Attitudes toward homelessness are changing, and not in favor of more services for them. While it’s true that there remains a sizable contingent of those who tell us we must be compassionate, recent developments are mobilizing public opinion against homeless people.
The two most powerful developments are, first, the news that drug and alcohol use are “the primary reason” most San Francisco homeless people lack a job or a place to live. This is something most of us have always known, but now, it’s official.
Secondly, voters and taxpayers have watched cities, counties and the state throw uncounted billions of dollars of their money at alleged “solutions” for homelessness, only to read—as we did in yesterday’s newspaper—that “S.F. homelessness is spreading.” People read that it costs $100,000 per unit to provide shelter to homeless people—an amount even the San Francisco Chronicle, long a supporter of homeless rights, calls “unconscionable.” Then they read that most homeless people, when offered shelter, don’t accept it. So voters are reaching some inevitable conclusions:
1. These homeless people are stoned most of the time, which is probably why they can’t work a proper job and take care of themselves. They don’t want to clean up. They prefer the vagabond street life that has landed them in the gutter.
2. Besides, they don’t even want our help, especially if it comes with a requirement to clean themselves up, adhere to a curfew, and other perfectly logical regulations.
3. Therefore, why should we worry about them? They made their own bed, so to speak; now, let them sleep in it. If they continue to break the law, let’s show them the consequences—fines, jail time, public shunning, and so on.
This shift in public attitudes is less notable in Oakland than it is in San Francisco, where the popularity of London Breed, and her increasingly likely re-election, show that even a liberal city can reach its tolerance level for encampments and filth. But Oakland, too, is evolving. While the recall efforts for Pamela Price and Sheng Thao center on their enabling of crime, I would argue, especially in Thao’s case, that her refusal to do anything about encampments is also fueling voter outrage. Thao has hidden behind the fiction that the city couldn’t do anything about encampments due to Court decisions. That fiction has now been totally gutted by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Grants Pass ruling. London Breed is abiding by that ruling. Sheng Thao is not. Still a fully-owned subsidiary of the big labor and worker’s unions, she has yet to lift a finger toward cleaning up our city. Take a look at Oakland’s “crown jewel,” Lakeside Park. Dirty encampments are everywhere. Some of them have turned into mini-condo developments, with front porches, front yards and in-law apartments.
We see this hardening of attitudes against the homeless also in the shocking decision of the BAHFA board to pull the measure from the November ballot. Everyone knows why: The public has had it with throwing money at homelessness. Even so-called “compassionate liberals” in Oakland realize there’s nothing to show for the hundreds of millions of dollars the City Council has wasted. Zero accountability doesn’t sit well with voters. They know a grift when they see one. The BAHFA people realized they were going to get demolished if they allowed people to actually vote on their scam, which was just another way to extort money from property owners.
We’ll find out on Nov. 5 if voters are actually fed up enough with Price and Thao to recall them. I confidently predict both politicians will be fired. It would blow my mind if they can escape their fates. Price is, at least, fighting hard to keep her job (Thao seems to have given up), but the only way Price can fight is to continue her dreary lies about MAGA billionaires trying to pull off a coup. The thousands of people who signed the Recall petitions know better, and they are telling their friends and neighbors the truth.
Steve Heimoff