But what is wealth? Do the top 1% own all the land and resources?
I’m not being sarcastic. Part of the problem that since the 80s wealth has become disconnected with reality and exists on ‘paper’. If you don’t use that wealth to get things and not simply keep making more money, than it’s hard to actually say what that paper wealth represents other than unrealized potential.
I refuse to answer that kind of question unless you are passing the bong while asking it.
I would be able to live well on “paper wealth”.
Paper wealth is as real as any other wealth. In many ways it’s probably better since it’s a lot harder to steal and easier to hide.
I mean, as far as owning the means of production goes, where does a 20% share in Cargill rate?
Turtles all the way down.
This guy.
I am writing today, to voice my concern and outrage over the increasing homeless and drug problem that the city is faced with. I’ve been living in SF for over three years, and without a doubt it is the worst it has ever been. Every day, on my way to, and from work, I see people sprawled across the sidewalk, tent cities, human feces, and the faces of addiction. The city is becoming a shanty town… Worst of all, it is unsafe.
This holiday weekend, I had my parents in town from Santa Barbara and relatives from Denver and Rochester New York. Unfortunately, there was three separate incidents and countless times that we were approached for money and harassed.
What are you going to do to address this problem? The residents of this amazing city no longer feel safe. I know people are frustrated about gentrification happening in the city, but the reality is, we live in a free market society. The wealthy working people have earned their right to live in the city. They went out, got an education, work hard, and earned it. I shouldn’t have to worry about being accosted. I shouldn’t have to see the pain, struggle, and despair of homeless people to and from my way to work every day. I want my parents when they come visit to have a great experience, and enjoy this special place.
I am telling you, there is going to be a revolution. People on both sides are frustrated, and you can sense the anger. The city needs to tackle this problem head on, it can no longer ignore it and let people do whatever they want in the city. I don’t have a magic solution… It is a very difficult and complex situation, but somehow during Super Bowl, almost all of the homeless and riff-raff seem to up and vanish. I’m willing to bet that was not a coincidence. Money and political pressure can make change. So it is time to start making progress, or we as citizens will make a change in leadership and elect new officials who can.
Is homelessness a problem in San Francisco? Absolutely. This guy is an ass.
That wasn’t satire?
Wow… Thanks for posting that.
I love when he speaks about the coming revolution.
The question is: is he a Trump supporter? :P
Not to agree with the “revolution is coming” talk, but SF has a homeless problem because for the most part they have made it very easy for them to settle in anywhere. I can’t think of a major city I have been in that is so “friendly” to it’s homeless. And in this case I mean the guy in military garb who sleeps on the sidewalk in front of a public building and hits you up for money etc kind of homeless. The top paragraph is very true, the bottom paragraph is just stupid rambling.
If I become homeless, my plan is to save my last thousand dollars on a ticket to Hawaii.
If somehow I become homeless so suddenly that I haven’t planned ahead for the trip to Hawaii, the next place is San Diego.
If in gonna be homeless, I want nice weather.
Because clearly the solution is to do what Giuliani did :P (hint: didn’t work, I have never seen so many homeless people as in NYC -only been to SF for a couple days-).
If you have a homeless problem, what you need to do is to make it less likely for people to become homeless, or failing that to help homeless people stop being homeless, not to make it more difficult for them to live. I mean, yes, that way you might take them out of the public view, but that solves nothing (except, maybe, public safety, if you define public safety as the safety of people living in well-off homeless-free neighborhoods).
Liberals say homeless should be given food, shelter, clothes, money, basically a chance to get back on their feet. Conservatives would say that those actions will end up trapping homeless in a cycle of public aid, and they’d be better off left alone and forced to get a job, even if it is minimum wage (so long as they are not in any immediate danger or suffer mental illness). Both viewpoints are correct.
What about shelter, clothes and money in exchange of a job? One thing is to offer them a job (and if they deny it then we can discuss) and another wholly completely different to suppose a homeless person has a fair chance of obtaining a job by their own means (some will, but some will face difficulties in the job market, specially if they are long term homeless).
(it’s the being left alone part the one I think it’s misguided. There normally are reasons why people fall in homelessness. Pretending doing nothing is going to change those reasons makes little sense)
Seattle is currently dealing with a huge homeless problem. We have literal RV parks and tent cities springing up.
Part of the issue is that many of the residents of these homeless communities don’t want a job. They’ve been offered work and they don’t want it because they’re either in the grips of an addiction or mental health issue.
The thing is getting a minimum wage job won’t get you out of being homeless, since it’s not enough money to get yourself a home.
What about shelter, clothes and money in exchange of a job?
Lol I read that and pictured a homeless guy handing over his sleeping bag, clothes and money during an interview to work in a Burger King. :) I agree there are a lot of sub-issues and sub-options beneath each viewpoint.
I’m talking about the option of the state/city offering jobs to homeless people with the acceptance of the job as a condition to receive the aid, plus pay (if they are not sick and unable mentally or physically to work, as Telefrog says, since that’s a whole different problem). Something like the (fakish) public job creation during the new deal. Jobs that are not necessarily needed, but the city/state could make use of if it can solve social problems on the side.
Sometimes there’s this view that public aid needs to be at a complete loss for the state, but that’s not necessarily the case.
It’s not a bad idea but giving government jobs to unqualified individuals at a near-total loss in terms of value and productivity for money just won’t happen in an age of accountability. Homelessness is a very complex problem. I read an article written by a professional who had a turn for the worse and was homeless for a period. It was really informative in that being homeless is a titanic job in itself - the mental and physical effort is exhausting. Go try and run a Marathon today. As you cross the finish line near the point of collapse, sweaty and nearly dead, then try and find food, shelter, and clothes on your own with no money, nowhere to go, and no-one to call. And imagine a bunch of suits debating what’s best for you, or telling you “we’ll give you a sandwhich, but just sign here and here and commit to being at this bus stop tomorrow morning at 5:30 a.m. to wash the toilets from the overnight crowd! You’re welcome!”. The writer of the article said he eventually went home to his parents and it took MONTHS to decompress and sort his mental energy and health out so that he was suitable to re-enter the real world.
In my opinion there just isn’t a ‘program’ that can be invented, at least not for any reasonable publicly-funded budget, that will solve it. Hence both conservatives and liberals are right in some ways, and wrong in others.
The current paradigm in working with the homeless is a “housing first” approach – which is to say that you get people into stable living situations first. Once that is done, the success rate for dealing with mental health and addiction issues, as well as finding/retaining stable work, goes up astronomically.
There will always be people who want a hand out rather than a hand up. I think that’s just human nature. However, the data seems to indicate that the most effective way to get people back into the workforce as productive members of society is first to get them housed, then to get them whatever help they need, and finally to get them back into the workforce.
We have done about as good a job as any city here with housing for the homeless. There are city/county owned complexes designed (and newly built) for the homeless. There are several non-profits that offer housing. However every housing opportunity comes with certain rules, and there are always a percentage of the homeless who choose (for whatever reason) that they cannot live by those rules. No matter how much housing is supplied there are still “traveling” homeless camps popping up. They last a short time and are then bulldozed, after the bulldozing agency follows all the legal requirements of doing so.
My problem with SF is they allow the homeless to just “camp out” on public sidewalks. My last trip to SF we went by the government district (my sister was showing us where she worked) and there were guys legally living on the sidewalk, with all the mess that goes with that. Being homeless shouldn’t give you the right to settle anywhere. But in SF that was the way the local authorities treated it.
It’s not a question of not wanting to see them or know they are there, it is a question of safety, of good sanitation.
And there will always be homeless.