The Chronicle’s licensed vacation from empathy
By Martha Bridegam, Guest blogger for www.leftinsf.com
C.W. Nevius seemed like a sportswriter with a heart. Not the deepest thinker maybe, but a man with moral equipment. Now suddenly he’s at the front of this hateful San Francisco Chronicle campaign to equate homeless people with crime, garbage and sewage and demand that they be run out of town — or anyway out of sight. The campaign has provoked some protests, but nowhere near enough.
The National Coalition for the Homeless says, “Research and experience have shown the correlation between homeless-directed violence and city efforts to criminalize homelessness.” Hate crimes against the homeless are increasing nationally. What has to happen here before enough people tell the Chronicle to stop?
To be fair to Nevius, the columns probably aren’t his idea. When I forwarded a complaint letter to another Chron columnist, a significant response came back: “Try to remember that assignments this big come from editors, not the writer in question.” Randy Shaw calls the Chronicle’s hate campaign “a transparent effort to to boost its Internet readership,” and he’s probably right. The Chronicle is trying to become popular by giving its readers a licensed vacation from empathy.
The Nevius columns are using openly eliminationist phrases. The paper’s Web site tolerates worse ones in its related comment sections. These are just from Nevius’ own columns:
- “‘Enough is enough,’ S.F. says of homeless…” (That was yesterday’s
front-page headline.)
- “…the homeless and vagrancy problem…”
- “…clearing out homeless campsites…”
- “…Not that the problem has been solved….”
- “…’We’re saying, ‘This is not how I want to live. I want the streets
to be clean. We’re tired of the homeless having sex in our alleys,
leaving feces in our alleys, and using drugs.'’…”
- “…If [Gavin Newsom] thinks he can accomplish more - lower the
homicide rate, find a long-term solution for the homeless in the park -
more power to him.”
The columns refer insistently to bodily wastes, trash, crime, drug needles in parks, and panhandling in association with “the homeless,” while they identify police harassment with cleanliness. If Nevius got to know actual homeless people in different parts of town, he’d know most are self-respecting human beings who do their best to stay tidy and unobtrusive so the housed neighbors won’t notice or object to their presence. On the other hand, some housed people do panhandle, use drugs,
commit crimes, etc. Club kids, cab drivers and dogs bear a lot of responsibility for the bad smells in this town. So do the many
“Restrooms For Customers Only” signs. But, no, we’ve got to blame “the homeless” for everything foul. We’re encouraged to think that if “the homeless” can just be driven away, they will carry all foulness out from the community, leaving the community purified. It’s rare to see such a textbook case of scapegoating.
A further pretense — mentioned to guard against sympathy for the scapegoats — is that homeless people irrationally refuse city-offered housing. In truth there’s not enough real housing to go around and fear of shelters is rational. It’s just cheaper to call homeless people crazy than to build subsidized apartments.
Now the paper has Nevius campaigning for yet another law to justify arrest for yet another kind of ordinary act — in this case sitting or lying on sidewalks (presumably not to be enforced against club kids or tourists). It has been held unconstitutional since 1972 to arrest people simply for being poor or different, but measures like a sit-lie ordinance create pretexts for police to do exactly that.
This campaign from the Chronicle is decreasing everyone’s quality of life by throwing hate in our faces. Please take a moment to write and ask the paper’s editors to stop. Or if you have the stomach, go through the online “Comments” sections and report the hate speech as hate speech. We have to let them know clearly that this time they are outside the mainstream of civic discourse.
October 11th, 2007 at 7:59 am
The comments stemming from Nevius’ column were shocking in their outright vulgarity. A few people recognized that our problems can be directly linked to the Reagan era cuts in services, but the tone tended mostly to be “I don’t like homeless people. They smell. Make them leave.”
No, it’s not this city that has failed. It is the closing of the state hospitals and the federal institutions for the mentally ill. And of course, failed welfare reform and the shredding of our so-called social safety net.
By the way, all the links in this post are broken.
October 11th, 2007 at 9:11 am
What matters here is not whether Nevius is correct or not–we cannot raise the resources to communicate our ideas to voters or residents–rather what we are doing as progressives to deal with the issues of homelessness that impact on those whose votes we seek.
Progressives have had policymaking power for seven and one half years now, and we have not taken it upon ourselves to do any thing but fight the efforts of the conservatives to demonize the homeless.
Progressives have been dismissive of residents’ concerns about piss and poop, preferring to focus on the needs of the neediest to the exclusion of the needs of the many. This is not just a problem with homelessness, but with housing in general and ENDA. We can and must attend to the needs of all of the non-rich if we are to remain a viable force in San Francisco politics, that is, if we haven’t made that an impossibility due to our squandering of the past seven years on so many issues.
What we’re seeing here is an effort by corporate San Francisco to clean up the tourist areas by moving human beings into residential neighborhoods. This is a precursor to a recall of Daly in that it causes problems for residents that are not being addressed by the target of the recall even though the problems are being created by the Mayor and downtown.
When I went home from work for lunch just yesterday, a junkie whom I’d never seen before was nodding out on our sidewalk planter. She stank to high hell even though there’s a center with showers a block away on Capp, and had left her shopping cart full of her belongings in the well of my garage as I was putting our trash cans back in after being emptied that morning by sunset scavenger.
I have one place where I can feel totally safe, and that is our home. There is a visceral response from average folks when that safe space is violated. To deny that and argue logic against a visceral, emotional response is an exercise in failure.
Without money and in the face of a mean well funded propaganda campaign, this will be very difficult if not impossible to overcome.
The way to beat it is to put forth comprehensive proactive ideas on how to deal with homelessness. Introduce progressive legislation that forces the Mayor’s hand on issues of funding substance abuse treatment and mental health treatment.
This is going to mean a very public results based audit of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on homeless services and the nonprofits that administer those programs with an eye towards axing what is not working and raising the money to solve the problems that are festering.
It is time for progressives to shit, not on a doorstep preferably, or get kicked off the pot. This wringing of the hands is a prescription for continued pummeling and eventual irrelevance of progressives in SF.
-marc
October 11th, 2007 at 11:15 am
San Francisco was founded as a city of homeless, drunk, and broke gold miners, and hence it has always tolerated filth and unrulyness to some extent.
What is changing now is this:
It is becoming a city of upper middle-class homeowners rather than renters because of gentrification and the TIC boom. And property owners are concerned foremost about property values and other bourgeoisie crap.
Nevius and his columns recently reflect these trends.
October 11th, 2007 at 11:41 am
Some are concerned about property values, but nobody likes to come home from work to Calcutta nor do they like to clean up shit and piss.
The facts are that the demographic is changing, true, but SSI was eliminated for alcoholics and addicts under Clinton in 1996, so they end up on the streets, and as has been noted, the state and federal governments, starting with Governor Reagan, have abdicated their responsibilities.
Protesting is not going to accomplish anything to address street squalor nor bolster progressive political prospects, the system has developed an immune response to that.
Progressives doing nothing on homelessness is a prescription for our further and further marginalization.
-marc
October 11th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
My second reason:
Downtown areas in major cities are the only places left where public space exists in America. In the film noir of the USA (where every stranger is a potential murderer or rapist), the police in the suburbs serve the will of the Suburbanites (the Lost Tribe) in keeping strangers off of private property and out of the malls.
So where can the homeless go?
Only to the cities. Especially tolerant cities like San Francisco. And homeless people will keep flocking here. (I say all power to them. They are part of my furniture and living room.)
Offering additional services will act as a magnet to bring more homeless here. After all, homelessness is not a SF problem, it is a bonafide American problem.
I think we should all show a little tolerance. Offer them the welcome mat to some extent. But let’s not have any illusions that we can fix this problem here in SF. The homeless can breathe sanely on the streets, often much more than they ever did in mental institutions back in the day.
October 11th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
A point rarely mentioned is that lots of people who are living homeless keep themselves tidy and unobtrusive in order to avoid becoming victims of the stereotype, so the people you see as being obviously homeless are just those who can’t keep up appearances any more.
October 11th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
That’s true, Martha.
Also, if we were to offer a plethora of services to the homeless–health services, space in the Randy Shaw-run vice hotel network, food, etc., we would draw plenty more homeless into SF from outside. The word would get out through the grapevine across the country that SF offers it all.
I’m in favor of offering these services. I’m just saying, though, that supply-demand dictates that plenty more homeless people will be coming into town once the services are in place to utilize them, and to sleep in the park, if necessary.
October 11th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
“Vice hotel network”? I have my differences with Tenderloin Housing, but referring to nonprofit-managed residential hotels as “vice hotels” shows plain lack of experience.
When you’re next on Eddy Street, ask to take a look around the lobby of the Cadillac Hotel, a nonprofit-owned building that is a far from perfect specimen of the category, or the Jefferson Hotel a few doors away, which Tenderloin Housing master-leases. Then, if you dare, step into the privately managed Fairfax Hotel right nearby. Oh, will you ever notice a difference.
October 11th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
Why anyone pays attention to anything the SF Weekly says about anything is beyond me. They are the masters of the sensationalist hit piece and never actually met a fact that they ever liked. Their capacity for twisting the truth is simply astonishing.
October 15th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
On the contrary, I think Matt Smith (Weekly) is one of the only public figures in San Francisco who cannot be pigeon-holed into a ready-made pre-cooked agenda (a soppy predictable menu).
He supported Matt Gonzales for mayor three years ago.
But he isn’t afraid to take a dig at corrupt union officials, either.
Who else around this town is so open-minded?