Thanks for your comment. You are correct that providing “loving and norturing” foster families is extremely important in assuring the success of foster kids after emancipation.

Matt Tuchow

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• Overall Rating: 1

Thank you for your articulate and informative article.

However, intended with the greatest respect, you fail to address the fact that thousands of homeless individuals are literally sent here by other cities on one-way tickets. San Franciscans should not have to pay the huge social and financial costs of this.

To ignore this population would be heartless, so I suggest that we send a bill to the respective cities so that they, not our City’s taxpayers, shoulder the respective social and financial costs of the problems these cities, not San Franciscans, have created.

This will accomplish various things:

1) Discouraging these cities’ social workers from shipping their problems to us, a City which they deem as so compassionate as to complacently assume this responsibility. At the very least, it might make them think twice.

2) The revenues would pay for social services for these thousands of people.

3) These cities would be held accountable for this problem, both financially and socially. Although somewhat idealistic, it might spark social reforms to address the causes of this problem in their own areas.

Again, I found your article incredibly educated and insightful, as I had never considered the homeless population arising out of foster care. Your suggestions as to how to address this are sound and deserve merit.

Nevertheless, I wonder, if there is not a manner in which to address the ultimate cause and not the symptoms of it - i.e., the increasing deterioration of the family unit.

Lest you quickly pigeon-hole me, I am not a bible-thumping, extremist who doesn’t recognize the virtues of untraditional family structures. Quite the contrary. Amonst the most loving parents I know, with happy, healthy and well-adjusted children are gay couples; unmarried, but committed couples; couples who are divorced but maintain a semblance of amicability for the sake of the children; aunts, uncle, guardians that are not biological parents, etc.

Might I suggest, that ultimately, the root of the problem which you eloquently address is a lack of loving and caring families? MAy I further suggest that the later is more importantly defined by the unified effort and earnestness with which parents raise a child than by traditional definition of the nuclear family?

May I ultimately speculate that even the most extreme conservatives should at least examine the virtues of children raised in an “untraditional” but loving home ?

I humbly come to the conclusion that the root of the problem may be deeper than trying to re-adjust and help young adults who come from broken homes. To truly address the problem, one might want to examine the lack of accountability and respect our society holds for bringing innocent lives into this world and nourishing their development.

As we increasingly become a secular society, people rely on the government to raise their children and educate them in scholastics and life and(or not). The importance of love and nurturing has been replaced by convenience, a substution which is not as beneficial to the child.

Moreover, it seems that there are so many financial incentives in place for bearing children and/or raising them in a foster situation. Are foster parents really compelled by a desire to help a child, or by the check they receive for doing so? How many individuals simply bear children for possible financial incentives?

Finally, how many respected institutions, such as CAtholic Charities, are unwilling to place a needing child in a loving “non-traditional” home?

So my point is? Remove financial incentives to raise children as income opportunities, and expand the base of potential loving parents. This may significantly change the statistics.

Thank you again for your poignant article.

Humbly,

joanne

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