Homelessness in San Francisco

What a nightmare.

From Heather Mac Donald, at City Journal, "San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless."

For the last three decades, San Francisco has conducted a real-life experiment in what happens when a society stops enforcing bourgeois norms of behavior—in the name of compassion toward the homeless. The results have been the opposite. https://t.co/QOREy5oiAV via @HMDatMI

— City Journal (@CityJournal) October 7, 2019

The stories that the homeless tell about their lives reveal that something far more complex than a housing shortage is at work. The tales veer from one confused and improbable situation to the next, against a backdrop of drug use, petty crime, and chaotic child-rearing. Behind this chaos lies the dissolution of those traditional social structures that once gave individuals across the economic spectrum the ability to withstand setbacks and lead sober, self-disciplined lives: marriage, parents who know how to parent, and conventional life scripts that create purpose and meaning. There are few policy levers to change this crisis of meaning in American culture. What is certain is that the ongoing crusade to normalize drug use, along with the absence of any public encouragement of temperance, will further handicap this unmoored population.

RTWT.