Come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep

This speaks to a larger problem: The world simply doesn't need many of the people born into it. Parents in the US have children for recreational purposes - child birth rates do not fluctuate with the demand for labor. These kids grow up, and many of them wind up sleeping on the streets of their chosen city or more commonly just barely living paycheck-to-paycheck, because there is no societal need for them. This bears itself out in statistics: 25% of households have a net worth of zero or less (negative net worth). 22% of children in the US live in homes below the poverty line.<p>In our world, the needs of many can be met by the work of a few. Only those few will prosper, while the rest languish. The harsh reality is that prospective parents that don't have anything to pass onto their children need to take a hard look at whether they should be having children, given that going forward there may very well be no way for those children to earn a living.

Places with good weather have huge visible homeless populations. (I have traveled all over the United States, and have been to all fifty states. AFTER EDIT: I have been in, and have lived in, gritty "skid row" neighborhoods of large United States cities, and have lived in Los Angeles.) Places with lousy weather, like the place where I grew up and now live, certainly have people who are "homeless" in the sense of not having a secure legal right to occupy a particular place at their own discretion, but most people with that lack of legal right to choose their living circumstances are indoors during cold winter nights. There is much provision of emergency shelter in the United States, by both governmental organizations and private charities. There are also both federal and state programs for providing free or heavily subsidized leaseholds for housing to poor families, and private charities that build single-family homes for poor families. People are more visibly out on the street in the United States mostly on a regional or seasonal basis.<p>Since quite a few of the comments here mention Europe, my question (as someone who has never been to any part of Europe) is where do people live in Europe if they have no personal funds to buy or rent housing? Do they live in housing operated by some unit of government, or where?<p>All of the above said, yes, I am not sure that United States social policy is a model for anywhere, and perhaps hackers working on social policy here would be helpful. There are already enough empty housing units in the United States to house everyone who needs a house. The tough policy issues are in allocating people to houses (or houses to people) and looking out for other aspects of everyone's welfare.

The guy's Scottish, he thinks it's about San Fran specifically, it's really about AMERICA. Maybe San Fran puts it even more in your face. But compared to most any other country even half as rich as America, the lack of social safety net in the U.S. is kind of shocking. People in Europe don't really realize the extent of it.

San Francisco homelessness is not a question about rich vs. poor. It's a question about what to do with people who are mentally handicapped and/or drug abusers. This is partially a money problem, but it's largely a social problem. A lot of other countries deal with this better because they have stronger family support structures. Programming can help, but this isn't a programming problem. And there's no money in it, so anybody who's trying to solve this problem can't afford to live in San Francisco.<p>Stepping over homeless people on my way to a cushy tech job has given me loads of cognitive dissonance. I have a really hard time with this, and I think about it every single day on my way to work. Frankly, I'm not sure what to do about it, and I'd love to have an open discussion instead of an anti-american one. Everyone here who's arguing about their superior European social programs are really preaching to the quire, because most Americans on Hacker News would kill to have these social programs.

With the exception of a very small sub group of people with serious mental issues, <i>it's not a hard problem</i>.<p>Most of it has been solved already. It's just a matter of having the will to do it. That will is absent.<p>Most developers in SF laugh at the amount of money their European counterparts get paid after taxes. The don't consider not having to step over homeless people a "benefit". That attitude is your problem right there.

i worked at uber and twilio in the city. I was so bothered by the homeless people I saw everyday that it seriously impeded my work performance. i'd walk by them and feel terrible for not being able to help, for having an easy time making money, and feel afraid that my bipolar disorder would get worse and i'd end up like them. it was hard to function properly at work when I'd start my day feeling guilty, powerless and afraid.

One thing that I think is missing from these discussions about the homeless in SF is: many of these people do not want to be rent-paying members of society and even if there was housing for them, some might still prefer their current lifestyle. Many people still view that lifestyle choice as unacceptable because it challenges the typical goals of someone working hard for a 'better' life. I don't think the question should be 'how do we get these people to participate in society?' but 'why don't they want to participate and how can we accommodate these alternative life choices?' Otherwise any progress made would benefit those who want to see the streets cleaned up and not necessarily those living out there.

I make a point of maintaining a clean separation between my work and my social life for exactly the reasons this author describes. The biggest problem San Francisco has right now is a bunch of people who came here for money, with no interest in being part of its social fabric. Many of whom loudly complain about how much San Francisco sucks, and how it should change to meet their needs.<p>You either need to start actually being a part of this city, or move your ass down the peninsula. Or better yet, move your company somewhere else. I hear they've got lower taxes and cheaper engineers pretty much everywhere else.

Not too far north along the west coast, the homelessness situation is mirrored in Vancouver, Canada. I have friends who have volunteered with non-for-profit agencies that support homeless people in identifying their needs and allocating resources to them if possible, such as social housing. My friends have told me that the people she has interviewed from the streets nearly 75% are mentally or physically handicapped or have fell into drug abuse and would never be able to function as a normal tax paying citizen again. There are cases where she has met people who where once normal people with normal jobs but because of a couple bad choices or traumatic situations, have gone into debt or turned to drugs and alcohol. One man was once a lawyer who lost his family over night and couldn't handle the stress and turned to gambling, drugs, and alcohol and probably suffered from PTSD and then sooner or later ended up on the streets.<p>In Canada, homeless/unemployed receive around $300/month from the government and if you have a psychical or mental disability, I believe you receive a little more financial assistance. Some homeless people just stay on the assistance instead of trying to get employment.<p>However, there is hope but we cannot rely on the government to sort it out. There is a privately funded organization called UGM that has a men's shelter and rehab program in the core of the homelessness district (equivalent to Tenderloin here) and are working on opening a women's and children's rehabilitation program. I volunteered there once and was taken aback on how well put together the program is. It's costly though, to build the building and support the program costs millions. They take in about 40 homeless people and puts them through a 6 month program. There are strict rules and guidelines in the program but in return they receive bedding, food, clean clothes and clean environment to live in, classes to help you finish your high school diploma, computer lessons, emotional and spiritual support, and career counselling, etc. It's still a newer program but they've seen a pretty high success rate, with many graduates becoming outreach works in the community.

I think one aspect of this is that San Francisco is somewhat of a safe-haven for the homeless and transient. While they do provide some context for the economic disparity between the poor and the rich, most of my homeless/transient buddies prefer living homeless/transient lifestyles in San Francisco to living homeless/transient lifestyles anywhere else.

I think that when people say "hard problems" they mean "problems that almost certainly have solutions if you are willing to put in the effort". Poverty on the other hand is a much, much harder problem than that. In fact, no one quite knows how to solve it in a general way (there are things that seem to work in certain contexts but not in others, many special case half-solutions). And on top of that, there probably isn't a clear path between solving the poverty problem and wealth the way there is between solving the {photo sharing, social media, web search, ...} problem and wealth.

&#62; Stepping over the homeless, weaving between the street corner schizophrenics<p>Imagine having a chronic disease simultaneously with an absolutely intolerable fear of doctors, hospitals, institutions and the social safety net. That's a hard problem.

This article leaves out an important point: Most, if not all, programmers I know <i>do</i> care about these issues, but we can't solve them. We would if we could, but it's not what our profession is good at.<p>The title of the article, "come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep," speaks to this. We programmers have the tools to solve many interesting and important problems, but certainly not all. Deeply rooted social problems such as homelessness cannot be solved with a mobile app or data analysis.<p>So programmers see homeless people on the way to work, and we feel bad, but what can we do? Maybe the author wants us to feel guilty about the gap between rich and poor. But bear in mind most of us are <i>not</i> the rich of America. We're in the middle. Yes, it's much, much more comfortable in the middle than at the bottom, and I think most of us are grateful to be where we are. But most of us aren't aristocrats; we work for a living. And we're also not the ones who want to further widen the income gap. Rather, we tend to vote for progressive candidates and policies.<p>Is there more we could do? I'm not sure what it would be. Charitable donations help a little, but won't solve the problem. Volunteering helps a little, but again, it's marginal. It's the people who actually work in advocacy, politics, and homeless services that are really in a position to help solve these problems. Programmers just aren't the ones to do it.<p>Coincidentally, I actually <i>do</i> have some experience in the homeless services world. And from what I have seen, the solution is basically money.<p>Much of the homeless population cannot be permanently cured. There is no homelessness reboot, where you go in for rehab, mental health treatment, etc., and you come out ready to face the world as a gainfully employed, self-sufficient person. Even with treatment, relapses are the norm, rather than the exception.<p>Consequently, the realistic and humane solution is to put up the money for a basic safety net. Considering the number of homeless in our country and the rather modest price of providing basic food and shelter, it would not really be a noticeable drain on our society. And just to head off criticism: We're not talking about putting lazy people in the Hilton and feeding them caviar. Even spartan, barracks-style homeless shelters, such as the ones where I've worked, are a whole lot better than leaving people on the street. So-called lazy people (i.e. those who <i>can</i> work but don't want to) will not take advantage of this, because it's not an attractive option. No matter how lazy you are, you will choose to work over living in a homeless shelter if you can.

I've tried to figure out a way to say what you've said in this post since I've gotten here, and every time, it's sounded like an indictment on the poor.<p>Brilliant post, and it's criminal that an area so full of brilliant people can be so detached from the most <i>actual</i> problems facing the world, when they're right on the proverbial doorstep.

Yeah, housing. It's the big issue of the day here, and you can see how much it affects our culture.<p>Basically we created a mortgage system that only works as long as property values continue to rise, which created a lot of political will behind "improvement" measures like eliminating public housing, like we did in the early 80s.<p>(see <a href="http://www.wraphome.org/downloads/without_housing.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.wraphome.org/downloads/without_housing.pdf</a> [pdf] for a fascinating study on the origins of modern homelessness)<p>I'm doing some experiments with cooperative housing and income-sharing right now, which slightly mitigates my contribution to gentrification, but something else is needed, and I'm not sure what.

As a person with severe social anxiety, I felt truly anonymous in my visit to San Francisco last summer. I was not worried or threatened like my wife. I knew all things come and go in SF. The inherent risks of SF seemed easier to evaluate due to the larger population. To me, it was bliss. The divide between rich and poor was no different than anywhere I have visited in the USA. A visit to Mississippi can open eyes to the evil dividing lines of human behaviors.

Welcome to a very individualistic and, by consequence, antisocial society. As an American that's never stepped foot in California, this sounds surprisingly familiar, albeit with the unique addition of free food and free beer at work.

The 2007-2008 San Francisco Civil Grand Jury Report on current efforts to address homelessness - some interesting info.<p><a href="http://sfcourts.org/modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=1985" rel="nofollow">http://sfcourts.org/modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=198...</a>

The same is true for Los Angeles. I've been in an office building while people were discussing six-figure sums like they were nothing, when outside in the alley below there were literally homeless people in a knife fight over a candy bar.

Are we creating the right kind of "WEALTH"? This should be a question people (who are doing startups) should ask themselves.<p>IMHO, that is why socialist Governments providing education, healthcare, roads and security sound popular to some people. All these are part of wealth that are provided to citizens at low prices.<p>But in a capitalistic economy, it is left to individuals (entrepreneurs) to provide this services at competitive prices.<p>One way of looking to solve the problems of the poor and deprived people would be to provide them services of education, healthcare, housing etc. at ultra-competitive prices.<p>I know it is easier said than done. But it is something worth doing.

This seems like a good time to remind everyone that there's a known method for reducing human misery you can do right now.<p><a href="http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities" rel="nofollow">http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities</a><p>Give some money. This won't help the person on your doorstep, but it is probably the best way to convert money into well being. And you can look yourself in the mirror and say that even though the world is quite fucked up, you are doing _something_ about it.

I'm originally Swedish and moved from France to Silicon Valley in 2001; I found it so depressing to see all the homeless people in SF that I ended up getting a place in Palo Alto rather than SF. As I gradually became desensitized I made my way further and further up north, until I finally ended up in SF 5 years later.<p>I am very happy in San Francisco and have no plans on moving back for a lot of different reasons: lots of smart people working on interesting projects, great weather, beautiful city, and so forth. Having said that, one of the few things that I don't love about living here is a more civilized i.e. socialistic system.<p>The current situation, where we live in one of the greatest richest cities in the US, with terrible infrastructure (compared to most European and Asian metropolitan areas) and homeless everywhere is completely appalling and depressing, and I do think most people would be happier if we had great streets, parks, transportation and a clean city even if that meant a little bit less cash in their pockets - even if they don't realize it. I think most people that don't value these things have probably not spent a lot of time in cities that have them.

Anyone who's been around the US knows that San Francisco has one of the most visible homeless populations in the country.<p>It's interesting to note that SF also has perhaps the strongest "social safety net" programs in the country.<p>I don't understand how the author then makes the jump to "we need more social safety net programs."<p>Maybe we should just run them effectively.<p>Also the characterization of the social lives of SV employees is just plain wrong, but that's a tangential point.

&#62; The cost of living is always increasing, and the flashy money from silicon valley is accelerating the gentrification of SF. rent-control is a last ditch effort to prevent those who grew up here from being displaced, but in return prevents them from being able to move within the city.<p>In particular, the bit about being prevented from moving within the city.<p>There are many problems with SF itself. One of which is the homeless population. But that doesn't feel so urgent. After all, what can we do for drug addicts and mentally handicapped people, outside of putting them in institutions? They're better taken care of here than they would be in most places, and those who live on the streets are at least in a moderate climate. It sucks, but it could be a whole lot worse. And every time I see people give them money, I feel compelled to explain to them that the money won't actually help them, but a sandwich might.<p>This is a visible problem, especially to tourists, which may be why it's so widely talked about. But there are other extreme problems with the city. Consider rent control, which is only barely mentioned in this article. It's actively destroying the city. Most economists agree about the effects of rent control, too, and studies have shown the negative effects to be strikingly similar to many of the problems SF is currently facing (which will only continue to get worse). <a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.html</a>.<p>How about we solve this problem before SF is just a business center with 0 housing. Then with all that extra housing, we find a place to take better care of our homeless? It's really hard to put them up when you just don't have the appropriate accommodations for it.

It is no different online. People online know I am homeless. Most of them step over me and move on, though all I have asked for is help figuring out how to make money online instead of going back to a normal job that was helping to kill me. I imagine this comment will get buried or ignored or negative attention, an ironic repeat of the problem people are decrying.

You know what? Thanks for writing that. The States needs to hear it.

I think it's often harder to acknowledge local problems such as homelessness because they require a sustained commitment. You literally seem them as you walk home or drive to work.<p>Contrast that with the instant gratification of making a one-time contribution to solve a distant problem, and it's easy to see why many prefer the latter approach.

What are tech companies doing to improve the area? And when I say improve, I mean helping those who need it most.

Come here and work on hard problems, like rounding corners and getting people to click on stuff.

its no land of "Milk and Honey" is it?<p>just wait until you get the disillusionment from going down to "Hollywood"

Ah!!! Someone finally nailed it

You want to see income disparity at work, travel to Mumbai and live there for a day. I've lived in Mumbai vicariously through VICE, and that was an eye opener on the income inequality issue.

"After all, technology is social before it is technical."<p>That is quite possibly one of the stupidest comments I have ever read...

%s/san francisco/milwaukee/g

"Last night, someone told me “In California, there isn’t a conflict between being a Capitalist, and a Liberal”, with a wry grin on his face."<p>Of course there isn't. Liberalism in its purest form (as espoused by Hayek, say) is, in effect, free market capitalism with a light but universally applicable (no "special cases", as those lead to totalitarianism) set of regulations to prevent bad actors (e.g. hey, let's put heroin in baby formula so it's really more-ish).<p>There's this odd commingling of the concepts of socialism and liberalism in the general populace's minds, for some reason. The two could not be more antithetical.<p>As to the rest of it - the US is neither capitalist nor liberal. It's corporatist, with a distinct socialist bent, but not where people usually point the finger. "Obamacare" is not socialist, it's liberal, as a core concept of liberalism is that the state should fund things that people cannot or will not fund for themselves, like roads and healthcare. Protectionist policies to keep the banks, agribusinesses and other without-legislation-to-protect them unprofitable enterprises ARE socialist, as they centralise control of industrial and economic output into government, and allow businesses that would not survive in a true free market to prosper.<p>Rant over.

George Carlin said it the best:<p><i>The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep 'em showing up at those jobs.</i>

Oh, man. Been in America--in the freakin' <i>Castro district</i>--for 19 days and already making generalizations?

There is a disparity between rich and poor in this country, sure, but come on. Most of the homeless in SF actually <i>want</i> to be on the streets.<p>So many of them are young and it used to make me sad but I have just learned to accept it. I always make a point to package up leftovers and hand them out. I'll even reach into my wallet and hand out a few dollars too.<p>If there were more I could do though, I would be more than happy to donate some of my time, as I'm sure many in this city would too.<p>Also, is more public housing the answer? Not sure about that one. They all look like government buildings with horrible fluorescent off-green lighting filled with junkies and drug addicts far from being cured.

Not everyone can create, whether it's a website or designing the next iPhone. Very few people can. Those people that do are rewarded very well.<p>Besides, if we were all trying to cure hunger or house the homeless who would be creating all the fancy computers we use every day?<p>And why blame 'programmers', there are plenty of doctors, lawyers, and financial workers in SF that have to 'step over' the homeless every day on their way to work as well.