[jyl]

Portland, Seattle, LA all also have serious homeless problems.

SF has long had a homeless problem. It used to be mentally ill people who were put out on the street when California cut back its state mental hospital capacity.

Portland used to have a seasonal population of "street kids" with backpacks who'd appear in the summer then leave in the winter. About 5 years ago they started being outnumbered by mentally ill, drug addict type homeless. Then we started seeing larger numbers of "down on their luck" homeless who are fairly normal except that they live in cars, RVs, tents. As well as criminal homeless who make their living from theft, drug dealing, etc. The city and county are pretty incompetent at dealing with the problem despite spending $70 million a year plus the private groups who spend many tens of millions as well. The reason for this ineffectiveness seems to be a combination of ideology and self interest. The problem has gotten pretty bad and most people are pretty mad about it.

I live near a beautiful park, one of the largest and most popular in the city. About four years ago, tent cities started appearing in the park, with trash and drinking, drug use and needles littering the playground, violent and deranged people harassing the neighbors who live around the park, big piles of stolen stuff guarded by aggressive "campers". People stopped coming to the park, patents wouldn't let their kids play there any more. It took two years and a huge amount of neighborhood activism to get the city to clear out the camps and keep them out. The official response was "there's nothing we can do" and a lot of outside groups attacked us as elitist, racist, uncaring, etc. Now people come to walk, picnic and play in the park again and my neighbors don't have to clean up feces and needles from their yards.