Exactly one year ago, I proposed an Oshkosh to San Francisco Tent Truck that would help those experiencing homelessness in a state where everyone with political power agrees that housing is a human right.
This year, Gavin Newsom has issued an executive order encouraging California cities to clear homeless encampments. It is unclear where unhoused Californians will go. The order merely suggests “Contacting of service providers to request outreach services for persons experiencing homelessness at the encampment.” That’s not a guarantee of shelter, certainly. CNN:
Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the parent organization of the Housing is a Human Right initiative, accused Newsom of “criminalizing poverty” and “doubling down on failed policies.”
“Governor Newsom, where do you expect people to go? This is a shameful moment in California history,” Weinstein said in a statement Thursday.
Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness in San Francisco, called Newsom’s executive order “a punch in the gut.”
She said there are already thousands of people on a waitlist for housing, and all shelter beds in San Francisco are already full. Roughly 8,000 people are homeless every night in the city, which has 3,300 occupied shelter beds, Friedenbach told CNN.
The actual order:
Some Oshkosh tenting action…
A high wing delta wing would be a good tent airplane & 1/1000 the cost of a house. Doubt that’ll ever happen in general aviation & it’ll certainly get banned by Newsom during election years.
It takes a lot of political will to get a shelter built downtown.
I lived in a snooty high-rise in South Beach, one of the newer neighborhoods in SF, and the residents came out in force to try to stop this center.
https://www.sprung.com/projects/san-francisco-embarcadero-safe-navigation-center/
As far I know, I’ve never heard of the city trying to put people in homes in cheaper areas. I think they view it as a shared problem, and they want every neighborhood to take their share.
However, if you look on the map, there’s a giant empty block of land here, across the bay
https://www.google.com/maps/search/alameda+antique+fair/@37.787888,-122.3254522,3441m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu
It was formerly a military air base, so it’s just giant strips of pavement.
It’s used 1 day per month for an antique fair(!).
I continually wonder why people don’t build shelters there.
I suspect it’s because people feel like the homeless deserve to live among us, even in the most expensive neighborhoods, so we don’t want to push them to unused land. That is, until we get fed up and tell the police to just grab their shit, throw it in the trash, and shrug, “it’s your problem now”.
Is building more shelters the answer? Isn’t that the same as giving a man a “fish” day after day?
I get it, there are some mental sick folks and they need to be taken care of, but boy, does the US, some states far more than others, has a lot of those! Why?!
My thinking was from before the recent supreme court case. The rule then was that you couldn’t stop people from living on the streets unless you had a bed for everyone who needed one.
Why not put 4k cots on the deserted air force base if you really need them?
I agree that enforcing the drug laws would reduce the number of people living in tents dramatically.
The city is under the impression that they’re being kind by not stopping the people from using fentanyl on the streets.
EVERYTHING is a human right in the eye of liberals, except for things you worked hard for and earned it. Then the liberals and government will want to take it away from you!!
Amen to that
why do they need to build those shelters in expensive metro areas at all, instead of the wide open prairies somewhere? if the Indians could live in wigwams, surely modern-day homeless could live in them, too?