Depends if the attraction is good enough. Haight Street, Harvard Square, lots of places with large homeless populations still attract tourists. The tourist sites of southern Europe are crowded with Rom beggars.

In this case it sounds like the homeless are already there and this is about hiding them.

The question is would more come or would this just hide the ones that are there anyhow.`

Any politician who recommends this sort of "solution" should be required to demonstrate the feasibility first by allowing a dozen randomly selected homeless people to live in his/her home with his/her family first.

Nic, that's silly.

RC, I was going to say in Bonin's office first, but we agree.

These types of solutions are generally proposed by two types of people, the types that have no skin in the game (i.e., no financial or social interest in the area or who live far enough away to not be affected) and the types who naively think all the homeless need are acceptance and shelter (i.e., that type that think homelessness is caused by heartless capitalism denying these folks "affordable" housing).

Witness Bonin's, "To end homelessness and sidewalk encampments, we need more housing, more shelter, and more services." Addiction and mental illness don't enter into his equation.

Read the anguished parent's response to shelters and services in the letter to the editor linked below, "She has no trouble finding free food at various shelters and free needles at the Harm Reduction Action Center. People who think they are helping her by giving her spare change provide her with plenty of money for drugs and no motivation to ever get sober."

Aurora, Colorado mayor, Mike Coffman, spent a week among the homeless and discovered some harsh truths about the people who make the streets their home. It's not about having shelters and services. The solution to homelessness is not a simple one; it's a much more complex problem than homeless advocates, like Bonin, are willing to admit. And far more of the homeless than those advocates are willing to admit are homeless by choice.

On a side note, I once worked with a guy who might have been the last true hobo in America. He would move to a new city, get a job as a temp, and make enough to support himself in an SRO while he was there. Then, when he'd seen what he wanted to see, he'd move on. He had some really interesting stories - like being trapped overnight in a Paris phone booth during a snow storm, burning the pages of the phone book to stay warm.

There may have been substance abuse issues, as several of us noted that he often smelled of last night's booze, but he did his job well and was a congenial coworker, albeit in a limited and temporary role. He had no interest in settling down. And, at 60-something, no one was going to convince him otherwise.

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Haight Street, Harvard Square, lots of places with large homeless populations still attract tourists. The tourist sites of southern Europe are crowded with Rom beggars. ~ NicoleK at April 6, 2021 2:08 AM

Are these places "still attract[ing] tourists," or are the places full of tourists attracting the homeless?

A study done a few years ago estimated the aggressive panhandlers roaming the streets of San Francisco were costing The City over $14 million a year in lost tourism dollars. Visitors from other areas would tell their friends and colleagues to forego a trip the City by the Bay; that San Francisco was smelly, dirty, and full of vagrants who would accost tourists for money. Working in SF at the time, I could believe it, having been followed down the street and yelled at by panhandlers when I told them I didn't have any spare change.

These aggressive panhandlers congregated near tourist attractions and along the Embarcadero and Market Street, places with lots of people who'd give them change to avoid a confrontation. You could easily be hit up for change five or six times in only a few blocks.

Hammer swings—

> or are the places full of tourists
> attracting the homeless?

Boom

I found out this by accident in 2009. The only time you actually enjoy visiting the tourist attractions in Europe cities is to go off season. Rome is a remarkable place in early February. Hotels are cheap and provide breakfast. Enough restaurants are open to keep you fed, and you can walk right up to the entrance of the Vatican museum and then into the Sistine chapel with no lines.

No pickpockets, no beggars, no crowds.

The locals told me as long as you are out of there the week before Easter, everything is golden.

Spent Christmas in London once. Same thing.

I don't know about a true hobo vs. a false one, but I have a friend who regularly lives out of his car. Sometimes he has a regular job and sometimes he doesn't. No real drug or alcohol problems, so that isn't part of the situation. He just isn't interested in settling down. Money also isn't an issue. He toured with Metallica I think some years ago. Ran the special effects. So he got to travel all over the world and had a +$60k paycheck at the end of it. He came to me for financial advice after that. I talked about the stock market and bonds and such. After thinking about it he decided to buy a used Cessna and fly that for a couple of months before he had to sell it off.

That is just the life he wants to live.

I thought this was a very good piece about the homeless, by Christopher Rufo at City Journal:

The Invisible Asylum: Olympia, Washington, is a microcosm of the problems created by the emptying of mental hospitals.

A study done a few years ago estimated the aggressive panhandlers roaming the streets of San Francisco were costing The City over $14 million a year in lost tourism dollars. Visitors from other areas would tell their friends and colleagues to forego a trip the City by the Bay; that San Francisco was smelly, dirty, and full of vagrants who would accost tourists for money. Working in SF at the time, I could believe it, having been followed down the street and yelled at by panhandlers when I told them I didn't have any spare change.

I've been to the Bay Area quite a bit since the early '80s, when my older sister moved from the Twin Cities to Richmond (the East Bay city, not the SF neighborhood.) And, for the six years 2010 through 2015, I went to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass music festival in Golden Gate Park
(which was free, courtesy of the generosity of the music-loving late Warren Hellman.) I'd go for a week. The festival was three days (Fri-Sun) and then I spent the rest of the time walking about the city.

I'm not suggesting my experiences are comparable to someone who lives there. I'm just offering them as my experiences. The homeless people that I saw were primarily in the Tenderloin, around Union Square, on Market Street, south of Market, the Western Addition and in the Mission. I also saw some in North Beach, the Haight and a few out in Richmond and the Sunset. On one of my trips -- I think it was 2012 -- a homeless guy stabbed a tourist somewhere in the Haight and, as I recall, the tourist died.

I only encountered a real aggressive panhandler once. A friend joined me in 2011 and, while we were walking downtown, a guy started pestering us for money and wouldn't stop. He followed us for about three blocks before finally giving up. He never felt threatening but if a person is mentally ill, you never know when they could go off on you.

Anyway, overall, my experience wasn't that bad. However, as I said, I was just visiting, not living or working there. And also, I believe that things have become much worse since I was last there in 2015. That's certainly true here in Seattle. Our homeless situation now is much worse than it was six years ago.

Related to that, I heard a woman on our local PBS station a few weeks ago who has been studying the homeless problem in the U.S. for quite some time. She said the the top three cities for homeless (numbers, not per capita) are New York (with around 75,000), LA (with around 65,000) and Seattle (with around 11,000.) NY and LA didn't surprise me but I was shocked that there are more homeless in Seattle than in San Francisco.

I thought this was a very good piece about the homeless, by Christopher Rufo at City Journal ~ JD at April 6, 2021 8:59 AM

Interesting article, JD. And it echoes many of the things people here have been saying about the nationwide closure of the mental institutions and the societal expectations placed on police to be social workers, psychiatrists, and police officers, but them being trained to do only one of those jobs.

The only time you actually enjoy visiting the tourist attractions in Europe cities is to go off season.

My first two trips to Europe were in late August and early September.
All subsequent trips were in the off-season and I heartily concur with you. I'd never go again in high season. Not just because of all the tourists but because of the heat.

The only off-season trip I didn't really enjoy was a trip to Paris with two friends in February (we found super-inexpensive airfares from Seattle.)
It was just too damp and cold. I should clarify that it was the Paris portion of that trip I didn't enjoy. I had flown ahead of them to Nice and spent five days there first before meeting them in Paris and Nice was fine that time of year (as was nearby beautiful Menton, the city that has more sunny days a year than any other place in France.)

The sweet spot for me has been early April to early May. The weather is nice, but not too hot and, while there are tourists, there aren't the massive hordes you find in the summer. But, once I retire and get back to Europe, I'd like to try sometime in the fall, probably October.

...but I was shocked that there are more homeless in Seattle than in San Francisco. ! JD at April 6, 2021 9:44 AM

I'm a little surprised by that, too. It may be that Gavin Newsom's "Care Not Cash" proposition reduced the attraction of SF to the homeless. Prior to that, the homeless were paid up to $400 cash every month with the idea they would spend it on food and shelter. However, most of them spent it on alcohol and/or drugs.

Newsom, then a City Supervisor, proposed vouchers for assistance programs be provided in lieu of cash. The proposal was bitterly opposed by some homeless advocates, at least one of whom argued for the "right to be homeless." The measure was eventually adopted by the voters as Proposition N in 2002.

Some homeless advocates in SF argue that the one-night counts only estimate the homeless on the street, and not the ones in assistance programs. So, they argue, San Francisco's homeless population is undercounted.

The 2019 estimate for homeless in San Francisco is ≈17,000, based on the number of people receiving assistance from the city. It's likely that this undercount applies to other cities as well, including Seattle.

And it echoes many of the things people here have been saying about the nationwide closure of the mental institutions...

Yes. I believe removing people from institutions was done with good intentions -- from other reading I've done, my understanding is that the goal, or belief, was that they were going to be managed with the "wonderful magic" of drugs -- but it's turned out to be a disaster.

It'll be a good 12 years before I can regularly travel off-season, sadly. But yes it is true.

I lived in SF from 99-01 and the homeless situation was disgusting. Saw a guy whip it out and pee into the street at a crowded bus stop. When you saw a brown pile you HOPED it was doggie doo. People sleeping everywhere, reeking of urine or vomit.

But there were still plenty of tourists.

I lived in SF from 99-01 and the homeless situation was disgusting. [...] But there were still plenty of tourists. ~ NicoleK at April 6, 2021 1:06 PM

I was working in SOMA then (on Townsend). SOMA was not a hotbed for panhandling at that time. The homeless situation then was mostly in the tourist areas and in the Financial District. Most days I'd ride Muni to BART and avoid the streets, but when I'd walk from the office to BART, I could see it getting bad.

Ultimately, the only way to prevent the homeless from ruining public places is to privatize those places. I lived in SF in the 1980s, and more than one mayor -- ex police chief Frank Jordan in particular -- tried to solve the problem, only to be told by courts that a city can't legally kick people out for being bums. But the private owner of a tourist attraction can.

Of course it would help to ease the shortage of housing, but for that we will need to bring down the scam and cartel known as urban planning. The ancient common law of nuisances should be the only limit on what you can build on your own property.

> we will need to bring down
> the scam and cartel known
> as urban planning.

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