Proposed sit/lie ordinance dehumanizes homeless and distracts from the real issue

By Angela Penny
The Guardsman

In March, Mayor Gavin Newsom proposed a citywide ordinance that would make it illegal to sit or lie on San Francisco sidewalks between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m., with 30-day jail sentences and $500 fines for repeat offenders.

This is a ridiculous “solution” to a serious problem.

Before March, Newsom said he would not support such an ordinance because it was too divisive. He changed his mind after taking his 5-1/2 month old daughter on a Saturday morning walk down Haight Street, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

“As God is my witness, there’s a guy on the sidewalk smoking crack,” Newsom told the Chronicle.

Last time I looked, smoking crack is illegal no matter where you are. So there is already a law on the books that justified having this guy arrested, it just wasn’t being enforced. Why would this new law make any difference?

The fact that someone felt it safe to smoke crack as the mayor walked down the street says a lot about this person’s mental state.

My guess is that most people hanging out on the streets don’t have $500 handy to pay a fine and that jail actually might be a welcome change for at least some of them, especially if it’s raining. Instead of sitting on the sidewalk they can sit in a room where there might be access to playing cards or a television. But chances are they won’t stay very long.

Jails are over-crowded and cost the government money. This is a serious problem since San Francisco is facing one of the largest budget deficits in history.

Haight Street merchants are very upset about the large groups of people who take up space on the crowded sidewalks and harass the passers-by, but fining and arresting these people is not the answer. When they see the police coming, they’ll just move.

How can a person with no address even be fined? It doesn’t matter if the fine is $10 or $1000, they’re still not going to pay.

These people need help and it’s frustrating because there is no easy solution. Even if our resources weren’t depleted, providing education opportunities or drug and alcohol treatment is often ineffective because of the resistance people have to changing their lifestyles.

Very quickly it becomes an “us vs. them”  situation which makes the homeless even more hostile and intensifies their feelings of entitlement. It’s wrong for Newsom to say that he’s dealing with the situation by offering this non-solution.

Obviously there is no easy way to rectify the situation or we would already have implemented a coherent national policy. But just because there is not an easy win doesn’t mean the issue should get stuck in a “pro vs. con” debate with homeless rights activists and merchants going at each other. The argument about whether or not this type of strategy is exploiting the homeless doesn’t address the need for some type of change to address the problem of homelessness.