{"id":7365,"date":"2010-10-14T17:40:24","date_gmt":"2010-10-14T21:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=7365"},"modified":"2010-10-14T17:40:24","modified_gmt":"2010-10-14T21:40:24","slug":"rejecting-the-san-francisco-mentality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/7365\/rejecting-the-san-francisco-mentality\/","title":{"rendered":"Rejecting the San Francisco Mentality"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Manhattan Institute\u2019s Heather MacDonald has an eye-popping expose<\/a> on the insane delusion about the \u2018root causes\u2019 of homelessness among what passes for San Francisco\u2019s intelligencia.\u00a0 Though the entire article is worth reading, one passage deserves special mention for the way it shows how disconnected are the captains of \u2018Homelessness, Inc.\u2019 from the actual motivations of the people they claim to serve:<\/p>\n

An unintentionally hilarious letter to the San Francisco Chronicle<\/em> in January 2010 revealed just why the homelessness-industrial complex is so desperate to claim the Haight infestation for itself: government contracts. \u201cThe majority of the youth on the streets and in the park are in the Haight seeking support to address the issues that have led them there,\u201d wrote the executive director of Larkin Street Youth Services in criticizing the sit-lie proposal. \u201cFunding to help these youths through outreach, case management, education and employment has been severely cut over the past two years. . . . Rather than rallying in anger, a better use of our time is to focus on helping youths exit the streets so they can find work and housing and become contributing members of the community.\u201d Translation: Homelessness, Inc. wants more money.<\/p>\n

Larkin Street\u2019s analysis of why people hang out in the Haight is as wildly inaccurate as the Coalition\u2019s fingering of unaffordable rent. Few, if any, of these vagrants are \u201cin the Haight seeking support to address the issues that have led them there,\u201d unless \u201csupport\u201d means money for booze and drugs. To the contrary, the \u201cyouth\u201d are there to party, en route to their next way station. As a platinum blonde boozily announces in The Haight Street Kids<\/em>: \u201cI love this city, love your fucking life.\u201d A tall youth draped around her adds: \u201cIt\u2019s awesome for traveling kids to stop in when they need a break.\u201d<\/p>\n

Predictably, the offer of services and housing\u2014which San Francisco\u2019s round-the-clock outreach workers constantly put before the Haight Street vagrants\u2014is usually turned down. As for becoming \u201ccontributing members of the community,\u201d that\u2019s definitely not on the agenda, either. Asked what he saw for himself in the future, a \u201ctraveler\u201d in the Stanford documentary rolls his eyes, smiles nervously, and shakes his head for nearly a minute before replying: \u201cA hot dog, there\u2019s definitely a hot dog in my future.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sanity is dead.\u00a0 Long live Progressivism!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Manhattan Institute\u2019s Heather MacDonald has an eye-popping expose on the insane delusion about the \u2018root causes\u2019 of homelessness among what passes for San Francisco\u2019s intelligencia.\u00a0 Though the entire article is worth reading, one passage deserves special mention for the way it shows how disconnected are the captains of \u2018Homelessness, Inc.\u2019 from the actual motivations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1946,1948,1950,1947,1949,656],"class_list":["post-7365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-heather-macdonald","tag-homelessness","tag-hot-dog","tag-manhattan-institute","tag-progressivism","tag-san-francisco"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7365"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7368,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7365\/revisions\/7368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}