The Daily Signal - What It's Like on the Streets of San Francisco

Episode Date: January 14, 2020

San Francisco has been called the Paris of the West, but lately, it’s become a nightmare. Rows of tents now line the sidewalks, and the air smells foul. Homelessness is out of control. We discuss Kate's recent feature on what's going on in America's most liberal city. We also cover the following stories: President Trump isn't happy with media coverage of the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassim Suleimani. The Supreme Court won't overturn a state court ruling on whether a law banning female toplessness is illegal. Soccer star Megan Rapinoe isn't happy the Olympics are going apolitical The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, Pippa, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, January 14th. I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm Daniel Davis. San Francisco has been called the Paris of the West, but lately it's become a nightmare. Rose of tents now lined the sidewalks and the air smells foul. Homelessness is out of control. Kate recently traveled to San Fran and came back with an essay and lots of pictures, which you can find all exclusively at the Daily Signal. Today we'll hear about what she saw. And if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on iTunes, and please encourage others to subscribe. Now, on to our top news. President Donald Trump again defended his decision to take out Iranian general Qasam Soleimani.

In a tweet Monday, the president wrote, The fake news media and their Democrat partners are working hard to determine whether or not the future attack by terrorist Soleimani was imminent or not, and was my team? an agreement. The answer to both is a strong yes, but it doesn't really matter because of his horrible past. NBC News reported over the weekend, citing unnamed current in past administration officials that Trump had authorized killing Soleimani seven months ago if Iranians killed any Americans. Meanwhile, Iran has been roiled with days of protests following the revelation that Iran is responsible for the crash of a Ukrainian plane. 176 people died in the crash.

The Supreme Court has refused to overturn a lower court ruling in the case of Michelle Carter, a Massachusetts woman who pressured her friend to commit suicide. Carter was convicted in 2017 of involuntary manslaughter after her friend, Conrad Roy, killed himself at her urging. She was sentenced to 30 months in prison and five years probation. Her friend, Roy, was chronically depressed and had attempted suicide multiple times. Carter's lawyers defended her, arguing that her words, mostly sent via text message, could not be considered criminal.

State courts disagreed and ruled that her words were not protected speech. The Massachusetts legislature is now considering a bill named in honor of Conrad Roy that would make it criminal to intentionally encourage or coerce someone to commit suicide. In a win for common sense, the Supreme Court also decided on Monday not to hear a case from three women arguing that it should be illegal to allow male toplessness but not female toplessness. The three women had been fined $100 apiece in the New Hampshire town of Laconia for being topless. The Supreme Court's decision to not hear the case means that New Hampshire's Supreme Court ruling, which said this law was not illegal, remains in place. U.S. women's soccer star Megan Rapino is protesting the International Olympic Committee for banning protests on the field. The committee had announced that athletes competing in the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo would be prohibited from making any political stand and could face stiff penalties for doing so.

The committee said, our political neutrality is undermined whenever organizations or individuals attempt to use the Olympic Games as a stage for their own agendas, as legitimate as they may be. Rapino shot back on Instagram, saying, so much for being done about the protests, so little being done about what we are protesting about. We will not be silenced. After a meeting Monday between Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Charles, Prince William, and Prince Harry, it's a go for Harry and his wife, Megan Markle, to step down as royals. The Queen issued a statement saying, my family and I are entirely supportive of Harry and Megan's desire to create a new life as a young family. Although we would have preferred them to remain full-time working members of the royal family, we respect and understand their wish to live a more independent life as a family while remaining a valued part of my family. And Harry and Megan have made clear that they do not want to be reliant on public funds in their new lives.

It has therefore been agreed that there will be a period of transition in which the Sussexes will spend time in Canada and the UK. No word on whether the couple will remain Duke and Duchess of Sussex or whether they will keep their British home, which was renovated at British taxpayer expense. Well, it's Oscar season and the film Joker has pulled out in front of the pack with 11 nominations. Joker tells the dark origin story of The Joker, played by Joaquin Phoenix. The film is competing against Ford versus Ferrari, the Irishman, Jojo Rabbit, Little Women, Marriage Story, 1917, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Parasite.

The Oscars will be held on February 9th. Up next, we'll hear from Kate about her recent trip to San Francisco. It's because of support from listeners like you that we can continue to produce podcasts like Heritage Explains and Scotus 101. And you can help us keep it going by visiting www.heritage.org slash podcast today to make your tax deductible gift. So, Kate, you're from the Bay Area, close to San Francisco, and San Francisco has been in the news more lately because of its massive homelessness problem. You recently went home for Christmas, and while you were there, you saw the city for yourself. Is it as bad as the news makes it sound? Well, yeah, so I didn't know what to expect.

So I grew up, as you said, in San Francisco Bay Area. And when I was growing up, San Francisco was this cool, glamorous city that I used to love to visit. I remember we had a field trip where we got to go to the symphony and I'd go shopping with my mom. And there were homeless people. But, you know, lately we've been seeing, especially in conservative media, like all these reports of poop maps and like the city just being the cesspool of filth. And I was incredulous, frankly. I don't think before this trip that I had been in San Francisco in the city proper for probably three, four years or something. I just didn't really make it up there.

And so, yeah, I went to see for my. And what I found was, well, there's definitely some parts of the city that are in disarray, and I'm sure we're going to talk about that. Not all of San Francisco is this filthy place. A lot of the tourist areas were pretty much the same as I remembered growing up. I mean, they were relatively clean. I mean, you are in a big city. I think anyone who's been to a big city knows that, you know, it's not the world's cleanest or safest place, but it didn't feel dangerous and it didn't feel disgusting. You mentioned poop maps.

Tell me about that. Was this way? Yeah. So there's been several attempts to document exactly, this is crass, but unfortunately, this is the reality, how much in terms of human feces there are on the streets of San Francisco. And that's because there's such an immense homeless problem. And so the organization Open the Books has made one such map. There have been some others made. I can't remember who did it. And they show that. And what happens is in San Francisco, if you see a neighborhood disturbance that isn't an emergency. You call, I think it's 311, and those calls are recorded. And so there is public data available on how often people are reporting human feces being in sidewalks or, you know, whatever. And there's been a lot of calls. This is not something, I mean, I think, you know, at D.C., for instance, you know, has a homeless problem. I've never seen this. I've never heard of anyone reporting this. This is not a level that we have to deal with. But San Francisco really does. So I understand first that you went to the tenderloin neighborhood.

Describe what you saw there on the sidewalks. Just what are the sights there? Yeah. So I had always, you know, the tenderloin has always been a rougher part of town. And I had always known growing up, you know, especially when I was a teenager and going there. Like that was not really the area you wanted to stray into. But unlike a lot of major cities in the United States, in this case, the rough part of town directly borders the tourist part of town. The big sort of shopping destination

area with like an eight-story Macy's and Union Square and like a huge mall. All of that is right on the border with the tenderloin. And for complex reasons, some just doing with different policies affecting different neighborhoods, the tenderloin has effectively become ground zero for homelessness. So as soon as I got into that neighborhood, there were tents on sidewalks. And I saw one at first and I was like, oh, wow, like there's actually – because if you think about it, a tent on a sidewalk, that's not just someone sitting there. That's someone who's constructed a tent, which I can't do anywhere, but side note. And like there's a real permanency to that. And so I saw the one, and this being San Francisco, by the way, it was right under a sticker for the transgender flag.

And I was like, this is perfect. But anyway, so then I start going further into the tender. line and there are tents everywhere. Like there would be rows where there would be, you know, probably four to eight tents all lined up next to each other on sidewalks. Now, there was sort of like an, I don't know, a gentleman's agreement for lack of a better term. Like it seemed that there was only one sidewalk on each street that had the tents.

So if people wanted to not walk through tents, they could pick the other side of the street. But still, it was very present. And the thing that was especially surprising to me was from a law and order perspective is I saw a police station right there, like within a block or two of a bunch of these tent settlements. And so it was very obvious that there is no asking people to move. And, I mean, the loitering laws, I would assume are still on the books, like technically, technically it's illegal to be doing what they're doing, right? Yeah, I would think so. I should have, good point that I should have checked that. But, you know, the new San Francisco DA actually said that he doesn't intend to enforce laws like that.

And I do think, by the way, this is more than an issue of prosecution. You know, people who are homeless, it's a complex issue. There's often mental illness. There's often addiction. There might be other things feeding into it. I don't think it's as simple as, like, enforce these laws. and forget these people exist. But at the same time, like, you certainly think of residents and businesses, and you wonder about it.

And, you know, when I was writing this story, I talked to a friend of mine who had been to San Francisco a few weeks ago, and she's from the East Coast, is not super familiar with the city. And we were discussing how the tenderloin bordered Union Square, and she was mentioning that it was shocking to her how easy it was when she went a couple of blocks to suddenly have, a person who's, you know, a scary looking vagrant who didn't necessarily seem to be in his right mind was her impression, like suddenly there in a situation that she was uncomfortable with. So I think that there, yes, I don't think the answer for homelessness is just like clear the sidewalks. We're done. But I also think there's real consequences that maybe not everyone's thinking about with the status quo. Were you able to talk to any of the homeless people and get their thoughts on all of this? Yes. Toward the end of the day, I did talk to. one guy, Anthony Rodriguez, and he drew my attention for, well, really, you know, I went all over San Francisco and I, like, had my Fitbit on my clock that I did like 22,000 steps and I took a bunch

of, like, Uber and Lyft. So, like, I was really trying to get a comprehensive view of the city and not just one or two neighborhoods. Anyway, he was sitting, I think, on a stool or a boxer's next to a tent, but then next to them was a sofa that had two guys on it. And that just I mean, it's just, you know, I mean, of course I've seen sofas put out for the trash, you know, whatever. But like, there was something about seeing too men either passed out or sleeping on a couch, on a sidewalk in the middle of the city, and no one saying anything that was just kind of like made me feel I was in this alternate reality. So I just actually started as I recall by saying, hey, do you guys know where this couch came from? Like, it just looked very homey in a weird way.

And they were like, no, we have no idea. But, you know, I did want to talk to at least one homeless person and get some perspective on it. And he seemed open a conversation. So I talked to him. And he, you know, he told me a story. I don't know if he was the world's most reliable narrator. It was a very complicated story about how he had had a knee injury and he'd been kicked out of a hospital sooner than he should have been. And his knee was still recovering.

And then, but you know, what really stuck with me was he also told me some about his background. Like I asked if he'd been homeless, how long had he been homeless or, you know, blah, blah, blah. And he said he'd been homeless for four years since his mother died in 2015. And he mentioned, you know, when we were talking about family, that he'd outlived two of his ex-wives. I'm not sure how many there were. And he said he'd had seven children, didn't seem like he was in touch with any of them. And Rodriguez actually studies from Oakland, which is a city across the bay from San Francisco, a smaller city. But he said he likes coming to San Francisco and he'd been there about a month, partly because he just mentioned there's resources here, you know, in the city.

But also he said he likes meeting people. And he talks about how that fills a void with him and he, you know, just how it makes him less depressed to be talking to people. and I don't know. That was just really heartbreaking. And I have no idea what the answer is for this guy. I don't know what happened. I don't know. But it just, it was really sad.

You mentioned in the piece that you also saw a number of homeless women in San Francisco. And that's something that's a little unusual. I mean, you also noted in the piece that homeless people are most often men. Why do you think the increase in homeless women? Yeah, I mean, I can only speculate. It was just something like just observationally. I was just surprised. I'd seen homeless women before, but statistically it's just far less likely.

And to me, it suggested that it was just more a way of life in San Francisco, that it was something maybe more fueled by addiction. This is all speculation on my part. But, you know, for whatever complicated reasons, including welfare for moms being available, it's just been a lot less typical to see women dealing with homelessness. And there were still far more men, but just even seeing women at all sort of through me. So I understand that the city has put in place these 24-hour public restrooms. Tell me about what's the idea behind those?

Well, when your city has poop maps, you're thinking it, well, maybe if we had public restrooms that were available 24-7, this would go away. So that is the thinking behind them. So they've got about 21, I recall, that are not 24-7. They're available certain hours. But then in three of the worst areas, and I believe they picked them based off those three-one-one calls I mentioned earlier, they set up these 24-7 ones. And this is not just a bathroom. They have, well, I mean, it is just about, well, yes and no.

Okay. So besides being a bathroom, it can also have needle disposal, and that's sort of a hot topic in San Francisco. right now, San Francisco distributes clean needles, but it's controversial whether that's the right way to tackle addiction. It also, you can put pet waste in there. But because for reasons of security and cleanliness, they have one to two attendance present right outside these bathrooms 24 hours a day. So a San Francisco Chronicle columnist calculated how much it's costing the city for these overnight bathrooms. and I think he came to 2870 per flush. So I'm not an expert in these matters.

I mean, it seems wise to, you know, if that's the problem, have it. But this does not seem like the most fiscally responsible way to deal with this. Right. You also mentioned that they are beginning to power wash the sidewalks. How are the homeless responding to that? Yeah. So they, in the tenderloin, I guess they were doing power wash. washing once a month. And then shortly, I was up there in December, as you mentioned,

around Christmas. And I think either in early December or late November, they switched to weekly power washings because apparently monthly wasn't enough to clear off the poop and the needles and whatever else was accumulating on the sidewalks. So that happens. And I actually stumbled upon a scene where two workers were trying to watch a sidewalk and they were basically kicking two homeless guys out and they were like, pack up your stuff and they were spraying right up to the brink of where their stuff was. And one of the homeless men, as far as I could tell, was just putting his stuff in bags and like not saying anything. And another homeless man got very, very angry. And he started swearing and I'm not going to repeat it because it's a family podcast. But, you know,

It was a very angry scene. In fact, I decided that as important as journalism was, I also didn't want to be in the middle of too heated a confrontation. So I don't exactly know what happened at the end here. It didn't feel like necessarily the safest thing to just be gawking at. But, yeah, it was pretty heated. And it was, you know, I don't know the full story. I walked in on this. But it did suggest that the man felt entitled to just have his stuff on the sidewalk.

So, you know, this massive increase in homelessness is happening at a time, as you note in the article, where they're spending way more to try to solve the problem. So you said that in 2011 to 2012, the city spent around $157 million. Now it's over double that. It's over $360 million. So it appears that throwing money at the problem is not working at all. Yes and no. I'm going to again say annoyingly I'm not an expert in this field. And, you know, one of the things that I'm hoping we can do in this podcast and on the Daily Signal generally is talk to people who are throughout this year because I think this is a really interesting public policy problem.

And I also think that, you know, when I think of people like Anthony Rodriguez, like we have to come up with something better than the status quo. That being said, from what I was reading about it, yes, they've thrown a lot of money at this problem. and homelessness has either remained the same or grown worse. One of the articles I was reading, I can't remember the site, but they were saying that, like, you know, it might have even been Gavin Newsom, who's now the governor when he was the mayor of San Francisco, talked about eradicating homelessness. Like the extent is new, but the problem is not. And obviously that did not happen. At the same time, you know, sometimes some of the groups that might skew me. more to the left are pointing out, or at least one of them was the Coalition on Homelessness

in San Francisco was pointing out in an article I read that a lot of that money is providing housing for people and potentially making it so not as many people are homeless. So it might be helping in certain ways. The other thing I note in the article is that housing prices in San Francisco have more than doubled in the past decade. It is crazy. My younger sister was working in San Francisco a couple of years ago, and she was briefly looking at apartments in the city. And I think a one bedroom was going for like 3,000. Like it makes, I think it's more than New York City now. It is absolutely bonkers. And that was actually one of the things that I was really interested in. And I mean, California housing policy in general is a nightmare.

for environmental protections. But I also, my understanding is in San Francisco, there's a lot of, you know, not in my backyard types. And one thing that I did notice going around in San Francisco is there's a lot of beautiful homes. It has a neighborhoody feel. There's a lot of those darling, old Victorians that, I mean, the famous ones, you know, you see on the opening clips of full house, but also just lots of not famous ones. And there were not very many high rises, which obviously for a city is a problem because

where do people live? At the same time, though, one of the people that I spoke to who was involved in a nonprofit that helps the homeless, and I can't recall his exact words, but he was sort of getting to, like it's more, it's not just the housing costs. Like we're talking about issues that go beyond that. Because, of course, if you can't afford the housing, I don't mean this in a Blythe way, because, of course, there's moving costs, but you could move to another region. Or you could explore that.

or there's a lot of people who work in San Francisco and are commuting from far out. So I'm sure that the higher cost of housing isn't helping the homelessness, but I think it's a bit naive to blame it for causing it. So you visited a church in San Francisco, and you spoke to a man who works for a program at the church that is to the homeless. Did he offer any insights as to what is driving the spike in homelessness or what, you know, maybe the mindset that some of these folks have fallen into? Yeah, I was really surprised by what he had to say.

He's an employee of the Gubio Project. And what they do is they manage this program at this Catholic Church called St. Bonifaces that allows homeless people on weekdays to sleep there during the day. And so they can sleep on the pews, et cetera. And so I wanted to talk to someone from there. And I thought, honestly, like, you know, I didn't know much about this. nonprofit and I was sort of like, you know, this is a San Francisco, you know, organization. I expect what they're going to say is we need more money. We need more government intervention. And to my surprise, that's not what he said. And I don't know. I didn't explicitly say like, do you think the government should intervene more? So I don't want to, I don't want to overstate this. But he sort of went to the psychological issues. And he talked about like how people need to have a fire burning within them and how we have to encourage those who are willing and how people have to essentially persevere.

And you just sort of talked about people giving up and that what they sort of, what this, what he could do was with people who were beginning to not want to give up, they could help them. And I mean, again, you know, you don't know, I certainly don't know the circumstances that led to these people being homeless. You know, I think a lot of people probably, you know, start on drugs and don't intend to become addicts, obviously. I mean, I don't experiment with drugs, kids. I think, you know, mental illness. And I think part of the reason that I cared about this story was a few years ago I had a friend

who seemed to be undergoing a severe mental illness issue that made me wonder if they were going to end up homeless because one of the things that's really scary about severe mental illness is it often, one of the symptoms is you don't think you have a mental illness. And that, you know, I know there's a lot of policy debate in America right now about should we be committing more people against their will. And that's it's not an easy question. You giving the government that power is a scary thing at the same time. You know, there's instances where friends and family are like they are mentally ill. I know this person. And this is not who they are. They are not well. But if they themselves can't commit themselves because their symptoms don't allow them to recognize it. It's a it's a very thorny question. Anyway, I digress. But yeah, I guess I'm just trying to be very clear. I'm not, you know, I have a lot of compassion for these people. Yeah, so he was talking about like needing to help motivate them, encourage them.

And again, just really that psychological stuff. And the way this project works, and I thought it was just really interesting, is most days this church has a 1215 mass. And what they do is they say the first third of the church is reserved for people who are there to go. to Mass and the back two-thirds of the church are reserved for people sleeping. And if you're a homeless person, you are welcome to participate or you are welcome to sleep. There's no pressure. And I thought, you know, coming from a Christian perspective, I thought that was kind of cool. I think it's a little bit easy sometimes, you know, in modern day life and the United States relieved a pretty comfortable economic existence. You know, even Christmas, and I was in the church

two days before Christmas, I think we kind of glamorize and it's like, actually. Actually, they were super poor and Jesus was born with animals in a place that probably smelled terrible. Like, there was legitimate poverty. And, you know, of course, in the Bible, we read a lot about Jesus interacting with the poor, interacting with the lepers. And it was just, I didn't, as far as I could tell none of the homeless engaged during Mass, I didn't get the impression any of them were participating. But it was still like a really welcome reminder. and to a certain extent chastening to me, like, you know, do I really, as a Christian, see Christ in these people? Do I see that these might be the people he loves perhaps the most? And that was a

really challenging thing. And the Gubio Project states on their website that, like, they do this to show the homeless are part of the community. And I think it's easy for a lot of us to not look at them and not really just sort of say no when they ask for money. And, you know, I think. I don't think the answer is necessarily to give them money, but, you know, years ago, a priest once mentioned, he was giving a talk about charity and he was saying something about like he tries to give a dollar to every homeless person who asks in part because he's wearing, you know, the Roman collar and like it has the potential to feel like a rejection from a holy, you know, figure or something like a rejection from God, not the priests or God. I am not saying that. But, you know, he mentioned he always tries to touch their hand when he does it. and he tries to look at them right in the eye. And I think that aside from all the policy issues and the funding issues and the what do we do issues, it's really important for us to remember that we need to recognize their humanity, whether we give them money or not. And, you know, I got to tell you, as a reporter, it's sometimes really disheartening when I would do campaign reporting and I would ask like, you know, 20 people for an interview and no one wanted to do it.

I can't imagine if you ask hundreds of people for money all day and like 95% of them won't even look at you, how rejected you feel. So you mentioned the super pricey homes in San Francisco in those kind of iconic neighborhoods and then this poverty on the sidewalks. It seems like there's not really a place for people in the middle to kind of find a place in the city. I mean, our colleague Jarrett has written about how in California as a whole the middle class is leaving because it's become kind of like your other rich or. you're poor. Is this like a pattern that's getting worse and worse in San Francisco and the middle class are just getting squeezed out totally? Yeah, I found this one of the most interesting things because in the past decade, obviously the homeless problem has gotten worse. But at the same time, starting, I believe the city established a tax break around 2011.

A lot of high tech companies came to the city. Twitter has its headquarters there. I believe Uber does as well, like Facebook, Google, I think they all have offices. And there's this part of town that really has, you know, these tech companies that are just ginormously wealthy and tend to have employees who are pretty well paid. And in many ways, this has been a boon for the city. I forget the exact numbers, but the Chronicle Ed reporting that I think unemployment was at 9 percent and 11 and now it's at 2 percent. So overall, you know, my understanding is this is a win. But at the same time, you know,

if you're working a tech job, odds are, you know, I'm sure there's some middle class people, but a lot of these jobs pay pretty well. I mean, that's why people want to work for them, among other things. So I decided to go over, and it ended up being Twitter's headquarters. I'm not trying to pick on Twitter, but that was just the easiest one for me to walk to. So I just wanted to see the neighborhood. And I was sort of curious if there would be homeless people there, what would it be like? And again, just to show you how small in some way San Francisco is, I was about six blocks from the church I just mentioned, from the homeless, and then you get to Twitter's headquarters. and beneath the headquarters, not owned by Twitter or anything, is a grocery store in a food hall.

And this was just like a specialty right after coming from a church for a homeless was just like whirlwind, some kind of, it just felt very dramatic. So the grocery store was like selling detox juice that was nearly $10 a serving. There were pies that were unironically called Upper Crest Pies, like that was the name of the brand. And when I went into the food hall, there was even a refrigerator that sold caviar just in case you needed that. So there's definitely a wealthy class in San Francisco. I spoke to, I know this is the most annoying reporter thing ever, but I spoke to my lift driver on one of the rides. And I didn't get his permission to quote him, so I'm not going to use his first name here. But, you know, he struck me as middle class and he was calling the city a ridiculous city.

and he noted like how expensive gas was. The gas station we passed was $3.99. He was talking about how no one, and he had been in the city about 10 years. He'd moved up from L.A., Los Angeles. And he was just like no one can afford to buy here. And he was talking about the issue that a lot of people had wanted San Francisco to not build so their houses would be worth more. But then the unintended irony is in their own children couldn't afford to live here. And in my own generation, again, I'm not from the city proper, but from the Bay Area generally, a lot of the people I grew up with, we've moved away in part because it's so unaffordable.

So I do think that California and San Francisco really are having an issue right now where it's sort of like if you want a normal middle class life, it's not really accessible in a serious way. Well, we will leave it there. Kate, thank you. And thank you for writing the piece. Our listeners can find it on the Daily Signal's website. It's called Tense, Homelessness and Misery, Nine Things I Saw in San Francisco. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal podcast brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or Spotify, and please leave us a review or a rating on Apple Podcasts to give us any feedback.

We'll see you again tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members. of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Kate Shrinco and Daniel Davis. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, the Leah Rampersad, and Mark Geine. For more information, visit DailySignal.com.