for the underclass (not judging either way).

But it points to an irony when you’re there, going to a meeting at the Transamerica pyramid or walking past the headquarters of Salesforce, or having a michelin starred meal, then walking down the street and a guy in an alley has a knife.

(Yeah, personal experience. I wasn’t very scared. Probably because I just had michelin starred wine pairings…)

[scrubs]

When demand on resources exceeds available resources and/or current plans are not moving the ball, management must act. Moving homeless to lesser cost places is in scope. The poster above is right. While getting stable is a huge win, it's silly to think they can then continue to live in sf

They are not entitled nor are tax payers obligated to insure they have parity with people who can afford to live and work in SF.

And I buy the argument providing homes is humane and cost efficient compared to options. Any treatment medical or mental in the US is stupid expensive. But I think/hope DBT which is effective mental side is not the most expensive

[jquery]

The "toilet" controversy was the set-aside maximum cost for a sheltered, multi-year maintenance project that involved road construction. It wasn't just a toilet seat like people keep repeating.

[xp84]

SF's attempts at "fixing" housing always amount to this lottery system.

Rent control: A random windfall for whatever tenant snags these coveted apartments when someone dies in a 3 bedroom apartment they haven't needed in 30 years but "can't afford" to downsize from since they have been paying $650 since 1989. Also the illegal subletters who are numerous and shameless, from personal experience.

Low-income housing minimums: A random windfall for a few lucky lottery winners, while everyone else from indigent to middle-class has to struggle because the developers need to build only luxury housing to make up for eating the cost of the low income housing.

And then this housing first thing is more of the same.

> siphoned off into these non-profits

Indeed. The homeless-industrial complex of nonprofits in SF is huge, but popular since it is a jobs program for all the people with social science bachelors and masters degrees, and no marketable skills.

[1letterunixname]

A lottery system for a few people is the rich's approach to looking down on the poor.

Solving it requires relocation. There's no getting around it because the total cost of living is incompatible with people with slimmer means.

[bombcar]

The problem is that eventually you need walls or forced relocation. We have evidence that people are already willing to live in SF with no shelter, and without changing fundamental ways America works, you can’t force them to leave and not come back (maybe a city can get a restraining order protecting itself? No idea).

[1letterunixname]

Force cannot be used but offers of food, shelter, and care elsewhere can and must be offered. In general, only the very rich can afford to live in the most central, desirable locations because the costs of everything are so damn high. It's only fair that most people who aren't insanely rich (like me) should find somewhere they can afford to live or where society can afford to help them. Trying to linger in SF Presidio or Manhattan is well above almost everyone's means.

[thirtyseven]

> Rent control: A random windfall for whatever tenant snags these coveted apartments when someone dies in a 3 bedroom apartment they haven't needed in 30 years but "can't afford" to downsize from since they have been paying $650 since 1989. Also the illegal subletters who are numerous and shameless, from personal experience.

This is a misrepresentation of SF rent control. Rent increases for pre-1979 apartments are only capped if the same tenant lives there continuously -- when the apartment lease turns over, the rent can be raised to market rates.

That being said, there are some people that abuse the system by keeping a lease for a place they haven't lived in for 20 years and subletting it, sometimes for a profit, but there aren't apartments where the rent is permanently capped at 80s levels like you're suggesting.

[aeternum]

It's not super common but there are ways to maintain the rent control: https://www.trulia.com/blog/how-to-inherit-a-rent-controlled...

Smart landlords will fight adding a cotenant, but tenants can always claim discrimination which is an uphill battle for the landlord especially in SF where juries are notoriously anti-landlord.

[ryan_lane]

The standard leases used for rent-controlled apartments are very explicit about this, so unless a landlord used a non-standard lease, or didn't use a lease, this isn't a real problem. You don't have to be a smart landlord, you just have to not be a stupid one.

There's no issues around discrimination for this, and it's not an uphill battle. Replacement tenants are not co-tenants, and do not have rent control protection if the original tenants move out. Landlords cannot reject replacement tenants in most cases, but they have no requirements on accepting replacements as co-tenants. Replacement tenants are added as sub-letters of the original tenant.

I was a real estate agent who worked in property management, and I've also lived in rent controlled apartments in SF. You're absolutely wrong here.

[Fatnino]

You say $1mil+ house and most people think we are putting up a select one or two homeless guys in mansions.

1 million dollars in San Francisco real estate is a one room (maybe two room if it's in extra bad shape) hovel.

And that's the real problem. San Francisco is not a place for the poor to try to raise their lives to middle class. It's a place for middle class to struggle to stay above water. The homeless in sf need to be given decent places to live in a place where land costs something normal. That place does not currently exist in or near San Francisco, but can be reached by an hour or two bus ride.

[fallingknife]

Then get them housing outside SF

[sharts]

They would then cry that it's not their problem once outside SF jurisdiction. Thus perpetuating the same issue elsewhere.

CA should have taken the 17B and invested it the lowest-cost-of-living regions in the US to build out communities + housing with full wrap-around services for different purposes (homelessness, mental-health, vets, etc) and focus on therapy/recovery.

It seems spending 17B in CA would just get you a hotdog and bicycle these days.

[Fatnino]

Thats what I said

[HWR_14]

No one who lives in a $1mil+ home (absent subsidies) is middle class.

[seanmcdirmid]

Anyone who lives in just a $1 million house in LA or SF is more than likely middle class, not even on the upper end of it.

[HWR_14]

You have a skewed sense of the middle class. Assume it costs $50,000 a year to live in a million dollar house (which seems on the low end of reasonable.) The median tax-home pay for a household in San Fransisco is $84,500. So you think most people are spending 60% of their take-home pay on housing?

Also, the median value for an owner-occupied house in SF is 1.15MM. So half the people live in something less than that.

[jjav]

> Also, the median value for an owner-occupied house in SF is 1.15MM. So half the people live in something less than that.

This contradicts your earlier statement. If the median owner-occupied house 1.15M, that means more than half of homeowners are living in houses worth $1M or more. Clearly that includes middle class people, since it's more than half of the people.

Also, note that it doesn't take much money to live in a $1M house if you bought it a while back.

[ohgodplsno]

No, because homeowners are not a representative sample of the population. If I slap you down in the middle of Beverly Hills, I could say that on average you're a millionaire, but that doesn't exactly tell the whole story.

It includes _some_ middle class people. Fewer and fewer as property taxes raise and the value of their home rises. Sure, they'll have a bunch of cash once they sell it, but not everyone wants to move away from where they were born just because there's a bunch of overpaid tech bros now living next to you.

[midasuni]

Assuming you bought a whole back and have $1m equity, You could sell your $1.15m house and take 4% a year or $40k from that for doing nothing. You just need to live in a sensible location and let SF die.

[fallingknife]

More than half of all homeowners. Not everyone is a homeowner.

[35997279]

Austin has a great housing first community.

https://mlf.org/community-first/

[than3]

I agree.

SF has a lot of issues and the money went to places that were ineffective with only a small portion going to housing first.

17B shows this isn't a homeless problem, this is a corruption and accountability problem.

[1letterunixname]

Resettlement somewhere cheaper is the sensible thing to do. Unfortunately, this requires relocation and doesn't scale. This is something the federal government should pay for and coordinate.

[imtringued]

It requires the relocation of businesses, not people.

[animitronix]

Housing costs in SF are too high to house them in situ. Gotta bus them somewhere else cheap and start there. Why would you ever try to keep them in the city, it makes literally no sense?!