Robert L. Terrell

Much of the conventional wisdom in the United States regarding chronic homelessness is shortsighted, provincial and tragically inadequate. This is due to several factors, not the least of them being the ill-conceived tradition of permitting politicians too much latitude to frame the issue and propose politically palatable fixes. The full magnitude of the problem can be easily ascertained via an overview of the deteriorating situation in San Francisco, where the problem has grown and metastasized during recent years.

This sad truth is reflected in annual reports on the ominously rising number of homeless deaths, which take place in alleyways, emergency shelters, hospitals, parks, doorways, abandoned buildings, Single Room Occupancy hotels, homeless shelters, vehicles used as residences and sidewalks. For example, during the 14 years between 1986 and 2005, conservative estimates indicate that approximately 2,000 homeless people died in San Francisco, an average of 142 per year. In 2003, the city’s medical examiner announced that homeless people were dying in San Francisco at the rate of one every other day. At the time, official estimates of the number of homeless people in San Francisco ranged from 8,000 to 15,000. By 2005, the number of annual homeless deaths totaled 149.

Even though the Newsom administration claims to have placed more than 2,000 people in permanent housing, and provided one-way bus tickets out of town to 2,360 individuals, the annual municipal count indicated that the number of homeless people in San Francisco increased 2 percent between 2005 and 2007. Although needless, largely preventable deaths are stark indicators of the most tragic dimensions of the homeless crisis, one of the most egregious aspects of the worsening tragedy is the shortsightedness of those primarily responsible for managing it. San Francisco’s municipal leaders have been pursuing one failed homeless eradication policy after another for decades. Nonetheless, few of the individual politicians, public relations experts and directors of the municipal officers who dispense the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on homelessness by the city each year are willing to publicly acknowledge the magnitude of their continuing failure. Moreover, few if any of them are willing to acknowledge the blatantly obvious fact that, where this particular problem is concerned, they have simply run out of good ideas.

A good, representative example of this is the current assault being waged by Gavin Newsom’s administration against homeless people in Golden Gate Park and the South of Market sector. Mayor Newsom took office claiming that eliminating chronic homeless would be one of his highest priorities.

At the time, he confidently asserted that he would not be worthy of re-election if he did not make good on his promise.
He has tried hard, and experienced some success. But the unfortunate truth of the matter is that chronic homelessness is still a major, unresolved social problem. And the thousands of bedraggled homeless people who still inhabit San Francisco streets attest to the magnitude of the Mayor’s failure.

In response to the upcoming election, and the irresponsible, frenetic commentary on the problem engendered in recent months by the San Francisco Chronicle’s don’t-have-a-serious-clue journalists, the Mayor has mounted a desperate, public relations offensive designed to convey strong leadership and effective management regarding the homeless crisis.

Unfortunately, it is obvious that his current offensive is not based on new insights and creative solutions. Rather, it is little more than a re-implementation of inadequate tactics that have been tried in the past and proven ineffective Terrorizing homeless people with police sweeps, and punishing them with endless, expensive citations may prove sufficient to get the mayor re-elected. But such brutish, unimaginative tactics are doing little or nothing to eliminate chronic homelessness in San Francisco. Driving people from the streets and warehousing them in residential hotels is not intended to eliminate the problem, but is a temporary mode of hiding them from public sight. In the final analysis, the problem will persist because warehousing does not address the reasons why desperate, deeply disillusioned people who can no longer afford conventional housing inundate the streets of our cities and town.

The key point to be understood is that massive chronic homelessness of the sort that bedevils San Francisco, and virtually every other major city in the world, is a product of fundamental transformations in the global economy. That transformation involves the increasingly robust participation in the global economy by rapidly industrializing nations with huge populations. India and the People’s Republic of China are particularly important sources of that transformation. With their huge populations, including hundreds of millions of low-income, skilled workers, India and China are absorbing production functions previously monopolized by western workers. Moreover, scores of Third World nations, impressed by the example provided by India and China, are preparing their own take-no-prisoner plans for full participation in the global trading system. Are you ready for Africa-based call centers

This means that the economic pressures at the root of the chronic homelessness problem that has established itself as a more or less permanent feature of the so-called social order in the United States and Europe during the last couple decades will almost certainly get worse. Thus, U.S. workers, who were largely protected from foreign competition via tariffs and other forms of economic protection prior to the last couple decades, are finding it increasingly difficult to compete. Low-income workers in blue-collar occupations were the first to experience negative consequences of this new form of global competition. The most obvious ones are associated with the automobile industry, and their ranks are being decimated by competition from abroad. Hundreds of thousands of them have been terminated in recent years. But workers in other industries have been similarly undermined, including those who produce shoes, textiles, machinery and electronic components.

In recent years, eroding employment security among U.S. workers has begun to include an alarmingly large number of white collar workers, including those engaged in high tech industries of the sort that have heretofore flourished in nearby Silicon Valley. There are many good reasons to believe that in the immediate future common employees in U.S. based high tech industries will suffer declining professional options in much the same manner as their down market counterparts in the automobile industry. One of the most important results is that people with higher educations and state-of-the-art skills will begin to compete with less educated, less skilled workers for the same jobs. The process will exert unavoidable pressure on workers at the bottom of the labor force in a fashion such that many of them will end up unemployed. The most unfortunate individuals who fall into this category will end up homeless, while seeking refuge and succor in places such as Golden Gate Park.

Given all this, it should be clear that homelessness of the sort that has become common in major cities around the world during the past couple decades is not a temporary phenomenon. Rather, it is the product of massive, global economic forces that are beyond the power and authority of any municipality, or state government. Moreover, if the current global process of immigration from rural to urban areas continues, the homeless segment of the world’s urban populations will grow. Very few cities are prepared to deal effectively with the consequences of such an outcome. And this is certainly the case here in San Francisco, which remains wedded to the irrational notion that providing services to the worst 3,000 will essentially make the problem go away. The truth of the matter is that chronic, urban homelessness has become an endemic component of modern metropolitan territories. As such, it cannot, and will not, be eliminated without the implementation of structural changes in the economic order.

Innovative thinking and work of the sort that needs to be done must be inclusive. For example, any realistic assessment of the situation will almost certainly need to note that the current homeless crisis cannot be eliminated via the implementation of stand-alone state and municipal plans of the sort currently being employed here in San Francisco. What we desperately need is a comprehensive, national plan based on a new vision of what constitutes a vibrant, healthy, fair and balanced social order. And if we are as smart as we need to be, we will insist that every person who seeks to become the next President of the United States make the elimination of chronic homelessness one of his or her highest priorities.