NYC, prior to our current Democratic mayor, had aggressive law enforcement during Giuliani and Bloomberg terms. They would corral the homeless into specific areas (the poor neighborhoods) and push them out of sight (actual strategy to hide the homeless). You can be homeless in NYC, just not around areas where ‘decent’ folk live. Interpret that however you want.
If SF corralled the homeless to the ghettos, no one would notice.
Overall, if we take a census of the homeless, we’d easily learn that a good percentage of them are mentally ill and/or drug addicts. It’s much cheaper to build tents for them than provide institutional treatment (prolonged stay in clinics and mental health wards of hospitals). Generally these hospitals don’t have enough beds for everyone and constantly try to release everyone within 72 hours, no matter how severe the situation is. Plus, the cost of healthcare is immense (I’d say orders of magnitude over the tent housing solution).
These are forsaken people, we will never solve this. I would recommend SF hide their homeless and get them off the beaches and boardwalks, and put the tents out of sight somewhere desolate. We as a society don’t have a sustainable altruism to succeed here.
