30 million dollars for two doctors to study homelessness. Priceless.

SF mayors have been running on the platform of solving homelessness since the 70s and 80s. I’ve been here over 20 years and it only seems to get worse.

SF needs new leadership and an audit for corruption.

They want to start talking about structural racism but ignore the fact they received 30 million to study homelessness😑🤦🏽🤦🏽

Six months after this video was posted San Francisco is emptying out at an extraordinary rate. The homeless population will soon be the only inhabitants of the City, Perfect!

Wow. Never have I heard so many words say so little.

they really talked a whole lotta nothing and a dentist.

I visited SF in 2017 on holiday and I couldn’t believe the level of poverty/hopelessness. I couldn’t cope with all the homeless people with clear serious health issues. I was traumatised by what I saw, one man was in a wheelchair and had breathing equipment. I am from Kenya and I was shocked at the so called first world poverty. It is worse than Kibera because most of the people there are healthy mentally as well real hasslers.

Give it up to a magazine named "Fortune" to not include anyone who's struggling in S.F. in a video about why people are struggling in S.F.

As someone who’s born and raised in the Bay Area, here’s your short answer: No

That doctor lady is pissing me off. She doesn't have a clue.

As a native San Franciscan I could only watch so much of this before I started to get really pissed! London Breed has been an awful mayor, Scott Weiner is in developers pockets, and while Mark Benioff is a forward looking thinker the $30 million will probably be wasted and we'll end up with answers to questions we already know. Taxing businesses to pay for supervisor folley is also a bad idea. The city is not the same or better, it's going in the wrong direction and there;s no stopping the idiocy that plagues city officials.

A bunch of "smart" sounding people that are really clueless regarding the reasons why....

MDs should be very well compensated, so all due respect. But $30M to crunch some numbers and pontificate? Maybe such funds need better allocation.

if there are that many needles on the streets maybe this is a drug problem.

A $30 million study that showed housing is expensive. Way to go. 👍

A lot of platitudes and virtue signaling and a dearth of practical solutions

STOP talking and START doing!

Sounds like a bunch of tech intellectuals brag how much they could help but they don't

As a native San Franciscan it breaks my heart that I can't afford to live in my hometown.

A Safeway Food clerk in the 80's was able to live in a 2 bedroom apartment in any part of the mission or noe valley and still have money to save on the side and enjoy life. WTF happened to us?

These two researchers from UCSF is the problem. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on studying the homeless with nothing to report. How can structural racism create homelessness when the City is helping big tech companies develop its downtown to attract overpaid tech workers to come here to displace and drive up the cost of real estate and tell us we are too selfish not to allow the city to ruin our neighborhoods. The greedy politicians are in bed with the developers to massively develop the city with no regard to our quality of life. There is just no more land to develop without sacrificing our quality of life but the politicians just don't get it. From another study, 75 % of the homeless in San Francisco are from outside of the city, they are mostly drug addicts and/or mental which the city pander and coddle with millions of our tax dollars and that's why this problem only gets worse.

My first trip to San Francisco was in 1980 after I had graduated and decided to fly to NYC from London and travelled overland to San Francisco before flying back to Singapore. I still recalled it was a pleasant and beautiful city. My next trip was 5 years later when I flew into San Francisco and spent a few days there before flying to Phoenix to start my MBA program. Over the years, I have been to San Francisco many times as I preferred to fly into SFO instead of LAX. However, over the years the city has deteriorated, especially the areas around Union Square. Vagrants, homeless and beggars seemed to gather in these areas. The places smelled of urine and shxt. Once I accidentally walked into the Tenderloin District and I was shocked to see needles and syringes on the streets. There were drug addicts everywhere. It is likely both my wife and I will give San Francisco a miss should we travel to the U.S. again. It is a pity the city has deteriorated so much.

"be yourself" as long as you're like everyone else around there!

30 Million to tell me that you need homes to fix homelessness?? What a breakthrough discovery. I could of told you that for half the price HA

I'm from that area.....haven't been there in about 10 years.....will I ever go back??? ...NOPE!

Short answer: not likely. Long answer: they need to weed out the corrupted politicians that are only banking the funding for homelessness that in reality is going through shell companies and never ever ending up helping the cause. It's not just simply helping the homeless currently roaming in the area, but also fixing the economic structure presently in place as rent prices and overall cost of living remain insane. I'm no expert so I cannot say how plausible this is to fix everything, what I do know is that they certainly can't keep this up and expect it to even out or get better.

Sf use to be a beautiful city of quirky ideas and artists. Now it’s just homeless and out of towner techies.

Let me translate for anyone living out of state: "Progress" is political slang for "Back-room real estate deal".

The elite 1% ruined San Francisco by driving up rents so high that working people are homeless. I experienced this myself as an artist and bike messenger. I loved my life there for 17 years. The end of the 90s was the end of my life there. I sobbed watching my city disappear in the rear view mirror. If I could afford to live there I’d still be there.

While visiting San Francisco in 1998, I could see the beginning of this. I never saw so many young people living on corners with grocery carts & pets..The sidewalks were full of people panhandling it was crazy to see.. The current administration is too busy helping migrants while our cities / our people continue to decline. Sometimes I feel like we're being replaced..

*"We have Diversity"* I wonder if they've ever been to any other American cities. Like, every American city has diversity. Even small towns in rural Iowa have diversity now days. "Diversity" isn't unique at all.

As long as the interviewees are the policy makers, there is no hope for San Francisco.

I watched this because of the title and because I lived in SF for 20 years (leaving in '94). The title question was never answered. The "solutions" proffered were non-solutions and the feel good bromides about what could happen were useless (mobile dentists???). Meanwhile the homeless problems and other crime problems have grown to epic proportions, the public schools are still horrible and unsafe and you can't afford a house, any house, unless you have a trust fund or bought apple stock a long time ago. Can SF be saved? Yes. Will it? The odds are not good.

As a child of a formerly homeless person who lives in San Fran, the notion that substance abuse is not 98% of the homeless problem is an absolute joke. If people are poor and can't afford to live in the city, they move to the suburbs. It happens every day. Very few people go from a stable home to the streets in a single week.

Building “affordable housing” is not going to help San Francisco’s homeless population...they have no jobs and no money.

Best thing i ever did for my career, lifestyle and friends was moving out of the bay area...

Congratulations Fortune Magazine. You have completed a work which is totally useless. You Should win the booby prize for journalism.

I spent many years of my childhood regularly visiting SF, every other weekend from the early 1980's to the late 1990's, and off & on a lot thereafter. Over the last 20 years, I have seen the soul of SF be sucked out of the city. San Francisco and Amsterdam are two of the most beautiful cities on Earth, when you wake up there, you know you are there. San Francisco has let itself go like Thor in Endgame. When I go to North Beach now, the majority of the floor-level commercial space is boarded up, not because of an economic collapse like one of the rust-belt cities, but because of its own greed and price gouging. Property owning San Franciscans have told me that they don't care to see extra bathrooms available throughout the central city, which means that they are fine with their streets covered in human feces. At this point in the city's history, do its residents even care enough to see their city cleaner and nicer? Or are they OK with it being a model of someone's California nightmare. If you wanna nightmare, do like Tesla and Oracle and move Texas, where third world values have led to a little cold wreaking havoc on the state. The tech industry is an industry of garbage and e-waste that is actually worth pennies on the dollar, has stolen and diminished the human experience, increased stupidity and impotence, and has turned America's children into Patreon whores. California is the best state in America, and was before tech, and will continue to be after. Until then, build massive amounts of surplus housing as to even out the market so people can actually live inside, unless you're a filthy developer whose trying to rape our state, then jump off the bridge or GTFO! But if San Franciscans are fine living in a city where the streets smell like a rectum and the biggest building looks like an uncircumcised shlong (this would appeal to SF's most famous demographic) and is dominated by homeless people, one must wonder where their sense of taste and sophistication has gone.

"In homelessness we've had remarkable success using evidence based policies in permanent supportive housing to really decrease homeless in people with significant disabilities." Meanwhile homelessness has skyrocketed every year.

Yet every time I've purchased food for a homeless person and spoke to them in Union Square, not ONE was even from California. Not one.

I live in the east bay. My wife and I never go to San Francisco. It’s a mess. Sad 😞 Scott Winer is working on destroying the rest of the state. He needs to go!

Sounds those 30 million dollar "doctors" came to a conclusion then skewed the "evidence" to support their conclusion. Once again, these poor, hopeless humans will not be helped. Drug, alcohol and mental health treatment, forcibly, if necessary, are the most important part of the solution. And some criminals need to go to jail for a very long time.

Don’t forget about the conditions at City Hall. Clean up the fraud and corruption within the agencies that manage federally funded contracts.

"People who live in S.F. all of their lives" (for 10 years), "built this city" (in 10 years) and are now homeless ? They must have had skills ? Why didn't they move to another more affordable city and continue with their skills ? But when your a doctor getting paid $15,000,000, that kind of money makes it easy to lie though your teeth.

Im Australian and I left SF very traumatised and disturbed after my 2015 visit. Never have I seen such extreme poverty, homelessness and destitution. Never again.

Worked in healthcare with homeless patients for the last few years and I’ll say you can give people money, shelter and food but what do you actually change? Is their mentality different, behavior different? are they going to be more self reliant and independent? The able body homeless at least need a life coach not an underpaid social worker who had to operate within strict laws. It takes extreme examples to shake people out of apathy. More virtue signaling and not actually asking the tough questions.

There are plenty of areas I can’t afford to live... so... I don’t live there.

watch the similar video that is titled "Seattle Is Dying."

The problem with the Left's ideas (while often coming from the heart) is that it’s all academic. Sure socialism as an intellectual principle has good qualities but in reality, that system has killed millions in the last 100 years as well as always fails. Sure, handing out needles to cut down on shared usage sounds like a good idea but now there’s millions of metal needles lying around and even more people shouting up. It’s almost like when you put a system in place or make something easy for people more people do it. Sure, welfare as a stepping stone makes sense, but as a system, it’s become a habit or lifestyle. Take most of these progressive ideas into the real world and they will fail and be abused. The world is not a utopia and doesn’t need utopian ideas. It needs pragmatism and self-accountability values in order to move forward. Definitely not folks that want an abusable system to take care of them.

Love the city for the vistas, but damn their politics are terrible.

I lived there 50 years ago when regular folks could and did live there. I worked for the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency. They acquired property for developers by condemnation. Resident hotels where old people lived were "condemned' so developers could build office buildings. NIMBY started then.

Sure. 30 Million dollars for 2 doctors to STUDY homelessness rather than using these 30 Million dollars to build 200 residential units for 600, 700 homeless people. Seems legit.

My experience with the homeless in San Francisco when i visited was quite different than the sanitized picture in this video. It was more like hell.

Use that 30 million to build some homeless shelters outside of SF instead of funding Margot Kushel who made over 280K last year.

That’s 16 minutes I won’t get back.

My family came to San Francisco in 1860. They came from New York after sailing around the Cape Horn. Everyone I know has moved away except for one that lives in Twin Peaks in a run down house worth $1.5 million. I left in 1991 and never looked back. I thought I had left my heart in San Francisco but it seems not. I haven't been there in over 16 years. It was quickly going south at that time. I never thought I'd leave San Francisco but I did. Now I know why! How sad!

What's the main solution to fix homelessness? Doctors: Homes 😏 What do poor people need? Doctors: Money 😏

Five months into the pandemic, San Francisco is still in lockdown literally. No dining, no gyms, no malls.

The majority of homeless people can’t find jobs in the flourishing tech industry. The technology moved forward but there skills didn’t. Mail, news retail jobs are gone because of tech. 25% of homeless are between 41-65. A large number don’t know shit bout computers. No more Macy’s or Sears n they closedNordstrom at stonestown mall. there’s hardly any record stores or video rental spot like blockbuster 😂

Used to love going to San Francisco as a kid. I wouldn't come within 50 miles of it now. The entire Bay Area is a lost cause, and the voters allowed it to haplen.

Soooooo no one is gonna mention the insane amount of drug use or the bills that virtually decriminalized drug use and the mental health disparity.... 30 million dollars to have 2 doctors say the majority of homeless people are just poor...... bruh. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Did that lady try to tell me homelessness has ties to racism ??

Honestly most people living in SF won’t even read this comment the moment I mention the Bible, but this verse is so apt here: “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” Romans 1:22. SF can’t be saved until the people residing in it and affecting/creating the policies that have shaped it, return to common knowledge and solution based problem solving, over their ideologies and cult like politics. They think themselves so wise, they’ve walked off a cliff everyone else can see.

I’ve been staying in San Francisco since I was a kid and had many fond memories there. Now I’ve gone on my own a couple times a year for the past nine years and every time I’ve either gotten robbed, almost mugged by a crack head on the street or had our car broken into multiple times... The city leaders have provided safe places in recent years for people to shoot up drugs along with millions of free needles to use with it. It’s gone from my happy land playground to a total nightmare. You can still get a ticket for an open beer can on the street or jaywalking while someone shoots up heroin or poops next to you. How about lowering the minimum wage from its current $15 to encourage more all entry level jobs, lowering taxes on small businesses and middle class, creating affordable housing, stopping the flow of hard drugs and fostering mental health services and shelters for those who absolutely can’t get on their feet? Your politicians are corrupt and seem to want it to turn hell so they can feel more powerful or have their elitist little class and huge homeless class with little in between. Get those political criminals out of there!!! I miss the jewel of California this place once was!!! I love this city so much and miss it for what it was!!!

A higher minimum wage Tax businesses in the neighborhood even more to subsidize these people who likely deter most businesses in the neighborhood from being more successful. Cameras to record petty crime but then don’t convict anyone for anything. Found a business to give dental care to tech workers. Sounds like an infallible plan, congrats folks you did it!

The problem in SF is not the tech companies. It's the local governments, along with the state of California, that make it so hard to build new housing. NIMBYism is rampant in the state.

SF is just a giant expensive toilet

The "tenets this country was founded on" are: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. "Equality, fairness and justice" are legal principles.

i lived there for 8 years and I just couldn't take it anymore. The homeless problem, the housing situation among other things just started to get to me. That and I just couldn't take the rising costs. It's a city for the rich and not creatives any more.

I love the city but if they really gave a damn about the homeless problem, they could build a massive dormitory in the Presidio in a matter of weeks, for pennies on the dollar on what businesses have spent on sky rise offices and fancy condos.

The tax breaks for hi tech companies, the back room deals, etc the govt is corrupt and the working class is lost to broken system. The City needs help.

The two scholars gathering data are failing to mention the overwhelming effect of fentanyl and other addictions. Are they gathering data about substance use? That is crucial. Homelessness isn't only about people who lost jobs and affordable apartments. It's not only about mental illness. It's all of those things and often all in the same person. You can find an SRO room for a mentally ill person, but when she stops her psych medication she's going to tear that room up or invite all her friends over to shoot heroin, or whatever. She'll get evicted - over and over. So it's not a one-and-done, it's non-stop lifelong issue for most of those people. City officials, policy makers, have to buckle down for the long haul. Funding has to be ongoing, not just put into building apartments. I did mental health work in SF for nine years, 1999-2008. At the time, homelessness was visible, but not raging out of control like this. There weren't tents and piles of crap everywhere. I don't live there anymore, but will love and miss that city forever. It's awful to see the state of those streets, now. If you think this is bad (and LA, NYC, etc.) just wait until the end of this year, when the unemployment and evictions really skyrocket. And, if you are one of those ignoring the mask and distancing rules, remember, you can't visit your mom in the ICU.

“I think we need to reconsider how we think of things in this country” what do you think you were paid to do? “What price are we willing to pay as a society”..... $30 million dollars. They just talked in this video didn’t actually say anything though.

The mayor cant even afford a home in her city. Hahaha!

The city is now called: San Fran-Feces.

Saved? SF is run by a "from the projects, for the projects" mayor. We need a mayor that wants to build a world class city, not a welfare colony.

the problem is that a lot of people living in SF don't think there is a problem. They like it.

Born in sf, grew up in east bay then moved more up north like sac area. This is never gonna happen lmao good luck

My first visit to San Francisco was 2002 (loved it). My last trip to San Francisco 2019(awful,never again). ...so sad to see a beautiful city dying.

Buy a nail gun, miter saw, and power drill, and build a 100 tiny homes. It doesn't even take that long! With the amount of money SF leaders have spent, they could have built a hundred thousand tiny homes!

For 30 million dollars you could have renovated one of the many abandoned buildings, putting in showers, bathrooms and beds for people to stay in while using some of the spaces for education rooms. You could have volunteers help with drug and alcohol issues, maybe even have a nurses office. While it may not solve the problem, it is a step and would be a better way to spend the 30 million. It might help 20 people a year, which is better than none.

Move. The US is big and opportunities abound outside of California.

I wonder how much these public employees take off taxpayers for just talking about homeless.

I lived in SF for 11 years 2010 to 2021, Im so glad that I moved away, I don't miss living in the Bay Area as much as I thought I would

Structural racism. A tried and true progressive standby. If one wants to find racism one will find it. Whether it is there or not. The people who hope to find racism in anything will find it in the mirror first.

İ lived in SF for 30 years & you guys have been saying the same things for ever. Don"t you ever get a new idea?

The real question is: how did it come to be that SF has lots and lots of wealthy people, and tons and tons of poor people -- and essentially no middle class? The place to start would be reviewing the governing policies instituted since WWII.

The only reason Im here is because my family lives in CA.

Everybody dished BS, no solutions, blame others

There is another youtube video interview one guy who used to be homeless on SF streets. He was arrested a few times, and threaten with long jail sentence, and he finally brought himself up and got a job. When asked how many homeless are drug addict, he said 85%. So racism force people to be drug addict?

I heard lots of compassionate virtue signaling from politicians and entrepreneurs. Any practical suggestions for dealing with homelessness? If so, I missed it.

“Not addicted to drugs”......... seriously... last time i was in SF i saw people with needles in their arms.. people drugged up all over the place.. drug deals going down. All while pushing my two kids under 5 in a stroller to a wiggles concert. SF is a joke now.

"I can't talk with these people anymore. They're not on the same page. There are some people who just don't want to live inside, and there's nothing you can do with them. They are the hobos of the world. They don't want help" Mayor Willie Brown - 1997

I lived in SF for 25 years. The positive quotes you hear are describing the San Francisco of 15 years ago or more. Politicians have no political interest in doing what it takes to change the problems. The Coronavirus may end up doing it for them, but there are going to be signifiant problems as tax revenues plummet.

The only thing that doesn't add up to me is the that in times past, when there wasn't affordability/opportunity in a given region, people migrated and moved on to another. My home town is in the Midwest. Low umemployment, incredibly affordable, many low-ish skill jobs available. Why don't these people move out of SF? To me, it suggests that the permissiveness of homelessness in SF is such that people would rather live in a state of purgatory on the street than be forced to look for opportunity elsewhere.

Get the republicans in there!

Paid 2 people to study homelessness 30 million! Damn I would have done it for half the price.

at 14;43 he said we are all people who "deserve" an equal share. Share of what? We deserve what we work for. We deserve nothing simply because we live.

I've lived in SF for over 20 years, I love this city, and have even had to deal with homeless issues around my home (like opening my garage door to a violent man in a sleeping bag threatening me). In my observations, there are different types of homeless and we need unique solutions for them all: 1. severely mentally ill or brain damaged from intense drug abuse - this is the woman on the 38 that screams to no one (or everyone) and says the same word over and over again. They need to be cared for in an institution - and never be on the street alone. this is how societies should be judged, how do you help the people that can't help themselves? 2. drug addicts - need to be cared for in an institution focused on drug addiction. This should be viewed as a temporary state and they need an assist to detox and end their dependency and get back on track. 3. marginal/temporary homeless - these people are often living in cars, some life event happened and they found themselves out on the streets. They don't want to be homeless and therefor need an assist, TEMPORARY housing with a strict program, even city or government funded jobs (think FDRs The New Deal) no handouts. Handouts result in learned helplessness and a loss of dignity - yeah this will require our officials to create programs - do the work - not just write checks. 4. older citizens without support or a safety net - these are often the people who fought our wars and built (literally in some cases) SF and for some reason their families are not around or able to care for them. It breaks my heart seeing people in their late 70s and 80s living out of cars. These people need to be cared for in city or federal run elderly homes - this is not temporary - they'll need this support for the rest of their lives. This is a great use of our tax dollars. 5. bums/vandals - yep I said it. These are jobless by choice and SF has a lot of them. This last group is why we need to make it illegal to sleep on the street. Many of these are in the 25% of our homeless who never actually lived in a house in SF - they came here for the handouts, easy pickings with tourist car break-ins, handouts, etc. We need to care for the other types of homeless and prosecute this last group. These are my observations from living and working in SF for over 20 years. We need politicians with the courage to make difficult decisions and do their jobs (do the work) and at least start on a path for solving homelessness in SF - enough with the bad ideas (like handouts that cost up to $100K per year per homeless person). If you want different results, you need to try different solutions.