(San Francisco mayor) Newsom gets homeless off streets - problems linger

[alp227]

Outgoing San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has moved more homeless people into supportive housing in his seven years in office than any other mayor in the city's history - and has one of the best track records of any mayor in the country on that score.

Yet many of San Francisco's neighborhoods remain plagued with panhandlers, and residents and tourists alike complain of feeling scared or just plain disgusted.

"In terms of housing homeless people, he probably has the best record of any mayor in the history of the United States," said Randy Shaw, who runs the Tenderloin Housing Clinic and operates many of Newsom's hotels for formerly homeless people. He is a frequent critic of Newsom but has come to support many of the mayor's homeless policies.

"For the average person who walks down Market Street or confronts things in Union Square or Fisherman's Wharf, they feel like, 'God, you have homeless people everywhere,' " Shaw said.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/08/MNAP1GMN20.DTL&ao=all

[KamaAina]

1. The good news: Newsom found the money to house homeless people.

The bad news: He merely shifted money around that was already being used to pay for people's basic needs, in effect robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Maybe some day The City and other cities dealing with homlessness (i.e. most of them) will find a way to actually "make the pie higher".

[EFerrari]

2. I used to work directly with the Coalition on for the Homeless in SF

and the mayor's policy was a constant battle. Cred not Care!