San Francisco Homeless Policy: A Costly Fiasco

Over the past 50 years, give or take, the idea of personal agency has been displaced by a soulless conviction that all human dysfunction is caused by the environment.

WSJ letter to the editor.

"Ms. Mac Donald accurately describes the thought process behind San Francisco government’s decision to tolerate squalor, addiction and crime on its city streets because it is “involuntary, and it persists because of inadequate public spending.”

Over the past 50 years, give or take, the idea of personal agency has been displaced by a soulless conviction that all human dysfunction is caused by the environment, and more recently honed to a more specific aspect of that environment: oppression by the white power structure.

Aside from the irony of how this formulation might apply to San Francisco’s governance, Ms. Mac Donald is also right to call for building clean, spartan and safe transitional institutions to help these folks get back on their feet and back to life. The deinstitutionalization of the 1970s was also motivated by “compassion,” without any thought about the consequences. I hope those lessons have been learned. It’s time to try to do it right this time.

Tom O’Hare, Ph.D.
Boston College School of Social Work
Boston"