Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps

Julia Carrie Wong in San Francisco
Wednesday 12 October 2016 11.00 BST

A tent on a sidewalk is the only place thousands of San Franciscans have to call home. But if a few of the city’s tech billionaires and millionaires have their way, even that shelter could be taken away.

Sequoia Capital chairman Michael Moritz, tech angel investor Ron Conway, and hedge-fund investor William Oberndorf have donated $49,999 apiece to a divisive ballot measure intended to clear San Francisco’s streets of homeless encampments, according to campaign filings.

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Proposition Q purports to address the most visible symptom of the city’s ongoing homelessness crisis, tent cities that crowd the sidewalks in certain neighborhoods. To the city’s housed residents, the encampments serve as a visceral reminder of the city’s gaping inequality – or as a nuisance that they wish would go away.

The proposed law would amend the city’s police code to ban tent encampments on city sidewalks. The city would be required to offer residents of an encampment 24-hours notice and a shelter bed or a bus ticket out of town, before being authorized to confiscate their tents and other belongings. The city would be required to store those belongings for up to 90 days.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/12/san-francisco-homeless-proposition-q-tech-investors

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[DarthDem]

2. Despicable

And here I thought the story might be about these wealthy people donating money to *help*. Silly me.

[KamaAina]

4. No, deplorable.

[sinkingfeeling]

3. What a disgusting proposal! Why in the world won't they use

their money to buy a building to house people or an acre to have a real tent city? I can't believe the residents of SF would want to confiscate the belongings of those with so little! Is this the answer they get when asked, 'what would Jesus do'?

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

9. the type of building required here is called a psychiatric hospital

The people of San Francisco want their city back from drifters, lunatics and inebriates. However society has been stripped of most of the tools to do that.

[lindysalsagal]

11. I've been to san fran. They need housing. It's a problem.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

12. Housing affordability and the substance abusing/insane homeless are different issues

My girlfriend has been assaulted twice by San Francisco's roaming psychopaths, one of them technically speaking wasn't homeless, she just preferred smoking crack on the street to living where she had been housed.

[lindysalsagal]

13. I had to get off a san fran public bus once at 9 in the morning

because one guy was wretching and screaming, obviously totally wasted. I got off the bus, started walking, heard the bus come towards me and then stop when a cop came around. He threw the guy off the bus, and so I got back on.

I was all the way across town from the wharf. It would have been an hour walk, at least, and I didn't think any cabs would come by.

It's frightening, and I have no idea what the solutions would be, but it's clear, society is dropping the ball, big time.

The homeless are everywhere and it's not fun.

[KamaAina]

5. Xposted to California group

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1040

[Warren DeMontague]

6. I'm sure there are plenty of old money Pacific Heights billionaires backing the thing, too.

Let's be real, there were rich people in San Francisco before the dreaded tech invasion.

Where do people think DiFi came from?

[Hassin Bin Sober]

7. Sequoia capital chairman. Why dos this ring a bell?

I seem to remember some other major assholery from this douchebag ...

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

8. I strongly suggest one experience these camps first hand before condemning their opponents

San Francisco doesn't have a homeless problem, it has a rampant substance abuse and mental health crisis. Every last techie, hipster and affluent homosexual could decamp to Los Angeles leaving San Francisco with a 40% vacancy rate and these guys will still be on the street.

[Rex]

10. That is the rich mans way of fixing the problem of poverty in America.

Make is go away, well guess what? America is overcrowded with homeless people, maybe HELP them out for a change? I despise rich people that kick the poor when they are down.