In honor of the anniversary, Team Gavin has launched a full court press showing that despite appearances, things have improved. Question: what is the proof? Answer: according to Trent Roher, about 1,800 homeless people are now people formerly known as homeless. Those who go into the program mainly stay in the program. Of course, numbers can be spun all sorts of ways and there's been different interpretations of those numbers.
Team Gavin has also been issuing a whole bunch of new initiatives on the issue. One of them will be more money. Another one is to deal with the 219 people who are classified as "chronic inebriates" and who cost the city a little under $11 million a year just in hospital expenses. Gavin wants to set up a "wet house" in which participants will be put in a special house and can drink all they want if only the agree to counseling. Now that would make one hell of a reality show. Come to think of it, isn't that what "the Real World" is anyways?
And finally, there's his community court idea, the one about setting up a special court for so-called "quality of life" crimes. This is his biggest initiative (Ken Garcia drops some Aristotle in his support of the measure) but is getting the most heat from opponents. And by opponent, we mean mainly Chris Daly, with whom Gavin recently threw a gauntlet at. How much of a gauntlet? Gavin says this about the homelessness: "If people don't like what we're doing, get rid of me this November. Just throw me out. They have a chance. They don't have to wait four years. You can do it right now."