the demographic has changed quite a lot in the past 12 – 18 months. the population of folks living (not hanging out…LIVING) in Dolores Park has gone up quite a bit too.

the reason is that civic center and soma have well organized, well connected merchant associations & tourist dollar associations that pressure city govt and cops to push the bums out.

the mission on the other hand has over 50 “service” organizations many of whom are poverty pimps with their livelihood built on the backs of the marginalized folks they’re supposed to be “servicing”….along with a youthful, transient population that thinks “progressive” politics are cool and so is a “gritty” hood that they’ll leave for the burbs when they hit 30 anyways…. and a huge recent immigrant population that’s too scared or uneducated to complain about anything.

(this has nothing to do with the current lack of services, future budget cuts that will make them even more scarce, the need for these services to be mandatory for individuals endangering the community or themselves, the lack of any sort of balance between the “rights” of bums and the “rights” of other people in neighborhoods where they are, the difference between a crazy bum and a family or individual in fiscal distress, etc).

so, long story short, all the bums in the city are pushed into the mission, because apparently we LIKE bums. they’re more aggro because they’re more chronic types which have not lived here before in any great numbers…but do now.

ugh. i could go on all fucking day.

but this particular morning there were a lot of them. i will try to call. be interesting to see what they say, if anything…

here’s a new one just happened with calling:

i call the non emergency dispatch to get cops to roll up and move bums camping on my block. i used to just go over & ask nicely (or at times not so nicely), but quickly realized i could be endangering myself (one guy showed me his knife). i’m a dad, so that matters….

so anyways…i called the other night and the dispatch asks “are they blocking pedestrian traffic?” they never asked me that before.

this was a tactic used by many cities to enable cops to move bums: making the blocking of ped traffic technically illegal.

i dont know if the rules have changed, or if this is a rule in SF, but it was interesting. i didnt have time to query….will do so next time.

also, living in your van in the park isnt the same as “enjoying the public space”. i mean, i feel for the guy if he’s off his rocker, living in a van & all…but shacking up near a national park visitor center just aint gonna fly. and if you are going to try to live in a national park, you’d probably want to ingratiate yourself with the feds…and make yourself scarce for the most part. you living there out in the picnic area = them not doing their jobs.

similar deal in the hood, my view. LOTS of homeless folks working to be respectful of others and keeping a general lid on things. others, well, not so much. sometimes it’s affliction or addiction…sometimes i guess folks just tire of being beat down…and some are just fucking assholes…just like everywhere else.

far as the smackdown this guy got….could be they asked the guy to not live there before, and he kept coming back. could be the guy was confrontational with them first. could be they were fascist assholes. hard to say.

mess with the bull, though…you get the horns. most part…it’s a good thing.

Suddenly I hear shouting and look up to see multiple park ranger SUVs and a group of rangers confronting the loon. They are up in his face. On guy in particular getting totally confrontational. It almost immediately escalated to the loon getting cuffed and laid out on the pavement. Exactly the kind of over reaction zinzin would expect of Guiliani thugs. I’ve heard the feds (and GGNRA rangers) are real hard asses. Maybe its there way of telling the homeless to get back to Golden Gate park…

Predictably, the loon doesn’t handle it well. Getting louder and more profane, telling the lawmen to f— themselves. I bet the poor guy spent the night locked up. Then again, maybe he was angling for that? Its getting cold and jail has some advantages… But does he loose his van?

while the people of SF may have their heart in the right place…. i am not so sure about the advocates. again & again i feel like the ecosystem of these groups is flawed…that they are more an industry than an advocacy…and that their economy is built on the backs of the people they’re supposed to help.

it reminds me of a the bakery co-op i go to in the sunset. the product is good – when you can get it – but it’s the PROCESS that’s most important to the people that work there. whether or not you get to buy your baked goods is totally secondary to them.

so while i think that most advocates WANT to help people, i think they’re blinded by the process and their own interests.

my other thought is around civil rights. many would say that forcing the psychotic gentleman i saw this AM into some sort of treatment would be an attack on his civil rights. Or the woman passed out in the playground with a needle in her arm. Or the naked guy on South Van Ness from over the weekend. (These are the people in my neighborhood, in my neighborhood….)

is that really true? is it their “right” to live in such a degraded state? i mean…do they really WANT to? outside my yuppie, nimby i-just-dont-want-to-look-at-it-every-fucking-day vitriol….really, is it their RIGHT to refuse treatment?

i dont think so.

that being said, there ARE no treatments into which we can force them…so the issue is moot…unless they’re hanging around where tourist dollars might be spent…and then, at the very least, we can force them into the Mission.

Where San Francisco fails in helping her homeless is in execution. Mental health services in this town *suck*. It’s not that SF doesn’t want to help these people; it’s that SF is really bad at it.