Sunday 29 December 2019

The 94-Million Dollar Problem

In a normal year, San Francisco will go and spend $94,000,000 on homeless folks within the city.  That's to handle the 'crisis' in the city for 8,000 to 9,000 people.

I sat and pondered over this.

This comes out to around $10,400 a year, per person.

In Alabama terms, if you handed me the money and said that it'd be a regular sum for at least ten years....it'd be a rather simple task.

I'd go find a huge chunk of land (say 300 acres) and lay out a mini-city of modular cabins (15 ft by 20 ft) with a basic studio appearance.  I'd issue out a free breakfast each morning, some baloney sandwiches with a Sun Drop cola for lunch, and a fried chicken plate each evening.

At the end of the year, I'd still have 25-million left in my hand.

The problem here is that this all San Francisco 'cost' and not Alabama 'cost'.  You toss in city managers making $90k, and a little empire of 100 homeless technicians, and you have eaten away at fair chunk of the $94-million.

What'll have to happen to change the dynamics of the SF homeless issue?  Well....you'd have to go and probably triple the $94-million to around $300-million....to really retake the city and end the 'crap-on-the-streets' chatter.  And where does the money come from?  Yeah, that's really the big question left to answer.

Then you come to pause on this last question....with the drug-usage dynamic playing into this....why would you assume that the numbers will stay at 8-thousand to 9-thousand?  I would go and forecast that the homeless numbers in SF will bump to 12,000 by the end of 2021.

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