If You're Going To...

 

Photo: © Stan Banos

Some of this is pretty simple to fix. You can't have Big Tech come riding into San Francisco on their tax cut, city handouts throwing money at landlords who in turn throw out long term residents for no good reason. But what about all the money that they bring? You mean the money that goes into constructing more luxury apartments, high end restaurants and boutiques... for them? You mean the money they use to disrupt and overturn a somewhat balanced (racially- another story), thriving city into an inequitable abomination of wealth and privilege vs. those without? An untenable situation they create, exacerbate and then abandon in the disgust of their own making. Yeah, putting an end to that could be, should be fairly easy- establishing and maintaining laws that limit outright, unfettered greed!

But some of this is also very, very complex. You can't just throw people in jail because they're mentally ill or drug addicted- neither should you just cut them loose unto our streets! Again, each side needs to sustain some measure of responsibility. And when laws and policies that mean well, don't work out as intended, they need to be challenged and changed- ASAP!

Even now as thousands are leaving the city, construction continues unhampered- and it's not affordable housing! Homelessness in this city has always existed, has always been visible- but it was also considerably more limited. It was not rampant throughout vast swaths of the downtown area- you did not have to walk in the street to avoid sidewalk tent encampments, hordes of dealers and dope fiends or human feces. This is a social pandemic now amidst a biological one- one for which there is no vaccine on the horizon. The patchwork quilt of band aids and half measures thus far employed in San Francisco to battle homelessness have obviously not worked, just as the same lack of nationwide non-policies failed to confront Covid. The homeless need shelter, the unemployed- jobs, the mentally ill (and we're talking s-e-r-i-o-u-s-l-y mentally ill) and drug addicted- programs... and cannot be allowed to roam the streets living in their own filth and squalor, subsisting on petty crime.

That's what it takes to live in a successful, thriving and equitable community. And those in power are neither thinking as clearly as they should, nor acting in any way close to assuming responsibility. Sometimes, I think the best thing that could happen to this town is a nice... good... shake!

 

Photo: © Stan Banos