Dear Editor.
Thank you, Randy Shaw, for your opinion piece.
As a San Franciscan I have spent most of my adult life campaigning and volunteering for community improvements with near zero success. Conditions in some neighborhoods are the worst I have ever known and I am too old to carry on. Progressivism should not condone people to harm themselves and a majority of others. If the city had no resources then we the people need to volunteer to help the druggies and homeless. But if city hall is willing to spend $600 million of our budget each year then officials are the ones responsible for failing to help the druggies and homeless so that the majority of bystanders can reclaim their public spaces and civic lives.
I know entire families who live on a lot less than $60,000 per year. They can’t afford to live in San Francisco so they commute over 3 hours a day to work here. Why should druggies and homeless on whom the city spends on average $60,000+ per person have the privilege of living in San Francisco, but not those people who work here? If the city pays each of them $60,000 per year could they be contracted to live elsewhere? I propose that the city pay $600 million per year directly to people who are suffering on the streets instead of through who knows what programs that haven’t been working so that the majority of folks in the Tenderloin, Civic Center, Mid Market, SOMA and Mission could stroll on their sidewalks freely and without worry as it used to be not so long ago
Archie Goodwin
