A liberal paradise! No doubt RRY16 will tell us how this is nothing compared to the human waste pit of Florida, but even in the worst areas of Miami I don't see stuff like this. -------------------------------- https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Diseased-Streets-472430013.html How dirty is San Francisco? An NBC Bay Area Investigation reveals a dangerous mix of drug needles, garbage, and feces throughout downtown San Francisco. The Investigative Unit surveyed 153 blocks of the city – the more than 20-mile stretch includes popular tourist spots like Union Square and major hotel chains. The area – bordered by Van Ness Avenue, Market Street, Post Street and Grant Avenue – is also home to City Hall, schools, playgrounds, and a police station. Survey of Downtown SF Reveals Trash, Feces, Drug Needles The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit surveyed a section of downtown San Francisco to determine the amount of feces, hypodermic needles, and garbage littering the heart of the city. The results reveal a disgusting and potentially deadly mix of contamination that experts now believe could exceed some of the dirtiest slums in the world. Investigative ... Read more (Published Sunday, Feb. 18, 2018) As the Investigative Unit photographed nearly a dozen hypodermic needles scattered across one block, a group of preschool students happened to walk by on their way to an afternoon field trip to citiy hall. “We see poop, we see pee, we see needles, and we see trash,” said teacher Adelita Orellana. “Sometimes they ask what is it, and that’s a conversation that’s a little difficult to have with a 2-year old, but we just let them know that those things are full of germs, that they are dangerous, and they should never be touched.” In light of the dangerous conditions, part of Orellana’s responsibilities now include teaching young children how to avoid the contamination. Preschool teacher Adelita Orellana says the prevalence of needles in San Francisco has forced her to educate her students, some as young as two years old, about the inherent dangers (Jan 11, 2018). Photo credit: NBC Bay Area 'There’s Poop in There' “The floor is dirty,” said A’Nylah Reed, a 3-year-old student at the preschool, who irately explained having to navigate dirty conditions on her walks to school. “There is poop in there,” she exclaimed. “That makes me angry.” Kim Davenport, A’nyla’s mother, often walks her daughter to the Compass preschool on Leavenworth Street in San Francisco. She said she often has to pull her daughter out of the way in order to keep her from stepping on needles and human waste. “I just had to do that this morning!” A'Nylah Reed, 3, regularly has to dodge piles of feces and drug needles during her walks to and from preschool in downtown San Francisco (Jan. 11, 2018). Photo credit: NBC Bay Area The Investigate Unit spent three days assessing conditions on the streets of downtown San Francisco and discovered trash on each of the 153 blocks surveyed. While some streets were littered with items as small as a candy wrapper, the vast majority of trash found included large heaps of garbage, food, and discarded junk. The investigation also found 100 drug needles and more than 300 piles of feces throughout downtown. A needle found on the streets of downtown San Francisco was one of 100 discovered as part of an NBC Bay Area Investigation into potentially dangerous conditions (Dec. 28, 2017). Photo credit: NBC Bay Area Dried Feces can Lead to Airborne Viruses “If you do get stuck with these disposed needles you can get HIV, Hepatitis C, Hepatitis B, and a variety of other viral diseases,” said Dr. Lee Riley, an infectious disease expert at University of California, Berkeley. He warned that once fecal matter dries, it can become airborne, releasing potentially dangerous viruses, such as the rotavirus. “If you happen to inhale that, it can also go into your intestine,” he said. The results can prove fatal, especially in children. Riley has researched conditions across the poorest slums of the world. His book titled, “Slum Health,” examines health problems that are created by extreme poverty. Dr. Lee Riley is an infectious disease scientist at University of California - Berkeley and has researched health issues in some of the dirtiest slums around the world. (Jan 18, 2018) Photo credit: NBC Bay Area San Francisco Compared to Some of the Dirtiest Slums in the World Based on the findings of the Investigative Unit survey, Riley believes parts of the city may be even dirtier than slums in some developing countries. “The contamination is … much greater than communities in Brazil or Kenya or India,” he said. He notes that in those countries, slum dwellings are often long-term homes for families and so there is an attempt to make the surroundings more livable. Homeless communities in San Francisco, however, are often kicked out from one part of town and forced to relocate to another. The result is extreme contamination, according to Riley. Supervisor Hillary Ronen is convinced the solution to cleaning up San Francisco's dirty streets is contingent on adding more temporary shelter beds for the homeless (Jan 8, 2018). Photo credit: NBC Bay Areea 'We Aren’t Addressing the Root Cause' “Unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable,” said Supervisor Hillary Ronen. “We're losing tourists. We're losing conventions in San Francisco. All of this is happening because we aren't addressing the root cause, which is we need more temporary beds for street homelessness.” Ronen believes San Francisco has been too focused on permanent housing for the homeless and that the city has neglected to provide enough temporary shelter, which can provide the homeless a respite from the streets. The city currently has about 2,000 temporary beds. Ronen, however, believes an additional 1,000 are needed, at a cost of about $25 million. “We need to find a source of revenue,” said Ronen. “Whether that's putting something on the ballot to raise business taxes or taking a look at our general fund and re-allocating money towards that purpose and taking it away from something else in the city.” Mohammed Nuru, Director of San Francisco Public Works, says cleaning human waste, trash, and needles from the city's sidewalks costs his department about $30 million each year (Jan 12, 2018). Photo credit: NBC Bay Area San Francisco Spends $30 Million Cleaning Feces, Drug Needles Until the problem is fixed, Mohammed Nuru, the Director of the Public Works Department, is charged with the towering task of cleaning the streets, over and over again. “Yes, we can clean, he said, “and then go back a few hours later, and it looks as if it was never cleaned. So is that how you want to spend your money?” The 2016-2017 budget for San Francisco Public Works includes $60.1 million for “Street Environmental Services.” The budget has nearly doubled over the past five years. Originally, that money, was intended to clean streets, not sidewalks. According to city ordinances, sidewalks are the responsibility of property owners. However, due to the severity of the contamination in San Francisco, Public Works has inherited the problem of washing sidewalks. Nuru estimates that half of his street cleaning budget – about $30 million – goes towards cleaning up feces and needles from homeless encampments and sidewalks. 'Human Tragedy' in San Francisco A single pile of human waste, said Nuru, takes at least 30 minutes for one of his staffers to clean. “The steamer has to come. He has to park the steamer. He's got to come out with his steamer, disinfect, steam clean, roll up and go.” Asked if he’d be willing to give up part of his budget and allocate it to more directly addressing the homeless problem – which would likely alleviate his cleaning problem – Nuru said, “The Board of Supervisors, the mayor – those are decisions that they need to make." He added, “I want to continue cleaning and I want to be able to continue to provide services. The Public Works Department provides services seven days a week, 24 hours a day.” Ronen acknowledges that finding the money to provide 1,000 additional beds for the homeless may very well take years. The city is planning on opening three new Navigation Centers for homeless people by the summer, but two centers will also be closing. “We're not going to make a huge dent in this problem unless we deal with some underlying major social problems and issues,” she said. “There's a human tragedy happening in San Francisco.”
And here's lovely LA. At least, with all those state taxes, people get so much for their money. ------------------------------ L.A. County's homeless problem is worsening despite billions from tax measures By DOUG SMITH FEB 19, 2018 | 6:00 AM A man sleeps on the sidewalk in front of the Union Rescue Mission on skid row in downtown L.A. last month. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times) Los Angeles County's homeless population is increasing faster than the supply of new housing, even with the addition of thousands of beds in the last two years and millions of dollars beginning to flow in from two ballot measures targeting the crisis, according to a long-awaited report by the region's homelessness agency. The report showed that officials two years ago far underestimated how much new housing would be needed when they asked city and county voters to approve the tax measures. As a result, a $73-million annual shortfall in funding for the county's comprehensive homelessness program could more than triple, a Times analysis of the report found. Providing permanent housing for the county's chronically homeless population would require more than 20,000 new units, about 5,000 more than projected two years ago, the report said. (@latimesgraphics) The estimated shortage of emergency shelter and short-term rental subsidies also increased by double-digit percentages. The report, known as the Housing Gaps Analysis, offers the latest sober assessment of the years-long surge in homelessness, marked by widespread tent encampments and rising demands for urgent action to curb the problem. In a departure from its previous report, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority provided no analysis of costs associated with the needed housing in the revision released last week. Based on estimates in the 2016 report, The Times calculated the additional costs could be about $200 million, pushing the annual shortfall to more than $270 million. Peter Lynn, executive director of the homeless authority, said Friday that new cost figures had not been calculated, but he guessed the additional costs might be closer to $150 million, leaving a $220-million shortfall in total. But he argued that the situation isn't as bleak as the numbers might suggest, because the county's multi-pronged homelessness initiative is still gearing up and the new funding is only starting to have an effect. In creating the previous analysis, officials didn't know what the funding would look like. But with the passage of both measures, Lynn said, "there are very serious dollars behind filling that gap." Now, he added, "we have a plan for deploying new permanent supportive housing through Proposition HHH and Measure H. That does give us a way forward." The original analysis was prepared to quantify the difference between the housing and services existing at the time and what would be needed to get all the chronically homeless off the streets and quickly restore housing for those falling into homelessness. The report became the basis for both Proposition HHH, the homeless housing bond approved by Los Angeles city voters in 2016, and the countywide Measure H sales tax for homeless services approved last year. (@latimesgraphics) Homeless advocates considered the quarter-cent sales tax to be the best approach to raising money for homelessness, but the $355 million it is expected to generate each year falls short of meeting the county program's estimated annual cost of $428 million. In adopting the initial Measure H budget last June, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors put off deciding how to deal with the deficit because the costs would not exceed revenue until the fourth year of the spending plan, as programs geared up. When the supervisors review the budget in June they'll face hard choices. Phil Ansell, director of the county's homeless initiative, acknowledged that the rising demand for housing and services will influence those deliberations, but he said that nothing in the report should deter the county from fulfilling its promise to voters. "During the Measure H election we projected that Measure H would enable 45,000 families and adults to move from homelessness into permanent housing in the first five years of expanded services and that an additional 30,000 families would avoid becoming homeless," Ansell said. "We are on track to achieve those targets." The 2015 homeless count, on which the previous analysis was based, put the number of people living on the streets across the county at just under 29,000. Last year, the annual January count raised the number of unsheltered homeless people to nearly 49,000 — almost three-fourths of all homeless people. The analysis released last week projected that more than 20,000 new units of supportive housing are needed to establish homes for chronically homeless people. The earlier report had set the number at about 15,000, two-thirds of which the city was expected to provide with new construction funded by Proposition HHH. The rest would come from long-term rental subsidies funded by Measure H to supplement federal rent subsidies. According to the new report, more than 6,000 new units of permanent supportive housing have been added since 2015. That includes newly constructed buildings as well as scattered placements in subsidized market rentals that are supported by traveling case managers. The gains in housing, however, were outstripped by the rising homeless population. The earlier report projected a reduction of 14% each year. If that had occurred, the total homeless population — including unsheltered and sheltered — would have dropped to 41,323 last year. Instead, it climbed to nearly 59,000. The results of this year's count will be released in the spring. doug.smith@latimes.com
"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door... correction gate!" During the big clean-up of New York, Guiliani bought the homeless of the Big Apple a one-way bus ticket to California. A lot of the NYC homeless went to San Francisco in the 1990s. That there are self-fulfilling prophecies created by a positive/negative reputation like orders building around a 200 SMA on a daily chart should be no surprise to any actual trader. That some seem to have a problem not with homelessness (they did close the psych hospitals also in many cities, the one in San Fran became a stadium I believe) but that it's visibility in a few rich places speaks of a lack of compassion among conservatives in America. The same types of people who are desperate for the world to end in their lifetimes so they can skip the queue into eternal bliss. Monsters to the rest of us.
I think the mental health issue is directly tied to homelessness. Many of them have serious mental health issues.
Keeping in mind that even in cities/towns in the U.S. which offer each & every one of the homeless shelter or apartments -- these homeless refuse to come off the streets -- and continue with their drug & alcohol problems. I have a lot more compassion for a single mother with children who is homeless due to getting kicked out of her apartment because she was not able to make the rent (and would be supportive of helping her) than I am of the homeless who are in the street by choice.
Some of the homeless refusing aren't exactly right in the head. This is why I'm saying it's a mental health issue. Not all of them, obviously.