Solution to homelessness needs more than a hammer

We were headed to a restaurant on the edge of the Tenderloin district that, though "cleaned up" somewhat in recent years, remains one of San Francisco’s rougher neighborhoods.

The city’s homeless population is well represented there, close as it is to hotels, public spaces and shops that attract tourists.

After declining a man’s

offer to sell us a scruffy pair of Nikes, which he displayed across his palms as if the shoes were diamonds, we edged toward the street to cross to the restaurant. We changed directions quickly, however, when a bedraggled woman dropped her plastic-bagged possessions on the sidewalk, pulled down her pants and squatted between two cars. What happened next, I won’t say, but the

incident did not whet the appetite.

I don’t often go to our main tourist district, having little reason to, other than to see what’s up and catch some glimpses of the ocean.

But I can imagine why Waikiki’s retail store managers, hoteliers and restaurant owners would be displeased with the people who set their living quarters near their glistening shop windows and tropical garden replicas.

Not only do homeless people spoil the paradise idyll, their presence is unsettling. Because along with distaste or revulsion, tourists and business people are made keenly conscious of the misery before their eyes.

I don’t hold with those who say that some homeless people choose to live on the streets. More likely their choices are limited, bound by mental or physical inability to earn an adequate living and to maintain a household, but also by an overwhelming loss of hope and the will to change.

Some people manage to get back on their feet with the help of nonprofit groups that provide job training and employment placement, shelter, substance-abuse aid, legal counsel and other services. Governments also try to help, but the range of needed assistance builds a wall difficult for agencies to hurdle, so even though governors and mayors set up special organizations to focus on homelessness, success has been elusive for lack of a large-scale, universal plan. And the best of intentions often fall short of resolve and funding.

The result has been to herd homeless people from one space to the next, confiscating their possessions or, as one state legislator did, destroying the grocery carts they use to hold their belongings, with the disgraceful, outright blessing of neighborhood board leaders and other elected officials, and detached indifference of law enforcement.

The cart-smasher quit his swaggering antics after a few days, saying he has made his point about homeless people and asking, "Are we going to move forward and try to solve" the problem?

Well, if anyone has a bully pulpit to answer the question, it is the lawmaker himself. Having completed his claimed purpose of raising awareness of the homeless — as if that awareness hadn’t already been raised before his menacing tactics — and having the power of a legislator, I’m counting on Rep. Tom Brower to formulate and propose a wide-ranging program to counter homelessness and, most importantly, to steer it to fruition.

I’m counting on him to forge a plan as strong as the sledgehammer he used to damage the compassion and sympathy that tourists, residents and business owners still possess on this day of thanksgiving.

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Cynthia Oi can be reached at coi@staradvertiser.com.