Gavin Newsom Confirms San Francisco Removing Homeless For APEC Conference

Credit: Mike D

San Francisco has struggled with homelessness longer than any of us have likely been alive. The Tenderloin has been anything but tender since the city’s founding and various leaders have come and gone, yet one thing stays consistent, and that’s the Tenderloin’s everlasting status as the city’s downtown destination for the downtrodden. 

When tech came in, and inequality increased, the Tenderloin’s boundaries seemed to grow and encapsulated larger swaths of the City including, but not limited to SoMa and the Mission District. 

However, not everything is business as usual. There is something unprecedented about how contemporary San Francisco politicians have been speaking about homelessness in the city. Most Democrats have historically embraced a familiar faux-compassion that has become the hallmark of political life in San Francisco up until most recently. What has replaced the hopeful, but oftentimes empty campaign rhetoric? Callousness. 

Building adequate housing is hard in San Francisco, but apparently hating the houseless is easy. And Gavin Newsom, with London Breed smiling behind him, said in almost playful tones “I know folks say, ‘Oh, they’re just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming into town,’ That’s true, because it’s true.” 

San Francisco has become a national obsession and Gavin Newsom has his eyes on the prize. It’s been rumored nearly to the point of confirmation that Newsom has legitimate intentions of running for President, and it makes sense – he’s a handsome guy, he can speak, which, as we’ve witnessed recently, the inability to speak may be a detriment to one’s chances of winning an election, but a detriment doesn’t necessarily equate to a disqualification. 

San Francisco’s reputation is the only thing truly standing in his way. So shitting on homeless people appears to be his magical elevator to electoral success. It’s not by accident, this display of dickishness is calculated. San Francisco’s homeless population has become an unofficial mascot of the city among rightwing circles, and their main point of attack on Democrats who call Northern California home. 

There are various options for countering the rightwing rhetoric espoused by Fox News and the Republican Party. The first (and my personal favorite) would be a housing blitz where San Francisco and the state of California begin to build aggressively to ensure affordability. If done correctly, this could not only put a massive dent in the homelessness crisis, but also provide drug addicts and people suffering from mental illness the stability they need to begin effective treatment. 

The other option is to criminalize homelessness in an attempt to appease rightwing critics enough for Gavin Newsom to become the President of the United States, and for San Francisco to once again be an attractive tourist destination to enough Midwestern aunties to fill every seat at the Fisherman’s Wharf Applebees on any given night of the week. Boom! ‘Doom Loop’ defeated! 

Except not really, because the City of San Francisco and the State of California seem to be making a promise to the rest of the country. The promise is this: to aggressively fail the very same people they’ve been passively failing for years. 

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