But every time one leaves, another one takes his place. Ten plus years ago, the city spent $1.5 billion and moved 19,500 homeless off the streets. A program that actually paid them was ended in 2007. The Ten Year Plan avoided much discussion of law enforcement.įrom what I have researched, there could be as many as 6500 homeless in San Fran. More significantly, open-air drug dealing and drug use persist, public urination and defecation are widespread, and downright creepy behavior such as screaming at and threatening passersby is tolerated. Newsom’s voter-approved 2010 ban on sitting or lying on sidewalks isn’t enforced much outside the Haight, for example. They just have no teeth:ĭespite several laws on the books that Newsom promoted (and that have been blasted by homeless advocates as being mean-spirited), there’s not much police enforcement of them. C ontrary to what some Bay area residents say, there arelaws in the city banning sitting or lying on sidewalks, as well as yelling and threatening passer-bys. Legislation banning it in 2002 has seen little success, despite a fine of up to $500. Public urination has long been a problem in San Francisco. The signs don’t explicitly state that the wall will fire back, the newspaper reports. Please respect San Francisco and seek relief in an appropriate place,” hang above some walls. Signs reading “Hold it! This wall is not a public restroom. The city now has nine public walls covered with a repellant paint that makes pee spray back on the person’s shoes and pants, a last desperate attempt to get people to quit urinating in alleyways and on walls. The vagrants in San Francisco DO seem to be getting worse and more aggressive. “I thought he was with you,” said the owner. I grabbed the cashier and told her the guy was a beggar, and someone asked him to leave. $10? The baseline for begging In San Fran is now a tenspot?įor a second, I thought it might be a fun story to buy him lunch, snag an interview, but probably not smart when traveling alone. “Just give me $10,” he said, ” and I’ll leave.” “That’s sweet,” I said, ” but really I am busy and will just be here a moment, if you want this table…” Maybe, I thought, maybe people in San Francisco now share tables because of space? Now I knew this was a total BS deal of some sort. He wasn’t badly dressed - it’s hard to tell the millionaires from the homeless in San Francisco. Total stranger.Įxcuse me, I said, wondering for a split second if I knew him. Suddenly, man walked in and seated himself at my table. Sat down, got out my phone and started focusing on emails. I grabbed a quick bite to eat across from the Hilton at the Old Siam Restaurant. And the day I arrived in San Francisco - after a super early morning flight, lost luggage, no food and little sleep - I learned real estate is not the only inflated commodity. I was horrified to see it’s no longer men and pets panhandling but women cradling infants with begging cups. A lot of agents complained about stepping over the homeless and their garbage/pee. Another exhibitor told me he had all his brand new Apple computers stolen out of his car the very first night of the conference, resulting in a scramble to get new computers overnight in order to stock his booth the subsequent days. Clay Stapp and James Bohan-Pitt saw gals shooting up heroin on the street, which is an everyday occurrence. I’m debating whether to sign the petition. Move the ICSF conference out of the Tenderloin.The homeless problem in San Francisco is bad and getting worse Networking with our industry peers should not have to include fending off a half-dozen super aggressive panhandlers, or getting screamed at by mentally unstable homeless people, or dealing with sexual harassment from vagrants. We are now actually afraid and worried about our physical safety. Whether we’re getting more sensitive, or the vagrants and panhandlers around the Hilton are getting worse, things have never been as bad as they were this year. ICSF is a great event held in a horrifyingly bad location. Saturday, I got a petition launched by Rob Hahn (a Texan, Houston, and a pretty smart guy) to change the location of the conference OUT of San Francisco’s Tenderloin to somewhere else: I was in San Francisco last week for Inman Real Estate Connect.
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