Housing First has proven to be a very effective (and, for the taxpayer, cost-effective) model for reducing homelessness – including for alcoholics.
For the homeless afflicted by mental illness and more intractable substance abuse the best solution (not a good solution, but the best available) involves setting up a “Hamsterdam” free zone that concentrates social and legal services, harm reduction programmes, restrooms and an absence of police enforcement of drug and quality-of-life laws in an area of several square blocks within a city (e.g. as in downtown L.A. or Vancouver). Combined with aggressive enforcement of those laws elsewhere it makes the rest of the city a much more pleasant place free of poop and aggressive and abusive panhandlers.
The political will among those with power in SF to implement either of these programmes is and has been effectively absent. As bad as the situation is now, it could actually get worse if Libertarian techbros get enough clout to implement a policy of saving taxpayer dollars by taking a brain-dead laissez faire approach.
others have beaten me to it but i would have answered your question by saying that although they are not legally obligated to do so, it would absolutely be morally and economically appropriate to do so.
From what I’ve heard from them over the past few decades the wealthy of SF are not at all happy about it.
Then a solution for this (if not the underlying problem) presents itself. The wealthy of NYC, who pine over the loss of Taxi Driver era Times Square can move to SF, and the SF rich, who have had enough with the grittiness can move to NYC.
The people in either city who pine for the “charm” and “authenticity” of squalor tend to be young hipsters and edgelords, some but not all of them trustafarians. Otherwise, I’ve found that the wealthy of both towns, while not necessarily wanting Disneyfied/suburbanised versions of the cities, could do without the steaming piles of human stool and used heroin spikes and abusive bums outside their homes and workplaces. SF is just uniquely hapless when it comes to doing anything about it.
Judge a civilization based on what it does for the least of its members. This is a sentiment echoed by the likes of Gandhi and Aristotle
SF shouldn’t be measured by the high profits the companies make, it should be measured by what it provides for the least capable of its members/citizens. Where I an alien I’d find it completely baffling that you can’t provide all members of society reliable means to do what is inevitable.
Somehow it made it much easier for me to clean up, when I convinced myself that it was just a large dog that had shit on the steps into my house.
Definitely not a person, no way.
Even though it was really big, and halfway up a flight of stairs.
Sometimes having the first house on a street gets you some ‘presents’ that you weren’t expecting.
It’s called the Tenderloin. The problem is that it’s prime real estate and the gentrifiers always want to move hamsterdam to oaksterdam. In the end the shit really is the easiest problem to fix, just costs money for installing and maintaining toilets. Maybe start by reopening all the closed BART toilets.
That’s where it effectively is, but I’m talking about the city formalising things and putting in proper infrastructure and support to isolate the free zone. As you say, though, it’s prime real estate which means it won’t happen, because the city saying that the Tenderloin is Hamsterdam in the way that L.A. said Skid Row is Hamsterdam has a serious impact on landlords and developers.
When I used to commute to S.F. from East Bay on BART I noticed all the public restroom facilities along the central BART corridor seemed to be permanently closed. Even gainfully employed commuters can have trouble finding a pot to piss in around here.
Attendants are certainly one solution and has a certain appeal, but I’ve never seen any restroom open 24 hours that included an attendant.
There are existing public restroom designs that are reasonably well suited to safe, unattended 24-hour use, and it would be great to see a serous investment in them.
