Opportunism knocks
by jenny friedenbach and robert haaland

THE SYSTEM IS broken. Anyone can see that we have a major housing problem in San Francisco – just look at all the men, women, and even children without a place to call home.

Sup. Gavin Newsom brings up this point just about every time he speaks nowadays. He puts his hands together like a sweet child praying at the altar and then proceeds to tell us how much he cares for the poor and downtrodden. That's why he is now gathering signatures for a November ballot measure that would cut cash aid by 85 percent if it passed. That's why he is proposing that people get fingerprinted in order to get a shelter bed or use a bathroom at a drop-in center. That's why he is proposing that people face up to six months of jail time for panhandling in parking garages and on median strips. It's because he cares so deeply – oh, and the polling numbers on his proposals are high with conservatives, his ticket to winning the mayoralty in 2003.

There is a better plan, developed by 225 community groups, that could address homelessness without gratuitously punishing the homeless. It's called the "Continuum of Care." You can read the entire plan at www.ci.sf.ca.us/lhcb. It emphasizes prevention (keeping people from becoming homeless in the first place) and affordable-housing construction as well as expanding shelters and homeless services.

Newsom is not only ignoring this plan; he's also snubbing the Controller's Office management audit recommendations that were made at his request. Controller Ed Harrington has found that homeless planning has been inconsistent due to elected-official interference. He recommends that planning should go through the city's Local Homeless Board, the same community planning body that created the Continuum of Care plan. But Newsom isn't taking that approach. Instead, Newsom, like Mayor Willie Brown, is getting comfortable with the appealing "compassionate conservatism" spin that leaves people thinking that if you punish homeless people enough, they will somehow find housing.

He is not alone; it's happening across the county. Fed up that homeless people are blights on otherwise perfect American towns, our so-called leaders resort to rearranging the bureaucracy so homeless people must shuffle endlessly through red tape. They create new laws to make it as difficult as possible for homeless people to sleep at night or use rest rooms during the day. Corporate media reinforce the perception that people choose to get kicked around by the cops, get rained on, become sick and sometimes die on the streets. Only with that perception in mind could anyone think that passing punitive measures will scare people out of homelessness and into well-paying jobs and affordable homes.

Most homeless people didn't get there by choice. The decimation of federally funded housing, cuts to disability and welfare support, and the state defunding of mental health treatment have converged with a service-sector economy that leaves little in the way of living-wage jobs for unskilled workers. Meanwhile, 62 percent of our housing subsidies go to households earning more than $100,000 a year. The result is the largest number of people living on the streets since the Great Depression.

There are programs in San Francisco that do get people off the street every day. They need to be expanded. Once we have succeeded in providing assistance and real benefits to our homeless people, the city that knows how can show other cities how as well. In the meantime, perhaps the powerful in this city, including Newsom, could flex their muscles and demand that the federal and state governments address this shameful situation.