Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Bummed Out

San Francisco, that heaven-on-earth for those who want nothing more than a lifestyle free of all obligations, ought to be the recipient of some kind of naivete award. It has not only a gigantic population of bums - sorry, "Homeless" - but an absurdly huge bureaucracy to go along with it. Now, you may think that the use of the term "Bum" constitutes an inability to sympathize with the plight of those less fortunate, or the mentally ill, or the addict-victim, which would fit well with the notion that such people are to be pitied, and supported, which in turn allows you to go on with your life while stepping around unconscious people on the sidewalk with their accompanying detritus and/or feces, avoiding the non-stop flood of requests for spare change. You can endure this because you will also have accepted that millions and millions of city tax dollars are being spent on "Services" for these people, which you can interpret as the cost of dealing with the situation.

And yet, if you spend any extended period of time in the city, you might start to wonder why Market Street becomes ever more crowded with such people, while you are told that the city has yet another budget crisis (indeed, when does it not have a budget crisis?), and the amount of money spent on those mysterious "Services" for the bums - ahem, homeless - appears to rise in direct proportion with that ever-expanding street population. There's just a bit of a chicken-and-egg syndrome here, and San Francisco appears to have embraced a permanent role as the guardian of anyone who wishes to make a sidewalk their home.

There is little talk anymore of actually solving the "problem" of "homelessness", in the sense that it is even acknowledged as a "problem" - it is shrugged off as the price of being the most lovely city in the region, and that's the end of it. Meanwhile, the amusingly named "Homeless Advocates" are cited and quoted ad infinitum in every single S.F. Chronicle story about the situation, and their dialectic remains the same as it ever was: More government services are needed to get homeless people off the streets, and into productive lives.

Even this proposition would provide a worthwhile starting point in the process of tackling an actual strategy, but it quickly becomes apparent that the goals of the various parties are not the same. The "Homeless Advocates" are there not to convert bums into yuppies, but to agitate for more government money. Does that sound too glib and simplistic? If so, when have you heard them recommend otherwise? Sure, they'll all acknowledge that we've been spending zillions of dollars only to see the problem expand, but then in the next breath, the solution is always the same: spend more, or at its most enlightened, spend differently.

So the first step is to spend taxpayer money on housing for such people. The other side of this wooden-nickel coin is "Jobs", and especially "Job Training". Be forewarned that hearing defenders of the bums touting capitalism as a part of the solution will induce uncontrollable laughter on your part. Since when has San Francisco had any attitude other than anathema to business? Just last week, San Francisco's oh-so-enlightened board of supervisors managed to prevent yet another chain store from moving in; does no one see a connection between such provincial protectionism and an environment which discourages commerce and enterprise? The taxpayer dollars will continue to subsidize on-the-street toilets until the end of time, apparently.