I get an incredible “narcism ick” from this writing. I wonder if other people feel the same way.
It’s so gross contrasted with the theme. The very first paragraphs start with a poor attempt to humble brag his”credentials” as not just a “normal” homeless person.
The self mythologising, the framing of negative things more like the weather than consequences of his choices.
The fact that despite privileged upbringing and working in tech in the valley he has no one willing to offer him a couch.
The most striking for me is the framing of his own grandmothers death as exceptional, proving his lineage is special.
Calling others NPCs, framing of stealing from stores as being the heroic action, even with approval from grandmother.
I feel this is getting redundant. I’d love to hear if anyone disagrees and what their thoughts are.
It seems clear to me that the author was experiencing an unmedicated psychotic disorder and gallantly owning the preposterous outlook he had at the time. So, not bragging, just plainly stating the sort of bigger than life delusions that come with the territory.
Are people reading this or just up voting the title? Sounds like someone who screwed up their life, likely by being stubborn, and doing a lot of drugs, which doesn't take knowing how to code to pull off. Reads like a love letter to misery by someone who knew they would never be truly affected by it.
What's incredible to me are comments, like yours, that are saying that somehow the system failed this person, just based on this blog post. When in fact:
1. He was given food and shelter, which he declined - most of his comments about the food are that it's too sugary.
2. He makes it sound like he was offered more permanent shelter in Feb of 2025, which he also declined.
To be clear, I'm not making a judgment about this person - and, for that matter, the comment you replied to didn't seem to be making a judgment either, just stating a reasonable conclusion that the author suffered from mental illness.
So I'd like to know what additional resources you think would have changed this person's circumstances?
> Currently constructing the Sanctuary of the Silent Star while unpacking a 6-month journey through psychosis, homelessness, and the systems that govern us. One story at a time.
I'm not saying it's his own fault. I'm also not too happy when people point to mental illness. But this is his blog description where he mentions himself that he unpacs a 6-month journey through psychosis.
6 months of psychosis means you're mentally ill with psychosis as a symptom.
I assumed this was a support group or service for tech workers who ended up homeless, and upvoted for that, and then took back my upvote after reading these comments :')
Sure, we don't know the entire backstory, but can we agree that no person should live in these conditions? Especially in one of the richest places in the world. Everyone deserves dignity, food, and shelter.
Also, can we stop stigmatizing "drug" use? Most of humanity uses "drugs" regularly for various reasons. Just because a specific "drug" which someone enjoys using recreationally is on a government list doesn't mean that they can't be a productive member of society. Live and let live.
It’s hard to respond to a call for “everyone to agree” in an online forum but yes.
Even people who are self or outwardly destructive, do not deserve the outcome the author got.
I think a harder to answer question is, assuming there are not enough resources to help everyone in need (in a practical sense) should we prioritise the “more deserving” over the less.
Every human who is suffering deserves compassion, but should we deprioritise those who are suffering partially because of their own choices?
> Every human who is suffering deserves compassion, but should we deprioritise those who are suffering partially because of their own choices?
Opening the discussion about who is more worthy of assistance is a slippery slope towards some people not getting it due to personal biases and politics of those in power.
Poor life choices can be consequences of poor upbringing, mental health, or simply bad luck. People can be helped in different ways to avoid making those mistakes. Reform is possible, but it starts with a society and government that cares for all of its people, and doesn't marginalize some as lower-class citizens.
And is capable enough to be (1) wealthy and (2) distribute that wealth so that everyone is wealthy enough. Especially (2) is hard. Norway seems to be the only country having some actual demonstrable skill at it.
When Covid came to Europe, we saw on the news how Italy was hit and what doctors had to do.
Long story short: young people lived, old people died. Because doctors faced the awful decision of whom to put on life support.
In the Covid case there's a genuine moment of lack of resources (good luck training enough doctors to help, even in a utopia it wouldn't be possible). Unfortunately, since many countries are bad at distributing their own resources enough such that no one is poor, we're basically in a Covid-like situation when it comes to homeless people.
And I'm saying this as a Dutch person. As I have one family member who didn't eat for 2 weeks, fainted, got found, etc. Granted, this person doesn't want to deal with bureaucracy and is quite stubborn, among other things. But still, even in a country that has "socialism" this stuff happens. And we're not as socialistic as one might think: Polish people that come here to perform labor do so in quite awful circumstances, to the point that when they lose a finger or a thumb they get reimbursed like 300 to 500 euro's IIRC. I watched it from some Dutch documentary (probably Nieuwsuur).
Countries are just incredibly bad at resource (re)distribution.
He was given food and shelter, and then he left on his own volition. He wasn't willing to stay in a shelter unless he had a private room so he stole some stuff from some stores so he could sleep under a bridge.
He was given temporary shelter, and later a bed in a room with 20 people. Have you seen what these places look like? Would you sleep in such conditions?
Dignity and personal space is something the richest country in the world can afford for all of its citizens. Yet chooses not to.
People committing petty theft are largely forced to do so due to the circumstances they live in. Your judgment is better aimed at people committing white-collar crime with far worse consequences in the same city the author is located in.
He makes it sound like he was originally offered more permanent shelter but he rejected it:
> The end of March happened and so did the temporary shelter. I needed to find a new place.
> I remembered a place in San Mateo I rejected back in February. It hadn’t crossed my mind when I first arrived back in San Francisco. When I had been offered it in February, I rejected the offer because I thought it was ludicrous to think I was homeless. I come from a relatively privileged upbringing, and the idea of homelessness was a distant concept to my naive brain.
> A couple months ago, I found that particular bridge was next to an office building inhabited by some of my old colleagues. A start-up I had been a part of in New York. Where I was the first employee. I had owned equity. They had eventually sold for $350 million.
It is depressing easy to have this happen and even worse how many people are convinced it could never be them.
For what it's worth: I know it could be me. I'm currently with tens of thousands of dollars in savings (in Europe, not American) but it could still be me. I'm quite afraid of it actually and I live every day so that it won't be me. I've noticed that reduces chances significantly, not to zero, but significantly.
Obviously there is a ton unsaid in this blog post, but I just wanted to answer your question because it's exceedingly common for companies to be sold, sometimes for lots of money, and for common stock (which is what employees hold) to get wiped out. If the startup was sold for $350 million, but it received $350 or more million in funding, the investors get (some of) their money back, and employees get nothing. This happens all the time.
Again, I don't know what happened in the author's specific case, but think it's important to know that lots of startups have exits that can look big on paper but still are a wipeout for common equity.
Not a worse place to be homeless, except maybe Portland or Seattle.
Obviously more to this story when someones support network has collapsed to this degree, but at the same time people don't have great support networks anymore =/
What I probably never get: When somebody is capable and reasonable but jobless, why stay homeless in a city with one of the highest rents? Why not move to a cheaper place, get any job, even a bad paid job will pay a nice flat in a small town.
It's always those large very expensive cities that have a huge amount of homelessness.
Don't get me wrong, I do not want to play clever here, it's just a honest question.
San Francisco also has a climate you won't freeze to death in February, a government that won't bulldoze your tent, charities that give you free stuff. For better or worse. In this man's case, it is probably also the only place where he has a slimmer of personal connections left that may still lend a helping hand.
Also, by the time he is already homeless homeless, he is likely no longer able to afford the fixed costs of a move. He is not getting an apartment even in small town USA if he can't put down a deposit. He is not even getting there without money to pay for the trip. He'll also likely need a car to hold any job which is another major cost.
And by the way, you said he should get a job, "any job." Now put yourself in the position of a small town mcdonalds franchise owner. Someone just moved to the town from California cough all in a sudden. He has no local connection, no experience in food service (or whatever other low skill job you are offering), probably not even an address. Why would you hire him instead of literally anyone else?
I think the harsh truth in this case is that this person has qualities of their personality and their habits that make them incompatible with a conventional job.
> When somebody is capable and reasonable but jobless
I'm not sure what your qualifications for 'reasonable' and 'capable' are, but without a support system those things are difficult to prove such that you can utilize them properly.
Let's do a thought experiment. Imagine have been evicted from your home and have no job. You have no car, no phone, no ID, no money, no credit or bank account. All of the people you know who would give you money or a place to stay or a reference have disappeared and cannot be reached. What do you do?
You could find a cash job as a dishwasher or something similar. If you work nights you can sleep in the library on in other public places. But where do you put your things? Spare clothes, toiletries, books, everything you might need to feel comfortable or to look decent has to be carried on your person, and even then is liable to become lost or stolen. How do you shower? Every restroom experience is using a public one. You can't cook meals, so you have to find free ones or buy them.
Hopefully what you got out of that is that access to things that you and I take for granted is a really big deal to someone without a home, and cities like San Francisco make many of those things difficult instead of impossible.
honest question: are there not enough shelters in SF? Are there not enough jobs? I heard it's dirty and unsafe at places, isn't government hiring street cleaners and police?
I will never stop being dumbfounded by the contrast of people going through this kind of hardship being surrounded by some of the wealthiest people in the world. This exists in other parts of the world as well, of course, but it's particularly troubling that it exists in the tech epicenter.
There's something deeply disturbing about a society that allows this to happen, and yet it's something we've learned to accept and largely ignore for centuries. The promise of technology bringing forth universal prosperity is a lie promoted by those who have something to gain from that narrative. Yet we keep believing these people to this day.
In my society, absolutely, possibly literally more than a hundred people.
Where in the world is the answer no? Maybe if you’ve freshly immigrated to a new country or something?
That is a very scary thought, but it’s also scary for me to think that so many people live such isolated lives, it’s such a foreign concept to me culturally.
The answer is no when you are severely mentally ill or have some other condition that causes you to be strongly detrimental to the people around you, such as addiction.
To the point where you have no friends. To the point where even your own parents have given up.
> Where in the world
Everywhere. You can’t comprehend it because you don’t know anyone like that, likely because the government you live in takes care of that problem for you.
> isolated lives
And by the way, the people in your culture in this situation are isolated too, from you. And that’s okay, and maybe good even. But you don’t know about them.
I don’t know what the right answer is. America’s answer is definitely not the right answer. But interrogate your culture, too, and how it takes care of your most vulnerable people. You may be dismayed at the answer, or you may not.
Unfortunately I think there are many places in the world like that. It just takes someone with even a mild mental illness, a relatively small family and the sudden early death of a parent to start a vicious cycle.
>“I Can Hire Half the Working Class To Fight the Other Half“
Technically a satire quote criticizing the robber Baron it's credited for, but the sentiment is the same. Pay off a bourgeois and they'll fight against the the sympathetic bourgeois and proletariat happily. The elite don't even need to lift a finger.
They've got capital, but I'd argue that they're long way from model capitalism since some time. There's both over- (regulatory capture) and under regulation (consumer and environment protection) that goes against this and companies have enough sway to influence the law and consequently the market. Free market in the original sense of "free from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities" is not even a goal anymore.
I get an incredible “narcism ick” from this writing. I wonder if other people feel the same way.
It’s so gross contrasted with the theme. The very first paragraphs start with a poor attempt to humble brag his”credentials” as not just a “normal” homeless person.
The self mythologising, the framing of negative things more like the weather than consequences of his choices.
The fact that despite privileged upbringing and working in tech in the valley he has no one willing to offer him a couch.
The most striking for me is the framing of his own grandmothers death as exceptional, proving his lineage is special.
Calling others NPCs, framing of stealing from stores as being the heroic action, even with approval from grandmother.
I feel this is getting redundant. I’d love to hear if anyone disagrees and what their thoughts are.
It seems clear to me that the author was experiencing an unmedicated psychotic disorder and gallantly owning the preposterous outlook he had at the time. So, not bragging, just plainly stating the sort of bigger than life delusions that come with the territory.
Which parts do you think were the delusions?
Are people reading this or just up voting the title? Sounds like someone who screwed up their life, likely by being stubborn, and doing a lot of drugs, which doesn't take knowing how to code to pull off. Reads like a love letter to misery by someone who knew they would never be truly affected by it.
There's a good saying, "People become homeless not when they run out of money, but when they run out of relationships."
This post reads to me like someone suffering from mental illness and/or personality disorder.
This is the first time I'm seeing that phrase. And I think it hits the nail on the head.
He explicitly writes that he did not do drugs or alcohol.
It would seem like it is some kind of felony charges that are the cause. Whatever they were.
But all in all - the downside risk is huge in the US.
The style of writing and strange segways suggest mental illness; the blog description seems to confirm it.
It is incredible how much energy is being put into justifying why this is his own fault?
I guess this is the only way people with high salaries or wealth in the US can find peace with themselves - maybe that's the mental illness?
What's incredible to me are comments, like yours, that are saying that somehow the system failed this person, just based on this blog post. When in fact:
1. He was given food and shelter, which he declined - most of his comments about the food are that it's too sugary.
2. He makes it sound like he was offered more permanent shelter in Feb of 2025, which he also declined.
To be clear, I'm not making a judgment about this person - and, for that matter, the comment you replied to didn't seem to be making a judgment either, just stating a reasonable conclusion that the author suffered from mental illness.
So I'd like to know what additional resources you think would have changed this person's circumstances?
> Currently constructing the Sanctuary of the Silent Star while unpacking a 6-month journey through psychosis, homelessness, and the systems that govern us. One story at a time.
I'm not saying it's his own fault. I'm also not too happy when people point to mental illness. But this is his blog description where he mentions himself that he unpacs a 6-month journey through psychosis.
6 months of psychosis means you're mentally ill with psychosis as a symptom.
Doesn’t change anything. In civilized world, people who are mentally ill are took care of by the society, not thrown in the streets.
He wasn't "thrown into the streets". He was offered food and shelter, and he declined it.
He was respecting the laws of California. What he did was like a speeding ticket.
I do agree that if he was truly in need he would have stolen an iPhone or some designer purses.
How privileged to steal sleeping bags and food.
> He explicitly writes that he did not do drugs or alcohol
> My public defender reminded me of a woman I did ayahuasca with in upstate New York.
Well...
Everyone does drugs or alcohol, even the pope, even Jesus himself.
> He explicitly writes that he did not do drugs or alcohol.
What are you talking about? He specifically mentions drinking beer and doing ayahuasca in the past.
I assumed this was a support group or service for tech workers who ended up homeless, and upvoted for that, and then took back my upvote after reading these comments :')
Sure, we don't know the entire backstory, but can we agree that no person should live in these conditions? Especially in one of the richest places in the world. Everyone deserves dignity, food, and shelter.
Also, can we stop stigmatizing "drug" use? Most of humanity uses "drugs" regularly for various reasons. Just because a specific "drug" which someone enjoys using recreationally is on a government list doesn't mean that they can't be a productive member of society. Live and let live.
It’s hard to respond to a call for “everyone to agree” in an online forum but yes.
Even people who are self or outwardly destructive, do not deserve the outcome the author got.
I think a harder to answer question is, assuming there are not enough resources to help everyone in need (in a practical sense) should we prioritise the “more deserving” over the less.
Every human who is suffering deserves compassion, but should we deprioritise those who are suffering partially because of their own choices?
> Every human who is suffering deserves compassion, but should we deprioritise those who are suffering partially because of their own choices?
Opening the discussion about who is more worthy of assistance is a slippery slope towards some people not getting it due to personal biases and politics of those in power.
Poor life choices can be consequences of poor upbringing, mental health, or simply bad luck. People can be helped in different ways to avoid making those mistakes. Reform is possible, but it starts with a society and government that cares for all of its people, and doesn't marginalize some as lower-class citizens.
And is capable enough to be (1) wealthy and (2) distribute that wealth so that everyone is wealthy enough. Especially (2) is hard. Norway seems to be the only country having some actual demonstrable skill at it.
When Covid came to Europe, we saw on the news how Italy was hit and what doctors had to do.
Long story short: young people lived, old people died. Because doctors faced the awful decision of whom to put on life support.
In the Covid case there's a genuine moment of lack of resources (good luck training enough doctors to help, even in a utopia it wouldn't be possible). Unfortunately, since many countries are bad at distributing their own resources enough such that no one is poor, we're basically in a Covid-like situation when it comes to homeless people.
And I'm saying this as a Dutch person. As I have one family member who didn't eat for 2 weeks, fainted, got found, etc. Granted, this person doesn't want to deal with bureaucracy and is quite stubborn, among other things. But still, even in a country that has "socialism" this stuff happens. And we're not as socialistic as one might think: Polish people that come here to perform labor do so in quite awful circumstances, to the point that when they lose a finger or a thumb they get reimbursed like 300 to 500 euro's IIRC. I watched it from some Dutch documentary (probably Nieuwsuur).
Countries are just incredibly bad at resource (re)distribution.
He was given food and shelter, and then he left on his own volition. He wasn't willing to stay in a shelter unless he had a private room so he stole some stuff from some stores so he could sleep under a bridge.
He was given temporary shelter, and later a bed in a room with 20 people. Have you seen what these places look like? Would you sleep in such conditions?
Dignity and personal space is something the richest country in the world can afford for all of its citizens. Yet chooses not to.
People committing petty theft are largely forced to do so due to the circumstances they live in. Your judgment is better aimed at people committing white-collar crime with far worse consequences in the same city the author is located in.
He makes it sound like he was originally offered more permanent shelter but he rejected it:
> The end of March happened and so did the temporary shelter. I needed to find a new place.
> I remembered a place in San Mateo I rejected back in February. It hadn’t crossed my mind when I first arrived back in San Francisco. When I had been offered it in February, I rejected the offer because I thought it was ludicrous to think I was homeless. I come from a relatively privileged upbringing, and the idea of homelessness was a distant concept to my naive brain.
> A couple months ago, I found that particular bridge was next to an office building inhabited by some of my old colleagues. A start-up I had been a part of in New York. Where I was the first employee. I had owned equity. They had eventually sold for $350 million.
It is depressing easy to have this happen and even worse how many people are convinced it could never be them.
For what it's worth: I know it could be me. I'm currently with tens of thousands of dollars in savings (in Europe, not American) but it could still be me. I'm quite afraid of it actually and I live every day so that it won't be me. I've noticed that reduces chances significantly, not to zero, but significantly.
> The morning crew felt like NPCs (for those older folks, an NPC is a character in a video game that is scripted or run by AI).
For those older folks, an NPC is a character in an adventure that is scripted or run by the Dungeon Master.
> A start-up I had been a part of in New York. Where I was the first employee. I had owned equity. They had eventually sold for $350 million.
What happened to the author's equity?
Obviously there is a ton unsaid in this blog post, but I just wanted to answer your question because it's exceedingly common for companies to be sold, sometimes for lots of money, and for common stock (which is what employees hold) to get wiped out. If the startup was sold for $350 million, but it received $350 or more million in funding, the investors get (some of) their money back, and employees get nothing. This happens all the time.
Again, I don't know what happened in the author's specific case, but think it's important to know that lots of startups have exits that can look big on paper but still are a wipeout for common equity.
I can attest that the Quaker Meeting on 9th street is an earnest reverent bunch. I attended regularly for some time around 2020.
Not a worse place to be homeless, except maybe Portland or Seattle.
Obviously more to this story when someones support network has collapsed to this degree, but at the same time people don't have great support networks anymore =/
Could always be worse in Des Moines or Toronto
What I probably never get: When somebody is capable and reasonable but jobless, why stay homeless in a city with one of the highest rents? Why not move to a cheaper place, get any job, even a bad paid job will pay a nice flat in a small town. It's always those large very expensive cities that have a huge amount of homelessness.
Don't get me wrong, I do not want to play clever here, it's just a honest question.
San Francisco also has a climate you won't freeze to death in February, a government that won't bulldoze your tent, charities that give you free stuff. For better or worse. In this man's case, it is probably also the only place where he has a slimmer of personal connections left that may still lend a helping hand.
Also, by the time he is already homeless homeless, he is likely no longer able to afford the fixed costs of a move. He is not getting an apartment even in small town USA if he can't put down a deposit. He is not even getting there without money to pay for the trip. He'll also likely need a car to hold any job which is another major cost.
And by the way, you said he should get a job, "any job." Now put yourself in the position of a small town mcdonalds franchise owner. Someone just moved to the town from California cough all in a sudden. He has no local connection, no experience in food service (or whatever other low skill job you are offering), probably not even an address. Why would you hire him instead of literally anyone else?
I think the harsh truth in this case is that this person has qualities of their personality and their habits that make them incompatible with a conventional job.
> When somebody is capable and reasonable but jobless
I'm not sure what your qualifications for 'reasonable' and 'capable' are, but without a support system those things are difficult to prove such that you can utilize them properly.
Let's do a thought experiment. Imagine have been evicted from your home and have no job. You have no car, no phone, no ID, no money, no credit or bank account. All of the people you know who would give you money or a place to stay or a reference have disappeared and cannot be reached. What do you do?
You could find a cash job as a dishwasher or something similar. If you work nights you can sleep in the library on in other public places. But where do you put your things? Spare clothes, toiletries, books, everything you might need to feel comfortable or to look decent has to be carried on your person, and even then is liable to become lost or stolen. How do you shower? Every restroom experience is using a public one. You can't cook meals, so you have to find free ones or buy them.
Hopefully what you got out of that is that access to things that you and I take for granted is a really big deal to someone without a home, and cities like San Francisco make many of those things difficult instead of impossible.
honest question: are there not enough shelters in SF? Are there not enough jobs? I heard it's dirty and unsafe at places, isn't government hiring street cleaners and police?
Great read. One bad side is it was so long, by the time I came back to upvote this article you already fell off trending.
It is scary. We live in a harsh world. I hope you made it through.
I will never stop being dumbfounded by the contrast of people going through this kind of hardship being surrounded by some of the wealthiest people in the world. This exists in other parts of the world as well, of course, but it's particularly troubling that it exists in the tech epicenter.
There's something deeply disturbing about a society that allows this to happen, and yet it's something we've learned to accept and largely ignore for centuries. The promise of technology bringing forth universal prosperity is a lie promoted by those who have something to gain from that narrative. Yet we keep believing these people to this day.
If you needed a bed for the night, do you have friends who would offer you their couch? Family? Cousins, parents, etc?
In my society, absolutely, possibly literally more than a hundred people.
Where in the world is the answer no? Maybe if you’ve freshly immigrated to a new country or something?
That is a very scary thought, but it’s also scary for me to think that so many people live such isolated lives, it’s such a foreign concept to me culturally.
The answer is no when you are severely mentally ill or have some other condition that causes you to be strongly detrimental to the people around you, such as addiction.
To the point where you have no friends. To the point where even your own parents have given up.
> Where in the world
Everywhere. You can’t comprehend it because you don’t know anyone like that, likely because the government you live in takes care of that problem for you.
> isolated lives
And by the way, the people in your culture in this situation are isolated too, from you. And that’s okay, and maybe good even. But you don’t know about them.
I don’t know what the right answer is. America’s answer is definitely not the right answer. But interrogate your culture, too, and how it takes care of your most vulnerable people. You may be dismayed at the answer, or you may not.
Unfortunately I think there are many places in the world like that. It just takes someone with even a mild mental illness, a relatively small family and the sudden early death of a parent to start a vicious cycle.
>“I Can Hire Half the Working Class To Fight the Other Half“
Technically a satire quote criticizing the robber Baron it's credited for, but the sentiment is the same. Pay off a bourgeois and they'll fight against the the sympathetic bourgeois and proletariat happily. The elite don't even need to lift a finger.
needs more backstory. what's your crime and why aren't you being paid for your superbowl work?
I think the superbowl work is the present and the homelessness was a flashback
Exactly, he was homeless for 6 months is what I understood.
I'm not sure if this is real account or AI slop -- possibly a mix of both.
But the US is a f*cking dystopia at this point.
How come the richest country of the world - the model of capitalism - allows so many of their citizens go homeless?
It's mindblowing.
> the model of capitalism
They've got capital, but I'd argue that they're long way from model capitalism since some time. There's both over- (regulatory capture) and under regulation (consumer and environment protection) that goes against this and companies have enough sway to influence the law and consequently the market. Free market in the original sense of "free from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities" is not even a goal anymore.