|
|
|
|
|
 |
According to the SF Chronicle, we are "down to 280 encampments…" in Golden Gate Park. Hello? Shouldn’t this be ZERO? Get out a fire tanker truck and go in and hose out each encampment. I don’t care if they think of themselves as "harmless eccentrics," there is nothing harmless about living in a camper, RV, car, tent or tarp unless you are in a campground and San Francisco’s parks are NOT campgrounds.
Maybe it’s time to forget the homeless "shelters" and go outside the city and build a "homeless campground." Get GGNRA to donate some land, add porta potties, install some outdoor showers, add dumpsters for trash and - heck - build some outdoor BBQs. Throw in some picnic tables and then round up all of our urban park dwellers and redeposit them in their very own out-of-our-city-and-out-of-our-face "homeless campground."
In other words, combine elements of shelters with elements of encampments and provide a camping area that has some services but no walls, no roofs and no ‘rules’. All of the service groups can still make visits and offer services, but the environment would be less restrictive than a formal shelter. No curfew, no assigned sleeping spot, the ability to keep your possessions with you, no regimented mealtimes. In other words just what they have now in GG Park but with better sanitation and other facilities.
Of course the key is to get the homeless out of the city and away from our parks and children, however that might have legal and political complications. One alternative would be to find a large tract of land that is in SF but remote to the majority of the city. Maybe around Candlestick point? Brisbane near Sunset Scavenger? I should think there are still open tracts of land in the south of the city that would make fine "homeless campgrounds."
Gretchen Cotter
- : 10.0
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
December 5th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Weird idea but SF does need to address its homelessness & petty crime problem. Moving the homeless out of SF would be a good solution.