Los Angeles, San Francisco Mayors Clean Up Cities for Visiting Dignitaries But not for Residents

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who ludicrously chairs the U.S. Conference of Mayors’s Homelessness Task Force, is hosting a two-day U.S. Conference of Mayors gathering to discuss the challenges in addressing homelessness.

At the same time, San Francisco Mayor London Breed is washing poop off the sidewalks in the City by the Bay in preparation for the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit. And she’s borrowing police officers from nearby cities Brisbane, Belmont, Daly City, Foster City, Menlo Park, San Mateo, South San Francisco, Fairfield, San Jose State University and the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department, “to aid the city’s police force” during the summit.

Why can’t Mayors Breed and Bass do this for the citizens who live there? The answer is evident – because they don’t care about anything other than politics and their political optics.

“Bass, who was named chair of the USCM’s Homelessness Task Force in June, has made addressing homelessness and affordable housing key priorities of her administration since she became mayor nearly a year ago,” the LA Daily News reported.

“But when the U.S. president and other world leaders come to town next week, even college police from San Jose will chip in,” the San Francisco Standard reported. “The bulk of local outside help will come from the CHP, which is sending more than 1,000 officers, while Bay Area agencies can spare about 50 officers collectively for the cause, who will mostly help with dignitary escorts.”

Why is it ludicrous that Bass head up the USCM’s homeless task force given that her city is one of the biggest sh*tholes in the state and country? Why is Bass’s record on homelessness laughable? Here is what the LADN claims are her “Actions:”

• Declaring a homelessness emergency
• Launching Inside Safe, an initiative to move people living on the streets into motel and hotel rooms as temporary housing.
• Courting members of the Biden administration to support the city’s efforts to address homelessness
• Advocating for a historic investment of $1.3 billion in the city’s current fiscal year budget to combat the homelessness crisis
• Advocating, alongside other big city mayors in California, for more homeless funding for the state’s Homekey program
• Having her administration work with city councilmembers to develop a spending plan for the first $150 million in Measure ULA funds to support housing and homelessness prevention programs.
• Leading a historic delegation that included six members of the City Council to meet with federal officials in Washington, D.C.
• Signing an executive directive on Wednesday, Nov. 8, to incentivize speedier construction of housing for all income levels

Let’s see – Mayor Karen Bass “advocates,” “launches,” “courts,” “declares,” “incentivizes” and “signs” things.

Mayor Bass hasn’t done anything concrete to eradicate homelessness in Los Angeles, any more than San Francisco Mayor London Breed has.

But Mayors Breed and Bass will polish up their needle-infested, urine-soaked, poop-stained streets by removing the drug addicted, mentally-ill homeless for a few key blocks so visiting dignitaries don’t mistake Los Angeles and San Francisco for Mogadishu Somalia or Chihuahua Mexico.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, with the upcoming Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in San Francisco, there is a frantic rush to clean up the city streets – the streets, the sidewalks and the many businesses which have been rotting under the burden of the filth from homeless tent camps allowed by city officials, the Globe reported.

This has been going on for far too long, and now the urgency to clean up is laudable and laughable at the same time. Just who is San Francisco Mayor London Breed trying to impress? The Chinese? They are already laughing at and mocking San Francisco and California over the homeless population allowed to languish in our cities.

Why not clean streets up first for the taxpaying residents and business owners? A little buy-in from residents would go a long way for a mayor intent on impressing visiting dignitaries.

In July, San Francisco resident reporter Sebastian, a friend of the Globe, reported that Businesses along Van Ness have been struggling for years due to decaying street conditions and crime:

Frustrated by the lack of responses from the San Francisco Mayor’s and the Chief of Police’s offices, the Jaguar Land Rover San Francisco dealership on Van Ness and Ellis took the initiative to spruce up their neighborhood with urban gardening to fight crime which I wrote about:

https://beyondchron.org/my-walk-down-troubled-van-ness/

They installed steel planters on their Ellis sidewalk about 3 months ago which soon after was followed by their neighbors along Van Ness and Franklin.

And just like that, San Francisco’s new “Urban Garden District” was developed.

San Francisco business owners have had to spend thousands of dollars on the steel planters on the sidewalks in front of their businesses to keep the homeless and growing tent encampments away. It mostly works. These same business owners pay taxes to the city with the expectation that the city will maintain the common streets and sidewalks.

And now they are being rewarded by mayors who won’t clean the cities and eradicate the homeless for the citizens, but will do it for visiting dignitaries. Welcome to California.