zlacker

San Francisco's homelessness budget in 2021 was $1.1 billion, for a homeless population of maybe 10,000. That works out to $110K per person before you add in state and Federal money.

Say this budget was doubled. What should that money be spent on, that isn't being funded now?

>>idlewo+(OP)
We had this mathematical problem during the Venezuelan migrant crisis. A group of well-intentioned activists bussed about 100 migrants from the CPD station on Grand to Village Hall in Oak Park. By the time the dust had settled, we'd allocated enough money to each family --- through in-kind services, temporary housing, bridge services, etc --- that most of them could have bought a small house (outright!) in the south suburbs. Most of those families would have been way better off with the money than with the program design we came up instead.

>>idlewo+(OP)
I'll take the next $1.1 and provide them with new tents and sleeping bags and shoes.

More seriously, you get grafts like these. $800k for sheds in Los Angeles [1] or 300k for shipping containers in Oakland [2]. These are the type of stories that destroy hope that government us up to the task of handling the problem, no matter how much money they throw at it.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-03-05/lopez-co...

https://oaklandside.org/2024/07/10/oakland-fbi-investigation...

>>tptace+u
Where are those families now?

>>idlewo+s2
Really hard to say. Many of them ended up in specially-arranged multi-month lease situations; I don't know where they would have gone when the leases ended.

>>tptace+u
For the price of a home here they could live in a shack in the jungle of Venezuela off the mere interest and never work again.

>>ty6853+33
I'm making a point about program design, not about the advisability of allowing economic refugees into the country.

>>tptace+f3
Yes I am too. I have no problem with them entering at least facially. I'm saying if we're to provide for them I see even more cost effective options in areas Venezuelans can reside in.

>>idlewo+(OP)
I'm not familiar with SF finances. I gather the problem with any kind of public works in the USA is that it immediately gets drowned in graft, pork and bureaucracy.

I suspect the bulk of the money in that budget is being spent on civil servants and very little of it actually reaches the people who need the help.

Doubling the budget will just attract more graft and not double the amount of help getting through. But I'm not an expert, so I may well be wrong.

>>s1arti+22
If I may give you some optimism for LA:

https://abc7.com/post/federal-judge-frustrated-missing-data-...

"frustrated" is an understatement.

"You're not working on your time frame now. You're working on mine," Carter said.

And surprise. LA is getting small improvements on the homeless situation.