A man outside the Central Square McDonald's in Cambridge begged me for something to eat once. I brought him out a cheeseburger on my way out and he wept with joy. Some people really are hungry.
An Unremarkable Event in the Tenderloin
91–100 of 216 posts
Re: An Unremarkable Event in the Tenderloin
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who hasn't spent much time in SF but plans to move there very soon and doesn't want to live off of ramen, I genuinely want to know: where does one get those free meals? Edit: namank and iamwill beat me to it.
Most dumpsters/trash cans in big cities have tons of free food, you just have to keep your eyes open.
A couple of years ago, a couple getting their food from trashcans around here got poisoned by the cooling agent you put in cars. They were found in their apt. a couple of weeks later. The hypothesis was that someone was tired of having them going through their trash.
They were not homeless. A criminal investigation was made. It is used as a scenario in school, and that's how I know about it. The pictures were... "interesting".
Not saying it's common, but if I ever have to get my food from trash cans I will make damned sure that it's at least properly sealed.
Re: An Unremarkable Event in the Tenderloin
#93What's remarkable about this is how the poster finds these casual encounters with homelessness "unremarkable". No other western city that I have visited has the massive, in-your-face homelessness as SF. I don't know enough about the causes of this phenomenon in SF to suggest what can be done about it; I'm sure they are complex, multi-factorial and politically fraught, but the level of homelessness in SF and (almost)…
The main cause is pretty simple. The police in San Francisco just do not bother them in certain neighborhoods. In most other cities police routinely pick up the homeless and dump them some place far.
So the absence of homeless is usually not a sign of better humanity, it is usually a sign of cruelty. This is especially the case in the US. There are other countries where they have better treatment for poverty and mental illness (most homeless are mentally ill to some extent) where the absence of homeless on the city streets may mean actual absence of homeless. But this is not the case in the US.
Thus, even if the sight of homeless in San Francisco is so terrible, one should keep in mind that San Francisco provides the best treatment for them in America.
Re: An Unremarkable Event in the Tenderloin
#94What's remarkable about this is how the poster finds these casual encounters with homelessness "unremarkable". No other western city that I have visited has the massive, in-your-face homelessness as SF. I don't know enough about the causes of this phenomenon in SF to suggest what can be done about it; I'm sure they are complex, multi-factorial and politically fraught, but the level of homelessness in SF and (almost)…
In the mid-90s, when I lived in New York, panhandlers would follow me several blocks while negotiating for change (you got tokens? I take subway tokens!). In Paris in the mid 80s, the same thing happened constantly in the metro station. Panhandlers would also come up to you while you were stuck in traffic, ask you to roll down your window, and try to bum money off you. It was constant. I was punched by a bum in Dubli…
As a parisian currently living at Montreal, there is a huge difference between the two mentalities. There is homeless people at Montreal too, but .. well .. most of them are civil : they don't try to annoy you to get money (some of them even say "Have a nice day" when I decline).
One of the thing which surprised me when I first used the montreal subway was that the 'musicians' were actually real musicians, played only at some places, and did not try to get money by playing so bad that you only wanted them to stop. When I came back to Paris during holidays, it was horrible to see again these guys with their horrible speakers, horrible musics and horrible voices.
tl;dr Montreal is a very nice city. Why can't we find such nice behavior in other cities ?
Re: An Unremarkable Event in the Tenderloin
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Has Westwood gotten worse since I graduated UCLA in 2010? By my memory, there were only several decipherably-homeless individuals wandering about. In most cases, they would talk at me, mumbling, and didn't actually talk TO me in a real attempt to get anything. I would even say downtown Palo Alto is worse than Westwood. The rest of LA is pretty bad, but Westwood was a far cry away from any of it.
Didn't spend much time in the rest of LA, but I was in westwood for 8 months in 2011. There was less than the tenderloin, but most of the streets with shops had a homeless on every corner. I would walk by 5-10 on my way to grab lunch or dinner.
But did they harass you at all? Downtown Palo Alto has one on every street corner too, and they don't bother anyone. But Tenderloin... after walking through Westwood and PA for several years now, I still just plain don't feel safe in the Tenderloin at all.
Re: An Unremarkable Event in the Tenderloin
#96I also heard you have tent cities in the USA.
Seriously guys, stop fighting brown people and start feeding your own people.
/ Your allies in europe =/
Re: An Unremarkable Event in the Tenderloin
#97What's remarkable about this is how the poster finds these casual encounters with homelessness "unremarkable". No other western city that I have visited has the massive, in-your-face homelessness as SF. I don't know enough about the causes of this phenomenon in SF to suggest what can be done about it; I'm sure they are complex, multi-factorial and politically fraught, but the level of homelessness in SF and (almost)…
I think SF is stuck with a perfect storm of "landed gentry" conservatives that don't want to pay for homeless services, sympathetic liberals whose spare change enables drug addicts, civil rights activists that fight city hall to protect people's "right to be homeless", and the so-called "homeless industrial complex."
A few years ago, the local PBS station had a TV show about SF's homeless problem. People migrated to SF because the city (until "Care Not Cash"?) handed out monthly cash stipends. Emergency rooms would be crowded with drug ODs on the first day of each month. PBS also spent a few days with one panhandler in particular. He received handouts that would have added up to $70K/year, if he didn't spend it all on heroin.
Re: An Unremarkable Event in the Tenderloin
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the mid-90s, when I lived in New York, panhandlers would follow me several blocks while negotiating for change (you got tokens? I take subway tokens!). In Paris in the mid 80s, the same thing happened constantly in the metro station. Panhandlers would also come up to you while you were stuck in traffic, ask you to roll down your window, and try to bum money off you. It was constant. I was punched by a bum in Dubli…
though someone did try the old trick of pretending to "find" a ring, ask if it belonged to my wife, insist on handing it to her, and then asking for money I don't understand this, and if someone did that to me, I would be utterly confused. What's the basis for giving someone a ring that they would know isn't theirs?
"This ring did fall, take it, take it !" "Now can you give me money please ?"
Sometimes they don't speak the country languages (or don't want to), so it's hard to say 'no'.
Re: An Unremarkable Event in the Tenderloin
#99Try going to Ocean Beach or Santa Monica, same thing there. I think helping out with food is better than with money. As a side note, I recall a National Geographics photographer that traveled the world taking pictures ended up killing himself because what he saw made him very depressed.
Re: An Unremarkable Event in the Tenderloin
#100Knew a guy in my hometown who drove a BMW every day to the corner where he begged for change. At the time, he made more than I did.
On a completely separate note:
You can't help homeless people by subsidizing and enabling homelessness as a lifestyle. There is enough housing to go around, we just allocate it more efficiently than effectively.