The Revolt Against Homelessness

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MSN/The Atlantic

Olga Khazan

May 2 2022

SAN FRANCISCO—Michael Shellenberger was more excited to tour the Tenderloin than I was, even though it was my idea. I was nervous about provoking desperate people in various states of disrepair. Shellenberger, meanwhile, seemed intent on showing that many homeless people are addicted to drugs. (If that seems callous to you, Shellenberger would say you’re in thrall to liberal “victim ideology.”)

He told me not to worry. “You seem like a tough Russian chick, right?” he said as we walked up narrow sidewalks where hundreds of humans sleep at night, passing people sitting on wheelchairs, under tarps, and in tents. Many were slumped over or nodding off—from fentanyl, Shellenberger said. One man walked down the street hooting repeatedly to no one.

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Shellenberger said his vision for California would address scenes like this. Most unsheltered homeless people, who live on the street, are either addicted to drugs or mentally ill or both, he claims. (Homelessness experts say this is true of the chronically unsheltered population, but that this group is a very small percentage of the overall number of people experiencing homelessness.) They should be offered shelter beds, Shellenberger believes, not studio apartments. They may receive better housing only if they agree to drug rehab and mental-health treatment. Camping on the street would be banned. If a homeless person refuses shelter or drug treatment, that’s fine, but they can’t stay on the sidewalk overnight—they’d be arrested if they tried. A new statewide mental-health and drug-treatment system, Cal-Psych, would treat those with mental illness and addiction for free. San Franciscans—and Angelenos and Californians all over—would reclaim neighborhoods that have been given over to tents and dealers. “Just because you’re in a poor neighborhood doesn’t mean you should lose your sidewalks and streets to people suffering mental illness and addiction,” he said as we sprinted past poop of unknown provenance. He is an extremely fast walker.

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*The risk for Democrats is that San Francisco’s crime and homelessness problems convince voters across the state that liberals can’t be trusted to govern. This is how Seattle ended up with a tough-on-crime Republican city attorney in 2021, and how an effort to recall progressive San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin gained momentum. Newsom can hardly distance himself from the city: In the ’90s, he was on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and he served as mayor until 2011. He may be safe for now, but down-ballot Democrats aren’t—and neither is Newsom’s post-California political future. If Newsom wants to run for president someday—and what California governor doesn’t?—he would benefit from having successes on homelessness to point to. “In terms of a person’s national ambitions, it certainly helps to be popular at home and to be seen as solving problems at home,” Eric Schickler, a political scientist at UC Berkeley, told me.

In this way, Shellenberger’s main role is keeping California Democrats honest. His campaign resembles his book: an exaggerated provocation, but one that may contain a kernel of truth.

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* Now Why I The World Would They Think That! 

May 9, 2022 With crime a persistent and growing concern for many Americans, one city that’s frequently in the headlines is San Francisco. As homelessness has spiraled out of control, drug crime has gotten so bad in one historic section of town, the mayor declared a state of emergency to try to get a grip on it. Today in our cover story, we pay a visit to the troubled San Francisco neighborhood known as The Tenderloin.

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Top Comment

Lee Cohen 23h

In the late 1980s I lived at Turk and Van Ness in SF, and watched as the Civic Center and Tenderloin became the center of activism for homeless in San Francisco. Every policy made by my city and state only made the situation worse. Now, 35 years later, it is a crisis. When do politicians

 

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