Hundreds of unsheltered people living in tent encampments in the blocks surrounding the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco have been forced to leave by city outreach workers and police as part of an attempted “clean up the house” ahead of this week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’s annual free trade conference.
The action, which housing advocates allege violated a court injunction, was celebrated by right-wing figures and the tech crowd, who have long been convinced that the city is in terminal decline because of an increase in encampments in the downtown area.
The X account End Wokness wrote that the displacement was proof the “government can easily fix our cities overnight. It just doesn’t want to” (the post received 77,000 likes). “Queer Eye but it’s just Xi visiting troubled US cities then they get a makeover,” joked Packy McCormick, the founder of Not Boring Capital and advisor to Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto VC team. The New York Post celebrated the action, saying that residents had “miraculously disappeared.”
They also miraculously appeared. San Francisco is a sanctuary city. There are countless cities that just ship off their homeless and make the residents deal with it. The weather does not help either. California is great for homelessness due to the lack of a true winter.
But as a resident it is hard to know how to help and still see them constantly coming.
i hear you. this is why i think what we’re doing isn’t working, and i think it’s going to get worse if we don’t help homeless people with actual housing and medical / mental health care.
I think housing could be solved if you just took some of the abandoned buildings. However after seeing some of them. I’m not so sure they will leave the shanty village.
So far I’ve lived in Massachusetts and Colorado. Both of those states offer the following to homeless people:
We still have homeless people. What’s your next move? What additional steps do we need to take to solve homelessness?
it’s not like you fix up the homeless people the one time and then you’re all set forever.
mental illness is an ongoing issue for people dealing with bipolar/schizophrenia/recurrent depression, and new people are going to evidence mental illness on the regular. new people develop addictions. people lose jobs. people suddenly have major health problems or accidents. people are forced to escape violence.
providing the things you mentioned along with case management and follow-up care where appropriate helps. i live in a major city with a municipal umbrella organization that’s considered one of the best (ie most effective) in the country. that doesn’t mean nobody is homeless here.
what would come closest to fixing it long-term? addressing all the other systemic issues and shortcomings. universal medical care (which includes mental health care), ubi and housing, addressing violence (in families and communities) providing quality education, social justice.
the systems we have now only meet the needs of some, and for most only to a limited degree. those with the most needs have the most difficulty accessing appropriate and sufficient support.
in other words? i think capitalism is a big part of the problem. i don’t have any illusions that fixing any of this is easy.