NEW YORK, NY Oct. 9 (DPI) – The New York Times got around to reporting this week on San Francisco’s out-of-control homeless problem, which has fostered lawless and shockingly unsanitary conditions throughout one of America’s most beautiful cities.

And while the NYT trotted out its usual reasons for the chaos – the lack of attention paid to the homeless population (estimated at about 4,400), and the absence of services for the mentally ill — nearly all readers commenting on the report said something else: The City government simply isn’t doing its job.

The Times focused on the so-called Tenderloin District as the epicenter of San Francisco’s street problems, in which miscreants routinely rob and steal and deal drugs, while urinating and defecating on sidewalks, in a neighborhood where many buildings have been converted to housing for the homeless.

In fact, readers say, the problem of lawlessness and shit-smeared sidewalks is everywhere in the city. “Even outside the Tenderloin, the problem is bad enough that it affects safety and quality of life,” wrote one. “What the article failed to mention is how aggressive homeless people are to non-homeless people.

By and large readers – some of whom identified as current or former SF residents – said the problem was not lack of resources but a lack of will on the part of police and government officials to address the city-wide problem in a firm way.

The top five most-recommended reader comments:

What boggles the mind as a 30 year San Francisco resident is the false narrative of entitled well-off people who do not live amongst this now 15 year old and ever growing disaster – that it’s a homeless problem. That is patently false. San Francisco has built so much affordable housing that many blocks in the Tenderloin and South Of Market are exclusively that. Many of those residents will also tell you they won the housing lottery while living across the bay.
What we have in San Francisco is an abject failure of basic law enforcement com the street cops (we have none) to the DA, to the courts. There is zero law enforcement and zero consequences for the behavior described here. Drug dealing and consumption, burglary, mugging, bike thefts and the like are epidemic and completely ignored by those responsible for upholding the law. And the tents are just cover for all this.

I moved from Boston to San Francisco a year ago, and never have a missed an old city and disliked a new city more. I hardly visit the city any more. The filth and the homelessness combined with the billionaires and the rampant inequality is not just reminiscent of third world countries but also seems utterly surreal – is this what one of the wealthiest and most liberal cities in the world has to offer?

I moved away from the Bay Area because of this issue. The Tenderloin is the neighborhood where the problem is the worst. But even outside the Tenderloin, the problem is bad enough that it affects safety and quality of life. What the article failed to mention is how aggressive homeless people are to non-homeless people. Someone I know was punched in the face by a homeless person. My neighbor was pushed in the street. My friend had a wadded up ball of greasy, ketchup-y fast food wrapping thrown in her face. I had a homeless person start screaming and raising his fists as if to attack me — when a man behind me on the street yelled, “LEAVE HER ALONE!!” and came running to help. (Two other homeless people tried to do things to me too — three incidents in only two years.) You have to think about your safety constantly in the Bay Area. I finally realized I could move to a city where I didn’t have to constantly fear for my safety, so I moved back to NYC, where I had previously lived before for over a decade and never thought about my safety once the whole time I was there, and where I never had any instance of a homeless person trying to do anything to me.

There was a time in both Canada and the USA when people who were mentally incompetent, and without family to care for them, were certified as such and were housed in what were known as asylums, originally a decent word meaning a shelter for aid, latterly a despised term.
Then the “do-gooders” supported by the wish to cut back on public expenditure, closed the asylums and turned these unfortunate people out on the streets.
Under whatever name you wish to choose, a program must be initiated to care for those who cannot decently care for themselves; yes, there will be a loss of freedom, but there is a mistaken concept of the value of freedom when it means no more than the right to die in public.

As a native and resident of San Francisco, I am appalled by the proliferation of tents pitched on our neighborhood sidewalks and the filth generated because of it. I want my property taxes to guarantee people in need shelter and services, not living in tents.
I’ve been here 60 years and I am, saddened to say, ready to leave.