Unlike some here, I came away with a deep sense of empathy, and today’s HN snark and frustration bounced off me pretty hard. The public order issues - homelessness in parks, the challenges of shared spaces—have certainly impacted me. But more than that, I struggle with how to translate the state of the world to my boys. I always remind them: every unhoused person was once a little boy or girl. We might be older now, but we’re still kids inside, and nobody dreams of growing up in these circumstances.
What struck me most was the balance of compassion and pragmatism that Amanda brings to her work. It’s easy to be frustrated with the policies and bureaucratic inefficiencies that slow down real solutions - but they are, in some ways, understandable.
The biggest frustration for me is the gap between the mental state of many unhoused individuals and the requirements needed to secure housing. The city surely understands the long-term costs of its policies, and it’s run by highly pragmatic people with limited budgets. But rules are rules, and at some point, top-down accommodations (including medical interventions...) are necessary to bridge this gap.
To those whose lives have been irreparably harmed by the violent mentally ill people inhabiting SF's streets and parks while the police stand idle and billions of their tax dollars are spent annually failing to solve the problem-- it might hit a bit differently. That isn't the story here, but when you see people taking it differently than you it isn't necessarily because are in any way lacking in compassion.
The article paints the person in question as a harmless Garden Hermit ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_hermit ), perhaps he is but many of the support-resistant homeless are certainly not harmless.
It makes sense that would be the case when you think of it - do the rates of violence decrease as you move up the socioeconomic ladder? By all indications the rate of violence among the very wealthy is not dissimilar from those lower on the socioeconomic ladder. Why would you think homelessness is a cliff through which people suddenly become drastically more violent, especially considering how people like Putin and drug lords are extremely wealthy while paying people lower on the socioeconomic rung to do violence on their behalf to protect their economic interests?
Being a victim of violence is entirely compatible with being a perpetrator of violence. I believe that is very often the case.
But if you ever have a person in a crisp tailored suit come out nowhere at you with a knife in an effort to murder you for no reason than delusion or perhaps a desire to steal your backpack, please let me know.
This isn't a remark on wealthy people being more or less capable of physical violence, but rather that untreated serious mental illness is usually incompatible with maintaining a high maintenance lifestyle. While headwinds probably mean that many of the violent people on the SF streets did come from unprivileged backgrounds, I'm sure people from all different starting points end up there too.
> To those whose lives have been irreparably harmed by the violent mentally ill people inhabiting SF's streets and parks while the police stand idle and billions of their tax dollars are spent annually failing to solve the problem-- it might hit a bit differently
The logic is that if your life is harmed by a violent mentally ill homeless person, then all homeless mentally ill people are more prone to causing such behavior. It’s flawed and I was purposefully making a provocative statement. A statement I might add that has actually been made in the past with much of the same emotional reasoning - I was hoping the jarring racism would resonante and share much of the same callous tone being displayed.
> This isn't a remark on wealthy people being more or less capable of physical violence, but rather that untreated serious mental illness is usually incompatible with maintaining a high maintenance lifestyle
I remember when Bob Lee was murdered in SF and everyone came out of the woodwork claiming it’s the supposedly violent mentally ill homeless people who clearly must have been responsible (it wasn’t). It’s important to separate the baseless narrative from the actual facts on the ground. Mentally ill and homeless make people feel uneasy and unsafe but the actual data suggests in reality they’re not so much different.
We can go back through the threads if you like, but it certainly wasn't everyone. My bet was on it being related to the yet unresolved theft of a ~billion dollars from FTX using phenomenal amounts of mobilcoin.
Instead it was a less interesting story: A drug user under the influence killed another drug user they knew well over an interpersonal dispute.
People doing dumb shit attacking other people they know who are also engaged in dumb shit is enormously different from being attacked by a stranger out of nowhere while minding your own business. People rightfully feel less safe regarding risk that they don't have much control over vs risk they have more control over.
And we should treat it differently. No amount of policing can ever make you safe-- ultimately we all have to keep ourselves safe. FAFO is a law of the universe that we can't legislate out of existence, but we can adopt policies that increase or decrease the risk of random violence.
[1]
Seems like violence is at an all time low, meaning the city is actually safer than ever. In fact, in 2024 violent crimes fell another 14% [2]. So if the goal truly is safety, we should keep doing whatever it is we’re doing because we’re on a fantastic roll of making the city safer.
[1] https://missionlocal.org/2023/04/bob-lee-killing-arrest-made...
[2] https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/san-francisco-2024...
Homicide rates are more reliable, since it's not something that can easily go unreported. But there is a lot of room for violent crime that is short of homicide.
> The 2024 downward trend was evident early in the year and was clearer by July, when police statistics showed a 39% drop in homicides from the first half of 2023, alongside significant declines in some violent and property crimes.
Wouldn’t it make sense that if homicides are down then so is violent crime? It would be strange if they didn’t track together for the most part.
It’s interesting the kind of alternative explanations that you start bringing out when the narrative you have doesn’t agree with the data.
Oh and look:
> Between 2022 and 2024, chronic homelessness increased by 11% with 2,989 people experiencing chronic homelessness in 2024. Thirty-five percent of the total homeless population is chronically homeless, a rate similar to 2022.
Weird how the homeless population stayed the same yet violent crime decreased. It’s almost like they’re not the ones that are behind the violence statistics.
https://www.sf.gov/reports--september-2024--2024-point-time-...