<a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/05/23/PSYCH.TMP">Psychiatrists at S.F. convention get dose of reality on streets</a>
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Members of the nation's largest psychiatric association discovered San Francisco's mentally ill homeless problem up close this week, as they stepped out of their annual convention and were surprised -- some say shocked -- by the legions of people living on the street.
The worst, however, came when an official of the American Psychiatric Association, a Baltimore doctor known for being an advocate for the indigent mentally ill, was assaulted by an apparently homeless man with a history of psychiatric problems.
"It's kind of shocking," said James McNulty, head of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. "I've been walking around the hotels and up the hill to Fisherman's Wharf. It was very disheartening." </blockquote>
My company bailed five years ago when we had to roll street people away from the door and step over human waste in the morning. A casual broken-car- window pool became a running joke in the building cafe. SF is awash in <i>homeless</i>...not all are mentally ill. Many are part of a street-wise homeless counterculture who use the monthly cash stipend to supplement their drug and alcohol habit.
Of course the good doctors and our uber-liberal pols see it as a funding issue, not a failed policy which created waves of homeless during Mayor Art Agnos's term. Agnos suspended the rousting of homeless and began to fund cash assistance and flea bag hotels.
<a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/05/20/BA242380.DTL">Proposition N</a> created a means to to defund the cash payments and provide real solutions. However as you might expect the courts intervened and the Board of Supes dithered.
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Meanwhile, Supervisor Gavin Newsom, who wrote the "Care Not Cash" proposition, asked the Board of Supervisors to adopt his original plan. The measure would reduce the city's welfare payments to roughly 3,000 of San Francisco's homeless residents from the $320 to $395 a month they receive now to $59 a month plus housing -- including at shelters -- and food.
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Just as Liberals clung to the welfare state long past it's obvious failure point, so they cling to treating homelessness by enabling the entrenched homeless to live on our streets. Summer will bring a new influx of young run-away hustlers to prey on tourists...some will stay and adapt to life on the streets of San Francisco. Why not?