[james4k]

Empathy created the housing crisis?

[kortilla]

If you want to focus on the housing crisis aspect and not the policies that enable addiction, then the answer is still yes.

Capped property tax increases is a moronic empathy law based on “protecting little old ladies on fixed incomes”. It has resulted in an incentive structure that means all home owners are incentivized to block all new housing and keep the value of their homes sky rocketing.

The second level of empathy laws causing the housing issue is all if the ones that empower NIMBYs to stop housing developments.

“Preventing gentrification”, “stopping the character of the neighborhood from changing”, “delays for a 1 year impact study” are all empathy motivated laws that caused the housing crisis in Cali.

[james4k]

You are right. Empathy in the literal sense of only being able to relate with others that have the same experiences and interests. I appreciate that clarity.

[Redoubts]

Yes. Bad feel-good policies are the vast majority of the problem

[james4k]

Thank you for expounding. I can only assume we're talking about empathy from the real estate lobbyists who control housing policy.

[lupusreal]

Housing is too expensive for many people in many places. The normal healthy response to housing being too expensive in an area is to live in another area. Only a very small minority of people who can't afford housing in a place they'd like to live respond by becoming homeless in that place. It's simply not a rational response to housing being too expensive.

[istjohn]

It's not easy to leave your social network, job, and home to look for better opportunities while living hand to mouth. Things happen unexpectedly.

And it's not particularly insightful to point out that people who are homeless often have difficulties coping with the demands and challenges of life.

[ninetyninenine]

prop 47 and free syringes.

The housing crisis extends across the bay area and SF is noticeably shittier then most places int he bay area. So it's likely not the housing crisis that is the reason why SF is particularly bad.

[notthemessiah]

San Francisco doesn't even have free Narcan, which many US cities do. And of course syringes will flood the streets when you don't have safe injection sites. SF needs to learn from Portugal on how to address the drug crises. Also, it just needs to build denser to accommodate housing demand.

[vlovich123]

People always say this, and yet it just seems more like SF is the tip of the spear to changes that the rest of the area faces. I remember when people were decrying the homeless epidemic in SF only for El Camino in South Bay to start having significant homeless population spring up. And then LA’s housing problem also got markedly worse. And people decry that it’s “Californian” politics only for the same problems to pop up later in their neck of the woods. These are growing systemic national and global problems with our social fabric falling apart and the response for many seems to be “take care of me first”. You even see it with the huge political backlash globally.

[olyjohn]

Because it was re-using the dirty syringes that was keeping people off the streets before.