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

By Angela PennyThe 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.