The extent to which the homeless, the hard-core unemployed, the drunk and the addicted, and general shabby personalities of all kinds are deployed about the city is something to bring even the most hard-core liberal from elsewhere up short. If the myriad policies and millions man-years of effort, coupled with untold billions of dollars in funding deployed in San Francisco over the last four decades have created the current visible result, something is seriously askew with the city's basic social engineering. It is as if the entire region has spent 40 years and 400 billion building a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge on Ocean Beach intending to span the Pacific. A good intention, but a city's gotta know its limitations.I'm no liberal, but I too was appalled at the sheer numbers of SFO's homeless when I arrived there back in 2000. I worked in the heart of the Financial District, three doors up from the intersection of Market and Montgomery Streets. The Financial District is prime panhandling territory. It's no exaggeration to say I saw literally hundreds of homeless men and women every day.
An interesting phenomenon Vanderleun doesn't touch on is how a lot of folks "adopt" a homeless person. I had my own guy; most of my friends had theirs, too. I knew my man's name, but I've forgotten it now. We were on a first-name basis. I saw him every single working day, and every day I'd slip him a couple of bucks and a few cigarettes. We'd exchange small talk and he'd tell me of his plans to get out of the City and into a new life. It never happened. I saw him the day I left my job, and he told me, sadly, he was going to miss me. I believed him. For all I know, he's still there, still dreaming, still panhandling. At least I hope he's still there. Worse things can and do happen. Often.
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