[onlyrealcuzzo]

There's 8300+ homeless people in San Francisco.

That's 1% of the population. Maybe not a big deal to you.

There's only 13,000 city blocks in SF.

That's a homeless person every 2 blocks.

Kind of dangerous to be walking past people in all different states of desperation multiple times every trip everywhere you go, is another way to look at it.

[Broken_Hippo]

Even if you end homelessness, you'll still be walking past people in all different states of desperation multiple times everywhere you go.

People looking like they have homes or acting like it won't stop this. It doesn't make people inherently dangerous.

Don't get me wrong, I think any percent of the population being homeless because of lack of options is a tragedy. (I don't really care if someone wishes to be so, and I think we should have appropriate living options for this). I understand that you can't really stop temporary homelessness - fires and urgent things happen - but that's something we can deal with as needed.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

Is your argument that, because x% of the population is desperate, we shouldn't care or do anything about x%+y% being like that?

y% LIVES on the blocks - so the multiple on y is higher (higher probability you encounter them), and the desperation factor is also likely much higher.

[nis0s]

Please note that someone giving you a quantitative context isn’t necessarily saying don’t care. But it’s important to be mindful of how people use words in the media to describe certain issues because it benefits them politically or financially.

The problem which sticks out to me is that homelessness can be addressed by providing housing, but that’s not an easy solution to provide in a country that gets 10s of millions of illegal immigrants. So why is someone talking so much about homelessness relative to other issues? Do they want the U.S. to provide a house for every illegal immigrant who crosses a border? If political officials in states struggling with homelessness really care about solving the problem, they would do what other states are doing, as mentioned in OP’s article.

[UncleMeat]

Is it dangerous? I agree that people with means feel unsafe when encountering poverty but the "it is unsafe to ride the subway because there are poor people there" stuff doesn't appear to be proportionate with actual risk.

I think that one of the huge limitations of how we think about homelessness in the US is that we view it as a problem that non-homeless people encounter. This encourages a bunch of policies that make it easier for somebody to avoid ever having to see a homeless person but which do little to mitigate the suffering of a homeless person.

[devmor]

I don’t really think this holds the point you think it does.

While property crime is more likely to be committed by people the lower their income level is, the majority of all violent crime is committed by people who have homes.

In fact, the homeless are far more likely to be the victims of a violent crime than any other income demographic.

Furthermore, the unstable and dangerous people you see behaving erratically on the street are not necessarily sleeping there - and the homeless in the area probably feel much more unsafe about their presence than you do.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

> majority of all violent crime is committed by people who have homes.

Gee, I wonder why, they make up 99% of the population.

How could they ever make up more than 50% of crime?

> I don’t really think this holds the point you think it does

[devmor]

No, you just missed the point I made.

Which is that if you’re scared of being assaulted by someone you should be scared of everyone around you at all times. Someone’s housing status does not make them any more likely to attack you.

Being scared of homeless people hurting you is like being scared of flying in a plane when you drive a car every day.

[sroussey]

People drugged out screaming on the street in SF are not necessarily homeless. Just that they may have rules about drugs in their room.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

Is this an argument that a homeless person per block isn't a problem?

Or are you just what-about-ing?

Homeless people can be a problem independent of housed-drug addicts being a problem.

[ThrowMeAway1618]

Yeah! A big problem. We should just Brian Kilmeade[0] them all, right?

They're a burden on society and should be removed. But why stop there? The bottom 20% of school kids are just going to end up being a burden on society too! Prison costs something like $50k/inmate/annum. So let's inject them too!

But why wait for the kids? We know who is popping out all those burden-on-society babies. Sterilize them. Then we can use them as "comfort women" for our brave, selfless Immigration Enforcement heroes!

USA! USA! USA!

[0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fox-news-involuntary-letha...

[ThrowMeAway1618]

I'm getting a little worried about you HNers.

Granted, this is pretty obvious satire, but upvoting it?

If you did, is it because you support murdering poor and disadvantaged people?

I hope not. But some folks around here make me wonder.

Maybe I'll just stop, as I certainly don't want to encourage murderous pieces of shit.