When Tom Ammiano was in a runoff with Mayor Brown in 1999, I sent this to his campaign urging that he make a speech along these lines. Brown had thrown in the towel on homelessness early in his first administration and was vulnerable to a genuinely progressive approach to the issue. I never heard from the Ammiano campaign, and they never made homelessness an important issue in a losing campaign.

Lost Opportunity: The Speech Tom Ammiano Didn't Make in 1999

Fellow San Franciscans:
The other day Mayor Brown proposed a regional conference on homelessness. The idea has some merit, but coming from this mayor, it's four years late. He had his chance to deal with this important and distressing city problem, and he botched it, forfeiting the right to lead the city for the next four years.

Mayor Brown's policy on homelessness: periodically calling out the cops to roust the homeless from city parks and public property, confiscating their belongings, and pushing them from one neighborhood to another (Interestingly, however, one never sees homeless people in Pacific Heights, Sea Cliff, St. Francis Wood, or Nob Hill---or any other neighborhood where the mayor and his more prosperous supporters live).

Granted that permanent encampments of the homeless in city parks are unacceptable, but merely pushing the homeless out of city parks is only half a policy---and the cruelest half at that. The half that's missing: offering the services and opportunities to help the homeless get and stay off our city's streets.

The mayor's excuse for his abject failure on this issue is that homelessness is a national problem, and there's not much one little city---even a prosperous city with soaring budget surpluses---can do to solve it. Even if this was true---and it's a half-truth at best---homelessness inevitably manifests itself in local jurisdictions. It's not acceptable for city government to abandon people and neighborhoods crying out for leadership just because the problem is difficult and nationwide.

New city policy initiatives on homelessness are long overdue.

We liberals and progressives, by the way, should also confess that we too have been derelict in our duty to both the homeless and the city's neighborhoods that suffer from this policy failure. For the last four years we've done little but react to the mayor's repressive approach, instead of proposing humane and pragmatic alternatives in a time of large budget surpluses.

There also seems to be a preposterous notion held by many progressives and defenders of the homeless that homelessness is just another lifestyle choice by those who can't or won't pay rent. Anyone who's taken a close look the people living on our streets knows better. These people are in trouble not just because they lack affordable housing or because they prefer living outdoors. Obviously housing costs are an important component of the problem, and providing shelter will be a crucial part of any solution. But we need to face reality: the overwhelming majority of the homeless have serious substance abuse and/or mental health problems.

The people of San Francisco should be clear about the primary goal of the Ammiano administration (1) to help the homeless get and stay off the streets with aggressive and humane outreach. Anything less is unfair to both the homeless themselves---158 died on our streets in 1998---and to the rest of the city's people.

After I'm elected, I'll contact the political leadership of other jurisdictions in the Bay Area and invite them to join me in San Francisco (2) for a regional conference on homelessness. Regional policy coordination is essential to prevent those jurisdictions perceived as having the most generous approach---higher general assistance payments, more subsidized housing, etc.---from becoming magnets for the region's indigent.

While plans for a conference on homelessness are being made, the Ammiano administration will conduct (3) a citywide census of the homeless population. How many homeless are there in the city? What will it take to get them off the streets? How much will it cost, and how will we pay for it?

And why shouldn't dealing seriously with homelessness be on the national agenda in a presidential election year? I will use the prestige of the mayor's office and my political contacts to try and make this happen.

We should, by the way, throw a bouquet to the much-maligned Clint Reilly, since a census of the homeless was one of a number of good ideas contained in his substantive, widely unread booklet on homelessness published during the first phase of the mayoral campaign.

I want to make the fundamental assumption of the Ammiano administration's policy on homelessness clear: It is unacceptable that people, for whatever reasons, are living and dying on the streets of San Francisco.

Our city once had the reputation for being progressive and humane. Alas, that reputation has been sullied by our continued acquiescence in mass homelessness on our streets.

Let us begin to meet our responsibilities to the homeless, and in the process, perhaps salvage the reputation of our great and beautiful city.

Thank you,
Your next mayor, Tom Ammiano