San Francisco from San Francisco Headlands and Golden Gate bridge, San Francisco, CA. (Photo: Kropic1/Shutterstock)
Dear Parents Across America: Keep Your Children Away From San Francisco
Regretfully, people die on San Francisco’s streets and in temporary housing from fentanyl and other highly-addictive, dangerous drugs daily
By Richie Greenberg, July 22, 2023 2:55 am
Dear Parents Across America: Keep your child away from San Francisco.
Parents, does your child seek refuge from criticism over their drug use, suffer from a mental disability or do they simply want to live “off the grid,” free from constraints of societal norms? They should not come to San Francisco.
Be warned: San Francisco officials have given taxpayers’ hard-earned money to unaccountable nonprofits serving the homelessness and drug addiction sectors to administer programs on their behalf, ultimately ineffective.
Our mayor London Breed, along with our Board of Supervisors (our city council), who allocate spending, disregard accountability; City Hall refuses to acknowledge their unconscionable waste of monies. Your child will not be provided meaningful care by the city, nor a safe, secure environment for them to rehabilitate, get clean, navigate to a job or into housing. Recently published statistics painted a very grim picture for those individuals who come to (or are lured to) San Francisco seeking an escape from a troubled home environment. This is my plea to parents across America: Stop your child from coming to San Francisco.
News reporters, concerned citizen journalists and civic organizations conduct interviews seeking comment directly from the homeless and drug addicted on the streets, on a perpetual basis. The affected individuals indicate many were forced out of their homes by their family. Most tell us they understood San Francisco is the preferred place to go due to our city’s acceptance of homelessness, lax law enforcement, monthly financial stipends and ease of obtaining cheap drugs. California also has a law (Prop. 47) which makes theft of merchandise below $950 a misdemeanor, essentially saying shops can be looted and theft won’t be prosecuted. So, I ask you: How long before your child lives in a tent- perhaps an encampment- in filth, garbage and hazardous waste, sexually assaulted or trafficked, to partake in their preferred drugs, and steal from our local businesses, their lives then subsidized by local San Francisco taxpayers?
Regretfully, people die on San Francisco’s streets and in temporary housing from fentanyl and other highly-addictive, dangerous drugs daily. Overall, more people have died from fentanyl overdose than by Covid. There is virtually no meaningful treatment for street drugs here. None.
San Francisco’s best success is to return your child home. Surveys and data have consistently found the best plan is to actually provide a ticket for individuals to leave the city and live with loved ones through the Homeward Bound program. Statistically, this means all other treatment and solutions for distressed, addicted and homeless individuals in San Francisco have been unsuccessful. Under a plan formulated by former mayor (now governor) Gavin Newsom, Homeward Bound pays the travel expenses for individuals’ transportation home. Starting March 2023, current mayor London Breed is expanding access to this program.
Who pays for this? Taxpayers do. I do. My hard-earned money is going to the city through property taxes, business taxes, sales tax, hotel occupancy taxes, parking meters, gasoline taxes, bridge tolls and more. We residents are weary, we are overtaxed and the high cost of operating homelessness, addiction, drug overdose and emergency care programs combine into a very significant chunk of our city’s budget, while other agencies, departments, programs and resident/business and students’ needs are scrambling for funding.
For the 2023-2024 fiscal year, there is a projected $760 million shortfall; for 2024-2025 it will be significantly higher.
Last May 2023, an official meeting of San Francisco’s Mayor and Board of Supervisors (city council) was convened outdoors yet terminated early amid a rowdy throng. Ultimately, a brick was thrown by a deranged individual from the crowd towards the mayor. The brick-thrower was a 26-year-old transgender woman whose mother had sent to San Francisco from Texas just months prior. The mother soon after made a statement to the media about the violent incident, admitting she knew her daughter has bipolar disorder – stating she hoped “San Francisco would take good care of her.” The daughter is now currently in jail and is charged with attempted murder. This is precisely why our streets have become dangerous. This is why San Francisco cannot continue as a city to send “difficult” children to; we are not a rehabilitation center; we do not take care of your child.
Our city is in deep trouble on many fronts and your child moving here to become dependent on local taxpayers funding is unfair, reckless and truly irresponsible and can be deadly. Please talk to your child, to your extended family, to health professionals and find an alternative to San Francisco. Please.
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Richie Greenberg, actually, your message should be to the VOTERS of San Francisco who keep electing progressive Democrats like London Breed and members of the SF Board of Supervisors – “WAKE UP and STOP VOTING FOR these incompetent people, you Nincompoops!” https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/video-deserted-mall-and-streets-downtown-san-fran-reveals-democrats-destroyed-city
Election integrity is the issue. The people are largely not voting for progressive policies. Democrats have the power to decide election outcomes regardless how voters cast ballots.
Richie Greenberg is completely delusional if he thinks that San Francisco’s problems stem from parents sending their kids there to become dependent on local taxpayers? Described as a long-term resident, it sounds like he moved to the City from somewhere else and he’s not a native San Franciscan? No doubt Richie Greenberg has voted for every Democrat currently in power whose leftist policies have created the hellhole that he now complains about? San Francisco residents like Richie Greenberg are part of the problem and they need to take responsibility for their role in destroying a once great city?
Simply put, it is progressive policy that has reformed San Francisco into what it is today, a progressive rat infested, drug infested dystopian sh*thole. They allowed it! Just simply follow a
Supervisor board meeting or try to get through a London Breed presser or even a Police Chief presser. It is unbearable. The police have been knee capped. Who would want to be a cop in S.F.?
The tax base is shrinking faster than one can scream, H-E-L- P!
If San Franciscans want change they have to vote for change! After all what do they have to lose at this point?
One more thing. Adult drug addicts are not children. As a parent of adult children,I have no control over their travels or whereabouts. It would be liken to me saying, “ Little Johnny, stay out of Las Vegas, there is gambling and whores galore, drugs too! It is bad for you. Don’t go, please don’t go!”
Pushing a Noisome plan? Really? Mamas’ don’t let your children grow up to be Democrats!
San Francisco needs to keep its denizens out of all other jurisdictions. When they escape this hell hole they work to bring that hell to other cities. Put a fence around it!
Sending drug addicts home only disrupts a healthy home life for everyone else. If you have someone abusing drugs in your house, they need to either stop or get kicked out.
Democrats destroyed SF by making a magnet and a sanctuary city for the homeless, drug abusers and the illegal alien hordes by providing generous funding to support them. Greenberg sounds like another liberal Jew with no common sense. He needs to blame himself and his Democrat masters.
I’m new to SF. Only moved to SF in the 1980’s. The authors is essentially correct.
One number that has not changed over the decades is that 80%+ of street people and 90%+ of street junkies have zero connection with SF. They were never long term residents of SF. 50%+ arrived in the last year. 25%+ in the last three months. That was the number in the 1980’s. That is the number today. The number goes up when the City does n’t enforce the law. And goes down when they do. The recent upsurge in street junkies is due to Prop 57 removing drug rehab as a condition of parole.
It takes a hell of a lot of work and very stupid decisions over many years to end up as a street junkie. Zero sympathy. Most addicts are functional and are not on the streets. Street junkies stop being addicts when they stop telling lies. To to themselves and others. Until then, let them die. I dont care. My empathy is for those who bad decisions did not put them on the streets.
In the recent “homeless street survey” almost 70% of street people are addicts. Who refuse treatment. Another 25% are mentally ill. Who refuse treatment and medication. Who are on the streets because of the ACLU and Disability California. Which leave around 5%. Which is the true number of “homeless”. Mostly drifters/runaways etc. On the street because the SRO’s/ cheap hotels were all closed decades ago. Almost none are long term SF residents who short term have nowhere to live.
The media coverage of the “homeless survey” in the Chron etc went to great lengths to hide these facts. Because the Homeless Industry is worth over $2B per year in SF alone. With zero results. A very lucrative fraud.
As for SF voters. They have been gerrymandered out of any real control over city politics since the 1970’s When Barbagelata lost the Mayor recall in 1976 that was the green light for stealing future elections by a very small groups of organized radicals in key districts. You only need a few hundred “voters” to swing enough districts to control the Board of Supervisors. It ‘s far more difficult for the radicals to control the Board of Supes with citywide elections. Not going to get a majority.
So the last sane local political was Quintin Kopp. In the 1980’s. No sane person would run for a seat since. Unless you have seen the visceral hatred and utter derangement of “activists”, all recent arrivals in SF never locals, you will never understand why no sane normal person would run for elected office in SF. Its not Chicago politics dangerous. But pretty close. A new Christopher or Rolph would be killed or seriously maimed by one of these deranged “activists” sooner or later. More likely sooner.
There is a simple way to fix City politics. A 5 year residency rule for voting in City elections. Only those who might stick around for the consequences of their votes get to vote in City elections. In SF 90%+ of the swing voters in districts were not living in SF 10 years ago. And wont be living in SF in 10 years time. The 10 year tourists. If they did not get to vote in City elections the Board of Supervisors would soon look remarkably like it did in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Just dealing with municipal politics. As it should be.
San Francisco last elected a Republican mayor in1956 with George Christopher who was of Greek ancestry and had previously worked as an accountant. Liberal Democrats have since controlled the mayor’s office and also the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for decades. Quintin Kopp is what passes for a sane Democrat politician in San Francisco? He’s was a carpetbagging Harvard trained lawyer originally from New York. In 1979, Kopp ran for mayor against Dianne Feinstein. Both were liberal Jewish Democrats, but Kopp lost to Feinstein in the runoff election. In 1986, Kopp ran for California State Senate as an independent in a heavily Democratic district straddling southern San Francisco and northern San Mateo counties but Republican distaste for the Democratic nominee (then Assemblyman Lou Papan) led them to financially support Kopp, who went on to win by one percentage point. Kopp later became a member of the California High-Speed Rail Authority also know as “the train to no where” and he was a strong proponent of it. Liberal Democrats have controlled San Francisco for decades and their insane policies are responsible for the mess that the City is in now?
@Tj
I know all about Kopps background. And I heard him interviewed many times back then. Both in SF and when he was in Sac. And more recently. He was the last sane Sup in comparison to what came after. That is a very low bar. Very low.
Kopp was the last Supe who seemed to be grounded in traditional SF municipal politics. You know, streets, sewers and schools. Which itself has its own very “interesting” history in SF. I have n’t seen a single Supe candidate since then that had any positive reason to vote for them. It was always negative. The alternative was always far worse. Far far worse. There is no bottom of the barrel when it comes to SF politics.
As for Christopher. He was n’t really an “accountant”. He grew up South of Market and ran the family dairy for years. Which is where the mug shot came from that was used against him on election posters. Busted in the 1930’s for selling milk below the price set by the state commission. He was last competent straight talking mayor. Although the Candlestick saga was not the only “interesting” story of his time in office. Shelley was weak and out of his depth. As was Alioto in his particular own way. Both throwback to City ward politics of the time before the City population started its precipitous decline starting in the 1950’s.
And it was all over by the 1970’s. The young working / middle class had fled to the suburbs. And with them went the normal people voting block. The public schools imploded forcing more families out and by the late 1970’s City politics was totally dysfunctional. Where it has remained ever since. Did we ever find out just how much money Jim Jones stole from the SF Housing Authority.
Maybe its time for a Third Vigilance Committee. After all we are dealing with institutional political corruption in City Hall just as bad as the 1870’s. The current prosecutions for corruption are still just catching the small players. Just wait till Willie Brown is dead. The full story of his web of corruption is going to make the Mayor Reuf gang look like a Boy Scouts operation in comparison.
SF politics has been the same since the late 1840’s. When the Democratic Party controls City Hall its out of control corruption and spectacular incompetence. Eventually the Republicans get elected to clean up the mess and you have a few decades of low level corruption and mostly competent city government. Until the Republicans are voted out of office by the next generation who have forgotten why the Republicans got voted into power in the first place.
And so the cycle continues.
Voting the scoundrels out may have worked in the past, but is it still possible in an era when Democrats can steal elections by using techniques such as ballot harvesting, producing mail-in ballots with no chain of custody, tweaking voting machines, etc. and the courts have been stacked with impartial judges who rule in their favor when voting irregularities are challenged?
@Tj
The recent recalls show that things are slowly changing. Boudin and the worst nut cases on the school board were kicked out. Mostly by the Asian voters saying enough is enough. And if what happened in Seattle recently is any indication I expect some of the worst of the smug rich out of towner/ out of state “progressives” or straight out nut cases on the Board of Supes like Ronen, Peskin, Dorsey and Mandelman to bail sooner rather than later.
Walton is a straight up crook from the East Bay (long tradition of those in SF politics) as are politicians who are really nasty drunks. Like Peskin. Both Phil Burton and Hallinan were exceptionally nasty drunks.
Once the Asians start assert their political muscle, they are 35% of the population of the moment, I expect SF city politics to get back to normal (ish) sooner rather than later. Blacks are only 5% (and falling quickly) and Hispanics have stayed at 15% for many decades. So the type of voter fraud that is rife in LA city / country really cannot be easily replicated in SF. I dont expect Willie Browns block of 50K or so votes for sale for the right price to survive his passing.
Eventually the Asian voting block will replicate the old Irish / Italian block in SF politics. Not exactly honest but good enough when it comes to running a city. The total opposite of the last 50 years.
Asians tend to overwhelmingly vote for Democrats who have been proven to be corrupt and abysmal at running cities? The Chinese voting block was instrumental in electing Ed Lee as San Francisco’s mayor? After Gavin Newsom was elected as Lieutenant Governor of California in 2010, a vacancy in the office of mayor resulted. Ed Lee who was the City Administrator appointed by Gavin Newsom had promised not to seek election if the Board of Supervisors appointed him as mayor. The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously for Lee whose term would expire in January 2012, when the winner of the November 2011 mayoral election would assume office. Even though Lee had promised not to run in the mayoral election, he announced his candidacy for mayor in 2011 running as a Democrat with the support of many leaders in the Chinese community such as Rose Pak, consultant for the San Francisco Chinese Chamber of Commerce. Lee won the November 2011 election and he was easily re-elected in 2015. Lee was involved in the usual identity politics that Democrats use to divide communities and he was instrumental in providing billions of tax breaks to corporations like Twitter which had threatened to move out of San Francisco without tax breaks.
There are some within the San Francisco Chinese community and the Democrat party who have ties to the CCP? For example, Dianne Feinstein had a Chinese American spy working for her as an office staffer and her personal driver for over 20 years who was reporting back to China’s Ministry of State Security before he was caught. He worked for officials based out of the People’s Republic of China’s consulate in San Francisco, which Feinstein had helped set up when she was mayor of the City. In another example, a Chinese billionaire and real estate developer named Zhang Li admitted to paying off Mohammed Nuru, who was then head of San Francisco’s Department of Public Works and who had a personal relationship with current Mayor London Breed, with meals, luxury hotel stays, a hot spring trip and numerous gifts un exchange for Nuru to personally attend to issues arising from Zhang’s development projects. In August 2022, Nuru was sentenced to 84 months (7 years) in federal prison. Zhang accepted responsibility for the conduct he was accused of and committed to paying a $50,000 fine. In exchange, the Justice Department agreed to drop the charges against Zhang in three years. Meanwhile, his development firm Z&L Properties pleaded guilty to federal fraud and conspiracy charges, and agreed to pay a $1 million fine and enter into a corporate compliance program designed to prevent future corruption. Zhang’s firm Z&L Properties remains active in San Francisco, San Jose and Los Angeles.
San Francisco is hopelessly corrupt?
@TFourier, @TJ. Good discussion about some history of politics in SF. I would like to hear more about the corrupt Willie Brown years, @TFourier. As you know, his “protege” is now one step away from the White House (Good grief, Mr. Brown!). As for the Asian voting block becoming the “savior” of SF, a lot depends on how the post-Wuhan VIrus offices-to-housing transition is handled. If and when those empty office buildings are bought by developers and converted to apartments/condos (and there ARE opportunities) will they be priced in a way that attracts the middle class types who want to work and raise families in the Bay Area? In the mean time, public safety issues (crime, drugs and homeless) have to be dealt with first and foremost.
@TJ
Ah, Ed Lee. He was just another Newsom but without the slick media image. A sock puppet. A non-entity. While all the story you describe was going on the real story in City Hall was the senior staff in the Mayors Office. Who during the Newsom / Lee era were still all Willie Brown’s people. Think of it as a much more politically and financially effective version of what the “Obama Organization” have in the Biden Admiration. Its no accident that the corruption trials for city officials only really got going after Mayor Breed took put a major dent in that control. Although it was Feinstein’s loss of control over the appointment of the new Fed DA that really got the ball rolling.
As for why the Chinese block voted for Lee that’s simple. For the same reason the Italian block once voted for Alioto etc. Thats how multi-ethnic big city politics works. But as the recent recall elections showed. When interests vital to ordinary voters came up, like the school board recall, guess which way they voted. For their kids education. There will be more votes like that in the future as SF politics realigns itself to the new demographic reality. What my Asian neighbor say in private is very different from what they are willing to say in public. Because of, well, a certain state political history. Mostly driven by the SF Democratic Party of the era no less.
CCP influence? Of course. Its everywhere. But its a more of a problem with recent non Cantonese immigrants. If you have lived in a Asian majority neighborhood long enough you know there is a huge difference between the recent arrival Mainlanders and the Cantonese, HK’ers, and Taiwanese. The Mainlanders have pretty much the same statist political attitudes as Mexicans from the southern / PRI states and Central Americans. But the Cantonese are very different. Much more individualistic and get the government off my back types. In my experience.
So kind of like the fact that as most of the Italians in San Francisco were Northern Italians when the Italians became a serious voting block in City politics the Mafia never had the same kind of influence in SF that it had in cities back east. Where most of the Italians were Southerners. Like in Baltimore. Nancy Pelosi’s home town. Where her father was the Mafia supported Mayor..
That’s going to be the block of Asian voters that will push reform in the future. The – Why are you wasting my Tax Money People. Restate city political questions on education, quality of public services, and waste of their tax money, and just watch the Cantonese line up to vote the bums out of office. Sooner or later. When the current City ruling block lose control of the pollical Overton Window.
“CCP influence? Of course. Its everywhere. But its a more of a problem with recent non Cantonese immigrants. If you have lived in a Asian majority neighborhood long enough you know there is a huge difference between the recent arrival Mainlanders and the Cantonese, HK’ers, and Taiwanese. The Mainlanders have pretty much the same statist political attitudes as Mexicans from the southern / PRI states and Central Americans. But the Cantonese are very different. Much more individualistic and get the government off my back types. In my experience.”
I agree, @Tfourier. My college roomy’s family were immigrants from Canton (now Guangzhou) in the 1950s. His parents were, like most of the southern Chinese, supporters of Chang Kai-shek. When the Mao communists took control and Chang went to Formosa (now Taiwan) their family escaped through Hong Kong and settled in Oakland; where they opened a small market. My roomy says that the Catholic church that he and his wife now attend in Burlingame has many Italians members like you describe. You are correct. When it comes to FAMILY, they have CONSERVATIVE values.
San Francisco – also known as ‘Wienerville”