Nonprofit pledges $100 million to aid SF’s chronically homeless
sfchronicle.com/aboutsfgate/article/Nonprofit...
sfchronicle.comPosted May 7, 2017, 7:41 PM UTC
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sfchronicle.comno one's pledging anything to aid middle class people working jobs just to not be able to get by, though.
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i do think we are at a tipping point of our "lost generation" of young men that can't seek higher education (or don't see the value of it) in America.
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I can't believe you troll so consistently and STILL get upvoted with this shit. You are a true master.
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Haha. Shit...
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Middle class people don't need money. They make enough to support themselves just fine. They just need the government to take less.
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in theory i agree, but the housing issue exacerbates this problem to the nth degree. most cities on the coast are facing some sort of similar issue with housing prices.
the middle class is really what made America "great" the first time around, and they/we are now being squeezed out of existence.
make just enough money to be taxed for social services they cannot take advantage of, not enough to avoid being worked to death.
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The housing issue was caused by government intervention (extreme zoning policies, price controls, various other onerous hoops for developers to jump through). So Yalay's point that the government ought to get out of the wag still stands.
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totally agreed. government intervention when there is so much demand for an absolutely essential good leads to perverse market conditions.
however, within the context of grants to people with certain income levels etc, it seems pretty crazy that this wouldn't be used to, say, lower rents for everyone in the city temporarily or something like that that, which would definitely stimulate the local economy even more.
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Lol already $260 million in tax payer dollars.... evil capitalism coming to help!
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LOL all that money is making someone richer, not helping the homeless
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We are having a planning meeting discussing goals, vision; community partners, and housing all related to youth who are experiencing homeless.
PLEASE COME AND PARTICPATE!
Thursday, 5/11/2017
9:30am-2:00pm (come any time)
220 Golden Gate Ave.
I have a room i can afford now since of city policy before that i was sleeping out in the cold. I would say this was Saddest and most hopeless part of my life so far. i am starting to reap my potential with the support i have been given from the county. , so what you are saying is not very true maybe slightly true. I have seen to much money spent on needle boxes, consultants in meetings who seem like less than needed, and bogus education for the homeless. Yeah this room cost about $10,000s a year for the city to give me. Its a lot but it has help me not have a twitching eye and worry about just surviving. I hope rich folks in the city know that their tax dollars have helped me. the people who work in my building, the supportive housing staff all have jobs and are completing their hours for counseling certificates. I wish more communities across the united states besides san francisco could be as aggressive but we are a rich city, so we can spare some for others.
If anyone wants to come to a policy meeting about youth homelessness un SF THAT is folks 12-24 years of age. I will be attending this Thursday and its open to the public. We will be discussing how to spend a 1.5 million dollar grant given from HUD. You can see the social workers/nonprofits, the consultants, the appointed bureaucrat, and the homeless youth discussing what we should do. Everyone who wants to learn about the homeless should come.
This meeting will be about education, employment, and social-emotional well being.
So here is the next opportunity, our second planning session: Thursday, May 11th, 2017. If you want to participate please let me know!
We are having a planning meeting discussing goals, vision; community partners, and housing all related to youth who are experiencing homeless.
PLEASE COME AND PARTICPATE!
Thursday, 5/11/2017
9:30am-2:00pm (come any time)
220 Golden Gate Ave.
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Homelessness is such a complicated problem.. I doubt money will solve it. Many of the people that live on the streets in SF, do it by choice. They can't deal with the rules in a shelter, are dependent on drugs, and can't hold a job. One of the best projects I've seen so far, was the one where volunteers would contact these peoples families.. some success stories there. If they can reunite with family, get support there. This money will be swallowed up by the city, and many of these 'profit for me' non-profits. Meaning all the employees make 150-200k, while the project or program is untested, radical, and usually fails.
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the one where volunteers would contact these peoples families.. some success stories there.
You mean where the city would offer a free ticket to anywhere in the country if there was family willing to take care of the person, there? That is a great thing. Will only deal with a small percent of the population, though.
Also, good pointing out how "non-profit" doesn't mean that the salaries for the directors (and possibly others) aren't sky-high, at the taxpayers' expense.
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this program, some great success stories here http://miraclemessages.org/about/
yeah... I think alot of non-profits are scams. meaning a company can donate funds (against tax obligations), then that company can put a family member or good friend as the head.. and pay them whatever... not really important how successful the NP is. Options.. give your money to the gov't and have no say in it, or give it to your buddy, and he does what he wants in the name of charity. Rather give your money to your buddy than to gov't... right. I know of several 'relationships' like this. (edit), I should say 'suspect' several relationships.
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I'm even more worried abut the nonprofits that are taxpayer-funded doing the same than some b.s. charity. At least their donations are volitional.
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the taxpayer ones are audited pretty good I think.
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So the only thing to point out that money does not work for homeless is the fact the city spends 241 million for around 7,000 homeless. That is $34,428 per homeless person, or $2,869 per homeless person per month i.e. enough to rent each homeless person a market rate studio apartment in almost any neighborhood in the city and 1 bedroom in some neighborhoods.
Even if you say that the number is double that at 14,000 you could still rent 7,000 apartments and put two homeless people in each apartment for the amount that is wasted and it is clearly wasted as the homeless population is growing not shrinking. Either the goal should be to get them back on their feet and self sufficient or we just pay to put them in an apartment somewhere but stop wasting money with things that dont help the problem.
I would love if instead a nonprofit instead pledged to build an apartment building and then start picking people up off the street and setting them up in the apartment. Even if they got just 30 people off the street it is a start and that is 30 less homeless that need to be helped. Then you could start focusing on the mentally ill homeless and moving them into mental health facilities which would also be a better use of 241 million dollars but NIMBYs would never let a mental health hospital be built near them or we could spend 241 million to build in patient rehab centers to help get the addicts off the street. But instead we just feed them and leave them on the street allowing the problem to continue helping no one and probably pushing the addict closer and closer to a fatal OD
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$2,869 per homeless person per month i.e. enough to rent each homeless person a market rate studio apartment in almost any neighborhood in the city and 1 bedroom in some neighborhoods.
Or enough to rent them a market rate studio in Cleveland and pay for all of their other necessities. There's no reason that this population should be subsized to live in one of the most desirable places in the world.
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Perhaps the homeless could be given free housing for a length of time, like one to two years. After that, they are charged a rent that starts very small and each month goes up by perhaps $100 for a set number of months. The maximum rent would be a big debate. The point of it all would be getting people off the street and giving them some time to get their lives back together, and hopefully on track to self sufficiency, including finding work and housing locally or elsewhere. Then they can move out of the city-supplied living space.
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spend 241 million to build in patient rehab centers
Haha. I can't imagine a worse job on earth than working in one of those places.
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This is based on a social policy called Housing First that this nonprofit has pledged money to do in their 3 pronged approach (along with treating mentally ill and working with government to build up their capacity to deal with these issues).
So yes, this money is being used to do what Utah did so it's not "better," it's the same. Therefore, your argument that this approach is inefficient doesn't hold up, although I do agree that money can be spend inefficiently on the homeless.
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Pardon me for being skeptical, but I've seen the headline "Nonprofit pledges $________ to help SF homeless" so many times, it's all starting to blend together:
Giants will donate $1K for every run scored at home to campaign aimed at ending family homelessness
SF, Benioffs announce $30 million plan to fight family homelessness
Google gives 2 million to SF nonprofits to aid homeless
Tech Leaders donate 5 million to house homeless veterans in SF Mission Bay
San Francisco Receives $2.9M Grant to Help End Youth Homelessness
...All in a 2 year period.
On top of the quarter of a billion dollars in taxpayer money the city is already allocated to house...just 8-15,000 people.
You can probably buy a town somewhere in the Sierra foothills for them to all live at with that sort of money, complete with amenities for everyone.
There are only 8-15,000 homeless in SF, how many billions of dollars do they need? Maybe throwing money at the problem won't make it go away? I think the solution is taking a hard stance to homelessness, maybe encouraging neighbourhood markets not to sell to homeless people...Or perhaps ending the sense of victimisation that non-profits create in order to justify their own existence...
...Or maybe Marley had it right: Total Destruction Is The Only Solution.
i would like to see a USAFacts type breakdown of where the money goes, and how much of it is actually used for services that directly impact homelessness with metrics indicating the permanence of retaining a residence thereafter.
It would be interesting to see, just to account for why we have the most expensive homeless problem in the world
Cut and paste from a comment I made a while ago:
Not in as many words, but the effect is the same.
1 in 4 currently homeless came here to utilize the homeless services (this is a result of referral from other services - they didn't just 'magically' hear about golden San Francisco through some kind of hobo grapevine), and 1 in 5's first place of residence in the city was a homeless shelter: they came her to be housed and then ended up on the streets.
http://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Francisco%20Homeless%20Count%20%20Report.pdf
These tiny gems are buried near table 16.
People are coming here directly to use the services. We can't pretend that they are doing so independently, to "further their career in homelessness": that's patently ridiculous. These are people that can't manage their shit well enough to keep a roof over their head - they aren't flocking to San Francisco as much as being referred from other parts of the state, or in worst cases, literally being sent.
And if people are coming here directly to use the services, the shelters damn well do have control. It may not be direct and immediate, but it's control. Case in point:
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/10/nevada-settles-busing-homeless-lawsuit-san-francisco
Yes, that was found to be illegal and some wrists were slapped. Don't tell me it is the only place bussing people to SF - there's no other conceivable way that so many of them are arriving.
Ultimately, the organizations involved have no immediate incentive to stop referrals from other parts of the country. And the more people they serve, the more money they can ask for from the city, and the more 'successful' they are as a non-profit business.
And just as serving more people is in their interests, so is dumping the most costly onto the streets and serving more newcomers. Once they've outstayed their welcome, or become too costly, they are shunted on to the streets. And, again, the worse the crisis gets, the more money they can ask for from the city.
I'm not suggesting that this is some kind of intentional human trafficking. I am sure that (almost) everyone involved is doing so because they think that they are improving the world.
My thesis is that our current environment is is the result non-profits being run in a capitalist business environment, with a capitalist mindset. Eventually, the business model achieves stasis with it's environment, which, in this case, involves letting the city be a dumping human tragedy and letting the city's tax payers pay $250 million dollars a year for the privilege. The crisis is the side effect of an expanding bureaucracy, achieving homeostasis and justifying it's existence.
The homeless shelter industry should be funded by the population it serves (ie - the state), and not the city. And it should not be allowed to use city streets as a dumping ground for human misery, in order to maintain their business model.
Tl;dr: there's evidence to suggest that the SF homeless industry is soliciting homeless people from around the state and country and then dumping the most troubled on the streets, presumably to improve their business numbers.
What a bullshit summary. There's no evidence to suggest any of that. You can't just put up a wall of text of your speculation, opinion, and lack of reading comprehension, and then make up a tl;dr.
Tl;dr: there's evidence to suggest people completely make things up due to having agendas.
No, nothing is "buried" anywhere. What you're misinterpreting is this stat:
They're not describing 1 out of 4 homeless people in San Francisco. They're describing 25% of those that were living in CA, but not SF. i.e. 25% of a portion of the total homeless population. What portion? Let's actually read the context of "Table 16":
So, 25% out of the 19% of homeless came to "To access homeless services and/or benefits". Or, roughly 1 out of every 20.
And of those 1 out of 20, there's no reason to suggest that there's a nefarious conspiracy "(this is a result of referral from other services - they didn't just 'magically' hear about golden San Francisco through some kind of hobo grapevine)" other than your paranoia.
I agree with Alfonso for once. I don't think the data makes it clear there's a conspiracy. That said, I don't think there necessarily needs to be one. San Francisco is a nice place to live, and both the homeless and well heeled professional crowds know that by now. We should try to welcome and house as many people as possible.
Thanks for this rebuttal.
For sure. I was worried for a moment when I saw folks were down-voting me for fact-checking and holding people accountable to actual truth, but luckily it looks like the amount of reasonable people here still outnumber or can outlast the trolls and brigades.
As fucked up as this sub is it would be twice as fucked up without you.
Thanks. I think I'm missing big portions of it nowadays because life's too short, and so I block trolls when I can, instead of engaging with them.
It's scary when the shitposting and ridiculousness is coming from non-trolls, but there's still decent discussion possible, I think.
So you're saying ignore 80% of the homeless because 20% of them didn't have a residence in the city before a shelter?
That's a garbage argument.
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You realize there would be a lot more people that would be homeless if it weren't for this money. A lot of the money is spent on people not accounted for in your 8k to 15k number.
Also, buying housing doesn't account for all the other costs associated with life.
Last I heard, 6-7,000 is the highest estimate of homeless. Where are you getting 8-15,000 from?
41 upvotes at current time for "Total Destruction " of the homeless. Class.
Because I don't want to throw billions at the problem, that makes me want to 'destroy' the homeless?
I just want to destroy their desperate situation, not their lives
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgpa7wEAz7I
^bot ^info
It sounded ok until you said they should not be allowed to purchase things. Man thats just not right, but fuck sf is not going to fix its own problem.
But will that town have heroin to consume and bikes to steal to pay for it? What about liquor stores?
All this money to end homelessness and all they have to do is let some homeless people live with them. Instead they try to pay the problem away, virtue SIGNALED.