Progressives have long claimed homelessness is just a result of poverty, but a growing number of insiders are admitting that the unsheltered homeless live in tents to support their addiction, and that so-called "homeless advocates" are making the problem worse đ§”
In my new book, San Fransicko, I describe why progressives create and defend what European researchers call âopen drug scenes,â which are places in cities where drug dealers and buyers meet, and many addicts live in tents.
Progressives call these scenes âhomeless encampments,â and not only defend them but have encouraged their growth, which is why the homeless population in California grew 31 percent since 2000. This was mostly a West Coast phenomenon until recently.
But now, the newly elected progressive mayor of Boston, Michelle Wu, has decided to keep open a drug scene at Mass and Cass avenues, even though it has resulted in several deaths from drug overdoses and homicides.
Progressives defend their approach as compassionate. Not everybody who is homeless is an addict, they say. Many are just down on their luck. Others turn to drugs after living on the street. What they need is our help.
They say we should not ask people living in homeless encampments to go somewhere else. Homeless shelters are often more dangerous than living on the street. We should provide the people living in tents with money, food, clean needles, and whatever else they say they need.
But this âharm reductionâ approach is obviously failing. Cities already do a good job taking care of temporarily homeless people not addicted to drugs. Drug dealers stab and sometimes murder addicts who donât pay.
Women forced into prostitution to support their addictions are raped. Addicts are dying from overdose and poisoning. The addicts living in the open drug scenes commit many crimes including open drug use, sleeping on sidewalks, and defecating in public.
Many steal to maintain their habits. The hands-off approach has meant that addicts do not spend any amount of time in jail or hospital where they can be off of drugs, and seek recovery.
Now, even a growing number of people who have worked or still work within the homeless services sector are speaking out. A longtime San Francisco homeless service provider who read San Fransicko, and said they mostly agreed with it, reached out to me to share their views.
At first this person said they wanted to speak on the record. But as the interview went on, and the person criticized their colleagues, they asked to remain anonymous, fearing retribution.
The main progressive approach for addressing homelessness, not just in San Francisco but in progressive cities around the nation, is âHousing First,â which is the notion that taxpayers should give, no questions asked, apartment units to anyone who says they are homeless.
What actually works to reduce the addiction that forces many people onto the streets is making housing contingent on abstinence. But Housing First advocates oppose âcontingency management,â as itâs called, because, they say, âHousing is a right,â and it should not be conditional
But such a policy is absurdly unrealistic, said the San Francisco homeless expert. âTo pretend that this city could build enough permanent supportive housing for every homeless person who needs it is ludicrous,â the person said.
âI wish it werenât. I wish I lived in a land where there was plenty of housing. But now people are dying on our streets and it feels like weâre not doing very much about it.â
The underlying problem with Housing First is that it enables addiction. âThe National Academies of Sciences review [which showed that giving people apartments did not improve health or other life outcomes] you cited shows that.
"SF has more supportive housing units per capita than any other city, and we doubled spending on homelessness, but the homeless population rose 13%, even as it went down in the US. And so we doubled our spending and the problem got worse. But if you say that, you get attacked."
How did progressives, who claim to be evidence-based, ever get so committed to Housing First? âMalcolm Gladwellâs [2006 New Yorker article] âMillion Dollar Murray,â really helped popularize this idea,â the person said.
âBut it was based on an anecdote. It works for who it works for but is not scalable. [Governor] Gavin [Newsom] made a mistake [as SF Mayor 2004-11] which was that we stopped investing in shelter. But thatâs because all the best minds were saying, âThis is whatâs going to work.ââ
One of the claims made defenders of the open drug scenes is that people who live in them are mostly locals who were priced out of their homes and apartments and decided to pitch a tent on the street.
In San Fransicko, I cite a significant body of evidence to show that this is false, and that many people come to San Francisco from around the U.S. for the cityâs unusually high cash welfare benefits, free housing, and tolerance of open drug scenes.
The insider agreed. âPeople come here because they think they can. Itâs bullshit that âOnly 30 percent [of homeless] are from out of town.â At least 20,000 homeless people come through town every year. Talk to the people on the street.
"Thereâs no way 70 percent of the homeless are from here. I would guess itâs fewer than 50 percent. Ask them the name of their high school and they guess, âWashington? The one around the corner?â But you canât even talk about that without being called a fascist.â
The people living on the street suffer from serious addiction, this person said. âDuring the first point in time count [census of homeless population] in 2007, one-third had a disability, mental illness, or addiction, while last time, it was over two-thirds.
The population fundamentally changed, whether from the drugs, or the time on the street. It doesnât matter because a lot of the problems on the street are drugs-related. Neither San Francisco nor any other municipality can solve the housing policy without changing federal policyâ
Life in the open drug scenes is brutal. âMost homeless encampments are not communities but have paper-thin relationships based on their disease. Itâs hard to have healthy relationships when youâre just trying to keep your head above water because youâre so dope dependent.â
What San Francisco and other progressive cities are doing isnât working. âPeople in those encampments have food brought to them, port-a-potties brought to them, and all they need to do is put drugs in their arm all day. They get really really sick and they die.
Portugal didnât make it so you can do whatever you want. The consequences of your action are treatment driven, but there are consequences. Here there are no consequences. And so we make it worse.â
This person was harshly critical of San Franciscoâs Department of Public Health for allowing drug overdoses to rise to over 700 per year. âThey say, âItâs not our fault because itâs fentanyl.â But itâs only gotten worse.â
This person stressed they were in favor of harm reduction policies like giving addicts clean needles in exchange for them giving back dirty ones, but not just giving out needles. âIâm all in favor of needle exchange, but not of needle distribution.
Ask people to return the needles theyâve been given. There are people who donât have it together enough. I get that. But when you tell people weâre going to give you whatever you want, to do whatever you want⊠Sleeping on a sidewalk is a crime. You canât shoot up on the streetâ
Open drug scenes look like natural disasters, but they are the result of specific city policies. These policies including giving money, food, and drug paraphernalia to addicts to support their addiction.
But even if progressives didnât give people those things, many addicts would still live in drug scenes. The main reason âhomelessnessâ is worse in West Coast cities is because progressives oppose efforts to close the open drug scenes and move addicts into shelters and rehab.
By blocking the closing of open drug scenes, which is referred to as âclearing an encampment,â people in need of help donât get it. âThe San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness recently [July 2021] protested an encampment clearing where a woman was pregnant,â the insider told me.
âAs soon as everybody left, the woman went into a shelter, after having been on the streets for three months. She went indoors. Itâs like, âWhat are you fighting for? The right of this person to stay on private property and be pregnant?ââ
One of the questions I tried to answer in San Fransicko was when it was that street addicts started living in tents. I concluded that it started with the âOccupy Wall Streetâ protests in 2011, when progressive activists in San Francisco, Oakland and other cities lived in tents...
... in front of government buildings to protest capitalism. âYouâre right that the tents popped up after Occupy. But it wasnât just that the Occupy activists gave the homeless their tents. It was that the homeless saw well-heeled whites sleeping in tents. It got moralized.â
The most influential homeless advocate in San Francisco, and perhaps the United States as a whole, is the head of the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness, Jennifer Friedenbach.
Over the last three decades, Friedenbach has taken control over San Franciscoâs homelessness budget and other policies. She blocks the closure of open drug scenes, calls people who disagree with her fascists and racists, and organizes protests at the homes of politicians.
A typical example of Friedenbachâs tactics could be seen in posters she promoted in May. The headline read, âSee a tent? Just fucking leave it alone, thanks. Maybe instead of complaining you could do something about the economic conditions that put them there in the first place?â
The main reason San Francisco lacks sufficient homeless shelters is because Friedenbach and other Housing First advocates have long opposed them. They have demanded that money go to providing people with their own apartment units.
The reason, Friedenbach explained to me, is that âif you ask unhoused people, theyâre not screaming for shelter. Theyâre screaming for housing.â
In the spring of 2021, Friedenbach published an op-ed opposing a proposal considered by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to create, within eighteen months, sufficient homeless shelters and outdoor âSafe Sleeping Sitesâ for all of the cityâs unsheltered homeless.
âOne can simply take a look to New York City,â she wrote. âTheir department spends about $1.3 billion dollars of its budget on providing shelter for their unhoused population while thousands remain on the street. As a result, New York has a higher rate of homelessness than SF.â
But the claim was misleading. New York shelters the vast majority of its homeless, whereas San Francisco leaves the vast majority of its homeless unsheltered.
âNew York has made the decision that everyone should have an exit from the street,â said Rafael Mandelman, an SF county supervisor. âSan Francisco has chosen not to make that commitment. And the conditions on New Yorkâs streets versus SF streets are reflective of what that means"
Friedenbach controls how San Francisco spends its astonishing $850 million annual budget. âJenny built her power base by becoming a master of the budgetâs âadd backâ process,â said the San Francisco insider.
âThe night before the budget is announced, it gets reviewed by the Board of Supervisors, but theyâre trying to get out of there by midnight, and thatâs when these âcommunity asks.â
"The board goes & trims stuff out of the mayorâs budget and does âadd backs'' of money for struggling nonprofits. Jenny has mastered the process. If youâre a nonprofit executive director, and you want money in the add back process, which everyone does, you have to go through herâ
This person said that Friedenbach also operates behind the scenes. âShe controls fake front groups like the Homeless Service Providersâ Coalition and the Justice Budget Coalition,â said the insider. âShe knows the issue well. A lot of people look to her.â
But more importantly, Friedenbach, like many progressive defenders of open drug scenes, demonize the people who stand up to her. âThey shut down the discussion,â the insider said. âEverybody is just like, âPolice bad. Public health good.â Itâs Animal Farm...
... But the cityâs homeless outreach team canât do their jobs without the cops. Thatâs the stuff that shuts down any meaningful discussion.â Why do they do it? Radical anti-system ideology.
âThereâs a San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness hat which says, âCoalition on Homelessness: On The Frontlines of Class Warfare,ââ said the insider. âThey feel like theyâre fighting class warfare. They tell people to not take shelter.â
I documented in San Fransicko that Friedenbach and other homeless advocates are motivated in significant measure by their belief that capitalism, not addiction, is responsible for the suffering on the streets.
After I appeared on Joe Rogan, a clinical psychologist who for two decades ran programs for homeless veterans at the San Francisco Veterans Administration Medical Center, which included homeless vets, emailed me.
âI agree with all you say about the âhomelessâ people who are actually mislabeled mentally ill and drug addicts,â wrote Dr. Mark Zaslav. âI like your comparison of the âideologyâ of people who âadvocateâ for the homeless to a religion gone haywire.
"But I wanted, as a psychologist, to add another point for your consideration. This is the fact that this leftwing religion is based on split-off hatred and contempt for civilization itself...
"When I attended substance abuse conferences in San Francisco run by community leaders, it became clear to me that these people had no understanding of mental health disorders like addiction â they regarded 'homeless' addicts as heroes of some kind."
âThus, each drug addict defecating on the streets in the Tenderloin was a massive middle finger to some imagined white male with a briefcase.The premise of your solutions, which make so much sense, assume that adherents to the now reigning ideology want things solved.They do not"
"They want people inconvenienced by addicts â the homeless become quote literal scared cows who roam society reminding everyone of the sins of capitalism. You mentioned Noam Chomsky. These people are angry and full of hate.
"They have tapped into a form of blindness among the voters of places like San Francisco or California itself â these are angry people endlessly telling themselves they are compassionate while projecting their hatred toward the âbourgeoise.â I am afraid this does not end well."
The San Francisco homelessness insider agreed, and despaired over the religious fervor in which the people who work at the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness, the San Francisco Public Health Department, and many elected members of the Board of Supervisors are gripped.
âMaybe homelessness is part of capitalism and racism,â said this person. âI canât solve that and neither can any nonprofit organization. I canât stand seeing people suffering on the streets. What are we going to do right now?â /END
I just left an interview @sfchronicle & met a homeless man, Michael in the lobby. He was trying to find a journalist to explain his grand unified theory. I asked him to explain it to me. He said heâs from out of town, been homeless for 6 months, and smokes fentanyl every 4 hours
I have interviewed hundreds of homeless over the years & San Fransicko is filled with their voices. Yet some claim I relied *only* on expert voices, an obvious lie. In truth, I quoted homeless & THEIR experts saying addiction causes homelessness, which is why theyâre attacking me
One of the lies some people are spreading about San Fransicko is that I claim people are on the street by âchoice.â Some are, but most, as everyone who reads the book knows, are there due to addiction. Simply reading my book makes liars of my (bad faith) critics.