Homelessness Tax Would Target Rich Tech Sector in San Francisco

Draax said:
These are cold hard statistics and facts ... not talking points. The only ones who have been indoctrinated are those who believe they actually have a shot at making it into the top percentiles. Pro-Tip ... you won't.
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Considering the Mega Millions jackpot is actually over a a billion dollars I have a shot :) :(
 
Kinestron said:
If you take a myopic view of things, I suppose you can say you are worse off than, what, when you were born? Where is your baseline of comparison?

- The number of people living in extreme poverty worldwide declined by 80 percent from 1970 to 2006.
https://www.aei.org/publication/cha...man-history-thanks-to-free-market-capitalism/

- Poverty worldwide included 94 percent of the world's population in 1820. In 2011, it was only 17 percent.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...obal-poverty-is-at-its-lowest-rate-in-history

-Globally, those in the lower and middle income brackets saw increases in pay of 40 percent from 1988 to 2008.
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/01/oxfam-wont-tell-capitalism-poverty/#

-The world is 120 times better off today than in 1800 as a result of capitalism.
https://fee.org/articles/capitalism-is-good-for-the-poor/

-Mortality rates for children under the age of five declined by 49 percent from 1990 to 2013.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/child_mortality_estimates/en/


How about we look at it over a longer period of time and compared to other countries.

View attachment 113297

So, you are most likely posting from your laptop inside an apartment or house where you are paying for electricity and internet, internet not necessarily being a human need so you obviously have some disposable income after your basic needs of food, shelter and water are met. Did you have many children die at birth? Did someone in your family or someone you know die after stepping on a nail and could not be treated for staph? How many people do you know that are living on the street? Insert any hardship that people had to deal with just a 100 years ago that no longer exist today while ignoring that a third of the country is obese and suffering from diabetes because they are so well-fed but because you are uncomfortable in your short life, you deem there is an unprecedented amount of unfairness.

What I'm seeing is your argument is that unless you can afford a Lamborghini, have a couple personal servants or afford 3 houses, there is a problem with how the rich are paid and that your quality of life is not high enough. Your solution would be the government mandate a CEO distribute his wealth to his employees when in reality that may give a company of 2000 people an extra $20. Have some perspective. In sum, the wealth and innovation spurred by capitalism has done more to help the poor than any government program ever could.
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There is a reason you are using global figures and not western / North American ones. There are billions of people outside NA that survive on fractions of a cent a day. Having a second shinny penny will increase the stats you choose but in reality it doesn’t mean jack shit. The gap between the rich and poor has only continued to increase and the longer you act as a “useful idiot” and support such a system the longer it will continue to exist.

I have absolutely nothing to be jealous about I would be categorized as upper middle and damn near the upper 20%. I have had many advantages that others have not, in life. I acknowledge that there are a shit ton of people out there that work far harder than me and yet are far worse off. These people are not poor because of choices they have made but because of the lottery of life and what they were born into. Hardest working people I ever met were the Vietnamese guys who worked in the manufacturing outback where I used to work. These guys made it to NA by getting in a shitty little boat and trying to get run over by huge shipping vessels because sometimes those vessels would pick them up and bring them to NA. These guys were paid minimum wage, never took a single vacation day or sick day, and when the break bell went they would finish what they were working on and then take whatever remained of their break. We would be lucky to find anyone born in NA who would work half as hard.
 
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Krenum said:
Agreed, in a less sugar coated fashion, The people who bitch about income inequality are jealous , living though other people on social media & spend all day wondering "why not me". Why not you? Well because you have your priorities all wrong, rather than worrying about what other people are and have, focus on yourself. I'm not a good example, I have made some very bad mistakes in my life, but I don't sit around all day feeling sorry for myself or have the mindset of "Those rich people keep getting ritcher, we should knock them down a notch, they're riding on the backs of us poor folk!". That's a defeatist attitude & on that they are counting on you to have, that doesn't help me or anyone else.
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Personally I’d just say “Winners win”, at least that’s my view.
 
Draax said:
There is a reason you are using global figures and not western / North American ones. There are billions of people outside NA that survive on fractions of a cent a day. Having a second shinny penny will increase the stats you choose but in reality it doesn’t mean jack shit. The gap between the rich and poor has only continued to increase and the longer you act as a “useful idiot” and support such a system the longer it will continue to exist.
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Ahh, ad hominem attack. Gee, that was unexpected. Try to have a good day eating fast food and watching Netflix while waiting for your next 2-day Prime delivery in your dystopian world.
 
Kinestron said:
Ahh, ad hominem attack. Gee, that was unexpected. Try to have a good day eating fast food and watching Netflix while waiting for your next 2-day Prime delivery in your dystopian world.
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Are you kidding me ... what was your very first sentence In your original post? and then this post in its entirety?
 
Kinestron said:
Ahh, ad hominem attack. Gee, that was unexpected. Try to have a good day eating fast food and watching Netflix while waiting for your next 2-day Prime delivery in your dystopian world.
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It is a dystopian world wake the fuck up. 15 of the 19 9/11 terrorists were Saudis, Osama Bin Laden was a Saudi, the Saudi king tried to blame 9/11 on the Israelis when it happened, Saudi Arabia holds public beheadings and crucifixions, Saudi Arabia just sent a death squad to murder a reporter in Turkey and then dismembered him and yet no one will stand up against the Saudis because they have all sold their morals for billion dollar defence contracts and personal gains, my country included. Just take a look at the world and tell me it’s all right.
 
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Draax said:
It is a dystopian world wake the fuck up. 15 of the 19 9/11 terrorists were Saudis, Osama Bin Laden was a Saudi, the Saudi king tried to blame 9/11 on the Israelis when it happened, Saudi Arabia holds public beheadings and crucifixions, Saudi Arabia just sent a death squad to murder a reporter in Turkey and then dismembered him and yet no one will stand up against the Saudis because they have all sold their morals for billion dollar defence contracts and personal gains, my country included. Just take a look at the world and tell me it’s all right.
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Now, THATS something I can agree on with you. That whole story stinks to high heaven. And you're right, the world isn't right. Hasn't been for a long time. Were getting close to a Blade Runner type scenario every day.
 
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Kinestron said:
  • Richest 1,409 taxpayers pay more income tax than bottom 70 Million.
  • The top 1 percent paid a greater share of individual income taxes (37.3 percent) than the bottom 90 percent combined (30.5 percent).
  • The top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97 percent of total individual income taxes.
  • In other words, the bottom 50 percent paid 3 percent. Which small percentile of tax payers also paid 3 percent or more? You might have guessed it. It is the top 0.001%, or about 1,400 taxpayers. That group alone paid 3.25 percent of all income taxes. In 2001, the bottom 50 percent paid nearly 5 percent whereas the top 0.001 percent of filers paid 2.3 percent of income taxes.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...xpayers-paid-majority-of-income-taxes-in-2016

Anyone telling you the rich don't pay their fair share is either lying through their teeth or regurgitating talking points by mainstream media or corrupt politicians and not looking at the real numbers. Stop with the envy and work harder if you don't like your lot in life. If you aren't going to work harder then stop trying to bring others down to feel better about yourself or at the very least, educate yourself with some facts and keep your mouth shut when it comes to the topic of the ultra rich and fair taxes.
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that is not fair share cause the 1% owns more than half of the world's wealth. And of that 1%, probably only the 0.01% owns 90% of the share. And that 0.01% ( that's more than a million peeps) , shouldn't own more than 1%. (total no of billionaires by open accounting aka whats on the surface = only 2.2k persons)

Income tax was never an accurate way of calculating how much the rich should pay because they are

1. allowed to stash most of it in tax havens
2. write off by purchase of items like artwork (no such thing as a rational price on artwork in those circles. And they just store it) , property ( even though they don't use it, and then flip it)
3. write off contributions to society ( even if it is just buying influence . Example, donations to universities )
4. income tax does not count wealth derived from stocks


https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/nov/14/worlds-richest-wealth-credit-suisse and many, many, many more articles. This is just the first that pops up on the search.
 
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Is this not what happens when you have liberals in charge?
Take from the rich, give to the poor is their motto
People who actually do well need to be punished.
 
ep0x73 said:
Is this not what happens when you have liberals in charge?
Take from the rich, give to the poor is their motto
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Actually, that was Robin Hood. Reality is more complicated.

Liberals generally want programs that benefit the majority of the population. Public education, environmental protection, public roads, welfare to prevent homelessness, etc. When taxes are allocated in a sane way, they get funded, and that's more or less the end of it. When they're misallocated, giving subsidies to corporations, funding unnecessary wars, bailing out Wall Street, etc., then the money magically isn't there any more. Or better yet, the rich hire lobbyists to defund or shut down existing programs that were in place, making the need for them exacerbated. Since the rich who lobby are generally the strongest opponents of public services and often get wealthier by their elimination, they're often a prime target for increasing taxation to make up the difference for what has been lost.

Don't worry though, the rich are winning, it's not even close.
 
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ep0x73 said:
Is this not what happens when you have liberals in charge?
Take from the rich, give to the poor is their motto
People who actually do well need to be punished.
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As opposed to the conservatives? Take from anyone they can, give to their rich friends. See I can do this too!
 
Laowai said:
Actually, no it wasn't.
Robin Hood 'repurposed' loot taken from tax collectors.

#SocialistsRuinEverything
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Ya it’s just terrible here in Canada and all the other countries with socialist programs. Great education systems, universal healthcare, higher minimum wages, higher life expectancy, lower infant mortality rates ... it’s a damn travesty.
 
Draax said:
Ya it’s just terrible here in Canada and all the other countries with socialist programs. Great education systems, universal healthcare, higher minimum wages, higher life expectancy, lower infant mortality rates ... it’s a damn travesty.
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To be fair you do elect full on crack heads to office there, so it's a win some, lose some situation if you ask me.
 
capt_cope said:
To be fair you do elect full on crack heads to office there, so it's a win some, lose some situation if you ask me.
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To be fair that was a Mayor, who is now deceased. Then again his brother, a former hash dealer, does run the countries largest province. Even with all that, they don’t come close to Trump being elected. Something about glass houses and stones.
 
Draax said:
Ya it’s just terrible here in Canada and all the other countries with socialist programs. Great education systems, universal healthcare, higher minimum wages, higher life expectancy, lower infant mortality rates ... it’s a damn travesty.
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Yes, it's a very nice country indeed.

Draax said:
To be fair that was a Mayor, who is now deceased. Then again his brother, a former hash dealer, does run the countries largest province. Even with all that, they don’t come close to Trump being elected. Something about glass houses and stones.
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Oh, I love the Canadian stance against Trump. The same people with that thin veiled racism that wants skilled immigrants as long as they never dare to do anything that a Canadian - not native, euro-canadian - wants to. Otherwise, in the nicest most polite way, they'll show you exactly what they think, talking about rainbows and sunshine in the meantime, of course.
 
lcpiper said:
The man said a white person couldn't possible understand anything about being homeless?

I thought the quote made it clear enough.

Look, my problem isn't that we are helping homeless people, it's how we are going about it. I think it's wasteful and that the money and the effort should be pushed down to local levels and organizations. In many cases that is what is happening so it's not like it's not a proven concept.

There are homeless throughout the country, always have been some, but it's worse now. I believe that raising tax revenues to fund federal assistance programs is less efficient than doing so at State and City. And if any city already has civic/faith based organizations capable of handling the burden, I say let them, and pony up some local and if needed, state taxes to do so.
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Fair enough on the point that there are white homeless people.
 
theBrownLlama said:
that is not fair share cause the 1% owns more than half of the world's wealth. And of that 1%, probably only the 0.01% owns 90% of the share. And that 0.01% ( that's more than a million peeps) , shouldn't own more than 1%. (total no of billionaires by open accounting aka whats on the surface = only 2.2k persons)

Income tax was never an accurate way of calculating how much the rich should pay because they are

1. allowed to stash most of it in tax havens
2. write off by purchase of items like artwork (no such thing as a rational price on artwork in those circles. And they just store it) , property ( even though they don't use it, and then flip it)
3. write off contributions to society ( even if it is just buying influence . Example, donations to universities )
4. income tax does not count wealth derived from stocks


https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/nov/14/worlds-richest-wealth-credit-suisse and many, many, many more articles. This is just the first that pops up on the search.
Click to expand...

Then argue with your congressman for a fair tax(i.e. consumption tax), instead of just reallocating wealth that is never efficient and gets misallocated. See 15% of the population that uses Medicare yet 100% of working people are contributing to it and it will be insolvent in 8-12 years. Even besides that, your point still completely ignores they foot most of the bill which includes your military, border, medicare, social security, education, highways, etc. yeah, let's give them 0 credit because some lives are slightly uncomfortable and you only have a spongbob poster on your wall. Argue for more freedom in your life rather than trying to restrict others.

https://www.businessinsider.com/medicare-insolvent-in-8-years-2009-5?op=1

Just for some fun and why I don't believe tax the rich(i.e. socialism) more is the solution:
 
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Draax said:
Ya it’s just terrible here in Canada and all the other countries with socialist programs. Great education systems, universal healthcare, higher minimum wages, higher life expectancy, lower infant mortality rates ... it’s a damn travesty.
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Canada is the exception....for now. I can see why they just legalized marijuana, that will surely pay for a lot of the freebies.
 
cdr_74_premium said:
Yes, it's a very nice country indeed.



Oh, I love the Canadian stance against Trump. The same people with that thin veiled racism that wants skilled immigrants as long as they never dare to do anything that a Canadian - not native, euro-canadian - wants to. Otherwise, in the nicest most polite way, they'll show you exactly what they think, talking about rainbows and sunshine in the meantime, of course.
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Struck a nerve did I? I must have hit pretty close to the mark to get you so riled up. I’m sorry I don’t categorize Canadians into subgroups such as natives or “euro-Canadians”. We are all Canadian.

I lived in Canada’s most multicultural city for a decade and I never saw this thinly veiled racism you speak of. When the 2003 blackout hit, when I was in College, it was a newly immigrated Canadian family who took my 2 roommates and I in and made sure we were fed. I have had newly immigrated Canadians as bosses, worked and lived beside them with no problems to speak of.

The United States shouldn’t be surprised by Canada’s stance on Trump. When 9/11 happened and US airspace was closed Canada took in and housed displaced Americans. We supported / fought beside the US in every armed conflict except for Vietnam and Iraq and Trump turned around and put tariffs on our steel and aluminum calling Canada a “national security threat”. We simply don’t put up with that shit. We know why the world laughed at Trump when he spoke at the UN. It wasnt nervous or anxious laughter ... it was dismissive laughter.
 
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Krenum said:
Canada is the exception....for now. I can see why they just legalized marijuana, that will surely pay for a lot of the freebies.
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What about: Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Ireland, New Zealand and Belgium?
 
Draax said:
What about: Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Ireland, New Zealand and Belgium?
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I guess they're doing ok. But those countries have smaller populations, easier to control.
 
tempertantrum said:
I'm from Detroit. Born and raised. That's not even remotely how it happened. It was already having troubles before WWII (everyone was, because of the depression). After WWII (the even into the 60's and 70's) the cash for housing was flowing pretty freely, but there were restrictions, but official and unofficial depending on the time period, in which black people were either not given any money or only granted mortgages inside certain areas, and white people were only granted mortgages outside of those areas. The line in Detroit was 8mile, and the redlining continued (unofficially) even into the 90's and 2000's with some mortgage companies (think Bank of America). This depressed house prices for generations (not a single generation, that idea is utter BS), and to this day prevents people who live in Detroit from participating in the housing booms, developing property-based "nest eggs," and in general acquiring wealth the way whites in the area did (check out Bloomfield Hills, Birmingham, etc.). This literally left the poor Detroit filled with the poor black people who were either the children or grandchildren of slaves that migrated north for jobs to places like Detroit stuck with no way to get out. Because of this, and the collapse of the auto industry, Detroit remains one of the poorest, most segregated places in the country. That doesn't even take into account things like the racism of the state as far as the allocation of funds for things like infrastructure, development, and education, the fact that the city was made for 2 million people and the white flight forced the poorest people to try to support that infrastructure so there are some of the highest tax levels in the state, the fact that the bus system is literally set up so there is ONE way for people to ride out of the city for jobs, and things like the "war on drugs" which specifically targeted the kinds of drugs people of color tended to use, etc. etc. etc. This is starting to change, as the rich children of the whites who abandoned Detroit now are returning and buying up the now incredibly cheap property and gentrifying parts of the city, but that typically doesn't benefit the people who suffered and struggled to get along without any support in the meantime. Now, before you start saying some BS about bootstraps, let me tell you, having been a teacher in the area including in some of the roughest schools you can imagine, it is *incredibly* difficult for kids to "make it" out of that kind of generational poverty. I wasn't any smarter or harder working than the others, I was just lucky. Most parents of my students were working 2-3 jobs just to get by, leaving kids all alone. (There is no day care in many places, and many people can't afford them when there are. When people get in troubles there's really not great places to turn for help or support or a hand up. The system is designed to keep people down with quirks like if you make enough money you get kicked off welfare so you ultimately make less money, trapping people in limbo. There's few investors (and the ones there are only invest in white people in white or gentrified areas), the churches do a terrible job doing anything other than a bit of food and maybe a nights rest. Maybe. Nothing to help give you a hand up, and are usually pretty manipulative.

So... shut your pie hole when it comes to Detroit, because you are ignorant AF. California will continue to support the mostly white and affluent SF - it is nothing like Detroit.
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So I said like one sentence you say its not even remotely how it happened, how do you make that claim based on the fact that I didn't detail how it happened in much of any way.

This is from Wikipedia
The city of Detroit, in the U.S. state of Michigan, has gone through a major economic and demographic decline in recent decades. The population of the city has fallen from a high of 1,850,000 in 1950 to 677,116 in 2015, kicking it off the top 20 of US cities by population for the first time since 1850.
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But lets just say for arguments sake the decline started back in the 1920s you are still talking about just 3 generations and my point still stands I bet someone back before WWII would never imagine in their wildest nightmares that Detroit would fall into the decrepit mess it is now after being one of the worlds premier cities. And as much as people don't want to believe it the same fate could fall on SF or LA.
 
Laowai said:
I'm not moving any goalposts, you're just being a bit dense.
I can be for X social program without being a socialist.
A country can have some social programs and not be socialist.

I stand by my statement. Socialists ruin everything.
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Ad hominems again ... sigh.
Doubling down on an incorrect statement doesn’t make it true. Gee I wonder what type of person creates a socialist program ... perhaps a socialist.
 
Laowai said:
You still haven't learned what an ad-hom is.
How....unsurprising.
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Thank you for so clearly illustrating “what an ad-hom is” and perhaps even a touch of irony.

For some extra credit you could read up on Tommy Douglas, he was often accused of being a dirty socialist... He is the father of the Canadian universal health care system. #HeRuinedEverything
 
Kinestron said:
Then argue with your congressman for a fair tax(i.e. consumption tax), instead of just reallocating wealth that is never efficient and gets misallocated. See 15% of the population that uses Medicare yet 100% of working people are contributing to it and it will be insolvent in 8-12 years. Even besides that, your point still completely ignores they foot most of the bill which includes your military, border, medicare, social security, education, highways, etc. yeah, let's give them 0 credit because some lives are slightly uncomfortable and you only have a spongbob poster on your wall. Argue for more freedom in your life rather than trying to restrict others.

https://www.businessinsider.com/medicare-insolvent-in-8-years-2009-5?op=1

Just for some fun and why I don't believe tax the rich(i.e. socialism) more is the solution:
Click to expand...


so the gov. That's what i have been saying, and you were saying no.

and i was saying it's a money thing, and you were saying no too.

my point is that the rich gets away with what they rightfully owe to the country because loopholes are huge. (tax havens , one of the examples for which i mentioned before)

not only that, but the rich perpetuates a dysfunctional, severely unequal society , for their own profit and ego. ( buying properties around their domicile because of 'privacy' being one of the examples i mentioned earlier )

btw, the millionaires (small business owners for example) of the 1% are shrimps compared to the whales whom owns entire media enterprises which sets the narrative to whatever they want. This being a tech site, take Facebook for example. Even the stocks which these 1% owns in diversified funds are owned by these 2000 billionaires or so.
 
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so what i am getting out of this is SF is 1. incredibly overpriced 2. incredibly overpopulated 3. the land values in SF are insane.
 
Laowai said:
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Eh, while he absolutely has some true points very early on he throws in a major fallacy as he equates homelessness with not having a job. That is one of a very minor amount of homelessness. There's mental health, physical health (addiction issues), there's not making enough money, there's because you can get away with living the lifestyle, and probably last on that list is lost your job.

So going down the list
Mental health - really there's no fix for this, you can't fix crazy, most are not going to be productive, you can give them a place to sleep but you can't give them "housing" in the traditional sense if it requires some sort of "upkeep agreement" (i.e. paying rent, sweat equity, etc). This is the hardest level of homeless to deal with

Addiction issues - hard to fix, but something that is fixable. Some addiction issues stem from being homeless in the first place, as drugs are a nice way to escape your own personal hell, some were addicts which is the reason they became homeless and now they simply are stuck. Treating addiction is a real thing though, and while never 100% successful, is something that can be done and these people can reintegrate with society.

Not making enough money - This is the one that pisses me off, Seattle and San Francisco are expensive as fuck cities, realize this, can't afford to live here? Then try somewhere else. Really easy level of homeless to fight in theory, but practically is very difficult as giving developers incentives for cheap housing puts a limited number of houses out there and there's no guarantee homeless get it, people who are paying rent at higher areas can go for them. And simply having a program to get them to migrate to other parts of the country often gets frowned upon, mostly because in the past that simply involved giving someone a bus ticket and saying "ha, you're now some other city's problem"

Because you can get away with it - These are the ones that piss me off the most, these are the RV dwellers, living in $100k RVs, moving around to avoid street sweeping, or worse someone else with money rents out the RV at hundreds per month. They differ from boat dwellers because they don't even pay for an RV park, because why would you? if you can get away with NOT paying more money, and even though there are laws on the books making it illegal to sleep in a vehicle from 10pm-6am police can't charge people with it unless they physically see someone in there, so all windows are draped/curtained shut, and no one answers their door if there is a knock after 10, so they game the system of "if you can't see me breaking the law then you can't arrest/cite me for doing so". Some of these people are due to the "not enough money" category, but in theory it's really easy to fix this group by banning RVs in residential neighborhoods, however when the local government drags their feet and uses arguments of "would you rather them sleeping in tents" when the reality is most of this group wouldn't sleep in tents. These are people who have figured out that you can live that "tiny home lifestyle" in a city which for the most part allows you live outdoors for the rest of the day.

Jobless - This is a hard one to deal with as well simply due to the fact that 1) there are jobs available but 2) the cities (Seattle & SF) are so expensive that getting one of those jobs more likely than not won't pay for the lifestyle they want (not having roommates). But again, this is one that is fixable, not by "giving a job" but having a job search program, which presumably is elsewhere in the country where you can get by with a less than ideal job.

Overall, government leaders do recognize all these different forms at some point, but when they make arguments as to why they should (tax, give money, not prohibit, etc) it's always focuses on one group "but we can't do that because mental health...". It's a problem that there really is no cure for as a whole, but cities do just throw money and think "more affordable housing" is the generic cure for it, when the reality is that it will help a small portion of homeless, meanwhile being one of the more expensive options, plus it tends to fatten a developer's bottom line with all the tax breaks they get.
 
Lunas said:
so what i am getting out of this is SF is 1. incredibly overpriced 2. incredibly overpopulated 3. the land values in SF are insane.
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1. Absolute, but this is a known thing, and didn't just happen over night, so it is what it is. And the thing is there is no shortage of people willing to pay the price that it is. That said SF is rent controlled as a city if the building is older than 1978 (I think) which is most housing, so those people who have lived here a while they have relatively inexpensive rent compared to new people, or people who do get forced out (which in itself is due to rent control). It's people who haven't lived at the same place for much time, or who are new here but not rich, they are the largest complainers. Think of it this way, 20 or so years ago you could buy a house with a blue collar job, today that isn't possible, so there's a rift people who thought it would always be that way, and people who were "lucky" enough to see the light at the end of the tunnel (and didn't get scammed with an ARM mortgage)
2. Kind of, there's less than a million people living here, but due to the small land area (roughly 50 square miles) it translates to a large population density, 2nd to NYC I think for metropolitan cities but then again by definition those urban areas are denser than elsewhere. Bigger issues is that there's probably easily twice that number who commutes into the city for work so it's always filled.
3. Yup, but back to point 1. It is a known thing, and it is what it is. You either bought or got in on a rental a long time ago and didn't move, or you move from place to place and are upset that you don't enjoy the same benefits as that first group.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Eh, while he absolutely has some true points very early on he throws in a major fallacy as he equates homelessness with not having a job. That is one of a very minor amount of homelessness. There's mental health, physical health (addiction issues), there's not making enough money, there's because you can get away with living the lifestyle, and probably last on that list is lost your job.

So going down the list
Mental health - really there's no fix for this, you can't fix crazy, most are not going to be productive, you can give them a place to sleep but you can't give them "housing" in the traditional sense if it requires some sort of "upkeep agreement" (i.e. paying rent, sweat equity, etc). This is the hardest level of homeless to deal with

Addiction issues - hard to fix, but something that is fixable. Some addiction issues stem from being homeless in the first place, as drugs are a nice way to escape your own personal hell, some were addicts which is the reason they became homeless and now they simply are stuck. Treating addiction is a real thing though, and while never 100% successful, is something that can be done and these people can reintegrate with society.

Not making enough money - This is the one that pisses me off, Seattle and San Francisco are expensive as fuck cities, realize this, can't afford to live here? Then try somewhere else. Really easy level of homeless to fight in theory, but practically is very difficult as giving developers incentives for cheap housing puts a limited number of houses out there and there's no guarantee homeless get it, people who are paying rent at higher areas can go for them. And simply having a program to get them to migrate to other parts of the country often gets frowned upon, mostly because in the past that simply involved giving someone a bus ticket and saying "ha, you're now some other city's problem"

Because you can get away with it - These are the ones that piss me off the most, these are the RV dwellers, living in $100k RVs, moving around to avoid street sweeping, or worse someone else with money rents out the RV at hundreds per month. They differ from boat dwellers because they don't even pay for an RV park, because why would you? if you can get away with NOT paying more money, and even though there are laws on the books making it illegal to sleep in a vehicle from 10pm-6am police can't charge people with it unless they physically see someone in there, so all windows are draped/curtained shut, and no one answers their door if there is a knock after 10, so they game the system of "if you can't see me breaking the law then you can't arrest/cite me for doing so". Some of these people are due to the "not enough money" category, but in theory it's really easy to fix this group by banning RVs in residential neighborhoods, however when the local government drags their feet and uses arguments of "would you rather them sleeping in tents" when the reality is most of this group wouldn't sleep in tents. These are people who have figured out that you can live that "tiny home lifestyle" in a city which for the most part allows you live outdoors for the rest of the day.

Jobless - This is a hard one to deal with as well simply due to the fact that 1) there are jobs available but 2) the cities (Seattle & SF) are so expensive that getting one of those jobs more likely than not won't pay for the lifestyle they want (not having roommates). But again, this is one that is fixable, not by "giving a job" but having a job search program, which presumably is elsewhere in the country where you can get by with a less than ideal job.

Overall, government leaders do recognize all these different forms at some point, but when they make arguments as to why they should (tax, give money, not prohibit, etc) it's always focuses on one group "but we can't do that because mental health...". It's a problem that there really is no cure for as a whole, but cities do just throw money and think "more affordable housing" is the generic cure for it, when the reality is that it will help a small portion of homeless, meanwhile being one of the more expensive options, plus it tends to fatten a developer's bottom line with all the tax breaks they get.
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His video was not meant to offer solutions to a difficult problem, nor to address all of the varying factors that contribute to the issue. I think his biggest concern is that simply throwing more money at something won't fix it and the city proves it with their own numbers. As he said, in SF they already pay nearly 40k per homeless person and this new plan would bump it to something like 75k. Homelessness has not decreased while spending has already increased by 40% in the past 5 years. It's at 280million/year. That's a considerable amount of money and that money does not come from thin air. If spending has increased but there are no positive results to show for it they're pissing money away. And he's right...in a few years they'll likely come looking for more money again. And again.

I really don't know what to suggest for the mentally ill on the streets. I'm conflicted. I'm inclined to want some kind of forced hospitalization to get some of the more dangerous or vulnerable off the streets but I don't like the idea of anything being forced upon citizens. I'm not sure that saying "it's for their own good" is enough as that becomes wide open to abuse. One thing for sure is that what they're doing in SF, is not the right thing.
 
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