Photo by Gary Raynaldo / Homeless man sleeps on the street in the shadow of San Francisco’s majestic beaux-arts City Hall.

By Gary Raynaldo   DIPLOMATIC TIMES

SAN FRANCISCO  –   I never thought I would see the  day in which I would be in total agreement with a critical remark spewed from the  foul  mouth of President Donald Trump. But the day came yesterday when Trump attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., over the shutdown involving his demand for $5.7 billion to fund a border wall with Mexico.

“Nancy Pelosi has behaved so irrationally & has gone so far to the left that she has now officially become a Radical Democrat. She is so petrified of the “lefties” in her party that she has lost control…And by the way, clean up the streets in San Francisco, they are disgusting!”

President Trump via Twitter  Jan. 20, 2018. 

To be clear,  I only agree with the last 8 words of Trump’s twitter rant…...”the streets in San Francisco, they are disgusting!”

Photo by Gary Raynaldo /  Homeless sleeping on streets of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district.

Yes, folks, the Streets Of San Francisco Are Disgusting!  I know some of the San  Francisco readers are going to get mad at me, but  I don’t care!  It’s the truth. I am in a unique position to comment on the conditions of San Francisco’s streets. I was born and raised in San Francisco.

Part of my childhood memories of growing  up  in San Francisco was the Patty Hearst Kidnapping 1974. Patty (before) and her transformation into  “Tania, urban guerrilla”.  Those were the days. Only in San Francisco folks!

I grew up in the Fillmore District where the Black Panthers had a local office, and lived a few blocks from the ghetto apartment where kidnapped newspaper publishing heiress Patty Hearst was holed up in. I earned my B.A. degree in journalism at San Francisco State University. I have seen many changes to my beloved city. Although I have been living in New York since 1990, San Francisco will  always be “home.”  I visit my family every year in San Francisco and walk all over the city up and down the streets. The truth will  hurt some, but San Francisco has become overrun by homeless, and many areas of the  city are virtual  open air drug dens. The beloved Main San Francisco Public Library on Larkin Street near City Hall, where I spent countless hours studying in college is infested with homeless, particularly in the bathroom. At one point, a few years ago, the homeless were urinating on the books in the stacks! Don’t get me wrong, the SF Public Library is still a fine institution, and the security guards have the study areas under control, where one can study in peace. The problem area still remains the bathroom where many homeless use it as a place to wash up, shave, brush their teeth.

Photo: by Gary Raynaldo / Scores of homeless camped out along the streets in the heart of the San Francisco’s municipal government Civic Center.

The open air drug situation is particularly bad in Downtown San Francisco where one can walk by a multitude of homeless on the streets shooting up  heroin, and smoking  crack  in broad daylight.  The homeless problem has expanded to the wealthy residential neighborhoods of the City including Pacific Heights, and the Marina District. Homeless persons are sleeping on the streets right outside of multi-million mansions. It is a very sobering sight, worthy of some reflection, as nobody is promised tomorrow, and those in the mansions today could be living on the streets one day.

HISTORY OF HOMELESS PROBLEM

With the end of the Vietnam War, battle-shocked veterans began filling urban alleyways, wrote the San Francisco Chronicle.

“The 1980s brought Reaganomics’ decimation of federal social and housing programs, and a cascade of the poor and mentally ill landed on the streets. By the end of that decade, a new term had entered the lexicon of San Francisco and the rest of the nation: homeless,” the San Francisco Chronicle.

In addition, Ronald Reagan, first as California Governor, then U.S. President unleashed policies to cut spending on social services –– like the safety net that existed since the Great Depression, which resulted in waves of discharged mentally ill patients literally dumped on urban streets with no services. Many became among the multitude of mentally ill homeless wandering aimlessly on the streets of San Francisco.

Today, despite the efforts of six mayoral administrations dating back to Dianne Feinstein, homelessness is stamped into the city so deeply it’s become a defining characteristic, according to the SF Chronicle.

SAN FRANCISCO continues to grapple with its persistent homeless problem. According to the City’s latest homeless count, some 7,499 folks in San Francisco are without a place to call home, a minuscule decrease of 40 persons or 0.5% versus the 2015 count.   San Francisco has only 1,250 emergency adult shelter beds to deal with its homeless population. The city spends $239 million a year on the problem, but only managed to get 40 persons off the streets in the latest period counted. San Francisco has the second highest homeless population in the United States. With its year-round mild weather and progressive politics, San Francisco his been a magnet for the homeless.    San Francisco is second only to New York City for the densest homeless population by land mass. There are 795 people per 100,000 residents. New York has 887.

GOOGLE, TWITTER, APPLE, FACEBOOK BEAR SOME BLAME FOR CONDITION OF SAN FRANCISCO STREETS

There is bound to be tension between the well-heeled suit and tie types who come in contact with the massive down and out homeless population in this densely populated city. They claim they ‘have worked hard’ and earned the right to be free of this ever-present urban flotsam. Many of the start-up and high tech company workers at Google, Twitter, Apple, Facebook, etc., in San Francisco come from other U.S. states and are ‘shocked and disgusted’ at the myriad homeless population they encounter everyday they go to work. They complain to the City’s political establishment about the aggressive panhandling, and homeless persons urinating in public. But San Francisco’s homeless population has garnered significant political clout over the years and the Mayor and police often turn a blind eye to the situation. A lot of the formerly low income neighborhoods like the  Mission District, the Fillmore, the Haight Ashbury, have been gentrified and taken over by Silicon Valley tech types, with the resulting skyrocketing housing rents.

 San Francisco voters approve plan to tax rich companies to help homeless people

San Francisco voters last November 2018 approved a measure (Proposition C), which is designed to inject the most money ever directed at city homeless programs by taxing big businesses to raise hundreds of millions of dollars. The measure was easily the most contentious on the city ballot, dividing political leaders and pitting the Chamber of Commerce and the owner of tech giant Twitter against nonprofit programs and the owner of the city’s largest private employer, Salesforce, according to the Chronicle .

It is very doubtful Proposition C will go into effect as it faces huge legal challenges.

PRIMARY CAUSES OF SAN FRANCISCO’S HOMELESSNESS:

The primary cause of an individual’s inability to obtain or retain housing is difficult to pinpoint, as it is often the result of multiple and compounding causes.

Nearly one quarter (22%) of respondents reported job loss as the primary cause of their homelessness.

Fifteen percent (15%) reported drugs or alcohol.

Thirteen percent (13%) reported an argument with a friend or family member who asked them to leave,

12% reported eviction.

10% reported divorce or separation

7% reported an illness or medical problem 

SOURCE: 2017 San Francisco Homeless Count

Photo by Gary Raynaldo /  Long line of homeless, and low-income folk waiting to eat at one of San Francisco’s many soup kitchens.

The homeless problem in San Francisco is complex. But I, as a native born-and-raised San Franciscan, can offer some insight. When I was a kid growing up in the City’s Fillmore District, my friends and I used to hang out and play football in a nearby park where homeless people also slept on the wooden bleachers. My friends and I befriended a homeless man and would often talk with him. I remember him having a full beard and strong, muscular legs from all the walking he did around the City. He had a perpetually greasy mouth from the left-over Kentucky Fried Chicken he ate out of the garbage cans. Specs of fried chicken stuck in his beard. Let’s call him Mr. Homeless. One day, Mr. Homeless dropped some serious street knowledge on us after one of us asked him the “million dollar question”: ‘Why do you always sleep in this park. Don’t you have a place to live?” Mr. Homeless became quiet, put his head down in deep thought, before answering. Mr. Homeless responded: “You know, I have a lot of freedom out here and nobody bothers me. It is good to be outdoors because it keeps you active and you can get fat and lazy always being in a home. I like it outside.”

There you have it. Homeless is a way of life for some folks, and they cannot live any other way unless they die a spiritual death, perhaps? For others, they may have simply slipped through the cracks of society and found themselves jobless, homeless, sick, mentally ill without any family support. For now, it seems as though the homeless are a ubiquitous part of the San Francisco landscape as the fog.  NOT EVEN NANCY  PELOSI  CAN WORK MAGIC TO FIX THIS, MR. PRESIDENT! However, my heart aches for this beautiful  city I grew up in. It is still my city.  I LEFT MY HEART IN SAN FRANCISCO.