The number of people sleeping outdoors dropped to under 3,000 in January, the lowest the city has recorded in a decade, according to a federal count.
And that figure has likely dropped even lower since Mayor London Breed — a Democrat in a difficult reelection fight this November — started ramping up enforcement of anti-camping laws in August following a U.S. Supreme Court decision.
Homelessness in no way has gone away, and in fact grew 7%, to 8,300 in January, according to the same federal count.
But the problem is now notably out of the public eye, raising the question of where people have gone and whether the change marks a turning point in a crisis long associated with San Francisco.
Spending money while not doing Anything any research group has ever recommended is the same as doing nothing. They’ve spent a billion on 1930s era “solutions” that make conservative liberals feel like theyve accomplished things while doing literally not one thing to actually solve the causes of homelessness. If they spent a million on new city owned no rent housing, that would be more than the entirety of all their other projects combined.
…they would get laughed out of the room? That barely buys a single condo in an existing building in SF.
If they did literally nothing else, and ignored all the people who overdose and die of exposure and end up sick etc etc…just did absolutely nothing and saved their budget for 10 years, MAYBE they could approach a partnership to THINK about breaking ground on a single building. Which would take 20 years to build.
Building new homes is just such an expensive approach that it’s not worth considering in SF.
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Oh yeah? Why?
I’ll take a crack.
It doesn’t take 20 years to build a building, even a large housing project. If you’re including the planning, financing, management, and value engineering stuff - yeah it takes longer than the actual physical building, but no where near 20 years in total. Unless someone who would say as much is being disingenuos and including all time from concept to completion, combined among all individuals involved.
Also, in previous comments you said they spent a billion a year. Then, in a follow-up comment you said “if they save their money for 10 years”. So I’m wondering if you imagine building a housing project costs 10 billion?
Sounds like if the they are actually garnering a billion a year, building housing should be totally workable.
I mean, okay, if they redirect that entire billion a year to building housing (ignoring the fact that a decent portion of the homeless problem would be solved via DEATH), they could throw up housing complexes with that money. But it doesn’t change the timeline a lot.
Quick and dirty math:
Building affordable housing in SF costs about a million per unit. There are about 4400 unsheltered people in the city. So we’re looking at about 4.4 years of our $1bn/yr budget.
And remember, providing housing is only one small part of keeping people off the streets. Bills, addiction, mental issues, discrimination - we are doing nothing on that front. Preventing people from falling into homelessness? Can’t do it, we’re building housing.