One of the first major crimes in the Bible …Perp tried to cover up murder with the phrase “am I my brothers keeper” … As a culture those of the capitalist turn seem to think they can still use it and not be held to account. They never understand they could be someone who needs help someday.
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Why is anyone ever surprised when complex, difficult problems are super expensive to fix? If there were a cheap, easy fix it wouldn’t be a problem, now would it?
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Orly? 
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You pay what you are told in advance and that’s it. If you don’t like it, you don’t book it. There’s no motivation for the driver to take you the “special” route to run up the meter because it doesn’t change what the trip costs. If anything the driver is motivated to go the quickest route possible to maximize trips. That’s what I was getting at.
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There’s “visible” and then there’s visible. The median homeless person is not the guy shaking a cup and muttering to himself on a cardboard mat. It’s the woman who made your lunch at a fast food restaurant, or the guy who stocked the shelves of the drugstore where you bought a pack of gum, or the kid you saw on her way to elementary school.
A while back, before the 2007 recession, you couldn’t open a copy of Wired without reading a story about some Bay Area techie who secretly lived in his office because his take-home pay was only $200K and that meant he couldn’t afford to live any closer than Montana. (It’s probably still true now; I just don’t read Wired as much anymore.) Those absurd (but true) stories were sort of amusing from a human-interest standpoint, because you knew a highly skilled worker making top-5% wages wasn’t REALLY being oppressed more than he wanted to be, but at the grimmer end of the socioeconomic ladder, that’s a meaningful portion of the workforce in any city.
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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?
A reasonable point. But if you think that massively improving the quality of life for the homeless in one particular urban region is going to significantly reduce the amount of homelessness in that same region, there is something basic about human nature you are not grasping.
Their response is basically “homelessness is tough and complex, so we shouldn’t do anything about it”.
A classic case of bemoaning a proposal without offering solutions of your own that is workable.
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It seems to me that homelessness won’t be solved until those with the power to change things take action. And that won’t happen until they recognize the basic human dignity of the people living on the streets.
Maybe the City, Lyft and Stripe need to ask homeless people what they need instead of everyone assuming they know what is going to work. Maybe they need to learn why people are on the streets - Are most internally displaced? Are they economic migrants?
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Removing the urban growth boundary is a horrible idea. Visit the SW and see what happens when you invite unplanned sprawl.
We’re going to have to reckon with the fact that we will always have people who need housing and medical services provided for them and will never be able to work. We also have people who can contribute once they have received the help they need.
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You’ve already been played and have accepted the narrative uncritically. Your question is predicated on the acceptance of a conceit that money being spent in SF for the homeless isn’t working and that spending more will result in continuing the not working situation.
The truth is that the money being spent in SF is primarily being spent on housing the homeless. The money goes towards people the city of SF has successfully housed and to continue to provide them services so that they don’t become homeless again. So, your tax money is in fact doing a lot of good to help the homeless but falls short of ending it. So, how do we end it? Additional taxes of course. While the amount being proposed falls far short of the goal of ending homelessness in SF, the argument being presented by Stripe is a false narrative that seeks to prevent the expansion of taxes to benefit the homeless. I’m sure the folk at Stripe know how many people SF is already keeping off the streets but they have chosen to gaslight the people of SF in to beveling that the current system isn’t working. Yes, of course it’s working and with more tax money it will work even better.
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It’s the corporate version of the usual Libertarian Nirvana fallacy: humans are evil and fallible, which means if a proposed solution isn’t 100% effective then either leave it to be sorted out by the market (blessed be Its Name) and corporations or do nothing. It’s usually easily disproven. For example:
A statement like this ignores the fact that this proposition, whatever its problems, does specify funding for new housing. Since a Housing First approach is one of the few that works in significantly reducing homelessness (improving quality of life for everyone in the region in the process). But no, some nebulous “something basic about human nature” means this won’t completely solve the problem so let’s do nothing (or, at least, not “punish” the corporations).
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Who said you only need to do it in one place? The solutions here are obvious and have been proven to help when tried in other places.
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Given that homelessness increased due to changes in government services and policies - mental health service cutbacks - discouragement of SRO housing that we used (back in the day when Kathy was a social worker) with vouchers to get people off the streets and hopefully something better down the road - it’s obvious that gov policy can improve the current abysmal situation.
" The United States saw a decrease in single room occupancy housing during the period of 1960s and 1970s urban decay. For example, in Chicago 81% of the SRO housing stock disappeared between 1960 and 1980." - wikipedia
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I’m not close enough to the Bay Area to be able to have Prop C on my ballot, so I don’t have a direct, immediate, personal stake in the efforts. I did find State Senator Wiener’s remarks on his decision to oppose Prop C (https://medium.com/@Scott_Wiener/senator-wieners-statement-opposing-proposition-c-on-the-november-ballot-in-san-francisco-7cce04fce225) to be thought provoking, especially within the larger context of a growing number of California ballot initiatives being really poorly written.
I suspect this trend has much to do with the folks and interest groups at the top realizing that they can (and must) manipulate both sides of any given issue in order to still reach their desired outcomes. It’s getting more difficult to have black and white positions on any of these issues due to the homogenization among the upper levels of the ruling parties. More than anything, this demonstrates the need to find and elect real progressives, rather than taking the easy route and waking up long enough every few years to vote straight-ticket before going back to sleep.
a. Land on which to build things is in short supply in SF
b. Neighbors don’t like highrises
c. People keep going there because it’s beautiful and the weather is pretty uniform year round
Not sure how these things can be balanced - and I am sure I’m missing about 10 other plates in the air at the same time.
The first two issues you mention can be addressed to a small degree by better zoning and a city government that doesn’t constantly cave to the NIMBYs.
If those changes were put in place (and they are needed) I still think you’d see the aggro panhandling and gutter ODs and street poopers, extreme anti-social behaviours which are more prevalent in SF than in any large American city I’ve ever been to, and have been for decades. The attraction of the weather is only part of the issue.
The only solution I’ve seen that works in regard to this subset of the homeless (beyond bussing them out, which only makes it someone else’s problem) is creating an official “Hamsterdam” area like Vancouver’s.
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The robotic servant class they are developing will save them. The robots also won’t need living spaces larger than a closet. Win win?
May your fortunes be ever favorable, and may your deity of choosing not have a wicked sense of humor when it comes to setting you on your path through life.
Or more… extreme… methods. Time will tell.
Tangentially, we were discussing the disconnect between rich GOP affiliated farmers that rely on immigrant labor to get their crops in, and their support for Trump and the GOP’s astoundingly draconian immigration enforcement. We wondered what the end game might be that we aren’t seeing. I joked that maybe they are hoping to bring back slavery; only this time they’ll enslave the poor. The more I think about it… the less of a joke it seems… #MAGA?
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Already there.
IIRC, the number of Americans currently enslaved in prison is roughly equivalent to the number of chattel slaves just before the Civil War.
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The solution is obvious. Build your high-rises underground, so it has 50 basement floors of basement apartments that we can shove the poor into and never have to gaze upon their ugliness and instead enjoy our unbroken views of the coastline.
Also, to your point C, think a bigger draw is the relative abundance of well paying jobs.
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