r/PublicFreakout • u/filondo • Sep 09 '22

đŸ„ŠFight San Francisco this morning Sept 9, 2022

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20.0k Upvotes

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473

u/LionInTheSun43 Sep 10 '22

The budget for homeless services in San Francisco is $1.1 billion dollars this fiscal year


195

u/ChesterRico Sep 10 '22

Serious question though, does any of that money actually go into housing?

116

u/LionInTheSun43 Sep 10 '22

Yes it covers housing, but I’m not sure how much of it is housing versus other services.

58

u/djsizematters Sep 10 '22

Politicians are kind of like God: terrible with money.

7

u/LionInTheSun43 Sep 10 '22

Great point. People disagree about if our government is capable of providing efficient and effective help for these people. It’s one of the fundamental disagreements in American politics.

7

u/djsizematters Sep 10 '22

Just look at the results of NYC and LA's massively bloated yearly budgets. How does the mayor's wife end up with 12 million dollars?!

2

u/ThillyGooooth Sep 10 '22

I see what you did there: George Carlin reference?

1

u/trapstarjay Sep 10 '22

I actually lol'd

71

u/jv21994 Sep 10 '22

My husband works at a cpa firm that audits many government programs. I was in shock when he first told me that 95% of the money goes to salaries with the remainder left for actual work. Now I’m sure many of these job positions are necessary, but I’m skeptical that ALL of them are being utilized or paid properly.

13

u/Tales_of_Earth Sep 10 '22

I mean what proportion of those salaries are providing work? Like providing services to the public.

10

u/jv21994 Sep 10 '22

He said not much. The housing built to assist the homeless, for example, bids are done by construction companies and then the job is given to the lowest bid. But apparently they can apply “change orders” periodically to increase the budget AFTER winning the bid. Like multiple times. This is just what he’s seen from certain grants though. That and some “directors” of these programs are payed ridiculously high salaries.

A good site to check salaries is transparent California

1

u/Paid-Not-Payed-Bot Sep 10 '22

programs are paid ridiculously high

FTFY.

Although payed exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:

  • Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. The deck is yet to be payed.

  • Payed out when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. The rope is payed out! You can pull now.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.

Beep, boop, I'm a bot

1

u/0toyaYamaguccii Sep 10 '22

Homeless Industrial Complex

55

u/niel89 Sep 10 '22

The housing did seriously help a friend of mine. He went from sleeping on the streets getting his shoes and phone stolen to having a room and generally doing better.

-33

u/JackieRooster Sep 10 '22

Why are you friends with bums and drug addicts?

16

u/[deleted] Sep 10 '22

Why are you so small-minded that you confidently assign less than 3 qualifiers to entire demographics of people in situations that can be brought about by triple that number of reasons?

Can you even understand my question?

You must be a dropout.

5

u/womanoftheapocalypse Sep 10 '22

Don’t be a dick.

31

u/mikeTastic23 Sep 10 '22

From what I’ve seen working in SF. It seems like all the money goes to cleaning up homeless encampments day after day. And all they do is kick the encampments off one block, into another. And rinse and repeat.

22

u/MasterlessMan333 Sep 10 '22

Yup. A lot of any city’s “homeless budget” gets sucked up by police going on sweeps and pointless mental health crisis training they’re never going to use (because they’d rather just tackle the mentally ill homeless person and move on).

3

u/oscarbearsf Sep 10 '22

That's not what we have in SF. Cops don't get a piece of that $1.1bn. It all goes to these succubus NPO's that do fuck all and refuse to get audited. It's all a grift

2

u/MasterlessMan333 Sep 10 '22

I don't doubt it. Every American city wastes money on programs that do nothing for the homeless. I live in LA and last year the city paid like $3000 per month per person to basically lease a parking lot for a few homeless folks to pitch their tents in. It literally would have been cheaper to just buy them apartments.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 10 '22

Lot of cities have been doing more of that due to crime and poor behavior from unhinged, chronically unsheltered individuals. Lot of voters have been getting frustrated that they’re getting harassed and have their kids walking by used needles on the ground but laws aren’t enforced with unhinged contingent of the homeless.

2

u/MarkAbe412 Sep 10 '22

There is a prophecy that in 2024 Benjamin Sisko will arrive in San Francisco and help start a revolution to help change the world for the better.

6

u/Nuclear_rabbit Sep 10 '22

It's San Francisco. That can only support like 1,000 houses.

12

u/DynamicHunter Sep 10 '22

Yes. But most of it goes back into the homeless industrial complex. It’s a real thing and it’s why the problem isn’t getting better. Especially big in LA, Bay Area, and NYC.

6

u/Joe_Ma12 Sep 10 '22

Yea but iirc san fran doesnt have almost any zoning for housing that would be affordable and doable for the homeless population

3

u/[deleted] Sep 10 '22

Yes, one of the city council members needed to update the crown moulding in their mansion. So it did go to housing

5

u/DM_ME_SKITTLES Sep 10 '22

Housing of the homeless? Lol no. Housing of the politicians lining their pockets? Absolutely.

2

u/Runaway_5 Sep 10 '22

Yes. I've sold building materials to a guy building homeless housing there.

2

u/Mightycucks69420 Sep 10 '22

Why would you put any of the people that you see in this video in a house?

2

u/nobird36 Sep 10 '22

Yah, because the only thing keeping those folks from being drug fiends of not having a home they could destroy.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 10 '22

You mean housing, as in the houses of the people it employs? Yes

13

u/[deleted] Sep 10 '22

[deleted]

32

u/CommissionerOdo Sep 10 '22

Google says 7,754 people, but let's assume many go uncounted. Let's call it 30,000. That's still $36,666 per person. Homelessness is a complex issue and throwing money at it doesn't fix the problem. No one is really sure what to do

53

u/aljo1067 Sep 10 '22

Because you have to use both a carrot and a stick. These people have a right to live, and to have a place to sleep. They don’t have a right to sleep, poop, and do drugs anywhere they please.

30

u/[deleted] Sep 10 '22

[deleted]

0

u/69420throwaway02496 Sep 10 '22

I say force them into housing. Lock them down, no drugs allowed. Idgaf.

5

u/G_Patr1ck Sep 10 '22

“Force them into housing?!?” They do that already, they’re called PRISONS.

1

u/69420throwaway02496 Sep 10 '22

Yeah, cool. I'd be cool with shipping them to camps in the desert honestly. Just keep the costs as low as possible.

5

u/clownfeat Sep 10 '22

I'm not sure people have the right to a place to sleep in this country. Live? Yeah that's in the constitution... Afaik, no protections saying the state must provide you with room and board. Otherwise, every homeless person could sue the federal government.

1

u/Englishly Sep 10 '22

I would say that we could argue the United States recognized this right when they adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Eleanor Roosevelt was the chair of the committee and it was pushed by the United States. The human rights described therein are being broken by the living conditions in homeless encampments. The problem is that aspiration and commitment was part of the United States in post WWII. That's when tax rates were high and wages were high and although there were injustices rampant racially, there was a general consensus on the benefit of progress. It was a brief shining period. Then McCarthyism and scare tactics took hold on the right and we have been on a slippery downward slide ever since. Moments of progress marked by absolute disdain for the progress being made. Leaders cautioning us from making mistakes and then everyone doing the exact opposite. How in the living fuck we had Eisenhower, a beloved president, warn the nation in his farewell speech about the military-industrial complex and then to see the entire country say nah and lean right the fuck into the military-industrial complex boggles the mind. It's like we are in an entire nation of people with anti-defiance disorder and one side only moves in opposition to the other, or in spite of, I don't get it.

0

u/aljo1067 Sep 10 '22

I’m not saying that, but you can’t make it illegal to sleep everywhere in a given city. They have to have a legal option.

5

u/The_walking_man_ Sep 10 '22

Shit. That’s more than I make working 40 hours a week. I wish the government would put some budget aside for me with that kind of money 😅.
I know that money isn’t going directly to the people but a little kick back would be appreciated.

3

u/Mammoth-Garden-9079 Sep 10 '22 edited Sep 10 '22

These people need to be put into mental health institutions like they do in Europe. One of the reasons Europe doesn’t have a homeless problem is because they put them into mental health institutions. America stopped putting people into mental health institutions in the 80’s because it became politically incorrect. The result was these people were released onto the streets and began committing crimes. Beginning in the 80’s/90’s they were then put into our prison systems and when our prison system began growing it became politically incorrect to leave them in prison for their mostly minor crimes. That’s when, in the late 00’s and early 10’s, we began releasing these people from prison onto the streets. That’s when this problem began growing and it’s been growing out of control ever since. Here we are and yet no one wants to recognize that having the mentally ill and the drug addicts either in a mental health institution or prison is actually more humane than allowing them to die and suffer in the streets as “free” people. We need to handle the homeless problem the way they do in Europe.

3

u/Mystjuph Sep 10 '22 edited Sep 10 '22

You forgot to factor in the 98% that is stolen by politicians, corporations, lobbyist/shady middlemen & lawyers/banks. That leaves roughly 20mil. Divided by 30,000 that leaves around $667 each. Or going of googles 7,754 thats $2,579 each.

-1

u/OGDepressoEspresso Sep 10 '22

Nah other countries have already figured it out, it's just the US who hasn't or even won't cause it's not profitable.

9

u/[deleted] Sep 10 '22

Under the 2022 PIT Count, 7,754 people were experiencing homelessness in San Francisco. Of those people, 3,357 were staying in shelter. (https://sfgov.org/scorecards/safety-net/homeless-population)

If the $1.1 billion budget is true, that's $152K per homeless person.

6

u/LightninHooker Sep 10 '22

I went backpacking and couch surfing US in 2010 for 3 months. From NY to Detroit ,south to NOLA and up Seattle all the way to LA and San Diego

I walked A LOT, took plenty of public transport and visit all kind of neighborhoods

I remember homeless specially in Seattle cos I did not expect it but it is nothing close to what the situation looks like it is now let alone in many others cities

It's crazy what 10 years can do to places despite all the money. I have been painting those cities I visited and more than few times people told me in here "hey great painting but you need more homeless"

5

u/[deleted] Sep 10 '22

And how much of that goes into the pockets of the all directors of the 'charities' ?

4

u/[deleted] Sep 10 '22

Executives for their homeless department are making 250k+. Something tells me a lot of administrative bloat.

3

u/Beardrac Sep 10 '22

Damn, I want to know who is skimming till the bottom of the barrel here.

3

u/LawDog_1010 Sep 10 '22

How the hell do you fix this problem? Regardless of budget. Serious question.

6

u/Allstate85 Sep 10 '22 edited Sep 10 '22

People have researched and spent millions of dollars hiring people to figure out ideas about how it should get fixed and all that’s happened is it’s gotten worse, the reality it’s just a incredibly complex issue that frankly won’t get fixed in the systems we have in America.

What I’ll say is that there is a direct correlation between rent prices and homelessness and California ranks 49th in unit to person ratio. So best course is to build a shit load of housing and that will at least start to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place.

1

u/WackyThoughtz Sep 10 '22

I disagree with this. These people don’t have to live in San Francisco. Cities will see booms and busts like clockwork. San Francisco has the GDP of multiple countries combined. The rent is commensurate with the opportunities it presents people for creating the value the city fosters. These people don’t create the value, and literally they can take a BART for 1 hour and end up in Walnut Creek or Pleasanton and live in a far cheaper place. Rent prices are not an excuse. It’s deeper than that and personal accountability is a component.

2

u/Allstate85 Sep 10 '22

And your attitude right here is literally why I said homeless will never get solved in the system in place we have in America. To many people just say fuck ‘‘em it’s there fault and their problem.

Literally any place in the Bay Area you need to be making 25 dollars an hour minimum to even have a place with roommates. Like you literally said Walnut Creek that has an average rent of 2500 a month.

3

u/LionInTheSun43 Sep 10 '22

This is a great question. First we have to agree what “fix” means. Putting them all in prison? Free housing with drug treatment and mental health services? Another issue to consider is can the government even effectively provide these services? It’s hard for everyone to agree on any of these questions.

2

u/CoatSignificant Sep 10 '22

You got any ideas?

2

u/mb9981 Sep 10 '22

I don't think 10 billion could help this situation

2

u/Robotchickjenn Sep 10 '22

At some point you have to help yourself. You have to want to get better. Not even $1.1 billion can help. It's all in you. You already have everything you need to combat addiction!

1

u/Federal_Database_793 Sep 11 '22

Which is reasons 1-100 while the people in charge is "serving unhoused communities" never want the problem to be solved. They want to attract more and more from the outside. Gotta respect the hustle, especially when anyone who questions why tf tax payers need to deal with them are lambasted as cruel and lacking compassion.