https://centerforhealthjournalism.org/our-work/insights/mill...
More seriously, you get grafts like these. $800k for sheds in Los Angeles [1] or 300k for shipping containers in Oakland [2]. These are the type of stories that destroy hope that government us up to the task of handling the problem, no matter how much money they throw at it.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-03-05/lopez-co...
https://oaklandside.org/2024/07/10/oakland-fbi-investigation...
Spending $700M/year on homelessness crisis is straight up insane. There has to be a better way that doesnt cost as much. SF is kinda fucked.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/homeless-questions-an...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpIJJPvn_ZI
Edit: This got downvoted because it's a direct retort to what the GP is suggesting.
I'm heavily involved with Austin Bicycle Meals [1]. When a homeless person already knows you are there to help, it creates an entirely different social dynamic than normal. You get opportunities to make conversation and connections, which humanizes how we view these issues.
That's a total reversal to how most people interact with the homeless: in an entirely avoidant manner either randomly on the street or through a car window. That's why so much of the general public is numb to their plight.
The change in mindset that happens is really powerful, can take only a couple of hours of volunteering to happen, and something I hope more people seek out.
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.
I'm going to risk a political statement and say that this is why I'm mostly hopeful about DOGE, even if parts of it are a shit show.
Building civilization comes with a hefty dose of institutional entropy, which keeps accumulating, despite (or often because) good intentions and competence. Everybody is improving their piece of the map, but this means you get stuck in a lot of spots of local maxima. Some can be fixed from a level above, but some need a round of creative destruction every 10 years or so.
I've read this yesterday: https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/why-japan-succ...
It's a good read and a good blog for many reasons, but the relevant part to this conversation: Japan managed to keep a very high level of living even through decades of economic stagnation and aging population in large part by having a sane zoning system. Yes, that simple. They have 12, nation-wide, mostly inclusive zoning types. This means the permitted building types carry over as you move up the categories, allowing mixed-use development by default.
And indeed, you can actually go to Japan and buy a house for about the price of a decent car - which coincidently used to be the case in most of the world, before the double pressure of zoning/coding on one hand, and migration towards urban centers on the other squeezed the housing pricing way above what actual costs would have it be.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/san-francisco-sign-stolen-...
[1]: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_homeless_relocation_pr...
[3]: https://atlantablackstar.com/2025/02/14/elon-musk-faces-back...
It does: https://www.sf.gov/information--overdose-prevention-resource...
It's an incredibly complicated problem, but if there is one message I can share it is this: homeless people are, first and foremost, people. They span the full range of human experience (the main subject of my movie had a masters degree in psychology) and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Homelessness is not one problem, it is a symptom of at least half a dozen different problems, all of which need different solutions. (And, BTW, some homeless people voluntarily choose the lifestyle. It's definitely a minority, but it's not zero.)
[0] USA has the highest drug use per head of population in the entire world. Portugal is way down the list.
I don't think there's "nothing we can do". I think it's more of a question of how we approach the problem. We have always approached it as a failure of the individual in question, requiring correction by punishment. This has clearly not worked (ever) but everyone seems reluctant to abandon it.
If we approach addiction as a disease, like cancer, that affects some people against their will, rather than something they chose because they're junkie scum, we might help them more [1]
> society just shouldn’t be on the hook for fixing them
In the USA society is never on the hook for fixing people. All that rugged individualism. Other societies work differently, and that seems to get better results.
[0] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/drug-use-... the USA has the highest world
[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...
HUD[1]:
"Housing First is an approach to quickly and successfully connect individuals and families experiencing homelessness to permanent housing without preconditions and barriers to entry, such as sobriety, treatment or service participation requirements."
California Department of Housing and Community Development[2]:
"Housing First is an approach to serving people experiencing homelessness that recognizes a homeless person must first be able to access a decent, safe place to live, that does not limit length of stay (permanent housing)...Under the Housing First approach, anyone experiencing homelessness should be connected to a permanent home as quickly as possible, and programs should remove barriers to accessing the housing, like requirements for sobriety or absence of criminal history."
[1] https://files.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/Housing-F... [2] https://www.hcd.ca.gov/grants-funding/active-funding/docs/ho...
Car break-ins are because the police were not doing anything. They have started trying to finally do something about it and made a dent: https://www.sf.gov/news--increased-enforcement-against-car-b...
But keep in mind that police only ever make positive progress on policies in order to extract concessions from the city
> "I'm optimistic about the progress we've made in reducing the number of auto burglaries in San Francisco, but this is just a start," Chief Bill Scott said. "I want to thank our officers for their tireless work. The SFPD hopes to build on this progress with additional tools, like automated license plate readers, to continue making arrests and holding perpetrators accountable."
> The City has also reached a 5 year high in applicants to join SFPD, which is essential for adding more police officers back.
Oh look, the police force is becoming more politically powerful & crime is down. Wonder how that happens.
Anything I read about middle ages or later was even worse. At best, they put such people into poorhouses.
A big family under one roof helped the best I guess? But in any less ideal situations I doubt even the children would have gone out of their way to devote their lives to the care of the elderly or the disabled. Examples from primitive societies: https://www.international.ucla.edu/cnes/article/113384
I just went to apartments.com. Palo Alto (not the cheapest place), shows loads of 1 and 2 bedroom apartments under and at 3k/month. That's under $40k/year.
This tax calculator shows the generic case of $120k (low 'six figures'), as being more than $80k takehome:
https://www.talent.com/tax-calculator/California-120000
That means less than 1/2 of a 'low end' engineering salary is taken for housing, and that's without a room-mate. Something most people have at the start of their career, and before being married (which is another way to have a room mate).
Do you actually live in the region? Why do you think almost $4k/month of cash in hand, left over after rent paid and taxes paid, isn't much?
Why do you think no one can find a place to live, when apartments.com show places aplenty?
Are you referring to a specific area, instead of a more central place such as Palo Alto?
However, it's hubris to assume that everything is bloat. There is the adage of Chesterton's fence, which reads: "...reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood." Many things that appear to be bloat that serves a useful function, and tearing them blindly is going to do irreparable damage.
It's this trifecta that people complain about - unsheltered, mentally ill and addicted. If we can solve any one, that feeling of abject squalor goes away.
https://x.com/sp6runderrated/status/1879257360344199255?s=46...
To act like housing policy is controlled by developers, even in this contemptuous jest you exude, is delirious and is the remainder of the problem with San Francisco.
> 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-...
https://chatgpt.com/share/67b36262-3c7c-8013-aa61-f1ff8088fb...
If you have the money to imprison the homeless you could use that very same money to just build more affordable housing and that would give you more in terms of results per dollar spent.
But that doesn't jive well with the American idea of having to morally punish unwanted behavior, instead of just helping people.
Jailing homeless people is like jailing people who break a leg: Nobody plans to break a leg, so jailing people who do won't reduce the number of people who do. The only thing criminalization of such involuntary traits achieves is to reduce visibility and pushing people to hide it.
The incarceration rate of the USA is 541/100k:
https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/united-states-america
The incarceration rate of Singapore is 164/100k:
https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/singapore
The homelessness rate in the USA is 19.5/10k. The homelessness rate in Singapore is 1.9/10k.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_ho...
Singapore doesn’t have a homelessness problem because they build as much public housing as possible, sell it to citizens at a massively subsidised rate, and follow up with schemes to rent to people who fall through the system for practically nothing.
If you want to reduce homelessness, you need to build a large volume of housing. San Francisco is doing the exact opposite and getting the exact opposite results.
And Singapore executes ~3.5 times more of it's population than the US. Singapore is a heavily policed state. They still cane people there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_in_Singapore
There is a _huge_ difference between how crime is handled in the US and how it is handled in Singapore.
> If you have the money to imprison the homeless you could use that very same money to just build more affordable housing and that would give you more in terms of results per dollar spent.
I'm not talking about the homeless. The people I lived next to had homes (that were unfortunately adjacent to mine). They would constantly commit crime and face 0 repercussions for it. I knew of someone in the building that was on their 5th DUI somehow. They were still driving, still causing problems nearly every week.
> Throughout his campaign, Trump focused on deregulation, tax cuts and reducing mortgage rates. In speeches, including one at the Economic Club of New York in September and a press conference in August, Trump reiterated his promise to reduce regulatory barriers and vowed to make federal land available for extensive housing projects.
https://www.housingwire.com/articles/trump-housing-build-fed...
In 2023, Singapore executed 5 people, which is less than one in a million:
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/policy/internatio...
You basically have to bring drugs into the country to be executed. So as long as you don’t do that, this statistic doesn’t affect you at all.
> How policed are these public housing projects? I wouldn't have a problem living near or even in a place like that if there weren't criminals running around.
Three quarters of Singaporeans live in these places, and there is no significant police presence. There doesn’t have to be because the crime rate is so low. Criminals aren’t running around.
> Sure. I just don't see that happening in the US without it turning into a dump. I didn't even live in a homeless shelter. I lived in an income restricted place. It was a magnet for criminals and non-criminals are punished for it.
I think you read “public housing” and interpreted it as something like you have in America, with high crime and poverty. That’s a misinterpretation. This is the type of place most people live in Singapore. They are nice places to live, they are just massively subsidised by the government.
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/banks-sell-down-55-...
so I was wrong to say they were as low as 40 cents, but the point stands that twitter's financials have improved a great deal
https://endhomelessness.org/resource/opioid-abuse-and-homele...
i do not have any idea how to solve housed people turning to drugs/alcohol to try and solve internal emotional pain...maybe more & more education.
https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/place-based-...
https://americaninequality.substack.com/p/violent-crime-and-...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Singap...
540 ish executions in 35 years. 50 executions last decade. I don't think these are the statistics that make me thing Singapore is a kill happy country.
>m not talking about the homeless. The people I lived next to had homes (that were unfortunately adjacent to mine). They would constantly commit crime and face 0
Anecdotes are just that. I've been in a nice neighborhood. I don't think people are naturally evil.
Did it?
There is an interesting discussion for a picture on reddit's //r/wtf right now: https://old.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/1ioz5xy/carved_ivory_c...
Basically, it looks like a significant propaganda effort was used to get people to act that way. That means it wasn't automatic at all.
It works best when the parent/child relationship is pretty good, and when the child is not under a lot of pressure him- or herself.
It was the ideal, sure, but how much of it is actually true IRL? There seem to be plenty of bad parents, in which case the children would require quite a bit of pressure and/or brainwashing to take care of them I would think.
> But you don't see very many people moving from the highest-income cities in the U.S. to places like Appalachia
CA declined in population this decade until 2024:
https://apnews.com/article/california-population-growth-pand...
So yes, people are moving out.
So the user "searealist" who you're responding to was correct in saying the comment was written by AI. Are we not supposed to call that out when we notice it? It's difficult because it's typically impossible to prove, and most people won't be as honest as the OP was here.
If what "searealist" did here is not acceptable even though he was right, what are we supposed to do? Flag, downvote?
Personally, I do not want to see any LLM generated content in HN comments, unless it's explicitly identified by the person posting it as a relevant part of some conversation about LLMs themselves.
[1] >>43075184
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-...
From what I hear, it is quite successful, giving their residents the dignity and autonomy they need to stand on their own.
https://abc7.com/post/federal-judge-frustrated-missing-data-...
"frustrated" is an understatement.
"You're not working on your time frame now. You're working on mine," Carter said.
And surprise. LA is getting small improvements on the homeless situation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_social_we...
It's kinda interesting. In terms of % of GDP on social welfare spending it's halfway down the list (but still just above Australia and Canada which surprises me).
In terms of government taxation and spending it's very close to the top on taxation and #10 on spending, which is definitely not what the USA tells itself.
This implies that the USA taxes folks heavily and then doesn't spend it on social welfare (which seems consistent with the vast military spending).
A nice pair of contrasting data points here is WA and West Virginia. Drug usage and addiction, as well as mental health problems, in West Virginia far outstrips Washington - see https://www.kff.org/statedata/mental-health-and-substance-us... However homelessness in Washington is far, far worse than in West Virginia. West Virginia had almost the lowest rate of homelessness in the country.
https://mountainstatespotlight.org/2024/07/16/wv-new-data-ho...
https://247wallst.com/state/how-the-homelessness-problem-in-...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
(see also >>22427782 and similar)
We haven't added a specific rule to the guidelines about it (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) but we may end up having to.
What's tricky is that accusing other commenters of being bots/AIs is, at the same time, a new twist on the "you're a shill/astroturfer/troll/bot/spy" etc. swipe that internet users love to hurl at each other, and which we do have a guideline against (for good reason).
Between those two rules (or quasi-rules) there's a lot of room to get things wrong and I'm sorry I misread the above case!
We don't want LLM-generated comments (or any other kind of generated comments) here. Downvoting or flagging comments that you think are generated is fine. "Calling out" is more of a grey area because there are also a lot of ways to get it wrong and break the site guidelines by doing so. But I got it wrong the opposite way in the above case, so I'm not really sure how to make all this precise yet.
We rate limit accounts when they post too many low-quality comments and/or get involved in flamewars. I'd be happy to take the rate limit off your account, but when I look at your recent comments, I still see too many that match that description:
If you want to build up a track record of using HN as intended for a while, you'd be welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and we can take a look and hopefully take the rate limit off your account.
The drugs are administered first to foster obedience, credulity, and fidelity. The patient learns to keep their appointments, lest the drugs be withdrawn. The patient becomes a regular customer at the pharmacy, which must also be done on precise schedules. The drugs must be taken as directed, and the patient learns how to read and understand and follow intricate rubrics for rituals at home, and what foods to avoid, how to coordinate meals with the drugs, etc.
The patient, having demonstrated obedience and fidelity is well-supervised now by the clinic and provider. The drugs are "virtual shackles" that stand in for actual restraints and confinement methods. Just as "chemical castration" substitutes for surgical mutilation, any patient who's on drugs and making regular appointments can be let loose, a feral in the human population, often undetected and blending in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_psychiatry#/media/F...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Pinel
It's important to consider that Mental/BH has never been a medical discipline, and while today's scrubs and white coats are the priestly raiment of BHT, NP-LPN-RPh-BH, and M.D.s alike, they take blood pressure and do labs, and they prescribe drugs and work in clinical systems, even Western-style BH is, fundamentally, a religious temple cult of profound spirituality. In order to fit the mold of modernist secularism, the BH temple must array itself in trappings of science and respectable, professional jargon. The BH orthodox profession is that mental illness begins and ends in the body, somewhere, hopefully the brain, or at least where the neurotransmitters flow, to be manipulated by sacramental means. Because if mental illness is not bound or subject to the body, or the secret HIPAA-protected rites and liturgies are not concrete and high-tech, then treatments become subjective, outcomes are unpredictable, and evidence cedes ground to superstition or faith in deities and the intangible world of spirit, which must be ignored in order to promote and foster D.E.I.
Ramp up drug regimes trying to blunt aggression, anxiety, restlessness, independent thought and reason, resistance to authority, and other compulsions to harm others, or sometimes the drugs magnify those compulsions and homicidal ideations, and the patient just goes totally apeshit, until the hospital can get to billing their insurance in earnest. But since President Reagan "closed the asylums" the paradigm shifted to keeping people out and free and at-liberty. Because institutionalization is an excessive burden on taxpayers, families, and insurance carriers, and it's labor-intensive: this is recapitulated in the past 5 years because the "Flatten the Curve" mantra was promulgated because there are widespread staff shortages and a lack of skilled, certified HCPs, especially for Defence Against the Dark Arts. I recommend viewing the critically acclaimed, award-winning film "Ladybird" starring Saorsie Ronan; her mother is a psychiatric nurse played by Laurie Metcalf, and see how Ladybird herself turned out
Even for the HCPs on staff, BH facilities are closer to meat-grinders than revolving-doors, as they burn out, train up, move up, drink their own Flavor-Aid, circulate within the system. So those homeless psychos meet a new team of strangers every month or so. Over 25 years, I personally witnessed one clinic that changed its name/brand/ownership 5-6 times, expanded/moved at least 3 times, and there are literally dozens of BH systems that didn't exist 10 years ago, including 8-story hospitals with no 6th floor.
https://www.azahcccs.gov/Fraud/Downloads/ProviderSuspensions...
Would you believe dozens of New Religious Movements operating under auspices of BH services? You may find yourself in a shotgun shack, worshipping Shiva or Kali, or I don't know, in a UFO cult, or practicing tantric yoga with authentic Punjabi Guru, because Medicaid funding. BH Funding for Treatment is Public Safety and a National Security concern: every time a mass shooting is reported on the news, Congress acts to bolster BH funding and services, and so "every time a shell casing pings, someone's clinic builds a wing!"
Ask anyone working in hospice/palliative care and they may confide that drugs are administered when family or staff are irritated or vexed by the patient, rather than basing it on the needs of patient herself. An incoherent or insane patient may be unable to articulate their needs, but when they act out, or become criminally dangerous, they must needs smacked down. "The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease" indeed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy#Lobotomy
The patient works with the provider to identify and treat more and more conditions. The drugs layer-up, and sometimes extra drugs are shoveled on top, to complement really debilitating effects. But in general, the drugs are exacerbating and magnifying the patient's sins and proclivities. The drugs are interacting and the patient is increasingly entangled in the intricate ritual of provider->pharmacy->daily pill rituals->pharmacy->provider->pills.
It's impossible to know whether recovery is attributable to a true underlying change or whether the drugs have papered over the worst symptoms. Therefore, it's never advisable to stop those drugs or titrate off them, because they don't get labeled with maximums or limits like the OTC stuff can be (this guy once OD'd on fiber supplements).
In the case of "lunatics" and other folks who just had a temporary nervous breakdown or trauma-based freakout, they certainly can recover and exit the system--anyone can exit the system until they're court-ordered or incarcerated, anyway.
There's plenty of other non-drug treatment for outpatients on the streets; counseling/therapy can be done 1:1 or in groups and other supports in the clinic for building life skills, etc. The homeless nutjob population can typically get benefits from us taxpayers to keep them in the clinic 3-5 days a week, just doin' stuff, because the clinic is pretty much a church, and the mentally ill need a religion with structure, rituals, priests, and sacraments like Prozac.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/ktnBzitvbKjPrFp78
Is this clockwise or widdershins? I need to squint and ponder the shape before the swastika spins out. Like the arrow in the FedEx logo.
Activate the Satellite Photo view to see the building design
This area in Glendale, AZ is a large medical complex, and the two "spins counterclockwise swastika style" buildings are "Advanced Health" which is boutique cosmetics and upgrades for the wealthy, mostly, and there are dentists and imaging/radiology and vision care. You can Street View the shingles hung outside. No BH here that I found.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/srBLyNUkMLNmD3gt6
Another interesting clockwise swastika, if I am not hallucinating it, is by road design in Tempe 85288:
It's at Priest Drive, [psychiatrists and physicians are a priestly class who practice a religion of Aesclepius, wearing casual blue or dressy white vestments and stethoscope rosary, in temples that smell sanitized and sterile], and there is a little international food court with good falafel and Hindu fare, cybersecurity/IT firms kitty-corner to that, homes going up, a train station, and oh yeah, up the road to NW there's the central behavioral health authorities and crisis line operators, a large disability center, the D.E.S. services for SNAP, unemployment, not far actually from the Phoenix Zoo, etc, (is the Zoo hiring this month? any vacancies for carbon-based homeless?) and a housing agency for the Mentally Ill, Disabled and Chronically Homeless, commercial blood testing lab, etc.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/PXz44uHWc4vTw8hR9
Now of course a Swastika is not automatically rabid Nazi supremacist style, but it helps to understand the positioning of Mental Health Care and ordinary normal physicians and hospitals, the legal authority they carry to route patients out of the community, and into court-ordered drugging, or the penal/corrections/prison system, and the pipeline to cemeteries such as White Tanks or crematoria. Of course many mentally ill people also die or become gravely disabled, or felons, without any treatment.
But I just looked at the graceful curved arms of Priest & Washington as the wheel spins clockwise, I suppose.
Don't forget that the WWII losers and refugees migrated to elsewhere and contributed all their research and intellect to receiving nations. Herr Mengele drowned off South American coast. So it goes.
