I've had some pretty sharp disagreements with Bevan Dufty (in the picture above), but in this case, he's on the right track: Mayor Lee's idea of launching an ad campaign to discourage contributions to panhandlanders is ugly, dehumanizing, and a civic disgrace.
Homeless people are people. They're not animals at Yosemite ("please don't feed the bears.") They're not some sort of public-relations problem for downtown hotels. They're San Franciscans who for one reason or another have lost the ability to pay rent. That's not a crime and it shouldn't be the end of thier humanity.
You want to stop agressive panhandling? It's relatively easy. Increase general assistance grants and make sure that everyone in the city has enough money to eat and get a place to sleep. Oh, but that involves raising taxes -- and it also requires a dramatic change in attitude at City Hall. A guaranteed minimum income wasn't always considered a crazy radical idea; 40 years ago, it was part of the mainstream of American political thought. Now, anybody who isn't working -- for whatever reason -- is considered drunk, lazy, a freeloader, a drag on all of the rest of us. Except that a lot of the rest of us are one paycheck away from the same fate.
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