Hundreds of unsheltered people living in tent encampments in the blocks surrounding the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco have been forced to leave by city outreach workers and police as part of an attempted “clean up the house” ahead of this week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’s annual free trade conference.
The action, which housing advocates allege violated a court injunction, was celebrated by right-wing figures and the tech crowd, who have long been convinced that the city is in terminal decline because of an increase in encampments in the downtown area.
The X account End Wokness wrote that the displacement was proof the “government can easily fix our cities overnight. It just doesn’t want to” (the post received 77,000 likes). “Queer Eye but it’s just Xi visiting troubled US cities then they get a makeover,” joked Packy McCormick, the founder of Not Boring Capital and advisor to Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto VC team. The New York Post celebrated the action, saying that residents had “miraculously disappeared.”
Why do the right cheer as if it’s a permanent solution? They’ll be back as soon as the important people are gone. To say the problem is “fixed overnight” is like saying “Look Mom, I cleaned my room!” after you just finished sweeping everything underneath the bed and hiding it with the covers.
I do hope they fix the problem, but I don’t know what else they can try other than just building houses and giving them the keys. That would probably be less expensive in the long run, but taxpayers evidently feel better paying for homelessness programs in perpetuity rather than giving people free shit one time.
Conservatives don’t know how to fix or build anything anymore. They have no solution to homelessness and they don’t care . Sending police to crack some skulls and patting themselves on the back for it is the best they’ve got.
Conservatives don’t have solutions, just stop gaps. They just stall and pass the ball, and lower taxes, its their only trick.
Conservatives didn’t do this. The article mentions cheering but not who actually did this. All it says is the operation was a “black box”.
This isn’t journalism. They made zero effort to get to the facts. Facts such as:
- Who ordered this sweep to occur?
- Who will be held responsible for the illegal actions performed?
Why is this story entirely focused on the New York Post being in favor of it? There is zero effort to hold the people responsible for this to account.
Moderate democrats, liberals, are still conservatives, notice I didnt say Republicans
Right wing people are typically either stupid or dishonest.
The San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing had a 2022-2023 budget of $672 million dollars. This does not include EMT and police services. It’s just what they earmark for homelessness.
In 2022, there were 7,754 unhoused people in San Francisco.
That’s roughly $86,000 per person they spend on getting them housing, and still failing at it. The average rent for an apartment in SF is $3500 a month, or $42,000 per year. They’re spending twice as much as they would if they just got apartments for people.
Where is that money going, I wonder
7754 is the PIT count of people homeless at one given point in time. Many, many more cycle through homelessness in any year.
BUT BUT BUT WE CAN’T JUST SOLVE PROBLEMS, WE VAVE TO MANAGE THEM.
Most long-term homeless people can’t just be given free apartments - they have serious, often untreatable problems that would make such a solution unsustainable.
A quick google shows that most homelessness advocacy groups can cite numerous studies that show housing-first solutions are not only more effective, but also cheaper.
And here are some examples:
Look up the groups behind projects like these and you’re sure to find documentation for their effectiveness. I’d much rather fund these than shelters where nobody feels safe.
Are these studies specifically of the long-term homeless population?
Maybe you should read them and report back
You brought them up but didn’t provide a link.
Yeah because they’re so easy to find it’s literally the first five links on Google.
I didn’t realize I was dealing with someone so content to be misinformed.
What a fucking lie. They still need housing regardless of their problems so you need to learn to accept them as they are and let them have a roof over their head. Give them a small house and isolate them from others that way if they’re such a problem.
This comment is insane. You realize that a home / apartment needs to be maintained right? It’s not a magical cave that functions on its own. There’s plumbing, there’s electrical, sewage, a person suffering from mental issues cannot be safely just put into a building and left to their own devices.
I’m all for helping the homeless but just saying give them a free apartment is bonkers and completely misses the point why a lot of people are homeless.
It’s also why things will never change. You have the right who say fuck em, let them pull themselves up by the bootstraps and then you have lefties calling for free apartments… Both solutions are insane and basically assure we’ll never come to an agreement and people will continue to suffer.
Why is “give people houses” insane? Other countries have done it and virtually eradicated homelessness, Cities and organizations here in the US have tried it. In most cases, even the ones with “serious mental illnesses” are able to seek treatment and manage their illnesses FAR better when they have a stable platform to build upon - meaning a house and food, which eliminates the rather more pressing needs of “I need to figure out where to pitch a tent so the police don’t drag me in” and “I need to eat some time this week or I’ll starve to death” and allows you to start saying “I really want to talk to someone about this PTSD and the drug addiction I developed because of it” or “that social worker was right, I should see about getting on medication for my schizophrenia”. Contrary to what people love to believe, most people with severe mental illnesses DO have touch with reality, and a lot of them simply don’t have the framework necessary to start building a long-term care plan because their meds are expensive, or the meds they’re on have terrible side effects, or they simply don’t have health insurance to be diagnosed and treated properly in the first place.
I think (s)he meant it more like prison but more spacious
It would be insane to your classist bigoted NIMBY ass, but that’s the reason why no one on the left listens to worthless Karens like you anymore.
Being a drug addict or severely mentally ill doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t have a house. Actually, the opposite: people like that need to just be given housing more than a normal person because they can’t take care of themselves, and that means even if they destroy the house, they should have it.
Drug addicts and mentally ill people have rights.
They have rights, and there’s nothing you can do to change that fact. Nothing.
And that means they have the right to housing just like the rest of us do.
You’ll have to live among them whether you want to or not, and you best get over it.
Wow that sure is a shitty thing to do to humans…
Right-wing: “yay” on all shitty things.
Right wingers might have cheered this on (I believe one individual and one news publication were mentioned cheering in the article), but who actually ordered and carried out the sweep?
All the article says is that the operation is a “black box”.
Who ordered this?
But I’m sure YOUR door is open to house the homeless right?
False equivalence
It’s not but ok.
It is, because I don’t have the resources to house strangers in my home to any meaningful extent. I can barely keep myself fed.
A city’s municipality has the resources of a literal City, and is therefore in a position where they can actually do something about homelessness.
yes, in fact it is. But it’s part of my religion.
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republicans love the idea of a brutal authoritarian police state society
Also known as small government
I just do not understand why we are not addressing homelessness in more productive ways. We know it can be better managed as some countries have figured it out. Really crazy that we are not all on board with just doing the right thing and having a win win for all. We choose to suffer and we choose to sweep our suffering under the rug when guests come over.
Because that would involve “giving someone something for free that they DiDn’T WoRk FoR!” You can’t give anything to anyone except billionaires because it’s “not fair to meeeee. I work, I don’t get free stuff. They should just Get A Job!™©®”
Because solving homelessness is counter-productive to running a capitalist society.
That is one of the common excuses but countless studies show it is cheaper to just deal with it.
Just World is heavily baked into the American ethos, I think. That, along with a healthy dose of contagious protestant every-moment-must-be-productive.
Homelessness is the-on earth hell they need and invoke.
I just wish Jesus had an opinion on the poor that he’d shared with his followers.
Yeah, the best solution I’ve seen is lots of small, private housing. Basically, give people a bed and a locking door, and they have a way better chance of turning their life around. Let people stay as long as they’re not violating the rules, and don’t violate their privacy.
… that and providing mental health care.
We have a large homeless community in our downtown area and it is rampant with people that have mental health issues and no support system from family or friends. Nowhere to go but out on the streets if you can’t manage your finances when you live in a capitalist society.
But all of that costs money, and… ya know… capitalism means that money is the most important resource…
There are no easy solutions to mental health issues, but helping the quiet majority who just need a locking door and a bed in order to reset their life is inexpensive, relatively easy, and effective. It can even potentially prevent many mental health issues from developing or worsening in the first place, especially if counseling services are provided to residents of these communities.
This is a large part of it. Not all homeless have mental health issues, but the most conspicuous ones often do.
And months of homelessness likely means some support is warranted, in a compassionate society. Better to prevent homelessness, but that doesn’t change on a dime.
A private room is far better than shoving everyone in multiple rooms. It needs to be a stream that directs people to the correct support system.
Just lost job - Okay, you go into the program that has employment support. Dealing with mental health issues - Into the program with mental health support. Addiction issues - Into the program with addiction supports. etc.
Have multiple issues, then we get the support needed for those issues.
For this kind of system, it needs to be well funded. Maybe take some away form the bloated police budget.
also no one on the left went live on any national tv broadcast to denounce it either
Dear conservatives,
Why are you purposefully awful?
With love, Everyone
Only social guidelines like being homophobic, misogynist or racist are adhered to. The rest of the Bible is ignored. These people follow the social guidelines Billionaires want them to. Gotta breed more slaves.
I think their misery comes from religion limiting them in so many ways they take it out on everyone else.
I think they’re just awful people and use things like religion to somehow justify their awfulness. It’s easier to go “God says gay people are bad” than “gay people make me feel icky and I don’t want to deal with why I feel icky so fuck them!”
Especially since the original passage was actually about pedastry not homosexuality.
Blame King James for a terrible translation
easy reply:
Can you prove god existed?
Why is it when progressives carry out an illegal sweep of homeless people, and conservatives cheer it, we get a story about conservatives?
Because Democrats are aware of the problems in their party and many disagree with how things are done and try to vote to stop it. While Republicans cheer at homeless people getting kicked while they’re down.
Why is it … conservatives cheer it … ?
miraculously disappeared??? wtf
They also miraculously appeared. San Francisco is a sanctuary city. There are countless cities that just ship off their homeless and make the residents deal with it. The weather does not help either. California is great for homelessness due to the lack of a true winter.
But as a resident it is hard to know how to help and still see them constantly coming.
i hear you. this is why i think what we’re doing isn’t working, and i think it’s going to get worse if we don’t help homeless people with actual housing and medical / mental health care.
I think housing could be solved if you just took some of the abandoned buildings. However after seeing some of them. I’m not so sure they will leave the shanty village.
So far I’ve lived in Massachusetts and Colorado. Both of those states offer the following to homeless people:
- Housing
- Food
- Medical care
- Psychological care
We still have homeless people. What’s your next move? What additional steps do we need to take to solve homelessness?
it’s not like you fix up the homeless people the one time and then you’re all set forever.
mental illness is an ongoing issue for people dealing with bipolar/schizophrenia/recurrent depression, and new people are going to evidence mental illness on the regular. new people develop addictions. people lose jobs. people suddenly have major health problems or accidents. people are forced to escape violence.
providing the things you mentioned along with case management and follow-up care where appropriate helps. i live in a major city with a municipal umbrella organization that’s considered one of the best (ie most effective) in the country. that doesn’t mean nobody is homeless here.
what would come closest to fixing it long-term? addressing all the other systemic issues and shortcomings. universal medical care (which includes mental health care), ubi and housing, addressing violence (in families and communities) providing quality education, social justice.
the systems we have now only meet the needs of some, and for most only to a limited degree. those with the most needs have the most difficulty accessing appropriate and sufficient support.
in other words? i think capitalism is a big part of the problem. i don’t have any illusions that fixing any of this is easy.
While I agree we should be solving the root problem of homelessness equitably, the headline is misleading as I know many people on the left were also happy to have clean streets for a while.
Live in Bay Area, vote progressive/left, so ready for encampment to be less of a thing - in favor of some better solution like what they have near Oracle Stadium.
I personally think a not insignificant amount of encampment dwellers are just people taking advantage of the situation to steal and get high/drunk all day rather than stay clean and work some crappy job to get by, but even I think these sweeps are stupid and a waste of resources as they just shuffle people to other areas rather than accomplish a single thing.
And there is no mention in the article about who ordered and carried out the sweep.
Who cheers about something is secondary to who actually does it. This article doesn’t address who actually did it.
To solve homelessness would mean to completely upend the entire world’s economy and change to a global socialist structure. Homelessness is baked into our economic system. Capitalism is a zero sum game and if we’re going to celebrate having billionaires, we have to celebrate having people live and die on the street.
Capitalism is wired in such a way that productivity literally produces poverty.
At this point the homeless ought to try staging a camp in at the city hall. Get the headlines all over them being dragged out of there.
I remember homeless people doing exactly that in Santa Cruz back in the eighties to great success.
However, public sentiment over the past thirty years really seems to have swung aggressively toward the fuck you I got mine so die end of the pendulum.
Food Not Bombs did it there ten years ago too. They camped outside of city hall every week, getting arrested over and over. They were finally given a vacant lot next to the freeway to freely camp in after that. It started after SC passed anti-camping laws, making it illegal for any unhoused person to fall asleep.
I seriously doubt that’s the case compared to the 80s, the 80s is how we got Reagan, and whatever qualms you have with Mr. Tangelini, Reagan was demonstrably worse.
No fucking shot was Reagan worse than Trump. Reagan was a piece of shit, but he didn’t attempt a coup and (insert list of the thousands of insanely stupid and illegal things Donald Trump has done since being elected).
Are you accounting for candidate Reagan negotiating with Iranians in Tehran in 1980 holding American hostages in order to weaken Carter’s re-election efforts as part of the October surprise, by prolonging the situation until after Reagan won and was sworn in? (Obviously this has some undercurrent that it may have been even more of a VP GHW Bush fingerprint in terms of execution of the plan as he was a recent DCI of the CIA).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_October_Surprise_theory
https://theintercept.com/2023/03/24/october-surprise-ben-barnes/
https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/george-h-w-bush-the-11th-director-of-central-intelligence/
Yes. I am aware of, and accounting for, that. Pales in comparison to Trump.
I’d make the argument that Trump was never competent enough to pull off anything so sinister and evil. Trump is more of a calamitous evil buffon spewing bullshit than some 5d chess player of evil. Some people around him may be crafty evil sons of bitches, but Trump is a petulant man child dipshit that actually thinks money makes him powerful, all while having to play pretend that he’s one of the ‘ultra rich’ and not just a scumbag criminal scammer moving debt around trying to hide his business incompetence.
I don’t usually lean in so hard on this stuff, but it’s Sunday morn and I’ve had 3 cups of coffee. /fidgets
He didn’t attempt a coup here.
Latin America has a very different opinion of that point though.
Also, Trump let COVID happen because of sheer idiocy, Reagan let AIDs happen as an act of genocide against queer folks.
Hmm Republicans being inhuman and Techbros saying hold my beer. Cool
If you read really, really critically, you’ll notice the entire article is about who cheered the move, not who actually did it.
Who did this sweep? Who is actually responsible for it?
Who remembers that homeless encampment in Texas that was about to be ripped apart by cops, until a bunch of armed people turned up to defend it?
WACO?
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Link?
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That’s what it’s going to have to take. People need to become so angry that they do something to take it back, and they aren’t going to do that until they have nothing left to lose
Housing needs to be a right. Every citizen should be able to go to a housing authority and have a roof over their head if they are unable to afford it.
Agreed. I’d go a bit further. Anything regarding sustenance should be a right:
Housing, healthcare, access to clean water, clean air, at least one hot meal a day, and emergency services should be a right.
I’ll even go as far as arguing that internet access should be included in that list.
Better yet, college
In any normal world, any decent society these issues would be addressed. America is a plutocracy. Tax the rich and get money out of politics. A total overhaul of the system would be needed and that would probably take a revolution. The utter corruption is just that overwhelming.
Agreed.
I have nothing against millionaires, but billionaires are a serious problem. They’re like dragons sitting on their piles of gold, spitting fire at anyone who comes near. No one needs that many resources all to themselves
Modern society has really fucked us up. Only 200 years ago we could have all built our own houses and worked on improving our own properties rather than slaving away for a corporation’s profit.
Even if you want out you’re kinda screwed with the price of land most places. My wife and I have good careers, make pretty good money, and yet we still aren’t sure we could afford to start a simple homestead.
Lowest form of humanity, has to be near when you criminalize homelessness.
No I heard yous solved the problem by calling them uNhOuSEd
That kind of language shift is stupid. Changing words because you don’t like the connotation is just denying reality. The connotation comes from what the word means. It’s not the word itself. Homeless has horrible connotation because of what it is describing. If you change the word, eventually it will gain the same baggage.
Homeless is the perfect example of this because that was the new soft word. It replaced vagrant or bum.
