By Rosanne Haggerty
President, Common Ground Community

Maryann and Gerry were fixtures at the Times Square subway entrance, well known to local office workers, to the police and the courts.  With a dog as one prop, and Gerry’s drums as another, they had supported themselves and their heroin habits by panhandling, sometimes aggressively, to tourists and the regular business crowd.  Their belongings a makeshift tent, sleeping bags and clothes - were tucked into two carts, which sidewalk food vendors and the security staff at the office building above the station would watch for as they shifted to more lucrative posts over the course of the day or went to buy heroin or tend to their growing array of health problems.   By night, they bedded down at the subway entrance beneath the office plaza. Read more »

By Gavin Newsom and Kamala D. Harris
San Francisco Chronicle
Originally Published May 13, 2007

On any given day, take a walk in the Tenderloin, Civic Center or South of Market, and you will see the same problems that have plagued our neighborhoods for decades: drugs, theft, prostitution, auto break-ins and aggressive panhandling. Has the justice system forgotten about these neighborhoods? No. But the fact is that low-level offenders cycle through the system, at a cost to the city of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The result? Offenders don't get the life-saving help they need, victims lose faith in the justice system, and neighbors have to live in a dangerous and frightening environment.  The time has come to break away from the status quo. We owe it to the community, to the victims -- and to the offenders. Many people who are living on the streets are suffering from addiction and mental illness and receiving no treatment. Turning a blind eye and doing nothing is not compassionate -- not for those individuals, and not for our neighborhoods. That's why the two of us are partnering to launch the Community Justice Center, a collaborative, problem-solving service center with a court on site. Read more »