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Homelessness gets center stage
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Some religious groups are protesting a plan to crack down on low-level crimes committed by homeless people in the South of Market area. The plan, announced by Mayor Gavin Newsom this week, is similar to one The City undertook at Golden Gate Park.
SAN FRANCISCO (Map, News) - Mayor Gavin Newsom and homeless advocates held dueling news conferences Wednesday — one to discuss The City’s success in securing housing for more than 2,000 formerly homeless persons, and the other to criticize the millions The City is spending to hand out citations to those still on the streets.
One of Newsom’s hallmark programs, Care Not Cash, reduces the amount of cash given to homeless people on welfare in exchange for housing or shelter. The program, approved by voters in 2002 despite protests from homeless advocates, has placed more than 2,000 formerly homeless persons into housing since its inception in May 2004, Newsom said Wednesday.
Care Not Cash brought a “tremendous amount of controversy … but also a tremendous amount of opportunity,” Newsom said at a Tenderloin hotel-turned-housing complex, boasting that many initial critics of the program now see its merit.
A few blocks away, at City Hall, a group of spiritual leaders representing Religious Witness with Homeless People, a San Francisco advocacy group, simultaneously held a news conference to protest the ongoing arrests of poor and homeless people who are living or hanging out on the streets.
While the group commended Newsom for prioritizing supportive housing for homeless people and for offering homeless people needed social services, they said that giving numerous citations to people on the streets for such offenses as sleeping, panhandling and public urination is a waste of city money.
San Francisco has spent more than $7.8 million in taxpayer dollars to issue, file and adjudicate 46,684 citations since Newsom came into office, according to the group’s study of public records, including documents from the Police Department and the District Attorney’s Office.
“It’s totally ineffective and extremely expensive,” said the group’s founder, Sister Bernie Galvin. “It drags poor and homeless people into the criminal justice system.”
San Francisco is ready to revive a crackdown on low-level crimes committed by homeless people and others hanging out on the streets of the South of Market area, Newsom confirmed this week.
The program, called the “downtown outreach plan,” will use teams of police officers and social service staff working in a 15-block area, from Third Street to Fifth Street and Market to Harrison streets. Officers will tell offenders committing such crimes as littering, blocking the sidewalk and intoxication that they can take offered city services or receive a citation.
A count conducted by The City at the start of this year identified 6,377 people as homeless.
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examiner critic said:
The 'homeless' are getting help. It's the bums and vagrants that are making the problem unmanageable by refusing the help needed to get off the street and become productive citizens.
113 agree | 101 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
i used to be homeless. i never once smoked, drank, or used drugs. there was just not any cheap housing i can afford in the bigger cities, especially CA area. and yes i panhandled at times, and i never once misused the money. in fact a guy once who took me to a grocery store said i was making such wise food choices he gave me an extra $5 in cash because he said he trusted me to spend it wisely. the money i received at times panhandling enabled me to wash my clothes, buy a prepaid cell phone, bus passes, etc, all of which enabled me to look for jobs which helped get me OFF the streets. as a Christian, the Bible commands us to help the less fortunate. somehow i cannot picture Jesus driving by and yelling ""GO TO XXXXING MCDONALDS"" like so many people do who believe the way michael medved believes. if people really wanna end homeless they should work hard to make $50-100 a week cheap rooming houses made available in SAFE AREAS of bigger cities. many times when i had little money i would r
99 agree | 100 disagree
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bob said:
You can tell an election year is coming up when the politicians re-discover the homeless.
109 agree | 95 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
Sister Bernie Galvin is right. We shouldn't give tickets to persons who use drugs, deficate and urinate in public. WE NEED TO HAVE THEM INSTITUTIONALIZED. That is the only way to get them the help they need. Force the homeless drug addicts and alcoholics into institutionalized treatment. Don't ask, just do it.
125 agree | 125 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
Let's see - the city of San Francisco doesn't want the Blue Angels, the Marines filming advertisements, Junior ROTC in the schools - but more programs to attract homeless and ID cards for illegal aliens are OK. Maybe we can form an Illegal Homeless Militia to prevent Al Qaeda from attacking SF?
116 agree | 113 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
Why should we expect the homeless to make some effort to stand on their own two feet when they can come to SF and bleed the city dry and run amuck by abusing the misguided generosity and tolerance of the citizenry? Most of the people in San Francisco are HOMELESS BY CHOICE - it's a perfectly acceptable lifestyle to them. Talking about "treatment" and "job training" is fine and dandy, but like the old joke about how many psychiatrists it takes to change a lightbulb, the vast majority of homeless types panhandling, wandering around stoned, and defecating in the streets are only going to change when they find that they can't get away with their current "lifestyle choice". Every homeless person in this city should be presented with 4 choices: Go to a supervised shelter, get treatment, get out of town, or go to jail. That would take care of 90% of the problem right there.
137 agree | 104 disagree
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william said:
No matter what Gavin Newsom or anyone else proposes or does, there will always be some group that will be "outraged". Plans on dealing with the homeless issue need to keep the best interests of EVERYONE in the city in mind, and not cater to the shrill hysterical so-called "activists" who do nothing else but impede any effort to move ahead.
148 agree | 91 disagree
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burnedout said:
If bums and winos don't care enough to clean up their own act, why should anyone else care about them? I am so sick of fending off aggressive panhandlers and dirtbags near Moscone Center that all I care about is hoping this city will finally come to its senses, round these people up, and run them all out of town!
141 agree | 96 disagree
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a reader... said:
One problem with dealing with the homeless is the liberal tendency to make everyone out who suffers from some misfortune as "victims". People who become homeless through fire, earthquake, flood, or some other natural calamity are victims, and are deserving of our sympathy and help. However, those who insist on making really bad choices (i.e. over-indulging in drugs or alcohol) must accept the contribution of their own behavior to their own predicament. The bleeding hearts who can't bear to place the blame where it belongs when people wind up on the streets due to their own reckless behavior are as much of the problem as the alcoholics and addicts sleeping on the street...
160 agree | 124 disagree
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Marvin the Martian said:
Many people have proposed using old military bases as homeless centers, run by the Salvation Army or some other private charity with a reasonable reputation of actually helping people instead of using the donations to pay their execs inflated salaries. The idea is that you could have a supervised atmosphere, off the street, free of drugs and alcohol, and work on giving these people medical assistance and job training/placement. Unfortunately, the lest time this was suggested, the "Homeless Advocates" that Gretchen mentioned previously started screaming that Bush and Halliburton were conspiring to build concentration camps for the poor. It's really hard to sit down and come up with new approached to the issues when the Homeless Advocates are as mentally ill and detached from reality as the people they claim to be helping...
111 agree | 105 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
We have plenty of homeless people in San Francisco already. Why do we want to launch any new programs that are only going to attract more of the same?
148 agree | 98 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
Regarding the comments about people coming from out of town to take advantage of benefits for locals: in any type of program where public funds are set aside for social services (in effect transfer payments), there needs to be a considerable amount of safeguarding and vigilance to prevent these programs from being abused and turned into endless cash spigots from the taxpayers. Unfortunately, we have a lot of people in SF who wear their hearts on their sleeve, and don't understand the importance of defining the scope of a program and keeping some semblance of fiscal accountability. There is a fine line between providing people with the help they need vs. creating an bigger load on the system by creating incentives for destructive behavior. I am not a big Newsom fan, but I did support Care Not Cash because merely handing out $400/month was creating a significant market for drugs and alcohol among the homeless.
102 agree | 111 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
Some good comments here. Finally, some rational, thought out approaches to how the city can address some of these serious issues and policies that really are not compasionate to the homeless by keeping them homeless and enabling their depdencies and burdening the taxpayers by re-introducing proven failed programs of the past, only to come up with the neighbors picking up the trash of the homeless. 1st, I personally would like to see an audit of all these programs, and if they are ineffective, then they should be phased out or merged with a program that IS effective. 2nd, substance abusers aside, I agree with Gretchen's previous point on the mental health issue. These are people who truly cannot help themselves and can pose a danger to the greater population (and themselves). I believe there's a big distinction with the people that can (but won't help themselves) and those that truly are incapable of helping themselves - I suspect this # is relatively small.
113 agree | 114 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
A third question that should follow from the 2 asked by Weldon should be what should be the proper scope of San Francisco's effort to "help" the homeless - the entire world or those who are legitimate residents of the city. The idealism/ego of the typical SF resident sees him/herself as an advocate/activist for change, and is willing to embrace all sorts of legislation (and spending) to achieve that end. However, this results in burdening the taxpayers of the city with various crusades that aren't really thought out in advance. This attempt to provide all this extra special treatment to the homeless has the unintended consequence of MAGNIFYING the homeless problem in the city as a certain segment of the population is unfortunately attracted by the taxpayer-funded socal services and permissive attitude (as well as the misguided tendency of people to hand out cash to people with "will work for food signs"). This merely attracts homeless from other cities to relocate here.
106 agree | 105 disagree
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Weldon said:
In dealing with the homeless in SF, we need to deal with this as a 2-part question - the first question being "What are the primary causes of homelessness" and the second one, "Why are there disproportionately more homeless in SF than neighboring cities?" The answer to the first question: mental illness, substance abuse, and mental illness brought on by substance abuse. The answer to the second question: San Francisco, thanks to cash handouts, extensive "services", and a lax attitude toward enforcing littering, public intoxication, and vagrancy laws, is a relatively attractive place to hang out compeared to most other cities in California. While this city may not be responsible for the first question, it certainly is for the second. The people of SF need to decide whether they are responsible for assuming the burden of homeless people who migrate from other locations and act accordingly.
154 agree | 106 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
A "5150" will lock a person up for 72 hours. After that, unless you've made a solid case for continued custody in that limited time, they are likely back on the streets. a conservatorship, assuming someone wants to be the conservator, will likely take months to implement. The law does not currently allow dosing people with medicine without their permission. However, some programs for schizophrenics have enjoyed some success offering subsidized housing on balance for the clients continued participation in a regimen of medicine. Compliance with the program is followed up on by a social worker. In California, until the late 1960's, there were state agencies/institutions which provided care for these individuals. However, in a trend towards individual autonomy and a failed assumption that local counties would implement programs and provide housing, the state stopped providing much of its resources, which likely facilitated at least some of the current situation.
124 agree | 113 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
From what I can see, 80% of the 'homeless' are really substance abusers. If we can solve that, we can solve a majority of the problem. These are the drunks and druggies that terrorize us when we're trying to get to work and make our streets a toilet bowl... It's time we take a firm stand on this, help them to be contributing members of society, and stop wasting taxpayer $$ on cleaning up their mess! Enough is enough!
101 agree | 116 disagree
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jimsr said:
The mayor needs to stop muddling through this problem. With a 6 Billion budget ( 3 times the amount needed to run a city this size), he has more than enough resources to implement a comprehensive program. Instead, he has hired a staff to basically implement a federal program that is addressing less than 25% of the problem.
104 agree | 122 disagree
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Gretchen said:
Right - and when the next 8.0 quake hits it will change the definition of "homeless." However, that is no reason to tolerate our current crop of vagrants until then. I agree completely that many if not most of the homeless have mental problems, and I firmly believe that we as a society should take care of them. But "taking care of them" doesn't mean enabling them by providing services that still leave them homeless. Many of these folks belong in a hospital setting. We would never condone allowing a child to be abandoned and unable to care for himself but we seem to think that if someone is over 21 and has mental problems we have no responsibility for hospitalizing them. There are statutes such as the 5150 diagnosis that states that if someone is "A danger to himself or others" he can be involuntarily hospitalized. Many would agree that a large number of the homeless are a danger to themselves and should be placed into inpatient mental treatment facilities.
153 agree | 104 disagree
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Gretchen said:
At least the term "Homeless Advocates" is right on target. These people advocate homelessness because they are rewarded for doing so. Either they make money off the homeless industry or they get that "feel good by helping others" experience, but the net-net is that if the homeless disappeared these folks would have nothing to do. Of course they advocate homelessness. We hear that "Being homeles is not a crime." Well maybe it should be. Maybe that's what it will take to get the homeless off the street. Instead we have "quality of life crimes" - most of which are committed by the homeless - but we're too chicken to admit that if homelessness were a crime these other crimes would go away. People who are homeless need to be moved into a shelter, a mental hospital, a medical hospital, or jail. If they are truly "choosing" to be homeless, then give then a tent, a park pass, and a one-way ticket to Yosemite.
133 agree | 124 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
When Gavin Newsom becomes Mayor he'll do something about this.
152 agree | 114 disagree
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Harassed by homeless people everyday said:
Since when do homeless people dictate city policy. Homeless people have no respect for your cities environment and the people who live here. There is no contribution on their part to make this city tolerable of their existence.
121 agree | 114 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
There is no easy solution to this. It's a systemic problem. I don't mind cleaning up the streets though some means rather than leaving it as is.
122 agree | 118 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
Sister Bernie Gavin has been bleating the same tired message for a very long time. Wake up, sister - the "homeless" you so passionately support commit a myriad of quality of life crimes that have turned San Francisco into a squalid, third-world city. Why not ring up the Pope - with the Catholic Church's vast wealth, it could eradicate poverty overnight if it so chose. Instead, his eminence prefers to squander the Vatican's ill-gotten wealth on Prada footware.
157 agree | 97 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
I fully support the crackdown. Actually, I'd fully support putting street drunks and druggies on the drunk farm for 90 days. They can grow food for themselves and the jail and sleep in bunks. Don't like that? Then get outta Dodge. This "homeless" biz has been going on for 25 years. It's time to end it. I support the cops rousting these bums and pointing them to the bus station. I no longer care about their "issues". And it isn't my job to provide housing to people who won't work.
128 agree | 105 disagree
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