Ten years ago…then-Mayor Gavin Newsom promised that San Francisco’s seemingly unsolvable homeless problem would be cleared away in 10 years. On June 30, 2004, Newsom unveiled his Ten Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness, a 70-page opus written by former Supervisor Angela Alioto and more than 30 other city officials, homeless advocates, business leaders and others. Newsom and the plan’s writers believed that by today, the city’s 3,000 chronically homeless people — the longest-term, most in-your-face transients — would have been brought inside and housed. Newcomers to the streets would be dealt with quickly. And emergency shelters would cease to exist, because nobody would need them.
It’s been said that you can tell a lot about a city by examining the way it treats the least among them- the poor, the sick, the homeless, the mentally ill, the elderly. By that yardstick, San Francisco has much to be ashamed of. Ten years ago, Mayor Gavin Newsom (now California’s Lieutenant Governor) put forth a plan that, if implemented, was intended to eradicate homelessness in San Francisco. The plan was adopted and , thanks to the Law of Unintended Consequences, San Francisco’s homeless situation is arguably worse than it was in 2004.
The blame can’t and shouldn’t be laid at Newsom’s feet, though some of the plan’s assumptions and goals proved to be overly optimistic and unrealistic. Newsom left office, and with him went most of the momentum to make eliminating homelessness a city-wide priority. The city hasn’t completely abandoned Newsom’s plan, but a new mayor has meant new priorities, and in Ed Lee’s case that’s meant development, of which there’s no lack in San Francisco. That’s not to imply that Lee should be judged harshly; I don’t know enough about him or his programs and priorities to speak with any moral authority.
What I do know is that I’ve never walked around a city in which the homeless appear to be so thoroughly abandoned to their fate as they are in San Francisco. The chronically- and in some cases, aggressively- mentally ill are legion. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen so many people sleeping on city streets. Walking to breakfast, I grew accustomed to stepping over somnolent bodies on sidewalks. There’s something very wrong about a city that allows such an intolerable situation to continue unabated.
I’m not going to say that San Francisco isn’t doing anything to help the homeless on their streets, because it’s not that simple. Homelessness is a seemingly intractable dilemma, a problem with no readily available solution. Plug one hole in the dike…and another pops up somewhere else. Humanity may never, no matter how well-intentioned we may be, solve homelessness. That said, what’s happening- and allowed to continue- in San Francisco is unconscionable and displays an immense lack of compassion. Go to the area around Union Square and you’ll see raggedy, disheveled, long-unwashed people panhandling or sleeping on the sidewalks amongst high-end retail shops. The homeless are everywhere, and there’s no way to avoid encountering them. Many are profoundly mentally ill, left to their own devices…even with all the gilt and opulence San Francisco has to offer. That says a lot about the city’s priorities…and it’s something it should feel no small degree of shame over.
I love San Francisco; it’s an amazing, beautiful place with a rich history and a bright future. I can’t begin to understand how it can rationalize abandoning their homeless and mentally ill. It feels like Ayn Rand’s Objectivism writ large…and it’s an embarrassment to a city that could easily make caring for the least among them a priority.
