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There's lots of noise in SF about homeless folk "refusing shelter" and "They want to live in tents!" And that we should force them to accept the shelter against their own will, "for their own good!" Many SF folks rationalize their desire to not see homeless people, by convincing ourselves that refusing shelter is an irrational behaviour, and that we know better.

We don't consider the fact that people might be refusing shelter when that shelter is worse than a tent.

sfchronicle.com/projects/2023/

1/N

The cruel way forwards, is to force people to accept these substandard, dangerous conditions.

The way of kindness, is to improve the conditions at the worst places, to the level of the units that people don't refuse.

And "reducing the bureaucratic delay" involves both simplifying the application process, and not *checks notes* throwing away homeless people's paperwork every few months in sweeps. "Still gathering paperwork" sometimes means reapplying for documents thrown away in a sweep. 😢

2/N

Paul Cantrell

@mekkaokereke
Minneapolis is trying both approaches at once, and the results are…instructive.

We have a relatively small permanently homeless population, probably only a few hundred people. Yet we perennially have highly visible tent encampments. The city keeps destroying them — and destroying these people’s worldly possessions along with them — over and over. It’s expensive. It’s cruel. But at least it…no wait, it’s totally ineffective. Encampments keep reappearing, over and over and over.

@mekkaokereke
In the meantime, however, the city has also undertaken a huge push to just build a whole bunch more housing, and lo and behold, rents in Minneapolis did a U-turn while rents similar cities are going up. There’s hope of actually building enough housing.

But no, the same folks who whine about encampments also whine about the construction of condos and apartment buildings, sued, and manage to get a court to freeze that successful plan:
minneapolis2040.com/implementa

minneapolis2040.comMinneapolis 2040 Court Order