SF’s homeless problem: A civic disgrace →
The San Francisco Chronicle, in a very rare front-page editorial:
On one point we must all agree: The level and pervasiveness of homelessness in San Francisco is a disgrace. It is simply not acceptable to allow people to stay in the squalor of tent encampments or sleep in doorways, parks and freeway underpasses without attention to the underlying issues that prevent them from attaining shelter and stability in their lives. It’s bad for public safety, bad for public health, and bad as a matter of basic humanity.
Its reduction to the extent humanly possible should be this city’s No. 1 priority.
I only spend one week a year in San Francisco, and I’ve seen relatively little of the city. But every year, I’m increasingly struck by the widening class divide and disturbing contrast I see as tech workers (including myself) briskly walk past a lot of people for whom society has completely failed, pretending not to notice them, on our way to offices and events of some of the richest companies in the world.
We can’t continue boasting our industry’s “innovation” and how much we’re “changing the world” when we can’t even take care of people’s basic needs literally right outside these companies’ front doors.
This isn’t just a San Francisco or tech-industry problem, but there isn’t another place in America that illustrates the problem quite as clearly, sadly, and disturbingly.
Governments should be fixing this problem, but they have mostly failed due to public ignorance, judgment, and apathy. If you really want to be “disruptive” and have a meaningful impact on the world, disrupt the way our cities and citizens treat those less fortunate than the rich young people ordering overpriced burritos from their phones to avoid going outside.