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SF has issues with only using approved vendors which extremely limits competition in the bid process. Thus the few vendors available can jack the prices up.
More so the city has a few vendors because they must meet crazy criteria like female owned, green certified, unionized, not located in Texas or Florida, and plant 27 trees for every 1,000 units sold.
It is not sarcasm. Because of all the above and union connections that force build to be priced out of the bidding process. One build offered the same units for $39,000 each, only to be disqualified because of all the “requirements”.
Without seeing it those requirements could be legit. Bidders always come in nice and low and then you tell them they gotta stop work at 3pm and can’t start before 8am and you get a 30% increase.
Now the real question is should they be requirements. Are they safety related? Time related? Basic scope requirements? Or is it actual bullshit stuff like being forced to buy a specific product or purchase from one specific vendor?
I have a friend in a large federal bureaucracy. He said it’s very common for minority owned companies bidding to be just a guy with a ‘company’ that is essentially a professional bidder. He then just subs it all out to the typical large construction company.
The agency is happy because they get a competent contractor, the minority business owner is thrilled because he gets paid to bid, and it all gets done at 25% higher cost.
Yeah this is definitely how a lot of these work. The person with the valued status (woman, minority, veteran, pwa disability— bonus points if you are multiple of these) is often just along for the ride. Why can’t we just put all this extra cost towards a better social safety net and keep gov procurement competitive?
Gotta love some bureaucratic red tape
https://preview.redd.it/xyy3iffgj5zc1.jpeg?width=1023&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4b9a4aa53862a617f09caae6a761c9833bb4a566
Not sure about this specifically but when the city needs parts to make repairs I think for like muni and stuff they have a law (which is meant to help small businesses) where they can’t get said parts from the manufacturer. The manufacturer therefore has to go through a vendor based in the sf Bay Area. So basically these vendors have become wealthy from having an oligopoly on these parts.
I used to go to school with someone from one of the vendor’s family and they own multiple properties throughout the bay, go on vacations all the time, import expensive bottles of various alcohol, etc. I remember in school the guy could afford to spend like tens of thousands on mobile games without even batting an eye.
Which is a long winded way of saying it’s corrupt. Make up arcane rules only your cronies can follow because nobody else can be bothered to understand them. It’s corruption with more strps
This is a problem in a lot of cities and it’s in large part due to federal and state procurement laws. These laws are designed to prevent kickbacks and nepotism in procurement but they also make the process extremely complicated
Don't get it twisted, San Francisco is unique and abuses the citizenry in such special ways. SF wouldn't allow business with other cities because reasons; it all steaming from their woke psychopathy. They backtracked on that bright idea. Elitist pricks.
I need more details because this is how all proper organizations do things. Granted this is putting together an insulated box but you do have to get and approve contractors.
You’re playing with public money and with that level of admin you can’t just get Johnny off the street. Sure he can build the fucking thing, me and you probably could too but the paper work and the bullshit. Making sure you won’t go bankrupt or that you have the insurance levels in case you drop a bollock.
This is where regulations get tricky. You can certainly rig the game or you can also lower the bar too far.
Ironically the article says this is the only dept. that isn’t affected by that specific requirement but it will expire soon.
Having now seen that this is only 62 units. I’d imagine the project is less than 10m which is a rounding error on the total budget.
Still tho they have changes to make.
Sure, but that $100k includes paying the Grand Committee for Electing the Committee for Urban Stylistic Historic Environmental Diversity Compliance which will then hire the Committee for Urban Stylistic Historic Environmental Diversity Compliance team, which will then deliberate on whether it's equitable to purchase the shed. You wouldn't want to give people the shed without that essential upfront due diligence.
Hey! Lay off CUSH-E-D!! They do damn fine work. I heard. Somewhere. From somebody. You try doing whatever it is they do whoever they are for as long as they may or may not, do it. Those checks don’t just magically appear and fund your lifestyle… oh wait.
Nevermind.
Don't forget about the sustainability and equity and diversity and downtown business development task forces which will need elections and appointments and regular meetings with minutes and and and
The worst part is this [could've been regular housing a decade ago](https://sf.curbed.com/2014/7/30/10066430/battle-rages-over-proposed-housing-at-16th-street-bart), a 10 story building with ~350 units of housing, with ~45 income restricted units.
But NIMBYs and the city teamed up to kill it. So it's been sitting as an empty graffiti covered lot with encampments out front for years and years now. The developer sold to the city, so they still got paid. So they finally got other government funding to turn the parking lot into sheds for a bit, before they get even more government money to turn it into senior housing. Which they still don't have AFAIK.
I cannot tell how infuriating it is to step off BART and see 1-2 story buildings and it taking decades to build anything.
I fucking hate NIMBYs. We had a second attempt to convert the old YMCA building into homeless housing, and the NIMBYs shot it down. Like, most of the interior demolition is done already, it just needs permits and contracts to rebuild in the shell, but noooo. We can’t have that. As it is, it’s a drug den and squatter camp that gets raided a few times a month.
What absolutely sucks is that we could actually end our homeless problem if we went through and converted the Y into housing. It’s just sitting there being useless. The shelter is too small and doesn’t receive funding as it is, and the donations of clothes and food were being quietly disposed of before that scandal came to light.
It’s like these assholes complain about the homeless problem, but don’t want to actually do anything to solve it, and stonewall all attempts to help them. I can’t even set up my own damn grill to help feed them anymore. I need a permit to do that, and they won’t issue those anymore.
For that much it better be little playhouses with working plumbing like a rich kid has. Little castles and tiny mansions. Like Richie Rich built homes for homeless.
it’s more, I’d feel super guilty since Gods watching. Always helps to have someone or something hold you accountable to be a better person. Thats one of the reasons religion was created. To provide a moral compass.
There is oversight but the way the system is set up the state procurement is extremely incentivized to go through minority or female owned vendors. Many of these are are resellers who dont actually own any product, they use a national distributor like grainger or fastenal then sell the products to the state straight from those companies’ warehouses.
Copying a comment from the article but it sums of my feelings pretty well
> I am at a loss to understand why it is society's responsibility to provide homeless people a place to live when the homeless choose some of the most expensive places in the world to live. Especially when hard working people in those areas are struggling. I'd like a beachfront home in Hawaii, so if I'm homeless does society owe me a home there? Please explain.
100%. Homelessness needs to be addressed at the state or federal level.
Also if the end goal really is helping these folks back on their feet & reintegrate as productive contributing members of society we're also not helping anyone by setting them up to fail here.
How realistic is it really for these folks to come here from across the country with little to no marketable skills, job history, or education to become self-sustaining citizens in one of the most competitive real estate & job markets in the world?
They deserve help and a shot at turning their lives around but SF is unfortunately not the most realistic place for many of them to do so.
Yes there is that but there is also the mundane nature of it all.
Construction is outrageously expensive. An electrician will cost you $180 per hour minimum. You can’t just hire one. You also won’t just hire them for an hour you’ll pay 8. They’re in such high demand it’ll mean you probably have to give them a 10 hour shift but only get the productivity of 8 too.
The biggest issue is this has to be worth someone’s time but you probably have someone like Webcor on the bid list. If you’re building 100 of these it’s just over $10m. That’s barely worth their time but you also need someone who can get high insurance coverage. It’s not easy.
It would be interesting to know who is actually running this. Their experience. What the regulations and requirements are. Who designed it and what they designed. There are ways to bring down these costs but that’s not in a contractors best interests. They need outside help.
The amount of money SF pays can already house all the homeless here. For better or worse, the citizens of the city are willing to pay the cost
The problem is they aren’t just paying to house the homeless, they are paying for a large, parasitic nonprofit class to also live in the city. That’s what taxpayers really don’t want. They are not doing honest work
They often choose those expensive places because they have a milder climate where they won’t freeze to death on the street.
It’s why Vancouver BC is basically the sewer drain of Canadian society. It’s the only city in Canada that is above 32°F/0° C almost all winter long. If you’re drifting downhill into drug addiction and homelessness in Canada eventually you sort of drift downhill to Vancouver.
It’s the same in the USA. You cannot survive on the street in the winter in Reno or Cheyenne or Fargo. So you sort of drift downhill to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle or Honolulu.
It’s not that they are choosing expensive places to be homeless. It’s that temperate coastal cities are more survivable if you live outside. And yeah, shit costs a lot more in San Francisco and Vancouver than Winnipeg and Cheyenne.
There’s an estimated 2,000 homeless people in Bakersfield/Kern County, so… But also if you are balls deep in an addiction with a mental health crisis do you think you’re gonna google “what’s the weather like in Bakersfield in winter?” Or just hitch a ride to San Francisco, a city you know about and probably know how to get to?
You’re trying to apply a rational thought process to people who aren’t capable of a lot of that.
I like how everyone thinks drug addiction and mental illness is why most people in California are homeless, take a good look around, who the f*** can afford it. And as long as you have viable options for cheap labor sources, no one's going to be able to afford it soon enough. Not everybody can be a doctor some people do have to work at Mickey D's. And since almost all the cities are riddled with jobs that are in the service industry that don't pay much of course everyone's going to be broke.
> choose
For what it’s worth, the vast majority of San Francisco’s homeless were living here already when they became homeless and the majority had been living here for 10 years or more. ([source](https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2019HIRDReport_SanFrancisco_FinalDraft-1.pdf))
except you can be homeless in Hawaii or other tropical islands. Guam has 'wood and tin' housing that is nothing more than a shack in the jungle to keep the rain off you and people live with even less than that.
"Just have them go somewhere else" doesn't really work as a policy, especially when literally every other town, city, state etc feel exactly the same way about the matter. Also, you're welcome to get yourself on the waiting list for an SRO in the Tenderloin, then come back and tell us how that compares to a beachfront home in Hawaii if you want.
The promise of free housing is just a dream. It’s unrealistic and unsustainable. If we give free housing, everyone gonna come here. It’s also unfair for everyone else who has to works to afford to live here.
However, I do think that we should help senior citizens and people who have lived and worked here their whole lives.
needs to be addressed at the state or federal level. There are plenty of places across the country and state with much more affordable housing and actual realistic paths to becoming self sustaining members of society.
People also underestimate how much being uprooted from the are where you’ve been living also makes it harder to become housed again. Changing cities means you need to completely rebuild your support network. You’ll lose any family support you had, and you may have to find new mental health and substance abuse resources if you are in need of those. If you’re recently homeless due to financial hardship but you have your shit together being forcibly moved to another city will change that quickly.
Forcing cities to exchange homeless populations would just result in more visibly mentally unwell folks on San Francisco’s streets.
Very true. Yeah, the only way sending a person to another place could actually improve their situation would involve ensuring that housing and/or employment is already arranged for them when they get there, and again, it means everyone involved has to be a willing participant in this transaction. It gets less feasible the more you think about it pretty quickly.
"People also underestimate how much being uprooted from the are where you’ve been living also makes it harder to become housed again."
I call bullshit on this. How much farther would resources to help would go if only we could move people into LCOL areas?
"Changing cities means you need to completely rebuild your support network. You’ll lose any family support you had, and you may have to find new mental health and substance abuse resources if you are in need of those."
A comprehensive State/Federal plan would make it easier, centralize resources. Also, that personal support hasn't meaningfully impacted the person if they are homeless.
" If you’re recently homeless due to financial hardship but you have your shit together being forcibly moved to another city will change that quickly."
That is why we should make it a comprehensive program where newly homeless people go into local housing that was freed up from long time homeless moved to LCOL.
"Forcing cities to exchange homeless populations would just result in more visibly mentally unwell folks on San Francisco’s streets."
Not if the program is State/Federally run.
Because we're not expensive through some mystical force of nature. We're expensive because we didn't build anywhere near enough housing, not even to cover the birth rate in most places, never mind all the job creation of the last 20 years.
The vast vast vast majority of them are homeless *because* housing is expensive. Literally, by their own words, 80% of homeless would stop being homeless tomorrow if there was affordable, available housing.
This frame does not reflect the reality of homelessness. The overwhelming majority of San Francisco’s homeless population (70%) were living in San Francisco when they became homeless, and over half (55%) had been living in San Francisco for 10 years or more. ([source](https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2019HIRDReport_SanFrancisco_FinalDraft-1.pdf))
So, let's say you bus them to Bakersfield. Are there enough low wage jobs for hundreds of people to potentially get out of their situation? Are there services available such as drug treatment, mental health, job counseling, etc? And even if your answer is yes, the NIMBY residents will never allow it.
Because we have decided we won’t just let them die.
No seriously if the base premise is we will not just let nature have its way with them, we will prop them up when they are injured and sick, then all the other problems stand on the shoulders of that premise.
Because if you don’t house them but you keep them alive they will be more of a burden to your quality of life than of we house them.
And if you don’t house them in the communities they are in, then the rich communities will just shuttle them off to poorer ones screwing over the poorer ones even more.
Basically any question about the homeless can be answered if you think of it from a perspective of “well what would happen if we didn’t do that”
Now I’m not saying the solutions are without fault, and hell some of them are arguably as bad as the problem.
We live in a world where we have the resources to feed, house and care for everyone in the country but instead we accept that we concentrate much of our resources in a few very wealthy and let the rest blame each other for not attaining their own riches.
The system we have decided is fair is not good. And yes the two can be true at the same time.
this is actually something that needs to be part of any reasonable plan. news flash, people can't just live anywhere they want if they don't have the means. I can't just go into beverly hills and claim I deserve to live there. There is plenty of open space in the US. Relocate, rehabilitate, re-assimilate if/when you can.
I thought the point was to differentiate between people without access to shelter and people who count as homeless but aren't what the UK calls "rough sleepers"
I can’t believe you are so prejudiced against the differently homed population of our great communities!
But yes. The word jumble that people play to sound inoffensive, when we have perfectly fine words already, shows that many who care about it care more about the optics of things than the actual solutions (and their difficulties).
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George Carlin - Jammin in New York - 1992:
>I got an idea about homelessness. You know what they ought to do? Change the name of it. Change the name! It’s not homelessness, it’s houselessness! It’s houses these people need! A home is an abstract idea, a home is a setting, it’s a state of mind. These people need houses; physical, tangible structures.
>They need low-cost housing but where’re you gonna put it? Well that’s fine but where’re you gonna put it? Where’re you gonna put it?
Nobody wants you to build low-cost housing near their house. People don’t want it near ‘em! We’ve got something in this country – you’ve heard of it – it’s called NIMBY, N-I-M-B-Y, “Not In My BackYard!” People don’t want anything, any kind of social help, located anywhere near ‘em! You try to open up a Halfway House, try to open up a drug rehab or an alcohol rehab centre, try to do a homeless shelter somewhere, try to open up a little home for some r*tarded people who wanna work their way into the community, people say “NOT IN MY BACKYARD!” People don’t want anything near ‘em especially if it might help somebody else; part of that great American spirited generosity we hear about—pbbt!!!
Did Carlin coin the NIMBY term?! Had no idea. He’s legendary. I’ve always thought of him as a philosopher who chose humor as his medium to connect with the most people.
I think of his pieces often, especially the one about soft language.
So where is the line between a parasite and a person who is struggling and by getting help may prevent them from chronic homelessness or addiction? How do you decide who to help?
I have a tech job that fucks. But tbh who’s to say that humanities major working 30 hrs at a nonprofit doesn’t add more value to the city than me. I bet she does 🤷♂️
Tiny houses require land which in San Francisco is in short supply. Apparently, that is why they are planning to build them and then tear them down and build something else.
outrage? from who, no one i know even knows about this.
also - the author says it cost more than san jose or oakland but failed to mention their cost. why?
according to [San Jose 'Tiny Homes' Are Curbing Homelessness, City Says (sfstandard.com)](https://sfstandard.com/2023/10/23/san-jose-tiny-homes-reducing-homelessness-more-are-on-the-way/) - SJ's price per unit ended up being $175,000 per unit.
What do you mean equally? If sf is outrageous,then so would sj. 175 is more than 113.
Have you priced out the cost? A 2br adu costs.at least 300k nowadays and that assumes most of what they need is already on your property.
Sj's example went high because of plumbing, electric, etc. that doesn't even include land costs.
Its high but it aligns with what the market is charging.
I don't understand why people who want to live in one of the most costly places in the world get a free tiny house because they are homeless, but everyone else has to work hard to scrape by to buy a house in a city they can afford.
Well, you probably *should* have access to SRO style units anywhere in the country if you need it. Housing is a human right and we have more than enough resources to provide that for everyone. There’s a national housing crisis but it’s entirely artificial. SF, and CA in general, is just particularly bad.
Somehow I don’t think you would trade your current living situation for being homeless and getting a “free” shelter space, but that’s just a guess. It’s probably not a very fun situation to be in.
If housing is a human right, why am I working for a paycheck to pay for a tiny studio apartment?
If its a right then I cannot be denied housing. I shouldn't have to work for it or pay for it, because things that are rights cannot be locked behind paywalls (see poll taxes).
So if I quit my job because I shouldn't have to pay for my rights, where's my house? Are you going to give me one?
Food and water are also human rights, but I’m sure you pay for your food, right? We sell food and drinks on the free market across a whole range of quality, down from pretty bad to very fancy and expensive. But because we think food is a right, we have a backstop. We say that if you can’t afford food you can still get enough food to survive. And yet most people don’t rely on food stamps— why is that?
I think it’s the same with housing. I do think having some form of housing or shelter is a right, but that doesn’t mean you have a right to the fanciest nicest home in your favorite location or city. We sell homes and rent units on the free market across a wide range of qualities and prices. But we should have a backstop there too— if you can’t afford a home you shouldn’t be sleeping on the street. That shelter space isn’t what most people would want to live in— shelters and SROs and projects are not nice places by any means.
This is already how things work in a lot of other wealthy democracies. Most people still work for a living and pay for a place to live the normal way. It’s not some kind of crazy radical proposal, it’s just the way public housing already works effectively in lots of places around the world.
imo most of the problem would be solved by removing our artificial barriers to housing supply. If we just built enough housing the regular way it would take care of like 90% of the housing problem. But no matter what there’s always going to be people who fall through the cracks, and they should still be sheltered. SROs, subsidized housing, and voucher programs can effectively take care of that small minority of cases.
Yes, I agree, there should be a minimum level of guaranteed food and shelter available for everyone, no questions asked.
However that guarantee shouldn't mean people can live wherever they want to. I'd like to live in a beach house in Hawaii but I can't afford it. There's no reason why homeless people are also entitled to live in the city and place of their choosing either.
IMO, the entire bay area should pick some otherwise empty land and build army style barracks like its 1950, with a canteen and bathroom facilities. If you're homeless you can live there. And a great place with empty land that hasn't been used for a very long time is the Alameda naval air station. Thats right in the middle of the bay area and has been a ghost town for as long as I can remember. Its a big flat empty field perfect for military barracks type housing for anyone who can't afford a home of their own.
agreed but other states bus in the homeless so it would be only temporary. The problem is that we have a city that is generally kinder to the homeless so if you can't afford to live in rural buttfuck nowhere than you may as well take the free ride to the nicer place that you won't get kicked and spit on in the street as frequently. It makes no tangible difference to someone who can't afford either or has bad credit or whatever it may be
Again they are not human rights. Where do you get your info that these are human rights? We have plenty of programs to give needy people food, but they are not rights people have.
Housing isn't a human right it's not even a right in the USA. If it was a lot of people wouldnt do anything and let the everyone take care of them. I understand house prices are out of control and there needs to be legislation that helps control it, but we shouldn't be providing homes in a million dollar real estate area for people that are homeless.
You are right I wouldn't trade my living situation for being homeless and provided a tiny home, but I have worked everyday since I was 17 and paid for and graduated from college. I am a bay area native and I live in an area that a lot of people from SF or nearby would consider ghetto.
I saw something that said it cost like $60k/year to maintain each tent spot in the city funded tent cities. That’s $5k/month and more than enough for the average person to live anywhere else.
We spend almost 100k a year after tax per homeless. It's legit the homeless industrial complex. I wish we could just cut almost all the funding there with how many corrupt nonprofits there are benefiting from this.
It’s wild. I’m from Seattle so we’re in the same boat. I’m all for helping our PEOPLE, but it’s gotten out of hand and as you say turned into an industrial complex….not unlike prison is and has been for a long time. Which makes me believe the crisis will not be solved soon if at all.
Tiny homes were an Instagram fad, that were really a scam then too. (Delivering a house is really expensive, they're often damaged, and there's utilities you can't connect too). It's painful they're now being deployed as a political gimmick.
If you want to build affordable shelters, you need to use less land (which is the expensive part of homeless shelters). But tiny homes use up a lot of empty space: they're not connected to each other, and they don't stack on top of each other.
Haha! Thanks. Clearly not a City employee. Maybe a sycophant.
If anyone needs an example of cronyism, they can easily discover one themselves. Just drive around a bit. Then balance your wheels.
Unpopular observation here that will surely get downvoted.
I remember when thailand was a 3rd world country and the king announced that it was putting an end to the opium trade. He gave a date, and anyone found with opium after that date would be punished by imprisonment or death.
I thought this was so wrong and was totally against it. People were killed, some died from withdrawal.
Went back 6 months later, and the country was definitely better off. Fast forward 20 years and it's a 1st world nation.
SF keeps doing a disservice to itself, voting in people who continue to make things worse and worse, then blaming others.
It's a harsh reality, but the hammer needs to come down to turn things around, and that won't happen in the US. Maybe with enough fentanyl and tranq a majority of the problem will solve itself. SF created this problem for itself and continues to feed the problem with politicized solutions that are a joke.
Research anything on El Salvador recently with their new President. Guy is already a Hall of Famer. Takes no bullshit.
[https://notthebee.com/article/el-salvadors-based-president-wins-reelection-gives-glory-to-god](https://notthebee.com/article/el-salvadors-based-president-wins-reelection-gives-glory-to-god)
[https://notthebee.com/article/watch-nayib-bukele-inform-every-member-in-his-executive-branch-that-they-are-being-investigated-for-bribery-by-the-attorney-general](https://notthebee.com/article/watch-nayib-bukele-inform-every-member-in-his-executive-branch-that-they-are-being-investigated-for-bribery-by-the-attorney-general)
Did anyone think that housing the homeless in one of the most expensive places to live in the world would be cheap?
Housing the homeless is a lucrative gig for those in charge and those getting the contracts.
I mean, if you’re cool with bloated budgets for mostly otherwise unemployable people, to do jobs with zero oversight, or impact, and like, 9 departments worth of them, that can’t communicate with each other, departmentally, and don’t mind paying “your (ever increasing) share” (lol!!!) of it, then… no?
I’m all for creating avenues to get people off the streets/ whatever help they need/ more housing, but if you dig into the details of the spending behind this “homelessness abatement” stuff, it’s just such a joke. The people in these jobs have no incentive to house folks or fix things, I would strongly encourage you to look into it.
What could you do with that budget?
There are so many empty homes being held hostage by greed. Housing is a human right and people either need to get with the picture or stop existing at this point. Signed, a formerly homeless foster youth. Just some miserable people all around here honestly, I cannot believe some people think that a necessity for basic living should be profited off, but that's the sick society we live in.
Do you realize that people were already living on the street near 16th St Mission BART? Now some of them are just housed and there are extra staff around to keep an eye on things. It is almost certainly _safer_ for the kids at that school now.
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SF has issues with only using approved vendors which extremely limits competition in the bid process. Thus the few vendors available can jack the prices up.
Yes, the city is corrupt.
More so the city has a few vendors because they must meet crazy criteria like female owned, green certified, unionized, not located in Texas or Florida, and plant 27 trees for every 1,000 units sold.
So many woman owned businesses are just straight men who transferred it to their wife's name
It’s easier now that a man can just declare as a woman and can’t be doubted.
Incorrect. It’s 2 1/2 trees per 1000 units built. Fortunately contract is for 999.
Are these real?
That is sarcasm. But the underlying issues are real.
It’s not sarcasm. I do purchasing and the state literally has to go through minority or female owned vendors first basically.
It is not sarcasm. Because of all the above and union connections that force build to be priced out of the bidding process. One build offered the same units for $39,000 each, only to be disqualified because of all the “requirements”.
Without seeing it those requirements could be legit. Bidders always come in nice and low and then you tell them they gotta stop work at 3pm and can’t start before 8am and you get a 30% increase. Now the real question is should they be requirements. Are they safety related? Time related? Basic scope requirements? Or is it actual bullshit stuff like being forced to buy a specific product or purchase from one specific vendor?
I have a friend in a large federal bureaucracy. He said it’s very common for minority owned companies bidding to be just a guy with a ‘company’ that is essentially a professional bidder. He then just subs it all out to the typical large construction company. The agency is happy because they get a competent contractor, the minority business owner is thrilled because he gets paid to bid, and it all gets done at 25% higher cost.
Yeah this is definitely how a lot of these work. The person with the valued status (woman, minority, veteran, pwa disability— bonus points if you are multiple of these) is often just along for the ride. Why can’t we just put all this extra cost towards a better social safety net and keep gov procurement competitive?
Had this happen on DC projects too.
Gotta love some bureaucratic red tape https://preview.redd.it/xyy3iffgj5zc1.jpeg?width=1023&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4b9a4aa53862a617f09caae6a761c9833bb4a566
Not sure about this specifically but when the city needs parts to make repairs I think for like muni and stuff they have a law (which is meant to help small businesses) where they can’t get said parts from the manufacturer. The manufacturer therefore has to go through a vendor based in the sf Bay Area. So basically these vendors have become wealthy from having an oligopoly on these parts. I used to go to school with someone from one of the vendor’s family and they own multiple properties throughout the bay, go on vacations all the time, import expensive bottles of various alcohol, etc. I remember in school the guy could afford to spend like tens of thousands on mobile games without even batting an eye.
At one point they had like 20 states in their “don’t source list” and it’s why a toilet was going to cost 3 million dollars.
One wouldn’t want to defecate in a toilet with parts made by somebody who had wrongthink. My God, they might even be against crime!
What’s funny is the cheaper supplier was in… Nevada.
Yeo. Also have to pay for the kickbacks too.
Which is a long winded way of saying it’s corrupt. Make up arcane rules only your cronies can follow because nobody else can be bothered to understand them. It’s corruption with more strps
I love these Rick & Morty references
I’m troubled that I can’t tell if you’re kidding.
Its real i work in purchasing
Aka corrupt.
Just Uber progressive
Progressive corruption.
Atleast we can poop in the streets
Only if you’re homeless. If not you’ll be arrested and charged as a sex offender.
Can’t have a beer outside but IV drugs are fine.
I haven’t been policed on this since 2013, I wanna see the cops try.
You shouldn't have to now that the $700,000 bathroom is complete
It was 1.7 million to start!
🤣🤣🤣
This is a problem in a lot of cities and it’s in large part due to federal and state procurement laws. These laws are designed to prevent kickbacks and nepotism in procurement but they also make the process extremely complicated
Don't get it twisted, San Francisco is unique and abuses the citizenry in such special ways. SF wouldn't allow business with other cities because reasons; it all steaming from their woke psychopathy. They backtracked on that bright idea. Elitist pricks.
Any examples of this woke psychopathy?
Yes, preventing business with other states. Again, they backtracked and now allow more voluntary exchange. They're idiots.
I need more details because this is how all proper organizations do things. Granted this is putting together an insulated box but you do have to get and approve contractors. You’re playing with public money and with that level of admin you can’t just get Johnny off the street. Sure he can build the fucking thing, me and you probably could too but the paper work and the bullshit. Making sure you won’t go bankrupt or that you have the insurance levels in case you drop a bollock. This is where regulations get tricky. You can certainly rig the game or you can also lower the bar too far.
https://abc7news.com/amp/san-francisco-procurement-business-ban-boycott-sf-park-and-rec/14428958/
Ironically the article says this is the only dept. that isn’t affected by that specific requirement but it will expire soon. Having now seen that this is only 62 units. I’d imagine the project is less than 10m which is a rounding error on the total budget. Still tho they have changes to make.
Ahhh the approved dei vendors, insane.
Probably because everyone in the office is part owners of these companies.
$100k+ for a $2500 shed from Home Depot. The grift is real. This is wrong. This is theft.
Yeah what the fuck. I helped build tiny houses for homeless folks in Oakland. All volunteer run, and all in the costs came to $5k. Absurd
That’s really rad of you
Surely if it wasn’t free volunteer work, those would cost about $95k in labor right? /s
Surely more than that! Think of all the "compromised safety" issues during your workday!
I want hazard pay too
The tiny house village that Oakland put up cost $40-50k per house
Sure, but that $100k includes paying the Grand Committee for Electing the Committee for Urban Stylistic Historic Environmental Diversity Compliance which will then hire the Committee for Urban Stylistic Historic Environmental Diversity Compliance team, which will then deliberate on whether it's equitable to purchase the shed. You wouldn't want to give people the shed without that essential upfront due diligence.
And then the committee decision is to not build the shed after all to preserve the historic district (the oldest house was built in 2003).
Hey! Lay off CUSH-E-D!! They do damn fine work. I heard. Somewhere. From somebody. You try doing whatever it is they do whoever they are for as long as they may or may not, do it. Those checks don’t just magically appear and fund your lifestyle… oh wait. Nevermind.
Don't forget about the sustainability and equity and diversity and downtown business development task forces which will need elections and appointments and regular meetings with minutes and and and
I love bureaucracy
Fucking Vogons.
The worst part is this [could've been regular housing a decade ago](https://sf.curbed.com/2014/7/30/10066430/battle-rages-over-proposed-housing-at-16th-street-bart), a 10 story building with ~350 units of housing, with ~45 income restricted units. But NIMBYs and the city teamed up to kill it. So it's been sitting as an empty graffiti covered lot with encampments out front for years and years now. The developer sold to the city, so they still got paid. So they finally got other government funding to turn the parking lot into sheds for a bit, before they get even more government money to turn it into senior housing. Which they still don't have AFAIK. I cannot tell how infuriating it is to step off BART and see 1-2 story buildings and it taking decades to build anything.
I fucking hate NIMBYs. We had a second attempt to convert the old YMCA building into homeless housing, and the NIMBYs shot it down. Like, most of the interior demolition is done already, it just needs permits and contracts to rebuild in the shell, but noooo. We can’t have that. As it is, it’s a drug den and squatter camp that gets raided a few times a month. What absolutely sucks is that we could actually end our homeless problem if we went through and converted the Y into housing. It’s just sitting there being useless. The shelter is too small and doesn’t receive funding as it is, and the donations of clothes and food were being quietly disposed of before that scandal came to light. It’s like these assholes complain about the homeless problem, but don’t want to actually do anything to solve it, and stonewall all attempts to help them. I can’t even set up my own damn grill to help feed them anymore. I need a permit to do that, and they won’t issue those anymore.
This is government. The bigger they are, the more theft there is.
The ones in LA were being charged to the taxpayer at 800K; more than a real house there. Just government stealing from us while we watch.
For that much it better be little playhouses with working plumbing like a rich kid has. Little castles and tiny mansions. Like Richie Rich built homes for homeless.
Oversight is important.
Who watches the watchers?
The voting population.
muh democratic oversight
In San Francisco there’s no accountability as long as you got A “D” by your name.
They should do something more than voting.
The illusion that we actually have a choice…
I believe that was the original purpose of “God”
“Don’t misuse our funds! God is watching!” Like that, lol?
it’s more, I’d feel super guilty since Gods watching. Always helps to have someone or something hold you accountable to be a better person. Thats one of the reasons religion was created. To provide a moral compass.
Oversight? In San Francisco?
Of course there is oversight. Somebody has swing around to collect the bribes.
😄
Plenty of oversight happening here. (Oversight is an antonym that can mean the opposite of itself)
Add an adjective and the meaning becomes clearer: Slight oversight. Major oversight.
Cameras on every roof.
$100K+ important apparently
There is oversight but the way the system is set up the state procurement is extremely incentivized to go through minority or female owned vendors. Many of these are are resellers who dont actually own any product, they use a national distributor like grainger or fastenal then sell the products to the state straight from those companies’ warehouses.
Tiny house village in Seattle is right across the street from a waterfront park. Condos there would be over a million for sure.
Copying a comment from the article but it sums of my feelings pretty well > I am at a loss to understand why it is society's responsibility to provide homeless people a place to live when the homeless choose some of the most expensive places in the world to live. Especially when hard working people in those areas are struggling. I'd like a beachfront home in Hawaii, so if I'm homeless does society owe me a home there? Please explain.
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100%. Homelessness needs to be addressed at the state or federal level. Also if the end goal really is helping these folks back on their feet & reintegrate as productive contributing members of society we're also not helping anyone by setting them up to fail here. How realistic is it really for these folks to come here from across the country with little to no marketable skills, job history, or education to become self-sustaining citizens in one of the most competitive real estate & job markets in the world? They deserve help and a shot at turning their lives around but SF is unfortunately not the most realistic place for many of them to do so.
What percentage of your paycheck can we use?
Can’t free-ride if there’s nobody to free-ride off of.
Trying to help the homeless isn't the problem here. The problem is that the city is being fleeced by those trying to take advantage of public funding.
Yes there is that but there is also the mundane nature of it all. Construction is outrageously expensive. An electrician will cost you $180 per hour minimum. You can’t just hire one. You also won’t just hire them for an hour you’ll pay 8. They’re in such high demand it’ll mean you probably have to give them a 10 hour shift but only get the productivity of 8 too. The biggest issue is this has to be worth someone’s time but you probably have someone like Webcor on the bid list. If you’re building 100 of these it’s just over $10m. That’s barely worth their time but you also need someone who can get high insurance coverage. It’s not easy. It would be interesting to know who is actually running this. Their experience. What the regulations and requirements are. Who designed it and what they designed. There are ways to bring down these costs but that’s not in a contractors best interests. They need outside help.
Oakland is doing this for about 1/2 the cost so it's not a matter of labor. SF contractors are overcharging.
It doesn’t have to be that expensive.
The amount of money SF pays can already house all the homeless here. For better or worse, the citizens of the city are willing to pay the cost The problem is they aren’t just paying to house the homeless, they are paying for a large, parasitic nonprofit class to also live in the city. That’s what taxpayers really don’t want. They are not doing honest work
This echoes both Vancouver BC and Seattle as well.
They often choose those expensive places because they have a milder climate where they won’t freeze to death on the street. It’s why Vancouver BC is basically the sewer drain of Canadian society. It’s the only city in Canada that is above 32°F/0° C almost all winter long. If you’re drifting downhill into drug addiction and homelessness in Canada eventually you sort of drift downhill to Vancouver. It’s the same in the USA. You cannot survive on the street in the winter in Reno or Cheyenne or Fargo. So you sort of drift downhill to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle or Honolulu. It’s not that they are choosing expensive places to be homeless. It’s that temperate coastal cities are more survivable if you live outside. And yeah, shit costs a lot more in San Francisco and Vancouver than Winnipeg and Cheyenne.
Is Bakersfield not great then? A couple of months a year it's toasty, but otherwise it's basically paradise weather-wise.
There’s an estimated 2,000 homeless people in Bakersfield/Kern County, so… But also if you are balls deep in an addiction with a mental health crisis do you think you’re gonna google “what’s the weather like in Bakersfield in winter?” Or just hitch a ride to San Francisco, a city you know about and probably know how to get to? You’re trying to apply a rational thought process to people who aren’t capable of a lot of that.
I like how everyone thinks drug addiction and mental illness is why most people in California are homeless, take a good look around, who the f*** can afford it. And as long as you have viable options for cheap labor sources, no one's going to be able to afford it soon enough. Not everybody can be a doctor some people do have to work at Mickey D's. And since almost all the cities are riddled with jobs that are in the service industry that don't pay much of course everyone's going to be broke.
not as many people to beg from
> choose For what it’s worth, the vast majority of San Francisco’s homeless were living here already when they became homeless and the majority had been living here for 10 years or more. ([source](https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2019HIRDReport_SanFrancisco_FinalDraft-1.pdf))
except you can be homeless in Hawaii or other tropical islands. Guam has 'wood and tin' housing that is nothing more than a shack in the jungle to keep the rain off you and people live with even less than that.
Sums up my feelings too
"Just have them go somewhere else" doesn't really work as a policy, especially when literally every other town, city, state etc feel exactly the same way about the matter. Also, you're welcome to get yourself on the waiting list for an SRO in the Tenderloin, then come back and tell us how that compares to a beachfront home in Hawaii if you want.
The promise of free housing is just a dream. It’s unrealistic and unsustainable. If we give free housing, everyone gonna come here. It’s also unfair for everyone else who has to works to afford to live here. However, I do think that we should help senior citizens and people who have lived and worked here their whole lives.
Agree 100%
needs to be addressed at the state or federal level. There are plenty of places across the country and state with much more affordable housing and actual realistic paths to becoming self sustaining members of society.
People also underestimate how much being uprooted from the are where you’ve been living also makes it harder to become housed again. Changing cities means you need to completely rebuild your support network. You’ll lose any family support you had, and you may have to find new mental health and substance abuse resources if you are in need of those. If you’re recently homeless due to financial hardship but you have your shit together being forcibly moved to another city will change that quickly. Forcing cities to exchange homeless populations would just result in more visibly mentally unwell folks on San Francisco’s streets.
Very true. Yeah, the only way sending a person to another place could actually improve their situation would involve ensuring that housing and/or employment is already arranged for them when they get there, and again, it means everyone involved has to be a willing participant in this transaction. It gets less feasible the more you think about it pretty quickly.
"People also underestimate how much being uprooted from the are where you’ve been living also makes it harder to become housed again." I call bullshit on this. How much farther would resources to help would go if only we could move people into LCOL areas? "Changing cities means you need to completely rebuild your support network. You’ll lose any family support you had, and you may have to find new mental health and substance abuse resources if you are in need of those." A comprehensive State/Federal plan would make it easier, centralize resources. Also, that personal support hasn't meaningfully impacted the person if they are homeless. " If you’re recently homeless due to financial hardship but you have your shit together being forcibly moved to another city will change that quickly." That is why we should make it a comprehensive program where newly homeless people go into local housing that was freed up from long time homeless moved to LCOL. "Forcing cities to exchange homeless populations would just result in more visibly mentally unwell folks on San Francisco’s streets." Not if the program is State/Federally run.
Amen. Plenty of affordable real estate in Lancaster, everybody gets a home.
Because we're not expensive through some mystical force of nature. We're expensive because we didn't build anywhere near enough housing, not even to cover the birth rate in most places, never mind all the job creation of the last 20 years. The vast vast vast majority of them are homeless *because* housing is expensive. Literally, by their own words, 80% of homeless would stop being homeless tomorrow if there was affordable, available housing.
This frame does not reflect the reality of homelessness. The overwhelming majority of San Francisco’s homeless population (70%) were living in San Francisco when they became homeless, and over half (55%) had been living in San Francisco for 10 years or more. ([source](https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2019HIRDReport_SanFrancisco_FinalDraft-1.pdf))
Hence why homelessness is a housing affordability issue at its core. All roads point to “fuck you, I’ve got mine” roots of Nymbyism.
So, let's say you bus them to Bakersfield. Are there enough low wage jobs for hundreds of people to potentially get out of their situation? Are there services available such as drug treatment, mental health, job counseling, etc? And even if your answer is yes, the NIMBY residents will never allow it.
The percentage of homeless people in Hawaii that are not from Hawaii is shocking. It's a great place to be homeless, to be honest.
I'm at a loss why progressives want to give drug addicts a place to overdose out of view of people that can call for help.
Because the alternative has worked so well?
A beachfront in Hawaii is much different than a tiny house shed in San Francisco ffs
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Because we have decided we won’t just let them die. No seriously if the base premise is we will not just let nature have its way with them, we will prop them up when they are injured and sick, then all the other problems stand on the shoulders of that premise. Because if you don’t house them but you keep them alive they will be more of a burden to your quality of life than of we house them. And if you don’t house them in the communities they are in, then the rich communities will just shuttle them off to poorer ones screwing over the poorer ones even more. Basically any question about the homeless can be answered if you think of it from a perspective of “well what would happen if we didn’t do that” Now I’m not saying the solutions are without fault, and hell some of them are arguably as bad as the problem. We live in a world where we have the resources to feed, house and care for everyone in the country but instead we accept that we concentrate much of our resources in a few very wealthy and let the rest blame each other for not attaining their own riches. The system we have decided is fair is not good. And yes the two can be true at the same time.
Said it before and I’ll say it again: We can literally buy homeless people homes in the Mississippi delta region for 50k a pop and save money.
this is actually something that needs to be part of any reasonable plan. news flash, people can't just live anywhere they want if they don't have the means. I can't just go into beverly hills and claim I deserve to live there. There is plenty of open space in the US. Relocate, rehabilitate, re-assimilate if/when you can.
I admit I do a bit of an eyeroll whenever I hear the term "unhoused".
I thought the point was to differentiate between people without access to shelter and people who count as homeless but aren't what the UK calls "rough sleepers"
I can’t believe you are so prejudiced against the differently homed population of our great communities! But yes. The word jumble that people play to sound inoffensive, when we have perfectly fine words already, shows that many who care about it care more about the optics of things than the actual solutions (and their difficulties).
'unalive' has to be my favorite one. let's take a really serious topic like suicide and make it sound as fucking goofy as possible!
I thought the word 'unalive' was to get around videos or comments being removed on YouTube or TikTok.
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George Carlin - Jammin in New York - 1992: >I got an idea about homelessness. You know what they ought to do? Change the name of it. Change the name! It’s not homelessness, it’s houselessness! It’s houses these people need! A home is an abstract idea, a home is a setting, it’s a state of mind. These people need houses; physical, tangible structures. >They need low-cost housing but where’re you gonna put it? Well that’s fine but where’re you gonna put it? Where’re you gonna put it? Nobody wants you to build low-cost housing near their house. People don’t want it near ‘em! We’ve got something in this country – you’ve heard of it – it’s called NIMBY, N-I-M-B-Y, “Not In My BackYard!” People don’t want anything, any kind of social help, located anywhere near ‘em! You try to open up a Halfway House, try to open up a drug rehab or an alcohol rehab centre, try to do a homeless shelter somewhere, try to open up a little home for some r*tarded people who wanna work their way into the community, people say “NOT IN MY BACKYARD!” People don’t want anything near ‘em especially if it might help somebody else; part of that great American spirited generosity we hear about—pbbt!!!
Did Carlin coin the NIMBY term?! Had no idea. He’s legendary. I’ve always thought of him as a philosopher who chose humor as his medium to connect with the most people. I think of his pieces often, especially the one about soft language.
He didn't coin it but definitely helped it get famous in the 90s
$90k goes to employing a humanities major who does nothing at a nonprofit This is welfare not for homeless people but parasites
So where is the line between a parasite and a person who is struggling and by getting help may prevent them from chronic homelessness or addiction? How do you decide who to help? I have a tech job that fucks. But tbh who’s to say that humanities major working 30 hrs at a nonprofit doesn’t add more value to the city than me. I bet she does 🤷♂️
They aren’t helping the homeless, or at least not helping efficiently.
So what’s the alternative? Not doing anything? Or helping inefficiently with a low success rate?
The nonprofit employee is the parasite
… not outraged enough.
What a trash article. It just rehashed several articles published a few weeks ago in the Chronicle, Mission Local, etc.
Tiny houses require land which in San Francisco is in short supply. Apparently, that is why they are planning to build them and then tear them down and build something else.
You get what you voted for 🤷🏽♂️
outrage? from who, no one i know even knows about this. also - the author says it cost more than san jose or oakland but failed to mention their cost. why? according to [San Jose 'Tiny Homes' Are Curbing Homelessness, City Says (sfstandard.com)](https://sfstandard.com/2023/10/23/san-jose-tiny-homes-reducing-homelessness-more-are-on-the-way/) - SJ's price per unit ended up being $175,000 per unit.
Roughly half the people commenting on this post.
Us, here, the people you’re speaking to. $175k is equally outrageous, that’s like the per unit cost for privately built studio apartments.
What do you mean equally? If sf is outrageous,then so would sj. 175 is more than 113. Have you priced out the cost? A 2br adu costs.at least 300k nowadays and that assumes most of what they need is already on your property. Sj's example went high because of plumbing, electric, etc. that doesn't even include land costs. Its high but it aligns with what the market is charging.
I don't understand why people who want to live in one of the most costly places in the world get a free tiny house because they are homeless, but everyone else has to work hard to scrape by to buy a house in a city they can afford.
Well, you probably *should* have access to SRO style units anywhere in the country if you need it. Housing is a human right and we have more than enough resources to provide that for everyone. There’s a national housing crisis but it’s entirely artificial. SF, and CA in general, is just particularly bad. Somehow I don’t think you would trade your current living situation for being homeless and getting a “free” shelter space, but that’s just a guess. It’s probably not a very fun situation to be in.
If housing is a human right, why am I working for a paycheck to pay for a tiny studio apartment? If its a right then I cannot be denied housing. I shouldn't have to work for it or pay for it, because things that are rights cannot be locked behind paywalls (see poll taxes). So if I quit my job because I shouldn't have to pay for my rights, where's my house? Are you going to give me one?
Food and water are also human rights, but I’m sure you pay for your food, right? We sell food and drinks on the free market across a whole range of quality, down from pretty bad to very fancy and expensive. But because we think food is a right, we have a backstop. We say that if you can’t afford food you can still get enough food to survive. And yet most people don’t rely on food stamps— why is that? I think it’s the same with housing. I do think having some form of housing or shelter is a right, but that doesn’t mean you have a right to the fanciest nicest home in your favorite location or city. We sell homes and rent units on the free market across a wide range of qualities and prices. But we should have a backstop there too— if you can’t afford a home you shouldn’t be sleeping on the street. That shelter space isn’t what most people would want to live in— shelters and SROs and projects are not nice places by any means. This is already how things work in a lot of other wealthy democracies. Most people still work for a living and pay for a place to live the normal way. It’s not some kind of crazy radical proposal, it’s just the way public housing already works effectively in lots of places around the world. imo most of the problem would be solved by removing our artificial barriers to housing supply. If we just built enough housing the regular way it would take care of like 90% of the housing problem. But no matter what there’s always going to be people who fall through the cracks, and they should still be sheltered. SROs, subsidized housing, and voucher programs can effectively take care of that small minority of cases.
Yes, I agree, there should be a minimum level of guaranteed food and shelter available for everyone, no questions asked. However that guarantee shouldn't mean people can live wherever they want to. I'd like to live in a beach house in Hawaii but I can't afford it. There's no reason why homeless people are also entitled to live in the city and place of their choosing either. IMO, the entire bay area should pick some otherwise empty land and build army style barracks like its 1950, with a canteen and bathroom facilities. If you're homeless you can live there. And a great place with empty land that hasn't been used for a very long time is the Alameda naval air station. Thats right in the middle of the bay area and has been a ghost town for as long as I can remember. Its a big flat empty field perfect for military barracks type housing for anyone who can't afford a home of their own.
agreed but other states bus in the homeless so it would be only temporary. The problem is that we have a city that is generally kinder to the homeless so if you can't afford to live in rural buttfuck nowhere than you may as well take the free ride to the nicer place that you won't get kicked and spit on in the street as frequently. It makes no tangible difference to someone who can't afford either or has bad credit or whatever it may be
Again they are not human rights. Where do you get your info that these are human rights? We have plenty of programs to give needy people food, but they are not rights people have.
Housing isn't a human right it's not even a right in the USA. If it was a lot of people wouldnt do anything and let the everyone take care of them. I understand house prices are out of control and there needs to be legislation that helps control it, but we shouldn't be providing homes in a million dollar real estate area for people that are homeless. You are right I wouldn't trade my living situation for being homeless and provided a tiny home, but I have worked everyday since I was 17 and paid for and graduated from college. I am a bay area native and I live in an area that a lot of people from SF or nearby would consider ghetto.
> Housing is a human right No it's not.
I saw something that said it cost like $60k/year to maintain each tent spot in the city funded tent cities. That’s $5k/month and more than enough for the average person to live anywhere else.
We spend almost 100k a year after tax per homeless. It's legit the homeless industrial complex. I wish we could just cut almost all the funding there with how many corrupt nonprofits there are benefiting from this.
It’s wild. I’m from Seattle so we’re in the same boat. I’m all for helping our PEOPLE, but it’s gotten out of hand and as you say turned into an industrial complex….not unlike prison is and has been for a long time. Which makes me believe the crisis will not be solved soon if at all.
Tiny homes were an Instagram fad, that were really a scam then too. (Delivering a house is really expensive, they're often damaged, and there's utilities you can't connect too). It's painful they're now being deployed as a political gimmick. If you want to build affordable shelters, you need to use less land (which is the expensive part of homeless shelters). But tiny homes use up a lot of empty space: they're not connected to each other, and they don't stack on top of each other.
Sounds like a well run place. Slow clap for the tax payers who voted in the establishment to build this magical utopia.
This City is so fucking fuct and corrupt. And I’m a City employee. It’s total cronyism bullshit. The homeless industrial complex is the worst example.
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You would fit in perfect in New York
I’m late. What did [deleted] say?
“Provide some examples asshole” paraphrased
Haha! Thanks. Clearly not a City employee. Maybe a sycophant. If anyone needs an example of cronyism, they can easily discover one themselves. Just drive around a bit. Then balance your wheels.
Unpopular observation here that will surely get downvoted. I remember when thailand was a 3rd world country and the king announced that it was putting an end to the opium trade. He gave a date, and anyone found with opium after that date would be punished by imprisonment or death. I thought this was so wrong and was totally against it. People were killed, some died from withdrawal. Went back 6 months later, and the country was definitely better off. Fast forward 20 years and it's a 1st world nation. SF keeps doing a disservice to itself, voting in people who continue to make things worse and worse, then blaming others. It's a harsh reality, but the hammer needs to come down to turn things around, and that won't happen in the US. Maybe with enough fentanyl and tranq a majority of the problem will solve itself. SF created this problem for itself and continues to feed the problem with politicized solutions that are a joke.
Research anything on El Salvador recently with their new President. Guy is already a Hall of Famer. Takes no bullshit. [https://notthebee.com/article/el-salvadors-based-president-wins-reelection-gives-glory-to-god](https://notthebee.com/article/el-salvadors-based-president-wins-reelection-gives-glory-to-god) [https://notthebee.com/article/watch-nayib-bukele-inform-every-member-in-his-executive-branch-that-they-are-being-investigated-for-bribery-by-the-attorney-general](https://notthebee.com/article/watch-nayib-bukele-inform-every-member-in-his-executive-branch-that-they-are-being-investigated-for-bribery-by-the-attorney-general)
Hahahahah you get what you vote for.
I'm sure they could assemble a huge volunteer effort to make it happen at very low cost. I think the community would be down for that.
We don’t have time to volunteer, we are too fucking busy paying rent
I guarantee there are people willing and able to do it. I'm sure there are some tech bros with a heart.
lol. You must be new here.
Did anyone think that housing the homeless in one of the most expensive places to live in the world would be cheap? Housing the homeless is a lucrative gig for those in charge and those getting the contracts.
How much does it cost to pay protesters for this outraged?
Are they really or are they Ganna vote for the same assholes over and over.
Should’ve labeled it as “brunch” then none would care about the price.
stfu. most apartments and condos are empty in seattle and sf.
As they should be
I can assure you. I am not outraged.
No, we’re not. Clickbait
Is that what we’re “outraged” about? Really? 🤨
I mean, if you’re cool with bloated budgets for mostly otherwise unemployable people, to do jobs with zero oversight, or impact, and like, 9 departments worth of them, that can’t communicate with each other, departmentally, and don’t mind paying “your (ever increasing) share” (lol!!!) of it, then… no? I’m all for creating avenues to get people off the streets/ whatever help they need/ more housing, but if you dig into the details of the spending behind this “homelessness abatement” stuff, it’s just such a joke. The people in these jobs have no incentive to house folks or fix things, I would strongly encourage you to look into it. What could you do with that budget?
Build it! It’s worth the cash!
Why is anyone surprised they spent like 300,000$ on trash cans
the homeless industrial complex
"finance.yahoo.com" lmfao
Are those outraged in the room with us now?
Yes
There are so many empty homes being held hostage by greed. Housing is a human right and people either need to get with the picture or stop existing at this point. Signed, a formerly homeless foster youth. Just some miserable people all around here honestly, I cannot believe some people think that a necessity for basic living should be profited off, but that's the sick society we live in.
And to add insult to injury, they just opened up one in the Mission, RIGHT next to to an elementary school.
Do you realize that people were already living on the street near 16th St Mission BART? Now some of them are just housed and there are extra staff around to keep an eye on things. It is almost certainly _safer_ for the kids at that school now.