January 28, 2008
Ask SFist: City-Funded Homeless Showers?
Someone reports, asks the following about city-enforced personal hygiene of the homeless population:
I saw a city water truck soak a homeless guy and all his stuff this morning. The guy was camped out on Bryant about a block from the courthouse when the truck drove up and sprayed him with a firehose type spout. The guy freaked and ran to get away. Does the city routinely route out the homeless with these tactics? I've never seen anything like it. It was really shitty.
What say you, readers? We can't recall seeing any water-related anti-riot tactics used against the homeless population. Can you?
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LMAO!
that is priceless
i hear in sac-tucky (sacramento) the kids throw water balloons at the homeless from moving cars
They were aiming for the steaming pile he left on the steps.
no shit.
b/c i saw some dude at bryant and EMB this morning hanging a bunch of clothes and sheets up on the fence outside of pier 36. i assumed it was wet from the rain and he was drying it out.
then on my way back, i saw a cop making the dude take all his stuff down of that fence.
i wonder if it was the same dude who got hosed down by 850?
Or, they thought that HE was the steaming pile on the steps.
I think the water trucks squirt without regard to folks being in the line of fire .... I've been hit, and I'm definitely one of the folks lucky enough to be able to pay for my own home.
And won't someone do something about buses splashing gutter water on unwitting sidewalkers? SF is SUPPOSED
And won't someone do something about buses splashing gutter water on unwitting sidewalkers? SF is SUPPOSED to be perfect!
Every person deserves a shower.
Plus I think this would greatly improve the moldy wet bus rides.
C'mon, it's a city employee, do you really think they would expend the energy required to actually aim?
Regardless of what really happened, I just feel bad for the dude who is now damp. It's cold outside, if you haven't noticed!
Hey Keight, don't you know you're supposed to leave reactionary comments that are callous and off the cuff? Not thoughtful comments acknowledging a human being in need?
Don't you know that homeless people aren't human. They're supposed to be mocked and generalized because "they're all the same".
i like it better when the cops just say they had a knife and execute them.
I've been walking to work on Stevenson between 5th and 6th and had a huge water truck drive by, dousing the sidewalks and street with an incredibly heavy spray. I think it's a one-size-hits-all approach to street cleaning.
Yeah, bobby, the cops executed him. Cops love doing stuff like that. They just walk around looking for excuses to execute people.
As somebody with a strong sense of smell the thought of enforced showers for the odorifically offensive sounds like a great idea to me. Give them a knife and execute them if they opt out of the showers. I know, I'm so cruel, boohoo. hippie.
I do wonder what the water trucks would be doing spraying the sidewalks. It's not like SF makes much of an effort to keep Bryant Street clean.
saw the same thing happen on Larkin by the courthouse. The spindledrift just sort of sighed and walked away. We're big on pneumonia killing hobos here.
The police are supposed to move homeless encampments by asking the loiterer to either move along or be brought in to talk to a social worker so they can get into a shelter program.
The water truck probably didn't even see this homeless man's camp, and that's a pretty awful place to setup camp anyhow.
If you stay in one of the JC Decoux toilets long enough, you will get drenched. Unless the City disabled that feature because it violated someone's basic human right to always use a filthy toilet.
hey skyliner,
you and the professional homeless coalition have no one to blame but yourselves for the lack of sympathy in this town for the plight of the homeless. you should have been forcing them into treatment years ago to do the right thing and get these people off the street instead of throwing up your hands and continuing to take city hall money, now up to 180 million a year i hear.
sleep on that for a few before you blame those of us that are fed up with your status quo!
Amen suckafree. Their enabling of these poor souls' misery is despicable.
suckafree, always thoughtfully dispensing unrealistic advice :) please recognize that it isn't possible to force someone into treatment, since the state is not set up to allow involuntary commitment, so another solution is obviously needed. unless you want to go higher with this issue and personally take on reopening institutions.
Kay, it actually IS possible to force somoene into treatment. The bill known as "Laura's Law became effectivein 2003 and allows for court-ordered outpatient commitment of mental health clients who refuse voluntary treatment. The problem is that counties have to pay to set up the outpatient clinics and it's too expensive for SF.
You see Kay, Suckafree, as usual, avoids the topic by misdirection and attacking the vague "status quo". People who work to help others are merely "pimps" or "hippies" because they get rich by working for nonprofits.
The catch22 he supports is that if you work to get people off the street and into programs then you are a pimp and an enabler. If you fund these programs, then it's his tax dollars going to help "drug-addicts".
It takes millions to accomplish what he asks for, but if you "take city hall money", then you are a whore.
All of this conveniently avoids any detail or thought into the subtleties and complexities of the human lives associated with each person on the street.
He cynically thinks that the people who work everyday in the lives of the poor and sick actually want to perpetuate this cycle so that we can collect a small paycheck.
He finds it a simple decision to force someone into treatment but not collect taxes to accomplish it.
The "lack of sympathy in this town for the plight of the homeless" is because the public at large are generally bored with any forethought or critical thinking. It's so much easier to categorize everyone into tiny boxes that can be easily disposed of.
It's not "too expensive" for SF, many in SF have been pushing for it for some time. But the Coalition For Homelessness doesn't want anything to do with it. Your tax dollars at work.
Suckafree, well put.
If this is true, it is called assault, and the person would have a VERY STRONG case against the police. This is wrong. I am not thrilled with the homeless situation in this city, but to do that to a human being. Come on folks.
It's not "too expensive" for SF, many in SF have been pushing for it for some time. But the Coalition For Homelessness doesn't want anything to do with it:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/23/BAE6U2BKM.DTL
Your tax dollars at work.
Suckafree, well put.
someone just needs to run the numbers on what we are spending per year to not commit these fuckers to an institution. i'd bet that we can build several new facilities in the valley and bus them all there for much less than the money we spend in homeless coalition, ER visits, drug rehab, you name it.
word would get out to the peeps eventually and they'd stop coming to ruin our once beautiful city as well.
i'd give it 3 years tops.
skyliner: it's called "nihilism."
Quoth skyliner: "The 'lack of sympathy in this town for the plight of the homeless' is because the public at large are generally bored with any forethought or critical thinking."
No, we're just bored with the homeless. We absolutely adore forethought and critical thinking.
Suckafree,
Pushing "peeps" into other communities is not a solution, it is avoidance.
You are absolutely right about the money we spend on police, ER and infrastructure. That's the whole point on funding programs in the community, to avoid those costs. Does that make the agencies who run them "pimps"?
Since YOU haven't "run the numbers", you actually don't know how much money goes where nor do you know how much money it takes to run the programs that you demand. Salaries, facilities, supplies, infrastructure....perhaps more than 180 million for the thousands of homeless.
YES, SOME people should be mentally committed to an "institution". They were until Reagan's social welfare cuts. So then I assume you're all for funding these "institutions" again, yes?
Has anyone not noticed that that's when homelessness problems on this scale began?!
These are all valid questions that you ignore when you make incendiary comments calling people who work for these very goals "pimps".
There needs to be agencies like The Coalition on Homelessness to watch out for these people, because that's how a free society works: checks and balances.
There needs to be a process so that people aren't locked up for merely being poor.
There are many sides to these issues, so perhaps dismissing all street people as smelly, drug-addict animals that should be put into internment camps is a little narrowminded and a lot fascist.
And BTW, SF has ALWAYS been a city of vice, which is exactly why I love it here and it still is beautiful.
Skyliner wrote:
"The "lack of sympathy in this town for the plight of the homeless" is because the public at large are generally bored with any forethought or critical thinking. It's so much easier to categorize everyone into tiny boxes that can be easily disposed of."
I love the fact that Skyliner attacks people who make broad generalizations and don't think critically by making a broad generalization and not thinking critically.
skyliner, you have captured my essence so well. i do fear that you are much more like the hamas or al queda than you realize. you do not want a solution to homelessness or peace in the middle east, in their terms. what would you do with yourself the next day?
;)
I agree with suckafree. Call it a solution, call it avoidance, I'm just sick of watching these people crap in the bushes (when there's an open public toilet THREE FEET AWAY!!!).
Apparently Newsom can find money (by raping MTA, no less, way to go green!) to appoint a "greening czar", but can't fund Laura's Law? Maybe he could fund it with the $180 million that's being used to advocate the rights of the homeless to crap/camp on the sidewalks.
Skyliner: These are all valid questions that you ignore when you make incendiary comments calling people who work for these very goals "pimps".
Suckafree never called them pimps; he simply suggested that certain individuals profit from the homeless industry. You're misrepresenting his comments by suggesting he used the word pimp.
thanks snaggs. i forgot about that. it's classic rhetoric from these people, just like cw says. agree on a solution dammit and implement it!
as for suggesting i want to send them to someone else's community, that is exactly what happened to us here in the city and i do not agree with that statement, btw. i am suggesting that we build institutions where it is cost effective and house them until they either die or are ready to re-enter society in a positive way.
before you jump on me again for suggesting something so inhumane, i think you are the ones being inhumane for letting these people exist for so long on the street. it's pathetic. you people are the criminals in this context.
we won't let animals try and eek out an miserable existence on the street but you are just fine with letting human beings do it.
crazy!
and don't tell me it's ok for them to chose to be on the street. it's not. my choice is to force them into treatment after the chose to alienate everyone in their lives to have no other option but to live on the street. they probably abused everyone and themselves for years to get to this point, insane, for chosing to live on the street,s so we should be well within our legal boundaries to force them into treatment.
To quote your favorite president: "Well, skyliner, there you go again."
In all your long-winded answers, you failed to answer a simple question. Never mind what happened before most SFist readers were born! Do you support requiring individuals who are clearly incapable of taking care of themselves to enter treatment? (aka Laura's Law)
Suckafree may be radical, but don't think for a minute that he's in the lunatic fringe. If you think that peace-and-love SF is still all okay with the crapping on the street because, like, we're all liberal and stuff, just you wait until the next round of ballot initiatives when people are REALLY fed up.
great point aj. someone should go out and survey our local homeless. i'd bet big money that the number of them that were ever in a pre-reagan institution is statistically insignificant. but what's the point. the homeless coalition will just find some other excuse for their existence.
Here's a solution that both Skyliner and Suckafree can agree on. Let's fund the serial killer in the park that is stabbing homeless to death with city dollars! Let's give him a car too, why should the residents of Fulton be the only ones to benefit from this great citizen's deeds?
that's a killer idea!
let's give them all knives so we can have sfpd shoot them too
;)
God people agreeing with Suckafree? This board is becoming a Bill O'Reilly love fest. Suckafree is a certifiable nut.
what does bill o'reilly think of the homeless daithi? i'm not a fan of his so you'll have to elighten us o' queen of hypocrite's.
;)
Glad you did not dispute the second part of my post suckafree.
Suckafree only sounds like a "certifiable nut" to someone who does not routinely watch the homeless shit in the bushes, or get screamed at by a homeless lady, or have a crazy ass homeless attack her dog (smart move, hobo).
has anybody had a whiff of the guy who hangs out behind Home (across from Amber) on 14th/Church/Market intersection. Dear FUCKING GOD. His odor is VIOLENT. Maybe you all don't have strong senses of smell... but god damn... god fucking god damn... VIOLENT ABHORRENT ODOR.
has anybody had a whiff of the guy who hangs out behind Home (across from Amber) on 14th/Church/Market intersection. Dear FUCKING GOD. His odor is VIOLENT. Maybe you all don't have strong senses of smell... but god damn... god fucking god damn... VIOLENT ABHORRENT ODOR.
throw some water balloons at him next time you see him. i'm sure the neighbors will appreciate it.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/23/BAE6U2BKM.DTL
Why the Coalition on Homelessness said "no"
When a newspaper editor has a "columnist" write an article on the front page, there is no accountability. A columnist DOSE NOT have to be accurate. A columnist writes an "editorial/opinion"
A journalist writes FACTS!!!!!
When and if, I do say if, the Chronicle was to write an article about the struggles that someone goes through just because they have no home....then facts can be established.