Homeless = without a homeThis morning on Forum Michael Krasny hosted Jennifer Friedenbach from the Coalition on Homelessness and CW Nevius, columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, discussing the homeless sweeps in SoMa and the vitriol stirred up by the Chron's coverage of life on the streets by pointing at the shit, the needles, the trash, the insanity.
Near the end of the piece, Nevius says that using the cops to ticket homeless people who do these things is one solution and a way to hold them accountable. He said he doesn't know how to solve the overall issue of homelessness. In the background, you can hear Friedenbach simply say, "Housing."
Which is the whole frustrating disconnect on this issue. "Homeless" does not automatically translate into "criminal," or "insane," or "druggie," or "lover of shitting on the street." Nobody wants to see people sleeping in the streets, using drugs, defecating, or publicly displaying their individual psychotic problems. So give them a place to live. Don't buy cops, buy housing. Let people do what they need to do behind closed doors.
One caller mentioned new housing developments at 5th and Mission and how none of the buyers of the million dollar condos are going to want to see the streets outside their doors in such a condition. Again, another major disconnect -- developers want attractive neighborhoods, but when it comes to building affordable housing that might make those neighborhoods more attractive by housing the homeless, they run away screaming that it can't be done.
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Comments (3)
I heard this yesterday morning and I have to say, Nevius and Trent Rohrer were kind of honest in how they felt and admitted they didn't know all the answers to the homeless problem. They actually sounded kind of conflicted about the whole thing, like they knew there were no good choices and were struggling with what to do.
Then Jennifer came on and started screeching about how Nevius was just spreading hate and something about "Jim Crow" policies and accused those of wanting to deal with "quality of life" issues of all sorts of nasty things and so I turned the radio channel. Seriously, maybe if the homeless advocates didn't come off as such self-rigteous assholes people might listen to them a bit more. Right now, they just turn people off.
Just because somebody is tired of, say, seeing people take a sh-- on the street in front of their house/apartment, doesn't mean they "hate." It just means they're tired of seeing somebody take a sh-- in front of where they live. I know plenty of people who are fed up by it all and disgusted by the the things they see and put up with (like seeing needles strewn across alleyways) who are neither "yuppies" nor "suburbanites"-- just tax-paying residents of the city who want something practical done
Posted by Guest | October 11, 2007 12:22 PM
Housing??? Where. We live in a capitalist, free market economy. The market has decided that property values in SF are expensive and therefore not everybody can afford to live here. Even people who earn a good income can't always live in the neighborhood they'd like to. So what do you do if you can't afford it, you work harder so one day you can or you live somewhere else.
Posted by Josh | October 11, 2007 01:48 PM
Doesn't anyone hear the evil historical echoes in talk about "solutions to the homeless problem"?
Posted by Martha Bridegam | October 20, 2007 04:34 PM