[throwawaymaths]

> The city surely understands the long-term costs of its policies, and it’s run by highly pragmatic people with limited budgets.

Is that the case? maybe there are highly pragmatic people in the org, but i dont think they are "running" things. and the city's budget for homelessness is astoundingly high (look it up)

[Miraste]

If anyone is wondering, it's ~1 billion dollars per year, for a homeless population of less than 10,000. With this money, they have achieved basically zero change in that number for years. Staggering, incredible levels of waste.

[istjohn]

It might be more appropriate to look at the numbers of people being brought off the streets. They have over 14,000 supportive housing units and 4,200 shelter beds. 5,000 of the supportive housing units were added in the last 5 years."More than 20,000 people seek homeless services in San Francisco over the course of a full year" [0].

At the Jan 2024 Point-in-Time count, 4,354 unsheltered people were counted, a 1% decrease since 2022 and a 16% decrease since 2019. There was a 20% decrease in the number of people living in cars since 2019.

To compare, NYC spends $4 billion per year and has 62,000 supportive housing units and 130,000 shelter beds (these NYC numbers come from GPT4o Search and are unverified).

0. https://www.sf.gov/reports--september-2024--2024-point-time-...

[yibg]

That's not necessarily the right measure though right? If that money wasn't spent (or less of it was spent), what would things be like? Hard to A/B test this, but seems like the "problem" would get worse rather than stay steady state.

[ryoshu]

If the population is increasing YoY and the number of homeless remains the same, is it?

[throwawaymaths]

jesus, the amount has increased since last i checked -- it was 80k/homeless person before.

> basically zero change

i would have to be persuaded the change hasn't been negative

Obviously some secular external effects (like fentanyl) have been causing a large part of the problem, but still.