I really don't know what you're trying to get at with your comment. It seems to consist mostly of straw-man arguments and a lack of interest in confronting a real problem.
Across the country, the homeless are routinely prosecuted for relieving themselves in public, yet in many cases they're offered no places to lawfully do so. (I don't know about downtown SF; I'm saying if there aren't bathrooms available to the homeless, you can't fairly prosecute them for going in public.)
Similarly, it's unfair to prosecute someone for shouting at passers-by if that person suffers from a serious mental illness, and has been denied treatment, as is so often the case. Indeed, our country has been defunding mental health and bolstering prisons, with the result that many would-be psychiatric patients are now being warehoused in prison.
> I really don't know what you're trying to get at with your comment. It seems to consist mostly of straw-man arguments
The article quote an SF startup CEO who seems to be calling all homeless people "degenerates." So it's hardly a straw man I'm arguing against. In case it wasn't clear, I'll be quite explicit: My argument is directed against the attitude espoused by the startup CEO in the second and third paragraphs of the article.
> a lack of interest in confronting a real problem.
Considering I explicitly agreed there was a problem and proposed an admittedly partial solution[1], I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion. What is the problem I'm uninterested in confronting? The problem of homelessness? The problem of tech workers having to encounter the homeless?
[1] I proposed better community policing as a way of addressing legitimate complaints about street crime. I should have also discussed the dire need to address the root issue, which is homelessness itself. For those interested, "housing-first" is a promising model.
Together we can put petition Ed Lee and SFPD for effective non-political policing. Let's start by upholding the law in Dolores Park on the week-ends.
Er, hello, anybody there? Nobody interested anymore? Hmmm.
I think cost and availablility of housing might have something more to do with it, seeing as rich folks doing drugs doesn't lead to homelessness nearly as much.
Still, if we want to know why the general public is displeased with college students in some hypothetical town, we should ask ourselves if there really is a problem with bored college students lobbing beer bottles through windows for fun. The hypothesis "The general public is frustrated with the local college kids because a highly visible minority of them wreck up the place" should probably be examined before we jump on board with less... direct.. hypotheses.
Yes, I know it's a counterfactual, but I can never resist the opportunity to toss out that old chestnut, because just about every time I do so, it meets two or three people who not only have never heard of it, but never imagined it possible.
Clearly not all 'mob grievances' are legitimate.
Anyway, even if we take the 'techies' grievances with the homeless as not legitimate, I think it is important to remain honest with ourselves as to what those (not legitimate) grievances are. The author is proposing a theory of the origin of those grievances that I think discards the seemingly obvious origin.
So for example, I assume the issue the residents of Kent had with the college students was somewhere along the lines of "they were a bunch of unpatriotic smelly hippies who didn't spend enough time in class". Both of us agree that would not be a legitimate grievance. What I think is relatively unsupported and usefulness is an alternative theory that the residents of Kent thought that all the college students were "Pretentious educated snobs who, on their shoestring college student budgets, contributed little to local businesses", asserting that the hippy stuff was just a convenient excuse. I mean, that could be the case, but I would want to see a pretty solid refutation of the obvious theory before I accept that less direct one.
While the residents of Kent were obviously being hateful monsters, they were probably being straightforward and honest with their complaints.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes what the mob claims their grievance is (legitimate or not) really is what they think their grievance is.
The legitimate complaints about the homeless in SF seem to always revolve around criminal acts: Assault and vandalism, mostly. (The less legitimate complaints are usually a variant on "I shouldn't have to look at poor people.")
Not all homeless people commit these sorts of crimes. Those who do are just disproportionately visible. This provides fodder for the false narrative that the homeless are criminals who are undeserving of compassion and responsible for their own criminality.
So how can we discuss this issue without wrongly demonizing a whole demographic? Here's how. If you live in SF and you're bothered by street crime, complain about street crime. Advocate for community policing that a) keeps a lid on assault, vandalism, and other such crimes, and b) treats the public (including the homeless) as valued customers.
It's fine to say that street crime in downtown SF bothers you. That's a completely understandable sentiment. I think most everyone feels the same way about the neighborhoods they inhabit. What's not fine is heaping overbroad blame on an already marginalized group.