[josefresco]

I certainly hope we wasn't referring to a startup to help you avoid the homeless. Taken in context, I believe he's referring to the widening income gap and would therefore not be advocating simply avoiding them.

A startup to fix the homeless problem? Good luck.

[the_af]

Agreed about the "good luck" thing. I wonder if this is a common reality disconnect thing going on in the SF startup world.

Homelessness and poverty aren't entrepreneurial problems to be solved by a startup. They are profound socioeconomic and mental health problems that require a big change beyond what's possible with a new social app thingy or an iOS gadget or an agile web framework or whatever. It probably requires country-wide or world-wide political and economic policy change. It's also something that has been going on for centuries, and I doubt this was because there weren't enough enthusiastic startup entrepreneurs in the world.

That I have to even say this makes me wonder if the startup guys in SF are actually Martians experimenting on us Earthlings.

[happyscrappy]

Homelessness is an amazingly intractable problem. In Boston even though crews are dispatched to bring the homeless to shelters during cold snaps they still die on the street because you can't forcibly make them get into the van.