Where we summarize reports written by actual media sources because they're really important but we don't feel like we're in any position to be able to comment on them!
The Chron revived its semi-regular profile of life on the streets with a three-part series (which concluded yesterday) about how things are looking for the San Francisco homeless population after the implementation of Newsom's Care Not Cash program. Answer: definitely at least some good, maybe part bad, but we can't really tell either way because we have no way of measuring success or failure.
Our book report summary of the three articles follows after the jump, but before we launch into that, we're pleased to see that individual people have done well under Care Not Cash and Project Homeless Connect, and given that Newsom won the 2003 mayoral election, we're definitely glad the critics were at least in part wrong about how Care Not Cash would play out. But we're still wondering how the homeless population as a whole is doing -- are people simply opting out of the entire shelter system now? What about people who don't have enough money to get by? Are we just shipping our problems with a one-way bus ticket to someone else's town?
It's good to see the Chron tackling these issues (and labeling all the pictures right too! A total bonus!) We'll leave it to our readers to educate us on the other issues involved that the Chron left out.