A left wing pressure group identifies the article publisher as a right wing pressure group.
Ok, cool, but whatever the quality of the arguments in the article that's probably not the devastating hammer blow to defeat them.
Ok, cool, but whatever the quality of the arguments in the article that's probably not the devastating hammer blow to defeat them.
Case in point: homelessness. Yes, it's a huge problem, but San Francisco is a dumping ground for the homeless, e.g., other states buy one-way bus tickets for their indigents/miscreants to shift the burden. It's a national issue that needs to be addressed on a national level.
Then there was this pandemic thingy, and the WFH shift has decimated the office worker economy.
So they blame it all on "crime, vagrancy, and drugs" without any note of the the external pressure helping to create those problems.
That said, the pols should always have their feet to the fire on their ability to do their damn jobs and be responsible.
But this is another point of the problem: anyone who solves the problem well is bound to just attract more of the problem. People are not immobile, and will move to where they have the best chance of surviving, so if Seattle is rumored to be handing out tiny houses to the unhoused, it will simply attract more of the problem. Whatever local resources are thrown at the problem will not make a noticeable dent in the problem locally (though the national problem will get some small improvement relative to its size).
It would be collectively cheaper and far more humane to boot.
The correct solution for individuals is to move out of these mismanaged high density areas.
Salt Lake City, that bastion of left-liberalism (/s) does a much better job, specially at preventing vulnerable people from becoming homeless in the first place.
Ultimately SF’s problems are well understood and the solutions as well, but there is no political will to confront the entrenched interests that led to this and an apathetic electorate that does not demand accountability is responsible.
The hard part is finding affordable ways to do so. This is compounded by the fact that a large portion of the homeless suffer from mental health problems (my mother was in that boat).
On the mental health front, we need to collectively find a way to institutionalize the mentally ill in a manner that is fair and humane. That should include indigent drug addicts who are unable to care for themselves.
It's not, though. Seattle ran into loads of problems with housing-first policies where the houses would get trashed and people with substance abuse problems would continue camping out as groups.
2) Build subsidized housing. SF likes to complain about the end of the state redevelopment agencies but did you know that with just one year’s worth of the $7B a year windfall from the much-despised Tech (difference between the 2022 and 2008 budgets), SF could buy or build a $1M condo for every single of the 7,000 homeless men, women and children in the city? Instead at least half of that was captured by civil self-servants in the city bureaucracy in the form of salaries and benefits.
3) Restore involuntary committal of some mentally ill unable to care for themselves, that was abolished by the well-meaning but clueless Lanterman-Petris-Short Act in 1967
4) means-test rent-control (half of SF’s residential units), which creates haves and have-nots and raises prices to astronomic levels for new entrants
5) remove land-use restrictions like single-family zoning that covers half of the city
6) force drug addicts into treatment, using coercive measures if necessary
And the “SLC solved homelessness” was a last decade story that has already unraveled due to sustained and increased funding not being applied (again national problem, local solutions can’t do much).
If we look at the author section of the website, it lists former members of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, members of the American Enterprise Institute etc.
Also the "left wing pressure group" says IRS filings show the Koch brothers fund the CPC.
The reader can look at the facts, some on their own web site, and decide if they are a right wing pressure group or not.