Merchants in San Francisco neighborhood threaten to stop paying taxes and fees if homelessness is not addressed

Agreed. I think it’s clever political positioning to pressure the city to help the unhoused by tying it to tax payment. But for consistency sake, that should also apply to other factors, like disruptive protests by RWNJs and such. I’m not sure if that’s as big of a deal in Castro but it certainly is in Portland and Seattle.

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To a classic non-threat. The business owners are going to think about not paying their taxes.

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I don’t live in SF but I’ve worked there for many years and my impression (biased, I’m sure) is that it’s more progressive cosplay than anything else. It’s a a cudgel wielded by special interest groups to get what they want in terms of political power and it seems there’s little incentive to actually solve problems, the homeless issue among them. But then that’s my cynical view and may be reflective of my current crappy attitude more than reality.

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If it’s anything like Seattle it’s Liberal Progressivism which boils down to ‘you can be as gay as you want, whatever religion you want, and whatever color you want, as long as you worship at the altar of the capitalist machine’.

Edit: Which to be clear: still WAY better than the death cult of the right wing, but it gets very frustrating around issues like homelessness/etc.

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Probably because cities like SF are less progressive than they like to pretend, and have a lot of people who have a NIMBY mindset with regards to things like housing the homeless, evidence be damned. SF also has a lot of libertarian minded tech dude bros.

Meanwhile, in red Utah:

Although, apparently, they’ve had problems again more recently:

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Politicians are frustrated by recent court decisions that you can’t just make it illegal for people to exist

So now they’re re-framing the homeless as child-harming monsters who must be kept away from schools and playgrounds, to see if that will work

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The first time I stepped out of the Union Station in LA I was shocked by the sheer amount of homeless living on any space available, parks, bridges, alleys, parking lots…
I had heard of it and saw some documentaries but the reality of it is something like ive never seen before and i have travelled extensively through latinamerica , africa and asia. There are poor people everywhere and slums and deprived areas but this situation of people living on the streets in the city centre of the one of the wealthiest city of the wealthiest state of the richest country is hard to comprehend.

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I think it sounded pretty great in a Sturgeon’s Law violating way to have a bunch of merchants sign on and still say ‘This here is right in the room with us, help us deal.’ Agreeing on the Improved Alleyway serving e’ybody is another order of progress and organization.

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