Donegan’s argument that San Luis Obispo should heed the example of San Francisco’s homeless and vacancies situation is not without considerable merit (Jan. 19, “San Luis Obispo should heed San Francisco’s demise as a warning”).
I, too, used to live in San Francisco. I worked as a reporter and producer at KRON-TV 4. I lived above a pizzaria at 33rd and Taraval, and when I drove to the TV station downtown, I had to go through Golden Gate Park. You would not believe what I witnessed in that wooded area—legions of homeless were living in the bushes there, and many were obviously crazed and on drugs, fighting among themselves, threatening pedestrians and motorists alike.
I was always relieved when I finally got through that park, as I felt threatened the entire time, and this was an everyday occurrence!
The tent encampments, the drug use, the filth, and the crime in San Francisco is now worse than ever, and I no longer think about even visiting there. To do so is life-threatening: Who needs it?
Tony Bennett’s iconic song is now just a pipe dream, because San Francisco is no longer that golden city on a hill, and never will be again. Donegan’s warning should not go unheeded here in San Luis Obispo, because if we’re not careful, it could happen here too.
To the city fathers: Please, don’t let that happen!
John Winthrop
Cayucos
This article appears in Health & Wellness 2023.
I don’t disagree with your current assessment but still believe that things can change. Look what Rudy accomplished in NYC. We just need to elect public officials that are concerned with law and order.
Who are the “city fathers”?!?
SLO, AG, and GB alone have women mayors.
It’s 2023. Allow your language to catch up with the current times.
Its not just San Francisco. Its everywhere in the U.S. as income inequality becomes ever more extreme, the top 10% take an ever larger share of profits, hedge funds buy up rental property and skyrocket rent, corporations continue to get massive tax breaks, etc. Please look at the bigger picture. In the 1960s taxes were split about even between corporations and individuals. Who do you think makes up the difference when corporations pay little to nothing and the wealthy pay less and less through tax breaks and loopholes? It doesnt take much research to see what massive inequality is doing to the country.
@kayaker:. Does the tax system create all the staggering zombies and the guys face down on the sidewalk soaked in urine? Silly me, I thought that it had something to do with fentanyl, meth, alcohol, freely made choices, and the drive to self-destruct which seems to afflict even the wealthy and famous. Hell, I hadn’t even realized that the homeless paid such high taxes
“Silly me, I thought that it had something to do with fentanyl, meth, alcohol, freely made choices, and the drive to self-destruct which seems to afflict even the wealthy and famous. Hell, I hadn’t even realized that the homeless paid such high taxes”
Yep, typical conservative knee jerk reaction to the truth. Not since the late 1800’s has the gap between the haves and have-nots been so large. Historians reference the 1980’s as the point when the economic gaps began to widen. Republicans lowered the top tax rate from 70% to 28%; vilified unions and repealed the communications fairness doctrine which said that for every hour of one political point of view, an hour needed to be given to the other side. Not surprisingly, this was the beginning of the large debt we now carry. Instead of funding the government, we decided to fund the rich with stock buybacks, tax loopholes, etc. So much so that an individual such as Donald Trump can live like a wealthy man despite not paying any taxes for four of the last ten years.
Many of the people we see on the street fall into two categories: mentally ill individuals who should be off the street and into hospitals (oh, no funding for that) or individuals who lost jobs and can simply no longer compete in a cutthroat economy that has seen rents soar while wages lagged.
Unfortunately, many of these individuals turn to substance abuse to get by on a day to day basis. They see no point in returning to a society that is rigged against them. In his book Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance, now a senator in Ohio, charts the downfall of the middle class quite poignantly. Good jobs recede, no more pensions, no health insurance and individuals become hopeless.
Let’s raise the top tax rate back to 91% as it was in 1950, raise the minimum wage to at least $20 an hour, build housing for those who need it, spend at a least $50k per year per pupil in our public schools and establish a robust safety net for those who fall on hard times. Short of that, we will have homeless, drug abusers, crime, mass shootings, etc. Of course, the right’s answer is to spend more on law enforcement, build gated communities, ignore the poor, shun the drug addicts and say, it’s their own fault, they had free will.
limiting housing to make housing a real estate investment for profit causes homelessness. plenty of housed people do drugs and are addicted. society doesnt allow everyone to have sufficiency. the population exceeds to housing supply. many if not most californians are on foodstamps, unless they’re university students with daddy’s out of state money. university students cannot make ends meet by themselves either. so daddy pays his child’s tuition and living expenses. thats welfare. it has nothing to do with self sufficiency or succeeding in the economy.
san luis obispo housing prices are extremely inflated because its a college town with out of town money being pumped into the local economy. otherwise san luis obispo would need to have its own functional economy where people work to pay their rent. san luis obispo creates its own poor class and housing crisis. san luis obispo’s housing market creates homelessness. then, SLO bigots and snobs push their homeless citizens to other cities for other cities to take care of SLO’s citizens. ironic that SLO is so prejudiced against homelessness after SLO creates the housing crisis. many other cities also create the housing crisis. palo alto in the silicon valley doesnt provide sufficient housing for its tech worker population who have to commute from out of town to work in palo alto. so palo alto burdens neighboring towns with housing palo alto’s workers. this is ubiquitous in most californian cities who have the excessively rich quality of life but a “not in my backyard” attitude. each city must take care of its own poor demographic rather than sending them to the neighboring towns for help. your citizens are YOUR responsibility and if you dont want to take care of santa barbara’s homeless citizens, know that santa barbara does not want you pushing your poor people to santa barbara by neglecting them.
As frequently happens, Mr. Smith has gotten things exactly backward in serving his ideological agenda, when he suggests that it was life on the street which drove the homeless into addiction. He would have us believe that high housing costs just plopped a guy onto the sidewalk, and that he then figured “well, here I am. I guess I ought to take up fentanyl or heavy drinking.” Instead, more of us recognize that the homeless once had homes and jobs, but lost them due to their addictions. If you are addicted, it becomes harder and harder to hold down a job, and once you’ve lost your job, it become much harder to keep yourself in a home. Currently, employers are desperate for employees, and are paying the $15 per hour that we were recently assured was the “living wage” which would give us economic justice. Of course now “economic justice” requires not only giving poor people more more, but also tearing down the rich because their wealth is just so doggone annoying, even if they can’t show how their wealth hurts the poor. And, of course, any employment is going to come with the utterly unreasonable expectation that you not only show up every day that you are scheduled to work, even if your friends are in town and the weather is great, but that you appear on time, and that you be reasonably coherent and presentable.