They supa-cool to the homeless
OK. Internets, have any of you ever been to San Francisco? I know some of you live here, and/or work here, and you're gonna know what I mean even if you disagree with me, but I also want a check-in from visitors to this filthy burg.
So, here's why I ask: Today's sfgate has a story about a new plan from Mayor Gavin "Tad" "Chaz" "Blaine" Newsom's office to deal with the rampant, festering problems created by homeless/bum/vagrant types in the downtown area.
The problems created by these people in this area -- which is full of office buildings such as the one in which I work, shopping meccas, movie theaters, restaurants and touristed thoroughfares -- include but are not limited to the following:
--Top-volume screaming, for hours at a time
--Lunging at people
--Aggressive panhandling (like, following you for BLOCKS, calling you bitch and worse)
--Masturbating
--Urinating
--Defecating
--Collapsing in drug-induced stupors in the middle of sidewalks
--Smashing empty MD 20/20 bottles on the ground
--Vomiting on innocent tourists' shoes
--Fucking
And this is EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. It's degrees of magnitude worse than anything I ever saw in NYC in the early nineties (not a bright spot in NYC's history, FYI). Many of the offenders are very seriously mentally ill, and the rest are generally the chronic homeless; it's to the point where your standard quiet wino, sitting with his back against the Bechtel building, swigging some wine "hidden" by a paper bag, looks like right pleasant company, compared to the shrieking, lurching, smell-him-from-four-blocks away curbside urinator down the street a bit.
So, Mayor "I Heart Teens" Newsom's plan for dealing with this intractable problem:
The city will send teams of outreach workers and police officers to offer social services to any homeless person caught littering, camping, trespassing, urinating, defecating, blocking sidewalks or publicly intoxicated.
If the homeless people refuse the services, they will receive a citation and will be told to appear in traffic court in 45 days. If a person is caught committing another quality-of-life crime within the same 8-hour period, he or she will be taken into custody.
I read this, and thought -- well, it's a little weak, but at least it's SOMETHING, and the social services angle might even help some people -- good going, Gav! But just a couple of paragraphs down, the goddamned tiresome bullshit begins -- the same tiresome bullshit that is forever being trotted out in this town:
some members of the Board of Supervisors and advocates for homeless people smell a re-election shift toward criminalizing homelessness and sound as if they are prepared for a City Hall showdown if the administration doesn't change course.
And there you have it, folks -- San Francisco in a nutshell.
So, here's why I ask: Today's sfgate has a story about a new plan from Mayor Gavin "Tad" "Chaz" "Blaine" Newsom's office to deal with the rampant, festering problems created by homeless/bum/vagrant types in the downtown area.
The problems created by these people in this area -- which is full of office buildings such as the one in which I work, shopping meccas, movie theaters, restaurants and touristed thoroughfares -- include but are not limited to the following:
--Top-volume screaming, for hours at a time
--Lunging at people
--Aggressive panhandling (like, following you for BLOCKS, calling you bitch and worse)
--Masturbating
--Urinating
--Defecating
--Collapsing in drug-induced stupors in the middle of sidewalks
--Smashing empty MD 20/20 bottles on the ground
--Vomiting on innocent tourists' shoes
--Fucking
And this is EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. It's degrees of magnitude worse than anything I ever saw in NYC in the early nineties (not a bright spot in NYC's history, FYI). Many of the offenders are very seriously mentally ill, and the rest are generally the chronic homeless; it's to the point where your standard quiet wino, sitting with his back against the Bechtel building, swigging some wine "hidden" by a paper bag, looks like right pleasant company, compared to the shrieking, lurching, smell-him-from-four-blocks away curbside urinator down the street a bit.
So, Mayor "I Heart Teens" Newsom's plan for dealing with this intractable problem:
The city will send teams of outreach workers and police officers to offer social services to any homeless person caught littering, camping, trespassing, urinating, defecating, blocking sidewalks or publicly intoxicated.
If the homeless people refuse the services, they will receive a citation and will be told to appear in traffic court in 45 days. If a person is caught committing another quality-of-life crime within the same 8-hour period, he or she will be taken into custody.
I read this, and thought -- well, it's a little weak, but at least it's SOMETHING, and the social services angle might even help some people -- good going, Gav! But just a couple of paragraphs down, the goddamned tiresome bullshit begins -- the same tiresome bullshit that is forever being trotted out in this town:
some members of the Board of Supervisors and advocates for homeless people smell a re-election shift toward criminalizing homelessness and sound as if they are prepared for a City Hall showdown if the administration doesn't change course.
And there you have it, folks -- San Francisco in a nutshell.
Labels: balls o'clock a.m., cryin' amazacrazy, indefensible positions
posted by Gleemonex at 10:50 AM
6 Comments:
The top-volume screaming was always my favorite. Seems like the type of homeless person depends on the location downtown, because some of those office security guards will smack that shit down right quick.
In other areas, less officey I suppose, the homeless are FIERCE.
But now I work in Oakland. So my opinion is for shite.
I have been a tourist in San Fran and to be honest, I must not have been too offended by the homeless shrieking because I don't remember seeing many homeless peeps. (My point being that there obviously WERE homeless people, but it was not repulsive enough, i.e. vomit on my flip flops, to overshadow the happy happy memories of the city.)
So, uh, good luck with that.
Will these outreach workers also patrol the T-line? I hate when I'm commuting home and get caught in the crossfire of an argument that involves the chucking of chicken bones.
CHICKEN BONES. Classic.
They could always adopt O'ahu's early 90s policy: by them a plane ticket to the Big Island?
See, Jory, I have long suspected that that's what Rudy "Jackboot" Giuliani did in New York -- gave all the homeless a bus ticket out of town. And most of them picked sunny California ...
That is exactly what Giuliani did. I don't want my loathing of that man to cloud the SF issue. But I have lived in both places (NYC and SF) and the indigent in NYC are largely invisible.
The homeless in SF are legendary and not in a good way. I don't know that I have an answer. But I can certainly agree that their aggressiveness is only outstripped by their vociferousness. It's bad.
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