I spent 5 years in In Boston, where we had a homeless problem for about 4 months out of the year. The rest of the time it was either too cold or too hot to be homeless. I moved to the Haight in 1996 and life was good. Sure there were homeless folks all year round, but whatever. I rarely gave out change, but always gave away my take-home containers after eating at one of the bajillion restaurants in the neighborhood.
In 1998 something happened. Some newspaper reported that a babies were frolicking in the needle strewn mess of Golden Gate Park. There was outrage, lots of circular debate, and the city decided to Fix It Once and For All. They rousted all the homeless people out of the park near the panhandle, fenced it off, and started a major cleanup that last several months.

The minute this cleanup began, the Haight was flooded with shit, literally and figuratively. Unceasing harassment for “spare change for kind bud” was irritating but bearable. What was not, however, was having our cars broken into weekly instead of monthly, people vomiting in our door way, and spraying the garage doors with diarrhea caused by malnutrition, alcoholism, disease, and eating unwholesome or plain rotten food scraped from trash barrels. It was sad at first, then it made me angry.

I was angry at the homeless first. Dirty, lazy fuckers. Then I was mad at the mayor and city council. Disconnected assholes ruined my neighborhood. Then I was mad at Ronald Reagan and the Republi-tards for doing away with any in-patient mental programs that actually helped the very ill homeless people stay somewhere relatively clean and safe. Inhumane, coke snorting, whoring, war mongers destroyed my country.

Then I moved to Potrero Hill. We don’t have much of a homeless problem up here. It’s too far away from the remaining out-patient treatment and service options. They come in once a week to pick through the recycling, dragging multiple 50 gallon bags of our tin throwaways someplace where they’ll get a few dollars to stay alive for another few days.

Nine years later, and history is repeating itself. And I am angry at myself, because I still get angry at the same set of things and still don’t know what to do to make it better. I read Atlas Shrugged and for 1400 pages or so, Ayn passionately enables me to believe that I should do nothing because I am the one that’s bearing the world and should be proud of my “wealth” (quite a relative term here). Then I put the book down and realize she was a loopy person who went a bit overboard on the whole bootstrap concept.

I volunteer occasionally, donate clothing and food, and I give money where my conscience tells me. I recognize that there are hopeless and sad people who have no ability to take care of themselves because they were born with some mental illness or physical disability and our laws and systems penalize them. There are people who are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves but choose not to, instead abusing the system and being rewarded for their laziness. There are single mothers and fathers who are forced to stay on the system and abuse it passively, because if they try to improve their situation and become independent, their assistance is reduced exponentially, giving them no incentive to help themselves. There are families who are working their asses off but get stuck because the only places they can afford to scratch out a human existence are reachable only by outrageously expensive public transit.

I know that the tiny things I do make tiny improvements, but it’s really hard not to try to tune it all out.

For 19-year-old Brandon Krigbaum, who goes by the name Repo Violence, the wake-up call came at 4:30 a.m.

Police officers and homeless outreach workers rousted him and his friends from their sleeping bags Wednesday morning in an encampment on Chicken Hill, near Golden Gate Park’s popular tennis courts.

Similar awakenings happened throughout the park, as well as Buena Vista Park, Corona Heights and other outdoor expanses as Mayor Gavin Newsom’s pledge to clear the city’s parks of homeless encampments once and for all continued to take shape.

Teams of police officers and city outreach workers took Krigbaum and 58 other bleary-eyed homeless people in vans to a huge, off-white canvas tent set up for one morning in Sharon Meadows. An additional 25 homeless people came to the tent on their own - perhaps drawn by the coffee, bagels, orange wedges and blueberries provided by the city.

The tent was erected eight days after The Chronicle reported that the park was riddled with homeless encampments and hypodermic needles - despite Newsom’s well-publicized efforts to clear the parks of encampments last fall. (Read More)