Free Republic

It was early afternoon when the man with the twitching legs was dragged from the ground into an ambulance. Another man selling books washed away the vomit.A man named Charlie Medina sat at the same spot a few days later, unable to remember his name before he fell into a trance with his jaw open and his eyes dilated.And the lovers. They were unable to find a room. One pulled off the other’s shirt and her bra, then started to kiss her bruised breasts while a small crowd gathered to watch.The people here on this stretch of 125th Street in...

San Francisco has had it with the homeless. First came the Chronicle’s obsessive summer of op-eds and thinly reported screeds; then came Mayor Lee’s announcement threat that the homeless must leave before the Super Bowl PR machine rolls into town; and yesterday Supervisor Scott Wiener put a semantic twist on the whole fracas, arguing it’s not the homeless we’re vilifying but unsavory “street behavior." The public outcry has no real center but, like a dragnet, implicates everything from mental illness and substance abuse, to access to public restrooms and street encampments. There’s a cacophony of complaints (and rallying cries) but...

San Francisco is known for its Golden Gate Bridge, world class cuisine, panoply of cultures, striking skyline, frigid fog, and homeless. More specifically, aggressive panhandling and homeless defecating and urinating in public. And sometimes doing even worse things. With the holiday shopping season coming, and Super Bowl 50 right behind, the city by the bay will be in the national spotlight once again, and so will images. While Mayor Ed Lee announced this week that "the homeless must leave the street" for Super Bowl 50, it's more what they leave behind on the street that is a concern for the...

America’s homeless are lawyering up to fight for a “right” to live on the street – your neighborhood and personal safety be damned. From Fort Lauderdale to Los Angeles, cities are struggling with a surge in people living in cardboard boxes and doorways. Local lawmakers are trying to ban “camping out” in public, and ordering police to clear the fetid encampments. But lawyers for the homeless are pushing back. They’re demanding that “sleeping rough” be legally protected. In Denver, where living on the street is outlawed, lawyers for the homeless want to guarantee vagrants “the right to use and move...

PARIS — The gunman who was disarmed by passengers on a train in France two days ago looked weak and malnourished and said he had only meant to rob people, a lawyer who interviewed him after the attack said on Sunday. "(I saw) somebody who was very sick, somebody very weakened physically, as if he suffered from malnutrition, very, very thin and very haggard," the lawyer, Sophie David, told BFMTV.

The Obama Department of Justice argued last week that a Boise, Idaho, law against "public sleeping in a city without adequate shelter space constitutes criminalizing homelessness itself, in violation of the Eighth Amendment." In a statement of interest filed in federal court, the Obama administration asserted that banning sleeping and camping in public places constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment." Republican candidates, please take note. Mike Journee, spokesman for Boise Mayor David Bieter, described his city as "a fairly progressive island in a deeply red state." Bieter is trying to address homelessness, Journee told me, "from a holistic standpoint" -- and...

San Francisco — The homeless are a challenge for almost every American city, but nothing like they are for San Francisco. The city’s mild, year-round climate, famously liberal “live and let live” attitude, and a dense network of social services have made the problem worse than ever there. The city has some 3,200 people living on its streets, and the number is growing. Two recent news items brought the issue into sharp focus. First, a light pole collapsed downtown, crushing a car and barely missing the driver. The cause? It had been corroded by urine aimed at it by street...

We all need sleep, which is a fact of life but also a legally important point. Last week, the Department of Justice argued as much in a statement of interest it filed in a relatively obscure case in Boise, Idaho, that could impact how cities regulate and punish homelessness. Boise, like many cities — the number of which has swelled since the recession — has an ordinance banning sleeping or camping in public places. But such laws, the DOJ says, effectively criminalize homelessness itself in situations where people simply have nowhere else to sleep. From the DOJ's filing: When adequate...

We all need sleep, which is a fact of life but also a legally important point. Last week, the Department of Justice argued as much in a statement of interest it filed in a relatively obscure case in Boise, Idaho, that could impact how cities regulate and punish homelessness. Boise, like many cities — the number of which has swelled since the recession — has an ordinance banning sleeping or camping in public places. But such laws, the DOJ says, effectively criminalize homelessness itself in situations where people simply have nowhere else to sleep.

Paul Deleon On Wednesday, 5 August, 2015, an armed homeless man stopped a brutal assault on a teen-aged woman, then likely saved his own life in a dramatic gunfight.  It occurred in Fresno County, California.  From fresnosheriff.org: Deputies discovered there was a domestic disturbance nearby in the parking lot of Fresno Liquor (5596 E. Griffith Way). Two men in a white Lexus pulled up next to two women standing by the store. One of the men got out of the car and began to kick and punch one of the women, a 19-year-old. She was later determined to be...

STENCH AND THE CITY: SF’S SUMMER OF URINE If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to… plug your nose. By Debra J. Saunders – 8.10.15 How bad is the urine situation in San Francisco? This is not a joke: Monday night, a light pole corroded by urine collapsed and crashed onto a car, narrowly missing the driver. The smell is worse than I have known since I started working for The Chronicle in 1992. It hits your nose on the BART escalator before you reach Market Street. That sour smell can bake for blocks where street people sleep wrapped...

Laws that make it a crime for homeless people to sleep in public places even when there isn't enough room for them at a shelter unconstitutionally punish the homeless, lawyers for the Obama administration said in a court filing on Thursday. The federal government took this position against so-called anti-camping laws in an ongoing case against the city of Boise, Idaho, which has enforced ordinances banning sleeping in public spaces and ended up convicting homeless plaintiffs.

The glass facade of Cooper Union’s $111 million academic building offers a remarkable view — of a back alley packed with vagrants. “I have seen drug deals, public urination, defecation, masturbation in broad daylight in the Taras Shevchenko alley,” a Cooper Union faculty member told The Post. “It’s a place where many homeless congregate to sleep — right in front of a church and between a high school and a college,” the faculty member added.

The elevated “SkyWatch” booth was erected July 21 following a Post exposé about the hordes of homeless people taking over the park and Mayor de Blasio’s subsequent visit to chat up vagrants there.

Don't get into a pissing match with walls in San Francisco. The city's Public Works agency is testing a pee-repellant paint on walls in areas that have been saturated with urine. Anyone urinating on the specially treated walls will get the spray splashed back onto them. [Snip] "The urine will bounce back on the guys pants and shoes. The idea is they will think twice next time about urinating in public," said Rachel Gordon, a Public Works Department spokeswoman. She said the super-hard coating made the "bounce back" effect much stronger than when peeing on a regular wall.

No wonder he doesn’t think there’s a problem. The police have been laboring to keep Mayor de Blasio in a bum-free bubble — clearing nuisance-causing vagrants from his view at Gracie Mansion and as he travels in the city. On Wednesday, two hours before de Blasio was due to walk through Washington Square Park, cops arrived en masse to clear out the quality-of-life-ruining bums who drink from paper bags, sprawl on benches and pee in public. “They had to clear all the homeless out before he got there,” for a Ramadan fast-breaking dinner at the NYU Islamic Center, said one...

Bums across the city hailed Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday for relaxing enforcement against homeless panhandlers, saying it hasn’t been this good for them in years. “I want to thank de Blasio for taking it easy on us. It’s easier for me to get by. Because of him, nobody bothers me,” said Phil Zasel, 63, who was hanging out near Bellevue Hospital with several sacks of belongings. “It’s better out here now. It’s the best time to be homeless. The weather is nice. I feel like I’m in California. So I’d rather be out here until it gets cold.”

My wife has to take trips to San Francisco every couple of months for business and each time she comes back with the same observation, "there are a great many people who appear to be living on the street and maybe homeless. " I have not seen this for myself yet but I began to wonder why there seems to be no or very few stories about the homeless in the news these days. I remember hearing and reading about the homeless situation in this county almost every day when President Bush was in office but now I can't remember...

Families in an affluent Hollywood Hills community are outraged after claiming to see people openly drinking and having sex on a campsite being rented out in their community. Advertised through the Airbnb website, the site is advertised as a "Hollywood Hills Camping Retreat" on La Punta Drive, but sits in middle of a multimillion-dollar neighborhood. For the cost of $40 per night — or $800 a month — people get a tent, spectacular views and are within short walking distance of the Hollywood sign. The listing appeared to have been taken down as of Thursday morning. But people living in...

A major new report from the nonprofit Coalition on Homelessness investigates how criminalizing homelessness in San Francisco has only exacerbated the crisis. Much like America’s War on Drugs, the city’s crackdown on homelessness has been a costly failure, leaving in its wake people who feel victimized by the very system that’s supposed to help them. The report’s title, “Punishing the Poorest,” neatly sums up city policy. “Since 1981, San Francisco has passed more local measures to criminalize sleeping, sitting, or panhandling in public spaces than any other city in California,” the report states. In fact, San Francisco has 23 state...