GREAT_AMERICAN asked: San Francisco, which is probably the national capital of homelessness and has been for quite a while. The story is from the San Francisco Chronicle: “Six months ago, Dave Tompkins — bereft after the death of his closest friend — looked at a map of the United States and tried to decide where to live. His eye fell on San Francisco, and he made a snap decision. Two weeks ago, he finally arrived, after hitchhiking from Jacksonville, Fla.” (Laughing.) I’m sorry, I can’t help but laughing. Six months ago the guy looks at a map, and says San Francisco is the place. Two weeks ago he shows up. He hitchhiked all the way from Jacksonville, Florida, with his white Labrador, Banjo Betty.
“Tompkins counts himself among the city’s homeless, though technically he has a roof over his head — a 1980 RV that he bought through www.craigslist.org for $1,000. But the 45-year-old divorced man who lives on about $400 a month in disability payments said his vehicle has accumulated so many parking tickets he fears he might lose it. Tompkins’ westward-ho campaign was motivated by the same impulses that historically propelled outsiders here: temperate weather, tolerant culture, scenic beauty, progressive social values.” (Laughing.) Really? Is this what inspires the homeless to go to San Francisco? Let me read you the whole paragraph. “His westward-ho campaign was motivated by the same impulses that historically propelled outsiders.” So anybody that went west, anybody that migrated to San Francisco, was no different than the homeless who are now doing it. The reasons are “temperate weather, tolerant culture, scenic beauty, progressive social values.” (Laughing.) Six months ago when he was in Jacksonville, Florida, this is why he decided to go to San Francisco?
In his case, though, in addition to all that, Dave Tompkins sought “a well-informed citizenry. ‘San Franciscans keep abreast of what is going on better than anybody,’ says Tompkins, a carpenter by trade. ‘I also like the cultural diversity and the cuisine. I didn’t come for benefits, that’s for sure.’” (Laughing.) It’s the cuisine! The cultural diversity. Handouts in San Francisco rank below cultural diversity in the homeless population. The diversity, the culture, the progressive social values, and the cuisine! I don’t know how many of you people have been to San Francisco, but the cuisine that he’s talking about costs a pretty penny to get in and consume. He’s obviously not talking about that cuisine. He’s gotta be talking about the cuisine at the shelters or the cuisine on the streets and so forth.
This story totally overlooks what a horrible problem homelessness is and has been in San Francisco. Tompkins, it says here, “is much like many other homeless people in town who are here primarily because of the city itself, and only secondarily because of public assistance. A new count of the homeless, released earlier this week, tallied a 2 percent rise from two years ago — from 6,248 to 6,377 people. After the one-night count on Jan. 31, in a follow-up survey of homeless people, 31 percent noted that they became homeless outside San Francisco.
“‘That is close to a third of the people we counted,’ says Trent Rhorer, director of the San Francisco Human Services Agency. ‘It begs the question of why they came here; I don’t know that the answer is necessarily one of homelessness.’ Rhorer believes a combination of factors … ‘The city has one of the best public transportation systems in the country,’ he says. ‘It is geographically small. We are a compassionate, tolerant city, a sanctuary city.’ In addition, he says, San Francisco has a network of social support for the homeless, ranging from shelters to dining rooms to medical care.”
Bingo! There’s the reason. You can throw the cuisine and the tolerance and the diversity out the window. Hilarious. Who wrote this? Elizabeth Fernandez, Chronicle staff writer.
Charlene
