Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting!
NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
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On August 18 2024 07:42 BlackJack wrote: I'm gonna take a break from my usual complaining about the stupidity of the leaders in SF and California and actually give them a kudos.
SF mayor London Breed released an editorial today titled "No more excuses, no more apologies. SF won’t tolerate encampments any longer" with a promise to crackdown on homeless encampments.
This comes after Gavin Newsom issued an executive order and vowed to take away funding from cities and counties that refuse to clear homeless encampments. He has even gone out himself to various encampments to clear debris and get some photo-ops.
Yesterday Gavin Newsom signed 10 bills to crackdown on organized retail theft, car theft, car break-ins, smash and grabs, etc. providing more resources for law enforcement and more serious consequences for criminals.
The metro police has also more than doubled their presence which has led to a surge of arrests to address rider's safety concerns. This comes after the transit system required a huge state bailout to stay afloat. Perhaps our glorious leaders have finally put 2 and 2 together to realize that fare evasion and riders feeling unsafe might be part of why the system is in financial straits in the first place.
Finally, Governor Newsom ordered a surge of state highway patrol officers into Oakland to deal with the rising crime and vehicle theft, leading to 355 arrests and a whopping 726 recovered stolen vehicles.
So credit where credit is due. They've finally started to pull their heads out of their asses and realize that enforcing the law is not racist or whatever woke excuse they used for allowing the bullshit to continue for so long. Even if it took them years longer than the rest of us with common sense. Better late than never.
What are they planning to do with all the homeless people they will displace by removing their camps?
My understanding is when they go out and clear encampments they ensure there are enough shelter beds for anyone displaced. Most end up refusing a shelter bed for a myriad of reasons, e.g. you can't bring pets, you can't bring opposite sex partners, you can't bring drugs/alcohol, the shelter is temporary, etc.
According to the mayor only 77 out of 617 people that were offered shelter accepted.
In 2023, 65% of people offered shelter by our workers rejected those offers. This year, that number has risen to 75%. Out of 617 engagements by our teams over the last two weeks, only 77 people accepted shelter. That means 88% of the people we encountered refused to accept a roof over their heads. This is unacceptable.
So doing nothing and hoping the problem goes away or that it becomes someone else's problem.
Sounds like a colossal waste of money, time and effort compared to actually trying to address the reasons why they are homeless.
The unacceptable thing isn't that they refused shelter, its that no attempt was made to actually improve their future prospects.
The "doing nothing and hoping the problem goes away" option is the one they have been practicing for years where they allow people to set up camps on public sideways and live in squalid conditions infested with lice, scabies, crime, drugs, human trafficking and fires. I know a lot of people consider this the "humane" option, though. Not allowing people a haven to stick dirty needles into their flesh and get maggot infested wounds probably goes a long way to improve their "future prospects", don't you think?
So sticking them in unsafe "sanctuaries" where they don't want to be and leave to go and live on some other street elsewhere is the solution? Sounds like the NIMBY solution. Which I guess is fine if you're downtown SF? But I was under the impression a lot of people actually lived on the streets of downtown SF because they actually had a job in SF, but couldn't afford the rent anywhere remotely viable to get to/from their job. So either those people are all out of jobs now, or the problem is just going to come back immediately.
But you actually have to invest in the social programs. Just removing the homeless from the street doesn't solve the problem, especially not if the "shelters" they end up in are worse than the street.
Nah, it’s not true that a lot of people living on the streets of downtown SF do so to be close to their job in SF. If I had to guess I’d say it’s pretty close to 0% of the people sleeping on the streets go to work in the morning.
That would be quite anomalous.
As many as 40%-60% of people experiencing homelessness have a job, but housing is unaffordable because wages have not kept up with rising rents. There is no county or state where a full-time minimum-wage worker can afford a modest apartment. At minimum wage, people have to work 86 hours a week to afford a one-bedroom.
While rates of homelessness for people with severe mental health or substance use disorders are high, the majority of people with no home also have no mental health or substance use disorder.
On August 18 2024 07:42 BlackJack wrote: I'm gonna take a break from my usual complaining about the stupidity of the leaders in SF and California and actually give them a kudos.
SF mayor London Breed released an editorial today titled "No more excuses, no more apologies. SF won’t tolerate encampments any longer" with a promise to crackdown on homeless encampments.
This comes after Gavin Newsom issued an executive order and vowed to take away funding from cities and counties that refuse to clear homeless encampments. He has even gone out himself to various encampments to clear debris and get some photo-ops.
Yesterday Gavin Newsom signed 10 bills to crackdown on organized retail theft, car theft, car break-ins, smash and grabs, etc. providing more resources for law enforcement and more serious consequences for criminals.
The metro police has also more than doubled their presence which has led to a surge of arrests to address rider's safety concerns. This comes after the transit system required a huge state bailout to stay afloat. Perhaps our glorious leaders have finally put 2 and 2 together to realize that fare evasion and riders feeling unsafe might be part of why the system is in financial straits in the first place.
Finally, Governor Newsom ordered a surge of state highway patrol officers into Oakland to deal with the rising crime and vehicle theft, leading to 355 arrests and a whopping 726 recovered stolen vehicles.
So credit where credit is due. They've finally started to pull their heads out of their asses and realize that enforcing the law is not racist or whatever woke excuse they used for allowing the bullshit to continue for so long. Even if it took them years longer than the rest of us with common sense. Better late than never.
What are they planning to do with all the homeless people they will displace by removing their camps?
My understanding is when they go out and clear encampments they ensure there are enough shelter beds for anyone displaced. Most end up refusing a shelter bed for a myriad of reasons, e.g. you can't bring pets, you can't bring opposite sex partners, you can't bring drugs/alcohol, the shelter is temporary, etc.
According to the mayor only 77 out of 617 people that were offered shelter accepted.
In 2023, 65% of people offered shelter by our workers rejected those offers. This year, that number has risen to 75%. Out of 617 engagements by our teams over the last two weeks, only 77 people accepted shelter. That means 88% of the people we encountered refused to accept a roof over their heads. This is unacceptable.
So doing nothing and hoping the problem goes away or that it becomes someone else's problem.
Sounds like a colossal waste of money, time and effort compared to actually trying to address the reasons why they are homeless.
The unacceptable thing isn't that they refused shelter, its that no attempt was made to actually improve their future prospects.
The "doing nothing and hoping the problem goes away" option is the one they have been practicing for years where they allow people to set up camps on public sideways and live in squalid conditions infested with lice, scabies, crime, drugs, human trafficking and fires. I know a lot of people consider this the "humane" option, though. Not allowing people a haven to stick dirty needles into their flesh and get maggot infested wounds probably goes a long way to improve their "future prospects", don't you think?
So sticking them in unsafe "sanctuaries" where they don't want to be and leave to go and live on some other street elsewhere is the solution? Sounds like the NIMBY solution. Which I guess is fine if you're downtown SF? But I was under the impression a lot of people actually lived on the streets of downtown SF because they actually had a job in SF, but couldn't afford the rent anywhere remotely viable to get to/from their job. So either those people are all out of jobs now, or the problem is just going to come back immediately.
But you actually have to invest in the social programs. Just removing the homeless from the street doesn't solve the problem, especially not if the "shelters" they end up in are worse than the street.
Nah, it’s not true that a lot of people living on the streets of downtown SF do so to be close to their job in SF. If I had to guess I’d say it’s pretty close to 0% of the people sleeping on the streets go to work in the morning.
Also just want to point out that I never claimed removing encampments would “solve” homelessness. That seems like an absurd standard to apply here. There are huge costs to public health and the local economy for allowing people to lay claim to public sidewalks as their preferred living area. I don’t feel compelled to make a grand argument for why sidewalks should be used for walking. You should be the one making a grand argument for why sidewalks should be used for camping. Preferring tents over shelters isn’t very convincing to me.
You may find that 0% somewhat lower then the actual figure which was 17% in 2022
According to the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing’s 2022 Point-in-Time Count report, about 17% of San Francisco’s 7,754 homeless people said they were employed full-time, part-time or sporadically.
That’s a six percentage-point increase from 11% in 2019, according to the report, which is released every two years and aims to conduct a real-time count of people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco in order for the city to receive federal funding.
On August 18 2024 07:42 BlackJack wrote: I'm gonna take a break from my usual complaining about the stupidity of the leaders in SF and California and actually give them a kudos.
SF mayor London Breed released an editorial today titled "No more excuses, no more apologies. SF won’t tolerate encampments any longer" with a promise to crackdown on homeless encampments.
This comes after Gavin Newsom issued an executive order and vowed to take away funding from cities and counties that refuse to clear homeless encampments. He has even gone out himself to various encampments to clear debris and get some photo-ops.
Yesterday Gavin Newsom signed 10 bills to crackdown on organized retail theft, car theft, car break-ins, smash and grabs, etc. providing more resources for law enforcement and more serious consequences for criminals.
The metro police has also more than doubled their presence which has led to a surge of arrests to address rider's safety concerns. This comes after the transit system required a huge state bailout to stay afloat. Perhaps our glorious leaders have finally put 2 and 2 together to realize that fare evasion and riders feeling unsafe might be part of why the system is in financial straits in the first place.
Finally, Governor Newsom ordered a surge of state highway patrol officers into Oakland to deal with the rising crime and vehicle theft, leading to 355 arrests and a whopping 726 recovered stolen vehicles.
So credit where credit is due. They've finally started to pull their heads out of their asses and realize that enforcing the law is not racist or whatever woke excuse they used for allowing the bullshit to continue for so long. Even if it took them years longer than the rest of us with common sense. Better late than never.
What are they planning to do with all the homeless people they will displace by removing their camps?
My understanding is when they go out and clear encampments they ensure there are enough shelter beds for anyone displaced. Most end up refusing a shelter bed for a myriad of reasons, e.g. you can't bring pets, you can't bring opposite sex partners, you can't bring drugs/alcohol, the shelter is temporary, etc.
According to the mayor only 77 out of 617 people that were offered shelter accepted.
In 2023, 65% of people offered shelter by our workers rejected those offers. This year, that number has risen to 75%. Out of 617 engagements by our teams over the last two weeks, only 77 people accepted shelter. That means 88% of the people we encountered refused to accept a roof over their heads. This is unacceptable.
So doing nothing and hoping the problem goes away or that it becomes someone else's problem.
Sounds like a colossal waste of money, time and effort compared to actually trying to address the reasons why they are homeless.
The unacceptable thing isn't that they refused shelter, its that no attempt was made to actually improve their future prospects.
The "doing nothing and hoping the problem goes away" option is the one they have been practicing for years where they allow people to set up camps on public sideways and live in squalid conditions infested with lice, scabies, crime, drugs, human trafficking and fires. I know a lot of people consider this the "humane" option, though. Not allowing people a haven to stick dirty needles into their flesh and get maggot infested wounds probably goes a long way to improve their "future prospects", don't you think?
So sticking them in unsafe "sanctuaries" where they don't want to be and leave to go and live on some other street elsewhere is the solution? Sounds like the NIMBY solution. Which I guess is fine if you're downtown SF? But I was under the impression a lot of people actually lived on the streets of downtown SF because they actually had a job in SF, but couldn't afford the rent anywhere remotely viable to get to/from their job. So either those people are all out of jobs now, or the problem is just going to come back immediately.
But you actually have to invest in the social programs. Just removing the homeless from the street doesn't solve the problem, especially not if the "shelters" they end up in are worse than the street.
Nah, it’s not true that a lot of people living on the streets of downtown SF do so to be close to their job in SF. If I had to guess I’d say it’s pretty close to 0% of the people sleeping on the streets go to work in the morning.
Also just want to point out that I never claimed removing encampments would “solve” homelessness. That seems like an absurd standard to apply here. There are huge costs to public health and the local economy for allowing people to lay claim to public sidewalks as their preferred living area. I don’t feel compelled to make a grand argument for why sidewalks should be used for walking. You should be the one making a grand argument for why sidewalks should be used for camping. Preferring tents over shelters isn’t very convincing to me.
You may find that 0% somewhat lower then the actual figure which was 17% in 2022
According to the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing’s 2022 Point-in-Time Count report, about 17% of San Francisco’s 7,754 homeless people said they were employed full-time, part-time or sporadically.
That’s a six percentage-point increase from 11% in 2019, according to the report, which is released every two years and aims to conduct a real-time count of people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco in order for the city to receive federal funding.
You're misinterpreting here. I said approximately 0% of people sleeping on the streets go to work in the morning. Your source says 17% of homeless people in SF have self-reported they were employed. Sleeping on the street =/= Homeless. Homeless can mean staying at a shelter, couch surfing with friends, living out of your car, etc. I assure you it's not the people rolling out of the gutter in the morning that are putting on their work uniform and showing up at 9am sharp.
Edit: and the reason that this is relevant is because we're talking about cleaning up homeless tent encampments. Implying that a lot of people living in these encampments are employed and will be displaced from their place of employment is categorically false.
On August 18 2024 07:42 BlackJack wrote: I'm gonna take a break from my usual complaining about the stupidity of the leaders in SF and California and actually give them a kudos.
SF mayor London Breed released an editorial today titled "No more excuses, no more apologies. SF won’t tolerate encampments any longer" with a promise to crackdown on homeless encampments.
This comes after Gavin Newsom issued an executive order and vowed to take away funding from cities and counties that refuse to clear homeless encampments. He has even gone out himself to various encampments to clear debris and get some photo-ops.
Yesterday Gavin Newsom signed 10 bills to crackdown on organized retail theft, car theft, car break-ins, smash and grabs, etc. providing more resources for law enforcement and more serious consequences for criminals.
The metro police has also more than doubled their presence which has led to a surge of arrests to address rider's safety concerns. This comes after the transit system required a huge state bailout to stay afloat. Perhaps our glorious leaders have finally put 2 and 2 together to realize that fare evasion and riders feeling unsafe might be part of why the system is in financial straits in the first place.
Finally, Governor Newsom ordered a surge of state highway patrol officers into Oakland to deal with the rising crime and vehicle theft, leading to 355 arrests and a whopping 726 recovered stolen vehicles.
So credit where credit is due. They've finally started to pull their heads out of their asses and realize that enforcing the law is not racist or whatever woke excuse they used for allowing the bullshit to continue for so long. Even if it took them years longer than the rest of us with common sense. Better late than never.
What are they planning to do with all the homeless people they will displace by removing their camps?
My understanding is when they go out and clear encampments they ensure there are enough shelter beds for anyone displaced. Most end up refusing a shelter bed for a myriad of reasons, e.g. you can't bring pets, you can't bring opposite sex partners, you can't bring drugs/alcohol, the shelter is temporary, etc.
According to the mayor only 77 out of 617 people that were offered shelter accepted.
In 2023, 65% of people offered shelter by our workers rejected those offers. This year, that number has risen to 75%. Out of 617 engagements by our teams over the last two weeks, only 77 people accepted shelter. That means 88% of the people we encountered refused to accept a roof over their heads. This is unacceptable.
So doing nothing and hoping the problem goes away or that it becomes someone else's problem.
Sounds like a colossal waste of money, time and effort compared to actually trying to address the reasons why they are homeless.
The unacceptable thing isn't that they refused shelter, its that no attempt was made to actually improve their future prospects.
The "doing nothing and hoping the problem goes away" option is the one they have been practicing for years where they allow people to set up camps on public sideways and live in squalid conditions infested with lice, scabies, crime, drugs, human trafficking and fires. I know a lot of people consider this the "humane" option, though. Not allowing people a haven to stick dirty needles into their flesh and get maggot infested wounds probably goes a long way to improve their "future prospects", don't you think?
So sticking them in unsafe "sanctuaries" where they don't want to be and leave to go and live on some other street elsewhere is the solution? Sounds like the NIMBY solution. Which I guess is fine if you're downtown SF? But I was under the impression a lot of people actually lived on the streets of downtown SF because they actually had a job in SF, but couldn't afford the rent anywhere remotely viable to get to/from their job. So either those people are all out of jobs now, or the problem is just going to come back immediately.
But you actually have to invest in the social programs. Just removing the homeless from the street doesn't solve the problem, especially not if the "shelters" they end up in are worse than the street.
Nah, it’s not true that a lot of people living on the streets of downtown SF do so to be close to their job in SF. If I had to guess I’d say it’s pretty close to 0% of the people sleeping on the streets go to work in the morning.
As many as 40%-60% of people experiencing homelessness have a job, but housing is unaffordable because wages have not kept up with rising rents. There is no county or state where a full-time minimum-wage worker can afford a modest apartment. At minimum wage, people have to work 86 hours a week to afford a one-bedroom.
While rates of homelessness for people with severe mental health or substance use disorders are high, the majority of people with no home also have no mental health or substance use disorder.
Your source doesn't really say where it gets this 40-60% number from, as far as I can tell. Gorsameth has the number at 17% and this is self-reported and includes people working "sporadically."
This article I just googled says 50-75% of homeless in California are drug/alcohol dependent
Your claim that more homeless people are employed than suffer from addiction is quite remarkable
On August 18 2024 07:42 BlackJack wrote: I'm gonna take a break from my usual complaining about the stupidity of the leaders in SF and California and actually give them a kudos.
SF mayor London Breed released an editorial today titled "No more excuses, no more apologies. SF won’t tolerate encampments any longer" with a promise to crackdown on homeless encampments.
This comes after Gavin Newsom issued an executive order and vowed to take away funding from cities and counties that refuse to clear homeless encampments. He has even gone out himself to various encampments to clear debris and get some photo-ops.
Yesterday Gavin Newsom signed 10 bills to crackdown on organized retail theft, car theft, car break-ins, smash and grabs, etc. providing more resources for law enforcement and more serious consequences for criminals.
The metro police has also more than doubled their presence which has led to a surge of arrests to address rider's safety concerns. This comes after the transit system required a huge state bailout to stay afloat. Perhaps our glorious leaders have finally put 2 and 2 together to realize that fare evasion and riders feeling unsafe might be part of why the system is in financial straits in the first place.
Finally, Governor Newsom ordered a surge of state highway patrol officers into Oakland to deal with the rising crime and vehicle theft, leading to 355 arrests and a whopping 726 recovered stolen vehicles.
So credit where credit is due. They've finally started to pull their heads out of their asses and realize that enforcing the law is not racist or whatever woke excuse they used for allowing the bullshit to continue for so long. Even if it took them years longer than the rest of us with common sense. Better late than never.
What are they planning to do with all the homeless people they will displace by removing their camps?
My understanding is when they go out and clear encampments they ensure there are enough shelter beds for anyone displaced. Most end up refusing a shelter bed for a myriad of reasons, e.g. you can't bring pets, you can't bring opposite sex partners, you can't bring drugs/alcohol, the shelter is temporary, etc.
According to the mayor only 77 out of 617 people that were offered shelter accepted.
In 2023, 65% of people offered shelter by our workers rejected those offers. This year, that number has risen to 75%. Out of 617 engagements by our teams over the last two weeks, only 77 people accepted shelter. That means 88% of the people we encountered refused to accept a roof over their heads. This is unacceptable.
So doing nothing and hoping the problem goes away or that it becomes someone else's problem.
Sounds like a colossal waste of money, time and effort compared to actually trying to address the reasons why they are homeless.
The unacceptable thing isn't that they refused shelter, its that no attempt was made to actually improve their future prospects.
The "doing nothing and hoping the problem goes away" option is the one they have been practicing for years where they allow people to set up camps on public sideways and live in squalid conditions infested with lice, scabies, crime, drugs, human trafficking and fires. I know a lot of people consider this the "humane" option, though. Not allowing people a haven to stick dirty needles into their flesh and get maggot infested wounds probably goes a long way to improve their "future prospects", don't you think?
So sticking them in unsafe "sanctuaries" where they don't want to be and leave to go and live on some other street elsewhere is the solution? Sounds like the NIMBY solution. Which I guess is fine if you're downtown SF? But I was under the impression a lot of people actually lived on the streets of downtown SF because they actually had a job in SF, but couldn't afford the rent anywhere remotely viable to get to/from their job. So either those people are all out of jobs now, or the problem is just going to come back immediately.
But you actually have to invest in the social programs. Just removing the homeless from the street doesn't solve the problem, especially not if the "shelters" they end up in are worse than the street.
Nah, it’s not true that a lot of people living on the streets of downtown SF do so to be close to their job in SF. If I had to guess I’d say it’s pretty close to 0% of the people sleeping on the streets go to work in the morning.
Also just want to point out that I never claimed removing encampments would “solve” homelessness. That seems like an absurd standard to apply here. There are huge costs to public health and the local economy for allowing people to lay claim to public sidewalks as their preferred living area. I don’t feel compelled to make a grand argument for why sidewalks should be used for walking. You should be the one making a grand argument for why sidewalks should be used for camping. Preferring tents over shelters isn’t very convincing to me.
You may find that 0% somewhat lower then the actual figure which was 17% in 2022
According to the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing’s 2022 Point-in-Time Count report, about 17% of San Francisco’s 7,754 homeless people said they were employed full-time, part-time or sporadically.
That’s a six percentage-point increase from 11% in 2019, according to the report, which is released every two years and aims to conduct a real-time count of people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco in order for the city to receive federal funding.
You're misinterpreting here. I said approximately 0% of people sleeping on the streets go to work in the morning. Your source says 17% of homeless people in SF have self-reported they were employed. Sleeping on the street =/= Homeless. Homeless can mean staying at a shelter, couch surfing with friends, living out of your car, etc. I assure you it's not the people rolling out of the gutter in the morning that are putting on their work uniform and showing up at 9am sharp.
Edit: and the reason that this is relevant is because we're talking about cleaning up homeless tent encampments. Implying that a lot of people living in these encampments are employed and will be displaced from their place of employment is categorically false.
Feel free to come with actual sources that are not putting your fingers in your ear going 'nanananana'.
On August 19 2024 01:39 NewSunshine wrote: Yeah, I've never understood "tough on homelessness" as a coherent policy position, it's always struck me as more of an optical play by politicians who want votes. The way you actually solve homelessness is the same way you solve crime, you enable the poor to actually do something about their circumstances instead of punishing them for it. Nobody wakes up and decides they want to be homeless one day. I don't know what this can accomplish aside from just sweeping homeless people out of sight. Then they surely stop being homeless, right? That'll teach them.
You're kicking people while they're down. Maybe address the insane cost of living so you can afford to live somewhere even if you're *only* making 5 digits.
Here's the problem.
Homelessness is a problem that is expensive to deal with and selfish voters don't want to have to pay for. The easy solution for local governments to do is to just push the homeless to the next county or next state over.
Any government whether it be state or local that tries to actually provide resources for the homeless eventually get overwhelmed as more and more homeless from other areas get pushed to them.
It gets to a point where the governments start feeling punished for being the only governments actually trying to help because now they have to shoulder the burden of not only their homeless but eventually everyone's around them too.
It's not a problem that can realistically be handled by state and local governments. It's a problem that requires federal resources.The entire United States needs to be made responsible for the homelessness of the entire United States.
As long as it remains an issue that only state and local governments are responsible for, the easiest and most cost effective way of managing it is to just make it someone else's problem. Politicans aren't incentivized to actually try and deal with it, and any that try eventually get punished for it as the cost balloons and balloons forever as more and more homeless end up under their care.
On August 18 2024 07:42 BlackJack wrote: I'm gonna take a break from my usual complaining about the stupidity of the leaders in SF and California and actually give them a kudos.
SF mayor London Breed released an editorial today titled "No more excuses, no more apologies. SF won’t tolerate encampments any longer" with a promise to crackdown on homeless encampments.
This comes after Gavin Newsom issued an executive order and vowed to take away funding from cities and counties that refuse to clear homeless encampments. He has even gone out himself to various encampments to clear debris and get some photo-ops.
Yesterday Gavin Newsom signed 10 bills to crackdown on organized retail theft, car theft, car break-ins, smash and grabs, etc. providing more resources for law enforcement and more serious consequences for criminals.
The metro police has also more than doubled their presence which has led to a surge of arrests to address rider's safety concerns. This comes after the transit system required a huge state bailout to stay afloat. Perhaps our glorious leaders have finally put 2 and 2 together to realize that fare evasion and riders feeling unsafe might be part of why the system is in financial straits in the first place.
Finally, Governor Newsom ordered a surge of state highway patrol officers into Oakland to deal with the rising crime and vehicle theft, leading to 355 arrests and a whopping 726 recovered stolen vehicles.
So credit where credit is due. They've finally started to pull their heads out of their asses and realize that enforcing the law is not racist or whatever woke excuse they used for allowing the bullshit to continue for so long. Even if it took them years longer than the rest of us with common sense. Better late than never.
What are they planning to do with all the homeless people they will displace by removing their camps?
My understanding is when they go out and clear encampments they ensure there are enough shelter beds for anyone displaced. Most end up refusing a shelter bed for a myriad of reasons, e.g. you can't bring pets, you can't bring opposite sex partners, you can't bring drugs/alcohol, the shelter is temporary, etc.
According to the mayor only 77 out of 617 people that were offered shelter accepted.
In 2023, 65% of people offered shelter by our workers rejected those offers. This year, that number has risen to 75%. Out of 617 engagements by our teams over the last two weeks, only 77 people accepted shelter. That means 88% of the people we encountered refused to accept a roof over their heads. This is unacceptable.
So doing nothing and hoping the problem goes away or that it becomes someone else's problem.
Sounds like a colossal waste of money, time and effort compared to actually trying to address the reasons why they are homeless.
The unacceptable thing isn't that they refused shelter, its that no attempt was made to actually improve their future prospects.
The "doing nothing and hoping the problem goes away" option is the one they have been practicing for years where they allow people to set up camps on public sideways and live in squalid conditions infested with lice, scabies, crime, drugs, human trafficking and fires. I know a lot of people consider this the "humane" option, though. Not allowing people a haven to stick dirty needles into their flesh and get maggot infested wounds probably goes a long way to improve their "future prospects", don't you think?
So sticking them in unsafe "sanctuaries" where they don't want to be and leave to go and live on some other street elsewhere is the solution? Sounds like the NIMBY solution. Which I guess is fine if you're downtown SF? But I was under the impression a lot of people actually lived on the streets of downtown SF because they actually had a job in SF, but couldn't afford the rent anywhere remotely viable to get to/from their job. So either those people are all out of jobs now, or the problem is just going to come back immediately.
But you actually have to invest in the social programs. Just removing the homeless from the street doesn't solve the problem, especially not if the "shelters" they end up in are worse than the street.
Nah, it’s not true that a lot of people living on the streets of downtown SF do so to be close to their job in SF. If I had to guess I’d say it’s pretty close to 0% of the people sleeping on the streets go to work in the morning.
Also just want to point out that I never claimed removing encampments would “solve” homelessness. That seems like an absurd standard to apply here. There are huge costs to public health and the local economy for allowing people to lay claim to public sidewalks as their preferred living area. I don’t feel compelled to make a grand argument for why sidewalks should be used for walking. You should be the one making a grand argument for why sidewalks should be used for camping. Preferring tents over shelters isn’t very convincing to me.
You may find that 0% somewhat lower then the actual figure which was 17% in 2022
According to the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing’s 2022 Point-in-Time Count report, about 17% of San Francisco’s 7,754 homeless people said they were employed full-time, part-time or sporadically.
That’s a six percentage-point increase from 11% in 2019, according to the report, which is released every two years and aims to conduct a real-time count of people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco in order for the city to receive federal funding.
You're misinterpreting here. I said approximately 0% of people sleeping on the streets go to work in the morning. Your source says 17% of homeless people in SF have self-reported they were employed. Sleeping on the street =/= Homeless. Homeless can mean staying at a shelter, couch surfing with friends, living out of your car, etc. I assure you it's not the people rolling out of the gutter in the morning that are putting on their work uniform and showing up at 9am sharp.
Edit: and the reason that this is relevant is because we're talking about cleaning up homeless tent encampments. Implying that a lot of people living in these encampments are employed and will be displaced from their place of employment is categorically false.
(1) I think most homeless people wake up well ahead of 9 am. I can't say much about SF, but it's relatively rare to see homeless people still sleeping during shopping hours here, because they know they're getting cleared out forcibly if they stay there. While substance abuse and mental health issues are no doubt a hindrance to holding down a job, I wouldn't be so fast to say none of them do that. And if it's 1/6th as Gorsameth's source says, that's a considerable part.
Must also be stated that it probably isn't easy to consistently hold down a job without a home. It's one of the reasons why getting people a place to stay safely is ranked so high by any organisation/government attempting to solve homelessness.
And who knows, maybe SF really does have a cohesive plan, starting with cleaning out the tent camps and offering residents safe housing. But it didn't sound like it from your first few articles, in which case this is really just NIMBYism. Move the tent camps from SF to somewhere just outside SF so *you* don't have to deal with them anymore.
On August 18 2024 07:42 BlackJack wrote: I'm gonna take a break from my usual complaining about the stupidity of the leaders in SF and California and actually give them a kudos.
SF mayor London Breed released an editorial today titled "No more excuses, no more apologies. SF won’t tolerate encampments any longer" with a promise to crackdown on homeless encampments.
This comes after Gavin Newsom issued an executive order and vowed to take away funding from cities and counties that refuse to clear homeless encampments. He has even gone out himself to various encampments to clear debris and get some photo-ops.
Yesterday Gavin Newsom signed 10 bills to crackdown on organized retail theft, car theft, car break-ins, smash and grabs, etc. providing more resources for law enforcement and more serious consequences for criminals.
The metro police has also more than doubled their presence which has led to a surge of arrests to address rider's safety concerns. This comes after the transit system required a huge state bailout to stay afloat. Perhaps our glorious leaders have finally put 2 and 2 together to realize that fare evasion and riders feeling unsafe might be part of why the system is in financial straits in the first place.
Finally, Governor Newsom ordered a surge of state highway patrol officers into Oakland to deal with the rising crime and vehicle theft, leading to 355 arrests and a whopping 726 recovered stolen vehicles.
So credit where credit is due. They've finally started to pull their heads out of their asses and realize that enforcing the law is not racist or whatever woke excuse they used for allowing the bullshit to continue for so long. Even if it took them years longer than the rest of us with common sense. Better late than never.
What are they planning to do with all the homeless people they will displace by removing their camps?
My understanding is when they go out and clear encampments they ensure there are enough shelter beds for anyone displaced. Most end up refusing a shelter bed for a myriad of reasons, e.g. you can't bring pets, you can't bring opposite sex partners, you can't bring drugs/alcohol, the shelter is temporary, etc.
According to the mayor only 77 out of 617 people that were offered shelter accepted.
In 2023, 65% of people offered shelter by our workers rejected those offers. This year, that number has risen to 75%. Out of 617 engagements by our teams over the last two weeks, only 77 people accepted shelter. That means 88% of the people we encountered refused to accept a roof over their heads. This is unacceptable.
So doing nothing and hoping the problem goes away or that it becomes someone else's problem.
Sounds like a colossal waste of money, time and effort compared to actually trying to address the reasons why they are homeless.
The unacceptable thing isn't that they refused shelter, its that no attempt was made to actually improve their future prospects.
The "doing nothing and hoping the problem goes away" option is the one they have been practicing for years where they allow people to set up camps on public sideways and live in squalid conditions infested with lice, scabies, crime, drugs, human trafficking and fires. I know a lot of people consider this the "humane" option, though. Not allowing people a haven to stick dirty needles into their flesh and get maggot infested wounds probably goes a long way to improve their "future prospects", don't you think?
So sticking them in unsafe "sanctuaries" where they don't want to be and leave to go and live on some other street elsewhere is the solution? Sounds like the NIMBY solution. Which I guess is fine if you're downtown SF? But I was under the impression a lot of people actually lived on the streets of downtown SF because they actually had a job in SF, but couldn't afford the rent anywhere remotely viable to get to/from their job. So either those people are all out of jobs now, or the problem is just going to come back immediately.
But you actually have to invest in the social programs. Just removing the homeless from the street doesn't solve the problem, especially not if the "shelters" they end up in are worse than the street.
Nah, it’s not true that a lot of people living on the streets of downtown SF do so to be close to their job in SF. If I had to guess I’d say it’s pretty close to 0% of the people sleeping on the streets go to work in the morning.
Also just want to point out that I never claimed removing encampments would “solve” homelessness. That seems like an absurd standard to apply here. There are huge costs to public health and the local economy for allowing people to lay claim to public sidewalks as their preferred living area. I don’t feel compelled to make a grand argument for why sidewalks should be used for walking. You should be the one making a grand argument for why sidewalks should be used for camping. Preferring tents over shelters isn’t very convincing to me.
You may find that 0% somewhat lower then the actual figure which was 17% in 2022
According to the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing’s 2022 Point-in-Time Count report, about 17% of San Francisco’s 7,754 homeless people said they were employed full-time, part-time or sporadically.
That’s a six percentage-point increase from 11% in 2019, according to the report, which is released every two years and aims to conduct a real-time count of people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco in order for the city to receive federal funding.
You're misinterpreting here. I said approximately 0% of people sleeping on the streets go to work in the morning. Your source says 17% of homeless people in SF have self-reported they were employed. Sleeping on the street =/= Homeless. Homeless can mean staying at a shelter, couch surfing with friends, living out of your car, etc. I assure you it's not the people rolling out of the gutter in the morning that are putting on their work uniform and showing up at 9am sharp.
Edit: and the reason that this is relevant is because we're talking about cleaning up homeless tent encampments. Implying that a lot of people living in these encampments are employed and will be displaced from their place of employment is categorically false.
Feel free to come with actual sources that are not putting your fingers in your ear going 'nanananana'.
Do you disagree with the idea that the unsheltered homeless are significantly less likely to be employed than the sheltered homeless? If you’re living on a friends couch you’re technically homeless but at least you might have access to showers, a washing machine, a place to keep your clothes, a front door with a lock so all your shit isn’t stolen when you go to work, etc.
Btw 17% is the 2022 number. The 2024 number is 13%. Again, that’s self reported and includes people working “sporadically”
I will acknowledge that the 0% figure is my estimation based on personal experience. At best your evidence shows that the number may be in the small single digits. Either way it’s sufficient to dispel the notion that a lot of people on the streets are working jobs in downtown SF. The notion would be absurdly laughable to basically anyone that lives here but obviously I can’t hold that against someone that doesn’t live here.
On August 18 2024 07:42 BlackJack wrote: I'm gonna take a break from my usual complaining about the stupidity of the leaders in SF and California and actually give them a kudos.
SF mayor London Breed released an editorial today titled "No more excuses, no more apologies. SF won’t tolerate encampments any longer" with a promise to crackdown on homeless encampments.
This comes after Gavin Newsom issued an executive order and vowed to take away funding from cities and counties that refuse to clear homeless encampments. He has even gone out himself to various encampments to clear debris and get some photo-ops.
Yesterday Gavin Newsom signed 10 bills to crackdown on organized retail theft, car theft, car break-ins, smash and grabs, etc. providing more resources for law enforcement and more serious consequences for criminals.
The metro police has also more than doubled their presence which has led to a surge of arrests to address rider's safety concerns. This comes after the transit system required a huge state bailout to stay afloat. Perhaps our glorious leaders have finally put 2 and 2 together to realize that fare evasion and riders feeling unsafe might be part of why the system is in financial straits in the first place.
Finally, Governor Newsom ordered a surge of state highway patrol officers into Oakland to deal with the rising crime and vehicle theft, leading to 355 arrests and a whopping 726 recovered stolen vehicles.
So credit where credit is due. They've finally started to pull their heads out of their asses and realize that enforcing the law is not racist or whatever woke excuse they used for allowing the bullshit to continue for so long. Even if it took them years longer than the rest of us with common sense. Better late than never.
What are they planning to do with all the homeless people they will displace by removing their camps?
My understanding is when they go out and clear encampments they ensure there are enough shelter beds for anyone displaced. Most end up refusing a shelter bed for a myriad of reasons, e.g. you can't bring pets, you can't bring opposite sex partners, you can't bring drugs/alcohol, the shelter is temporary, etc.
According to the mayor only 77 out of 617 people that were offered shelter accepted.
In 2023, 65% of people offered shelter by our workers rejected those offers. This year, that number has risen to 75%. Out of 617 engagements by our teams over the last two weeks, only 77 people accepted shelter. That means 88% of the people we encountered refused to accept a roof over their heads. This is unacceptable.
So doing nothing and hoping the problem goes away or that it becomes someone else's problem.
Sounds like a colossal waste of money, time and effort compared to actually trying to address the reasons why they are homeless.
The unacceptable thing isn't that they refused shelter, its that no attempt was made to actually improve their future prospects.
The "doing nothing and hoping the problem goes away" option is the one they have been practicing for years where they allow people to set up camps on public sideways and live in squalid conditions infested with lice, scabies, crime, drugs, human trafficking and fires. I know a lot of people consider this the "humane" option, though. Not allowing people a haven to stick dirty needles into their flesh and get maggot infested wounds probably goes a long way to improve their "future prospects", don't you think?
So sticking them in unsafe "sanctuaries" where they don't want to be and leave to go and live on some other street elsewhere is the solution? Sounds like the NIMBY solution. Which I guess is fine if you're downtown SF? But I was under the impression a lot of people actually lived on the streets of downtown SF because they actually had a job in SF, but couldn't afford the rent anywhere remotely viable to get to/from their job. So either those people are all out of jobs now, or the problem is just going to come back immediately.
But you actually have to invest in the social programs. Just removing the homeless from the street doesn't solve the problem, especially not if the "shelters" they end up in are worse than the street.
Nah, it’s not true that a lot of people living on the streets of downtown SF do so to be close to their job in SF. If I had to guess I’d say it’s pretty close to 0% of the people sleeping on the streets go to work in the morning.
Also just want to point out that I never claimed removing encampments would “solve” homelessness. That seems like an absurd standard to apply here. There are huge costs to public health and the local economy for allowing people to lay claim to public sidewalks as their preferred living area. I don’t feel compelled to make a grand argument for why sidewalks should be used for walking. You should be the one making a grand argument for why sidewalks should be used for camping. Preferring tents over shelters isn’t very convincing to me.
You may find that 0% somewhat lower then the actual figure which was 17% in 2022
According to the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing’s 2022 Point-in-Time Count report, about 17% of San Francisco’s 7,754 homeless people said they were employed full-time, part-time or sporadically.
That’s a six percentage-point increase from 11% in 2019, according to the report, which is released every two years and aims to conduct a real-time count of people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco in order for the city to receive federal funding.
You're misinterpreting here. I said approximately 0% of people sleeping on the streets go to work in the morning. Your source says 17% of homeless people in SF have self-reported they were employed. Sleeping on the street =/= Homeless. Homeless can mean staying at a shelter, couch surfing with friends, living out of your car, etc. I assure you it's not the people rolling out of the gutter in the morning that are putting on their work uniform and showing up at 9am sharp.
Edit: and the reason that this is relevant is because we're talking about cleaning up homeless tent encampments. Implying that a lot of people living in these encampments are employed and will be displaced from their place of employment is categorically false.
(1) I think most homeless people wake up well ahead of 9 am. I can't say much about SF, but it's relatively rare to see homeless people still sleeping during shopping hours here, because they know they're getting cleared out forcibly if they stay there. While substance abuse and mental health issues are no doubt a hindrance to holding down a job, I wouldn't be so fast to say none of them do that. And if it's 1/6th as Gorsameth's source says, that's a considerable part.
Must also be stated that it probably isn't easy to consistently hold down a job without a home. It's one of the reasons why getting people a place to stay safely is ranked so high by any organisation/government attempting to solve homelessness.
And who knows, maybe SF really does have a cohesive plan, starting with cleaning out the tent camps and offering residents safe housing. But it didn't sound like it from your first few articles, in which case this is really just NIMBYism. Move the tent camps from SF to somewhere just outside SF so *you* don't have to deal with them anymore.
Of course you live in a place where the homeless clear out in the daytime. That seems to be the standard everywhere but California. You wouldn’t find a 2 story condo made out of plywood in the middle of London or Tokyo
Skid Row is a trip. It's been a few years since I've been near there or had to pass through there, but you wanna know the trippy part about it that most people that don't live in Los Angeles would have a hard time believing?
It's really not as sketchy as some of the sketchy parts of LA. Like there are some neighborhoods I've taken a wrong turn on in South LA, that I've been WAY more nervous in than I have been any of the times I've been near Skid Row.
Skid Row is ugly as hell to look at, but it's really not the blight on the city that you'd think it was just by looking at pictures of it. There's a major bus line that runs right through it, and other than the fact that the bus was incredibly crowded and there was a dude playing a boombox in the front (with pretty good music I might add) it really wasn't different from any other bus line in downtown LA.
Skid Row has a lot of really cool murals that make it a little less ugly to look at. Homeless people in general are not that threatening. It’s very unlikely for them to own a gun and many of them are so disorganized that as soon as you are 5 meters down the road they have forgotten you exist. Plus these days so many of them are folded over at the hip thanks to fentanyl. It’s hard to feel threatened by someone that cant stand up straight.
On August 19 2024 21:26 Velr wrote: They are just about the most obvious telltale sign of failure of the state/goverment.
Well like I said in my post above. I think the reason that no government so far has been able to handle this problem effectively is because it's not a problem that should be left up to state and local governments to handle.
This is something the federal government needs to step in and help with. It's a national issue, as long as we keep pretending its a problem that is only affecting a handful of major cities in the US, we won't get anywhere in dealing with it.
On August 19 2024 18:51 Jockmcplop wrote: The homeless make people extremely uncomfortable for more reasons than they are 'threatening'.
Agreed and I theorize that this is part of the reason there is a paradox between statistics that show crime is down while opinion polls show people believe public safety is getting worse. A psychotic homeless man screaming for no reason isn’t a crime that’s going to be captured in statistics but it’s enough to make everyone feel unsafe or unsettled on their commute.
In general I think people would be shocked to know, at least in my neck of the woods, how many crazed homeless people are placed under a psychiatric hold instead of being arrested for things they should be arrested for. Groping women, throwing rocks at cars, punching people at random, starting fires, etc. Many of them don’t go to jail, they go to the emergency room. Then they get some good antipsychotic meds or they come off their meth-induced psychosis until they are lucid enough to answer “Do you want to kill yourself? No? Do you want to harm anyone else? No? Well you’re clearly not a danger to anyone and you’re free to go” just to be turned loose until the next random act of violence on an unsuspecting person.
At the Democratic National Convention tonight, Kamala Harris trolled the Republicans by wearing a tan suit. Harnessing that Obama wardrobe to make conservatives seethe again is such a power play.
On August 20 2024 10:43 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: At the Democratic National Convention tonight, Kamala Harris trolled the Republicans by wearing a tan suit. Harnessing that Obama wardrobe to make conservatives seethe again is such a power play.
Elite trolling. I bet they don't even bring it up because it'll show just how petty and small minded they can be.
I don't normally pay much attention to what the Daily Mail has to say, but their front-page today is nothing if not hilarious. I'm not going to link directly to their dross so I'll link to where I saw it.
"The Daily Mail leads with a claim from a new biography of the Queen that says she said former US President Donald Trump was "very rude". The monarch reportedly "particularly disliked" the way he looked over her shoulder as if "in search of others more interesting"."
"She also mused over his relationship with his wife Melania and said she believed they must have "some sort of arrangement".
The opinion of the late Queen probably doesn't mean much in America, but it will mean something to the kind of people who read the Daily Mail, and those are the kind of people who would be most likely to be politically aligned with Trump. And I'm sure we can all agree that needing "some sort of arrangement" with your wife is pretty weird.
On August 20 2024 18:10 Vindicare605 wrote: No offense, but I have a hard time believing that any American, even a MAGA American would care one bit about what the Queen of England thought.
Maybe I'm wrong though. It's not like I can really explain how that side of the country thinks anyway.
I did say that I didn't think anyone in America will care.
EPT
