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The original post was Feb. of 2018.
Can't say as this isn't happening to a LOT of cities, due to the homeless disaster. Our warm weather year-round draws them like flies.
I hadn't been to downtown San Diego in quite awhile, despite living here, and when I was down there in July for Comic-Con, I was gobsmacked by how filthy things had gotten. My husband is a contractor and does a lot of remodel work down there in some of the swankiest high rises, multi-million dollar condos that have sprung up since massive gaslamp area redevelopment, and these residents come down their elevators onto streets they literally have to tiptoe around the poop piles from the homeless. The stench of pee in the hot summer sun nearly knocked me out it was so bad! Streets are lined with tents and shopping carts from the homeless, beggars everywhere.
Until homelessness is dealt with, I don't think the filth factor is going to get any better.
carol - homeless research in cities all across the nation concur: the number of transient homeless moving for weather and / or benefits is very low, even though many people feel it is common sense that they would.
San Diego, L.A., and San Francisco all run between 70% - 80% homeless are from the cities where they are stuck on the streets. Another 15% - 20% are from neighboring counties and elsewhere in the state. Approximately only 10% are transient from out of state.
I also live in San Diego, between Point Loma and Midway, loaded with homeless. Sure, there’s some messy areas ... but I’m not “tiptoeing around piles of poop” everywhere.
It’s a sad situation for everyone, homeless and non-homeless both. San Diego is one of the high homeless rate cities. But you’re making it sound wall to wall ... and that sure isn’t my experience living right down in it.
Like I said you're a regular Izzy Mandelbaum. You seem just like him. Yeah, you're right I've wasted my 50+ years watching a mind-rotting box rather than spending my time posting almost 10,000 times in 5 years on CD like you. That's great, I hope I'm still as active as I am now in 18 years, good for you!
So answer one question, then I'm done. This was all I was really pointing out in the initial post that you just try to spin because you got the Izzy Mandelbaum life. It appears you and Genghis believe that $71K base with possibility of OT pay exceeding 6 figures is not wasting money, yet SF pays teachers less. You think that makes sense? A simple Yes or No answer will do. I don't need to read your garbage that you spew.
It's been proven over the last, oh, I don't know 20, 30 40 years that SF has wasted a lot of money with nominal results, so this along with all their other plans have not worked so why would I believe this one will?
Now, Bart has received $6.8M in FEMA to help with security issues, that they aren't able to take care of on their own. Ok, yeah, I'm quite confident that SF will be able to clean up the poop and deal with the problem.
Ok, now I got to go to my cubicle as you say and you can go on your 6-7 mile hike with your dog, Izzy.
Still laughing here about Izzy, myself. Hilarious. Despite your nasty-as-cat-pee attitude, that was a good one
Right. Sit in front of a tv / sit down at a keyboard ... what’s the difference. But you’re the one who is cranky all the time ... you’re the one who wanted to make this exchange personal. I’m laughing ... you’re foaming at the mouth. Meh. Live however you want.
Of course you “don’t want to read the *garbage* [i] spew”. Because my “spew” analyzes and explains the nuances and complexities angry people who seek overly simplistic solutions don’t want to consider ... because they can’t get past their rage.
The answer to your question about higher pay for poop cleaners than teachers is: of course it doesn’t make “sense” ... it just is the way the world turns ... for lots of reasons you aren’t willing to accept.
As for “caring what you believe”? Well, I certainly don’t give a rat’s ass what you believe. Sure SF, like every government throughout history everywhere, has “wasted” tons of money. That’s the nature of civilization and always has been.
And no, it’s not acceptable. But regardless of acceptability it is reality. And the job of all concerned is to tirelessly do whatever we can to ameliorate that reality and keep it from getting worse.
Your plan to hire the homeless is nice theory. If you feel passionately about it, go take the idea to your council person ... see what s/he says. My bet is they have already considered it at some level and determined it would cost more to make happen than it would save out of a $100 million dollar budget.
Personnel will have to be recruited, screened, vetted, trained, supervised, and responsibilities assumed.
Is that inefficient? Oh, probably. So question remains: what are YOU going to do about it? Fume on a forum?
You are partly right: it doesn’t address the underlying causes of the problem.
Yet two other things are important to recognize in my response to the poster as you are referring to:
1. The poster was proposing that we literally kill the homeless by sending them out to sea and sinking the boat ... and thus my comment on his useless, empty ridicule being pointless
2. However the problem should be dealt with in terms of elimination of causes ... until those problems are addressed, the stench and filth and public health hazard needs to be dealt with - until better resolutions.
The streets can be cleaned relatively easily - right now.
The underlying problems are deeply complex and will take great socio-economic change - which will not / cannot happen quickly.
Actually, dealing with the underlying problems could happen quickly, but there's no way that area has the fortitude to make it happen.
In other words: you can’t formulate a realistic, supportable position and carry it through a debate process.
(I probably burn more calories and accomplish more in a day in my 70’s than you do in a week on average. My iPad is my diversion alongside my piles of wood and tools as I build a boat, repair a roof, install a new bathroom, hike 7-10 miles a day with the dog, often adding a bike ride ... while you sit in your cubicle somewhere ...)
Paying several homeless persons $40k instead of $71k a year to clean poop would be a perfectly good idea, assuming several things, things that I could believe might be worked out (training, liabilities might be similar) if you could find some sober, straight, interested homeless. I wouldn’t be surprised if you could.
That said, how many employees at this theorhetical $31k savings would we be talking about? Five: X $31,000 ... saving $150k annually? Nice. Right?
Now, how much is the program budgeted to cost? $900,000 for that specific poop patrol, out of $2.3 million for steam cleaning pooped streets, out of $100 million for the total poop and needle clean up budget. Suddenly, the $150k doesn’t seem so amazing.
Every dollar saved is a great concept. Balance that with finding, training, supervising the new workers. Maybe the city would get lucky and really set a few formerly homeless on a new path. Expecting to replace lots of municipal workers involved in homeless camp clean up and needle clean up, etc is going to get dicey. Try paying ½ wages to inexperienced, untrained, non-vetted homeless replacing union employees and get back to us on that campaign putting an equal number of persons out of work who formerly contributed more back into the local economy. Maybe the old workers will then become homeless themselves!
Go for it. I don’t see you as having solved “the problem” of the poop or hardly, if at all, of the cost. But it’s certainly a nice gesture effort.
The short term solution is to try to clean the streets while long term solutions can be figured and implemented.
Nor have you "solved the problem". I see no solutions offered by you other than "need to be figured out".
The outcry against the spraying of sewage and other toxic waste into the bay is mounting- continue to keep pressure on the "public servants" ...they just might be waiting to declare this a wildly expensive cleanup site..hmmm? Needles in sea lions, toxic plumes etc...
Here is the EPA SF Bay site...the contact link is at the bottom of the page. https://www.epa.gov/sfbay-delta/epas...ting-watershed
Jerry and gavin are set on letting more and criminals out of prison or not ever receiving any punishment for criminal activity which means they will flock to the nice cities with the freebies and a permissive attitude towards crime and mess.
Continue contacting the EPA and your local "public servants " lets get the needy off the streets and into the facilities they need to be in ....NOW for everyone's sake!
carol - homeless research in cities all across the nation concur: the number of transient homeless moving for weather and / or benefits is very low, even though many people feel it is common sense that they would.
San Diego, L.A., and San Francisco all run between 70% - 80% homeless are from the cities where they are stuck on the streets. Another 15% - 20% are from neighboring counties and elsewhere in the state. Approximately only 10% are transient from out of state.
I also live in San Diego, between Point Loma and Midway, loaded with homeless. Sure, there’s some messy areas ... but I’m not “tiptoeing around piles of poop” everywhere.
It’s a sad situation for everyone, homeless and non-homeless both. San Diego is one of the high homeless rate cities. But you’re making it sound wall to wall ... and that sure isn’t my experience living right down in it.
mutt - I don't see where I make it sound like ALL of San Diego is like this, nor that it's "wall to wall". That's YOUR exaggeration, not mine. I was walking out front of the Harbor Club high rises (2 towers across the street from the Convention Center) and indeed, I myself had to side-step poop on the sidewalk...one does not *imagine* having to do that. And take a walk down Market St. or Island Ave. and tell me you didn't have to sidestep poop! I dare ya! And my point was......even the high-dollar condos in the most beautiful redeveloped areas are no guarantee that you don't have homelessness and it's associated unpleasantries thrown in your face daily, or on the bottom of your shoes.
mutt - I don't see where I make it sound like ALL of San Diego is like this, nor that it's "wall to wall". That's YOUR exaggeration, not mine. I was walking out front of the Harbor Club high rises (2 towers across the street from the Convention Center) and indeed, I myself had to side-step poop on the sidewalk...one does not *imagine* having to do that. And take a walk down Market St. or Island Ave. and tell me you didn't have to sidestep poop! I dare ya! And my point was......even the high-dollar condos in the most beautiful redeveloped areas are no guarantee that you don't have homelessness and it's associated unpleasantries thrown in your face daily, or on the bottom of your shoes.
Didn’t say you imagined it. Said it’s my impression that you are trying to portray San Diego in the same way many try to portray San Francisco. There are areas of blight. Serious blight from homelessness. The areas of concentrated problems in SF are less than 10% of the city, unfortunately some of that is tourist central so it is particularly ranted about. In the case of San Diego, the problems are serious but considerably less so than SF.
My response to your post is my contribution to balance the impression I think you are leaving in readers’ minds that SD homeless problem is widespread. It’s sad. But it isn’t overwhelming much of the city at all. You say you don’t come in to the city often, so I can understand your surprise as contrasted to your memory. I live in the middle of it. Quite unpleasant. But as I move around town, it’s very limited in most areas by far.
Actually, dealing with the underlying problems could happen quickly, but there's no way that area has the fortitude to make it happen.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ringwise
Nor have you "solved the problem". I see no solutions offered by you other than "need to be figured out".
Ringwise - the “underlying problems” are quite varied:
- Domestic abuse
- Family abandonment
- Disabilities of many kinds, many from birth
- Physical illness / accidents wiping out finances and opportunities
- Drug and alcohol abuse
- A constellation of severe mental illnesses
- Lack of reintegration programs for ex-cons released from prison
- Skyrocketing real estate costs
- Aging out of the workforce without pensions
Perhaps you should reassess your impression that dealing as a society with these issues “could happen quickly”?
Perhaps you might also reassess the degree to which I might personally “solve the problem”.
I disagree. It IS worse, and has been becoming so rapidly! I guess it depends on how you measure or perceive, and how in-touch you are with other parts of the city.
I live in the suburbs approx. 9 miles outside downtown SD and there's a distinct uptick in transients/homeless and activity, certainly in District 7 (Navajo, Allied Gardens, Del Cerro, San Carlos area), that has never been as widespread as it has become particularly in the last year. I live on a mesa off Waring Rd. surrounded by canyons, and a week never goes by *now* that police helicopters aren't circling the canyons, spotlights out, identifying homeless campfires, chasing down thieves who hope to disappear into the canyon. The canyon "Navajo Park" used to be a pleasant hike spot for neighbors; now not many would be caught dead hiking through there for what you might come upon. It was just two years ago a transient hiked out of the canyon up a hill to Del Cerro and raped two women in their home, murdered one. Maybe you didn't get that news all the way down in the Midway area. Our local shopping center now has homeless and their shopping carts sitting on the sidewalks of the center all the time, pushing carts up surrounding streets, riding those *free* bikes loaded down with their belongings, when we only used to see this rarely. A homeless man in a battered old camper and his cohorts (suspected of dealing drugs) tries to park in the parking lot and is repeatedly being asked to leave, but keeps coming back. Theft, car breakins are the worst any of us ever remember based on nextdoor.com The non-pavement easement alley between homes on my own street used to be a pleasant hike with dogs, green and scattered with wildflowers. Now it's littered with needles, used condoms, feces, and remnants of overnight shelters.
Sure....homelessness isn't wall-to-wall (as I never said it was), but it IS getting worse and the pockets where it does exist, or has moved to, makes those seeing it, all the more aware. In EVERY city...not just SF, and no...just the dregs streets of SD. Our beautiful lil' Beaver Cleaver community is nowhere near the same as it used to be, and that can largely be chalked up to the homeless/transient effect. If you choose not to believe it....come visit.
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And my point was......even the high-dollar condos in the most beautiful redeveloped areas are no guarantee that you don't have homelessness and it's associated unpleasantries thrown in your face daily, or on the bottom of your shoes.
