"Clearing the camp likely will be difficult both logistically — it’s more challenging to remove structures and vehicles that don’t run than tents — and ethically — there are few places for the displaced residents to go."
This might be an unpopular opinion, but since when did kicking "a sprawling camp of dozens of people, a maze of broken-down vehicles and a massive amount of trash" off of your private property become unethical? I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in that kind of "ethical" world.
The property owner in question has evaded paying billions of dollars in taxes, taxes that could have gone to fix the systemic issues in America that perpetuate homelessness.
But Apple does it legally so its ok. And I am sure the hopeless can pull themselves by their bootstraps. If they cant eat bread, why don't they eat cake?? If you are homeless just buy a house! Its that simple. /s
Jezz, I am reading through the comments here and i am not sure if i am on HN or subreddit for edy teens with the shallowest and one-dimentional view of the world.
I do like how we think owning property is like a natural right that just exists.
Apple only owns that property because our social contract says they can, that social contract can be broken if we feel like they're abusing that "right".
So if someone dying of thirst lands at my doorstep, yes, it’s not my responsibility to give them a glass of water.
Whether it’s my responsibility or not has absolutely no bearing on whether it’s ethical for me to not give them a glass of water. Maybe it is ethical to send them away thirsty. But that would be based on a lot more than whether it’s my responsibility or not.
Being ethical isn’t limited to doing just what one is responsible for.
I think most of us would give the dying person a glass of water. Would we also give them food? Clothes? A place to sleep? Money? Job training? It's hard to determine the bounds of our ethical obligations. I don't see a clear answer.
Personally, I think Apple does indeed have an ethical dilemma here caused by government specifically, and society broadly, failing in their responsibility towards habilitating the homeless and the mentally ill.
You think Apple should take actions that lead to a bunch of people dying, but without ethically being responsible for the result. That's not really how it works. It's a shitty situation but we can still hold people accountable for how they decide to react to it.
The second article kind of makes it clear that there are two governments at work here, and they are at odds.
San Fran approves office space, but no housing. Thus people live in San Jose (ironically where apple was founded originally).
That said… I don’t really see how this relates to homelessness in San Fran as according to the article Apple workers don’t live their anyways.
It’s a bit of a reach to say Apple is to blame for building an office building in the commercial district of the hottest tech city on the west coast after getting government approval.
The SF government ought to either approve more housing, or reduce economic pressure by refusing office spaces. That it does neither is a systemic failure.
Maybe if they'd paid their fair share in taxes, they'd feel less guilty about the ethics. As it stands, they're not exactly helping society fix these problems.
Apple builds tens of millions of products every year that increase productivity. They're not indebted to society, let alone to the US where they are providing billions in salaries and capital appreciation income.
Of course they are, without society enfircing property rights then anyone could do the same. They also owe (as everyone does) society for even being in a state where they can exist and operate. They depend on society exstentially. It's not like they paid for infrastructure, business ecosyatem, the conditions for consumers to consume, etc. Without societ they'd be nothing at all.
Society gets high quality products that enhance productivity, and enormous tax revenue that more than makes up for any public services that could conceivably contribute to their productivity, so of course they're not indebted to society.
>>Without societ they'd be nothing at all.
Society constitutes them as well, so they are also contributing to the existence of this society, which means they are giving as much as they're receiving.
You seem to have forgotten that we buy that from Apple. On top of the massive amount of research that we fund one way or anogher.
> Society constitutes them as well, so they are also contributing to the existence of this society, which means they are giving as much as they're receiving.
Society can exist without them but they cannot exist without society. That's a difference you're missing.
>>You seem to have forgotten that we buy that from Apple. On top of the massive amount of research that we fund one way or anogher.
Yes we buy it because the money we pay is worth less to us than the product that they provide us in the exchange. That is what trade results in: both parties benefiting.
Put another way, they are not indebted on account of benefiting from this trade, given they are contributing something of even greater value in exchange for that benefit, and have no more obligation toward society, on account of engaging in large volumes of mutually beneficial trade, than any one else.
>> On top of the massive amount of research that we fund one way or anogher.
That funding is for public research that is freely given away. You can't release scientific knowledge into the public domain and then claim those who benefit from it are indebted. That would be a false pretense of "public domain".
Moreover, the tax revenue generated by Apple, its US-based suppliers and its employees, allows for significant amounts of funding for public research that benefits society at large.
>>Society can exist without them but they cannot exist without society.
That applies to every constituent of society. We cannot say that every single individual owes to society more than it is owed on that account, or else it would mean some non-existent element of society should receive payment on the collective debt of the constituents of society.
Apple is part of this society, and has a responsibility (not to mention a direct interest) in helping to solve, or at the very least to not make worse, its society's problems.
Go to being a responsible person. Some of these people are mentally ill. Many others are just content to live a minimal existence, getting high, and not following any of the rules that normal people do. I see no reason to offer them support in that lifestyle.
This is irrelevant. SF has very low supply of housing and very high homelessness compared to other places. It could happen to basically anybody. One person in the article physically built her own house and then was kicked out by her ex-boyfriend. That person sounds way more responsible than I am, and I'm not homeless.
Well, it became unethical after everyone who had huge budgets bought up all the property, displacing everyone who couldn't. In a sense, it's a question of the ethics of owning property being inherently displacing. If there is only private property that nobody wants others on, and public property that isn't housing and nobody wants others on, then you're kind of both screwed and you're subject to the consequences of the system that let you have those things in the first place.
I'd rephrase this in what I think is a more succinct way. It's unethical because you're profiting off of displacement, in a system that allows you to do so, then being mad when the displaced don't care about the system that doesn't care about them, and so they take it back by setting up on your doorstep. Whatcha gunna do rich boi!?
Probably just internal employee pushback against doing such a thing, likely because the homelessness problem is well-known and they honestly don't have a place to go. Plus, when they're on Apple property, all it does is make it not look like utopia on earth; assuming they keep to themselves and don't impede traffic nor destroy property it doesn't affect Apple operations.
Well it’s California, and a hot button issue that many blame corporations for. Once the woke crowd gets involved it could mean chaos at Apple; damages, employee walkouts, press etc. You’re absolutely right but Apple won’t act unless they are confident they can control the narrative.
Surprised they haven’t offered to teach them how to code, or some other virtue signaling
It's unethical in the same place where building large apartment complexes on private land is also illegal. They have to have somewhere to go and people don't want their view blocked by a building.
When? Always. Good luck finding a popular ethical system where it's moral to have millions of times more than you need while others have nothing and then turn then away: Christianity, Islam, Utilitarianism, Buddhism...
There is an entire industry of government funded NGOs who work with the homeless, who rely on these kinds of precepts, like evicting squatters being unethical, being accepted, for their funding. They're the ones who place enormous pressure on others to adopt this extreme compassion worldview.
I could not conceive of a more poetic example of silicon valley dystopia than the richest entity in the history of the world stymied to come up with a solution to help 35 people suffering on it's throne room doorstep.
I read this, and my first thought was "what are they supposed to do? buy houses for all these people? Yea, Apple could afford it, but then they'll be sending the message that if you want Apple to buy you a house, all you have to do is pitch a tent on their lawn".
And then it reminded me of a quote from The West Wing, after Toby uses the president's name to pull some strings for a random homeless person he happened to run into:
> President Bartlet: "Toby, if we start pulling strings like this, you don't think every homeless veteran will come out of the woodwork?"
> Toby: "I can only hope, sir."
I know that "solving" homelessness isn't really as simple as just having the wealthiest company on the planet buy homes for people, but... it could be a start.
Meanwhile, San Jose is gearing up to clear a much larger camp at West Hedding and Spring streets, near the San Jose airport. That clean-up, which comes at the behest of the Federal Aviation Administration, could displace more than 200 people — some of whom might move to the Apple camp or other nearby camps.
You could pluck that right out of some dystopian future novel. I think we live in those worlds now actually - it's just unevenly distributed.
A lot of South Bay residents are still unaware of how many homeless people are living here. If you want to see the real extent of the problem go for a bike ride along any of our creek trails. Some areas are packed full of tents and makeshift shelters.
If you're in a position to donate some money I know HomeFirst Services does good work.
This is tangential, but I’ve always thought that disused office space would make an okay crash pad if I ended up homeless. Parking lots make scouting easy, and nondestructive entry is easy on most lower-security offices. Put on a hard hat, like 10 bucks at Home Depot, walk right in and out. If things get hot, hop to another office building.
I knew someone who worked at a particular office which had a computer lab as the IT person. This lab had a server room that served as an office and had just enough room to squeeze in a sleeping bag.
This person lived in that space for 6 years. I’m not sure if their boss ever figured it out or simply remained willfully ignorant.
I was wondering when this would happen. There's been a steady sprawl of camps on all the highway exits/entrances by 280 and 85 in all the bush and trees that grow there. Cupertino seemed to keep it more or less contained and off the sidewalks, but that was about 2 years ago. When you ride on the high double decker buses you can see all the camps not visible at car height level that line the freeways. It's nuts.
Who’s Bezos supposed to buy the homes from? It seems like there is already a higher than average number of people living per house here, so distribution of housing is not really the problem. The total number of homes is too low. It would help if Bezos could build a huge number of new housing units, but that’s illegal (which is the problem).
Yes, that would be ideal!! However homeowners in the late 1970s wrote into the state constitution that property taxes would be based on purchase price, and never increase more than 2% per year.
It's called Prop 13, and it needs to die. However, I fear it won't until there is a generational change.
Most cities, even those with large homeless populations, have many times more vacant homes. True even in regions with housing shortages like the SF Bay Area. Presumably in this fantasy scenario he'd buy some of those.
Shipping people to other states against their will, and away from their connections, support networks, and whatever else they say need, is both unethical and counterproductive.
Who the hell cares about homes nobody wants to live in? Build homes where people want them, don't let a few wealthy assholes hoard the best climate from everyone else. Why defend the interests of rentiers and landlords like this? It helps no one except the very wealthy.
I never meant we should ship people places, just that “supply” exceeds “demand”. Capitalism is an inherently inefficient mechanism for the distribution of resources. It favors the aggregation of capital over efficient distribution.
When you write "there's enough empty homes to house every homeless person," the only possible interpretation I can come up with is that you're saying that capitalism has provided enough housing already, and that we should use those existing houses.
Is there another interpretation that you can provide me, that I'm not understanding? Because I see that claim repeated all over the place, and I only see it in response to the idea that we should build homes where people want them, as a reason for not building homes.
I would be greatly relieved if there was an interpretation of that statement which was not just a defense of the status quo.
My point, which seems to have soared over the heads of my detractors in this thread, is that the ultra rich should be taxed at a higher rate, and that money used to fund programs that combat homelessness.
Jeff Bezos and the other dragons^H^H^H^H^H^H^H billionaires have demonstrably too much wealth, to the extent that they can afford dick-measuring contests like "whose CEO can get to space first, for no reason whatsoever".
The measure of a great society is by how it treats its least fortunate members.
The problem here is not the ultra rich, it's the moderately rich that are blocking housing.
There's more than enough money for people to pay for the building and maintenance, it's just that local land owners have said "we don't want to share"
All of Bezos' money isn't going to fix that problem. The problem here is wealth inequality, but it's the inequality of land wealth, not dollar wealth. The problem is excessive greed, not of Bezos, but of local homeowners and politicians. A former mayor literally joked about building a wall around Cupertino. That is the asshole that needs to be backed against a wall to fix this problem.
A fine opinion, but the only nexus to the news story we are commenting on is the exhortation for Bezos to go buy a bunch of houses (which would only push prices even higher and make somebody else homeless).
There was no such exhortation. I used the word "could", not the word "should", for a reason. That reason was to illustrate that he can afford a tax and should be levied one.
"A chronically homeless person costs the tax payer an average of $35,578 per year. Costs on average are reduced by 49.5% when they are placed in supportive housing. Supportive housing costs on average $12,800, making the net savings roughly $4,800 per year."
This has been known for a long time. It costs the public less to provide direct federal and state-financed housing for the homeless than to keep them on the streets. Finland and many other countries do this and they have the happiest people in the world. States like Utah have also implemented successful programs based on this model. The question isn't what do we do, it's why aren't we doing what we know works.
People don't become homeless because they run out of resources, they become homeless because they run out of relationships.
What you're proposing is me, in another state, city, neighborhood, paying for your states issue(s). My neighborhood, state and city has no homeless issue. In part because we have functioning churches, family units, etc
In SF, a portion choose to be homeless (have you ever asked them? I have). Many couldn't handle or don't want to handle the public housing (which SF has) requirements.
> Finland and many other countries do this and they have the happiest people in the world.
Finally, some facts -- they are "happy" because they have a functioning, nationalistic and proud culture. Aka their society works. This keeps people from being homeless, lowers drug abuse rates, etc
- 83% of the country has a man and a women with or without children married or co-habitating [1]
The implication was that if they just had a house their lives would turn around. This isn’t the case for a lot of people as it’s an addiction or mental illness problem.
Multiple case studies and real world examples show the opposite. It's cheaper to provide housing for the homeless, there's more success with drug/alcohol/mental illness programs when they have housing, and many of them do get a chance to re-enter the job market.
The point is though that a lot of them might be. Besides houses aren’t cheap or free you still have all kinds of bills to pay so your basically giving an addict a burdensome issue. Homeless shelters are a much better place for someone just trying to get clean and off the streets. There’s also an abundance of beds in homeless shelters because a lot of the people don’t want to get clean or off the streets.
You know, most societal problems are complex and solutions are not easy, if at all possible. But buying people homes wouldn't literally fix the homeless problem.
It ends of saving huge amounts of money. Single unhoused person with chronic illness can cost a city in excess of a million dollars a year.
Some people can’t countenance the “wrong” folks getting help they don’t “deserve”. Or that somehow help will discourage entrepreneurship. If that truly was the case they’d tax inheritances, but it’s not.
The terrible truth is that so much of industry relies on the precariousness of its employees: Walmart is the largest beneficiary of food stamps in the country.
Or, you know, if rich people and corps actually paid taxes.
So disgusting the people that defend the rich/super-rich (here its not rich- 'I only make 150k+ stock/yr, so I'm not rich!'). Min wage is what 15k/year, but yea 10x that isn't rich.
Reminds me of back in the 'everyone make a startup' days where CEOs got away with murder and some people on HN would just hand-wave it all away, because they wanted to be that CEO one day.
You completely ignored my main point. Physical housing is not the issue when it comes to the homelessness crisis. The fact that homelessness, in a majority of people, is a symptom of underlying psychological issues. Namely addiction and/or mental illness. Bezos would be better off donating that money to help understand and combat mental illness than giving every homeless person a house.
You can treat me like I’m so heartless, evil, person if you want but my point is there’s a hell of a lot more nuance than “there’s no houses.”
Apple should house these poor people at HQ. With employees working from home they should have a lot of office space that could be converted into rooms for the homeless. I'm sure there are fitness facilities they could use for basic hygiene and plenty of cafeterias that could feed them.
When there’s a “handful of employees there” cafeterias aren’t open and you’re lucky to have the staff keeping the coffee pots going. Have you not been to “the office” even once over the last 18 months?
This might be an unpopular opinion, but since when did kicking "a sprawling camp of dozens of people, a maze of broken-down vehicles and a massive amount of trash" off of your private property become unethical? I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in that kind of "ethical" world.