It persists on the streets of San Francisco through boom times and downturns. It is alternately an incubator and a destroyer of political will, as elected representatives eventually discover that their pledges to address it become their undoing when it doesn’t go away. It takes a heavy toll on the ambience of our neighborhoods, the cost of doing business for many enterprises and the experience of visitors who are stunned to encounter such deprivation in a city of profound prosperity.
It frustrates and polarizes San Francisco like nothing else. There are those who see it as a social-services challenge, those who reduce it to a law-enforcement matter, and a few who think the problem would simply go away if only there were more affordable housing in the city.
On one point we must all agree: The level and pervasiveness of homelessness in San Francisco is a disgrace. It is simply not acceptable to allow people to stay in the squalor of tent encampments or sleep in doorways, parks and freeway underpasses without attention to the underlying issues that prevent them from attaining shelter and stability in their lives. It’s bad for public safety, bad for public health, and bad as a matter of basic humanity.
Its reduction to the extent humanly possible should be this city’s No. 1 priority.
The ultimate goal must be to eliminate, not manage, homelessness.
No mayor, no member of the Board of Supervisors — no resident with heart and a love for this city — should accept the status quo.
