The Care Not Cash Program is Not Enough to Solve Homelessness

As a commercial real estate broker responsible for the leasing of commercial properties in San Francisco, I have first hand knowledge of the effect that the expanding homeless problem is having on the overall San Francisco real estate market, as well as, the standard of living for all San Francisco residents and those that work here.

With high vacancies, come vacant buildings. Vacant buildings lead to homeless encampments that develop in front of doorways. This leads to security concerns that in turn drive business away from remaining retailers in these neighborhoods. In turn, retailers go out of business and more vacancy on the ground floor occurs which in turn creates security concerns, as well as, lack of services to support office tenants that continue to have offices in these neighborhoods. In turn they move out in search of better neighborhoods.

This cycle cannot be broken easily. Homelessness as we all know is complex. It involves a number of different types of people with a wide variety of different types of problems that have led them into homelessness. There certainly is no end cure for all of the aspects that create homelessness.

Our homeless program and services over the last 25 years has expanded tenfold, yet the problem continues to grow. I recently attended a retirement party for one of the social services directors that was in charge of a program that dealt directly with homeless people every day. His statement to his employees was that each and every one of them worked hard everyday to make a difference in helping solve homelessness. He went on to say that in his 30 years of service, he could not name one person he was sure was no longer homeless because of their efforts.

This statement in my mind is the root of the problem. Throwing money at the homeless, creating large service infrastructures to service the community and having a “hands off” policy to enforce vagrancy laws is simply not working.

The ‘Care not Cash’ program voted in by San Francisco voters in November is a start. However, without other fundamental changes the program will be “dead on arrival”. First, we must enforce vagrancy laws. You must stop panhandling on the streets and you must stop encampments from forming in front of our businesses. Each person breaking these laws will be given a choice to take services or risk jail.

If they choose jail, they must attend mandatory counseling where service providers can once again be given a chance to help these people into programs. If they still choose not to attend then, they will be asked to leave the city.

This is harsh to some, but this is also nothing new. Cities throughout the United States have had such programs in place for years. The common joke heard for years was that other cities in the United State said they would buy one-way bus tickets to San Francisco for their homeless in order to solve their homelessness problem.

Homeless advocates will call this harsh and inhumane. What is harsh and inhumane is to allow someone to live on a street living in his own filth while harming the fabric for the rest of us that have to live and work in San Francisco.