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Guest Mores
7 minutes ago, omegaseamaster75 said:

Berkeley, Oakland, the smaller cities near by all have similar problems....once you leave the Bay Area proper or go to the more affluent areas the problem is greatly reduced I circled the areas that have the biggest problem.  Sure there are homeless in the other areas but not nearly what I would consider a problem.

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Well, that's about what we'd expect.  But I don't see how on earth that gets us into the 1 in 4 range of the entire population.  There's something else going on if there are THAT big of a percentage of homeless in the entire State of CA.

Any other ideas?

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22 minutes ago, Mores said:

Facts about the homeless:  Your contention was that "homeless benefits" are attracting the "dark side of humanity".  I'm wondering what are these benefits.  You've admitted there is no UBI.  What is there in SF that is attracting them?

Homeless benefits - there are tons.  I'll go with the first 5 that comes to my head:

1.) Mild weather year-round - you can live off the streets all year long and not die of heat stroke or hypothermia.  You won't find tons of homeless people in the Northeast where you can freeze to death 4 months out of the year.
2.) Big city with lots of rich people - you can live off of other people's discards or alms or steal stuff.  You won't find tons of homeless people in the farmlands of Kansas.  Or on BLM lands in the West where people can actually live off of tents legally all year long (lots of Van lifers live this lifestyle).
3.) Lax law enforcement on tent cities.  Miami is not as bad as San Francisco because of this.
4.) Welfare benefits or compassionate laws specific to the homeless population.  People don't choose to be homeless - they end up homeless for a reason beyond one's control.  A lot of these compassionate benefits try to be compassionate to these people to offer them relief from poverty but they don't address the reason the people ended up homeless in the first place.  Tokyo is a good example of how compassionate laws can work to address poverty.
5.)  Poverty used as a political weapon on every election - political favors to prop up campaigns.  These things just empower people to believe homelessness is just fine, or "it's the best I can do because somebody made me this way".

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Guest Mores
33 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

Homeless benefits - there are tons.  I'll go with the first 5 that comes to my head:

1.) Mild weather year-round - you can live off the streets all year long and not die of heat stroke or hypothermia.  You won't find tons of homeless people in the Northeast where you can freeze to death 4 months out of the year.
2.) Big city with lots of rich people - you can live off of other people's discards or alms or steal stuff.  You won't find tons of homeless people in the farmlands of Kansas.  Or on BLM lands in the West where people can actually live off of tents legally all year long (lots of Van lifers live this lifestyle).
3.) Lax law enforcement on tent cities.  Miami is not as bad as San Francisco because of this.
4.) Welfare benefits or compassionate laws specific to the homeless population.  People don't choose to be homeless - they end up homeless for a reason beyond one's control.  A lot of these compassionate benefits try to be compassionate to these people to offer them relief from poverty but they don't address the reason the people ended up homeless in the first place.  Tokyo is a good example of how compassionate laws can work to address poverty.
5.)  Poverty used as a political weapon on every election - political favors to prop up campaigns.  These things just empower people to believe homelessness is just fine, or "it's the best I can do because somebody made me this way".

I'm not certain I agree with your list.  But I don't see how those measures would make CA any different than most other big cities.  The weather could be a minor factor.  But the fact is that people live outside in inclement weather all over the world.  And homeless don't exactly migrate easily.

I'm wondering if some people just choose to be homeless and have regular jobs.  If I were an entry level silicon valley hire making $100k to $150k, I'd forego the home and the hour to two hour commute and just live in a tent.  Many of these companies have gyms, showers, refrigerators, and microwaves that I could live off of.  My desk could hold my few belongings (like clothing).  I could easily set up a PO box for mail.

Then this would mean that the real cause of people like me would be housing prices.

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28 minutes ago, Mores said:

I'm not certain I agree with your list.  But I don't see how those measures would make CA any different than most other big cities.  The weather could be a minor factor.  But the fact is that people live outside in inclement weather all over the world.  And homeless don't exactly migrate easily.

I'm wondering if some people just choose to be homeless and have regular jobs.  If I were an entry level silicon valley hire making $100k to $150k, I'd forego the home and the hour to two hour commute and just live in a tent.  Many of these companies have gyms, showers, refrigerators, and microwaves that I could live off of.  My desk could hold my few belongings (like clothing).  I could easily set up a PO box for mail.

Then this would mean that the real cause of people like me would be housing prices.

There are a lot of people Van-lifing in San Francisco (the term is actually not exclusive to those who live off of their vans - it also covers people converting their cars into houses or people who live off of a tent that they stuff into their cars).  They're not counted as homeless.  They're counted as "housing code violators".  I was one of them for a while there... living with 7 other people in a 1-bedroom apartment.

Even with the similar conditions existing in coastal Northeast and coastal West coast, you don't see as much homelessness in the coastal Northeast than the West coast - the Northeast weather is hostile to homelessness.  The homeless actually migrate to where they're living homeless - at least in the USA.  Colin Noir had a video about this - interviewing some people in the homeless tents of San Francisco.  A lot of them are not from San Francisco.  This is pretty much part and parcel of living in California and Florida - there are not many native Californians and Floridians living in the big cities of California and Florida.

 

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Guest Mores
10 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

There are a lot of people Van-lifing in San Francisco (the term is actually not exclusive to those who live off of their vans - it also covers people converting their cars into houses or people who live off of a tent that they stuff into their cars).  They're not counted as homeless.  They're counted as "housing code violators".  I was one of them for a while there... living with 7 other people in a 1-bedroom apartment.

Even with the similar conditions existing in coastal Northeast and coastal West coast, you don't see as much homelessness in the coastal Northeast than the West coast - the Northeast weather is hostile to homelessness.  The homeless actually migrate to where they're living homeless - at least in the USA.  Colin Noir had a video about this - interviewing some people in the homeless tents of San Francisco.  A lot of them are not from San Francisco.  This is pretty much part and parcel of living in California and Florida - there are not many native Californians and Floridians living in the big cities of California and Florida.

I'm not talking about Van-lifting.  I'm not talking about cramming 7 people into a 1-bd apartment.  I'm not sure how you got that when I said I'd live in a tent.

And if I'm living in a tent, I don't see how anyone going around counting would see that I am any different than anyone else who is homeless.

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9 minutes ago, Mores said:

I'm not talking about Van-lifting.  I'm not talking about cramming 7 people into a 1-bd apartment.  I'm not sure how you got that when I said I'd live in a tent.

And if I'm living in a tent, I don't see how anyone going around counting would see that I am any different than anyone else who is homeless.

They don't count homeless people by the number of people living in a tent.  You, who can afford a house but decide to live in a tent (just like people who can afford a house but choose to live in a van or a tent stuffed into their cars or live like sardines in an apartment) are not counted as homeless.  You will be counted as housing code violators.  Basically, you won't qualify for homeless benefits.

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Guest Mores
11 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

They don't count homeless people by the number of people living in a tent.  You, who can afford a house but decide to live in a tent (just like people who can afford a house but choose to live in a van or a tent stuffed into their cars or live like sardines in an apartment) are not counted as homeless.  You will be counted as housing code violators.  Basically, you won't qualify for homeless benefits.

Let me clarify then.

How are they determining if I can afford a house when all they see is that I come to a tent to sleep in?  Do these people counters follow me around until they verify that I have a job that can afford a $500k  1bd home?

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40 minutes ago, Mores said:

Let me clarify then.

How are they determining if I can afford a house when all they see is that I come to a tent to sleep in?  Do these people counters follow me around until they verify that I have a job that can afford a $500k  1bd home?

It's called the Poverty Line.  It's what the government uses to determine if you qualify for benefits.  If you don't apply for benefits, or you're not documented in any other form (like some illegal immigrants, for example), then the government can't "count" you.  Your job makes you documented especially because you file income taxes - it can also establish your residency.  

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Guest Mores
6 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

It's called the Poverty Line.  It's what the government uses to determine if you qualify for benefits.  If you don't apply for benefits, or you're not documented in any other form (like some illegal immigrants, for example), then the government can't "count" you.  Your job makes you documented especially because you file income taxes - it can also establish your residency.  

???

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4 hours ago, Mores said:

I'm not certain I agree with your list.  But I don't see how those measures would make CA any different than most other big cities.  The weather could be a minor factor.  But the fact is that people live outside in inclement weather all over the world.  And homeless don't exactly migrate easily.

I'm wondering if some people just choose to be homeless and have regular jobs.  If I were an entry level silicon valley hire making $100k to $150k, I'd forego the home and the hour to two hour commute and just live in a tent.  Many of these companies have gyms, showers, refrigerators, and microwaves that I could live off of.  My desk could hold my few belongings (like clothing).  I could easily set up a PO box for mail.

Then this would mean that the real cause of people like me would be housing prices.

where would you pitch said tent? That is not a realistic scenario. 

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5 hours ago, anatess2 said:

Homeless benefits - there are tons.  I'll go with the first 5 that comes to my head:

1.) Mild weather year-round - you can live off the streets all year long and not die of heat stroke or hypothermia.  You won't find tons of homeless people in the Northeast where you can freeze to death 4 months out of the year.
2.) Big city with lots of rich people - you can live off of other people's discards or alms or steal stuff.  You won't find tons of homeless people in the farmlands of Kansas.  Or on BLM lands in the West where people can actually live off of tents legally all year long (lots of Van lifers live this lifestyle).
3.) Lax law enforcement on tent cities.  Miami is not as bad as San Francisco because of this.
4.) Welfare benefits or compassionate laws specific to the homeless population.  People don't choose to be homeless - they end up homeless for a reason beyond one's control.  A lot of these compassionate benefits try to be compassionate to these people to offer them relief from poverty but they don't address the reason the people ended up homeless in the first place.  Tokyo is a good example of how compassionate laws can work to address poverty.
5.)  Poverty used as a political weapon on every election - political favors to prop up campaigns.  These things just empower people to believe homelessness is just fine, or "it's the best I can do because somebody made me this way".

I pretty much agree with all but #4 "Welfare benefits or compassionate laws specific to the homeless population.  People don't choose to be homeless - they end up homeless for a reason beyond one's control.  A lot of these compassionate benefits try to be compassionate to these people to offer them relief from poverty but they don't address the reason the people ended up homeless in the first place.  Tokyo is a good example of how compassionate laws can work to address poverty."

The people I see and I am in SF right now, want to be homeless, they don't want to conform to the norms of society where they have to follow rules and obey laws. They are addicted to drugs or are otherwise mentally ill and need to be in a care facility and medicated. 

Barring natural disaster no one "ends up homeless" being homeless in America is a choice. 

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Guest Mores
3 hours ago, omegaseamaster75 said:

where would you pitch said tent? That is not a realistic scenario. 

obviously, I'm not familiar with the terrain.  I was just going off of Annatess's statement of tent cities.

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19 hours ago, Mores said:

???

Which part doesn't make sense so I can expand on it?

I think your confusion might be stemming from your understanding that the homeless rate in a city is determined by going street by street and counting people sleeping outside of houses, but I'm not sure if that's what the question marks are for.  I'll just assume it for now.  My master's degree is on Systems Engineering and the way homeless rates are determined is an application of Systems Engineering methods.  Anyway, here's some material for your perusal:  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK218229/

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16 hours ago, omegaseamaster75 said:

I pretty much agree with all but #4 "Welfare benefits or compassionate laws specific to the homeless population.  People don't choose to be homeless - they end up homeless for a reason beyond one's control.  A lot of these compassionate benefits try to be compassionate to these people to offer them relief from poverty but they don't address the reason the people ended up homeless in the first place.  Tokyo is a good example of how compassionate laws can work to address poverty."

The people I see and I am in SF right now, want to be homeless, they don't want to conform to the norms of society where they have to follow rules and obey laws. They are addicted to drugs or are otherwise mentally ill and need to be in a care facility and medicated. 

Barring natural disaster no one "ends up homeless" being homeless in America is a choice. 

Your statement above is a perfect example that People don't choose to be homeless because they like not having a roof over their heads.  Rather, they become homeless because that's the only option for them.  So, for that particular example - people would rather give up a roof over their heads because they can't follow rules and obey laws - the issue is not homelessness - the issue is... what drives these people that they can't follow rules and obey laws?  Pouring money on homeless shelters and SEED money will not solve this problem.  If the problem is better understood - maybe it's a mental health issue or a drug problem, etc... then we, as a society, have a better chance at solving it.

"Being homeless in America is a choice" is disingenuous.  Being homeless in America is a by-product of OTHER choices.  Like being divorced.  Nobody goes into a marriage wanting to get divorced.  Things happen that lead you to make that choice as the better option, if not the only option.

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Guest Mores
1 hour ago, anatess2 said:

Which part doesn't make sense so I can expand on it?

I think your confusion might be stemming from your understanding that the homeless rate in a city is determined by going street by street and counting people sleeping outside of houses, but I'm not sure if that's what the question marks are for.  I'll just assume it for now.  My master's degree is on Systems Engineering and the way homeless rates are determined is an application of Systems Engineering methods.  Anyway, here's some material for your perusal:  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK218229/

I was asking about one statistic (counting the homeless).

You responded with another statistic (counting the employed).

Since these two are not the only categories and there are undoubtedly tons of overlap between many categories, the method of counting homeless is still a mystery to me.

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41 minutes ago, Mores said:

I was asking about one statistic (counting the homeless).

You responded with another statistic (counting the employed).

Since these two are not the only categories and there are undoubtedly tons of overlap between many categories, the method of counting homeless is still a mystery to me.

Counting the employed is one variable in counting the homeless.  Of course, it's a complex system (if it wasn't, you won't need an engineer to figure it out) and there are many variables in the statistical method.  But, saying you have this good job but you decide to live in a tent to save money - doesn't make you get counted as homeless, simply because - you have a good job (barring any other variables that you didn't include in your scenario).  I gave you a link to help demystify the process.  There's a world of difference between housing code violators and homeless people.

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2 hours ago, anatess2 said:

"Being homeless in America is a choice" is disingenuous.  Being homeless in America is a by-product of OTHER choices.  Like being divorced.  Nobody goes into a marriage wanting to get divorced.  Things happen that lead you to make that choice as the better option, if not the only option.

It is not disingenuous. 

People are choosing to live on the streets. Is this a byproduct of their life choices? Yes of course it is. Let's rule mental illness out or the equation because those are individuals that need help and are unable to make good life decisions. What about everyone else? 

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31 minutes ago, omegaseamaster75 said:

It is not disingenuous. 

People are choosing to live on the streets. Is this a byproduct of their life choices? Yes of course it is. Let's rule mental illness out or the equation because those are individuals that need help and are unable to make good life decisions. What about everyone else? 

You live in SF.  So you have the ability to actually walk those streets and talk to any one of them and see how they came to live on the street.  You just gave me the scenario of “not wanting to obey the law”.  So what brought them to that aversion of laws?  Like I said, nobody makes it their life goal to become homeless.  There’s reasons they ended up in that scenario.

That’s why Tokyo’s compassionate efforts worked to reduce homelessness.  They conducted a thorough study of what led people to end up on the streets.  They took swaths of the most common reasons and tailored their aid to address just those specific reasons.  E.g. they found that a lot of them were middle aged that got laid off during the 2008 mortgage crisis and couldn’t find a job due to the japanese culture of hiring from fresh graduates, so the government started an employment opportunity seeker program specifically for the homeless in this category.  In the study, they found that a lot of these people have lost the desire to be productive due to mental and physical degradation stemming from almost a decade of psychological angst and exposure to harsh elements and poor nutrition, so their employment seeking efforts included preparing these people to rejoin the workforce.  The department has a specific  goal with a specific budget addressing specific people with measurable effective rates.  They are aided by the fact that the Japanese have a culture of strong work ethic such that people who lost their jobs have had, at least at one point in their lives, had work ethic so they can resurrect  this pride of productivity back.  This, of course, only addressed one group.  There are many other reasons.  So they pick another swath of the homeless population with a common journey and tailor a solution for them.  And so on and so forth until what’s left are individual cases with individually unique journeys that they leave to Charity Groups.  They use strong enforcement of criminal laws to drive these people to organizations willing to help them.  The press like to call these people “The ones the Japanese government forgot” to guilt the government into more social welfare or to win the next election..

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Guest Scott
22 hours ago, omegaseamaster75 said:

The people I see and I am in SF right now, want to be homeless

How do you know this?

Quote

Barring natural disaster no one "ends up homeless" being homeless in America is a choice. 

Some reasons for homelessness:

Mental Illness

Disability

Depression

Escaping abusive spouses or family members


Job Loss

PTSD

A lot of war veterans become homeless due to PTSD.  Supposedly 40% of the homeless are veterans.  

Edited by Scott
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25 minutes ago, Scott said:

How do you know this?

Some reasons for homelessness:

Mental Illness

Disability

Depression

Escaping abusive spouses or family members


Job Loss

PTSD

A lot of war veterans become homeless due to PTSD.  Supposedly 40% of the homeless are veterans.  

I would go so far as to say that pretty much everyone who is homeless (at least, in the first world) *is* mentally ill—whether due to personality disorders, PTSD, substance addiction, or even simply a major depressive disorder that prevents them from reaching out for the resources that are readily available for the asking.

People may not want to be homeless.  But to all intents and purposes, they do choose to be homeless; and those choices are not easily counteracted by third parties—at least, not in a way that respects the homeless persons’s freedom of choice.  Quite frankly, I think it’s going to take widespread involuntary institutionalization and intensive rehabilitation to make a dent in the homelessness problem that remains.  Anything else is kabuki theater.  The low-hanging fruit has pretty much all been picked.  

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Guest MormonGator
3 hours ago, omegaseamaster75 said:

It is not disingenuous. 

People are choosing to live on the streets. Is this a byproduct of their life choices? Yes of course it is. Let's rule mental illness out or the equation because those are individuals that need help and are unable to make good life decisions. What about everyone else? 

"You take a big step to the right when you realize that the homeless man stinking of vomit and mumbling to himself isn't 'disadvantaged' but a lunatic."-Harry Stein, former liberal. He's blunt, but he's got a point. What I find truly fascinating is that even people on the left are turning against San Fransisco policies because of the disaster that the city is in right now. You'll hear people say "I'm a liberal, but this homeless problem in SF is disgusting and something needs to be done." Everyone loves to lecture others about compassion but when the city you love is turned into a disaster, even the most liberal person has their limits. 

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Somehow, "mentally ill" has become the go-to exculpatory phrase. Armed robbery? Rape? Murder? Child molestation? That's the Mental Illness acting out!

I don't dispute that mental illness exists, just as much as physical illness. And like physical illness, we all suffer at some time and to some degree. But generally speaking, mental illness is not exculpatory. It doesn't excuse our actions. Just as physical disability and illness is often caused by our own foolish actions and decisions, so it is with mental illness.

I don't know what the solution is. In some cases, pointing the finger of blame is satisfying, but usually not effective. It's easy (and probably true) to say that most people who live on the streets ultimately do so by their own choice. But in saying that, we run the danger of becoming those souls condemned by God who say, "The man has brought upon himself his ills, so therefore I will not help him, because he deserves what he suffers." King Benjamin had something to say to such people.

But by the same token, it's useless and counterproductive (and dishonest and evil and lots of bad things) to ignore the part played by the person himself in his evil situation, or pretend that he bears no responsibility. Somehow we have to learn as a society to extend the hand of true charity even while we refuse to ignore individual responsibility.

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3 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

You'll hear people say "I'm a liberal, but this homeless problem in SF is disgusting and something needs to be done." Everyone loves to lecture others about compassion but when the city you love is turned into a disaster, even the most liberal person has their limits. 

Do you ever hear people say, "I'm a liberal, and the waking nightmare that is this city is my fault and the fault of those like me"?

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