1y ago

San Francisco homeless sweep was cheered on by the right. It was also illegal

www.vice.com San Francisco's Xi Homeless Sweep Was Cheered by the Right. It Was Also Illegal, Advocates Say

The action, which housing advocates allege violated a court injunction, was celebrated by right-wing figures and the tech crowd.

Hundreds of unsheltered people living in tent encampments in the blocks surrounding the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco have been forced to leave by city outreach workers and police as part of an attempted “clean up the house” ahead of this week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’s annual free trade conference.

The action, which housing advocates allege violated a court injunction, was celebrated by right-wing figures and the tech crowd, who have long been convinced that the city is in terminal decline because of an increase in encampments in the downtown area.

The X account End Wokness wrote that the displacement was proof the “government can easily fix our cities overnight. It just doesn’t want to” (the post received 77,000 likes). “Queer Eye but it’s just Xi visiting troubled US cities then they get a makeover,” joked Packy McCormick, the founder of Not Boring Capital and advisor to Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto VC team. The New York Post celebrated the action, saying that residents had “miraculously disappeared.”

196 comments

We shouldn't decide the morality of things based on it being legal or illegal. The law is at best an after thought around morality.
- I'll take "it was legal at the time" for a thousand, Alex.
  
  What are you referring to? Are you aware the sweep that was performed was illegal?
  You don’t even need to read the article; it’s in the headline.
  How does this statement about “legal at the time” correspond to anything in this story?
- The law is a essentially the enforceable moral code of the state that enforces it. Most criminal laws were created to penalise acts that are considered morally reprehensible. I wouldn't say the law is an afterthought around morality but a reflection of the morality of the state. The laws are largely written by the capitalistic class and are a reflection of what they consider right and wrong.
  
  Yeah but the problem with this sentiment is that it eschews responsibility for the state its self, a responsibility for which a people always ultimately are. A state legislature makes laws. City councils create rules. Dog catchers have policies. At any point you can work to take responsibility for those positions. Its not an abstract theoretical thing. These are real material positions.
  We are responsible for the society we live in.
  
  So, what's that say about the law since slavery was completely legal at one point in time?
- When it comes to actions of government agents, though, following the law is the most basic form of accountability, and unaccountable governments are never good.
  
  You're a fool to think the entity that makes and enforces law will ever hold itself to its rules. Rules and laws are for controlling peasants, not itself.
- A philosophical argument that goes all the way back to Socrates.
- Truth.
- Violation of law most of the times is immoral. There are exceptions of course, but it is quite good guide.

The San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing had a 2022-2023 budget of $672 million dollars. This does not include EMT and police services. It's just what they earmark for homelessness.
In 2022, there were 7,754 unhoused people in San Francisco.
That's roughly $86,000 per person they spend on getting them housing, and still failing at it. The average rent for an apartment in SF is $3500 a month, or $42,000 per year. They're spending twice as much as they would if they just got apartments for people.
- Where is that money going, I wonder
  
  Housing is just one aspect. Food, medicine,, paying for employees (social workers, security, medical staff) etc. But even if say 75% of that was for housing it's not easy to just say rent them apartments; first off not enough apartment buildings are willing to take them in. It's difficult to even find cheap motels that will work with cities to temporarily house the homeless even though it's guaranteed money. Cities are looking at building shelters but then it's NIMBY time. Without dedicated facilities with mental health, addiction, etc treatment which the US doesn't have homelessness will be a forever problem.
- BUT BUT BUT WE CAN'T JUST SOLVE PROBLEMS, WE VAVE TO MANAGE THEM.
- 7754 is the PIT count of people homeless at one given point in time. Many, many more cycle through homelessness in any year.
- Most long-term homeless people can't just be given free apartments - they have serious, often untreatable problems that would make such a solution unsustainable.
  
  A quick google shows that most homelessness advocacy groups can cite numerous studies that show housing-first solutions are not only more effective, but also cheaper.
  
  Shut the fuck up, there are so many empty, insured buildings rotting away or even sitting in great condition but if we had to build new ones that CAN be done cheaply. No matter how bad they are, their problems would undoubtedly be VASTLY improved by the roof over their heads, and it could be sustained easily by the government taxing the rich even obscenely slightly. But no, instead we pass that burden onto the middle class so they get brainwashed into hating the poor too. Or stigmatizing, looking down on them, writing them all off as lesser beings who don't deserve a shred of hope. But realistically? Even if you have a million dollars today you could end up like them tomorrow. I remember somebody new starting at pizza hut who had just lost his house and was selling his Ferrari- it can happen to you. So many people are right around the corner from being homeless themselves and don't know it. Don't ever let anybody downplay that reality.
  
  What a fucking lie. They still need housing regardless of their problems so you need to learn to accept them as they are and let them have a roof over their head. Give them a small house and isolate them from others that way if they're such a problem.

Why do the right cheer as if it's a permanent solution? They'll be back as soon as the important people are gone. To say the problem is "fixed overnight" is like saying "Look Mom, I cleaned my room!" after you just finished sweeping everything underneath the bed and hiding it with the covers.
I do hope they fix the problem, but I don't know what else they can try other than just building houses and giving them the keys. That would probably be less expensive in the long run, but taxpayers evidently feel better paying for homelessness programs in perpetuity rather than giving people free shit one time.
- Conservatives don't know how to fix or build anything anymore. They have no solution to homelessness and they don't care . Sending police to crack some skulls and patting themselves on the back for it is the best they've got.
- Conservatives don't have solutions, just stop gaps. They just stall and pass the ball, and lower taxes, its their only trick.
  
  Conservatives didn’t do this. The article mentions cheering but not who actually did this. All it says is the operation was a “black box”.
  This isn’t journalism. They made zero effort to get to the facts. Facts such as:
  Who ordered this sweep to occur?
  Who will be held responsible for the illegal actions performed?
  Why is this story entirely focused on the New York Post being in favor of it? There is zero effort to hold the people responsible for this to account.

Were they moved into sanctuary districts? https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Sanctuary_District
DS9 just seems to get more and more relevant with age. Sad we haven’t done any better than projected by the show.
- No, it seems like they just had their tents and possessions taken and then we're forced to find a different street to sleep on. The sad thing is something like Trek's Sanctuary Districts would take a government that is way less cruel to the homeless than we currently are.
- 10 months to go until the Bell Riots.
  
  !remindme 10 months 🫠
- Either they were meticulously kept out of frame, or Star Trek didn't have nearly as much heroin addicts

Wow that sure is a shitty thing to do to humans....
Right-wing: "yay" on all shitty things.
- Right wingers might have cheered this on (I believe one individual and one news publication were mentioned cheering in the article), but who actually ordered and carried out the sweep?
  All the article says is that the operation is a “black box”.
  Who ordered this?
- But I'm sure YOUR door is open to house the homeless right?
  
  False equivalence
  
  yes, in fact it is. But it's part of my religion.

republicans love the idea of a brutal authoritarian police state society
- Also known as small government

Housing needs to be a right. Every citizen should be able to go to a housing authority and have a roof over their head if they are unable to afford it.
- Agreed. I'd go a bit further. Anything regarding sustenance should be a right:
  Housing, healthcare, access to clean water, clean air, at least one hot meal a day, and emergency services should be a right.
  I'll even go as far as arguing that internet access should be included in that list.
  Better yet, college
  
  In any normal world, any decent society these issues would be addressed. America is a plutocracy. Tax the rich and get money out of politics. A total overhaul of the system would be needed and that would probably take a revolution. The utter corruption is just that overwhelming.
- Modern society has really fucked us up. Only 200 years ago we could have all built our own houses and worked on improving our own properties rather than slaving away for a corporation's profit.
  Even if you want out you're kinda screwed with the price of land most places. My wife and I have good careers, make pretty good money, and yet we still aren't sure we could afford to start a simple homestead.

I just do not understand why we are not addressing homelessness in more productive ways. We know it can be better managed as some countries have figured it out. Really crazy that we are not all on board with just doing the right thing and having a win win for all. We choose to suffer and we choose to sweep our suffering under the rug when guests come over.
- Because that would involve "giving someone something for free that they DiDn'T WoRk FoR!" You can't give anything to anyone except billionaires because it's "not fair to meeeee. I work, I don't get free stuff. They should just Get A Job!™©®"
- Because solving homelessness is counter-productive to running a capitalist society.
  
  That is one of the common excuses but countless studies show it is cheaper to just deal with it.
- Just World is heavily baked into the American ethos, I think. That, along with a healthy dose of contagious protestant every-moment-must-be-productive.
  Homelessness is the-on earth hell they need and invoke.
  I just wish Jesus had an opinion on the poor that he'd shared with his followers.
- Yeah, the best solution I've seen is lots of small, private housing. Basically, give people a bed and a locking door, and they have a way better chance of turning their life around. Let people stay as long as they're not violating the rules, and don't violate their privacy.
  
  … that and providing mental health care.
  We have a large homeless community in our downtown area and it is rampant with people that have mental health issues and no support system from family or friends. Nowhere to go but out on the streets if you can’t manage your finances when you live in a capitalist society.
  But all of that costs money, and… ya know… capitalism means that money is the most important resource…
  
  A private room is far better than shoving everyone in multiple rooms. It needs to be a stream that directs people to the correct support system.
  Just lost job - Okay, you go into the program that has employment support. Dealing with mental health issues - Into the program with mental health support. Addiction issues - Into the program with addiction supports. etc.
  Have multiple issues, then we get the support needed for those issues.
  For this kind of system, it needs to be well funded. Maybe take some away form the bloated police budget.

An extrapolation to say the government could clean up the city over night of homelessness because they were able to relocate a portion a few neighborhoods for an event.

also no one on the left went live on any national tv broadcast to denounce it either

Illegal eviction and illegal failure to preserve tenant possessions. California let them move in and remain, now they must follow their own rules protecting squatters.
They will absolutely be sued for this.
It’s getting there but we’re still pretty far from critical mass. Need 10x more people to truly show the world how far US has slipped in favor of the 0.01%.

Of course conservatives would cheer the continued marginalization and traumatization of society's most vulnerable. They touch themselves to the cruelty.

Dear conservatives,
Why are you purposefully awful?
With love, Everyone
- Why is it when progressives carry out an illegal sweep of homeless people, and conservatives cheer it, we get a story about conservatives?
  
  Because Democrats are aware of the problems in their party and many disagree with how things are done and try to vote to stop it. While Republicans cheer at homeless people getting kicked while they're down.
  
  Why is it ... conservatives cheer it ... ?

At this point the homeless ought to try staging a camp in at the city hall. Get the headlines all over them being dragged out of there.
- I remember homeless people doing exactly that in Santa Cruz back in the eighties to great success.
  However, public sentiment over the past thirty years really seems to have swung aggressively toward the fuck you I got mine so die end of the pendulum.
  
  Food Not Bombs did it there ten years ago too. They camped outside of city hall every week, getting arrested over and over. They were finally given a vacant lot next to the freeway to freely camp in after that. It started after SC passed anti-camping laws, making it illegal for any unhoused person to fall asleep.
  
  I seriously doubt that's the case compared to the 80s, the 80s is how we got Reagan, and whatever qualms you have with Mr. Tangelini, Reagan was demonstrably worse.

miraculously disappeared??? wtf
- They also miraculously appeared. San Francisco is a sanctuary city. There are countless cities that just ship off their homeless and make the residents deal with it. The weather does not help either. California is great for homelessness due to the lack of a true winter.
  But as a resident it is hard to know how to help and still see them constantly coming.
  
  i hear you. this is why i think what we're doing isn't working, and i think it's going to get worse if we don't help homeless people with actual housing and medical / mental health care.

American liberals are only progressive until it fucks with their money.

Hmm Republicans being inhuman and Techbros saying hold my beer. Cool
- If you read really, really critically, you’ll notice the entire article is about who cheered the move, not who actually did it.
  Who did this sweep? Who is actually responsible for it?
  
  Getting ready for APEC.
  This has a bit more information it would seem. Can't say it is more difinitive or speak for the source as I am not familiar with them. (SanFranciscoStandard)
  https://sfstandard.com/2023/11/14/city-clears-homeless-encampments-apec/

While I agree we should be solving the root problem of homelessness equitably, the headline is misleading as I know many people on the left were also happy to have clean streets for a while.
- Live in Bay Area, vote progressive/left, so ready for encampment to be less of a thing - in favor of some better solution like what they have near Oracle Stadium.
- If the streets were cleaned by putting people in housing, it would be worth celebrating, but there's nothing left wing about people being displaced from where you personally live. Even if those "people on the left" have certain left wing values, it's right wing selfishness that made them happy. Those homeless people just got pushed elsewhere and those areas have to deal with a rise in the unhoused. The streets can only be, "cleaned," by housing people, otherwise you're just sweeping the, "filthy poors," into another person's area.
  From an amoral economic perspective, we should either get people shelter and make them productive members of society, or just hasten their inevitable deaths on the streets by executing them ourselves. Give them a helping hand, or accept that we don't think that they deserve life if they can't play the capitalist game. The current approach costs us more money, prolongs their suffering, but gives us plausible deniability through ignorance. Fuck ignorance. Just embrace that the system is evil.
  
  Hmm I wouldn't say left vs right wing is equivalent to some videogame good vs evil slider. Everyone can be selfish, it's not a 'right wing' trait. To enjoy a respite from feeling unsafe, having human defecation on the street, and being yelled at for no particular reason doesn't make you a sinner.
  
  Lol what? I don't think they would appreciate being executed, and would gladly take the status quo over being "out of their misery" 🙄
- And there is no mention in the article about who ordered and carried out the sweep.
  Who cheers about something is secondary to who actually does it. This article doesn’t address who actually did it.
- I personally think a not insignificant amount of encampment dwellers are just people taking advantage of the situation to steal and get high/drunk all day rather than stay clean and work some crappy job to get by, but even I think these sweeps are stupid and a waste of resources as they just shuffle people to other areas rather than accomplish a single thing.
- To solve homelessness would mean to completely upend the entire world's economy and change to a global socialist structure. Homelessness is baked into our economic system. Capitalism is a zero sum game and if we're going to celebrate having billionaires, we have to celebrate having people live and die on the street.
  
  Capitalism is wired in such a way that productivity literally produces poverty.

Who remembers that homeless encampment in Texas that was about to be ripped apart by cops, until a bunch of armed people turned up to defend it?
- WACO?
- Link?
  
  Here ya go.
  https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/2022/07/27/armed-activists-blocked-dallas-workers-from-cleaning-a-homeless-camp-thats-unacceptable/

I read the article, there doesn't seem to be any mention of where they went. The people vice interviewed seem to be playing coy and giving a bunch of carefully sanitized non-answers about what happened. ~~San Francisco just made 500 homeless people vanish?~~ No, excuse me, big ol' homeless camps just happened to up and vanish with no police intervention just in time for APEC? Yeah, fucking right. Dollars to dimes that they bussed them to the central valley. I know you can do better than this, California, get your shit together.

Lowest form of humanity, has to be near when you criminalize homelessness.
- No I heard yous solved the problem by calling them uNhOuSEd
  
  That kind of language shift is stupid. Changing words because you don't like the connotation is just denying reality. The connotation comes from what the word means. It's not the word itself. Homeless has horrible connotation because of what it is describing. If you change the word, eventually it will gain the same baggage.
  Homeless is the perfect example of this because that was the new soft word. It replaced vagrant or bum.

I also noticed that after a recent sweep/camp cleanup of homeless encampments in Seattle, the local Sinclair station (KOMO) was quick to run footage of people (presumably to be representative of Seattle folk generally) basically gloating that AT LAST they did something
Yes, the right are going to do everything they can to give others the impression that everyone else also regards poor people to be vermin, to be purged... preferably violently. The purpose of this sort of language is always to condition its audience to accept, if not cheer for, violence.

The city does seem to be in terminal decline, and the homeless encampments sure aren't helping.
But just pushing them around isn't helping.

Old joke:
Politician 1: We should half the homeless people in our city!
Politician 2: Great idea! Do we cut them in half horizontally or vertically?

Been wondering, who benefits from all the inflationary costs to living. Is it mainly wall Street, or banks? I'm a home owner, and while my home is worth more, it's not like I have more money, cause everywhere is expensive.
- Aren't property taxes tied to the value of the house? Expensive houses bring more tax dollars to the government.
  
  Nah, it's based on the appraised value, which for taxes is always only a fraction of the market value and doesn't change unless the city does a new appraisal. For instance my house is worth over $200k and the appraised value is something like $70k I'm not an outlier, everyone's house is appraised like this.

Getting ready for the Bell Riots

Well at least they cleaned up the area, though it'll just be overrun next week when the international dignitaries leave and it all goes back to normal

How come the US has such a massive homelessness problem while having pretty much the cheapest real estate in the world (relative to income)? People in other developed countries can't even dream about such low prices. The US government also has the world's biggest budget - just house people for free for fucks sake! It's literally pennies for the state.
P.S. Property to income ratio source - https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_country.jsp
- Much of the homelessness problem in America is really untreated mental health problems. A lot comes from not having universal healthcare.
  Also, most jobs are in cities where housing is more expensive. We also have a shitty minimum wage, and a minimum wage job can’t buy a studio apartment and food in most areas where there are jobs.
  Also, average and even median income is not a great measure of the wealth of the poor. The US Gino coefficient (a measure of income inequality) is poor compared to most other developed countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient
  
  And we can thank Regan for that.
  
  Ok, I see.
- while having pretty much the cheapest real estate in the world (relative to income)
  If that's true, considering young people in the U.S. can't afford to buy houses and end up living with their parents for 15 years after they turn 18, I'd hate to know what it's like in other countries.
  
  also, i'm sure a lot of cheap real estate amounts to random plots in the desert without actual infrastructure to support most people.
- Yeah, but why would we do that when we could just tell them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps?
  
  Look, I'm all for telling people to pull themselves up, but the US could rake some serious political prestige points worldwide for doing that. And also flex over China and other commies - look how great capitalism is! If I was Trump during his dumb economic war with China, I'd house all homeless in an instant just to show China who's a real daddy here.
- There was a bill that was passed by the Clinton administration in the 90s that limits the amount of residential property the federal government is allowed to own. They also passed some concessions that make it so that a reduction in unpopular government spending cannot equate to an increase of spending on social programs.
  
  What was the name of it?
- Don't use California as a metric for American homelessness. California has made itself a veritable Mecca for homeless people by passing laws that allow them to set up camp virtually anywhere. Those laws, combined with its naturally temperate climate have resulted in 30% of America's homeless population living in California. No other state in the U.S. has such a hard-on for homeless people and we have much more sensible laws that reflect that.
  
  Well, property values around where the homeless are are also way higher than just about anywhere else in the world. California also has 12% of the US population.
  It's not just the laws allowing homeless people to live that have created this. It's also the laws that allow rent to be extremely high and allow landlords to have empty living spaces without being taxed to hell for it.
  
  Ok. I don't know much about America.
- The real answer is that people feel entitled to live in major cities so they don't go to the areas where there is cheap real estate.
  They think supply and demand doesn't apply to them, and they have plenty of other entitled city-dwellers to support them.
  Unfortunately, reality is just different than what they want. They don't want to admit that though, so they just sit around and wait for other people to solve their problems.
  They're still waiting.
  
  yes, i'm sure i should quit my job in a big city, give up health insurance (which i have gotten for the first time in my adult life), uproot my kids and move to ?, to do ???, so i can live in a depressed backwater for cheap rent.
  i'm so fucking entitled.
  edit - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slab_City,_California
  
  This has to be the most divorced from reality hot take I've seen on Lemmy in awhile.
  
  You say the homeless in cities pay more to sleep on the street than the rural homeless, but you fail to provide sidewalk sleeping cost comparables. If you’re going to be so ridiculous it’s important to be very over the top, or people may really believe this is somehow your view.

I'm as liberal as the next guy, and i know this will definitely not be a popular opinion here, but honestly we need to stop giving homeless people a free pass and I'm fucking serious. A lot of these people do it only because they can get away with it. They need to know that what they are doing isn't OK. It's not the answer, there really isn't a single answer, but we also can't just keep enabling them. I say this as a person with a homeless meth addict sister, a brother in law who's been on drugs his whole life and is currently in section 8, and a sister in law who got her shit together after being a homeless addict. I also have family who have volunteered full time at shelters and food banks
Most of these homeless there are either addicts or severely mentally ill and need help. Of course I'm just referring to the addicts here, the mentally ill need help. Homeless families down on their luck aren't included here, they typically know where support is and are using it.
- Historically, study after study has shown that most people are not homeless due to addiction. So either there's been a drastic shift in the data since COVID-19, or you're repeating a false narrative that liberals and progressives have been widely aware of and discussed for ages.
  
  The homeless where they are booting people in downtown SF are 100%. I live 10 miles from there and see it. I agree with your claim, but location has a lot to do with the type of homeless. Oakland for example has a lot of people you're talking about. Also read my second paragraph

But it was the Democrats who orchestrated and approved it.
- That's what makes it illegal, Republican crimes aren't real crimes, remember?
  
  No

I hate wokness.
- What do you have against woks?
  
  Its not the woks that I hate (though I will admit I'm not a fan of the ones with long handles on one side). Its the property of wokness that I hate. Not because I know what it is (I don't), but because the alternative facts presented by the Stir Fry party propaganda machine told me I hated wokness.
- And spell check
  
  See post description. Just poking fun at the article's misspelling.

Let's put them on buses and send them to El Paso to be Greg FukButt's problem. If they're homeless, they're useless unless we use them as pawns in a political game anyway, so why not? A perfect pristine human city is made of unicorn farts and sunshine (and little statues of Jesus). There are no problematic, dirty, addicted or homeless people in God's vision for our world.
- Homeless are people, not things. This is the exact same attitude that allows Greg Abbott to be a fucking shitlord and use real, vulnerable people in his bullshit political games.
  
  I realize that, I was being completely facetious and ultra-Abbotty on purpose to make a point about how self-righteous these "get rid of homeless people" truly are.
  
  Woooosh
- If they’re homeless, they’re useless
  What bullshit. Many, many homeless people have jobs. Jobs pay dick these days and rent is ridiculous, so they can't afford to live anywhere except maybe their car if they have one.
  
  You're right, flying squid, it IS bullshit. That was my intent on making those horrible comments in the first place. I was couching my anger in the very language people (in my state) use to justify hurting the homeless and not helping them. I couldn't agree more about the frustration of rising rent prices, etc. Please go back and read my posting again - and you'll see the acid fairly dripping off of my comments.

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