One of our complaints about Libby Schaaf is that, early in her administration, she began inviting homeless people to come to Oakland, whose motto under Mayor Schaaf had become “Love Life.”
Many people, including me, warned her that her open-ended invitation would lead only to disaster. Alas, Schaaf did not heed our warnings, nor did the City Council. Homeless people poured into Oakland in droves, expecting to find shelter, food, medical care and “love.” The results were entirely predictable: the crisis we’re now experiencing.
It wasn’t just Oakland that attracted homeless people. So did San Francisco, and that city, too, is in the depths of a homelessness catastrophe. Which leads to my subject today: Our two cities have sent out a message to homeless people that they’ll receive better treatment here than they would if they went to other places, because of our reputation for liberalism. And so the homeless come.
This was emphasized to me in today’s S.F. Chronicle, which reported on two individuals who are homeless in San Francisco. Both are recent arrivals. Both came, as far as can be gleaned from the article, because they thought of San Francisco as an easy place to be homeless. They’ve since discovered, of course, that it’s not. There are no heated apartments awaiting them. Nor is there free healthcare, or meals. Both individuals are struggling and, according to the article, both are complaining that the city should be doing more for them.
Somehow, we’ve managed to put this reputation out there that the big cities of the Bay Area are welcoming to homeless people. Word travels quickly among homeless individuals across the country. They know where they’ll be welcome by advocates, and they know where the authorities will make life tough for them. They naturally avoid the latter places. Getting tough on encampments isn’t easy: there’s a lot of white guilt out there, stoked by homeless advocates. But some cities are at least trying: Austin, Atlanta, Sacramento, even to some extent New York. Some homeless advocates describe these cities as “mean,” but that’s just because they (the advocates) make unreasonable demands on cities to spend money they don’t have on a full range of services for homeless people; when the cities resist this, they’re accused of “criminalizing poverty.”
Look, on the Statue of Liberty’s base is the famous saying, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" It was a lure and a beacon for generation of refugees, including my four grandparents, all of whom worked their asses off when they got here and raised children who have been the backbone of America’s economy. But there’s a huge difference between the refugees of Europe who came here in the late 1800s and early 1900s, compared to the people pouring into the Bay Area who are homeless. One thing I have never, even seen in the S.F. Chronicle, not once, in the hundreds and hundreds of articles they’ve published on homeless people, is for the reporter to pose the question: “Why don’t you get a job?” (That question is for you, Sarah Ravani.) You’d think that would be the first question they’d ask…but they don’t, because it’s embarrassing.
If I became homeless, God forbid, I’d take anything that paid—greeter at Wal-Mart, fry cook at McDonald’s, whatever. Maybe I couldn’t afford to rent an apartment at that salary, but if I couldn’t, I’d move someplace where the cost of living was cheaper. The last thing I’d do is set up a tent in the street and then demand that the city pay for my expenses. I believe a lot of people feel the same way, which is why tempers are getting shorter with regard to our tolerance for encampments. If we crack down on encampments, just a little bit, maybe we can begin to stem the inflow of people whom we simply cannot support.
Steve Heimoff