Homeless by the bay

When San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom initiated a program in conjunction with Google last month to provide phone and messaging facilities to the homeless, it was the latest chapter in the city's seemingly never ending quest to tackle homelessness. While the program may prove useful for those inclined to better their situation, it is unlikely to have an impact on the chronically homeless.

San Francisco has the highest per capita number of homeless in the nation, and city officials have quite a challenge on their hands. And to hear Mayor Gavin Newsom or Angela Alioto, his appointee to chair the Homeless Ten-Year Plan Council, tell it, they are making great strides. City officials seem determined to put on a happy face when it comes to combating homelessness. But it's hard to believe any of them actually live here.

For the residents of San Francisco, the blight of homelessness has only gotten worse over the years, and today it has reached critical mass. One is hard pressed to walk around just about any neighborhood without having to run a gantlet of panhandlers, step over passed-out drunks or drug addicts, maneuver around the mentally ill or try to avoid the stench of urine and the human feces littering the sidewalk. These days, the streets of San Francisco resemble the streets of Calcutta.

Having lived in San Francisco since the early 1990s (with the exception of a year spent in the East Bay), I've witnessed my fair share of street scenes involving the homeless. I've seen the same apparently homeless people standing on the same street corners doing the same panhandling routines...

...I've spoken to several of them and discovered that they are actually able to make a living this way: professional panhandlers, as it were.

Some of the comments:

cvaldes1831 wrote:
Dear Cinnamon: do you consider yourself to be a happy person? Just wondering, that’s all.

Posted 3/4/2008 10:08:00 PM
Recommend (8)Report Abusebooboobear wrote:
It’s an excellent indictment, Miss Stillwell. Aside from your ongoing diatribes, what have you done to solve the problem? It’s one thing to gripe and moan; another to get involved and make a difference.

Posted 3/4/2008 10:14:10 PM
Recommend (13)Report Abusevluela wrote:
Good article. It’s how a lot of people feel, although it’s doubtful that such an article will really produce anything more than a bunch of comments here. For the most part, S.F. is complacent about the homeless. Most just deal with it until they have kids, and then move out.

Posted 3/4/2008 10:25:06 PM
Recommend (77)Report AbuseLeadhall wrote:
I completely agree with you, Ms. Stillwell. Why should ninety-eight percent of the population have to suffer at the hands of two percent? San Francisco needs to do what New York has done and soon! In the end the homeless will benefit as well as everyone else. And if one argues that they will not be better off? So what - I don’t care. I have children at USF - I care more about them than the great unwashed.

Posted 3/4/2008 10:26:29 PM
Recommend (87)Report Abusehsailor wrote:
Whether or not you agree with him, Chuck Nevius has done a remarkable, non-partisan job in his series on the homeless. This one is an unwitting example of exactly why nothing has gotten done - because the turf defense (in this case, bash Newsom, slam Johnson and Kennedy, deify Reagan) is much more important than actually exploring what worked for Guiliani and more important, WHY. This is why Ms. Stillwell will never have an audience past the Morford-Stillwell mutual drooling lunatic crowd.

Posted 3/4/2008 10:35:41 PM
Recommend (13)Report Abusesunrise wrote:
B

Posted 3/4/2008 10:36:43 PM
Recommend (2)Report Abuseodannyboy wrote:
thank you for stating the obvious. there is obviously a tragic disconnect between the political power class and the interests of the majority, i would guess on the order of 70% + of the population of the City. it is something that is very difficult for me to comprehend. in a way we normal ordinary citizens have only ourselves to blame for electing a class of people who are actively hostile to their interests. i am a dyed in the wool liberal born here in the City, and I do not believe that this is an in any form an ideological issue. it is an issue of public health and safety. it is an issue of our political system being held captive by a small and extremely active and threatening group of poverty pimps, and satellite groups of enablers.

Posted 3/4/2008 10:38:32 PM
Recommend (58)Report Abuserobert55 wrote:
The “homeless” are generally of two groups... either ex-cons who can’t live a mainstream life because nobody trusts them any longer... or mentally ill people who should be an inpatient in some facility. (Then Gov.Reagen made a mistake closing the public mental hospitals.. prior to that the “homeless” just ex-cons). I chatted with a homeless one guy, and honestly, he told me that he didn’t like people trying to “help him” as it bugged him. He WANTED to be on the street and he told me so. But then, nobody wants him urinating in their doorway... so what he wanted and what the majority of us want are two different things.

Posted 3/4/2008 10:39:37 PM
Recommend (19)Report Abuseodannyboy wrote:
new york in 1988 was a scary mess. the bums in the subway were like a cross between russ myers and george romero flicks. the filth and degradation was absolutely incredible, and lo and behold they were able to completely clean that place up. much tougher demographics, much much bigger crime and poverty conditions, older building stock, much worse weather, much bigger and more entrenched poverty pimps and noisemakers, and yet they managed to do it. why not here? it’s hard for understand. newsom lacks spine. he doesn’t understand that his life would actually be much easier if he didn’t feel the need to placate the poverty pimps and other friends of the filthy streetbums.

Posted 3/4/2008 10:43:35 PM
Recommend (63)Report Abusesunrise wrote:
BRAVE ARTICLE....true for those of us who live in SF and walk the streets of San Francisco to and from work, rather than the white tower politicos who travel in limousines, and live in isolated lives...the homeless have the rights to get help getting clean and sober and getting a place to live but a hard line towards crime and drugs and gangs affecting our city’s life must start....

I thought SF looked like a dirtier version of Bangkok, myself.
++++++++++++++++
Yes, better comparison. SF still photographs well and the distant views of the city from atop the hills are great but no matter what area of the city you live in it’s not really living. I even put iron bars are my skylights, disabled the buzzer system on my access door for a longer more sturdy deadbolt which meant an inconvenience when visitors came. I had to go down two flights of stairs. I had to remodel my entry way porch so that druggies couldn’t sleep without being seen from the street a day and nightly routine and I lived in a fairly good neighborhood, not really on the beaten path. When parking at home I’d stop the tail end of my car right at the garage door and only moved on into the garage when it closed completely. The fear was so great that I kept a pistol in the car (against the law) as I was more interested in my safety than obeying the law. Unless you have something really specific it’s a joke trying to get a concealed carry in SF. Just being scared is not good enough. City Hall is a joke and like the rest of government are run by special interests, not fed up homeowners. The homeless and druggies have every community action group known to mankind defending them and city hall seems to do backflips trying to accommodate their concerns.
I stopped taking visitors to Golden Gate Park or city hall as the homeless have taken it over. I could go on and on and on about quality of life issues there.

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