Most Popular

  • The Principal Matter
    Teachers said Principal Gil Cho was dictatorial. Students said he manhandled them. The school district said he was doing a good job.
  • He's No Angel
    They once called him a savior who helped people in need. Today, Edwin Parada is accused of taking money from Latinos unfamiliar with real estate laws.
  • Nonconformity Still Reigns!
    The top eccentrics of San Francisco, and that's saying something.
  • A Time to Kill
    The SPCA is struggling to finance a new hospital, and one way to save money is to speed up euthanasia.
  • State of the Cart
    Join us as we map the street food scene and find out why there aren't more vendors in this most food-involved and temperate of cities.

Recent Articles

Recent Articles by Eliza Strickland

  • The Gift of Reading

    Still have people to buy for? Consider these books as last-minute stocking stuffers.

  • Breaking the Cycle

    It's expensive and time-consuming, but a court can help cure the hard-core homeless problem in San Francisco

  • Quality of Hype

    Aggressive panhandlers are not getting the gentle, loving care they so need from the city

  • Chefs' Surprise

    The California Culinary Academy calls a student assembly to respond to our June 6 expose. We sneak in and listen

  • Stop Snitching

    Medical pot activists haze the traitors who ratted out Ed Rosenthal

National Features >

  • Houston Press

    A Dirty Picture

    What mainstream publishers don't want you to know about door-to-door magazine sales.

    By Craig Malisow

  • Riverfront Times

    Welcome to Cougar Heaven

    When these huntresses on are on the prowl, the prey very much wants to be caught.

    By Unreal

  • Broward-Palm Beach New Times

    Sweet Deal

    How rumored McCain veep choice Charlie Crist wants to bail out Big Sugar.

    By Bob Norman

  • SF Weekly

    All-American Girls

    Are Asian women getting their jawbones cut to look whiter?

    By Lauren Smiley

Quality of Hype

Aggressive panhandlers are not getting the gentle, loving care they so need from the city

By Eliza Strickland

Published on June 27, 2007

Mayor Gavin Newsom has been busy unveiling new proposals recently, in a rush to show voters how much he will improve their quality of life if they re-elect him in November. The community court proposal is at the top of his list. It would supposedly address crimes of poverty like panhandling by linking the arrested with social services.

We just have one question: Does anyone remember Proposition M?

Think back. The year was 2003, and Newsom was an ambitious supervisor campaigning for mayor. He sponsored the successful ballot initiative known as Proposition M to outlaw "aggressive panhandling," and used it to show voters — you guessed it — how much he would improve their quality of life, should they elect him as mayor. As a way to sell the ballot measure to soft-hearted liberals, the law required the city to connect arrested panhandlers with social services.

Four years later, homeless advocates say no specific program was ever set up to ease panhandlers into social services, so most judges have dismissed the cases.

According to the Department of Public Health, a grand total of 17 people have been referred to social services as a result of Prop. M. "It's easier to make something against the law than to set up alternatives," said Elisa Della-Piana, of the Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights.

So Newsom used Prop. M to get elected, but did nothing to ensure that it had any effect whatsoever. Might this say something about the mayor's ability to follow through on ideas like, say, the community courts? Not at all, said mayoral spokesman Nathan Ballard. Really, Prop. M was just the warm-up act.

"The community justice center is the coordinated system that Proposition M really needs to be successful," Ballard wrote in an e-mail.

In the meantime, the mayor could make use of the homeless folks who are back to panhandling at the highway offramps. Why not give them some Newsom '07 posters?



SF Weekly Insiders

  • Local food, music and news blasts
  • Free Stuff
Backpage.com