The comment a couple posts ago blaming Daly for drug dealers near the commenter’s house somehow clicked in for me why people don’t like Chris.
There are, broadly speaking, two approaches to solving societal problems like public urination: punishing people for doing it and providing facilities so that people don’t have to do it. The former is much more emotionally satisfying, the latter works better in the long term. I lived on Mission Street for 10 years, so I certainly understand the desire to strap on the old flamethrower and start cleanin’ up the neighborhood, but I also know that it wouldn’t make it any better in the medium or long term.
An example of how the punishment route fails is the War on Drugs. Families destroyed, hopes crushed, billions spent, and almost no effect on the impact of drugs on our society.
One commenter earlier was pissed at Supervisor Daly because he voted against a law forbidding public urination until there are more public toilets available. He actually ended up voting for it. Pissing on the streets is illegal. How much has it helped?
Passing nuisance laws may be good politics, but it doesn’t actually help. Sleeping on the street is illegal, yet people still do it. Shitting on the sidewalk is illegal, but people still do it. The way to get people off the streets is to provide housing. The way to get people to stop pissing on the sidewalk is to provide housing with toilets.
October 31st, 2006 at 10:16 am
Everyone wants housing for the homeless. Everyone.
Keeping the streets clean does not mean you can not simultaneously build housing and visa versa. In fact, they actually go together quite well.
One of the big problems all of the supportive housing complexes face is reaching the homeless folks they want to house. Outreach teams go out and get some folks in off the streets.This is a difficult strategy, as teams have varying levels of skill, and often use random encounters to make contact. The result is that most of the housing for the homeless is used to house relatively well functioning people who have been on the street at some point in their life, usually for short periods of time, but not at the time they are housed in the new facility. These are not the people who are pooping on the sidewalk. Random contact at random times makes it difficult to get the necessary paperwork done to move CHRONICALLY homeless folks into housing.
Enter the quality of life enforcement that requires case management for repeat offenders. Suddenly, these chronically homeless folks are known in the system that might actually be able to help them, and the repeat offender becomes first in line for the apartments with toilets.
Homelessness is a complex problem that requires complex, multi-faceted solutions, not sound bites and posturing. And not either/or’s.
October 31st, 2006 at 10:54 am
Laura, I understand and support case management. Your comments seem to suggest you think others don’t. However, as you also must know, case management is not a panacea to public urination or homelessness. I’ve done case management for the homeless; believe me, getting people to stop crapping on the sidewalk is not one of the categories of service I could provide or refer people to.
Though we obviously disagree about Daly, maybe we can at least agree that the solution to homelessness is not to use public funds to cite homeless people for public urination, give them tickets, and imprison them. That is one method that has a 0% success rate.
October 31st, 2006 at 11:39 am
There are no panaceas to any problem. What solutions do you see? Perhaps there should be services you can refer people to to get them to stop pooping on the street. Why not? What would they look like?
I am sick of talking about what doesn’t work. Let’s talk about what does.
October 31st, 2006 at 12:08 pm
What would such services look like? Why, they would look like public toilets of course. Also I think the business contributors to these “poor people are dirty” campaign advertisements should take down the “Restroooms for Customers Only” signs from their own shop doors.
Laura, you’ve written a very perceptive and obviously knowledgable paragraph above about the way supportive housing managers skim off the most highly functional members of the population to be served — you’re quite right there.
But we part company when you start talking about coercion. People who end up on skid rows tend to have problems with authority. If you start treating misfits like criminals they tend to respond by becoming what you call them. Try to improve people with punishment and you’ll only increase your jail population.
Besides which, if you spend some time dealing with actual “quality of life” citations in traffic court, you’ll find that the vast majority of citations are given for drinking in public, sleeping in parks, and “trespassing” in doorways. I don’t know what the precise figures are now, but three or four years ago, there would be one citation for public emission of bodily wastes among three dozen drinking or sleeping tickets.
Actually the SFGH “frequent flyer” program seems like a much better model. It doesn’t involve coercion or saddle nonviolent people with criminal records. It just provides “housing first” and a lot of effort to persuade people to accept help like money management and counseling.
October 31st, 2006 at 1:31 pm
Okay, Laura, I accept your challenge to talk about what’s working. Before doing so, let me also add that the reason I support Chris Daly is because I think his approach is one of the things that works for the homeless. My reasoning…
I believe the homeless need wraparound services that are consistent. Case managers can be effective, in part, because they can begin to give constancy and normalcy to a homeless person’s otherwise isolated existence. Wraparound care, in my view, stands the best chance of getting a homeless person to accept mental health services, address addiction issues, and become part of a supportive housing community. Over time, it’s possible to win the trust of a homeless person; THAT’S when it becomes possible to actually help them.
The general public gets upset at progressives because they want immediate changes that they can see and test for their effectiveness. Ergo, the piss and poop test. And while everyone agrees that it’s horrible to walk through this stuff, it doesn’t make law enforcement a viable approach.