Shame of the City Part 4

San Francisco's homeless problem is vast, in part largely to the liberal atmosphere of the city and the temperate climate which makes the city quite tempting to homeless drifters. The fourth installment of the series I have been blogging about discusses the way that the city's aid programs and inhabitants quite frequently enable the homeless instead of doing them any real good. Homeless are issued tickets for "squatting" charging them fines that they can not pay, and they are often arrested for possession of drugs or paraphernalia, resulting in their being sent to a rehab center to be cleaned up. The rehab stays are not the problem, the fact that post-rehab the homeless are immeadiately bounced back onto the street is.
Also sympathetic passerby handing out money to the homeless often provide the men and women with means to purchase their daily supply of crack or heroin.
San Francisco needs to figure out a more viable plan for dealing with the problem of homelessness.