Editorials

Just before the turn of the last century, the United States entered into a war with Spain which was to cost the lives of more than 4,000 Americans and many more Cubans. Spaniards and residents of the Philippines, and which would lead to decades of colonial domination by the United States. It is generally conceded that a major factor which precipitated the entry of this country into the Spanish-American war was the role of what was called “the yellow press,” the sensationalist newspapers which with lurid headlines and passionate front page editorializing whipped up a popular frenzy against Spain. The Hearst newspaper empire played a major role in this effort, which was a guaranteed circulation builder in those days. 

In the last couple of weeks San Francisco newspaper readers have been subjected to a minor-league version of the same kind of campaign. The San Francisco Chronicle, in its older and better incarnation assigned Kevin Fagan in 2003 to do a moving series on the plight of the homeless in that city which won a number of prizes. But that was then, and now the Hearst Corporation is firmly in the saddle at the Chronicle, and it seems to be up to its old tricks. Now the target is even easier than Spain: It’s the poor and sometimes crazed people who are still to be found on the streets of San Francisco, as they were in 2003 and as they have been for 30 years or more. 

Instead of assigning a real reporter like Fagan to the story, this time they’ve chosen a columnist, a former sports columnist even, C.W. “Chuck” Nevius. Chuck’s series of front-page diatribes against homeless people, which started last spring, aren’t burdened by difficult facts, or even by many interviews with knowledgeable people who don’t toe the official Hearst line. 

The Chron’s headline writer delivered the takeaway message on Tuesday:  

“ ‘Enough is enough,’ S.F. says of homeless. 

Residents of a famously liberal city appear to be changing views.” 

Chuck followed up in the body with lines like this: “Indications are that residents have had it with aggressive panhandlers, street squatters and drug users.” And what supporting data does he have for these “indications”? Precious little: a couple of number-free quotes from market research firms bolstered by illiterate burps from Blogsville: “In an informal poll by SFGate.com, 90 percent of respondents said Mayor Gavin Newsom’s crackdown South of Market was a great idea.”  

Yes, about 800 cowards have been eager to sign phony names on an SFGate (Chron online) blog to anonymous attacks on the poor and the crazy who can still be found hanging out on the streets of San Francisco. This is not news. The New Testament said that we will always have the poor with us, and we’ll always have those willing to cast the first stone at the poor too. There’s no way of knowing whether these fulminators even live in San Francisco, though Chuck himself confesses that he lives in the deepest boob-burbs. 

In contrast, the Chronicle’s letters page, where writers usually sign their own names and are perhaps required to, has had much more nuanced, balanced and compassionate letters about how to deal with the problems of street people. Anonymous e-mail seems to bring out the worst in people, or perhaps to bring out the worst people. That’s why the Planet only publishes letters from people courageous enough to sign their real names. 

The whole series could be used as a textbook in J-school for how not to report the news. Except, of course, on the sports pages where Nevius used to work, where “It is Us vs. Them” is considered a good lead for a so-called news report. The few decent real reporters who still survive at the San Francisco Chronicle after the recent purges must be deeply ashamed that prime front-page space has been turned over to this stuff. 

Nevius was a guest on Wednesday for part of Michael Krasny’s Forum program on KQED. The point was made, by him and others, that a lot of fancy new housing has been built South of Market, and those who’ve paid big bucks to live in it are tired of stepping over the homeless. Well, sure, but who was there first? Those pricey condos south of Market have replaced shabby but cheap single-room-occupancy residential hotels.  

As a decent number of Chronicle letter writers are starting to point out, disturbing street behavior started at a particular point in history for easily understood reasons, and nothing has been able to stop it since.  

Here’s Melissa Batchelder of Richmond: “Thirty years ago I worked as a volunteer at Napa State Hospital. The people I step over on the streets of SF each morning are the next generation of the same people, the difference being that ‘way back then’ there were places for the mentally ill to be housed. This isn’t a conservative, progressive, leftist or centrist issue - it’s a health issue, both in terms of public safety and for those who are ill.” 

Veterans damaged by the Vietnam war have added to the number on the streets, and the soaring housing prices in the Bay Area have contributed to the problem. And despite the claims of politicians like San Francisco’s Gavin Newsom and Berkeley’s Tom Bates, the social resources to take care of the indigent, needy, and, yes, badly behaved population just haven’t been provided at any level of government. Trent Rohrer, SF’s executive director of its Human Services Agency, admitted as much on KQED’s Forum. Yet Nevius’s tag ending on Thursday quoted Rohrer saying, “Right now we have a lot of carrot and not much stick”, and Chuck himself piled on with “That needs to change.”  

The teaser on the web version of the piece summarized the moral of the tale for slow readers: “How about going after chronic inappropriate behavior by forbidding folks to stake out SF sidewalks and sleep there for the day?” Perhaps Nevius didn’t see the piece in yesterday’s L.A.Times which pointed out that the Ninth Circuit has ruled against anti-sleeping ordinances in cities like San Francisco and Berkeley which offer inadequate alternatives to those who are weary but have no bed to sleep in. In response to this ruling, homeless advocates and police in L.A. have just agreed on a set of rules allowing the needy to sleep on certain sidewalks at certain times, though merchants in the designated areas are understandably apprehensive.  

According to the Times story, “the LAPD last year increased the number of officers deployed to skid row. Police Chief William J. Bratton said that effort had greatly reduced crime there but also had pushed homeless to other parts of the city.” 

We’ve been trying something similar in Berkeley, and it hasn’t worked here either. Because of complaints from a few merchants, many Telegraph regulars have been chased off the Avenue, but they’ve reappeared in the Elmwood, as those of us who take walks in both districts know. Moving street people around is not a real solution, it’s a tin fiddle.  

More “stick”—attempting to turn homeless or crazy people into criminals—doesn’t work either. Defecating on the sidewalk is not a political statement or a lifestyle choice, it’s an obvious sign of either insanity or desperation. Decent housing or at least available restrooms and adequate, appropriate mental health care aren’t “carrots.” They’re basic human rights, and until they’re available to everyone on the street who needs them it’s obscene for Hearst’s Chronicle to pander to the worst kind of readers with titillating talk about punishment.