August 2, 2007
Homeless People Swept Up At Golden Gate Park
The city provided a continental breakfast of "coffee, bagels, orange wedges, and blueberries" (delicious!) as well as temporary encampment tents for those that they evicted from Golden Gate Park at 4:30 a.m. this morning. (You can read Chron's article about it here, and SF Examiner's here.)
SFPD and city outreach workers sounded the alarm for this election-year effort to clean-up the park. And "after eight hours' work, 44 people accepted the offer of a roof over their heads, and 40 turned it down." Whether or not Golden Gate Park eventually becomes homeless-free remains to be seen, but it's doubtful. Golden Gate Park is synonymous with homelessness.
Newsom also proposes closing all SF parks from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., saying "[a] mother told me that nothing good ever happens after midnight, and I think she was on to something." Nothing good? Oh really? [NSFW]
Anyway, some of the removed homeless people have already been put into shelters or transitional housing, a few were handed free bus tickets via the Homeward Bound program.
|
And Gavin wasn't there to ask for "you guys' IDs?" The nerve.
"Four people were driven to the Transbay Terminal and given free bus tickets home through the city's Homeward Bound program - to mothers in San Luis Obispo and Athens, Ga., a daughter in Santa Fe and an uncle in Phoenix."
Did these daughters, mothers, and uncles also get a bill from the city to help cover the cost?
Wow, that "Oh really?" link was NSFW. Funny, but NSFW.
To be fair, fizzandpop, it's not the relatives' fault these people turned into hoboes.
If it were up to me, my entire family would be living their lives differently. I have about as much sway with them as the above-referenced daughter, uncle, and mother likely do.
And these people wouldn't be here if we weren't doing shit like providing them bagels and coffee and fruit. For crying out loud, what other city does this crap? (And what other city has this kind of homeless problem?)
I was very concerned about the homeless until I saw one shitting in my park (when a bathroom was RIGHT THERE!!!).
Now I say Newsom needs to go Guiliani on their asses.
With regards to the quote about nothing good happening after midnight - Didn't Gavin propose extending alcohol sales to 4 AM at one point?
"Enjoy the blueberries, and finding a new place to sleep."
Well, just ask Gavin's bevy of women that he dates. We need a dating score card to keep up. We really need a serious challenger.
Closing parks at night is dumb. Cops have better things to do here than pick on late-night dog walkers and homeless people.
#4: No it's not their fault, and neither is it my fault, but I'm paying for it every April and November.
Blueberries.
I can't wait for the right wing talk show hosts to have a field day with this one.
Newsom before he was elected: Care Not Cash and Aggressive Panhandling ban.
After: Blueberries.
I live in North Beach and I think most of the 40 homeless people who declined help are now living in my neighborhood.
This morning on my way to work I saw, in addition to all of our "regular," homeless folk, a whole new posse of homeless people I've never seen before, pushing their carts around looking for a nice alley to sleep and poo in.
Damn, #11, you are exactly right. My husband and I were talking about this just last night. And they are much louder and way more aggressive than the previous pack of mostly older, fairly low key homeless. In fact, I'm the previous poster who bitched about the new ones shitting in the park when a bathroom was right there and open.
I say keep GG Park open for the homeless. And keep the public-poopers out of MY neighborhood. ;-)
Of course you do, #12, because you don't live next to GG Park.
Now that you have these yahoos in your hood, maybe now you will vote for a DA who won't ignore all homeless tickets, and stop buying Street Sheets?
I saw a new homeless person in Sunnyside this morning.
I saw some new homeless folks along The Embarcadero between the Ferry Bldg. and Harrison Street over the weekend, but I'm beginning to think it may have been coincidence ... probably drawn there by the free yogurt and drinks being given out to SF Marathon folks and passerby. Free food has a way of attracting living things...
Years ago I had to attend a meeting at the "Old" DeYoung Museum in the Park. It started at 5PM or so and broke up late, after 10. As I said goodbye to the last attendee as they drove off in their car, I realized it was 10PM, I was in the middle of Golden Gate Park, and I had walked there from my home on Ashbury in the Haight.
Talk about behind enemy lines, talk about hearing a twig snap. I ran down the Kennedy Drive centerline, all the way home.
There's a mini-park in my hood and every other week there's a new homeless person living there. It gets completely destroyed with garbage, vomit and shit. They move on after a day or two because there aren't any booze stores nearby and no one is willing to give them any money.
Also, WTF is that drug store that only deals to homeless people? It's behind Market near Civic Center. They go in and get their meds, two steps out the door and they're selling them on the street. WTF????? Close that down!!!!
I'm soooo over it. Close down the entire Mission/Cap area too! I have to walk by that mess on my way to work and I have to hold my nose and run (while watching out for shit, vomit and needles). SAN FRANCISCO sure is one hell of a shithole. I'm sorry to say that, but it's the truth.
I realized it was 10PM, I was in the middle of Golden Gate Park, and I had walked there from my home on Ashbury in the Haight. Talk about behind enemy lines
Yeah, I hate how the enemy drives by and tickets you for parking in GG park after, what is it, 10? How are you supposed to meet people at bars in the Inner Sunset when you have a car, without parking in the park?
Seriously, MLK & JFK drives and the museum campus are safer than many parts of the city at night. I personally wouldn't walk through the Alvord Lake area or the stretch adjacent to Stanyan St. after 9, but I wouldn't freak out if I had to.
Everyone needs to calm down a little. It's a sad day for SF journalism when the Chron starts playing the fear card for pageviews. As a pedestrian, you're far more likely to be hit by a car than fall victim to scary homeless people.
My views on this whole mess are constantly shifting. However, I will say this: The Chronicle article today included some photos, including one of a group of three twenty-something homeless punk kids.
They all had the "look" of the type of street punks that have pretty much destroyed the business district along the several blocks at the end of Haight Street by GG Park and the section of the park around Hippie Hill. Agressive, drunk dealing, pit bull owning, predominantly white punks.
My sense is that the overwhelming numbers of these kids were not born or living in San Francisco when they became homeless, but rather where homeless in their hometowns, or runaways, etc. and moved to San Francisco AS homeless kids - they came here with no money in their pockets, no jobs, no housing set up and just planned to "hang out", party and bum around San Francisco, city of hippie love & harmony.
Why exactly are we spending untold sums of money to support these kids? Why exactly is it OUR responsibility to pay to support street kids from Oregon or Florida or Wisconsin or Orinda? Our public fisc is not a bottomless pile of money to deal with everyone else's social problems.
I'm left wondering if building all these units of housing for the homeless is just an endless program - for every unit we pay to build and fill with a formerly homeless person, someone else moves to free bagels and blueberry-ville to take his or her place.
Thank you very much, #13, but I did NOT vote for Kamala "it's all about me!" Harris, nor do I purchase street sheets, the bad grammar drives me insane.
Dearest ChinaNob 19,
Many of those kids on Haight are runaways from abusive homes, or were in foster care in other states and aged out. They have no financial skills, and although street smart lack adult skills.
They come to SF with a dream that this is paradise only to find themselves homeless, preyed upon. They get caught up in the drug scene, most are in the sex trade, and many get HIV. The agencies are trying to give them vocational training, transitional housing, or get them reunited with relatives as long as they won't get raped or beaten again.
BTW the biggest and best known agency here that helps those kids gets much of their funding from private sources. The goal of that agency is to get them off the streets, protect them, and train them how to live as adults who can work for a living.
mariconsoy - you haven't answered the question as to why some dumbass punk - aged out of foster care - who idiotically moves to SF thinking its gonna be all honey and roses should become OUR problem. the world is filled with kids with fucked up homelives. we can't - nor should we be - expected to help them all.
i'd rather see us devoting our LIMITED resources to helping troubled kids FROM San Francisco and not expect ourselves to solve ALL the world's problems.
only blinded by naivete, softheaded lefties assume its San Francisco's job to solve everyone else's problems.
We have no obligation to solve the country's youth problems. I do support the agency that tries to get these kids who move to SF back to their homes, or to teach them how to live by working without welfare. They don't all stay here forever, especially after they figure out how shitty it is here for them.
You know by now how much I despise professional bums and beggars leeching off of us forever. A Sixteen year old naive kid with the maturity level of a 9 year old is different to me. They can be changed and helped. They unlike the 60 year old drunks need adult mentoring so they can change.
I didn't ask where the 17 year old boy came from when I let him stay with me thru the agency. He'd been beaten by his dad and thrown out of home when the dad found he was gay. His dad threw him out after punching him in his face and whipping him with a belt.
That kid moved here thinking he'd be in OZ. But an old perv dosed the kid with a drink, and raped him for a weekend while he was unconscious, dumped him in an alley after stealing the little money the kid had. Should I have left him in the park? The agency and I worked to help the kid. He's got a job in Chicago and is supporting himself.
What would your solution have been?
My solution would be to publicize that San Francisco is not the happy homeless mecca that all the hobos apparently think it is, and that our homeless agencies will happily buy kids a ticket out of town (preferably back home, or to some guardians who will give at least some proper support and direction).
Assisting homeless youth to become productive members of society is something I'd support, but are there unbiased numbers as to how successful these programs really are? Judging from the gauntlet of kids lining Haight Street, they aren't particularly motivated to do much except scare tourists and locals alike.
wow, did i pick a day to miss ranting here on sfist. great work guys. you are all fighting the good fight. i smell the potential for a movement to start a prop to ban spending any public money on the homeless. we could get it on the ballot this november. that would stop all that ails you on this topic. the homeless would continue to destroy santa cruz as a result.
Tickets? They give chronic tresspassers tickets? Is that supposed to do something? That's completely ridiculous.
Cop goes to squatter/panhandler: go to shelter or go to jail. Done. I am so done with the disgusting state of our streets and parks. We pay taxes, clean it up.
nyc is so much cleaner than sf. it's a real shame. london too. i'm not sure why we can't just be adults about it and tell these leaches to get out of town or get a job. it's time for some real tough love around here.
Frankly I never understood why the homeless stay here. It's damn cold and really, really cold at night. I mean, this is summer and night-time temperatures are in 50s here while they're at least in the upper 60s and 70s in, well, pretty much everyplace else in the country.
Frankly all of these complaints about the homeless not being clean enough because of those beastly homeless just feels really NIMBY and yuppie to me. If you don't want to deal with the homeless, move to the suburbs where everyone else is obsessed with keeping everything clean, "perfect", and Disneyfied all the time.
I am sick of people saying that most of these kids came from disadvantaged backgrounds! I can testify having grown up with many of them that there are a sizable number that choose to slack off. Many are punk-styled kids from sanmateo (specifically pacifica) that think this bumming life is what its "all about". I also currently go to college on the east coast and know two people who spent their summer vacation between highschool and college "bumming around in san franciscos park. it was riteous" they said.
You want to talk to them yourself because they would be more than happy to talk about there "down with nature" experiences.
[29] Bornandraised,
The kids are not necessarily from disadvantaged households but abusive households. see my post23 about the kid who was punched in the face and beaten with the buckle side of a belt by his dad. While the beating was happening the dad kept screaming fag fag fag etc at the kid. That family was middle class. Would you go back if that happened to you? In the town he came from there were no services to help him.
The agency that helps does extensive screening so the "little rich kids" from San Mateo etc for a summer vacation don't get into the programs or most of the services [except to get them back to their families.] Also AIDS prevention and sex industry protection.
Pasted from another venue, but on hte same subject:
These interlopers are breaking the law and making it impossible for SF residents to enjoy the park (and other public areas) due to their threatening, aggressive and antisocial behaviors.
This is not something related to a "poverty existence." These are the dregs of humanity who cannot live as citizens abiding by the social contract, but live a marginal existence on public properties which they can do because we do not make it impossible for them to do it.
#####
marc wrote:
"I'd like for the City to initiate a "shit in a bag" program, where it
communicated to the homeless the importance of not befouling the public space and provided plastic bags, TP and sanitizer for them to use.
"Similarly, syringe disposal systems are inherently safe, designed to be unopenable without tools, and should be deployed in sites frequented by injection drug users."
#####
These statements are naively assuming that these folks would actually do what is suggested. If a person is "befouling public space" then he will go right on doing so whether or not a receptacle is provided or not.
He doesn't care if he is doing something which is considered unacceptable to those operating under the social contract, because he is not operating under that social contract.
As to "unopenable without tools" syringe disposal units: how many time have you seen these same people opening city trash bins' locked doors by jamming a metal stick into the lock? Bums work hard to get into things which are locked. They don't care if it is something they "shouldn't" do or not. They don't care if they are destroying public or private property.
The problem is that we have accepted a definition or label of "homeless" when speaking about people for whom that is but the symptom of their real problem. The real label is that they are drug addicted and alcoholic, because of or resulting in mental impairment.
They're bums, and if we do not show some tough love by forcing them into the social contract, then they will continue to destroy our surroundings and themselves.
I strongly advocate some sort of work program. People need to be kept occupied in a positive way.
I don't buy that the majority of the street punks are victims of abusive households. I'll bet many of them were punks before their parents finally said, hit the road if you don't want to work or go to school. Certainly none of the bums quoted in the recent series of articles seemed down an out.
That punk (what was his street name? Repo Violence) had himself a breakfast, didn't accept the city's offer of housing, and then said how much he loves his freedome and getting up in the morning and being able to do whatever he wants.
I'm in favor of helping but not in favor of being a schmuck. And as others have said, I'm in favor of helping San Franciscans first and not people who land here already charity cases. That's not our job. There's not enough money in the world to help everybody.