D
Well-Known Member
Ah, the Tenderloin.
My home for about four years.
Not much to say about it at the moment. This is what I had to say on my final night as a resident of San Francisco:
***
Last night before I went to sleep I saw something new.
I'd taken down the curtains and was staring, upside down, at the almost full moon. There was a beautiful, mysterious ring around the moon, a radiating lunar shadow in the dark sky above O'Farrell Street.
I looked into my neighbors' windows for the last time. I saw the way the really large building across the street, the one with the Korean restaurant, appears infinitely huge when viewed upside down.
I will never see that again, no matter how many times I visit San Francisco or even if I come back to live here one day.
I will never hear the contribution of my own quiet breathing to the soundscape - sometimes mellifluous, sometimes so cacophonous that earplugs can't guarantee a good night's sleep - of San Francisco ever again from that exact spot.
***
One of the reasons that SF's homeless population has been so large, historically, is that, for a long time, the county of SF gave a big chunk of the homeless population *all* their benefits in cash, rather than, say, a small cash stipend and then vouchers for redeeming other services (like shelter or food).
When Mayor Gavin Newsom was elected, he ran on a platform of substantially reducing cash welfare benefits for homeless people. Quoting the SF Chronicle:
"Care Not Cash began in May 2004, cutting the welfare checks to homeless people from a high of $410 a month to $59 a month, giving them either a shelter bed or a permanent room instead. The number of homeless people on welfare since then has dropped 72 percent, from 2,497 to 693 today.
Newsom said he believes the new statistics show that his goal of ending chronic homelessness in San Francisco by 2014 -- as called for in his recently adopted 10-Year Plan to Abolish Chronic Homelessness -- is not unreasonable. "
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/02/15/MNGTKBB73I1.DTL
http://www.sfgov.org/site/mayor_page.asp?id=25978 (Newsom's 10 year plan)
Other reasons - SF has always been a city welcoming of outcasts, so there's inevitably been a sizeable population of homeless youth, many of them also queer and/or trans, many people with significant mental health and drug problems...in that respect, arguably not that different from other cities and their substantial homeless populations; but, in this case, it's almost part of the history/mythology of the city itself.
There's a whole collection of articles about homelessness in the Chronicle, including this rather intriguing map:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/12/03/MNTERRITORIES.DTL
http://www.sfgate.com/homeless/
My home for about four years.
Not much to say about it at the moment. This is what I had to say on my final night as a resident of San Francisco:
***
Last night before I went to sleep I saw something new.
I'd taken down the curtains and was staring, upside down, at the almost full moon. There was a beautiful, mysterious ring around the moon, a radiating lunar shadow in the dark sky above O'Farrell Street.
I looked into my neighbors' windows for the last time. I saw the way the really large building across the street, the one with the Korean restaurant, appears infinitely huge when viewed upside down.
I will never see that again, no matter how many times I visit San Francisco or even if I come back to live here one day.
I will never hear the contribution of my own quiet breathing to the soundscape - sometimes mellifluous, sometimes so cacophonous that earplugs can't guarantee a good night's sleep - of San Francisco ever again from that exact spot.
***
One of the reasons that SF's homeless population has been so large, historically, is that, for a long time, the county of SF gave a big chunk of the homeless population *all* their benefits in cash, rather than, say, a small cash stipend and then vouchers for redeeming other services (like shelter or food).
When Mayor Gavin Newsom was elected, he ran on a platform of substantially reducing cash welfare benefits for homeless people. Quoting the SF Chronicle:
"Care Not Cash began in May 2004, cutting the welfare checks to homeless people from a high of $410 a month to $59 a month, giving them either a shelter bed or a permanent room instead. The number of homeless people on welfare since then has dropped 72 percent, from 2,497 to 693 today.
Newsom said he believes the new statistics show that his goal of ending chronic homelessness in San Francisco by 2014 -- as called for in his recently adopted 10-Year Plan to Abolish Chronic Homelessness -- is not unreasonable. "
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/02/15/MNGTKBB73I1.DTL
http://www.sfgov.org/site/mayor_page.asp?id=25978 (Newsom's 10 year plan)
Other reasons - SF has always been a city welcoming of outcasts, so there's inevitably been a sizeable population of homeless youth, many of them also queer and/or trans, many people with significant mental health and drug problems...in that respect, arguably not that different from other cities and their substantial homeless populations; but, in this case, it's almost part of the history/mythology of the city itself.
There's a whole collection of articles about homelessness in the Chronicle, including this rather intriguing map:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/12/03/MNTERRITORIES.DTL
http://www.sfgate.com/homeless/
But then they dont really get news outside the states.
