This is significantly due, of course, to the fact that commentary relevant to presidential politics during this high imperial era is hemmed in by rituals and obligations associated with the essentially unmentionable U.S. empire. Thus, the dominant candidates from the major parties chatter on and on regarding ways in which they intend to tinker with certain policies and practices, but not one of them is consistently addressing the bald reality of empire, and the inevitably disabling consequences that such status demands.

One of the most important demands that comes with the territory, as it were, is the unavoidable necessity for dominant empires to engage in near constant warfare, and at the very least, preparation for wars, real and imagined, just over the horizon. Given the broad, asymmetrical, culturally obtuse, global footprint of the U.S. empire, the biggest surprise to me during this particular phase of the nation’s “Grand Game” engagement is the fact that it is only engaged in two simultaneous wars. Members of the military responsible for strategic planning almost certainly agree.

I make this assertion because I am convinced that any cautious and perceptive scan of the current geopolitical scene clearly and immediately reveals any number of sectors of the U.S. empire that are vulnerable to developments that might require a military response. When such moments occur, and they almost certainly will, where will the troops necessary to meet the challenge come from? Nobody seems to know, and there is little in the commentary of the presidential candidates’ that indicates substantive comprehension of the precarious nature of the nation’s current geopolitical posture. Furthermore, my strong suspicion is that psychological blowback, moral confusion and unacknowledged, collective fear engendered by the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, are significantly inhibiting presidential campaign commentary regarding both geopolitical and domestic affairs.

At a time in the nation’s history when intelligent, forthright, nimble, practical thinking is sorely needed, the people with the best possible chances to become the next president of the United States are as much concerned about each others alleged religiosity as they are about what to do regarding the economic tsunami headed this way from India, China and other sectors of the world due to the integrated global economy. My key point is that the presidential campaign’s out of focus take on reality and the problems facing this nation portend extremely tough times ahead for those of us who call this nation home.

This is true despite the fact that the majority of San Francisco’s residents are people of color, a significant percentage of whom are lower middle class or poor. Thus, there is a mismatch between the city’s predominant population and the isolated, elite few catered to by the Chronicle’s editors and reporters. The skewed nature of the newspaper’s dated, and significantly biased, reportage is most clearly apparent in the sections which feature “the beautiful people:” attending symphonies, operas, museums, galleries, exclusive fundraisers and gala parties in multimillion dollar, hilltop mansions. The people featured in the photographs that grace these sections of the newspaper are invariably white, and most often wealthy. One who reads the Chronicle on a daily bias might easily get the impression that the vast majority of San Franciscans are wealthy whites who reside in hilltop or seaside mansions.

There is little in the paper’s normal reportage that helps readers understand why homelessness is virtually inevitable in a city where average dwellings commonly cost more than $700,000 dollars, and the minimum wage is far less than $20 per hour. Moreover, the Chronicle’s uncritical, fawning reportage regarding the affairs of the rich and famous is replicated on a daily basis in every section of the paper. This was the case throughout the dot com boom, which the paper’s cheer leader type coverage got wrong from beginning to end. Thus, it comes as no surprise to those who read the paper every day that it consistently fumbles in its confused effort to report on homelessness, which is arguably the most complicated social problem facing the city.

In any event, the Chronicle’s wrong headed, attack-the-victims reportage of homelessness is being practiced most auspiciously these days by C.W. Nevius, a former sports writer, who was until recently relegated to an obscure suburban beat far removed from the inner city where the homeless crisis is most intense. After his departure from the Chronicle’s sports beat several years ago, Nevius typically wrote about soccer moms and related fluff. Every indication at the time was that he was simply going through the motions, doing just enough to remain respectable until he could retire and drift off into unremarked anonymity.

But approximately five months ago, Nevius began writing a series of hit pieces on inner city homeless people. The stories coincided with the final push of Gavin Newsom’s re-election campaign, and they gave a positive push to the Mayor’s effort to keep his job. The articles also provided cover for the San Franciscans who apparently hate homeless people, and want them disappeared by whatever means necessary. Their vitriolic hostility has been featured for months on the Chronicle’s editorial page, and the level of hatred they exude is so heartless and intentionally cruel that it is hard to read them without cringing.

Nonetheless, clueless Nevius, feeling inspired and vindicated by such support, has upped his output of anti-homeless rants, which are intended, it seems, to demonize one of the city’s most vulnerable groups. His graceless, sordid performance is indicative of the extent to which The San Francisco Chronicle is out of synch with the city’s non-elite, colored majority. It is also indicative of some of the most important reasons why the newspaper is losing millions or dollars per month. I suspect everyone concerned, including the homeless people currently being demonized by the San Francisco Chronicle via the cultural and caste-based assault being waged by C.W. Nevius, will be better off when the carpet baggers in charge of the paper go belly up, and subsequently slink out of town to suburbs and gated ghettos better suited to their particular brand of biased, sucking up and kicking down journalism.

Thus, he was always cordial when I approached and tried to get him to talk. But he was a man of few words, and it was obvious to me that he had little interest in getting people such as myself to understand his situation, or his take on life in this brutally exclusive society. As a result, he was never got completely comfortable with my efforts to document his situation via questions and photography. He once told me he was from Texas. But I found out later that he had relatives in Oakland and Bayview Hunters Point. After photographing him for a couple of years, I created a special photo file consisting of shots featuring him and his closest friends. The file was titled “Texas Mike.”

With the passage of time, he became more comfortable and accepting of me. He signaled this by lettering me shoot from closer angles for longer periods of time. He liked alcohol. And so did his buddies. They constituted a close-knit clan, and I learned a tremendous amount about the culture of poverty in this ostentatiously wealthy city by closely observing their poverty-stricken, street side living conditions. Many of the men and women who belonged to Mike’s ragged crew of friends and colleagues moved in and out of their tight circle over the years. Sometimes one of them would disappear for a few weeks, and return cleaned up and outwardly prepared to resume life in mainstream society.

But more often than not, those who had been missing for a while returned in worse condition, smelly, dirty and dazed in the manner somewhat unique to hardcore, street side alcoholics. But Big Mike was the group’s anchor. Excepting occasional trips to the hospital to detoxify, he was pretty much always there, and easy to find in the three-square block territory over which he presided, and in which he slowly relinquished his fragile grip on life.

His friends say he lived on the street for seven years. They also say he loved drugs, and had no aversion to using them in combinations that would have killed a lesser man years ago. In response to my questions about why he lived on the streets, and whether he had options to leave, his friends said he had strong, supportive, loving family members who did everything they could over the years to get him to leave the streets. Mike’s friends say he once attended college. They say he was highly intelligent, and extremely articulate. Then he had an accident.

“It tore up his whole body,” said one of his buddies “After that, he was always in the wheelchair. After that, he was a different person. I loved Mike. We loved to hang out together. He slept under the bridge. Sometimes his family would take him away, clean him up, put nice clothes on him, comb his hair. But sooner or later, he would be back on the street. He loved it out here on the streets.”

He loved it out here on the streets? I shudder. We should all shudder. It sticks in the mind. “He loved it out here on the streets.” Leaving aside the fact that life on the street destroys good judgement, Big Mike’s friends repeat the claim so frequently that one is forced to face the reality of its stark ramifications. All societies produce individuals who chose to live outside the close embrace of mainstream life, and they frequently congregate together in ways that lead to the formation of shared, norms and traditions.

For reasons I will never fully understand, Big Mike was such a person. The fact that he loved life on the streets, including the drugs, drama and adventure that come with it is not the thing that most disturbs me. Excluding his tragic, unnecessary death, I am most disturbed by my recognition that he considered life on the street superior to all the available alternatives. With all due respect to Big Mike’s life and memory, we might use his death to address one of the most critically important issues associated with persistent, long term, chronic homelessness.

That is the fact that many of the chronically homeless people who inhabit our streets have consciously decided that it is the best possible form of life for them. They have experienced the mainstream womb inhabited by the rest of us, and rejected as dehumanizing and profoundly inadequate. Far too many of them feel the same way about the terribly modest forms of assistance that we offer. And their rejection of that paltry assistance is indicative of their overall disdain for us. The struggle being waged here in San Francisco to eliminate chronic homelessness is epic, and, for better or worse, success or failure regarding this signature problem will define the soul of this era just as much as the New Deal legislation defined the generation that was of age during the Great Depression.

In any event, I would like to acknowledge that some important things have been achieved in San Francisco under the leadership of Mayor Gavin Newsom. Moreover, the Mayor has put himself way out on the line in a high profile manner regarding the problem. He is paying his dues. Thus, it seems appropriate to extend modest kudos to Mayor Newsom for the manner in which he and his administration have gone about getting San Franciscans to take chronic homelessness more seriously.

It also seem appropriate to note that to the extent that more has not been achieved up to this point, the rest of us should share the blame. Thus, the following observations are about those of us who are not Mayor Gavin Newsom. Eliminating chronic homelessness will take a change in attitude and behavior by a critical mass of citizens. Moreover, all concerned persons should understand that success is about something more than comfortable, aloof citizens all too casually saddling government officials with inadequate resources and expecting them to eliminate complicated, endemic social problems such as chronic homelessness. In other words, we need to stop setting up public officials to fail.

We clearly aren’t living up to our responsibilities as set forth in the proverbial Social Contract. According to the Contract, citizens are entrusted with responsibility for working together honorably, efficiently and effectively to eliminate grave and serious threats to overall community health and stability. Given that, it is clear that we are miserably failing where the issue of chronic homelessness is concerned. Somehow or another, we have to develop the capacity to understand that chronic homelessness will eliminate itself if the available options are sufficiently improved. Affordable housing is a necessary component for success. But I have begun to seriously consider the probability that that even if we provide the resources necessary for housing each homeless person in our community, the problem will persist.

That’s because chronic homelessness is about something more than inadequate housing. It is also a result of a catastrophic tear in a community’s social fabric. In other words, chronic homelessness in wealthy societies such as ours represents human failure on a large, entrenched scale. Given this, we can’t hope to make definitive progress toward eliminating the plague of chronic homelessness until we make life inside mainstream society more attractive than life outside on the streets, in the garbage, with the rats and vermin, lodged in the low, nasty interstices of our buildings and neighborhoods.

Unless and until we manage to accomplish this feat, alienated souls like Big Mike and his friends will continue to haunt our lives. Their dark, brooding stares, which follow us with utter disdain and silent scorn as we go about among them tending compulsively to our insulated, self-satisfied lives, will continue to reflect our clueless ignorance of the fact that we are the problem.

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.

Ten minutes later I saw another such driver in a similar automobile parked in front of the Shell gas station located at the Third Street entrance to South Park. Moving slowly, the large white man got out of his vehicle and approached two homeless people, who were offering to clean the windshields of people filling their gas tanks at the Shell station. Gesturing in a commanding manner with his huge hands, he summoned the homeless people. They approached him slowly, their shoulders hunched and heads bowed. It took only a moment for me to decode the scene. This was the Mayor’s highly touted program to rid the neighborhood of poor, homeless people in action. The large, white men were plainclothes police officers. The officer who confronted the homeless people working the Shell station patrons for spare change was on a mission from the Mayor’s office. After talking to the silent, nodding homeless people, he dismissed them, turned and headed back to his automobile. He walked slowly, and he had a sour expression on his faced. He did not appear to be enjoying his task.

The luckless, homeless hustlers shuffled off in the opposite direction, their shoulders hunched even lower, exuding defeat and quiet desperation. Off into the soft darkness of South Park they trudged, as the police officer stood watching. After a short pause, he got back into his vehicle, started the engine and drove slowly into the stream of traffic flowing down Third Street toward the twinkling, bright lights of the city center. The police car hadn’t move more than a few feet before it paused to let another similar vehicle pass. That vehicle was also unmarked, and it was also driven by a large, white man in plainclothes. There was only one thing missing from the scene: social workers. The Mayor’s most current special program to cope with the thousands of homeless people who reside in this town is targeting this neighborhood. According to the Mayor’s public relations flaks, and the local mainstream press, the program is supposed to include compassionate participation by social workers and police officers.

But there weren’t any social workers accompanying the cops cruising the neighborhood this evening. Moreover, I strongly suspect that the scenario I witnessed is more representative of the normal manner in which the program is being pursued than anyone at City Hall is willing to admit. In any event, it is abundantly clear that the city administration is gradually increasing the pressure on local homeless people in its not so covert effort to drive as many of them as possible out of town. I am rather certain that the effort will eventually prove to be a failure. That may not matter in the long run. In the short run the offensive against poor, homeless people who reside in the South of Market section of the city is earning high praise for the Mayor. The daily newspapers regularly feature letters from well-off San Franciscans that urge the city administration to employ even harsher measures against the poor.

The most auspicious impact of this tide of narrow-minded bias is increased popularity for the Mayor. All indications are that he will be re-elected. What I am wondering is where are the social workers? I am also wondering how much additional pain and suffering must the city’s poorest residents endure before the sane, adult, responsible segment of this town’s allegedly liberal population demands that our homeless neighbors be addressed by something more than hostility, smoke and mirrors?

Having resided in the San Francisco neighborhood centered around South park for more than a decade, I am qualified to comment on the manner in which rapid, hyper-gentrification is transforming the troubled lives of the poorest residents. South Park itself is located in the South of market section of the city between Second and Third Streets on the East and West. The park’s North-South borders are Bryant and Brannan Streets, respectively.

The oval shaped oasis of grass and leafy trees is a beautiful little sliver of green in a neighborhood whose surface area is almost completely covered by concrete. As a result, for better or worse, it is an oasis around which much of the neighborhood’s day-to-day affairs revolve. South Park was San Francisco’s wealthiest neighborhood in the last 1800s, a period during which it was ringed by grand mansions and consulates. Neighborhood conditions took a turn for the worse in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake when the city’s wealthy decamped to the hills, where they congregate to this day in isolated splendor.

During the next century, South Park was the vibrant center of a working-class neighborhood dominated by warehouses, small businesses, cheap hotels and down market rooming houses. The city’s massive, “urban renewal” projects of the late 1960s kick started the process of deconstructing the area’s working-class culture. That process ultimately produced the Moscone Center, Yerba Buena Gardens, the Museum of Modern Art and other accoutrements of the so-called “smart set.

When I moved into the neighborhood in the mid 1990s, the process of gentrification was already underway and gaining momentum. The poorest residents in the neighborhood were being inexorably crowded out of the last remaining units of low-rent apartment buildings. Some of those buildings were being expensively renovated in order to accommodate the tastes of the young urban professionals associated with the burgeoning computer industry.

Others were being torn down and replaced by expensive live-work lofts outfitted with granite counters, cherry wood cabinets, 16-foot windows, 20-foot ceilings and rooftop gardens with panoramic views of the nearby downtown skyline. Change was also underway in the neighborhood’s small business sector. Many such businesses were being forced out because of rising rents. Others were leaving because of declining revenues, due primarily to dramatic changes underway in the composition of the area’s population. The cheap clothing stores, golf equipment stores, photo services businesses, computer repair firms, automobile repair shops, printing businesses and mom and pop restaurants were prominent among the early victims of the transition.

Many such businesses also failed because the composition of the neighborhood’s population shifted from dominance by working-class and poor people to dominance by elite earners who prefer as a matter of course the best that money can buy. Moreover, new businesses quickly moved in and replaced the neighborhood-based, inexpensive firms without which contemporary, urban dwelling people with low incomes cannot survive. During the mid 1990s, streets in the neighborhood were typically filled on Saturday mornings with scores of young women in search of cheap, second-hand wedding gowns. Walking desperately from store to store with fear of failure haunting their eyes and every step, the women symbolized the tenuous nature of the dreams on which the poor in our midst seek to build their structurally insecure lives.

Nonetheless, sometimes the women provided a measure of hope and encouragement for those who witnessed their desperate searches. This was because sometimes they emerged from the dingy, old buildings that housed the recycled gowns which drew them to the neighborhood with broad, happy smiles on their tired, innocent faces. They were smiling because they had found suitable dresses they could afford. They were happy, as were the relieved mothers and supportive bridesmaids-to-be accompanying them, because they were hopefully on their way to experiencing the so-called American Dream.

Chatting gaily as they strode to their precariously parked cars, they tightly clutched the old gowns sheathed in dust covered cellophane bags. Their enthusiasm conveyed their conviction that the right dress and marriage would help them make their individual versions of the dream come true. Those of us who witnessed the scene as it evolved over the years wished them well. But it was apparent even before the surge toward total gentrification of the neighborhood currently underway that brides who get married in second hand gowns are probably due to experience more than a little hardship as they struggle in an increasingly expensive environment to make their dreams real.

In any event, the used wedding gown stores are gone. The dot com boom, which transformed this particular neighborhood like a roiling, take-no-prisoners tsunami, sealed their fate. As was the case with other small business scattered throughout the neighborhood, owners of the used wedding gown shops received their death sentences via non-negotiable, quadruple increases in the costs of their leases. Lacking the financial clout needed to carry such leases, the storeowners held fire sales to get red of remaining merchandise, said their goodbyes and left forever.

A poignant reminder of times past takes place in South Park on the first Saturday of each June when hundreds of former residents return for a daylong party. Armed with huge, gleaming boom boxes and dangerously delicious slabs of barbeque ribs, they spend the day eating, reminiscing and casting wistful, sidelong glances at former residences. Many of those who participate in the affair are working-class blacks. South Park used to be their turf. But this is no longer the case. As a matter of fact, excepting homeless people, there are very few black residents in the neighborhood these days.

The same is true of working-class people of every race and ethnicity. The vast majority of the working-class and poor people who resided in the neighborhood for almost a century were run out of the neighborhood by rising rents, dwindling job prospects and, according to many of them, landlords who refused to rent to them any longer. South Park’s former residents are represented these days by the sad, downtrodden coterie of alcoholics and homeless people who congregate most days on benches at the far west end. They coexist precariously with the new residents, who tend to be upscale professionals.

The older buildings that used to house the neighborhood’s working-class residents are being renovated or torn down. They are being replaced with chic restaurants, art galleries, elegant boutiques, more expensive lofts and high rise buildings with top end units that routinely sell for more than a million dollars.

These days on Saturday mornings the neighborhood’s streets tend to be dominated by well-toned joggers, expensive women walking pedigreed dogs, and crowds of suburbanites on their way to participate in witnessing rituals at the baseball stadium, which is located approximately one and a half blocks from South park. As is the case in much of the rest of San Francisco, rich people have taken near total control of the neighborhood.

Unfortunately, many of them have brought class-oriented prejudices with them. Unused to living in close proximity with people unlike themselves, far too many of the wealthy, new residents are intent on driving out the last remnants of the neighborhood’s working-class and poor people. Planning and coordination for the gentrification regime is being accomplished via regular meetings with city officials, who are being urged to rid the neighborhood of people perceived to be unpleasant, destitute losers who undermine property values.

Here in the United States, mainstream spokespersons at the local and national levels typically support class-based cleansing of traditional neighborhoods inhabited by poor and homeless people. Fortunately, mainstream U.S. opinion is not the last word where human suffering of the sort underway in and around San Francisco’s South Park is concerned. For example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights holds that housing is a basic human right. That being the case, the gentrification-on-steroids process currently underway in my neighborhood, and many others here in San Francisco, is a form of cruel abuse that may eventually be recognized as a prosecutable human rights crime.

The basic problem is that municipal officials have never really come to terms with the magnitude and complexity of the overall problem.

The Golden Gate Park fiasco, which has produced additional stress and suffering for the homeless people immediately involved, can be used to illustrate the point.

The current upsurge of critical municipal attention was focused on the park’s numerous, chaotic encampments by a series of irate articles printed this August in the normally somnolent San Francisco Chronicle.

The somewhat sensational articles, which were characterized by a tone of astonished indignation, decried the squalid conditions in the chaotic camps. The prominently featured articles devoted particular attention to the size of the camps, their rumpled, residents and the haphazard circumstances of their lives.

The articles also provided, long, detailed commentary on the alleged dangers posed by the camps by highlighting the presence of discarded hypodermic needles, and other refuse dangerous to unwary park visitors.

Unsurprisingly, the articles generated a minor firestorm of critical commentary by residents and municipal officials.

The majority of the respondents expressed disgust with conditions in the park, and many called for the use of harsh measures intended to make life in San Francisco so miserable for homeless people that they will slink from town in search of less hostile places of refuge.

The articles also generated a flood of letters to the Chronicle’s editorial pages. The majority of those who chose to provide their opinions on the matter via this particular bully pulpit were hostile to homeless people in general, and those residing in the park in particular.

Few of the letter writers acknowledged the logic and anguish expressed by the homeless man who plaintively asked the following: What do they expect us to do, float in the air?”

None of the Chronicle articles responded to the question in any manner that might reasonably be considered fair, balanced or socially responsible.

Regarding homeless people, Chronicle staff members apparently believe their function is to serve as journalistic attack dogs for the city’s “beautiful people.”

The fact that homeless people have to sleep somewhere does not appear to be a dimension of reality that disturbs them.

Unsurprisingly, the sensational articles provided abundant cover for city officials to pull out their tough love truncheons and descend on the unprotected and undefended homeless squatter camps.

As has been the case on numerous other occasions in the past when the local news media have focused sensational reportage on homeless squatters in Golden Gate Park, and other iconic municipal locations beloved by the local gentry, municipal officials announced their intention to eliminate the squatters camps, clean up the areas where they congregate, and re-evaluate the city’s needle exchange.

Crews of workers were assigned the task of dismantling the camps, and dispersing their destitute residents.

Unfortunately, we have been treated to the same scenario on numerous previous occasions. Those with socially responsible memories can easily recall several similar episodes during the administrations of mayors Art Agnos, Frank Jordan and Willie Brown.

Mayor Agnos left office under a cloud criticism because his administration proved incapable of dealing effectively with the problem of chronic homelessness.

Mayor Jordan used aggressive police tactics to rouse the homeless people in Golden Gate Park and other sections of the city. But he proved little more effective in dealing with the homeless than his predecessor.

Mayor Willie Brown took office promising to definitively improve the city’s handling of homelessness. But his promises proved to be little more than empty words, and the problem grew larger during each of his years in office. As a matter of fact, Mayor Brown lost significant credibility and support in the aftermath of comments that indicated that he was blissfully unaware that thousands of people resided in Golden Gate Park squatters camps.
Brown’s successor, Gavin Newsom, assumed office amid much fanfare regarding his claim to be in possession of a plan to fundamentally reform San Francisco’s approach to its burgeoning homeless populace.

The less-cash-more-tough-love approach of the Newsom administration was based on the dubious notion that the back of homelessness in San Francisco could be broken by intensively focusing on a core group of approximately 3,000 chronically homeless individuals.

Crews of city workers were assigned the task of ridding the city’s public spaces of homeless people.

Particular attention was devoted to the downtown commercial district, including the Market Street corridor, the tenderloin, the Embarcadero, Fisherman’s Wharf, and other prominent locations frequented by tourists and well-heeled residents.

Mayor Newsom’s plan has included draconian cuts in the amount of financial assistance provided to homeless persons, and the promise of counseling and subsidized housing in decrepit residential hotels located in the seediest sections of town.

Sympathetic press coverage by the Chronicle, and other organs of the local press, routinely focus on the Newsom administration’s monthly photo ops, during which homeless people are assembled to have their ails documented while their feet are massaged and washed by community volunteers.

Hundreds of homeless people have been given one-way bus tickets out of town.
Thousands of others have been removed from the streets and ensconced in decrepit facilities located in nether regions of the city where few mainstream municipal residents ever venture.

Unfortunately, there is little reason to believe that the current tactics of the Newsom administration regarding the city’s thousands of homeless residents will have any more long term positive impact than those of his immediate predecessors.

This is primarily due to two facts. The first is that there is no municipal solution to the problem of chronic homelessness.

The second fundamental shortcoming in the Newsom administration’s approach to chronic homelessness is that it does not devote sufficient attention and resources to the reasons people become homeless in the first place.

Until these two fundamental shortcomings are addressed in a responsible, comprehensive fashion, the problem will not only continue to exist, it will grow more serious.

Moreover, destitute, homeless San Francisco residents will continue to furtively establish camps in Golden Gate Park—because they are unable to float in air.

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