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San Francisco needs to do something. The homeless situation is totally out of control. I lived there for a year, and honestly it was a big part of what drove me away. I am sick of San Franciscans shrugging it off by saying that there are homeless in all big cities. While obviously a true statement, it is not comparable at all (although Seattle comes close, and I assume Portland does as well).
I have no problems with the homeless. I'm the kind of guy who will talk to anyone, so I have had some pretty good chats with homeless people back on the East coast. However, engaging most of the homeless in San Francisco proved to be a mistake. There really is a difference between homeless and street people. Most of what San Francisco has are street people. They almost always turn out to be completely mentally unstable or a mean spirited hard drugs addict. The 20 something year old kid screaming insanity on the subway platform. The teenage runaway who assaults a pedestrian at random to exorcise some of her emotional pain. The man who beelined right for me on the street and began ranting about how he was going to rain blows on my head repeatedly after my mass suicide ritual. The woman who walked right up to my girlfriend and started talking about how she cut up her baby and could do that for her too. Or, as the perfect metaphor for my experience and an image that will be with me for the rest of my life, an unwashed man having a complete mental breakdown on the corner of some yuppie neighborhood in the Marina, while a young happy couple just pushes their stroller right by him without a glance.
No one ever seemed to acknowledge any of these events as out of the ordinary. My San Francisco friends would just shrug and say that it happens all the time. They claim to be defenders of the homeless, but refuse to even acknowledge their existence while passing them on the street. They just don't see it. I'm not trying to say that New York had it right with their homeless situation, they didn't. New York made a bad decision while San Francisco continues to do nothing. I'm not sure that continuing to ignore the problem while things get worse is so much better. So many of the people on the streets of San Francisco are not going to be able to get the help they need without drastic action. Instead, they suffer in a spiral of mental illness and drug abuse.
In the end, it was a prominent reason that I decided to leave San Francisco. It was just too sad.
Tell this to our liberal friends - they love the homeless. They love crime, they love poverty. They hate anyone who works hard.
I said this in the other thread but perhaps its more appropriate here:
Why doesn't the City finally come out and say it: If you are clean, come to a shelter and you'll have a place to sleep, shower, and "relieve" yourself. If you are an addict, aggressive panhandler or a criminal, you are not welcome here. Simple as that. No more sleeping in the parks or on the stoops of private homes or businesses. No more harassing citizens. We spend enough money dealing with the side effects of homelessness (e.g. cleaning sh** off the sidewalks and escalators) that surely they could divert that money towards shelters, and adopt a no-tolerance policy for anyone that chooses to remain a public nuisance.
My sympathy towards the homeless ends when they threaten the public safety. Tell Ed Lee or one of the supervisors to walk down Polk St from Civic Center to Clay on a Friday night. I just did that walk last weekend - no joke, there was at least 3 incidents where I felt the safety of myself and/or my girlfriend were seriously threatened. Some drunk guy who was probably mentally ill was threatening to hit me because he thought I stole "his book." The other day I had a friend who had a homeless man burn-out his cigarette on my friend's jacket. And then there's the stuff that's not necessarily threatening but just disgusting - people taking dumps on the sidewalk in broad daylight, people shooting up while sitting on the sidewalk, drunk homeless throwing up in the alleyways....
I'm not naive, I understand that in a dense city environment, you are going to come across some "interesting" characters. But this is getting ridiculous. City Hall needs to wake up.
You're absolutely right but you also need to acknowledge that its the liberals who are responsible for enabling these people.
Tell this to our liberal friends - they love the homeless. They love crime, they love poverty. They hate anyone who works hard.
I don't hate Barack Obama, and he's one of the hardest-working Presidents we've ever had.
As for your other generalizations, I'd be interested to know where these "liberals who love homelessness, crime, and poverty" live. I've certainly never met one.
I don't hate Barack Obama, and he's one of the hardest-working Presidents we've ever had.
As for your other generalizations, I'd be interested to know where these "liberals who love homelessness, crime, and poverty" live. I've certainly never met one.
Why did you guys move to or CHOOSE to live in a city where the homeless have been in FULL ATTENDANCE, since you've arrived?
Did you think they would "magically" disappear into oblivion?
If you don't like living with them, then why don't you make plans to move someplace else?
This is just stupid. Far as I know SF is still part of the U.S.A., we're free to move here just like any other American. You should focus on the issue at hand here instead of attacking those rightfully bringing it up.
This is just stupid. Far as I know SF is still part of the U.S.A., we're free to move here just like any other American. You should focus on the issue at hand here instead of attacking those rightfully bringing it up.
You're also free to either leave or contribute in a positive way to the city in which you blew into. Nothing pi*sses me off more than the carpetbaggers that complain and whine endlessly about the San Francisco's problems expecting other people to do something. How about YOU do something?
You live here, you're probably employed here, and you pay taxes here---it's really up to all the negative, snarky out of state a-holes that constantly want it to be like somewhere else that come here in droves to make their careers happen and make their big money, yet sit back and wait for gawd knows who to take care of the problem.
This is just stupid. Far as I know SF is still part of the U.S.A., we're free to move here just like any other American. You should focus on the issue at hand here instead of attacking those rightfully bringing it up.
I'm not "attacking" anyone.
The homeless in SF have been here for YEARS. There have been movies and South Park episodes dedicated to it. It's NEVER been a secret.
I'm sure you and everyone else who flew in for your interviews for your current positions noticed the huge influx. You must have also saw them when you were searching for your apartment. They ride the subway and buses and stand outside most businesses and street corners begging for change.
All I'm saying is that they were in SF BEFORE you moved and you're upset that they are STILL there and their numbers are increasing (duh!). You want Giuliani style tactics to "eradicate" them, but you know that SF (most California) politicians would NEVER implicate such measures due to the "culture" of the city.
If you don't like it in SF, why don't you MOVE somewhere else or back to "glorious" NYC or wherever YOU'RE originally from?
Your solutions seem to be, drove them like rats from the city, or maybe euthanize them as one may do with a sick dog or cat.
As mentioned earlier in this thread, an awful lot of the homeless are mentally ill. Many are veterans who developed DTSD, and are unable to cope with modern stateside life, with flashbacks, and panic attacks. Unable to hold, jobs, and live a normal life.
At one time California had mental hospitals and clinics to help these people, and it was not the problem it is today. The clinics provided medications to help them remain in a more normal life. But a number of year ago, it was not dignified for these people to be in these facilities and they decided they no longer wanted to put out the money to take care of these people and closed the hospitals and the clinics. These people were just pushed out onto the streets. They have no place to go, but to try to survive on the streets.
That was in the 1980's. They were going to send people who often lived quite happily and securely in the state hospitals to board and care homes. A board and care can't possibly provide what someone severly ill needs. A friend of mine, who's brother has been deprived of oxygen at birth and had been in the state hospital since five drowned in the bathtub at the home. He had seisures and had decided to take a bath. In the hospital he never would have had the chance. The people who had the board and care were not at fault, they had been approved by the state. They were so broken up the others who lived there were moved and they closed it.
We don't do much more today, and even board and cares are hard to get into.
Don't even mention county mental health clinics, especially since everyone cut back. For people who have a place to live its a nightmare to get appointment and just hope there is never a problem with meds.
I wonder if any of the people in this thread have ever been homeless. I lost my house and everything in it. I had applied for disability, but had to wait. I used up the six months at the local shelter I coud use before the county housing program those in my circumstances could be considered and fortunately got into a group house. But there is NOTHING as devistating as being seen as either invisible or just worthless by people who notice the packed car. And the daily wonder if you'd have a place to sleep. And the day you realize everything you owned, your kids pictures, your great grandmother's letter, your mom's keepsakes are gone that day. I lived day to day. The irony is that the place I stayed wasn't supposed to let those on any kind of psych meds in. Half there did but were smart enough not to tell them. Read my blog if you want a 24 hour slice of being homeless.
The children are the saddest, but its amazing when they can be kids they are. But those who just want to 'get rid' of the homeless should consider that anyone can have the bottom of life collapse and maybe you could be out there too.
I have no dislike for those who choose to follow the homeless lifestyle. Its their choice. Or those who are sick and the problem is NOBODY CARES, just want to get RID of them. And while there are programs for the currently lost, who used to have a life, I know back when for me it was a long wait it must be even worse now. After a year of not having a permenant home, you will never be the same. You will never see things as you did or depend on things staying as they are. Still, all this time later, every day still is a new start..
Seeing as this is talking about San Francisco, go to netflix, under Star Trek Deep Space Nine, and find the third season two parter Past Tense. Its about San Francisco, a decade or so from now, with the Sancuary District. It's for those who had no place to go, with housing and help and food, in the form of cards you stand in line to get your meal with. Maybe started with great intentions, but when people started to object and left, they put in a wall and a gate and out of sight is out of mind. But the crush of people is about to boil over, and our lost in the past doctor and captain see no way out but helping the rebellion.
The really interesting thing about this was San Francisco had considered and tabled for later the idea of a 'dictrict' where nobody had to see 'them'. Los Angeles was talking about it. One city in Florida was about to open a camp outside the city, with no bus line except in, where those who had no place to go could stay with food and beds and help. But no way to leave and far from the tourists.
San Francisco never got back to it. LA had the City Counsel watch the episode, shown before broadcast, and they unanimously voted it down. The Florida city decided it was 'impractical'. But just because non homeless people don't want to see it, its won't make it not exist. Remember they are our fellow citizens and if we choose to shove the victums out of sight, it just gets easier to pretend it doesn't really exist or it will never happen to me.
Maybe everyone should have to try being invisible and ignored by those who don't want to think of tomorrow when they too might lose their jobs and end up in nowhere land. At least before snippy comments like 'getting rid of them'.
Also, nobody wants to see poverty, homelessness, crime etc. This has nothing to do with political affiliation. You seem tremendously limited and quite immature in your thought process. Grow up. The world isn't as black and white as you think. Generalizing and stereotyping is nothing but a curse on our society right now.
As I've mentioned (and someone else did also) that this problem is not necessarily a "homeless" problem...but a mental health and drug addiction issue. How about YOU (since you're a resident of the City) go from there? How many letters have you written to your supervisor? I bet NONE. I bet you don't even know who your local supervisor is. How many public meetings have you attended? I bet NONE.
Seeing as most of your posts are about chicks and bods, and comparisons to the last city you blew into (seeing as you fancy yourself as some big man about town) and whatever trivial cra* that little boys obsess over, you haven't much hope as being useful to a very difficult problem. You should probably just stick to your high school banter on comparing girlies.
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