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An inadequate supply of affordable housing is not the first thing that comes to mind when conversing with San Francisco’s street denizens. Their behavioral problems—above all, addiction and mental illness—are too obvious. Forty-two percent of respondents in the city’s 2019 street poll of the homeless reported chronic drug or alcohol use; the actual percentage is likely higher. The city relentlessly sends the message that drug use is not only acceptable but fully expected. Users dig for veins in plain view on the sidewalk; health authorities distribute more than 4.5 million syringes a year, along with Vitamin C to dissolve heroin and crack, alcohol swabs, and instructions on how to best tie one’s arm for a “hit.†Needle disposal boxes have been erected outside the city’s public toilets, signaling to children that drug use is a normal part of adult life. Only 60 percent of the city’s free needles get returned; many of the rest litter the sidewalks and streets or are flushed down toilets.Drug sellers are as shameless as drug users. Hondurans have dominated the drug trade in the Tenderloin and around Civic Center Plaza and Union Square since the 1990s. They congregate up to a dozen a corner, openly counting and recounting large wads of cash, completing transactions with no attempt at concealment. Most of the dealers are illegal aliens. One might think that city leaders would be only too happy to hand them off to federal immigration authorities, but the political imperative to safeguard illegal aliens against deportation takes precedence over public order. Local law enforcement greets any announced federal crackdown on criminal aliens with alarm....Mental illness is the other obvious condition afflicting the homeless that makes the question of affordable housing secondary. Thirty-nine percent of the homeless polled in the 2019 street survey said that they suffered from psychiatric conditions; the actual percentage is probably higher. Outside the Red Coach Motor Hotel on Eddy Street, a small, dusty man in a white T-shirt is waving his arms in the middle of the street, his pants hanging down, smartphone in hand. He yells at passersby: “I’m too bleep polite, bleep you, you take my kindness for weakness. I don’t know why you’re laughing at me. I don’t feel that way about women, but I’m the bitch!†After lunging toward me, he wheels around and continues up Polk Street, screaming and gesticulating. Two male tourists from Greece, who landed in San Francisco just hours before, observe: “We don’t have so many problems in Greece.â€Mental illness is not always so overt. A man in a Stanford University sweatshirt is lying on a grimy apricot-colored blanket on Van Ness Avenue, eyes closed, mechanically putting pieces of muffin into his mouth. Realizing that he is being observed, he sits up, centers his sunglasses on his head, and reaches for a pack of Pall Malls. Timothy, 47, says he served time in a Texas hospital for the criminally insane, following a domestic violence incident. He has been banned for life from banking with Wells Fargo after getting into a “disagreement†with a teller; Bank of America is also off limits, after he got into a “disagreement†with a manager who insulted him in Hebrew, he says. He is barred from a local shelter for getting into yet another “disagreement,†this one with someone who stole his diver’s watch. He is on probation for attacking a health worker in the San Francisco Veterans Administration hospital. He was recently in jail for brandishing a loaded BB gun in a Red Lobster restaurant....The city enables the entire homeless lifestyle, not just drug use. Free food is everywhere. Outreach workers roam the city, handing out beef jerky, crackers, and other snacks. At the encampment across from Glide Memorial Church, a wiry man in a blue denim jacket announces that day’s lunch selection at the church’s feeding line, to general approbation: fried chicken. He triumphantly brandishes a half-eaten leg before tossing it into the street. Susan, a 57-year-old Canadian who lives in an encampment on Willow Alley, itemizes the available bounty while rolling a cigarette: free dinners and movies; the microwave ovens at Whole Foods; free water at Starbucks. The homeless position themselves outside coffee shops in the morning for handouts of pastries and java. If those handouts don’t materialize, there’s always theft. A barista at the Bush and Van Ness Starbucks says that someone steals food and coffee at least every other day. “We are not allowed to do anything about it,†she says. “The policy is we can’t chase them.â€The city’s biannual homeless survey claims that “food insecurity†is a pressing problem, but the homeless don’t act like food-deprived people. Uneaten comestibles litter the sidewalks and gutters. A typical deposit of detritus outside an office building on Turk and Market includes an unopened one-pound bag of California walnuts, a box of uneaten pastries, an empty brandy bottle, a huge black lace bra, a dirty yellow teddy bear, one high-heeled red suede boot, and a brown suede jacket. A dapper man named Ralph has appointed himself the unofficial cleaner of the block where Glide Memorial Church sits. He has never seen anyone throw something in the trash, rather than toss it on the ground. “They’re not interested in doing anything for themselves,†he says.The homeless are also wired. Most vagrants have smartphones, which they use to barter goods. They use free Wi-Fi or steal passcodes. ...
