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SFGate Culture blog beat us to this story (damn, that Aidan Vazari), but the National Coalition for the Homeless recently put together a list of the meanest cities to the homeless and San Francisco came in 11th. You know, the other night while we were walking the gauntlet on 16th between Mission & Valencia and trying to navigate between a passed out drunk lying in a pool of piss and a drunk couple yelling at each other at the top of the lungs, we were just thinking about how mean we were to the homeless.
What do all the numbers mean? Well, while we're only 11th, Santa Monica is the only blue state city before us in a list mainly made up of such motley cities as Sarasota, Little Rock, and Lawrence, Kansas. And Santa Monica probably doesn't count because they're all rich and hoity toity down there. We also somehow came out as meaner than New York (14th), which has had 12 years of Republican mayors. Somehow, not on the list are all those hardscrabble, rough and tumble east coast cities like Philly, Baltimore, and D.C. You know cities that received a lot of plaudits over the past decade or so for "cleaning up" and when we say "cleaning up" we think you know what we mean.
The report, which you can read here, calls out San Francisco for anti-pan handling measures, issuing citations, handing out one way bus tickets, and for having "negative reactions" to homeless people. As opposed to, say, Cleveland, which has instituted "Hug a Homeless Person Day."
Probably the worst part of the ranking is that it won't make anyone happy. Homeless advocates who have been breathlessly claiming that our policies are slightly akin to having jack booted Gestapo thugs rousting poor, defenseless, homeless people can't be happy we didn't come off as more mean. Meanwhile, Downtown Business Interests who wish we could have jack booted Gestapo thugs rousting poor, defense homeless people can't be pleased we didn't come off as more mean. And you can bet Gavin's already working on his photo-op right now.
So come on, San Francisco-- we can do better.
Full list after the jump:
1 Sarasota, Fla.
2 Lawrence, Kan.
3 Little Rock, Ark.
4 Atlanta, Ga.
5 Las Vegas, Nev.
6 Dallas, Texas
7 Houston, Texas
8 San Juan, P.R.
9 Santa Monica, Calif.
10 Flagstaff, Ariz.
11 San Francisco, Calif.
12 Chicago, Ill.
13 San Antonio, Texas
14 New York, N.Y.
15 Austin, Texas
16 Anchorage, Alaska
17 Phoenix, Ariz.
18 Los Angeles, Calif.
19 St. Louis, Mo.
20 Pittsburgh, Pa.
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So what you're saying is we're not mean, we're median.
In fact, Le Show's Harry Shearer has always called Santa Monica the "Home of the homeless." Hell, that's even noted in Santa Monica's Wikipedia entry. :)
I'm sorry, but as bad as I feel for some of these folks I can't help but think back to the time that two of the neighborhood (Inner Sunset) drug addled homeless folks (one of which has someone that lies in the neighborhood that he can stay with) were having sex in my doorway and called me stupid because I made them move so I could, you know, open the door to go to my apartment. I don't mind being called stupid, but it's the sex in my doorway that bothers me.