The Sidewalks of San Francisco: Can the City by the Bay reclaim public space from aggressive vagrants?
The homelessness industry has pulled off some impressive feats of rebranding over the years—most notably, turning street vagrancy into a consequence of unaffordable housing, rather than of addiction and mental illness. But for sheer audacity, nothing tops the alchemy that homelessness advocates and their government sponsors are currently attempting in San Francisco. The sidewalks of the Haight-Ashbury district have been colonized by aggressive, migratory youths who travel up and down the West Coast panhandling for drug and booze money. Homelessness, Inc. is trying to portray these voluntary vagabonds as the latest victims of inadequate government housing programs, hoping to defeat an ordinance against sitting and lying on public sidewalks that the Haight community has generated…
Both Mayor Gavin Newsom and San Francisco’s new police chief have endorsed the proposed law, later named “Civil Sidewalks.” It is similar to ordinances adopted in Seattle, Berkeley, Portland, Santa Cruz, and Palo Alto, all cities with impeccable “progressive” credentials. The police have issued few citations under those laws; as in San Francisco, their main purpose is to give officers the authority to ask squatters to move along and to prevent the hostile occupation of public space…