If you build it, they will come.
San Francisco doesn’t have a homeless problem—it has a substance-abuse crisis. And Project Roomkey, California governor Gavin Newsom’s hotels-for-homeless plan that he’s touting as a model for the rest of the country, won’t help any more than a band-aid will cure a cancer patient.
Block after block, you’ll see thousands of people who are barely alive. Some are alone; others are piled on top of one another, running into traffic, or standing slumped over, unconscious. They’ll be injecting or smoking heroin, fentanyl, and methamphetamine in front of you, unaware or unfazed by your presence. Scabs cover their faces and bodies, limbs are swollen red and blue, often bloody and oozing pus. You’ll notice the garbage, rotting food, discarded drug detritus, and feces surrounding them. A shocking number are mere teenagers, but many are old or have aged well before their time.
Most Progressive.
Apart from their distain for the obvious,that being behaviour that is rewarded persists,what we mere normals see as wasted lives,destroyed potential and human tragedy,our Progressive Comrades see “Opportunity”.
For all the evidence points to their desire to extract as much personal benefit as they can from the suffering these people inflict upon themselves and the society around them.
Everywhere that tax dollars have been diverted into “helping” the numbers needing help have exploded and those tax dollars have vanished into the same suit pockets ..
“Forward”.
In hindsight we would be better served by hiring the junkies and hanging the Progressive.
no real surprise – every study shows that in the homeless population there is a super high number of people who have an addiction of some sort (alcohol and/or drugs) and usually a mental health issue as well. Yes there are some people who prefer to be on the streets (traditionally the hobos who have attained some kind of cult status) and others that are temporarily homeless. But a continuing homeless status is a direct result of those issues – if all your money is going to drugs, there is no money for rent and you get booted out. Little success in dealing with homelessness unless the problem is recognized – the Housing First approach seems to work (still relatively new approach) BUT it requires a lot of support to ensure that the client is addressing his/her issues. But it is the best approach to date. Paying for accommodation without addressing the addiction/mental health issues is just silly.
I hate having to even drive through San Francisco… the roads are so rough that it throws the car’s alignment out, and once you’re transiting through San Francisco, you have to be extremely watchful of bums stepping out in front of your vehicle in hopes of getting a big payday… yeah, they’re faking being hit by a vehicle so they can get rides to a warm hospital / a warm meal for the night and a payday from the car insurance companies… having cameras on your vehicle is a must if you’re driving through San Francisco.
Walking through San Francisco is not recommended… and if you do, carry a weapon (I carry a Leatherman with a knife that is razor sharp, sharpened on a ceramic whetstone to be so sharp it’ll nick you if you just touch the edge), wear steel-toed boots with puncture-resistant soles, and carry your cash in the toe of your sock. Walk fast, don’t stop for anyone no matter what, keep one hand on your weapon and keep your head on a swivel. Don’t jaywalk, the police look upon the honest citizenry as a cash cow and won’t hesitate to overlook a bum beating another bum to death or using illegal drugs right out in the open, so they can instead ticket you for walking across an empty street. In San Francisco, the bums AND the police are predatory… they ARE out to get you… and the police literally have a license to kill… so they’re more dangerous than the bums and the druggies.
I once looked forward to my semi-annual business trips to SF. But that was 35 years or so ago. Given your narrative, Clyde, I no longer miss those trips. I’ll just remember SF as it was.
“I’ll just remember SF as it was.”
ditto
If you’re going to SAN Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.
I left my heart, in SAN Francisco…..
Ah, the good old days….
*
“be sure to wear some flowers in your hair”
and hip-waders.
*
I went there in 1988 and it was a mess back then.
So all it could do was go lower.
And even WORSE than driving through SF ? … PARKING in SF !! Let your vehicle out of your sight for 5 minutes … and you will return to find windows smashed, radio gone, glovebox emptied. And NO … that’s NOT an exaggeration.
Oh, that’s another good tip… only drive a vehicle with a manual transmission in San Francisco. No one wants to steal a car with a manual transmission, because not very many even know how to drive a manual transmission… they wouldn’t even know how to get it moving.
The only vehicle I’ll drive into San Francisco is a basic model Hyundai… it doesn’t even have a radio, or cruise control, or electric seats, or A/C or anything ‘luxurious’, it’s as basic as I could find it… I like it that way, less stuff to break, less stuff to cost big $$ to get fixed, less stuff to get stolen.
It was a dealership loaner car. I got it for 1/3 the price of a new vehicle, it was only 1 year old when I bought it, and had 9 miles on it. No one wanted to drive it because it’s got a manual transmission.
Insurance is dead cheap, too. Less than $125/yr from Geico.
And because I did a hard break-in of the engine, changed the oil frequently as the engine broke in, and use tungsten disulfide (the most lubricious substance known to man) in the engine and transmission oil, it gets ~40 MPG. That little 4-banger 1.4 L engine will get up and do 135 MPH. I have to feather on and off the accelerator for anything under 60 MPH.
It’s a bit tricky maneuvering the hills with a manual transmission, but once you’ve learned to feather the clutch and the hand brake as you’re pulling out from a stop on a hill, and once you’ve learned how to double-clutch to down-shift on steep down-slopes, it becomes second nature.
My daily runabout is a 1990 BMW 325i manual 5-speed. And I taught all of my kids to drive a stick. When they went to Europe … where 90% of the rental cars are manual … they were the only ones in their group who could drive the car.
There will never be a solution to the homeless problem in SF … CA … or anywhere else in America. Why? Because a long time ago, we replaced a “judgmental God” with … “Tolerance”. That “tolerance” includes (perhaps primarily) drug use. We are on the brink of legal marijuana across the nation, and virtually all drugs have been legalized in Oregon … and are defacto legalized in CA.
The thing about a “judgemental God” is that the deity actually CARED about people. Those “judgements” were born of TRUTH. “Tolerance” doesn’t give a shit. Gavin Newsom doesn’t give a shit. Newsom only cares about empty political virtue signaling. The judgement of God deeply cares about every life and soul.
“Tolerance” is a fine thing, if it means you will no longer hate me because I have long hair … or a couple of tats. But when “Tolerance” excuses and ignores destructive behavior … it is Satan’s handiwork. Gavin Newsom would NEVER in a million years … pass “judgement” … on the languishing mentally ill, or drug users … because according to the leftist rubric … that would be worse than death … worse than suffering.
Well Said Kenji…well said.
The Wuhan flu seems to have given Canada’s “homeless” (numbers), a massive boost.
The progressives on pretty much every stinking Town/City Council in the Country all in lockstep on that issue as well: “SAFE Injection sites” blah blah blah etc….and always in a Downtown core area. YVR, Calgary, Edm..well just keep naming cities till ya get to Halifax….SAME SHIT.
I remember back in the good old days, when we had the Superman radio serials preaching against those who would incite hatred and violence in order to gain political power. I remember CBS bringing on old man Kraft (of Kraft cheese fame), who would actually cite Bible verses and pray on-air.
We’ve gone from “Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Superman!” to “Look! Up in this guy! It’s a gerbil!” so fast that most didn’t even notice that America was crumbling around them.
Hiding the problem is not just inhumane and impractical; it’s how the left hides the fact that its policies do not work.
SF had been going downhill for years. Long time ago we watched one of the “derelicts” shuffling the mortal coil two blocks from Union Square. What people don’t realize is amount of money spent on their “helpers”. Armies of NGO’s get government money to “help the homeless”. Mostly they are helping themselves.
The problem is that they always demand Federal Funding, everyone else’s money for their problems……..
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/federal-funding-will-allow-city-to-build-housing-on-unimaginable-scale/
Observing and thinking about this for a long time, came to the conclusion that Americans, as good a bunch as they are have this idea that nothing can happen to them as a result of being good people.
There might have been some truth to it in the after WWII years when there were boom times and things went rather on autopilot.
That of course was not good enough for the communists, socialist and fascists that were laying low to wait when the can overcome.
Well, as it always is with the ”ists, they have all the time in the world and have nothing to lose.
Their time has come. They are just about there. One would venture to say that those Americans that get up every morning to go to work don’t know much of the scummy underbelly of the system.
It’s not necessarily their fault, from observation they are engaged, though the mass media cartel that they usually consume, of course promote certain ideology, intentionally and completely avoiding the whole story.
The more crises, the better. The more power and control that bureaucrats and politicians can accrue to themselves.
The “problems” don’t “get solved”, because they benefit the people in charge. More departments, more staff, more budget.
Kevin
You’re Describing Alberta Health Services to a TEE..!!
More “management” than front line workers….all well above “Sunshine” Levels of pay to boot…
ABSOLUTELY TRUE Kevin ……
Read Robert Higgs’s seminal book, Crisis and Leviathan from the mid 80s. Had an enormous impact on me, tho I was pretty well seasoned by libertarian literature, the Austrian school of economics and Franz Kafka.
Oh, and again, avoid bitter disappointment: forget UDI. The zeitgeist is not in place and never will be.
This pragmatic libertarian says, sans blush, sans hesitation:
INVOLUNTARY INTERNMENT AND TREATMENT.
Nothing else will work.
But I don’t think the Zeitgeist will allow it and will ever move in this direction.
Thomas Szasz was wrong.
Not to worry. All those hobo addicts are dying in droves from covid and they’ve been collecting the bodies and burning them in big open pits for a year now so the hobo addicts will naturally become a thing of the past.
What? You say that isn’t happening? Surely if there were a Pandemic the death toll would be astronomic among drug abusing hobos!/