There’s a number of other studies that show that, overall, letting people go unhoused is far, far more costly than just fucking housing them. It’s not just paying for the cops and demo teams to chase them around, you’re also paying for excess use of medical services that wouldn’t be taking place otherwise, lost revenue because of people wanting to avoid the homeless, and a bunch of other things that all just pile up. It doesn’t help that some startups have entered this space and you’ve got cities like San Francisco paying them something like 40 or 80 thousand a year to keep the homeless in a fenced off area in a tent grid. It doesn’t really fix anything, it’s just another shitty, expensive band-aid whose funding could have gone to fixing the problem but didn’t.
Yes. They should do it like NYC, where it’s basically illegal to live on the street. The city is required by law to offer free housing at a certain quality level for anyone who needs it. It’s not amazing but you get a door that locks and a security team, plus a bathroom.
If you don’t want to sleep inside, you literally have to leave the city. It’s not cheap but it works much better than letting people live in tents.
San Francisco infuriates me. There are activist groups that are made of actual literal unhoused people telling the city what they need and what they want. And the city could just give people the money they need for a fraction of the administrative costs it spins on its non-profits and its government agencies.
But the city says homeless people are drug addicts and criminals and can’t be trusted to use money responsibly.
So they funnel millions of dollars to corrupt non-profits and government agencies who promise to use the money responsibly for the benefit of the homeless and they fucking don’t. There was a $350K program run by the Salvation Army in partnership with the local public transit agency. One homeless person used their services.. One.
At least government agencies are, at some remove, responsible to the taxpayers and the voters. Non-profits dedicated to “helping” the homeless have a very strong incentive to make the problem worse. Because the worse the homelessness crisis becomes, the more money goes to the nonprofits. So they take government money, give it to their employees, make some sort of pathetic token effort to help unhoused people, and as the crisis worsens they go back to the government and say “the crisis is worse, we need more money”.
And civilians look at the amount of money being poured into assistance to unhoused people, and look at the crisis getting worse, and say “more money and services won’t help these people, we need to criminalize them”. And fucking Newsom is all over that because he’s angling for the Presidency and military style crackdowns impress the fascists in red states.
There’s a homelessness crisis because of government corruption and incompetence. And the majority of Americans think the solution is to give the government more military power, more police power, and let those same corrupt agencies brutalize the homeless more. It’s sickening.
I actually kind of went to a major fancy pants conference in Portland last year for homelessness issues.
Yes, it was extremely dystopian to drink wine and wear jewelry and fancy dresses while seeing presentations on homelessness. The whole thing was depressing. The other people who were there to genuinely resolve the issue were also depressed. Everyone got drunk. We talked a bit.
The problem is that it’s all a gridlock and all controversial and these people don’t face any real discomfort from that gridlock or from prolonging the situation. They still get paid. As much as they wince and say how it’s bad and they can’t figure out how to work with NIMBY’s and all the stigma and regulations etc- they still get paid. And they get to brag to all their friends about how kind and amazing they are for being the head of the Sad Pathetic Homeless People NonProfit Fund for the last 8 years.
It’s like they sympathy jerk off. They are just edging to the suffering in a different way. If they were effective, then they wouldn’t look so amazing and charitable because the homeless wouldn’t be an issue. They couldn’t keep jerking off to their own saintly ego.
The nonprofit industrial complex is a leech. At least government agencies have some level of accountability, because if they fail to solve a problem, the voters blame the politicians, and the politicians shit downhill on the agencies. Nonprofits don’t even have that minimal level of accountability. They just spend all the government money they get, write grants saying “we spent all the money you gave us doing stuff, please give us more”, and get more money.
But this is what you get when both the left and right have bought into libertarian free market ideology and agree that privatizing government services is more efficient than letting the government do its goddamn job.
and honestly, I would like to sit on a bench at night without worrying im keeping somebody out of their bed. that would be cool. I would like to stop the streets smelling like piss. I would like too walk on the sidewalk without having to detour and step into the street to avoid people’s homes at least twice a block.
clearly, armed neo nazi thugs, even if you LIKE armed neo nazi thugs (we should, um, have a chat separately. what the fuck is wrong with hypothetical you?) don’t make that happen. and for the libs: you wouldn’t even have to look at human tragedy beyond their full comprehension every time you go outside!
yes, you would have to give resources and basic human dignity to the ‘undeserving’, and supply side jesus WOULD damn you to eternal hell (being homeless in san francisco but during extreme weather events), but the few years before you die would be substantially nicer.
There’s a number of other studies that show that, overall, letting people go unhoused is far, far more costly than just fucking housing them. It’s not just paying for the cops and demo teams to chase them around, you’re also paying for excess use of medical services that wouldn’t be taking place otherwise, lost revenue because of people wanting to avoid the homeless, and a bunch of other things that all just pile up. It doesn’t help that some startups have entered this space and you’ve got cities like San Francisco paying them something like 40 or 80 thousand a year to keep the homeless in a fenced off area in a tent grid. It doesn’t really fix anything, it’s just another shitty, expensive band-aid whose funding could have gone to fixing the problem but didn’t.
Yes. They should do it like NYC, where it’s basically illegal to live on the street. The city is required by law to offer free housing at a certain quality level for anyone who needs it. It’s not amazing but you get a door that locks and a security team, plus a bathroom.
If you don’t want to sleep inside, you literally have to leave the city. It’s not cheap but it works much better than letting people live in tents.
San Francisco infuriates me. There are activist groups that are made of actual literal unhoused people telling the city what they need and what they want. And the city could just give people the money they need for a fraction of the administrative costs it spins on its non-profits and its government agencies.
But the city says homeless people are drug addicts and criminals and can’t be trusted to use money responsibly.
So they funnel millions of dollars to corrupt non-profits and government agencies who promise to use the money responsibly for the benefit of the homeless and they fucking don’t. There was a $350K program run by the Salvation Army in partnership with the local public transit agency. One homeless person used their services.. One.
At least government agencies are, at some remove, responsible to the taxpayers and the voters. Non-profits dedicated to “helping” the homeless have a very strong incentive to make the problem worse. Because the worse the homelessness crisis becomes, the more money goes to the nonprofits. So they take government money, give it to their employees, make some sort of pathetic token effort to help unhoused people, and as the crisis worsens they go back to the government and say “the crisis is worse, we need more money”.
And civilians look at the amount of money being poured into assistance to unhoused people, and look at the crisis getting worse, and say “more money and services won’t help these people, we need to criminalize them”. And fucking Newsom is all over that because he’s angling for the Presidency and military style crackdowns impress the fascists in red states.
There’s a homelessness crisis because of government corruption and incompetence. And the majority of Americans think the solution is to give the government more military power, more police power, and let those same corrupt agencies brutalize the homeless more. It’s sickening.
I actually kind of went to a major fancy pants conference in Portland last year for homelessness issues.
Yes, it was extremely dystopian to drink wine and wear jewelry and fancy dresses while seeing presentations on homelessness. The whole thing was depressing. The other people who were there to genuinely resolve the issue were also depressed. Everyone got drunk. We talked a bit.
The problem is that it’s all a gridlock and all controversial and these people don’t face any real discomfort from that gridlock or from prolonging the situation. They still get paid. As much as they wince and say how it’s bad and they can’t figure out how to work with NIMBY’s and all the stigma and regulations etc- they still get paid. And they get to brag to all their friends about how kind and amazing they are for being the head of the Sad Pathetic Homeless People NonProfit Fund for the last 8 years.
It’s like they sympathy jerk off. They are just edging to the suffering in a different way. If they were effective, then they wouldn’t look so amazing and charitable because the homeless wouldn’t be an issue. They couldn’t keep jerking off to their own saintly ego.
The nonprofit industrial complex is a leech. At least government agencies have some level of accountability, because if they fail to solve a problem, the voters blame the politicians, and the politicians shit downhill on the agencies. Nonprofits don’t even have that minimal level of accountability. They just spend all the government money they get, write grants saying “we spent all the money you gave us doing stuff, please give us more”, and get more money.
But this is what you get when both the left and right have bought into libertarian free market ideology and agree that privatizing government services is more efficient than letting the government do its goddamn job.
Yes, charitable organizations are unfortunately corrupt.
Star Trek DS9 predicting the future yet again
and honestly, I would like to sit on a bench at night without worrying im keeping somebody out of their bed. that would be cool. I would like to stop the streets smelling like piss. I would like too walk on the sidewalk without having to detour and step into the street to avoid people’s homes at least twice a block.
clearly, armed neo nazi thugs, even if you LIKE armed neo nazi thugs (we should, um, have a chat separately. what the fuck is wrong with hypothetical you?) don’t make that happen. and for the libs: you wouldn’t even have to look at human tragedy beyond their full comprehension every time you go outside! yes, you would have to give resources and basic human dignity to the ‘undeserving’, and supply side jesus WOULD damn you to eternal hell (being homeless in san francisco but during extreme weather events), but the few years before you die would be substantially nicer.
Not asking as a challenge to your comment, but what studies are you referring to? I’d be interested to learn more.
I would be very proud to say I had them on hand, but I don’t. I’ll look around, and share if I find them.
That would be very cool of you!