[kyro]

What was most off putting on my last trip to SF was the juxtaposition of the yuppie and homeless worlds. It wasn't uncommon to see long lines for local chic coffee shops full of young, well-to-do individuals while the homeless begged, urinated and defacated on the same stretch of sidewalk to often no acknowledgement by the former group.

I live in NYC so I see homeless people every day, but here you don't see such an unsettling and stark contrast between them and the non-homeless.

[debt]

That seems to be largest complaint I hear from tourists. SF takes care of their homeless. Matter of fact, SF programs are so good we have a problem with other states sending their homeless specifically to SF[1]. I'm from Chicago where the homeless don't have nearly the same advantages as they do here in SF(particularly the weather).

There were encampments in Grant Park in Chicago and they were forcibly removed by the police both in '68 and just a few years ago[2]. Which, again, is in stark contrast to something like Golden Gate Park here in SF where there has been a large homeless encampment for at least as long as I have lived here and probably longer[3]. That shit would just not fly in Chicago but I do like that SF actually takes care of everyone and not just the people that know the right people.

[1]http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/09/11/2602391/san-franc...

[2]http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-10-16/news/chi-occup...

[3]http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/despite-improvement-5...

[ethomson]

I'm not sure that I agree with you. I don't equate allowing homeless encampments with "taking care" of them. Many of these people have mental illness and / or drug addiction that is being ignored by the city.

I feel like San Francisco (and some of the other nearby municipalities like Berkeley) have this lassez faire mentality when it comes to their homeless population where they think that interfering would be a bad thing. That this acceptance is a healthy thing. That some guy in a tent in Golden Gate Park who yells things at passers-by and chases dogs is somehow a charming slice of life in the city and contributes to its uniqueness and not that this poor guy might benefit from antipsychotics.

But again, that's just a feeling I get that I can't really back up with anything but anecdotal evidence.

Chicago is certainly no better in terms of taking care of its homeless, as you point out: the city and state have been deprioritizing spending for years. Homeless shelters, community health organizations, addiction centers have been losing state funding and having to get federal and private grants to get by (when they can get by; certainly the number of beds available are shrinking.)

But Chicago isn't proud of the status quo and I'm surprised that San Francisco, well, seems to be.

[tptacek]

I don't understand your second graf; you seem to be referring to an Occupy protest as an "encampment of homeless people", but those two things obviously aren't equivalent.

San Francisco differs from Chicago on homelessness in two significant ways: the weather and environment is amenable year-round, while Chicago is inhospitable for 1/4 of the year, and San Francisco's politics regarding homeless people are "hands-off".

Based on the last spot counts I could find, Chicago and San Francisco have roughly comparable homeless populations, despite the fact that Chicago is more than 3x larger. That difference is not simply because Las Vegas busses homeless people to SF.

I dispute the notion that SF does a particularly good job taking care of homeless people. It's indeed possible that SF does a better job of this than Chicago and NYC, both of which see clusters of indigent people on the streets as a quality-of-life problem for residents. But if you can find a source that says SF is doing a good job of actually delivering services and getting homeless people off the streets and into society, I'd like to read it; the sources I've found say the opposite.

[debt]

The CPD definitely makes it a priority to treat people as "blight" in the more touristy areas(Grant Park, Loop, Navy Pier, North Ave. Beach, etc); be it protestors or homeless people, they're quick to, literally in some cases, extricate them from the area. The Occupy protests in NYC turned into an encampment of people for some time. They weren't homeless people, but I fail to see the difference between an encampment of homeless in a public space vs an encampment of protestors in a public space. If there's nothing from stopping the protestors, I assume they will protest indefinitely, thus they'll be "living" in Grant Park for some time.

Someone on here had mentioned something I never thought of before, and it might be a cop out I don't know but "quality of life" isn't something for people of authority or higher societal status to figure out for another person. To put it another way, just because a person is living on the street doesn't mean that person doesn't want to live on the street and you, as an individual, shouldn't make such assumptions. They may seem to be in a bad state, but, perhaps, that's their lifestyle. SF is hands-off for that reason.

The services exist in SF for those who want treatment; a homeless person may subsist on the nice weather and any government social services alone if they choose that lifestyle. People go in and get their treatment, food, medicine, blankets, etc. and then they're on their way back to their living area.

Is it right for me to judge them based on their lifestyle? Should the government insist that they're living incorrectly and explain to them that they're messed up in the head and that normal people don't want to live on the streets?

[tptacek]

Three things:

1. The difference between an Occupy encampment and a clustered homeless population is that the Occupy encampment is there to disrupt the surrounding area (that's the point: to generate awareness) and the homeless cluster is there for safety and convenience --- in other words, for the intrinsic benefit of the people in the cluster. Policy responses to those two different circumstances aren't comparable.

2. I do not disagree that displacing organic, emergent clusters of homeless people to improve optics and quality of life for residents and tourists is an unfriendly and probably unhelpful policy response to homelessness. It is not my contention that shuttling homeless people out of the Mag Mile in Chicago is a positive step. This is, however, the standard policy response to homelessness in much of the US (not just Chicago), because the overwhelming majority of urban residents want it to be.

3. The relativism underpinning your sentiment about not judging the lifestyle of the homeless is disquieting. Homeless people aren't hobos. They aren't deliberately living a different lifestyle. They are an underserved population of mentally ill, substance-dependent people continually victimized by their circumstances through lack of medical care, death by exposure, and crime. Let me help you out: it is OK to judge homelessness as bad. Homelessness is bad.

[debt]

1. Regardless, I believe the Occupy movement in NYC wasn't very disruptive. It was more of a peaceful protest. So I was going off that.

3. While I agree a large percentage of the homeless in Chicago are as you describe; it seems, at least from what I've read, SF contains a large enough percentage of homeless people that also seem to choose the lifestyle.

http://www.dailycal.org/2012/10/22/homeless-by-choice/

Read the comments for more insight into the mindset.

[tptacek]

The belief that homeless people in SF want to be homeless and should be left alone to be homeless does a pretty good job of encapsulating the qualms people have about how SF deals with homelessness.

[gadders]

This is a good article on homelessness in SF and the industry that has grown up to support them: http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_4_san-francisco-homeless...

"Finally, the homelessness advocates pulled out their trump card: associating supporters of the Civil Sidewalks law with “business interests.” San Francisco “progressives” regard businessmen as aliens within the body politic whose main function is to provide an inexhaustible well of funds to transfer to the city’s social-services empire. If it weren’t for vigilant politicians, however, the interlopers would constantly seek to duck this ever-growing civic obligation. “If these corporations pay their fair share,” supervisor John Avalos explained in 2009 when introducing a new business tax, “we can generate millions that will go towards keeping health clinics, youth and senior services, and jobs safe for San Franciscans.” (The contradiction between raising business taxes and keeping jobs safe was lost on Avalos.)"

[lquist]

That's because Bloomberg moved all the homeless to the Bronx and outskirts of the city...