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I know this is about how remote work and that we don't know how bad the collapse of commercial real estate will be -- how huge the tsunami will be, but the sea has pulled back miles from the shore.

But in this case, for SF, it's been exacerbated by the deep poverty and mental illness that sleeps on its streets. It could be America's most beautiful city but the frog of its decline has been slowly boiled for decades and now it's, frankly, gross. We were making so much money that we covered our eyes at the destitution around us as it got worse and worse. So when was the compassion, the empathy, ever going to kick in? Now, when it finally hits us in the pocketbook?

7 comments

> We were making so much money that we covered our eyes at the destitution around us as it got worse and worse

I experienced SF leadership protecting them and giving them more rights to live outside and do anything without consequences. It seems they tried really hard to solve the problem for at least a decade, and it only got worse with every policy and decision they made. The solution to the problem has to factor in incentives that may lead to worse outcomes for the city, and I don't think that has been done properly.

> more rights to live outside

What would less rights to this look like just curious.

There was a mandate to stop moving tent cities. I believe also their property was protected so that anyone that tries to move it can be charged. I'm not saying moving people is necessarily a good idea, but that leaving them alone is basically encouraging the behavior, which of course results in more of it.

Dispersing encampments, for one.

kicking the can down the road and making it someone else's problem.

That's a straw man. Nobody is saying that you tear their tents down and leave them to the elements. You provide housing, and you don't give the mentally incapacitated a choice about where they live; at least until they recover.

What you're suggesting is to do nothing at all, which achieves exactly what is going on right now.

Anecdotally, most of the folks I hear espousing this viewpoint in the Bay Area are not big on the "provide housing" part of this--more of a "begone from our sight" sort of thing. It's good to see some recognition that providing alternatives is a major step towards a real solution.

same.

I very often hear a call to end tent encampments.

I very rarely hear any sort of thought out policy on how to end homelessness.

> Nobody is saying that you tear their tents down and leave them to the elements.

This is in fact the most commonly adopted practice for “dealing with” homeless people in places like the United States: violently destroying their homes and property at regular intervals, so that they are out of sight and therefore out of mind of people without empathy.

I’ll say it. Obviously some people with severe mental illness will need support the rest of their lives, but the people that are homeless because they’re addicted to getting high all day?

The only way they’re going to stop is if they hit rock bottom. If you’re enabling their behavior that’s never going to happen. And yeah, it’d be rough for them and some will die, but that will cause some others to never go down that road.

> but the people that are homeless because they’re addicted to getting high all day?

You've got it backwards: they're getting high all day because they're homeless and doing what little they can to cope with the insane amounts of stress that entails.

Once you recognize that inverted causality, the solution becomes obvious: provide them with housing and help them back onto their feet.

> The only way they’re going to stop is if they hit rock bottom. If you’re enabling their behavior that’s never going to happen. And yeah, it’d be rough for them and some will die, but that will cause some others to never go down that road.

Now this is some proper fucked up high horse shitty cruelty. Its appalling to read it here to keep things polite. It seems you have no clue whatsoever about addictions, how to treat them, what works and what is just some arrogant entitled wishful thinking. I realize similar extreme people are rather outliers, but not so much as we would wish for, hence the topic discussed.

One of those moments when its so darn easy to say 'we have it figured out in Europe in much better and humane way than across the pond'.

I could write an essay about how we have methadone, heroin etc. no-question-asked dispensaries in the middle of one of the richest cities globally, shelters for the poor and actually treat mental illnesses appropriately, but I don't think your type cares about that. Needless to say, we don't have these issues at all while having similar folks as part of society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_End_Drive-In Salton Sea Slab City is ripe for development. Cancel/ban all free Methadone clinics from SF, setup one in Slab City with a condition of wearing user tracing bracelets and not moving more than 20-40 miles away and you have something going there.

Is this a joke or are you seriously advocating for setting up a concentration camp?

This problem largely didnt exist 60 years ago because mentally troubled people were institutionalized https://www.kqed.org/news/11209729/did-the-emptying-of-menta...

You can either setup incentives pulling those people away from population centers (free food, drugs, shelter) or bring back Mental Hospitals and forcefully incarcerate. What LA/SF seem to be doing now is ... providing free food/drugs/shelter and protection in downtown and wondering why regular citizens complain. Something has to give, the worse it slowly gets the more drastic snap overreaction when things flip and someone radical gets in power.

Why not move the tech bros to Slab City and let the homeless have SF? At least the tech bros can set up air conditioning.

These people are not idiots. They know exactly what they can get away with.

There is no “compassion or empathy”

This is a lie that was sold to the public for votes (power) and taxes (money).

The only thing that “will be done” about the homeless and crime in SF is eventually someone will come to power who will get rid of them. Not the problem - but the people.

It will not be compassionate but it will happen. This is what inevitably comes to these places in which the incumbents in power are unwilling or uninterested in solving anything.

This is not what we should do and of we can avoid it we should, but I agree that this is pragmatically what typically happens, my understanding is that it was what happened as part of Mayor Bloomburg's "clean up" of new york. It didn't solve of get rid of the problems, it just pushed them out if certain areas like Manhatten anf Brooklyn elsewhere to the outer boroughs and Jersey.

That's one endpoint. Another is Detroit.

The entire rust belt while you’re at it.

The problem is resistance to solutions, both NIMBY and YIMBY generally get in the way of progress. The problems the NIMBY crowd present are obvious. YIMBY will usually fight tooth and nail against any solution that:

- isn't 100% effective (no solution is 100% effective), OR

- involves making any decisions for the mentally incapacitated

Chronic homelessness can be brought to miniscule levels with the approach that Idaho has taken: "just get people into homes." Once that happens so many doors fly open for these victims, usually because they acquire an address.

But, again, you have to accept that 5% will get left behind, and that some people will have help forced onto them.

> isn't 100% effective

Homeless shelters and public housing ain't 100% effective, yet I know of zero YIMBYs not pushing for them, let alone "fight[ing] tooth and nail against" them.

Part of that destitution was people attempting to move to SF simply because of the frankly insane salaries. People would sooner move there and live in a '72 camper shell on the side of a busy street than live in Arkansas in a mansion, simply because they can make like 90k a year doing stuff that would net 40k or less in Arkansas. What happens to all the people that cant handle that lifestyle, and don't save enough to bail themselves out before they crash and burn? Homelessness.

Yup. I remember it wasn't long ago that people would work in the Valley and live in SF. They were willing to commute 2-3hr each day on corporate shuttles just to live in SF.

The quality of life in the city has really taken a hit.

More people died in San Francisco during the COVID pandemic due to drug overdoses than COVID, and yet SF residents supported the COVID lockdown to deal with COVID. Nothing of the sort is done to prevent more drug addicts killing themselves daily. In fact, the opposite is done.

The term "homeless" is a convenient ideological mislabeling of the problem that most homeless in San Francisco have, which is drug addiction.

Addictive drugs distributed on the street are big business. You can see it in person by walking the block long tent cities in San Francisco. (Probably walk with somebody else if you want to do this.)

Homeless addicts in San Francisco aren't all depressed philosophers that are self medicating. They are drug distribution network customers. A sort of subscription business if you will.

Cities are machines.

San Francisco is a machine that kills people by encouraging drug use by enabling illegal drug possession and street dealing in broad daylight. The SF police will not arrest for drug possession.

The supposed "compassionate" policies of San Francisco are euthanizing homeless people.

The results of this "compassion" kills more people than COVID at its peak did. Yet instead of doing anything about it, people behind these policies double down with policies to aid and abet the illegal drug business that is killing the very people they claim to be so piously advocating for.

What makes these pious advocates justify this in their minds? When people have enough money to satisfy most all of their material needs, their form of competition changes to zealous virtue signalling.

The extremely highly compensated white collar workers of FAANG companies that live in San Francisco cause these policies because they are so detached from reality, their concerns aren't the concerns of normal people, and so the political representatives they fund represent these impractical ideologies, that include things like not prosecuting shoplifters until the point it's not uncommon to be in a store like CVS or Walgreens and watch people sweep the items on a shelf into a black garbage bag and then walk out. (I've personally seen this and other bizarre theater.)

Compassion is what got Portland, SF, and Seattle into these situations. We are the most compassionate part of America BY FAR. We are now also reaping what we sowed.