Billionaire Tech Investors Support Divisive Plan To Ban San Francisco's Homeless Camps (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader shares a USA Today report: The images are startling: Homeless men, women and children huddled on the streets of the San Francisco Bay Area -- often in the shadows of start-ups and high-tech behemoths generating billions of dollars in wealth. It's a stark contrast that has gripped the region, and prompted four county measures on the Nov. 8 ballot to generate $3 billion over the next 25 years for affordable housing and services. Under the most-ambitious measure, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has proposed a 0.75% increase in the sales tax, to 9.5%, to raise $50 million a year. Propositions J and K would generate $1.2 billion for the next quarter-century via a simple majority. "There is clearly not enough affordable housing, or housing at any level," says Kevin Zwick, CEO of Housing Trust Silicon Valley.TechCrunch adds: The debate over what to do about San Francisco's homeless population has been building for awhile among the many startups and residents here. But now tech billionaires Ron Conway, Michael Moritz and well-to-do hedge fund manager William Oberndorf have each thrown about $50,000 behind a measure to rid San Francisco of its homeless tent cities. Other notable investors, including Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's husband and venture capitalist Zach Bogue, have also donated. Bogue reportedly gave about $2,500 to support it.

Comments

Is This a Joke?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they trying to do a Montgomery Burns impression?

How about a plan that raises taxes on these ultra profitable companies in order to fund the construction of housing for people who can't afford to back a political campaign themselves?

Re:Is This a Joke?

[Fwipp]

Speak for yourself.

I live in Seattle, and I am more than enthusiastic about any plan that will help shelter our homeless neighbors. If I could vote a 10% income tax on myself to pay for making sure that everyone here has a safe place to sleep at night and to leave their belongings, I would.

I believe that mayor Murray's proposed plan announced yesterday is insufficient, but better than the status quo.
(In response to "well why don't you donate your money then" - first, I do, and secondly, one person's funds only do so much).

Re:Is This a Joke?

[SumDog]

Thank god. On Seattle's subreddit, it's nothing but homeless hate. They do nothing but complain about the homeless and want all the tent cities gone.

Seattle's homeless problem is a total crisis. When it's this many people camped out on the street and in parks, they don't chose it. Even people I know with normal/non-tech jobs are in a constant struggle to just make ends meat.

Re:Is This a Joke?

[Immerman]

So, are you actually claiming that you currently donate 10% of your income to combat homelessness every year?

And that's the problem with good intentions - almost everybody has them, and almost nobody follows through. Worse, the people least likely to follow through tend to be those who are most advantaged by the current status quo. Keep in mind that there's nothing natural about our economy, it's entirely an artifact of human construction, built by those with power and wealth to help them accumulate more of it, usually at the expense of everyone else. Taxes can be one way to moderate that excess, especially when more direct methods are out of fashion, as they are in the US thanks to 50+ years of extensive PR efforts.

Re:Is This a Joke?

[deathguppie]

The crisis is self perpetuating. We have people coming from all over the country now because of the lax laws and generous public assistance. At this point we have more homeless here because they choose to be here than we do because they are down on their luck. I've been patient I've talked to people on the street.

And by Homeless hate on reddit you are talking about the people complaining of being assaulted in their own homes the needles in the parks or the aggressive and sometimes verbally sexual comments that people now have to live with on a daily basis because of the massive increase of homeless people in Seattle that have flooded here from all over the country.

People say they care about homeless.. you have a home let some homeless people stay there.

Re:Is This a Joke?

[ATMAvatar]

Taxes can be one way to moderate that excess, especially when more direct methods are out of fashion, as they are in the US thanks to 50+ years of extensive PR efforts.

To be clear, the US also used heavy taxation at the top end (90% in the top bracket!) in the past. From the Reagan era onward, we have continually decreased the top rates until you get what we have now - a very slightly progressive income tax scheme alongside a capital gains tax rate that ensures the top of the top wealthiest individuals pay less as a percentage of income than the average person does.

Re:Is This a Joke?

[CanadianMacFan]

They don't want the problem solved. They want it hidden from view. Putting people in shelters doesn't solve their problems. Getting them into an apartment starts to help. Then they can worry about eating properly, their health, getting a job if they don't have one, and a whole list of other things that will improve their lives.

Re:Is This a Joke?

[jandersen]

No, they are not trying to do a Monty Burns impression. This is a deadly serious issue, as anyone living in Seattle or Portland can tell you. You do not want to give the so-called "homeless advocates" any influence in your local government. They will utterly destroy your city's quality of life.

Amazing - so this is the attitude of the average citizen in God's own nation, where a higher percentage of people claim to believe in God and Christ and all that? "I want my quality of life and to hell with those worse off"? But of course, once it gets to be your turn, you will start whining about how unfair it is; and the risk of the average American losing everything and ending up on the street is a lot higher than in most industrialised nations. Your attitude is not only despicable, it is stupid and pathetic.

If society - that is the ordinary members of society, not the state - does not care about those in need, then you will end up, like now, with a growing mass of people who are desperate and bittter against all those smug, well-fed idiots, that turned their back with some lame excuse. This is exactly what Karl Marx went over in excruciating detail in his works; even if you don't agree with the ideologies of his various followers, common sense tells us that he was right in saying that unfettered capitalism breeds inequality, which breeds revolution. I'm not saying that naive communism is The Solution, or even a solution, but it is blindingly obvious that society must care for its weakest members - it is simply a good investment in stability, which is a crucial element in creating a productive business climate. Even hard-nosed businesses like Oracle, Microsoft and Google know this and have on-going, social projects.

Re:Is This a Joke?

[drinkypoo]

Amazing - so this is the attitude of the average citizen in God's own nation, where a higher percentage of people claim to believe in God and Christ and all that? "I want my quality of life and to hell with those worse off"?

It's one thing to say that we should care for our homeless, which we absolutely should. It's another thing to say that a handful of cities should bear the load for the entire nation. California, Oregon, and Washington have to pay for the bulk of the nation's failure to care for its people? That seems grossly unfair, especially since all of them already depend on us for food and culture and half of them depend on us for seaports.

If society - that is the ordinary members of society, not the state - does not care about those in need, then you will end up, like now, with a growing mass of people who are desperate and bittter against all those smug, well-fed idiots, that turned their back with some lame excuse.

We The People of The Western States are seriously fucking tired of dealing with the rest of the country's cockamamie bullshit. California is one of the states that gets raped on taxes by the federal government; our income taxes go to pay for stuff in other states that we can't afford, like freeway dots that don't get scraped off by plows (we have snow in the north, whatever you may have heard) without being located in deep wells that catch rocks and draw vehicles off course (into the oncoming lane!) when drivers stray onto the lines. And then those states literally have the audacity to put homeless people on buses to California? Well, fuck that.

As a nation we can handle the tired, poor, and huddled masses. But California cannot foot the bill for the rest of the country. Which, by the way, is the part that's claiming to be so fucking godly. We especially can't do it while paying your taxes.

Revoke their Linux Licenses

[Anonymous Coward]

These "tech" billionaires made their billions by exploiting the community-built Linux project. Now they want to destroy communities. The community should strike back by banning use of Linux for commercial purposes. Oh no! The free software license can't be revoked. The free software movement enabled "tech" billionaires, see now how the free software movement has backfired.

Lots of cheap housing in US, just not in San Fran

[steve1234567890]

What is their specific entitlement to live in San Francisco? If someone gave me a free house in the valley, I'd go there too. Until then, I'll keep living and working in the mid-west and putting up with the cold winters.

Re:Cheapskates

[dgatwood]

Or to paraphrase the famous quote, "If they cannot afford apartments in San Francisco, they should just move to their summer homes in the Hamptons...."

I think the phrase you're looking for is "completely out of touch".

what are we trying to do here?

[supernova87a]

I live in San Francisco. What I want to ask the Board of Supervisors, and the government entities responsible for this problem is this:

Regardless of how charitable it is as a human duty to take care of displaced and unfortunate people, what is San Francisco's goal and strategy about homeless people? We seem to actively attract homeless people to our city -- because of our policies that seem to say, come one come all, we will take care of you. Or at least we look the other way as they're left to their own devices on the streets, and don't discourage the homeless population. So much so that other states have sent us their homeless in the past.

Is this our strategy? Be the city that actively attracts homeless people to us? Is that our brand, and our role? Are we being deliberate about this problem or just status quo because policymakers in our city are neutered far-left knee-jerk reactionary against anything effective, but which could be perceived as insensitive?

As a result we're flooded with homeless people that you have to step around on your way to work, home, BART, MUNI, etc. And each of us pays a price in the vehicle breakins, stores that have to wash/clean their steps of filth each day, areas of the city that are no-go zones, and higher housing prices in support of people who contribute little to our city. That's a hidden tax that somehow the most liberal sectors of our voting population seems happy to impose on the rest of us, because they don't live close to Civic Center / Tenderloin, SOMA where all this shit happens.

Sometimes, I long for a Rudy Giuliani in the 1990s to clean up our city and take a hard line and be a little insensitive for a change. Not everything should be done through collaboration and feel-good democracy. [/end rant]

Re:what are we trying to do here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, the homeless are only in SF becaue every other city and state SENDS THEM HERE.

San Francisco has turned into the homeless dumping ground of America, and we're drowning in it and don't know what to do.

And you call us callous and insensitive? What about all the other states that just put their homeless on a bus to California? :/

The whole Bay Area

[Anonymous Coward]

SF gets the attention, but the whole BA has homeless. When you look at that larger picture, you realize the arguments about not having enough space aren't up to snuff. Water rights arguments would make more sense--except that it hasn't stopped development during boom times. No, it's really just that the equilibrium price of housing is too much, so you get working homeless/van dwellers, couch surfers, etc. Then of course there are the mentally ill homeless who want help and aren't really getting it, and then finally the hard core of mentally ill and/or obstinate people who are really hard to move off the streets.

Anyway, I digress. The solution needs to involve the whole BA, not just SF, and these guys aren't helping. They claim to be capitalists, but what would they say about getting rid of the restrictions on SROs, aka "flop houses" that you used to see all the time back in the 40s and 50s? Oh NOES! They'd say. That was when we were still living in a somewhat free country. Bring back the cheap flops, that would probably house most of the working homeless. Ditto for RV/trailer parks. That would be an affordable option for most working homeless, and it might even make the non-working homeless realize that it's worth cleaning up and flipping burgers so they can flop.

The mentally ill problem is a whole different ball game, and not enough time to rant here... but hey you big capitalists, until we actually have some REAL CAPITALISM, why don't you just stuff it?

Re:The whole Bay Area

[PCM2]

They claim to be capitalists, but what would they say about getting rid of the restrictions on SROs, aka "flop houses" that you used to see all the time back in the 40s and 50s? Oh NOES! They'd say. That was when we were still living in a somewhat free country. Bring back the cheap flops, that would probably house most of the working homeless.

I live in Frisco. We still have plenty of SROs. In fact, one of the things that the pro-gentrification folks get absolutely up in arms about is that because years ago we entered into a deal with the federal government to get federal money to help support the SROs, the SROs can apparently NEVER be converted into any other form of building unless the federal government says so. Build all the chrome and glass towers you want, that SRO will still be sitting there at the end of the block.

But if you think those SROs house even a tenth of the otherwise-would-be-homeless population in SF, you're kidding yourself. Even the shelters, sponsored by every kind of charitable organization you can think of, don't have a fraction of enough beds.

And yeah, the rest of the Bay Area could maybe do a better job of building SROs and homeless shelters outside of the City, but how would that work, really? A lot of the people who find themselves on the street have real problems. They have mental health issues, they have problems with drug addiction, they have medical problems like diabetes. Is San Leandro going to build free health clinics to handle those issues? Are they going to build drug treatment centers, are they going to hire mental health professionals? On the last one, the answer is plainly no -- we know from experience that what happens to people who suffer schizophrenic episodes in suburban, upper-middle-class areas is that they get thrown in jail and abused, sometimes killed, because there's no infrastructure to treat them.

That's what I don't get about this influx of fuckin dicks who have moved to my City. The only way the economics of dealing with poor people who have medical and mental health issues even start to work is when you have the population density of a major city. A guy living in a tent in San Francisco cannot just up and decide, "Welp, I can take a hint, they don't want me here" and go live in a tent in Castro Valley. If he was lucky, six months from now he'd be locked up on a long-term sentence, if he was unlucky he would be dead. But all these rich assholes, on the other hand ... they can AFFORD to go buy a house in San Ramon! They can afford a car to drive in from Danville or Fremont or Orinda, and when they open the Venetian blinds in the morning they won't ever need to see a poor person! So why can't they go live where the rich people live and let the poor people live in the only model of society that can support them? Why would they spend $2 million on a house that would cost $150,000 in Michigan and then complain that there's garbage everywhere, graffiti on the walls, homeless in the streets, and everything looks like shit? What ... am I meant to be sorry for them because they took a sucker's bet and got suckered?

And, might I add, to you rich assholes, please move along let us people who have both a little money and enough compassion to understand that in this life you're going to have to live ALONGSIDE poor people, let us live in the City, pay our taxes and vote for how they're spent without hearing narcissistic douchebags talking about washing the poor off the streets. You're disgusting and you make this City look even worse than the people you complain about.

Re:Better: jobs

[Austerity Empowers]

t's their own fault for being unemployed because they didn't keep their wages down .

You had a typo in there, I fixed it.

Outlawing poverty does not make it cease to exist

[JoshuaZ]

Outlawing poverty doesn't make it cease to exist. This is not the only example of this, but it is curious that San Fran has so many similar issues. A major reason that there are homeless people in San Fran to start with is the insane cost of living which is made by having the minimum mandatory apartment size be high. In general, in the US there has been in the last 100 years a trend for stricter and stricter zoning laws and related laws. And now cities are actively fighting attempts to come up with workable solutions within the legal codes such as microapartments where shared kitchens and other shared spaces http://www.sightline.org/2016/09/06/how-seattle-killed-micro-housing/. Do you want to actually make homeless people go away? Then you need to make cheap housing affordable. How do you do that? By getting rid of the unnecessary zoning rules about height, massive number of parking spaces, large yards, etc.

Re:Not enough affordable housing?

[brunes69]

.. and this is exactly the problem.

The whole housing shortage in the bay area is entirely self-created. If the city would allow developers to come in downtown and build a few giant condo buildings they would do so in a heartbeat, because the market is obviously red hot. But the city does not want to allow the market to solve the problem.

Re:Not enough affordable housing?

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

This is exactly the problem. Prices are a fairly straightforward function of supply and demand. Even look beyond the homeless in the city to other towns, such as San Jose around Tully/101/280. Go driving around those neighborhoods in the evenings and you see cars parked absolutely everywhere: lawns, sideyards, crammed and jammed up into garages and driveways and sidewalks, and of course good luck ever finding a spot on the street. Because San Jose, like San Francisco and the rest of the SF Bay Area, doesn't want to allow enough new residential units to be built each year, the supply of housing ends going only towards the wealthy or those who have a home and can afford to re-fi and use the cash as a downpayment. The rest, including the "working class,", have got nowhere to go because developers all but stopped investment in building anything they can even afford to rent, unless with a large group of strangers.

The better solution is don't "take" the money, just let developers choose how many units they want to invest in and they will remedy the problem, profitably, without stealing anyone's money.

I am really hoping the measure fails because the SF Bay Area has a pathetic history of wasting money on similar efforts (VTA doesn't go to SJC or connect to BART, there is a train that goes from Novato to Petaluma WTF) and the officials need to not have such a convenient cop-out every time this issue gets brought up. What is happening right now is a caste is forming with the landowners becoming a smaller percentage, huge swaths of the population being crammed into miserable housing that eats up all of their income, and I'm not sure this has a happy ending.

Re:Not enough affordable housing?

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

Robin Hood returned taxes to the taxed.

Star Trek called it

[Jzanu]

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/...

Re:Lots of cheap housing in US, just not in San Fr

[SumDog]

Entitled? What if you grew up there; lived there all your damn life. People who like moving can go -- and if they have family somewhere they often do. But there are a lot of people who don't like moving. They want to be near their family and their home.

At one time they could live out on a BART line and afford a single one bedroom for under $1k like so many other cities in the US. But that was decades ago. The tech market emerged and created a totally different social environment. Housing sky rocketed and people in normal jobs struggled to make ends meat.

Who are you to say who should and shouldn't live there. And if all the people who couldn't afford to live there left, who exactly is going to work in your coffee shops, your corner stores, drive your buses and man the rail stations? Just because you don't have a fancy-ass tech job means you should have to commute over an hour each day to work shit wages in live in shit overpriced housing?

George Carlin said it best: they call it the America dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.

As usual the press distorts the story

[Anonymous Coward]

The billionaires respond:

[Ron] Conway initially declined to comment but wrote back pointing out he’d been involved in projects to help the city’s homeless before and telling TechCrunch, “Prop Q only allows for encampment removal when real housing or shelter is offered and that’s why I support it. It’s not healthy or compassionate to let human beings suffer in tent cities and we shouldn’t allow it when there’s real housing, shelter and supportive services we can provide for people instead.”

[Zach] Bogue, who served on the board of the Bay Area homeless outreach organization the Tipping Point for the last several years, said he supported the proposition “because it would provide more resources to help get the homeless off the street and into sheltersThe encampments are unsafe and inhumane, and frankly, I hope that this is not our solution to homelessness in the city.”

Speaking on behalf of [Michael] Moritz, Nathan Ballard, spokesman for the campaign to support Proposition Q said it was, “inhumane to allow people to live on the street when shelter is available. Mr. Mortiz and Mr. Conway have joined San Franciscans from all walks of life who support Prop Q because they urgently want to see an end to the human suffering on our streets.”

Re:Lots of cheap housing in US, just not in San Fr

[Anonymous Coward]

> Entitled? What if you grew up there; lived there all
> your damn life.

Actually, what's going on is that other states are "dumping" their homeless on California in general, and San Francisco and San Diego in particular (LA used to be a popular one too, but they engaged in their own anti-dumping battle a while back when "skid row" became unmanageable.). Most recently, Nevada was caught red-handed shuffling their mental patients off to California with one-way Greyhound tickets:

http://www.motherjones.com/moj...
https://thinkprogress.org/neva...
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/...
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/new...

Im not sure what the solution is. But the reality is that there really is a metric crapton of unpopulated land in the US where people could be housed cheaply. It's hard to believe until you do a decent amount of cross-country travel. But I've flown from SF to Kansas a number of times for work these last few years. And, aside from Denver, there's very little in-between. And, for that matter, Kansas has all of one city of any note; and they share that one with Missouri. The rest is a whole lot of nothing. It's kind of ironic that it's Nevada that was caught doing the most recent round of bussing; because they're one of the states with the most empty land.

Re:Status quo can not be the answer

[PPH]

Anyone homeless needs to be offered reliable shelter, food, medicine, clothes

It's been tried. And with the food, shelter, etc. usually come rules of conduct. No thanks say the heroin addicts and people with mental problems. They live under the freeway off-ramps because the rules most closely match their lifestyle. To be precise: none.

and a plan to get out of their predicament towards a productive lifestyle.

They are happy with the lifestyle that they have. Want to give them some handouts? Fine, thanks. But that isn't going towards a better lifestyle. Sometimes it isn't even going toward food. Gotta have that meth or cheap booze.

We had a program in Seattle some years ago that involved participating businesses to accept meal coupons which the public could buy and hand to the cardboard sign guys. It didn't work, unless you actually liked being screamed at by winos for not handing out cash.

Re:Better: jobs

[Hylandr]

The ignorance is strong in this thread.

You can only live so far from work before the cost and time of commuting are unmanageable.