Setting the Record Straight on San Francisco Homelessness

Its second claim---that conflict between homeless advocates and city leaders has forestalled a solution---ignores the long history of city leaders implementing homeless policies despite advocate opposition. Third, the paper mistakenly suggests that the Newsom Administration is shifting policy toward criminalizing homelessness, when police citations of homeless people have been a constant in the city since the Jordan Administration. And the paper’s fourth and perhaps most dishonest argument---that preventing people from lying on sidewalks will “solve” homelessness---ignores the most fundamental truth of all: society’s refusal to invest the money to provide alternatives to people living on the street, particularly the costly mental health facilities where many of those most complained about properly belong.

The San Francisco Chronicle has been quite busy creating a fictional local history for its readers. It’s a world where long-suffering residents are finally saying, “Enough is Enough,” where solutions are stalled by conflict between political leaders and advocates, and where increased police enforcement and the passage of a law banning sitting on the sidewalk would put an end to the scourge of widespread visible homelessness.

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