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.
My inquiry is motivated by the observation that AI-generated text has become increasingly prevalent in online discourse, and different platforms have adopted varying stances on whether such content is acceptable, encouraged, discouraged, or outright prohibited. Some online communities prefer organic, human-generated discussions to preserve authenticity, while others are more permissive, provided that AI-generated responses align with the spirit and intent of meaningful discourse.
Thus, within the context of HN’s commenting system, does the platform have an explicit policy, a tacit expectation, or any historical precedent regarding whether AI-assisted comments are permissible? If so, are there any specific constraints, recommendations, or guiding principles that users should adhere to when leveraging AI for participation in discussions? Furthermore, if such a policy exists, is it officially documented within HN’s guidelines, or is it more of an unwritten cultural norm that has evolved over time through community moderation and feedback?
I would appreciate any insights on whether this matter has been formally addressed or discussed in past threads, as well as any pointers to relevant resources that shed light on HN’s stance regarding AI-assisted participation.
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I was swept up in this article and the portrait for Amanda (barrows) - what a unique and strong person - this city is soo lucky to have her.
I want to respond that unlike some here, I came away with huge empathy and today's HN snark and frustration bounced off me pretty hard accordingly. The public order issues such as homelessness in the park have impacted me, but more so, how to translate the state of the world to my children. I always remind them that this person was once a little boy / girl and we might be older, but we're still kids inside and nobody dreamt to grow up in this environment.
The compassion and my own empathy shown here coupled with the pragmatic approach shown by Amanda washed over me and the policies and bureaucratic inefficiencies that make solutions slow and ineffecient are understandable, but also highly frustrating.
The unhoused individuals and their mental state vs the requirements to find a home are very frustrating - the city surely understands the cost of housing policies and is run by highly pragmatic people, but rules are rules and some top down accommodations and medications are needed to help merge this.
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I personally don't see my opinions changed here - I think the posted text is a bit better but also agree on the uncanny valley issue. A little less brain swelling and I would have been all over the small signals :)
Personally, I find AI and the derivatives extremely helpful when it comes to communication (a booster for the mind!) and use it all the time when translating into other languages and also removing my northern British dialect from communication over in California.
You ever notice that only stuff you disliked is AI?
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.
You can disagree with someone's view, but editing their words with AI doesn't make them wrong or disingenuous any more than asking another human to critique your post would be. And to imply otherwise is, itself, disingenuous and disruptive.
The exception would be if you thought there was no human involvement in the account at all, in which case, as another commenter noted, the appropriate thing would be to email the mods.
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?
That’s the playbook. Do they not do this with black people? Immigrants? Trans? China? Homeless?
It’s all they do. It’s their one play, and this playbook that they all subscribe to caused a lot of problems. That’s all.
We must look at the package of beliefs, none of this is isolated.
I think it's important to do both.
b.) Another way to look at it is, "do you think it would be the top comment if the author didn't solicit feedback and thoughtfully edit their comment?" To which I would say, "who cares? Editing is fair play. Let's talk about our actual points of disagreement."
c.) To be frank I think this response from you is very telling. I haven't seen you engage at all with the substance of the comment. But you press very hard on this "AI" angle. The commenter has now shown us their pre-AI draft, and it's much the same - I think if you had a good-faith concern that it was "manipulated," that would satisfy you. Since it hasn't, I infer that your concern is either puritanical ("no AI must ever be used in any way") or that you are attacking the style of the comment when your real issue is it's substance.
It is empathy that is in great part responsible for for the crime ridden shit show that is much of SF.
How do we balance empathy while making SF not a gigantic pile of shit? I don't think there is an answer here. It's choose one, or choose the other.
Not sure what the studies say, but I don’t need a weatherman to tell me when it’s raining outside.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/san-francisco-sign-stolen-...
Nothing about this article strikes me as pragmatic. She's spending all her energy attempting to help people with the least likelihood of success and then gets angry at the system when they inevitably fail. The city didn't kick Morrisette out of the hotel because they like zero-tolerance policies, but because other people deserve a chance a chance to live in a free hotel room as well.
Free syringes make sense because people will find disease-prone means to get their fix, and then they end up in emergency rooms requiring more expensive care.
>Also, many would beg to differ that SF is a "gigantic pile of shit."
It's like the myriad of people living in North Korea who think it's the greatest country in the world. There's reality and then there's people who don't face it.
The housing crisis extends across the bay area and SF is noticeably shittier then most places int he bay area. So it's likely not the housing crisis that is the reason why SF is particularly bad.
There are those that do succeed but those are certainly the most motivated to do so. Others are in transition: know they should get indoors but know their difficulties.
Rather than kicking them out, maybe they are required to attend some mandatory psych sessions. Maybe they go maybe they don’t but at least there support to help them work thru their issues of why they blew up at the staff (as in this instance).
Maybe because it's not the orphan crushing machine, but the lack of the low functioning orphan saving machine. Or a mix of both.
But their rights can’t trump victims, that’s not justice. Like someone else mentioned prop 47 was a bad idea.
And the only thing to show for it is gangs of feral orphans raping and pillaging. (If I can stretch the metaphor a bit too much.)
I suspect if someone did a survey, they'd find that most places in the internet have grown consistently less empathetic in terms of social policy since mid 2020.
You're right in that SF does way too much to accommodate robber barons, tech moguls, heavily-subsidized Silicon Valley industries, and housing speculators.
It does: https://www.sf.gov/information--overdose-prevention-resource...
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.
Which ones? Are there stats showing before/after unhoused numbers?
> There's reality and then there's people who don't face it.
I guess I'm just too brainwashed to be miserable living in the Mission.
This is what I'm saying the ranger is doing. Someone who gets extremely distressed by indoor living is not a good candidate taxpayer funded indoor living. On the other hand, that housing given to someone who is capable of navigating welfare bureaucracy on their own may actually enable someone who is at risk spiraling down a path of no return to turn their life around.
This is true, and that's why housing first is a terrible policy (I've seen it fail spectacularly first hand). Many of these people simply can't take care of themselves, and putting them in free apartments doesn't fix their situation, but it does make life miserable for long-term residents. All while being extremely expensive.
> Maybe they go maybe they don’t
Here they have frequent wellness checks. It doesn't solve anything. This shouldn't be a surprise - someone who's incapable of living civilly when given a free apartment likely isn't going to be a person who's going to put the time and effort into mental health classes.
> 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.
You condemn that policy, so I suppose you think this should be tolerated to a degree?
Let's say that a homeless shelter abolished it's zero-tolerance policy. Staff and other occupants can now be assaulted a few times, before someone gets kicked out.
Who'd work at this facility? At this point, you aren't looking for social workers, you're looking for prison guards. They'd treat their charges with the same love and compassion that correctional officers are known for.
Who'd go into this facility? Would a non-violent peaceful person even want to be sheltered there?
Do you really think a facility like that will help anyone?
Suddenly a zero-tolerance policy towards violence isn't such a bad idea, is it? Maybe, just maybe there is no orphan crushing machine, is there?
Capped property tax increases is a moronic empathy law based on “protecting little old ladies on fixed incomes”. It has resulted in an incentive structure that means all home owners are incentivized to block all new housing and keep the value of their homes sky rocketing.
The second level of empathy laws causing the housing issue is all if the ones that empower NIMBYs to stop housing developments.
“Preventing gentrification”, “stopping the character of the neighborhood from changing”, “delays for a 1 year impact study” are all empathy motivated laws that caused the housing crisis in Cali.
This is not correct. SF gets a superset.
Car break-ins in SF were commonplace 25 years ago. They never became bad in the South Bay. SF just has legitimately bad policies that directly cause a lot of their issues.
The housing crisis is about the only thing it has in common with the South Bay and that’s because it is a state issue.
> Ronnie was always very clear about his needs. He knows he’s a volatile person. He doesn’t want to be in a shared room, especially with a stranger
So perhaps listening to what the people need instead of forcing them into unwinnable situations is the right answer. If your question is how you scale personalized care in a way that’s financially sustainable I don’t know. But pretending like the orphan crushing machine was turned off, to use your words, isn’t capturing the picture as I’m seeing it. Seems pretty crush happy.
[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.
> All seemed to be going well. But in September, Morrisette got into a fight with staff at the Monarch and was evicted. “It was devastating,” Barrows said. Because she was out of town dealing with a family crisis, she couldn’t intervene or help him lodge an appeal.
> It angered her that one bout of bad behavior could cost him so dearly. Given his background and mental health issues, the Monarch should have cut him more slack, she thought.
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...
I’m too lazy to find stats and stats may not exist anyway. You don’t need science to prove to you the ground exists when you get up in the morning. You use your common sense for that.
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.
Homelessness, poor physical or mental health, crime, domestic violence, discrimination. There's a long list of social ills that get worse when a society is inequitable and unequal. These problems and their effects go down significantly when a society acts to maintain its own health and distribution of resources is more equal, there is social mobility, individuals are under less financial stress, etc... Number will never go to zero or even close but there are countries where the base homelessness rate is similar to the US but the manifestation of problem is very different as is the approach, mostly that being homeless isn't considered criminal. e.g. very few people sleep rough, their homelessness period is shorter and living in cars is not normal.
Just that last fact, that living in cars is relatively common and that includes children, makes me look at the US and decide that yes, US society is broken.
Presumably you're aware that's not the only option, as your last comment before the one above was on a thread about the Finnish approach, which has found it to be cheaper and to act as a gateway to get people other help.
With regard to migration, I frequently see expensive CoL and remote work vis-a-vis the pandemic cited as primary reasons, not homelessness or crime. If you have reputable sources saying otherwise, please cite them.
That's why they say capitalism is based in fear. That's why we have dreams of Star Trek.
Met a guy whose elderly wife isn't strong enough to lift him when he falls out of bed, so once a week they call EMS or the fire department to get him back in bed. So many things that you used to call on your neighbors for help with, but life for many Americans in 2025 is isolating and lonely.
That's not empathy. Empathy is being sympathetic to someone based on how similar they are to you. You're talking about much older, less relative concepts, such as equality under the law and limits on what the state can do to people.
Although I am a bit perturbed that there is still such a huge problem with drugs when the economy is booming and unemployment so low. It points to deeper problems within the fabric of American society.
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?
And a very basic part of it is simply geometry: the more people you have in a limited area, the harder it is to build homes for all of them. Historically, there simply were FAR fewer people, and so finding place for homes was never a huge issue. The cost of housing is mostly property, not construction costs.
You'd need, I think, to have security guards on hand. Not to stop drug use, but instead to stop violence against other homeless, to intervene if medical attention is required, and so on.
While the costs would be higher than some other solutions, it would be lower (I think) than paying for private housing.
Of course, you'd have to force move people, and that's not going to happen. That is, unless you make squatting in a park a crime, and the result is "you're going to be incarcerated in this very nice outdoor place" the "jail".
Maybe a medical order.
My point is, I don't see an issue with some of your logic. Some people won't transition to inside living, or being close to others.
But if you take people used to living in parks, move them to a park with cabins(tiny homes), and state run water/facilities, the cost might be the same, but they'd have a warm bed, etc.
According to the social workers I know who work with this population, there is a persistent fear that any form of offered mental health help is a trap for institutionalizing people.
By and large, people who are chronically homeless due to mental health issues will prefer to remain homeless over being required to see a psychiatrist and having to take medicine, or so I'm told.
Maybe I don't understand your comment, but I think our societies were/are tighter in many places and epochs. Maybe it's not so in cities and suburbs in the modern West, but, I think it used to be different in Medieval Europe and before, in villages at least. Neighbors were your support community. I know there are parts of the world where it's still the case.
I'm not that old and I was raised by my neighbors, because both of my parents were working. When my dad was dying last year, I couldn't be there because I was their only economic support, working abroad, and I don't have any wealth to be so if I'm not working. There was more family, but the neighbors were the ones day to day helping my mom with shores and the care of my dad.
>> 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.
It was the children, in most sane cases. Not that I argue it's a good thing to bring children to the world to take care of you when you are dying.
Barring other factors, of course.
Unfortunately, a lot of the homeless I knew were very proud, arrogant, angry, bitter and many other emotions that made it nearly impossible to get them to take care of themselves through any intervention.
And if people refuse to take care of themselves, they will always be in a state where they need others to step in. Once they become destructive to society, I don't think any expectation of mercy from leadership should be expected. That leads to the situations we currently see in some places today.
It's not the lack of shelter that's the issue. There's plenty of shelter and housing if you want it.
And while it is a magnet for this kind of problem, San Jose and Los Angeles have similar issues.
Part of the problem being, they’re one of the easiest places to be/exist if you’re homeless. Not that it’s necessarily easy or pleasant, but compared to Chicago, New York City, or some random suburb? You bet.
More carrot and less stick, more compassion and less puritanism might have a chance of working.
The US is huge with a low population density, why not just expand the cities a bit or build a few new ones? Is there some reason why this can't be done?
Imagine singlehandedly earning 150% of what the average family earns, in one of the richest countries in the world and living in a one-bedroom apartment - and such a low standard of living isn't even cheap.
The landlords must be laughing all the way to the bank!
The California high desert is full of variations of this in shacks and trailers across the nearly uninhabited expanse.
The biggest problem is support, but if they can navigate enough to get government assistance they can survive for quite a long time.
Prison guards get extra pay compared to the work they do, and great benefits, to compensate for the assaults.
Hotel staff do not.
Most other cities that have large homeless populations aren’t on a peninsula so they can eventually shuffle them to places that are “out of sight, out of mind.”
> Nobody knows or helps their neighbors here in Japan
I think yimbys are framing that situation as THE problem.
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.
As a side note I think the state of current discourse has shown that anything other than concrete language presents too much opportunity to talk past each other. So I don't think talking about yimbys is specific enough (and its too tempting to strawman). Same for magas and libs, they are broad labels for a broad spectrum of people
Put another way, an ocean of money was poured into a thimble and no amount of "increasing supply" is going to make a difference. Make it two thimbles, ten thimbles, a hundred thimbles, it's still going to leave a mess.
So? The problem is not "too much money", it's too little housing. Having lots of highly-paid folks around is good for local workers' incomes; housing scarcity is really bad for them. Homelessness happens when people can't afford to pay for a home.
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.
You go continue to live in a universe where you ignore general sentiment and fill in reality with your own happy construct where a void of stats and science exists. Did they do a research study on whether people enjoy eating feces? No? I guess I can make up whatever garbage I want around this area now. Yes people love eating shit. (This is what you and all the science maniacs around HN love doing).
No science exists on how much people hate San Francisco even though there are reams and reams of people talking about how bad things are? Ok fill it in with your own delusion of reality. San Francisco is great. I love the whiff of fresh human shit I occasionally get when the right breeze just waffs by under my nose. I love stepping on broken syringes when I go run.
When I was naive, out on my own after 18 I found a low-income/income-restricted apartment complex and thought I got a steal. It was $1k a month for a 2 bed when everywhere else was closer to $1.5k.
I soon realized I would _never_ live in a low income place if I could help it. Someone was killed in our building. Fights in the parking lot every other day. People leaving trash in the hall ways. People smoking 24/7. Of course, maybe only 25% of the people were "problematic" but that was more than enough to make you feel totally uncomfortable in your own home. The last straw was potheads causing a fire alarm at 3 AM and having to evacuate into the cold night in a panic.
Some people are simply selfish and will not be able to live close to/with others without causing problems. _Most_ people do not want to live next to them.
You're describing income inequality. Personally, I don't believe income inequality is good for everybody. I think it tends to benefit some people at the expense of others.
Even then, the problem could be Elon buying so much steel, or it could be steel manufacturers deliberately limiting steel production and only selling it to Elon to keep prices high. The latter is what is happening with landlords and building restrictions.
The fact that many countries have solved it seems to indicate that you are wrong.
I think you’re coming at this from the wrong angle. A lot of people just really like drugs (and alcohol) and it has nothing to do with society getting them down. Surely there are plenty of people abusing substances as a coping mechanism but I think there are likely a lot more who just want to have a good time.
> 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-...
(There are of course some who only got rich by transferring wealth away from others - but they're not the ones people mostly complain about wrt. 'the rich'.)
I don't understand the reflexive nature many people present in jumping this kind of framing. Of course it's taxpayer funded. Everything is taxpayer funded. Even when it's not literally paid from taxes collected by the government, it's probably funded by people who pay taxes.
The price you pay for your groceries funds not just the wholesale purchase of the goods you pay for but also the labor, facilities, equipment and resources used to purchase, deliver, store and sell those goods. Considering the total amount of taxes collected versus the revenue of the place you get your groceries, you probably contribute more of your income to operating that place than to any single service funded directly from taxes. The amount of those grocery expenses that goes directly into profits alone is probably still greater than that. Housing first specifically also literally is cheaper than the previous approach by reducing expenses for medical services, policing and incarceration.
So "taxpayer funded" is neither a meaningful qualifier if taken literally nor do its implications stand up to scrutiny.
The most common reason for using this phrase is an emotional appeal to selfishness. Your money is being spent without your say on services you don't benefit from. I find that framing morally appalling but even so, what is the alternative? What the US did before was more expensive. Not housing people means more health issues and ER visits. Throwing them in prison means housing and feeding them at a massive multiple of the cost of a housing first initiative. If you want to save costs without spending money on housing, I guess you could cut their access to medical services but then you might as well allow law enforcement to shoot them on sight as the outcome will be the same.
> On the other hand, that housing given to someone who is capable of navigating welfare bureaucracy on their own
What you're describing is triage, not housing the homeless. If your housing program is small enough that you have to engage in triage and turn people away, it's not addressing homelessness, it's addressing a fraction of the homeless population. It's better than nothing, sure, but it's not enough.
Also triage means weighing the necessary resources for treatment against the likelihood of recovery and the likely extent of the recovery. You don't treat someone who can walk it off but you also don't treat someone who's in very poor health or too far gone to be saved without using a disproportionate amount of resources.
Triage is not how you organize a hospital. Triage is how you respond to an overwhelming emergency situation without access to necessary resources. Triage is a last resort measure to reduce the number of people who will die, not a strategy for helping people survive and thrive.
Homelessness is not a natural disaster, not a spontaneous pandemic. Homelessness is a longstanding social issue most often directly arising from poverty and lack of mental health support. If your concern is with the support being wasted on people with worse chances and not support being insufficiently funded for that kind of decision not having to be made, I think you might be overestimating your humanitarianism.
We could "solve" the problem like Singapore or China (some of these 'many countries'), and simply throw everyone in jail for petty crimes. In fact, IIRC Singapore is one of the safest places on earth. I'm sure SF (and California, and the country at large) would probably take issue with a sudden step up in policing.
https://chatgpt.com/share/67b36262-3c7c-8013-aa61-f1ff8088fb...
Favoring narratives of individual heroes over narratives of systemic changes is a cultural problem. Whether it's Atlas Shrugged, the Odyssey or Harry Potter. It instills a learned helplessness and an artificial desire for a "strong man fix things" that can be very difficult to overcome. But it also atomizes and fractures society and benefits those with the most individual wealth and power.
The ranger is a hero. What she is doing is good. But she shouldn't have to do it. And nobody should have to do so much. The article intentionally buries its lede: if this is what it takes to save one person, how can we save thousands? The implied answer is again helplessness: of course this isn't scalable so we can't. What she is doing is too much for one person, so we can't expect it of others. But the real answer is that literally none of this would be necessary if the system were actually built to help these people.
Her work does not require a herculean effort because it is difficult. It requires so much effort because it is being made difficult. The right question isn't how can we scale this, the right question is how can we make it easy enough that we don't need her to be a hero. The question of scalability answers itself once you've removed the obstacles.
This is the real world where societal structures save hundreds of millions every year.
The amount of suffering that would exist if society dissolved is unfathomable.
those who cried out to quote Tax The Rich unquote, were likewise upset by the tariffs being imposed which are taxes on the rich... a really uniform and effective one! taxing corporations by tariffs is much father reaching than taxing individuals. individual heroes.
those who cannot interpret epic fantasy sagas as allegory or larger than Life metaphors are already helpless and they just need entertainment and some opiates.
So the way I figure, you spend money on imprisoning (though private prisons make more money and can sell non-violent labor).
Or spend money on housing and social workers and maybe a good chunk of this individuals rejoin the workforce and pay taxes.
Or you spend money on cleaning up after, paying for medical emergencies, and increased private security costs.
The option selected is either the one that the invisible hand found to be the most efficient or a better option was not sold well enough.
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)
This clearly isn’t true, as the US has a per capita prison population four to five times that of China & Singapore! We jail far, far more people than they do.
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.
Humans naturally evolved in a hunter gathering setting, yet certain governing “civilizing” forces had the audacity to eliminate that as possible lifestyle, and then label people who defy that restriction on lifestyle choice as problemmatic.
I know what you mean by police state, but i wonder why america doesn’t consider themselves a police state, with such a large prison population and all the innocuous behaviors that can land you in legal trouble. i guess americans get indoctrinated in a certain way of thinking, where their subset of freedoms which they can mostly practice, makes them think they are free but ignore all the numerous other penalized behaviors. for example: i cant possess cocaine regardless if it wont be consumed as a drug, cant drink in public, cant lay down in public, cant sleep in public(ny), etc etc. a lot of intermediary stuff gets penalized because its the only way to control some tangentially related detrimental behavior, or its penalized for making people feel odd (nudity).
but more on point: america polices property taxes. Any property owned gets taxed automatically. this creates a forced work state to accumulate money to pay Uncle Sam. Failure to comply with this system and you get policed or pushed around as a homeless. David Graeber talks about Madagascar colonies set up with a similar system (underline) intentionally(/u) to produce a productive populace. similarly he mentions ways monarchies created rules and systems to force markets and force productivity elsewhere. I think homelessness circumstances is by design, and this free nonpolice state we call america is actually an artificial created police state. we can choose different governing setups that have different features emergent and by design. Its what Mao attempted to do, its what the French and British monarch did. But i see the coercive force in all the government setups even the ones that claim to be free.
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.
Of course you can probably find some government subsidy somewhere and trace it to grocery stores but nobody realistically claims grocery stores are taxpayer funded.
The government directly putting homeless in hotels over and over again is very clearly taxpayer funded and everybody knows what is meant when someone says that.
I'm not even saying the solution is more/harsher policing. I'm saying it is a solution that seemingly works.
> 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.
Reference: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
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.
No, I don't. I claim it's difficult and unlikely.
EDIT: so long as it offers an urban playground to people earning high salaries, that is
> 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.
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.
The problem I was referencing was the problem of trying to get the general populace to live with antisocial types. I don't think that can be "solved" in the US anytime soon.
> 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.
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 advocate a Singapore-style justice system then thanks to atoav's revelation that they do much better on crime than we do with punishments like caning and execution for most hard drug offenses.
> 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.
Equally curious which the non-working property owners fall into as well?
I met a nursing student in Shanghai who ended up marrying a "driver". (For reference, the way you get into nursing school in China is by flunking the college entrance exam.)
Attending Fudan University, I also met several students there and at the school across the street, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. Both are highly prestigious.
Everyone's graduated by now, and the most materially successful of all the contacts I made, by far, is the nurse. She already owns a Tesla and an apartment in Shanghai. (She also has a child, which is true of only one of the university students.) What's her secret?
The couple's parents bought those things for them.
• Societally and culturally produce so few individuals who would behave the way America's most problematic homeless do that direct 1on1 intervention is feasible. There are school districts in the US where the truancy rate exceeds 70%. There are other countries where this is not the case. Switzerland and Norway come to mind.
• Involuntarily commit or arrest individuals who are mentally unfit to function in normal society. Institutionalization, basically. China and Russia come to mind.
If there was a silver bullet which was politically acceptable to "solve" America's homeless problem I ensure you, folks in California would have tried it.
No, in the middle ages that job would have been done by the guy's son, who would have been living in the home.
> Given his background and mental health issues, the Monarch should have cut him more slack, she thought.
Which is the equivalent of "hotel staff should just take abuse".
https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/place-based-...
https://americaninequality.substack.com/p/violent-crime-and-...
The focus on humane care was universal. The methods sometimes suffered from incomplete understanding but that improved over time.
From 1930s to 1960s, the responsible individuals died off and no one replaced them. The p/p/p quit caring. Locations transitioned to gov-only. The public/press weren't interested so neither were pols. The quality of care steeply fell off as budgets (read 'efficiency') were prioritized over everything.
By the 1970s, asylums were associated with hellholes for mostly good reasons. By the 1980s most were shuttered. The public justification was the inhumane conditions (typically true). The motivating reason was to recapture the remaining funds that were spent on them. There was little/no interest in funding replacements.
FF to today. Florida has 5 state criminal mental health institutions. Their long history is that patients and staff die there with some regularity. After that came out in a news series, reporters lost access and that's where that's at.
source: 10y genealogy research & 25y caring for mi spouse.
Also: 10y supporting developmentally disabled care facilities (public/private) that are still spearheaded by caring, invested individuals. They are models of what is possible.Costs almost nothing compared to prisons, and has a comparable deterrence effect.
You can always arbitrarily divide people into two groups by making one "everybody else", but the two groups you name are not coherent classes. (Not even the first, which overlaps both [a relatively well paid segment of] the working class and the petite bourgeoisie, but especially not the second, which spans from the lowest of the working class to the highest end of the rentier/capitalist class.)
As for "we're actively accomplishing it in other cities", I'm interested in these questions:
1. Who's "we"?
2. Which cities?
3. What exactly is being accomplished?
I don't mind strangers benefitting from my tax dollars. No where do I even imply this, so this idea is completely coming from your own preconceived ideas about those who disagree with you. The problem with this case is that I'm not sure anyone is benefiting from these tax dollars. These men aren't asking for help. They're being pressured into accepting help. Someone resourceful enough to trap racoons isn't fundamentally so helpless that they require 7 months of handholding to apply for temporary housing. He required 7 months because that wasn't something he was interested in the first place but is willing to occasionally humor a pretty ranger. She would have much more success meeting them where they're at. For example, she can set up an arrangement where the rangers will stop harassing the campers and tearing down their encampments if they keep the surroundings clean.
> What you're describing is triage, not housing the homeless
Yes, I'm talking about triage because that's exactly what the ranger is doing.
Frequently asserted, but not really well substantiated. Plenty of new (or previously) ignored archeological and anthropological evidence that humans moved back and forth fairly seamlessly between hunting, gathering and cultivating in many differents part of the world.
You sound like the kind of person who would have somehow managed to read "The Dawn of Everything" by Graeber & Wengrow, but apparently either did not or for some reason disagree with one of their fundamental conclusions.
This is marked contrast to, for example, most European countries (particularly the two you've mentioned) where the number of people who simply do not see a role for non-carceral government action (i.e. the first solution you've described) is quite small.
Combine that with a referendum process, and you've got a situation in which there are lots of things that could theoretically be tried but will not be, even in California.
When people talk about this topic, people get into big debates about it because they are thinking of 2 very different kinds of low-income places.
first perspective is the common american sympathetic or not to homeless and their perspective on penal code. then 2nd, theres reactive use and enforcement of code, which is the main punishment for homelessness. and third is the figurative cognitive behavior modifiers but instead of being therapists they are american rulers who want subjects to behave in a certain manner ( more on that at the end).
first perspective is divided into two camps i think. empathetic yes lets not punish homelessness, lets help them out. they seem to have more influence in liberal states. then theres the “lazy bum” castigators, like trump said or would say. no sympathy, get a job types.
2nd perspective matters more because homelessness in-effect criminalized if police enforce laws and the laws are sufficient to cause more than a minor inconvenience to the homeless. Most states technically have all types of laws to put homeless people in jail, but in certain states and certain contexts do homelessness get more aggressively targeted and thus punished. its in the form of no body wants to deal with homeless people where they hang out at (nimbyism) so they have police remove them however the police are instructed and allowed to do, which might be making and enforcing laws incidentally target behavior homeless are more likely to do but everyone does like loitering.
3rd perspective is more conjecture but is based on academic documented equivalent cases in french and british colonies (found in david graebers writings) and extrapolated to say that people who make the laws in america must think like cognitive behaviorists specifically to wielding the threat of homelessness as a tool to modify the populations behavior to their agendas. this is conjecture but not unreasonable, and its substantiated.
But places in America do penalize homelessness if not intentionally implicitly. examples include hostile archtecture, no sitting rules in transportation hubs, sleep police in new york, and consequences for being, acting, or appearing homeless in various municipalities which sometimes results in jail.
Until sometime around the 1980s, even in the USA poverty and homelessness were scene as systemic failures - "our system should not lead to those results". Post-Reagan, the attitude has shifted dramatically and now poverty and homelessness are broadly seen as personal failures, a mixture of poor morals, bad character and weak decision making. We even used to be a little inclined towards a potential role for the state in helping individuals deal with bad luck, but now bad luck is seen as "gravitating" towards individuals whose fault is all theirs.
This has necessarily drastically altered government policies at the local, state and federal level. We are much, much worse for it, no matter which interpretation of poverty and homelessness is more factually correct.
Personally in my ideal world, we would distribute life's essentials in such a way as to be free at point of use, and then leave markets to handle things they're actually good at, like televisions and such.
It certainly can be solved. The real think is people in power don't want to solve it, and the voters don't want to invest in solving it. Admitting your own folly and vainness is much more difficult than dismissing it as an "impossible problem".
>Some people are simply selfish and will not be able to live close to/with others without causing problems. _Most_ people do not want to live next to them.
And those people do not get the help they need. Again, and investment no one cares to put in. Better to sweep it under the rug and try to rely on the security of higher income areas to deal with it than taking preventative measures.
2. Almost. They don't use for profit prisons who are incentivized to punish. Other countries actually focus on minimizing recidivism. But America keeps falling for "Hard on Crime". Again, that selfishness: "I would never do that, that person deserves to suffer".
>If there was a silver bullet which was politically acceptable to "solve" America's homeless problem I ensure you, folks in California would have tried it.
I agree. But politically people treat reformation as "free handouts". With that attitude nothing will change.
They are a "a paragon of free markets" because their social safeties actually work. Housing probably isn't a stock to hoard like in the US, nor owned by private equity to treat as a business. so you can focus on more than just staying alive and do actual work/passions.
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.
>The government directly putting homeless in hotels over and over again is very clearly taxpayer funded and everybody knows what is meant when someone says that.
And why are we framing is as bad? You're either funding their low income housing, or you are funding their jail cell (and they are not generating any real sense of income to stimulate the economy).
Heck, Id2be surprised if we got even a plurality of Americans who said they'd want to live in San Francisco.
Well that's your first problem. We're hiding the underemplyment crisis with "but unemployment is so low!". Quality of life for underemplyment is a lot closer to homelessness than middle class.
The deeper problem that America is more and more trying to focus on the elite over the working class.
> 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.
Finland, the poster child for housing first, does this as well.
Humans.
>2. Which cities?
My example is Chicago.
>3. What exactly is being accomplished?
Letting people who want to live in San Francisco live there.
If you’re not saying that San Francisco can’t build enough housing to satiate demand, what are you saying, exactly?
Even in my childhood I had remnants of this. My uncles or not-grandma grandma neighbors could be trusted to take care of my when my mom or grandparents weren't around. Nowadays that dynamic is spending $30+ on a credible babysitter. Those are the sort of dynamics that have recently weathered away.
>I doubt even the children would have gone out of their way to devote their lives to the care of the elderly or the disable
1. Yes they did and do. Many people still love their parents and want to make sure they are taken care for.
2. It isn't really that deep for neighbors. It's just a matter of checking up in them every few days. It isn't full time care. Of course if they get hurt they can either help out in minor cases or call emergency if it's more than minor.
These days you may sadly accept dying alone and not being discovered for weeks if people don't regularly contact you. What does that say about modern society?
And you're too focused on families. This society relied on villages that were all somewhat connected. Modern 3rd world countries still have an arguably richer social support than the US because overall their burdens are not theirs to share alone. They pitch in the care for children, provide food, maintain housing, and much more. Having a big family can simulate this clan feeling but the scale is still a magnitude smaller than a village working together.
>in which case the children would require quite a bit of pressure and/or brainwashing to take care of them I would think.
In the same way kids are "brainwashed" to get kicked out at 18 and make a life for themselves in America with minimum support, sure. Any upbringing can be framed as "brainwashing" if you don't agree with it.
A common meme on both sides of the political aisle is that public spending that they don't like is motivated by someone else's profit, but that's never the why the spending happens. I'd like the government to give me a million bucks to dig a hole in my backyard, but that's not going to happen unless if the voters agree to it.
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-...
And it's not particularly insightful to point out that people who are homeless often have difficulties coping with the demands and challenges of life.
From what I hear, it is quite successful, giving their residents the dignity and autonomy they need to stand on their own.
Even if you disregard history, the current POTUS literally talked about concentrating homeless populations into centralized camps away from the general population.
How realistic this fear is and how probable it is, is of course debatable. But given that these people probably didn't have any positive experiences with mental healthcare and institutions and that the public discourse often describes them as analogous to vermin or disease and focuses on "removing them" rather than helping them, trusting a psychiatrist - especially if it means having to go to them, especially into a clinical environment - let alone taking psychopharmaceuticals seems like it would require quite the leap of faith.
Hero narratives are enabling the system.
Those are two different things. She likely doesn't consinder herself heroic. The story about her however is written in such a way to portray her as heroic. It doesn't leave room for any other option than helplessness and hoping for more heroes to emerge.
Framing it as heroes being toxic and enabling the system suggests accelerationism: if things only get bad enough (i.e. if we stop "enabling" the system by trying to work around it), the people will see how bad things are and demand change. But accelerationism doesn't work. When things are bad enough, the people will want a simple answer and a promise of a fast change. Stable systemic changes don't work fast and they are rarely simple.
To put it another way, heroes aren't toxic, heroes are harm reduction. Harm reduction is good because it helps people in the here and now. But harm reduction is not a solution to problems. Solving problems requires putting in the ground work of building bottom-up social structures. There's no reason to believe she would be just as good and enduring in doing that as she is in what she does now. And most importantly, she wouldn't be helping those she helps now because she might not even see it resulting in change within her lifetime.
So given that heroism doesn't work and letting things get worse doesn't work, what now? It sounds like we need a hero to take on the herculean task of dismantling the individualist atomizing culture norms - oh.
- Seem to tolerate high income inequality or even see it as a good thing.
- Value "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" and devalue social safety nets and other avenues of providing opportunity to the masses
- Have given up on higher crime rates, lower education, poorer health care and health outcomes compared to other wealthy nations
Instead of trying to prevent homelessness in the first place, we try to tackle it once it's already there, then throw up our hands and say it's not possible to deal with.
We must have read different articles because the one I read stated that her job description is literally to remove people from these parks, just in a more humane way than just harassing the campers and tearing down the campsites. You can make an argument that they should be allowed to let them live there but her job isn't simply to keep the park clean but to stop people from living there.
> Yes, I'm talking about triage because that's exactly what the ranger is doing.
Again, we seem to have read different articles because to me it didn't read like she was prioritizing specific individuals for movement into housing using any of the considerations I described.
Overall, Singapore and China are significantly more willing to sacrifice freedom in exchange for security. There is more surveillance and no trial by jury, for example.
My apologies.
The parent of your post is a good example of how effective it is at doing that, especially when combined with the claim of an apparent wasteful use of that money. If you pay tens of thousands of dollars in taxes and hear about a million dollars of "taxpayer money" being supposedly wasted, your emotional response reflects an imagined scenario where all of your taxes went into that alleged waste even if individual income taxes alone represent over $2 trillion (i.e. million million, or thousand billion) of the US federal budget and your actual relative lifetime contribution to that individual project can't even be measured in cents.
Not to mention that the news sources referring to that spending as waste may be reporting on inaccurate or incomplete information (even when deferring to an official source) and may be misrepresenting or omitting the actual economic efficiency of that spending (e.g. the entire "condoms to Hamas" incident where the official announcement turned out to not only apparently have mistaken about US medical aid in Gaza specifically but also misrepresent the total spending on contraceptives for AIDS relief by the US across the globe as going to a single place - the benefit to Americans of providing contraceptives to HIV hotspots should be obvious enough).
Doubling down on the preconceived judgments I see. Yes I read the article, and from it, I can tell she is given a lot of autonomy. I don't thinking allowing a "client" to camp for seven months while you file for paperwork is part of her job description either.
> it didn't read like she was prioritizing specific individuals for movement into housing
She is convincing people who otherwise would have refused offers for housing to take housing. If that's not triage, then you shouldn't have brought that up to begin with.
When programming, when engineering, I often run into these sorts of intractable problems.
Changing the rules, changing the preconditions or some aspect of the problem itself, that's usually how I solve them.
In this article, it looks like the Park Ranger is changing the rules by making the system work for the person who is experiencing homelessness instead of forcing the person to go alone into a system that they don't like and they don't necessarily see the value of.
SO it is possible to fix with the appropriate smart thinking and willingness to maintain multiple simultaneous perspectives, it seems.
There are so many reasons why this happened and it's way more than just San Francisco being supposedly more empathetic.
Rhetorically speaking, how about the fact that China is quite happy to supply precursor drugs to help make fentanyl cheap? How is that related to San Francisco's perceived empathy? Again, rhetorically.
It makes me angry that this problem is reduced so frequently when it's been proven time and time and time to be a complex problem. It's almost like citizens / voters / taxpayers are willing to play sport with this problem in order to score some kinds of points around being right, or to avoid the sense of blaming oneself, because they know they can do something about it and yet they aren't.
Being honest is a big part of making progress with this, and I think honestly this problem is way more complex than many of us have actually appropriately characterized.
The article goes a long way towards characterizing the problem well, by talking about each individuals, perspectives, situations, and how the system succeeded or fails, knocking them off the path to gaining public support.
These are common in large American cities. The problem tenants are a minority, but the landlord lacks the usual incentive to address them since the building will always be full, since it's below-market. The landlord may also be a social benefit organization that's politically disinclined to evict.
Non-market housing tends to go badly in the USA, including programs closely resembling those that have succeeded in other countries. The reasons for that are complex, though I strongly suspect that the weak mental health system (many of the worst problem tenants would be institutionalized elsewhere) contributes.
> They were still driving, still causing problems nearly every week.
That's what you get when you build a car dependent society. You can't actually prevent people from driving because people can't practically live without driving.
Sure, they are. "tech workers" tend to work in tech companies. "everyone else" tend not to work in tech companies. It's quite coherent. Are there exceptions? Of course. Does the presence of exceptions mean the classes are incoherent? Of course not.
Can you be more specific?
> Chicago
Chicago's tech sector, while growing, is still smaller than SF's and was much smaller in the past.
> Letting people who want to live in San Francisco live there
Obviously, that's not being accomplished.
> If you’re not saying that San Francisco can’t build enough housing to satiate demand, what are you saying, exactly?
I'm saying such a program would be unlikely to succeed and would be too disruptive to satisfy me, personally (and evidently many other San Franciscans as well). I'm also saying there's another option to increasing supply to meet demand: reducing demand to meet supply.
Quick question: what is the only country mentioned in my comment above?
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.
This was a valid perspective in the 1960s - jobs grew on trees, most people who didn't have a job just didn't want a job. Some people built that perspective in the 1960s, and then never updated it despite jobs no longer growing on trees.
My pet theory is that cars are a substantial cause - people don't want more housing because it will result in more traffic and more people using the nearby 'free' parking. Cities that are less car-centric will therefore have less NIMBYism.
Well, nobody's perfect. After all, perhaps you could've been perceptive enough to understand that I meant that for a long time, and even now, Elon's cars have been premium products at the high end in their category, priced accordingly, and tend to be less affordable for working class people than the alternatives (and even out of reach for some of them), without getting wound around the axle on these "exchanges on semantics." And yet, here we are.
> Anyway, of course a cheaper product is more affordable than a more expensive one, that's a vacuous, trivially true statement that does not add anything to the discussion being made in this thread.
In my experience, it's the trivially true propositions that internet debaters most readily overlook.
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 noted person she was ‘saving’ attacked someone when she was on vacation, and she is lamenting how if she had been there she could have stopped him from being kicked out again. And she’s angry (and reading between the lines, probably burning out) and lashing out at people. And not assigning any agency to the person she was ‘helping’. That is toxic. Regardless of her hero status. I’m sure she didn’t start this way, but this is a result of being put in this position over and over again and trying to do the right thing.
Like a combat vet with PTSD who attacks a random clerk at a grocery store due to a sudden trigger, or goes around yelling at everyone all the time because they’re always pissed off. That isn’t usually because of a one time event.
That she is also doing what she is doing, is also enabling the brokenness of the system by not allowing it to fail in a terrible way so the public or those in charge actually do something different.
Expecting heros to solve systemic issues by going so above and beyond that they ruin themselves is also toxic. That’s that I’m calling out.
Someone who jumps on a grenade in a foxhole is a hero - and those around them owe them their lives. That should be celebrated.
That someone got close enough to throw a grenade into that foxhole was likely due to many screwups, and if we ignore that, and even reinforce the environment that resulted in it, we’re just murdering heros, aren’t we?
Not that anyone wants to think long and hard about that of course.
It doesn’t mean all of these problems are solvable - some parts of life are, and likely always will be, meat grinders for a number of reasons. Maybe this is one of them.
Thoughts? I think we’re actually in agreement frankly.
I know the common human fallback is going to the ‘strongman’ (the ultimate hero fantasy).
IMO, that will almost certainly ultimately fail, and is toxic for anyone to try to even ask, because really we need to take a legitimately honest accounting of what we need/want, what price we’re willing to pay for it, and then actually follow through.
As a society. So there don’t need to have heros constantly ruining themselves to try to save us.
Notably, however, some people will still try to martyr themselves, even in those situations, to be the hero no one was asking for. But that is a different kind of problem.
For reference, the GGGP comment was generated using this prompt:
turn this small reply into an extremely verbose, very long
comment: Outside of my accusation. Does HN have any
guidelines on using chatgpt comments?The rate of people shot by police in the US is 0.34 per 100k of its population. Who needs capital punishment when you shoot people your police doesn't like even before they have been found guilty?
And your anecdotal evidence is not really valuable in the discussion at hand. Somebody else can say the opposite, I for example live in a country where crime is treated differently and we have less violent crime. You can leave your doors unlocked in a major city, despite living in a red light district with its own share of homeless, drug addicts and mentally ill.
Was that all an illusion? If so, what image were you trying to present? Why?
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.
There is a reason why the old saw of ‘if you’re poor, you’re crazy. If you’re rich, you’re just eccentric.’ is largely true.
If you’re a threat to society, society will become a problem to you. If you don’t have the resources to deal with that, then you have a real problem.
The more cooperation that can be elicited from the mentally ill, in terms of becoming sicker, and medicated, and incapacitated or dead, the easier it becomes for citizens who support spouses and sane children, for citizens who work and pay taxes, for sane citizens who own property and generate revenue by leveraging assets, for free humans pumping iron, or those exercising the rights to liberty and the pursuit of happyness.
All of the above are increasingly threatened unless mentally ill humans stop procreating, and be removed from law-abiding democratic communities, and until then, controlled and supervised. An incapacitated patient won't leave home, won't start any fights, and won't disrupt a workplace or elementary schools, if the patient struggles for existence, barely able to prepare meals or get sufficient sleep.
The USA is deeply in debt, overpopulated, gripped and choked by a dark, imperceptible 6-year pandemic that marches through every corridor and vehicle, and still the immigrants flow inwards through the Golden Door, ready to work and assimilate, but is our national Zeitgeist on life support? The feeble-minded and mentally ill, malcontents: especially those without caregivers or supportive families, human weeds! They hinder progress, hinder democracy, and they threaten national security.
Furthermore, the Finnish example shows savings per homeless, despite a far cheaper healthcare system. US savings vs. having these people cost a fortune of ER capacity would likely be far higher per homeless.
US potential savings are vastly higher.
Why US taxpayers are so consistently willing to burn taxpayer money to keep things worse when there are more efficient alternatives always confuses me.
If this was some super-costly policy that needed a big apparatus around it, then they'd have a point, but e.g. in Finland, one estimate is that it costs them up to 9,600 euro a year less to house a person first vs. leaving them homeless. As such, just starting to provide some housing units and gradually grow it would be a win for every local government with a homeless person.
It only starts to become a challenge if a few local governments reaches such a level of provision that it attracts homeless people from surrounding areas that don't do anything themselves, but that's not a reason not to start.
Sometimes it feels like US taxpayers wants the government to burn money if the alternative is to do something that might help other people with it.
We really need to repeal the 93 crime bill. We have the most incarcerated population in the world by both ratio and total numbers. Way too many offenses are felonies and once people get marked by the system, they will most likely never excel in society, much less get by.
In practical terms, because of the inevitable feedback loop, yes. Building more housing creates more demand for housing.
If SF built more houses, then rent would drop and thus more businesses/jobs could be profitable at the same standard of living. The more jobs there are, the more demand for housing there is. And if people move into those new houses then the city has a larger userbase for any locally-focused businesses.
This whole loop is why cities keep growing.
In other words, meeting the demand for housing creates more demand for housing.
It is perversely CHEAPER to give someone a flat and 1000 eurodollars per month than to have them roam the street, using drugs and being a nuisance. This is the wisdom that all first world countries have learned. Pay people money to shut the fuck up. The bread and games of the Romans.
I validated that they certainly can, on their own, and in an expensive area (Palo Alto) too.
I then said that the dynamic is even better with a room mate.
From this you infer I spoke of all affordability?
Why?
Understand, making wild unsubstantiatable and exaggerative assertions about affordability can invalidate a discussion. Stating fact instead of hyperbole is more appropriate.
Hence my response.
So, if it turns out your friend isn't a nurse, doesn't have a high salary, and doesn't live in San Francisco, or some combination thereof, I'm going to score that as a giant lapse in reading comprehension in a thread about high salaries in San Francisco.
Every state does have some form of civil / involuntary commitment, though nothing like before the 80's.
Many drugs also come with unpleasant side effects, especially if someone steals them from you and you're stuck with withdrawals. I'm reminded of one person my friend was helping who hated taking his medicine, but if he didn't, he would inevitably become increasingly paranoid that vampires were out to get him. Helping the poor guy live anything close to a "normal" life was a constant challenge.
I could say the same if I had no real argument to provide too. I understood perfectly fine what you are saying about Teslas being premium products, but I don't see how it is relevant to the question at hand, because the person above said "Elon got rich by creating goods and services for other people," so saying that you personally don't know anyone who is middle class who could afford them is a non-sequitur; no one said anything about Teslas being affordable for middle class at all (even though they are now starting to be, whether there are more affordable options or not), as "goods and services for other people" does not specify anything about the types of people or their income levels; if he sold superyachts to only the rich, then he'd have also gotten rich himself.
If you'll then say something about how "he should make things more affordable for people," or "he shouldn't have gotten so rich selling rich things to rich people," well, I'm not sure what to tell you, that's shifting the goalposts at the very least, and it looks like you have an axe to grind against rich people in general. "[Billions of dolalrs] worth of productive capacity [are] being redirected away from other uses that benefit many people" is not how economics and value creation works, much as you believe so.
What are you trying to say in your response?
That makes it very far from a free market, even if the preexisting housing units are distributed on a fairly free market to the growing population.
That's not all they said. They also said, "such as EV cars, or low-cost space launches. It's a wash. Oh wait, actually it isn't because every trade of goods and services is advantageous to both parties by definition."
What's the significance of "low-cost" for space launches? What do they mean by, "It's a wash." What do they mean by, "every trade of goods an services is advantageous to both parties."? Do they mean that low-cost space launches benefit all or most Americans, because we all benefit from satellites for weather and GPS? Maybe. Do they mean that with both space launches and EV cars, the benefits of Elon's activities to all or most Americans wash out any drawbacks of him being rich? Maybe. Do they mean that this balancing of benefits and drawbacks always occurs because it's built into free-market capitalism? Maybe. Those interpretations aren't ruled out so far. You can't be certain they aren't what they intended any more than I can be certain that they are. It certainly would be in keeping with a common line of argument, which is that wealthy people return as much or more to any economy as they extract from it. I don't know that this is this person's line of argument, but it could be, and if it is then it's not a non-sequitur to attack that line of argument by throwing into doubt the universality of the benefits of Elon's products.
> If you'll then say something about how "he should make things more affordable for people,"
Let me stop you right there. I practically never hand out recommendations for what people "should" do.
I'm not persuaded you're in a position to know what zozbot234 implied.
> where are you getting the idea that that relates to the American people at large
From my experience talking to other people on related topics.
> nothing was said as to whether these transactions benefit the average American
Something was said as to whether the class of people to which one of the parties to these transactions (Elon Musk, that is) belongs benefits the average American. It was said by me near the root of this sub-thread, in the comment to which zozbot234 replied.
> that is why I said your comment is a non sequitur.
If you're handing out non-sequitur demerits, hand one to zozbot234 then, if that person's comment and everything after it doesn't relate to the American people at large, as you seem to imply. Or, hand one to yourself. Take your pick.
> hand one to zozbot234 then
No, they were directly responding to your claim that
> Elon owning 10 megayachts means 10 megayachts (as much as $5 billion) worth of productive capacity being redirected away from other uses that benefit many people, to a use that is frivolous insofar as it largely benefits just one person.
They are saying that there is no relationship to wealth by billionaires and helping "the average American," only that they can get rich by creating value, whether it be for one person or many, and that it is not redirection but creation of wealth that benefits both parties. Their statement does not have anything to do with "the average American" because they were directly refuting that there may (or may not be) "uses that benefit many people," yet you misunderstood to thinking that they were still somehow talking about the "many people" part. This is quite clear in their comment but I still don't think you quite understood the thread of logic of the thread, particularly how their refutation redirected the topic of conversation, to which I replied.
> I'm not persuaded you're in a position to know what zozbot234 implied.
If you do not know the basics of the economics of comparative advantage, particularly in terms of how people talk about "both parties" in a transaction, then I can see why you are not persuaded.
> From my experience talking to other people on related topics.
Sure, but that is not this thread however.
Again, sounds like you have an axe to grind against billionaires which is biasing your argumentation.
> No
Then hand one to yourself.
> They are saying that there is no relationship to wealth by billionaires and helping "the average American," only that they can get rich by creating value, whether it be for one person or many,
I know they're saying that (or more accurately, that's what I infer...neither of us knows for certain what zozbot234 is saying). And, I'm saying they're wrong.
> and that it is not redirection but creation of wealth that benefits both parties.
Well, now you're both wrong because it is a redirection of productive capacity (which is the term I used in the parent comment) and that has drawbacks for "many people." That a few megayachts might have benefits for a few people doesn't change that.
> yet you misunderstood to thinking that they were still somehow talking about the "many people" part
Neither of use knows what they were thinking, so you're in no position to say whether there was or wasn't a misunderstanding.
> I still don't think you quite understood the thread of logic of the thread, particularly how their refutation redirected the topic of conversation
If they redirected the topic of the conversation, then I'm going to score that as a non-sequitur once again.
> If you do not know the basics of the economics of comparative advantage
Give yourself yet another non-sequitur demerit. Why? Because the "basics of the economics of comparative advantage" can't tell you anything about what was in zozbot234's head. Perhaps they don't understand those basics. How do you know they do? Did you ask them?
> Sure, but that is not this thread however.
I'm starting to doubt you even understand the role that experience plays.
> sounds like you have an axe to grind against billionaires which is biasing your argumentation.
Mea culpa. I do have an axe to grind against billionaires. Don't you? I also have an axe to grind against autocrats and despots. Don't you? Or would you score any critique of [insert geopolitical villain here] as "biased"?
Toodle-loo!
Qualified immunity was made up the United States Supreme Court in the 1960s. It is a buzzword.
From across the pond, it seemed that Nazism resulted in the expelling/extermination of foreign, undesirable influences and a stirring up of nativist fervor in order to validate those actions.
Also here across the pond, we've had major immigration by Eastern Bloc or Soviet refugees in the past century. They're a huge influence on our culture and ideology and the direction we've taken since the Civil War. And we see nativist fears and xenophobia in things like the McCarthy "Red Scare", but were they entirely unjustified when today we're screaming about Facebook and soviet interference in elections? ... And our voices are raised in chorus of "get these homeless off the streets, expand [mental] [women's] [right-to-die] health care, defund Churches [and mosques, synagogues and Wiccans?] will no-one rid us of these troublesome [cops, judges]?"
Surprise plot twist: the vicious military expansion that was nipped in the bud left more of a historical mark than the mass emigrations and migrant movements going on underneath the wars. The USA got Albert Einstein, rocket science, a regime change in Hollywood, new captains of industry and finance, and lifeboats full of philanthropists. We children of the Cold War wouldn't know one another at all if it weren't for the IETF, NSF, ARPA-DoD, and TLAs that you can't stand.
Eugenics may be a pseudoscience or a discredited ideology, but is it also entirely without merit, or unjustified? What does a nation do when she's deeply in debt, and more people are struggling for smaller pieces of the pie, and her reputation and huge tracts of land are an attractive destination for refugees and migrants? I guess some of her citizens log into free websites and give unpaid "Billion Keyboard Monkeys" labor to the guys who host the servers.
A free society will by definition be unequal; people have different priorities and abilities, and wealth acquisition isn't a zero sum game. If anything, instead of vilifying billionaires, take a look at the unelected but taxpayer funded and vastly bloated bureaucracies in every country around the world. The shocking revelations of USAID spending billions upon billions to interfere in other countries is example enough.
Prisons are the most equal places in the world in terms of living standards and options available to prisoners; nobody sees them as ideal.
Now lack of upward class mobility - that's a separate problem area to focus on.
It’s empathy for people with problems you don’t fully understand the cause of that turns into ham fisted destructive regulation.
