Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/10/21/woke-but-cruel.html
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Stripe’s response: https://stripe.com/press/prop-c
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Stripe’s response is basically, SF already spends tons of money on the homeless, this measure just means more money, more money doing the same things that didn’t work also won’t work. Is there a refutation of this? How will the increased spending be different from the hundreds of millions that are already being spent? And another question which Stripe doesn’t ask but which should be asked, why house homeless people in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world?
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Where are SanFran’s serf/service worker class going to come from? Pretty soon, even the two hour commute people make to work in SF will be unaffordable. If the capitalist is to survive, there needs to be a labourer to do it.
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Perhaps the billionaires can all take a turn loading cargo, resurfacing roads, and unstopping the fatburg sewers. Kind of like a chores wheel!
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From my observation of homeless around SF and LA, the thousands who are visible are not people who are going to work anywhere. Uneducated people with drug or mental health problems aren’t part of the serf / service worker class. At least that’s what I can see among the visible homeless from having spent a lot of time in both cities. SF’s capitalists would do better reserving the available housing stock for workers, not for people who are unlikely to ever work.
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So they should… bus them all out to a squalid ghetto outside city limits where they’ll be someone else’s problem? That’s definitely a 100% humane solution that has never gone wrong.
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Workers don’t want to live in places where homeless people can be regularly observed pooping on the pavement, which is the the point of crisis San Francisco has reached. I know tech workers who’ve passed on jobs in that city for that reason.
One way or another the presence of homeless people – who in the expensive Bay Area are very much not limited to those with drug or mental health issues – is something that’s going to hurt the city’s attractiveness as a place to live and work. This is one of the most prosperous places on the globe: they can do better taking care of their fellow humans.
Whether this proposition is the solution is something I’m not sure of. Housing First is great, but the addition of more shelter beds won’t address the underlying problem. I’d probably vote for it, but the city of San Francisco just seems particularly hapless when it comes to applying funds in an effective way to this problem.
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They are also human fucking beings. I guess they should choose to be homeless somewhere else so the working homeless can benefit? What nerve, am I right?
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Uhm, or we could just make enough housing for everybody. Right now SF is a massively NIMBY city where local neighborhoods have veto power over developments. The solution to the housing crunch that has made the average rent on a one bedroom apartment over $3,300 is more housing. The homeless are just a highly visible symptom of the SF housing crunch, not the underlying problem.
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Yes I get it but for the cost of housing one person in SF, taxpayers could house ten people in some more average area. Isn’t it more humane to house ten people than to house one? Or else, for the price of housing one person in SF, taxpayers could house one person in a more average area, and also provide that person with extensive medical, mental health, job training, etc services. Which is more humane? I understand the emotions but are emotions the right way to allocate scarce resources, especially when human lives are the issue?
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So what do you do with these homeless people that you don’t see as ever contributing to society? Ship them off to some camp in the desert so they don’t bother anybody and the “good ones” can benefit?
Did you ever consider that maybe giving them the help that they need - such as housing, training, rehab, decent clothing, and healthcare could change things? But I guess that would require taking change from the pockets of SF’s entrenched billionaire class.
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Oy. So now I can’t take Uber OR Lyft. I only do once or twice a year anyway. Back to using a taxi company! Even if their management are awful, it would be on a tiny scale.
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Mayor Breed is such a hypocrite. Her platform was that she would be the mayor that would fix the homeless problem in SF, it’s her “top” priority. Her only priority is selling out the city to big tech and contractors.
Prop C would be tax money allocated to her or rather agencies she appoints. That is like saying I’m fixing this homeless problem but I’m turning down $250-300 million annually to do so.
Prop C will probably pass and boy will she have egg on her face. She will have to spend the money she rejected.
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We’ve got the same thing happening in Portland. The way the housing market is going, there’s no amount of monty they coulr realistically throw at this that would fix it, but they still have their heads in the sand and refuse to admit that the only thing that could fix it is drastically amending zoning laws in favor of high density housing, and expanding or removing the urban growth boundary.
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rent control wouldn’t hurt either. limiting property taxes for homeowners who live in the house they own.
less directly, mayors and councils taking stances on public health care, drug decriminalization, needle exchanges.
providing public toilets. public facilities to shower.
there’s a bunch of things that would help. [edit: there is no silver bullet. ]
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- Because homelessness is caused by expensive housing, so raising local taxes, insofar as it depresses property prices, is in itself a solution
- Because if the responsibility to house homeless people doesn’t belong to the place where homeless people are, it doesn’t belong to any place
- Because wealthier places can afford to pay more
- Because very poor people often have less choice about where they can live than rich people
- Because homeless people aren’t prisoners, and won’t necessarily stay where you put them, unless you put them in concentration camps (so it’s important to be clear where you stand on that last)
- etc.
I don’t mean to give oxygen to this discussion because (and this is my real point), it’s never really about how to best provide people with housing; it’s about whether to do so. Lots of people don’t want to, but, recognising that this is unfashionably cruel, they won’t come out and say it, so instead they entertain these white-noise arguments about “pragmatism” that somehow always lead from “of course we must do something” to “we must not do anything”.
If you want to guarantee basic human dignity to everyone, it’s going to cost you money. Either deal with it, or be frank about not caring, but don’t jam important discussion just to avoid feeling like a mean person.
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I live north of SF. There are mobile shower buses for the homeless. There are toilets (I think the fancy ones cost $1?) and pissoire (sp?) in Dolores park and probably in GGP as well. It is downtown and in the rapidly transmogrifying SoMa area that we could use a lot more.
Some of the blame is on Reagan for choosing $ over decency when he closed much of the CA mental health infrastructure. To save money. (do I put a sarcasm tag there? a long fuuuuuuuuuuuuck! ?)
What could one do to alleviate homelessness? I’m no policy wonk, but increase the stock of more affordable housing. Work on creating more mental help resources, programs to re-engage and re-educate people beyond the margins (really really tough and in some cases perhaps unachievable). You could… loosen restrictions on tiny house development (ok ok kinda twee, still, in-laws in the back are already a SF staple). When I worked a corporate job, we had some guidelines that required us to hire a certain amount of disabled or other disability work for each year. We had dozens of these people stuff envelopes, collate odd sized materials for mailings and such. Ramp that up mb? Maybe have the smarty-pants code wizard masters of the universe think up some better solutions than Lyft/Uber and littering the city with techno scooters.
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I definitely will never patronize Lyft after finding out it’s putting money in Peter Thiel’s pocket. Fuck that guy. I want no part in contributing to his wealth.
I can’t say I particularly like Uber but it’s just so goddamn easy and convenient when I’m in an unfamiliar city or country (not to mention knowing I’m not going to get dicked over on fares) that it’s generally my go-to when I travel.
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