[roguecoder]

My local camp is great: no drug use, good structures, waste disposal and a portapotty provided by the city. And because there are always people around, we have less crime otherwise.

The problem comes when there aren't better options for people: neighborhoods break down and rather than get to know the people of their community, the haves come to see their neighbors, many of whom were here before the haves moved in and jacked up rents, as somehow less than human. When someone's very existence is seen as a threat, yeah, you'll end up opposing the effective policy solutions and instead look to ineffective punitive solutions that further destroy the basic bonds of society.

You can always move to Walnut Creak. San Francisco has always been thus (or worse), and the expectation that it's going to transform into your shiny polished city of glass and steel is a remarkably clear description of the entitlement behind gentrification. This was their city: you are the interloper here.

[closeparen]

So the rough sleepers I see are the people whose city it was - people with jobs and households, relationships and support networks. They got renewal offers they couldn’t sign, and had nowhere to go / no money to relocate when their leases expired.

Jesus. For like $3,000 I can buy someone a plane ticket to a more reasonable market and a few weeks of temporary accommodation there. That’s all they would need to have permanent normal lives again, and our government is somehow not doing this? Who even cares, if this is real I’ll do it myself starting tomorrow.

Or could it be that our social services agencies are not actually stupid, and the homeless population has extensive special needs that are incompatible with the modern world for deep-seated reasons unlikely to change this century?