Skewed Coverage Of The Homeless?
A San Francisco lawyer and housing activist questions the paper's focus on problematic street behavior and on law enforcement as the only way to deal with the city's homeless population.
This story from the San Francisco online daily BeyondChron offers an informed local perspective on the San Francisco Chronicle article on the homeless that was posted on the Planetizen website on October 10.
The Chronicle piece, which appeared on the paper's front page, tells how residents of the famously progressive city are fed up with the anti-social behavior of homeless people living on the street and are calling for a police crackdown.
That perspective is badly skewed, says BeyondChron's Randy Shaw, a San Francisco lawyer and housing activist. After marking the quarter-century shortfall of federal housing funds -- a development ignored by the Chronicle -- Shaw writes:
"You would never know from the Chronicle's recent reporting that San Francisco has housed 2062 Care Not Cash recipients since 2004, and over 4000 homeless single adults overall. Better to foster the impression that homeless people do not want housing, allowing the attitudes of a small minority to define the entire group."
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When Homelessness Began
From the article: "The federal government has not sufficiently funded affordable housing since homelessness began in 1982"
There is a People's Park mural in Berkeley that includes a homeless person panhandling - and that was in the 1960s, two decades before homelessness began. I remember that there were lots of homeless people on Berkeley's Telegraph Ave. in the 1970s (back when we called them "street people" rather than "the homeless"), and that was a decade before homelessness began.
Charles Siegel
Homeless fatigue
I have to agree. My parents used to call the homeless, bums, hobos and winos. Unfortunately, homeless advocates during the 1980s and thereafter tried to make those living on the streets seem like everyday people who had some bad luck. The reality was around 90% were chemically addicted, mentally unstable or criminals.
Now, even ultraliberal San Franciscans are running low on compassion after years of hearing the same tired excuses. I also find it odd how the poorest of the poor seem to live in the most expensive real estate in America.
Even the most well-planned cities look shabby when people have to run through a gaunlet of folks acting strangely.
Just as skewed...
For the writer to basically ignore the fact that there is a problem with the homeless, the drug-addicted, the alcoholics, is more skewed than the Chronicle story he is lambasting. We can love our fellow humans all we want, but to not admit that there is quite a different between the working or homeless poor, who have temporarily fallen on hard times, and the chronically addicted who want nothing to do with any public services, is to deliberately skew the story. Citizens have a right not to have people defecating on their driveways or not to find needles on their front lawn. You can try to make that some sort of conservative rant all you want, but it's a fact.