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SF the city of vagrants, homeless and druggos

11K views 19 replies 11 participants last post by  EDBTZ 
#1 ·
What's with the insane number of the above mentioned people essentially occupying the streets of both San Francisco and Oakland?

It's not just Market Street and the Tenderloin, they're everywhere. Plenty roaming around up at Fishermans Wharf and still many to be found roaming in some suburban neighborhoods of SF. Even a typical suburban park or underpass has a couple of tents. Had to ride on BART for at least 30 minutes out of downtown to find areas without them.

Powell Street BART station has a big cluster even in the daytime. Got on the train there to head over to Oakland and one of them had such an odour that it stunk out half the carriage.

Oakland seems to be some kind of failed state and much of it seems decrepit apart from the odd warehouse that functions as a hipster establishment. You'd think with it's proximity to San Francisco that it would actually be something.

Really ruins the city, leaves a bad taste in your mouth and makes you feel unsafe yet the locals seems to pretend the problem doesn't exist.

What's caused this city to go that way? Do other places just send their vagrants and homeless people to San Francisco on one way tickets? Does everybody feel sorry for these people so they won't do anything about them?

Even walking into the Westfield San Francisco centre one evening there was a bunch of 14 year old vagrants smoking dope inside, lovely.

Los Angeles is hardly any better in the wrong areas, but as I said, just in the wrong areas. It's everywhere in San Francisco. No other city is like this.
 
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#2 ·
LA more than holds its own in this area. Maybe 60k in the city as a whole. The same sense of entitlement to set up tents or structures on sidewalks and other public spaces, collect food, clothing and medical care, and live their lives there, mostly stoned out of their minds.
 
#3 ·
it's also more prevalent in california because of the weather. it's much easier to survive a winter with 50 degree average temps than 20 or 30 degree averages.

there have also been many documented cases of cities giving their homeless one way tickets to california, a practice called homeless dumping.
 
#4 ·
San Diego has a few but far far less than SF or LA. Would think it would be an obvious place for them to flock to, fairly safe, warmest climate on the coast and next to Mexico.
 
#6 · (Edited)
The reaon why SF has many homless and why their population is increasing it's because the city has allow them to do so, but the rabbit's hole goes deep in that regard. SF is known for diversity friendly not just for LGTB but any other groups rejected by society somewhere else from being weird or awkward, in SF they're welcome as long as we all get along without forcing our ways to others ( I support it) and believe it or not, homeless are included in this group of people by most San Franciscans.

They stink, they cause bad image and unconfort but people just let them be..other than owners kicking them out their shops or restaurants, for the majority of San Franciscans, if they don't mess with you, they are free and allowed to be homeless because they want to be and are treated just as a poor minority, that's why they city don't take actions to address its homlees problem.
 
#7 ·
I really fail to understand L2's sense of scandalized outrage at seeing the perfect illustration of the wealth disparity and housing crisis in the Bay Area.

Locals don't react because to us it's just the nature of the city and the area, plus what do you propose we do? Keep in mind a solution is one that actually addresses the causes of the problem rather than just shipping human beings elsewhere because they are deemed unsightly or make tourists and visiting suburbanites uncomfortable. Which as a short-term solution, I might point out, is definitely way more entitled and pretentious than whatever a few of the homeless may feel. If anything their accused sense of 'entitlement' is merely the knowledge that they make certain people uncomfortable along with the realization that they can leverage this to their advantage, which is why many people choose to ignore them on the street.

In general I rarely see the homeless interact with other people unless they're asking for money, which a brief 'no' is all that needs to be said to get them out of your hair. They are mostly harmless to people who aren't themselves, except obviously their mere presence seems to insight some interesting responses from those not used to them. There are many mentally ill among the homeless too (that category also describes many of the so-called 'druggos'), and us Californians can thank Ronald Regan's stint as governor for closing all the asylums and many state psychiatric facilities for that. This released a large population of people who otherwise could not work into the general population, of course they would end up homeless. The newer population can be attributed in large part to run-away teens and the foreclosure crisis of 2008; and as already mentioned the famous California weather draws homeless from other places.

But all in all, thinking that most of the homeless want to be homeless is far from reality, and solving the problem has to be through the lens of helping them rather than just following the desire to get rid of them. How that can be done, I'm not really sure.
 
#8 ·
San Francisco has always had a history with homeless people... back in the 60's a lot of them were called hippies

Cities that are walkable, have good public transportation, good weather, a vast park system, and left-leaning politics usually is a perfect recipe for homelessness.

You can't really blame them for being in SF. If I was homeless on the mainland USA, i'd probably want to be in San Francisco or at least a place where the weather won't kill me in the winter.
 
#9 ·
In other cities, a lot of people on the edges of society live in marginal housing but aren't truly homeless. Someone who is an alcoholic or addict and makes minimum wage can sort of scrape by without actually being homeless or relying on shelters because there are dumpy places for them to live. Or maybe they are homeless but they live in a car or tent in an out of the way location.So the problem they represent is invisible as they aren't on the streets or looking for charity or handouts. Historically, the demolition of "skid row" slum districts is what caused homelessness crises in cities around the country, so maybe the past is merely repeating itself.

For example, my city has a lot of old motels from the 1950's which have changed their business to low cost extended stay. They are where extremely poor families, recently released prisoners, drifters, drug addicts, and all sorts of other vulnerable people live. We also have old unregulated trailer parks and places in the country where people live in dilapidated dwellings. And in town, since rents are cheap the oldest least desirable areas have lots of homes with renters and subleased tenants, etc.

If my town suddenly became as gentrified as SF, where would these people go? The shelters aren't big enough and not all of these people are sane or reasonable enough to follow the shelter rules.

I imagine many of them would become street people.
 
#10 ·
Yes. Those converted motels with welfare housing are so common now that they even have a name: "Obama villages". Druggies, hookers and the plain old burnt out live there, sometimes working as maids, with the pimps and dealers hanging outside. But these tend to be away from city centers, more in small towns and at freeway off-ramps. They became available when the lower middle-class no longer had the money to stay in motels.

As someone noted, most of the homeless DO have homes; they just come out during the day and make the sidewalk dirty, stinking and full of their litter. Usually harmless unless they get short of drugs, which can make them very aggressive, often toward the elderly or handicapped.

As for causes, that is actually very simple. They made very bad decisions when young to drink and do drugs rather than develop life skills. Welfare supported this approach and now they feel entitled to it, as a human right, just like their lifestyle is a human right. You often hear them, when being evicted from a restaurant of store they are acting out in, call for some one to protect their legal right to be there.
 
#11 ·
We have similar issues in Manchester in the UK (perhaps not quite as harsh as SF).
I've visited San Francisco a couple of times (going back a few years since my last visit) and it was pretty noticeable (certainly around the Tenderloin), although never felt aggressive (Market Street seemed to have sections of many homeless playing chess all day?).
The night-time was different I guess. OI remember seeing a guy in an eletric wheel chair wedged (at an angle) into a doorway asleep.
It seems for our city, the better it's doing economically, the more homeless you're likely to see (not all of them are local).
We have a new Mayor who is determined to help the problem (and it's vastly complicated).
 
#12 ·
I don't think there is ever going to be any solution to solving homelessness within urban areas in the western world. As long as we impose restrictive land use policies its going to be difficult to provide them housing. We already have trouble getting middle class people housing as is, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that people at the bottom get shut out of the housing market completely.

I can't really speak for the homeless in SF, but in Hawaii a lot of homeless that aren't mentally troubled or drug addicted have jobs and just can't find an affordable place to live. For the homeless that do have addiction and mental problems its going to require 100% subsidies to house them as they have no source of income and there are is no market interested in helping them.

Another aspect to consider is that some people wan't to live that lifestyle. While not the vast majority, I know a few hippy type guys that were sick or paying bills. Most of them were older and have social security as an income source. One guy named Billy who hangs outside my work actually sold his home in Malibu and decided to live an entirely new life on the streets in HNL. A local magazine did a story on him a few years back and it shows how complex dealing with this issue is.

Homelessness is a problem that has been with humanity since the beginning of time so I highly doubt there will ever be a solution in our lifetime. Even with all the homeless, SF is still a great place to be :)
 
#13 ·
Not sure where your facts come from. As you note, there is a revolving group of people temporarily homeless who then get back on their feet and get a job and housing. The social welfare system works poorly for them but it sort of works eventually

But that's not the problem. The problem is people who assert their right not to be involved in drug or mental treatment facilities because they enjoy taking drugs and do so at every opportunity; or have been repeatedly thrown out of these facilities for dealing drugs to others trying to recover. That's the 30k now in DT LA with 20 square blocks of tents and rampant drug dealing and the law of the jungle. Likewise multiple smaller areas in SF and other cities.
 
#15 ·
I do wish there were an article showing this, I have my suspicion that they work with non-profits or do a lot of things themselves, and somehow instead of being able to make progress they have started to become more bureaucratic and bloated in terms of payroll. Which would be a real shame, as these programs are meant to help the homeless, not employ people, that is a secondary benefit.

But that is just speculation, I wish the Chronicle or someone could run through the budget and see where the money is going.
 
#16 ·
Yeah, I have a feeling that all of these non-profits employees are getting salaries way above the SF poverty line (was it 120k?). It would be interesting to see how much of the total spend is administrative expense. I'm sure it must be public info, but I'm too lazy to look it up. :)
 
#19 ·
Generally, this isn't the kind that is covered publicly. My info comes mostly just from watching LA politics.

This particular one was a recent high rise in City West, which was long-delayed in spite of being a great project. Then they made a 2M donation to Virginia Cervantes' organization for homeless women and the local councilman gave the OK (LA effectively allows councilmen to veto projects in their district). Cervantes is a long-term political activist trained at MALDEF, former city employee and then on the staff of the councilman in question before leaving to run the "private" charity organization.

I think you can find the name of the project with a little search. It was maybe 3-6 months ago.
 
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