Can you define your use of liberal and progressive? From my point of view a liberal and progressive government would have the opposite impact on homelessness and mentally ill people: by providing social support and welfare to those in need.
So I got a bit confused by the usage of liberal and progressive on this sense as they're fuzzy definitions by themselves.
> From my point of view a liberal and progressive government would have the opposite impact on homelessness and mentally ill people: by providing social support and welfare to those in need.
San Francisco does that, but it has also cut back on the most important social service for those who aren't impoverished: policing. By refusing to punish people for defecation in public, bathing in public fountains, panhandling &c., as well as by offering standard welfare service, SF has made life very easy for the homeless and mentally-ill. Unsurprisingly, there are many of them.
It's also made life not so nice for those who aren't homeless and/or mentally ill and aren't wealthy enough to afford to live above the mess, but I don't think the SF political class cares about them.
I think wtbob means either a) liberal & progressive government is inefficient and therefore things are bad, or b) homeless people move to SF because liberal & progressive government makes it better to be homeless there than in other places in the US. I am not sure which.
I really dislike the second argument (which I've read before). Effectively they're arguing for shifting the problem rather than actually solving it, we've literally seen states put mentally ill people on buses out of state(!).
Utah has a lot of problems (and is really conservative in most other ways), but you have to give them props for actually trying to solve the homeless issue[0] rather than hiding it or sending it out of town. Although the same state turned down Medicaid expansion funding which would have helped those with mental illness, so it isn't all rainbows and sunshine.
I'm sure it doesn't compare to SF, but the "homeless issue" is hardly solved in SLC, Utah, from my anecdotal experiences living here. If the homeless population has been reduced "91%" as this article maintains, then I cannot imagine what it was like before.
From what I've heard, SF's social services are good enough that other cities and states actively have their homeless people bused to SF on the grounds that SF will take better care of them (Nevada has actually been sued for this).
So I got a bit confused by the usage of liberal and progressive on this sense as they're fuzzy definitions by themselves.