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San Francisco Is Failing Its Residents
My homeless neighbors are dying on the streets
Winter Solstice, 2018. I am attending a gathering in a housing center in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, where four years ago I performed in a Pride concert with the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco. I’m here today to sing again, with vocal activist Melanie DeMore, who was the special guest artist at our concert last month. But the occasion for these tunes will be very different.
Two days before, I’d read Melanie’s Facebook post inviting folks to join her and the Skywatchers for a processional in memory of those who had died on the streets this year. Volunteers had painstakingly and lovingly created handmade “In Memory Of” signs, each bearing the name of one of 240 people. Each of these individuals — and doubtlessly, more that we don’t know about — died on the streets of San Francisco, the city I’ve lived in for over 15 years.
I’ve been happy to make San Francisco my home for many reasons: It’s queer-friendly, trans-friendly, immigrant-friendly, vegan-friendly, and has a mild year-round climate. But in this city of great tolerance and tremendous wealth, hundreds of my neighbors are living and dying out on the streets. I am ashamed.
Many people have attempted to address the issue of homelessness in San Francisco. Our November election had a ballot measure (which ultimately passed), proposing a tax on businesses with very high gross annual receipts to provide additional services to this population. This proposed tax brought on a public spat between Jack Dorsey and Mark Benioff, the CEOs of Twitter and Salesforce, respectively. Dorsey opposed the tax, siding with recently-elected Mayor London Breed, who many progressives see as continuing Mayor Willie Brown’s legacy of Democrats favoring business interests.
As I pointed out in my previous essay, the plight of our homeless population is so dire that the United Nations has characterized it as a human rights violation. This is in a city that has been led by Democrats for decades. We simply cannot blame Republicans for this problem.
