"Anyone who has lived in San Francisco for five years has either been attacked by a homeless person or has a friend who has been attacked," he says.
"There are more resources-showers, yeah, and housing." A 31-year-old named Rose arrived in San Francisco from Martinez, northeast of the city, four years ago, trailing a long criminal record.
Is San Francisco not spending enough generally, as the advocates and politicians maintain? Its main homelessness agency-currently dubbed the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing and dedicated to an allegedly novel mission: "Helping homeless residents permanently exit the streets"-commands a $285 million budget.
A unit of affordable housing in San Francisco costs between $600,000 and $800,000, depending on the materials used; building housing for all 8,000 homeless individuals would cost up to $6.4 billion, a third of the city's budget.
Assuming such an obligation, the money that San Francisco spends trying to house the homeless locally could go much further outside its boundaries; the millions saved could go to mental health and addiction services.
If San Francisco wanted to give its homeless addicts their best shot at stability, it would go after the open-air drug trade with every possible tool, including immigration law, however unlikely such a change of course is.
Tolerating street vagrancy is a choice that cities make; for the public good, in San Francisco and elsewhere, that choice should be unmade.
https://www.city-journal.org/san-francisco-homelessness
"There are more resources-showers, yeah, and housing." A 31-year-old named Rose arrived in San Francisco from Martinez, northeast of the city, four years ago, trailing a long criminal record.
Is San Francisco not spending enough generally, as the advocates and politicians maintain? Its main homelessness agency-currently dubbed the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing and dedicated to an allegedly novel mission: "Helping homeless residents permanently exit the streets"-commands a $285 million budget.
A unit of affordable housing in San Francisco costs between $600,000 and $800,000, depending on the materials used; building housing for all 8,000 homeless individuals would cost up to $6.4 billion, a third of the city's budget.
Assuming such an obligation, the money that San Francisco spends trying to house the homeless locally could go much further outside its boundaries; the millions saved could go to mental health and addiction services.
If San Francisco wanted to give its homeless addicts their best shot at stability, it would go after the open-air drug trade with every possible tool, including immigration law, however unlikely such a change of course is.
Tolerating street vagrancy is a choice that cities make; for the public good, in San Francisco and elsewhere, that choice should be unmade.
https://www.city-journal.org/san-francisco-homelessness
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