June 2 - The most interesting bit of news I’ve heard in quite a while was this front page bombshell today from the San Francisco Chronicle, where Mayor London Breed said the city needs “enforcement to compel [homeless] people inside or into care.” She explained, “For those exhibiting harmful behavior, whether to themselves or to others, or those refusing assistance, we will use every tool we have to get them into treatment and services, to get them indoors. We won’t accept people just staying on the streets, when we have a place for them to go.”
Enforcement! To understand this in context, you have to realize that no San Francisco mayor has ever used the “e” word with respect to homeless people. For Mayor Breed to employ that language is proof that she’s feeling the heat like never before. Even ultra-liberal San Franciscans have had it with tents, garbage, drugs and scary people clotting the streets.
What does “every tool we have” mean? The devil’s in the details, but from the tone of her remarks, and the mood of San Franciscans, I’m assuming “enforcement” means “force” for those “refusing assistance.” How such force would be applied isn’t at all clear. The cops? They really, really don’t want to get involved, nor should they, under current circumstances. But who else is going to “enforce” anything? Paramedics, mental health professionals and social workers aren’t going to do the enforcing. That’s not what they signed up for. So this is a conundrum Breed is going to have to figure out.
But still, it’s so refreshing to hear common sense talk coming from San Francisco. Here in Oakland, it will be a cold day in hell before Libby Schaaf ever says she’d use force to get people off the streets if they won’t go voluntarily. She’s just too much in the pocket of the shouters and protesters who dominate homeless advocacy groups. She’s also politically ambitious. Everybody who’s anybody in the town knows that Libby Schaaf is waiting for Dianne Feinstein to resign (or leave her Senate seat under other circumstances), in which case she hopes her friend, the Governor, would appoint her on an interim basis. Libby Schaaf is not going to do anything to tarnish her reputation. She’s not going to be pegged as the mayor who criminalized homelessness.
It’s all very complicated, but we should take heart from Mayor Breed’s announcement. People are realizing that the tent dwellers are largely comprised of hopeless drug addicts, who don’t want treatment, don’t want shelters, don’t want anything except to take their meth and live on the streets where there are no rules. Citizens are seeing through the homeless advocacy nonsense, and slowly but surely, we are turning things around.
Steve Heimoff