Sometimes, there's a good reason that they're homeless
/
Charities are urging local families to take homeless people into their very homes, in their spare rooms, with little to no compensation
Asked whether people expressed concern about welcoming homeless people into their homes, [Tom Butt] insisted that people care about the plight of the homeless
'They are more concerned with the homeless camps,' he said. 'People want to see solutions, and want to be part of the solution'
Of course, stories like this may slash participation rates:
Homeless man slits woman’s throat after she lets him into her house to shower
A homeless man in Utah allegedly slit a woman’s throat after she let him into her home to shower, cops said.
Officers responded to a call of a woman heavily bleeding from the neck around 5 p.m. last Sunday at her home in Salt Lake City, according to cops.
She was transported to a local hospital in critical condition and underwent emergency surgery. Her condition was later upgraded to stable, but her current condition is unknown, cops said.
If you’ve If you’ve nothing better to do this evening than watch corporate ads touting how woke they are, you might want to read some or all of these three articles on the subject of San Francisco’s sidewalk denizens:
In 2010, she provided a “progress” report: The program lasted just two years. Willie Brown was voted in in 1996 precisely because he’s promised to undo everything the previous mayor had implemented. The results were as you’d expect.
In 2019, She wrote another follow-up: things had deteriorated even further:
For the last three decades, San Francisco has conducted a real-life experiment in what happens when a society stops enforcing bourgeois norms of behavior. The city has done so in the name of compassion toward the homeless. The results have been the opposite: street squalor and misery have increased, even as government expenditures have ballooned. Yet the principles that have guided the city’s homelessness policy remain inviolate: homelessness is a housing problem; it is involuntary; and its persistence is the result of inadequate public spending. These propositions are readily disproved by talking to people living on the streets.
An inadequate supply of affordable housing is not the first thing that comes to mind when conversing with San Francisco’s street denizens. Their behavioral problems—above all, addiction and mental illness—are too obvious. Forty-two percent of respondents in the city’s 2019 street poll of the homeless reported chronic drug or alcohol use; the actual percentage is likely higher. The city relentlessly sends the message that drug use is not only acceptable but fully expected. Users dig for veins in plain view on the sidewalk; health authorities distribute more than 4.5 million syringes a year, along with Vitamin C to dissolve heroin and crack, alcohol swabs, and instructions on how to best tie one’s arm for a “hit.” Needle disposal boxes have been erected outside the city’s public toilets, signaling to children that drug use is a normal part of adult life. Only 60 percent of the city’s free needles get returned; many of the rest litter the sidewalks and streets or are flushed down toilets.
…. The city enables the entire homeless lifestyle, not just drug use. Free food is everywhere. Outreach workers roam the city, handing out beef jerky, crackers, and other snacks. At the encampment across from Glide Memorial Church, a wiry man in a blue denim jacket announces that day’s lunch selection at the church’s feeding line, to general approbation: fried chicken. He triumphantly brandishes a half-eaten leg before tossing it into the street. Susan, a 57-year-old Canadian who lives in an encampment on Willow Alley, itemizes the available bounty while rolling a cigarette: free dinners and movies; the microwave ovens at Whole Foods; free water at Starbucks. The homeless position themselves outside coffee shops in the morning for handouts of pastries and java. If those handouts don’t materialize, there’s always theft. A barista at the Bush and Van Ness Starbucks says that someone steals food and coffee at least every other day. “We are not allowed to do anything about it,” she says. “The policy is we can’t chase them.” ….
The combination of maximal tolerance for antisocial behavior, on the one hand, and free services and food, on the other, acts as a magnet. “San Francisco is the place to go if you live on the streets,” observes Jeff, the 50-year-old wino and drug addict. “There are more resources—showers, yeah, and housing.” …
