Homelessness
Helpless and Homeless Each year millions of people from all over the world flock to San Francisco for its remarkable beaches, the famous Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, Lombard Street, and its old fashioned trolley cars, but end up witnessing one additional feature not mentioned in their tourist guides, homelessness. The homeless problem in San Francisco has been on the rise for the past couple of decades, with the homeless population ranging from an estimated 11,000 to 14,000 (Coalition on Homelessness). ... Homelessness began to rise and become a noticeable problem in San Francisco during the 1980s. Many factors contributed to the rise of homelessness. ... Since the 1980s San Francisco has demolished thousands of affordable housing units, with only a small fraction being replaced (Coalition on Homelessness). ... Throughout San Francisco there are only about 1,400 shelter beds, which can not possibly accommodate all of the homeless population, leaving thousands of people out on the cold San Francisco streets each night (Coalition on Homelessness). ... For the last two decades San Francisco has had various programs to try and rid the city of homelessness, with four different mayors enacting their own policies. ... Current Mayor Willie Brown stated that “Homelessness is not a city soluble problem. Homelessness is a societal problem. ... population has a serious mental illness, five to six times as many people who are homeless (20-25%) have serious mental illnesses (National Resource Center on Homelessness and Mental Illness). ... According to the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness “warehousing psychiatrically disabled individuals in the criminal system is both inappropriate and inhumane. ... Although nurses try to place patients in shelters, many times this is not possible because some shelters shut out mentally ill people (Coalition on Homelessness). ... According to the Coalition on Homelessness 10, 967 residents of San Francisco requested mental heath services, but only 2, 333 were eligible for services. ... Targeting the needs of mentally ill people could ultimately be the key to ending homelessness.