The city also enables the entire homeless lifestyle. Outreach workers hand out beef jerky, crackers and other snacks. The city’s biannual homeless survey claims that “food insecurity” is a pressing problem, but the homeless don’t act like food-deprived people. Waste litters the sidewalks and gutters. A typical deposit outside a Market Street office building includes an unopened 1-pound bag of walnuts, a box of uneaten pastries, an empty brandy bottle, a huge black lace bra, a dirty yellow teddy bear, a high-heeled red suede boot and a brown suede jacket.
Free services and food—along with maximal tolerance for antisocial behavior—act as magnets. “San Francisco is the place to go if you live on the streets,” Jeff says. “There are more resources—showers, yeah, and housing.” A man standing outside the city’s latest shelter design, known as a Navigation Center, says that he was offered housing four times but always turned it down. Navigation Centers are designed to be maximally accommodating. Residents come and go as they please, order meals at any time of the day, and bring their pets, partners and possessions (known in shelter parlance as “the three Ps”).
It’s almost like if you subsidize something, you get more of it.
The question is when will the non-homeless people who spent $1M+ on a 1,500-sq ft uninsulated 100-year-old shack in San Francisco actually do something about the city’s problems? They’re not all nuts… are they?
California has a homelessness crisis, but Californians don’t agree about what it is.
To homeless advocates, social service providers, many politicians and most journalists, it’s a humanitarian problem — a social tragedy of rapidly increasing numbers of men, women and families living without shelter, vulnerable to crime, disease and degradation. This state of affairs, they believe, is a “moral disaster.”
For pedestrians pushed into the street by blocked sidewalks, women afraid of unruly men screaming obscenities, patio diners beset by panhandlers and homeowners discovering human feces in their yards, it’s an environmental catastrophe — the neighborhood equivalent of an oil spill. They want someone to clean it up and prevent it from happening again.
Both are correct. Any serious attempt to address the crisis must take both problems seriously. Activists who ignore, downplay or stigmatize the threat to public order are hurting their own cause.
The compassionate view overwhelmingly dominates press coverage and official statements. It defines the problem and the acceptable ways of discussing it.
Excerpts:
It’s almost like if you subsidize something, you get more of it.
The question is when will the non-homeless people who spent $1M+ on a 1,500-sq ft uninsulated 100-year-old shack in San Francisco actually do something about the city’s problems? They’re not all nuts… are they?
Also from yesterday:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-03/homelessness-in-california-isn-t-just-a-humanitarian-problem