The Streets of San Francisco The city made a choice to tolerate vagrancy and encourage drug use, with dire consequences.
San Francisco This city has been conducting a three-decade experiment in what happens when society stops enforcing bourgeois norms of behavior. It has done so in the name of compassion for the homeless. The result: Street squalor and misery have increased, while government expenditures have ballooned. Yet the principles guiding city policy remain inviolate: Homelessness is a housing problem, it is involuntary, and it persists because of inadequate public spending. These propositions are readily disproved by talking to people living on the streets. “Everyone’s on drugs here . . . and stealing,” an ex-convict named Shaku explains from an encampment of tents, trash and bicycles across from Glide Memorial Church in the heart of the Tenderloin district. A formerly homeless woman living in a city-subsidized hotel, asked if she does drugs, replies: “Is that a trick question?” Jeff, 50, slumps over his coffee cup at 7:30 a.m. A half-eaten muffin sits next to him on a filthy blanket. “I use drugs, alcohol, all of it,” he tells me, his eyes closed. “The whole Tenderloin is for drugs.” The city sends the message relentlessly that drug use is not only acceptable but expected. The Health Department distributes 4.5 million syringes a year, along with alcohol swabs, vitamin C to dissolve heroin and crack, and instructions on how to tie one’s arm for a hit. Officials have installed 17 needle-disposal boxes and kiosks throughout the city, signaling to children that drug use is a normal part of adult life. Only 60% of the city’s free needles are returned; the rest end up on the sidewalks or in the sewers. Users dig for veins in plain view. At the corner of Hyde Street and Golden Gate Avenue, steps away from the UC Hastings College of the Law, I was easily able to purchase a 2-gram pellet of fentanyl for $16, a new-customer discount. Public drug use has grown worse since the approval in 2014 of Proposition 47, the state ballot initiative that downgraded a host of drug and property crimes to misdemeanors. Local prosecutors and judges, already worried about contributing to “mass incarceration,” are loath to initiate misdemeanor drug cases. San Francisco police officers complain that even dealers get neither jail time nor probation. Drug courts have closed in some California cities, the Washington Post reports, because police have lost the threat of prison time to induce addicted dealers to begin treatment. The number of clients in San Francisco drug court dropped to 185 in 2018 from 296 in 2014, a decline of more than 37%. The city also enables the entire homeless lifestyle. Outreach workers hand out beef jerky, crackers and other snacks. The city’s biannual homeless survey claims that “food insecurity” is a pressing problem, but the homeless don’t act like food-deprived people. Waste litters the sidewalks and gutters. A typical deposit outside a Market Street office building includes an unopened 1-pound bag of walnuts, a box of uneaten pastries, an empty brandy bottle, a huge black lace bra, a dirty yellow teddy bear, a high-heeled red suede boot and a brown suede jacket. Free services and food—along with maximal tolerance for antisocial behavior—act as magnets. “San Francisco is the place to go if you live on the streets,” Jeff says. “There are more resources—showers, yeah, and housing.” A man standing outside the city’s latest shelter design, known as a Navigation Center, says that he was offered housing four times but always turned it down. Navigation Centers are designed to be maximally accommodating. Residents come and go as they please, order meals at any time of the day, and bring their pets, partners and possessions (known in shelter parlance as “the three Ps”). Elevating the rights of the homeless over those of the working public has cost taxpayers billions, with nothing to show for it. The “unsheltered” count continues to rise—up 17%, to 8,011, in 2019 from 2017—and San Francisco continues to wonder why. Is it lack of city-created affordable housing, as advocates and politicians maintain? No other American city has built as many units of affordable housing per capita, according to the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. From 2004-14, the city spent $2 billion on nearly 3,000 new units of permanent supportive housing, which comes with drug counseling and social workers. More have been constructed since, and thousands of shelter beds and apartment units are in the works. No one has a right to live in the most expensive real-estate market in the country, certainly not on the public’s dime. It isn’t clear why any city is morally obligated to provide housing to someone who starts living on its streets. But assuming such an obligation, the money that San Francisco spends trying to house the homeless locally could go much further outside its boundaries; the millions saved could go to mental-health and addiction services. Clean and sober campuses, serving an entire region, could be built on abandoned or undeveloped land in industrial zones and rural areas. Cities and counties should pool resources for these facilities, since the vagrancy problem is fluid—people move from one place to another. The bare-bones campuses must be immaculately maintained, safe and disciplined, so residents learn habits of self-control. Everyone should work. The stories the homeless tell about their lives reveal that something far more complex than a housing shortage is at work. The tales veer from one confused and improbable situation to the next, against a backdrop of drug use, petty crime and chaotic child rearing. There are few policy levers to change this crisis of meaning in American culture. What is certain is that the continuing crusade to normalize drug use, along with the absence of any public encouragement of temperance, will further handicap this unmoored population. Carving out a zone of immunity from the law and bourgeois norms for a perceived victim class destroys the quality of life in a city. As important, that immunity consigns its alleged beneficiaries to lives of self-abasement and marginality. Tolerating street vagrancy is a choice that cities make. For the public good, in San Francisco and elsewhere, that choice should be unmade. Ms. Mac Donald is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal, from which this essay was adapted.
San Francisco
This city has been conducting a three-decade experiment in what happens when society stops enforcing bourgeois norms of behavior. It has done so in the name of compassion for the homeless. The result: Street squalor and misery have increased, while government expenditures have ballooned. Yet the principles guiding city policy remain inviolate: Homelessness is a housing problem, it is involuntary, and it persists because of inadequate public spending. These propositions are readily disproved by talking to people living on the streets.
“Everyone’s on drugs here . . . and stealing,” an ex-convict named Shaku explains from an encampment of tents, trash and bicycles across from Glide Memorial Church in the heart of the Tenderloin district. A formerly homeless woman living in a city-subsidized hotel, asked if she does drugs, replies: “Is that a trick question?” Jeff, 50, slumps over his coffee cup at 7:30 a.m. A half-eaten muffin sits next to him on a filthy blanket. “I use drugs, alcohol, all of it,” he tells me, his eyes closed. “The whole Tenderloin is for drugs.”
The city sends the message relentlessly that drug use is not only acceptable but expected. The Health Department distributes 4.5 million syringes a year, along with alcohol swabs, vitamin C to dissolve heroin and crack, and instructions on how to tie one’s arm for a hit. Officials have installed 17 needle-disposal boxes and kiosks throughout the city, signaling to children that drug use is a normal part of adult life.
Only 60% of the city’s free needles are returned; the rest end up on the sidewalks or in the sewers. Users dig for veins in plain view. At the corner of Hyde Street and Golden Gate Avenue, steps away from the UC Hastings College of the Law, I was easily able to purchase a 2-gram pellet of fentanyl for $16, a new-customer discount.
Public drug use has grown worse since the approval in 2014 of Proposition 47, the state ballot initiative that downgraded a host of drug and property crimes to misdemeanors. Local prosecutors and judges, already worried about contributing to “mass incarceration,” are loath to initiate misdemeanor drug cases. San Francisco police officers complain that even dealers get neither jail time nor probation. Drug courts have closed in some California cities, the Washington Post reports, because police have lost the threat of prison time to induce addicted dealers to begin treatment. The number of clients in San Francisco drug court dropped to 185 in 2018 from 296 in 2014, a decline of more than 37%.
The city also enables the entire homeless lifestyle. Outreach workers hand out beef jerky, crackers and other snacks. The city’s biannual homeless survey claims that “food insecurity” is a pressing problem, but the homeless don’t act like food-deprived people. Waste litters the sidewalks and gutters. A typical deposit outside a Market Street office building includes an unopened 1-pound bag of walnuts, a box of uneaten pastries, an empty brandy bottle, a huge black lace bra, a dirty yellow teddy bear, a high-heeled red suede boot and a brown suede jacket.
Free services and food—along with maximal tolerance for antisocial behavior—act as magnets. “San Francisco is the place to go if you live on the streets,” Jeff says. “There are more resources—showers, yeah, and housing.” A man standing outside the city’s latest shelter design, known as a Navigation Center, says that he was offered housing four times but always turned it down. Navigation Centers are designed to be maximally accommodating. Residents come and go as they please, order meals at any time of the day, and bring their pets, partners and possessions (known in shelter parlance as “the three Ps”).
Elevating the rights of the homeless over those of the working public has cost taxpayers billions, with nothing to show for it. The “unsheltered” count continues to rise—up 17%, to 8,011, in 2019 from 2017—and San Francisco continues to wonder why. Is it lack of city-created affordable housing, as advocates and politicians maintain? No other American city has built as many units of affordable housing per capita, according to the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. From 2004-14, the city spent $2 billion on nearly 3,000 new units of permanent supportive housing, which comes with drug counseling and social workers. More have been constructed since, and thousands of shelter beds and apartment units are in the works.
No one has a right to live in the most expensive real-estate market in the country, certainly not on the public’s dime. It isn’t clear why any city is morally obligated to provide housing to someone who starts living on its streets. But assuming such an obligation, the money that San Francisco spends trying to house the homeless locally could go much further outside its boundaries; the millions saved could go to mental-health and addiction services.
Clean and sober campuses, serving an entire region, could be built on abandoned or undeveloped land in industrial zones and rural areas. Cities and counties should pool resources for these facilities, since the vagrancy problem is fluid—people move from one place to another. The bare-bones campuses must be immaculately maintained, safe and disciplined, so residents learn habits of self-control. Everyone should work.
The stories the homeless tell about their lives reveal that something far more complex than a housing shortage is at work. The tales veer from one confused and improbable situation to the next, against a backdrop of drug use, petty crime and chaotic child rearing. There are few policy levers to change this crisis of meaning in American culture. What is certain is that the continuing crusade to normalize drug use, along with the absence of any public encouragement of temperance, will further handicap this unmoored population.
Carving out a zone of immunity from the law and bourgeois norms for a perceived victim class destroys the quality of life in a city. As important, that immunity consigns its alleged beneficiaries to lives of self-abasement and marginality. Tolerating street vagrancy is a choice that cities make. For the public good, in San Francisco and elsewhere, that choice should be unmade.
Ms. Mac Donald is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal, from which this essay was adapted.
但是政客们想要的永远不是真正解决问题，而是自己集团的利益考量。
收容所现在严令不让吸毒， 这个条件放开了就很可怕， 这个条件不放开很多人就没法去。这些人很多都吸毒成瘾。
加州民主党需要这些 homeless 制造理由造 homeless shelter, 销售毒品。接下来就有不断理由可以加税。
越来越多加州政客在开大麻店，而随着 shelters 增加，加州的房子会越来越贵，然后政府又可以以房价理由造更多 shelters, 最后政府控制最多资源。
加州以后的普通中产会越来越少，税越来越高，除非民主党下台。
关键是利益。这些用在homeless和非法移民身上的钱最好贪污，因为不记名，没法计数，主管的官员从上到下，大嘴一张说花了多少就是多少。还有提供这些原材料的公司，都赚了老多钱了。所以这些既得利益者才拼命游说，拼死反抗任何的质疑和批评。
吸毒会互相影响的，好可怕。收容所里收留的人本来就条件不好，没有好环境，这下更糟了
这是最可怕的，这些脑子有屎的左逼搬到别的地方还是投民主党，然后把一个个好地方都变shithole。
很感兴趣这方面得题材。谢谢推荐！
你这是对民主政治体制没有信心啊……
三番即使全被左比和老墨黑榜毒贩占领，只要体制民主一人一票，一样秒杀中共独裁国
一旦进去就不允许再吸毒
但这些人离不开毒品， 所以他们自己不想去。
投票的不一定都是“人” ---发自Huaren 官方 iOS APP
可不可以分两个收容所,吸毒的一个,禁毒的一个
假如在收容所里面吸毒， 之后就很容易成为贩毒点， 黑帮就可能介入， 非常难管了。
我们这里警察的通知都是远离流浪汉聚集的地方， 因为多数都是贩毒点， 有毒品有武器， 不安全。
吸毒往往和贩毒， 犯罪绑在一起。
我觉得这得强制。你有本事就自己租房子，买房子吸毒去。住大街上就是不允许，必须进收容所，进了收容所就必须戒毒，没什么好商量的。这个社会必须有最基本的规则必须人人遵守。这是在合理范围内的，以公共安全卫生为准则。
比如家里有失智老人的，能让老人随地大小便，想怎样就怎样吗？一样的道理。
对头，提供免费的毒品注射站，拼命放非法移民进来。自己国家内的homeless纵容发展，张口闭口多少钱花在非法移民福利上了。加州现在有一帮人发起RECALL州长的运动，不知道有没有用。
作为科技领头羊的州，财政赤字确是无底洞，大批科技公司的税金，都被非移和流浪汉浪费，或者进了少数人既得利益者的腰包。
加州应该被联邦接管，受白宫直辖，让川普训政几年，否则永无出头之日。
Can’t agree more. 物以类聚人以群分
但为什么还有人投票给民主党呢
根子出在教育系统.加州是liberal思想大本营, berkeley出了名的革命圣地. 这些liberal社会学者教出来一代又一代liberal青年走向社会, 占领各个社会岗位. 少量有悟性的能逐渐摒除其毒害,大部分人一旦灌输进去ideology,一辈子都不会自己思考纠正,反而会积极纠正别人.