So I keep hearing about the homelessness and drugs in San Fran...

I figured I'd check it out for myself first hand, so I went to Google Street View.

Thuh Hell.

Do a search for the Tenderloin neighborhood, drop yourself on the corner of Larkin street and Willow street right in front of Lee's Sandwiches, walk up Willow Street and look around.

Holy Shit.

Buttsecks?
Cowboy buttsecks?
Sodo-mayyy?

Syringes.
Syringes.
Homeless people.
A guy in an orange shirt filling up a syringe.
Homeless people.
At least three people on the nod.
Syringes.

1. End the drug war.
2. Make addiction a medical not a criminal justice problem.
3. Punch everyone who looks like Dinner in the face.

I live in the sticks in TN, I can show you homeless encampments and syringes alongside the road fairly easily. Mind you, they're not in places that'd show up in Google Street View, but they're there. At least, until the next hard rain comes. Then they're all dead.

Where about?

Gallatin. We've had this conversation. I offered to help you when you were in the area, but I guess you forgot.

Oh yeah, the War on Drugs made people jab needles into their arms.

Unless you are referring to tattooing culture that would be the primary reason people do it in public. If you provided people with places to do it safely they would probably be doing it there.

I guess I did. Sorry about that. I'll be in Eagleville next week.

To be honest I'm not seeing anything there which couldn't be found in the back streets of pretty much any major city anywhere in the world.

Everywhere has its' slums and its' homeless quarters.

okay here's the deal spot - much of this behavior is not on "the back streets" it's on "the front streets" right there in front of god & everybody for the most part. Average working/money spending people are now dodging needles & human shit getting to their workplace where they didn't have to a few years ago. The problem is spreading exponentially and some people may see this as good because it shines a light on social ills. How noble of them! But this will bite a city in the ass if they want to stay solvent and relevant. Kinda how this works on this side of the pond.

Looks like a back street to me. I'm only going off the picture, not making a broad comment on how society works.

yes the current hot topic is a few cities out west that are popular magnets for homeless/helplessly addicted and often mentally ill folks and these areas are growing out of control. I preach on this a lot but it's true - it's never a problem until white people are inconvenienced. And indeed white people are now getting inconvenienced so it's an issue.

That said there are no simple answers, and no matter what the solution it will piss somebody off but that's the nature of the beast. But until solutions are found the problem grows and grows. It's like fixing a train while it rolls down the tracks.

But damn if I paid half my wages just for rent I sure as hell wouldn't want to dodge homeless shit encrusted junkies EVER let alone on a regular basis.

Can't claim to have any answers, only thoughts on the subject, but it seems to me good quality universal healthcare would go a long way towards improving mental health and addiction problems whereas some equivalent to council housing would be a massive boost in terms of the public hygiene issues whilst opening the door to landlords improving some of the physical neighbourhood.

yep - we all agree. But in the meantime would you want to navigate a minefield of needles, shit, passed out junkies, etc? I for one would not.

What makes you think that people with mental health and addiction issues would seek help even if they had good quality universal healthcare?

Well, the growing typhus, hepatitis, and leprosy epidemics will sort things out, since the local government's response to their homeless is to hand out needles and punish people for complaining. So tolerant.

Yep, every time I go there (once or twice a year) it gets worse and worse. They have decriminalized open drug use so that every where you look their are drug zombies shooting up and then throwing the needle on the sidewalk and streets. You will see piles and piles and piles of those contaminated needles; some stacked as high as my shin. All paid for by SF taxpayers and everyone a biohazard but liberals don’t care.

The mentally ill and drugged pit of their minds are every where. Wandering aimlessly in traffic, shitting and pissing any where and every where, threatening to stab people with used needles unless you give them cash, deliberately blocking store entry ways and then telling shop owners they have to give them money or they will ruin their business. The crazies have take over and the police have officially been ordered not to do anything in the name of “compassion”. It is disgusting.

You are the problem. SF ended the drug war and this is the result.

Can you do it for mile after mile after mile? If you want to see even worse, for the same reasons, look at video of downtown L.A.. It is not just skid row any more. It is 52 square blocks of every square inch of sidewalk space taken up with tents. No, most of them aren’t even from that city. They travel from all over the country now because they heard they will be free to be street junkies, that the cops won’t do anything, it is an open air drug market, prostitution and crime is every where, gangs are every where, human shit and piss are every where, emergency services are constantly there picking up the over dose victims. Something needs to change.

The fact that they do when there is good quality universal healthcare.

Actual evidence of this from an unbiased source?

We are talking 6th street downtown L.A. or any other street in any direction for 2-3 miles. Continuously. It is because of decriminalization and stand down orders to police while liberal prosecutors refuse to prosecute so quality of life completely collapses for regular people. It is nothing but enabling out of the Democrats. San Diego is literally the only major city on the west coast which saw a decline last year (and the year before), we saw a -6% in 2017 and - 10% in 2018 to the homeless population, every other major city on the west coast saw 20%-50% increases year after year.

San Diego has a Republican mayor, the only major west coast city to have one, all the other cities have Democratic mayors. We have an excellent safety net for people who want it but anyone who refuses help gets enforcement against them. The carrot and stick works because a lot of them just want to be enabled to continue being street junkies while the crazies never want to take their medication. In the Dem controlled cities all enforcement has been removed and it has become a massive humanitarian and public health disaster with even the U.N. Condemning it. That is right, we had the U.N. tour these cities and declare it even worse than refugee camps in Africa.

We have a housing crisis with hundreds of thousands on the streets (52,000 in L.A. county alone) yet Dems are demanding we take millions of more illegal aliens and fake refugees. We have actual US citizens dying on the streets in record numbers but Dems want to add millions more takers? Fix this problem first because their policies have caused this problem.

All of these poor people have free healthcare in California. Every single last one of them even the illegal aliens.

The U.N. disagrees with you.

California liberals are making it worse every day. It is not just the NIMBYs any more but now the state passed a horrible rent control law which is depressing investment in new properties and investment to rehab old properties. That will only make the housing crisis worse.

Combine that with the criminalizations and enabling and that is why the problem is exploding. Only one city has seen their numbers consistently going down and we are doing something very different from what leftforge is advocating and what Dems have done does nothing but make the situation worse and worse.