San Francisco has the world's richest companies, but you can't even walk the street without running into a several homeless people every single block. Go figure, very 'progressive'.
They’re practically the definition of Conservative. There’s just this wildly mistaken belief that CA (and SF in particular) is populated by ultra-left people.
The Bay is centrist at best.
If SF is centrist I want less than nothing to do with the whatever is left of it.
I'm sure if you want to pick and choose an issue to use as your measuring stick you will find that a substantial chunk of people in SF do not have a far left position on an issue when a far left of center position hurts them personally. However, justifying exceptions to the rule when the rule is not in your self interest is pretty common. Fiscal conservatives don't complain when the government pisses money away on things they like. Commies will gladly redistribute all the wealth that isn't their personal wealth. Few people are so dedicated to their beliefs that they advocate against their own self interest.
Edit: Is it the slight against SF or the observation about humanity that people don't like?
We could have a No true Scotsman [1] argument. Or we can talk about who considers whom else "in" their group, and what those groups call themselves. San Francisco's predominant economic and political block is homogenous in opposing new housing and calls itself progressive. (This pattern lines up with NIMBY policymakers in Seattle and New York City, too.)
I wonder if the homeless issue in california is a lot like it is in hawaii where people actively go there just to be homeless there rather than being displaced from their homes due to housing prices. After all the weather is nicer so its better to be homeless there than anywhere else.
Could the real issue be something like the opiod epidemic and homeless people are just moving to places with better weather? drug addiction makes sense to me why someone would want to stay homeless because I know people who live like that and everyone I've ever know whose rent was something they could not afford anymore just moved to somewhere less expensive.
Really? Cause that is the leading cause of homelessness. When your housing costs are eating up 50+% of your paycheck, that really leaves no slack whatsoever for if your car breaks down or you have a medical emergency or anything else.
"I wonder if the homeless issue in california is a lot like it is in hawaii where people actively go there just to be homeless there rather than being displaced from their homes due to housing prices. After all the weather is nicer so its better to be homeless there than anywhere else."
I have no idea who you're talking to, but I can guarantee that no one is homeless because they want to be homeless.
"and everyone I've ever know whose rent was something they could not afford anymore just moved to somewhere less expensive."
With what money? Again, if you're someone who's rent is taking up the majority of your paycheck, you don't have money to move elsewhere. Not to mention, leaving an area you grew up in, where most of all your connections and support structure reside, is not an easy thing to do.
The strongest predictors of homelessness are population density, walkability, and climate. Homeless people move to places that have those and away from places that don't. There's a theoretical case for provision of services driving homeless migration to the cities that provide services, but it's silly to imagine "progressive" policies generally being the reason why people are homeless. In San Francisco, if you're priced out of your home, you don't end up homeless for years on end; you need severe mental health issues or addiction to account for that. San Jose and San Diego are hardly wildly progressive, but they rank near the top on homeless population.
Excluding the dirty kids who choose the lifestyle, the easier you make it to be homeless and drug addicted the less likely they are to seek treatment.
In Ottawa I remember the mayor pleading on television not to give any handouts or cash to the homeless, so they'd seek out the govt services that would help them.
SF enables them far more than most cities...they can shoot up in broad daylight in a Bart station or busy street with no police response.
”Out of sight, out of mind” is not good policy.
But this is unrelated to the article.
Furthermore I'm not sure that there's even a critical mass of people in SF who think it's a problem. In any thread about homelessness in SF, you will see at least a few locals get very incensed that anyone is complaining about the sheer numbers of homeless on the streets, and accuse people who would like to move them off sidewalks and into shelters as being heartless monsters.
I don't know how many SF locals are in the homelessness-as-a-human-right camp, but enough to be visible here and elsewhere, and probably enough to muddy the waters even further politically. I've lived in the Bay Area for 10+ years and it always seemed like no one could even agree on what the problem was, much less a solution.