The view from the street
A D6 resident who asked to remain anonymous sent in this photo of the sidewalks on the corner of Howard and Russ Streets in the morning. I wish I could say that the sidewalks of our neighborhood in the upper end of D6 look cleaner, but they seldom do. Trash cans that have been knocked over in the night so addicts can pull out anything to sell on the street for their next fix; then come the rats. Not a pleasant environment in which to live, and not a safe one for children. Think this happens in D2? No way.
posted by the clicker at 6:44 PM
11 Comments:
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How is it Chris Daly's fault that someone knocked over a trash can?
the corner pictured here is right on the other side of my place...and at least that got dumped on Howard. There's a half a chance that a DPW truck will come by and clean it. Sure as hell doesn't happen on my little alley (the DPW that is)!
Daly is a crackpot, and D6 is quickly circling the drain. There seems to be a whole new crop of homeless people at 6th/Howard area lately. I think they got pushed out of the Mission/4-5th area when the new mega-mall got opened up. We should all send Daly the trash/feces/broken auto glass that accumulates in D6!
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"How is it Chris Daly's fault that someone knocked over a trash can?"
It's entirely symptomatic of our neighborhood and its leadership. Chris Daly has little regard for the values that are prevalent in most other parts of San Francisco. You wouldn't see the sort of trash on the streets, the graffiti and tagging, the general disregard for quality of life anywhere else in town, except maybe the worst areas of Bayview/Hunter's Point.
Most people want their neighborhood to be clean, and most Supervisors share that aim. Does Chris Daly? Not that I can tell. Everything about him seems to reflect his preference for "keeping it real", which means letting people get away with aggressive panhandling, chronic loitering, selling their crap on the sidewalk, public urination and defecation, littering and the host of other things associated with "street life". Making the neighborhood safe, clean and attractive is about as far down his list of priorities as can be imagined.
Well, I do live south of Market, not far from the site of that photo, and I've been seeing fewer sidewalk sleepers than usual lately, not more. And overturned trash cans are not the norm here by any means.
I have to wonder why there's a constant focus here on depicting our district as some kind of horrible slum full of human waste, when in fact it's a very nice place to live in many ways. Do you actually pay attention to the nice things here? How about a photo of the magnolia and cherry trees in our South of Market alleys, for example? Why not say something nice about our Civic Center farmer's market (Sundays and Wednesdays), which is certainly the best in the city? What about a little praise for one of the few urban neighborhoods we've got left where people of all races and income levels coexist with actually much less friction than you might expect?
Anyway sidewalk sleepers don't hurt me in any way, nor do they hurt you in any way. They're the ones suffering, not you, not me. Again, I can't see how anyone can respond to the presence of such gross inequality, not by trying to even things out or relieve suffering, but by demanding that the visibly poor be swept out of sight and made to do their inconvenient suffering somewhere else.
My only complaints about municipal services are that our cops are too sulky (or something) to do anything about car break-ins or thefts (NB successful car thieves make too much money in their business to sleep on the street -- the cops should be looking for active, competent, fast-moving professional criminals, not wretched drunks), and that DPT gives tickets on "street cleaning" nights while DPW fails to actually clean the streets. The inadequate street cleaning and policing are real, but they're as much the mayor's fault and the bureaucracy's fault as anyone else's.
"...I've been seeing fewer sidewalk sleepers than usual lately, not more"
Are you willing to attribute that to Care, not Cash? If not, why?
Martha, your neighborhood may not be a "horrible slum full of human waste", but mine is. My corner of D6 is a cesspool, especially dramatic for being in one of the most beautiful cities in the US. One can walk just a block up the hill from the boundary of D6 and be in the clean, safe, well-maintained streets of D3. Even the panhandle of D2 that comes down to Geary, right across Van Ness is remarkably cleaner than just across the border into D6.
The buildings in the upper Tenderloin are as nice as those in just about any other part of town. Our weather is generally better than many parts of town. Our location is very convenient. We have a thriving art scene, a bunch of interesting shops, restaurants, bars and cafes. It's very diverse, with Vietnamese, Middle Eastern and Hispanic communities, and a surprising number of hip Japanese kids. So why isn't the upper Tenderloin a great neighborhood? One reason: the people on the streets.
I walk around this part of town a lot, and I have NEVER seen a passed out person on the streets of D2 or D3, nor have I ever seen human excrement there. EVERY SINGLE DAY a gateway near my building gets used as a toilet. Every single day, I have to step over or around people passed out on the sidewalks of my neighborhood. Nearly every building in my neighborhood has been tagged. There are crack dealers and users on my sidewalk 24/7. Not so for any of these things just across district lines.
This blog was never intended to be about the nice things I encounter and experience every day. I do encounter and experience them, just not in D6, especially north of Mission. We're an eyesore and an embarassment to the rest of the city, and to visitors from all over the world. Surely you've noticed that.
You say that sidewalk sleepers don't hurt me in any way. I disagree. First, because I don't like to see anyone unwell or unhappy or unwanted. Whether you believe it or not, if I had a magic wand to be able to wave at these people, it wouldn't be to make them disappear or die, it would be to make them well and responsible members of society. As I've pointed out before, there are hundreds of different agencies that offer free services to such people. CATS will pick them up for free in their van and drive them to Walden, Delancey or any one of a number of other places where they can receive free help. Why don't people accept this help? Not all of them are so mentally ill that they can't be trusted to make decisions for their own safety. No, the majority of them are suffering from self-induced problems. If my problem were that I was nearly deaf and so I preferred to listen to my stereo turned up to 140 decibels, I suspect that you would prefer if I didn't bring my problem to the other side of your window at 3am.
I also am hurt by sidewalk sleepers because it brings me down, in the same way that seeing a person urinating on a wall or shooting up or turning tricks for their next rock of crack brings me down. It's debasing, and debasement is never a pleasant thing to witness.
Yes, our Police department has its problems, and I'd love to have them addressed. And I too hate the DPW/DPT extortion practices. But to blame the street cleaning and policing problems on the Mayor is simply absurd. One of Daly's flacks tried to blame the problems in our neighborhood on the Mayor, and I quickly pointed out that Newsom has only been Mayor for 3 years, while Daly has been our Supe for 6 years. Our neighborhood actually improved slightly in late 1998 and 1999, but soon after Daly was elected, it all went downhill. And if the Mayor were to blame, there wouldn't be the dramatic difference between conditions just on the other side of the district borders from us.
Whether they live here (such as the parolees in SROs), or they are homeless, or they are just using our neighborhood (such as the crack dealers that ride BART here from their homes outside the city), people on the street are the ones causing the trouble. This is a mystery to no one. And what has Chris Daly's solution been? To claim that the problem is one of the disparity of wealth. Oh yeah -- like they've ever solved that problem, or ever could. He's certainly not going to be the first to solve it. But as long as he can hold up that red herring, a certain number of people will always be willing to support him. Most of those people are either those who hope to get something for nothing, or those who think that social justice and equality can be created by taking from one and giving to another, just because the other's hand is out.
Like the guys who sit outside of Rainbow Grocery every day, all day. Able-bodied men, fully capable of pulling their own weight in the world. But there they sit on their milk crates, begging from people. Occasionally, when I see customers handing them money, I'll point out that -- by essentially paying these guys to do nothing -- they're literally keeping them in the role of beggars. After all, what's their motivation to do anything else, anything productive, with their lives as long as they're getting paid to just sit there? But sit there they will, until the day they die, because of people's "good intentions" and charity. Of course, people immediately get defensive when this is pointed out to them, and often play the race card, but I would say the same thing no matter what race a person was who sat there with their hand out when they could be using that hand to earn their own living.
I have always been amazed by the tendency of some people on the Left side -- my side -- of the political spectrum, to not recognize that there are people out there who do not deserve to get a free ride. The same people who would immediately castigate a Kenneth Lay or Bernie Ebbers for their greed and theft, yet will extend concessions and excuses without end to a person who takes from others by petty theft or panhandling or hooking or milking the entitlement system. As if being below the poverty line issued one a "get out of guilt free" card! Well, the guy on my block who bums money off of people for his crack habit, and who I see passed out on the sidewalk a few times a week, is no less a loser and a menace to my neighborhood than Kenneth Lay or Bernie Ebbers. They ALL need to get their shit together and stop being drags on society.
Tender-Nob, honeybun, if you're on "the Left side" of the political spectrum I'm Nancy Reagan. Last I heard, the political left had something to do with human equality.
I've actually been wondering where else in the world it would be possible to win votes in an election by complaining about poor people spoiling the view for their more fortunate neighbors. I can't actually think of any other place that would be so overtly heartless.
The Tenderloin is a little rougher than SoMa. It also has a pretty high density of interesting organizations and interesting educated people, although some of them have no money so I suppose they're worthless in your book. I'm guessing one of these days it'll be remembered as a Left Bank sort of place with a nostalgia that'll surprise you. (I mean, in a plain ordinary slum how would I have found an obscure classic like Paul Potts' Dante Called You Beatrice at a street sale?) The TL has some of the last comparatively inexpensive housing in the city, and good Indian restaurants, and the Faithful Fools copy shop, and Tenderloin New Market (blue awning, Leavenworth Street, you should try shopping there if you haven't yet), and the Edinburgh Castle for pity's sake... and if you can't adjust to the frictions of living in the Tenderloin and you don't wish to see any part of your neighborhood above the gutter (or anyway above waist level), maybe you should just move somewhere with spiffier sidewalks and duller neighbors. The Tenderloin is not going to change for your convenience.
If you think people living on the street just need to pull up their socks, you have not considered what it takes to survive in this very expensive town starting from zilch, meaning not only zilch money but also zilch friends and zilch professional connections. Try it yourself first before you look down your nose at people who beg. Begging, incidentally, is a profession -- a demanding, demeaning, morally ambiguous profession, though one no worse than, e.g., lawyering -- that deserves an equal mix of respect and contempt whether practiced in a "development office" or on a street corner.
Try actually using city services for the poor before you claim they're able to help anyone who asks for help. Just for example, I was told some years ago (hope it isn't still true) that people could only get to detox via the MAP/CATS van if they were actually intoxicated, so someone who was merely hung over and feeling remorseful would have to get drunk again to qualify for help. At the time I was told that people who knocked right on the door at the Ozanam center on Howard Street wouldn't be admitted unless brought in from elsewhere. I really hope that's no longer true. It at least used to be that some of the people sleeping in alleys near there had decided to simply lie down after being rejected at Ozanam's door.
Every nonprofit and public agency in this town seems to have some kind of similarly finicky admission requirements, and seems to spend half its time making "referrals," which means shunting people with problems from one office to another for increasingly specialized purposes. Just because there's activity doesn't mean it's efficient. If you actually tried being unemployed and broke in this town you'd discover that if you want to avoid begging or breaking the law, you have to spend each day waiting for different services in different lines or waiting rooms. Try it some time, you'll see.
As for "Care Not Cash," it has helped some people who happen to fit its template for The Well-Behaved Client -- e.g. who don't have pets or vehicles, don't mind too much being told how to live, can keep appointments, and are pretty good at paperwork. At the same time it has hurt others by discouraging needy applicants entirely out of the CAAP program who aren't good at paperwork, don't have a high tolerance for official busybodies, or would have to give up pets or vehicles to move into those little downtown hotel rooms. Now, you can say that people with poor work habits ought to develop better ones, but the question I have for you is, what should be the penalty for poor work habits? Exposure? Starvation? What?
Martha, how 'bout you spare me the patronizing nicknames, and I'll show you the same courtesy. OK?
Now then -- not that I have to trot out my "Left credentials", but here you go:
I have actively campaigned for every Democratic Presidential candidate since Carter's re-election campaign; in some cases, switching to working part-time so I could devote at least 20 hours a week to campaigning. I have been a registered Green for 19 years, although I usually vote Democrat, unless the Green candidate has a good chance of winning. I have been actively involved in direct action in environmental and animal rights causes for more than 25 years. I have been involved in anti-war activities against every US war since Grenada, in 1983. I support a woman's right to choose. I am against the IMF. I am willing to pay more taxes, if it would improve the overall quality of life. I am a vegan and an atheist, and I'm for a clear separation of Church and State. I support legalizing prostitution and soft drugs.
So, exactly how am I not on the Left? How are you more Left than me? Because you believe that people who could pull their own weight but won't, should be given other people's money? Because you think that the laws against crimes like loitering and public urination and aggressive panhandling shouldn't be enforced? That's neither progressive nor sensible.
You claim I'm a "more fortunate neighbor". Apparently you haven't read my earlier posts. I earn less than $20,000 per year, by my own livelihood decision. That puts me well below the poverty line, with many of the other residents of D6. (Excepting Chris Daly, with his $120,000 a year paycheck, which he voted for.) There's nothing "fortunate" about my situation. I have to work my ass off to make ends meet, but I do so. You keep harping on my supposedly not valuing people who have no money. Hardly -- I'm one of them! My objection is to people who take money from others, whether it's Bernie Ebbers or the local crackhead who breaks into cars at night. I've got no problem with people who have no income at all, so long as they don't expect to get a free ride off of others.
"Begging, incidentally, is a profession -- a demanding, demeaning, morally ambiguous profession"
What utter crap. The Hispanic man in my apartment building who gets up every day at 5:30 so he can go off to his job as a janitor for the school district and support his family -- THAT'S a profession. There's no way in hell that sitting on a milk crate in the Rainbow Grocery parking lot and asking people for money is even in the same dictionary as that. Thieves and hookers have more of a profession than panhandlers!
"If you think people living on the street just need to pull up their socks, you have not considered what it takes to survive in this very expensive town starting from zilch, meaning not only zilch money but also zilch friends and zilch professional connections. Try it yourself first before you look down your nose at people who beg."
I suggest you re-read my earlier post, where I describe my own experience of being exactly in the situation you described. Where I was homeless, broke, with my leg in a cast, in the winter of '85; one of the worst on record. And yet, with no help from any individuals and no reliance on the government, I managed to get a job as a dishwasher and in 3 months was back in a room. So no more nonsense about how I supposedly don't know what it's like. I do. Do you? Have you ever been homeless and broke and sick, and recovered due to your own efforts? I could've just said "world, take care of me", and started panhandling. I'd probably still be there, 20 years later, draining the system. But instead, I have my dignity and self-respect, and I contribute to the welfare of others through my taxes.
What you don't seem to recognize is that you are advocating for a failed system. San Francisco has had its grand social experiment of nearly 40 years, and its results have been disastrous. We have many times more homeless people than any of the surrounding counties. In fact, we have more homeless people than ALL of the surrounding counties COMBINED, and yet we are only a fraction of their population! Why is this? It's NOT because, as you claim, San Francisco is such an expensive place to live. Berkeley, Mill Valley, Burlingame -- they're all just as expensive. No, it's because we've rolled out the welcome mat for people all over the nation to come and be taken care of.
Wikipedia says "Homelessness has been a chronic and controversial problem for San Francisco since the early 1980s. The city is believed to have the highest number of homeless inhabitants per capita of any major city in the United States", and "The city of San Francisco, due to its mild climate and its social programs that have provided cash payments for homeless individuals, is often considered the homelessness capital of the United States. The city's homeless population has been estimated at 7,000-10,000 people. It is believed that New York, which is 10 times as large in population, has only 5 times as many homeless individuals."
Did you notice the cause-effect relationship that Wikipedia did? I'll repeat it, so there's no mistaking it: "The city of San Francisco, due to its mild climate and its social programs that have provided cash payments for homeless individuals..." So, it's not just some "heartless" complainer that thinks that we've gone about this the wrong way.
I've identified some things that contribute to the problems facing our district (beyond Chris Daly's preservation of the status quo), and I've suggested some ways to deal with those problems. So, what's your solution? Should we just "stay the course" like Bush with the war in Iraq, and keep headed down the wrong path -- the path that has produced the largest homeless population in the US, and a neighborhood that's a cesspool? Or perhaps we should throw even more money at the problem? Because it really seems to me as though -- not only do you not have a solution, but you refuse to consider any alternatives to the problem.
TenderNob --
First of all, I'd like to thank you for posting and responding to my additional comment on this thread, since you've apparently rejected comments I posted to two other threads yesterday.
After listing extensive identity-politics and pacifist credentials, you write:So, exactly how am I not on the Left? How are you more Left than me? Because you believe that people who could pull their own weight but won't, should be given other people's money?
...and that goes to show how far the public image of the word "left" has traveled from its origins. "Left" for much of the past couple centuries has meant either adhering to socialist principles or being influenced thereby. Socialist principles spring from the notion that there is a generic human right to the essentials of life -- a right held by virtue of being human, regardless of strength, popularity, ability or virtue. What you've just written is precisely a repudiation of socialist principles.
Regarding the hard time you had in the 1980s, no, I hadn't read that post, and I congratulate you on what must have been a very tough recovery. My own experience with homelessness is as a long-term advocate for very poor people. I've spent a lot of long difficult days at campsites and inhabited vehicles, and one such visit gave me an 18-stitch dog bite on the left leg, but I've always been able to go home. I do know the difference and respect your authority to speak.
However, I don't think I lose my own right to speak by having had a less harrowing personal experience. I still think you're mistaken, although it's a different kind of mistake than I thought at first. So you're not an oblivious yuppie, and I withdraw that suggestion, but I do think you've accepted a different kind of temptation to selfishness.
This happens often with people who have come through hard times, who feel they've earned everything they have, who feel they don't owe anyone anything. The sense of moral authority you get from having scraped your way up can make you feel justified in being incredibly unsympathetic toward others who have done worse in similar circumstances. I can see where the feeling comes from, but I can't accept the cruelty of saying that people who don't achieve what you've achieved deserve to suffer. Can't you want other people to have it *easier* than you did? Would you want your own kids to have to suffer and work as hard as you have? Do you not feel you can afford to be generous? If the Tenderloin neighbor you thought of as lazy was a member of your family wouldn't you feel that person had a right to live decently regardless of deservingness?
...and what in all this brings you to direct your resentments against one particular public official?
Martha, I didn't reject your responses; I moved them over to the correct posts they were intended to respond to, since you had put them after the wrong ones. Take a look around the blog and you'll find them where they ought to be.
Obviously, I disagree with your assertion that being on the Left requires adhering to, or being influenced by, socialist values. If that were true, then the political spectrum would be primarily a financial one, and that's certainly not the case. There's no shortage of poor Republicans (like, most of the middle of the US) and there are plenty of rich Democrats (like much of San Francisco, LA and NY). And the Right is just as happy about handing money out as is the Left; they just choose different groups to receive the largess (farm subsidies, defense contractors, tax cuts, etc.).
"Left-ness" and "Right-ness" have far more to do with believing in the equality of all people, and the ideal that things and groups have intrinsic value and autonomy, beyond any profit they might provide to others. That's the foundation of what all of us on the Left believe underpins causes like national sovereignty, gay marriage, the separation of church and state, defending the environment, etc. The Right uses subjective and exploitative criteria for extending rights and values. Not we. At least -- not in theory.
"Can't you want other people to have it *easier* than you did? Would you want your own kids to have to suffer and work as hard as you have? Do you not feel you can afford to be generous? If the Tenderloin neighbor you thought of as lazy was a member of your family wouldn't you feel that person had a right to live decently regardless of deservingness?"
No. Take a look at the generation that grew up during the Great Depression. They were probably the most productive generation since the height of the industrial revolution, and yet they also supported (and funded) the great experiments of the "New Deal", the NRA (National Recovery Administration), Social Security, the WPA and other forms of support for those who were unable to help themselves. But these assistances were never intended to be a permanent state for people; they were strictly temporary.
Then take a look at the subsequent generations: the Baby Boomers have created an infantilized society, where nobody wants to grow up and take responsibility for themselves. It is precisely the mentality of "wanting others to have it easier" that has gotten us into this problem! People who do not have a sense of self-reliance instilled in them during childhood tend to look for easy ways out of any challenge. It's a sense of entitlement without responsibility, and it pervades our society. And I wouldn't brook such a position in a person just because they were a family member, I assure you!
My wife and I chose long ago to not have children, for various political and philosophical reasons and, quite frankly, because we don't believe that children should be brought into a situation where their parents don't have enough resources to be able to provide them with financial security, a yard, a decent school and the freedom from crime and ugliness around them. I'm not suggesting that they should have luxury, or be spoiled, but neither should they be latch-key kids in a cramped apartment who have to ride Muni, which is the reality of so many children in San Francisco.
Unfortunately, people tend to reproduce without considering whether their resources can provide for their children, just as surely as some people to move to the second-most expensive and scarce housing market in the US, without first considering their resources. In both of these cases, their willful naivete (or outright foolishness) mean that everyone else has to carry them. Just like Bush and his ridiculously optimistic projections about the War.
What people need are tools. Our species is, by nature, makers of tools. The old saw about giving a man a fish versus teaching him how to fish is still true. If you give a man assistance because he's fallen on hard times, it cannot be open-ended, or he will surely defend that source of his comfort zone to the bitter end. It's all about a belief in entitlement without a belief in responsibility.
If ever the "lifeboat" analogy was needed, it's here. If you have a community of 100 people who are working and equally contributing to a rainy day fund, then 20 of them decide they no longer want to work, just draw from the fund -- it's not going to be long before the fund is gone. It's exactly the same thing here, just on a larger scale, so it seems more abstract. The city of San Francisco spends well over $200 million a year just on homeless services. That works out to about $500 out of the paychecks of every working person in San Francisco, every year.
One might think that, for such a large amount, citizens would have the right to be critical of a system that has so obviously failed to deal with the problem. It's a simple fact: as long as the handouts are available, there will be an endless number of people coming here to take advantage of them. There is absolutely no mechanism to limit the people coming to San Francisco, nor to their ability to draw from the system. It never ceases to amaze me that such a simple equation can't be grasped by otherwise intelligent people.
It's an old article, but you might find this perspective interesting. The opinions expressed are hardly uncommon, even if people are hesitant to express them in public.
"...and what in all this brings you to direct your resentments against one particular public official?"
There are a few reasons. I'm deeply offended by the fact that the person who is supposed to represent all of the people who live, work and visit D6, has decided that he only wants to work for one of the smallest groups of residents. And I'd be equally pissed off if he decided only to work for the Don Fishers and Walter Shorensteins of D6. It's a simple fact that Chris Daly doesn't care about the quality of life of those who live in my neighborhood, unless they're homeless or destitute. Nor does he care about the business environment Downtown. Nor does he care about curbing runaway tax expenditures for social programs.
Beyond his failure as a representative for the majority of his constituents, I'm annoyed that our tax dollars pay him $120,000 a year for such mediocre job performance. (That's about 6 or 7 times what I earn in a year, about 5 times what the hard-working Mexican school janitor in my building makes, and 3 times more than what a teacher makes. Why on earth should a Supervisor be paid so much? Well, it's at least partly because Chris Daly voted for that amount.) In the business world, a manager who only cared about one minor element of the business, to the detriment of the majority, would never last -- much less be lionized. But in San Francisco, such people are protected from criticism simply because no one wants to be thought to be insensitive about the poor.
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