completely free means you have one less legal reason to kick out the bad kind of homeless.
And last time I was there the controllers were scanning passes quite frequently.
I've never been in the Paris métro after it shut down, but are you saying the homeless people camping in some stations in the evenings, wrapped in their sleeping bags, get up at 1 a.m. and file out? I somehow doubt that.
But I’m going to continue funding homicide investigations.
“Don’t make things livable in small and practical ways, just hold out for total structural revolution and the solution to multigenerational and intractable social problems” is an infuriating line that unfortunately guides much of San Francisco policymaking.
- Can't solve homelessness without mass affordability.
- Can't have mass affordability without density.
- Can't have density when voters are worried about congestion and parking impacts of development.
- Can't stop worrying about congestion and parking impacts of development when you drive everywhere.
- Won't stop driving everywhere until transit is attractive.
Homelesness and repulsive transit are a feedback loop. We have to break it somewhere. Fare enforcement is a lever we actually have.
So yes, I'm willing to tell some homeless people to go to a shelter (of which there are plenty in the city) rather than ruin a transit system used by half a million commuters.
1. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Human-waste-shuts-dow...
(2) You live in a society and pretending that you don't and funding nothing isn't going to make the problem go away, it's going to be there getting worse. This is the dark side to America's individualism. Everyone looks out for themselves and pretends nobody else's problems should matter to them, then look around at the crap pile that leaves behind and wonders whose responsibility it should be -- not theirs to be sure.