hachyderm.io is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
Hachyderm is a safe space, LGBTQIA+ and BLM, primarily comprised of tech industry professionals world wide. Note that many non-user account types have restrictions - please see our About page.

Administered by:

Server stats:

9.9K
active users

mekka okereke :verified:

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

Periodic reminder that NYC has more homeless people, and more homeless people per capita, than SF. 🙂🙃

But NYC has more shelter spots that are suitable for human habitation, and a more efficient intake process, so has far fewer street homeless (tents etc).

coalitionforthehomeless.org/ba

5% of NYC homeless people are unsheltered. ♥️👍🏿

Over 50% of SF homeless people are unsheltered 😢

3/N

www.coalitionforthehomeless.orgBasic Facts About Homelessness: New York City - Coalition For The HomelessBasic facts about homelessness in New York City, including the number of people staying in shelters in the city.

This is the most New York photo ever. It shows 2 buildings. On the left is the Bowery Hotel. Rooms start at $500 a night. The Bowery is a known spot for A-list celebrity watching. It's a fun place. Recommend

On the right is Project Renewal Kenton Hall Men's Shelter.

Bowery Hotel:
Single Room Occupancy deluxe studio, $1500 a night.
theboweryhotel.com/

Project Renewal:
Single Room Occupancy deluxe studio, free!
projectrenewal.org/programs-ov

Stop saying New Yorkers are mean. They're kind.

4/N

San Francisco doesn't have the nation's most severe "homelessness" problem.

San Francisco has the nation's most severe "ineffective, selfish, and punitive response to homelessness" problem.

And before we say that the problem is fentanyl... NYC fentanyl usage is just as high. And before we say the problem is Black people, SF has famously few Black folk left, while NYC has a disproportionately large population of Black people. One in every 20 Black US citizens lives in NYC.

5/5

@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io Weber's razor suggests that people's actions could be explained as justified from their own points of view, and if they can't, as legitimate, or else as irrational.

This framing might be poor and based on a misunderstanding of Weber's rationality, but it helps to cut through the noise.

@mekkaokereke It's wild how much the NIMBY's have seized control of San Francisco and the Bay Area in general... or really California in general :drgn_sigh:

@Rusty

It would be helpful/interesting to know the change in the number of Silicon Valley employees living in SF over time.

@mekkaokereke

@mekkaokereke It's hard to improve the problem when the first thing you do is throw out the metrics entirely.

But that's been the reality of S.F. for over a decade now.

@mekkaokereke it's not kindness, it's Callahan v. Carey.

@mekkaokereke
It would be nice if we could see less blame and more solutions from our politicians.

@mekkaokereke the alternately barely veiled and completely unveiled hatred of the homeless that i see in every reply to a local news story about homelessness in SF really shows how dead set many people here are against helping anyone. they don't want to pay for proper services, they don't want to see them on the streets. policy wise it's a non-answer. only a few are willing to say out loud that the logical implication of their stance is extermination.

@mekkaokereke i suppose i should acknowledge the recently favored position of some of these people: "incarcerate them all, bring back sanitariums (no i don't want to pay for that either)"

@mekkaokereke San Fransisco city hall had a fucking gadsden flying over it I kid you not

@mekkaokereke I always figured it was the nice weather that made homeless outdoor living possible in CA -- does that not factor in?

@acm_redfox

No, that doesn't factor into it. Although many people are very convinced that it does.

Most homeless people in SF, were living in SF in a house, before they became homeless.

hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/111

Homelessness in a city, is strongly correlated with the affordability of that city. And the number of people living in tents, is correlated with the percentage of homeless people that are sheltered.

@acm_redfox

I'm not kidding when I say that homelessness is pollution emitted by rich people. Homeless people are victims of that pollution.

During Covid lockdowns, rich people fled SF for Atlanta and Austin. Home prices went up in both places, but Atlanta built enough new entry level homes to keep the "minimum monthly rent/mortgage" accessible.👍🏿 Austin did not. So homelessness in Austin is increasing faster.

Homeless people aren't making their way to Austin for that famous Texas weather.🤷🏿‍♂️

@Tamasg @mekkaokereke This could be said for the entire bay area or better yet, the entire state of CA.

@mekkaokereke Wow, I had no idea about that last statistic!

@mekkaokereke true New Yorkers are kind.

It’s all the transplanted folks from Ohio who make NYC so nasty. You know, the Karens & Aarons on the UWS, complaining that they see “homeless people everywhere,” and insist that the ONLY solution is to close the shelters. 😑

@InayaShujaat @mekkaokereke and I have always thought that’s a wild thought on the face of it:

1) I see people without shelter
2) close shelters (so then there is less shelter for those who lack shelter)
3) ???
4) magically there are fewer unsheltered folks in my field of vision.

@mekkaokereke @davidaugust They honestly think that if they can’t SEE homelessness, it doesn’t exist.

@InayaShujaat Well, they have a strange logic then: If they don't wanna see homeless people on the streets, they should build more shelter to get them off the streets. If they close the shelters, then, of course, homeless people will pour out on the streets, because they have nowhere else to go and be. @mekkaokereke

@mekkaokereke @levampyre They have a VERY strange logic, fuelled largely by baseless privilege.

I got tired of arguing with their delusion.

@mekkaokereke @InayaShujaat I’m kind of
amazed at the recurring claim that people can move here from Ohio and afford to live on the UWS (or the Meatpacking District, or etc)

Most of us came here for college, loved the city as it is, stayed, and are caught in the same mad scrimmage for an apartment larger than a broom closet for under $2K a month as our locally-born friends.

@mekkaokereke @serinde I lived in the UWS, and there weren’t many locally-born people left (rents were too expensive!). Almost everyone that I met had a nanny.

Those aren’t the kind of people who are struggling to pay rent.

@mekkaokereke
Was just listening to a great podcast about this. If Books Could Kill did an episode about San Fransicko and did what seemed like a great job dissecting the arguments in the book, and pointing out some real valid criticism of how homelessness is handled by both liberals and conservatives

@jonquass

That's the 2nd recommendation for that podcast episode in this thread. 👍🏿

Will check it out!

@mekkaokereke Well... we do for now. Let's check back in after Mayor Swagger is done trying to weasel out of NY state's right-to-shelter laws. :(

@mekkaokereke The Tenderloin is too precious for people to live there. As is every neighborhood facing overcrowding refugee infllux. Housing first then the human rights of ALL. Build for Humanity

@mekkaokereke Interesting. I wonder if that better shelter rate partly came about because winter is harsher in NYC (or vice-versa).

@mekkaokereke my belief is that in places where the weather will kill you, both sides are more motivated to make housing situations work, whereas a human can live outside in SF year round and exposure is not necessarily going to be a likely source of mortality. A year of living outside in NYC is not survivable without considerable equipment.

@Will

People believe this, even though the evidence doesn't support it at all. Cold cities don't necessarily provide more shelter.

hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/111

And people live outdoors year round in New York, and places much colder than New York. Steve Wallis teaches homeless and unsheltered people how to "stealth camp" and how to survive in the cold. He frequently spends the night in cities, below freezing temperatures.

hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/111

@Will it's 99% skill and prep, 1% weather. I spent a few nights out unprepared at +2C and consider myself lucky to be alive. I never hope to feel that miserable again and wish it on no living being. I have parted with many pieces of clothing since then out of compassion 🐑

Prepped, -20C with wind was just fine.

@mekkaokereke I like reminding people that housing *is* healthcare. Lack of shelter will undermine practically every health outcome, from addiction to diabetes to heart disease to infections, regardless of the amount of labs, counseling, and prescriptions administered. We can and need to do better on the west coast.

@BioGeek23 @mekkaokereke
I keep thinking of that streamer person who wanted to prove that anyone can go from homeless to fine if they just 'try really hard', who fibbed at least a little, then 'got sick' and 'had to quit'

And people were saying 'oh it doesn't count because he got so sick' or similar, when neglecting the entire thing of if you don't have any safety net and you stumble..

@Oggie @BioGeek23 @mekkaokereke the unhoused, notable as a group for being in great physical and mental health, right?

@BioGeek23 @mekkaokereke right, but it only makes sense to think about it that way if the entity paying for doctors is also the one that would build houses or set policies. in the US, health insurers don’t have authority to tackle those problems, so the buck is passed…

@kellogh @mekkaokereke which tangentially raises the question whether gambling on health insurance companies to cover necessary medical care is really the best approach for the American people... Our very profitable health insurance industry ultimately exist only to benefit the fat cats at the top, while the insurance policies are often tied to employment which in turn is tied to having stable housing, with some marginal exceptions.

@BioGeek23 @mekkaokereke my dad’s argument is that private companies can innovate better than government. but i tend to think government and private orgs are equally capable of being innovative or dysfunctional. the benefit of doing things at the government level is you can have these really big vertically integrated programs that aren’t remotely feasible for a company to undertake

@mekkaokereke I’ve been in NYC three weeks, and it’s been immediately obvious that

1) I am massively happier when the overwhelming majority of people around me have housing,
2) every conversation about why I’m leaving SF turns quickly into my longstanding rant about how badly we’re fucking up

@mekkaokereke really everything you need to know about San Francisco right now is that even the rich people are miserable

@mekkaokereke
Thank you for posting this, I used it to speak to Newsom's staff.

@mekkaokereke kind vs. nice in a nutshell right there.

@mekkaokereke

As you know, there's a major fallacy in thinking that people, if their basic needs were met, would not do work.

Being unemployed, without a purpose, is immensely damaging to people's mental health, even when they have their physical needs met.

What this horror show of "This Could Happen To You" is for is to persuade people to accept being exploited which they wouldn't if this wasn't the alternative.

It's all stick, no carrot nowadays.

@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

@mekkaokereke and it would be great if the state agencies, like DHHS, and public Housing, could share information. If somebody is homeless and they get food stamps or Medicaid the state has a copy of their Social Security card and birth certificate and all kinds of stuff that they needed to qualify for that. Couldn’t HUD use those same documents from the state database so they don’t have to be produced over and over and over again?

Also, if you are going into public housing and they want you to supply a criminal records check from every state that you’ve ever lived in, ask them if they can just take a nationwide background check. If I had to pay $25 to every state I ever lived in to get something from the state I would’ve had to wait so long I would’ve lost my apartment. But the company that does background checks for Notary signing agents can do the whole country for $40 in a couple days.

@maggiemaybe @mekkaokereke
At $25/State the cost would be impossible for many to meet never mind the time scale.

@maggiemaybe @mekkaokereke aren’t fingerprint scanners cheap now? It’s not problem-free, but agencies could have the option of looking everything up using your fingerprint, so no one would ever need to worry about losing that kind of documentation

@maggiemaybe @mekkaokereke IIRC, when I had to get an FBI background check for something, it took 15-20 mins at a FedEx office with a notary. Getting a local police background check at the same time involved driving across town to a specific police detachment and a few days turnaround. As in -- these kinds of bureaucratic hurdles are the product of _deliberate_ choices.

@mekkaokereke "we should force them to accept the shelter against their own will, "for their own good!"

We meaning Mayor Breed, the one who, well before becoming Mayor, as President of the Board of Supes, decided that the best thing to do to improve the over 1600 people long waiting list for permanent housing, was to get rid of the list entirely?!

The fact is that there isn't enough housing for them to move into, and that Breed has repeatedly blocked voter-approved funds to build it.

@mekkaokereke infuriating that America has this idea that all assistance must be accompanied by some form of punishment. “OK, we’ll give you shelter I guess, but you must still suffer for it.”