Can we please change this? How about “homeless and sick”? How about street sickness? Or? Although there’s a certain percentage of people living on the streets who are economically challenged, it is minute in comparison to the number of people who are suffering from mental illness, and drug and alcohol addiction. Accordingly, I see the manic and psychotic effects as I drive through SF and Berkeley with debris and items from recycling centers strewn everywhere in the midst of tattered tents and burned ground.

Most of these people need medical intervention, aid and accountability for their transgressions. A bed in a navigation center, ostensibly one giant tent, does not target the source, and so the vicious cycle continues.

Unquestionably, the issue is complex. Block after block in SF residential high-rises are sprouting up. Why not mandate the building of permanent housing with medical facilities specifically for those who are sick? And, in general, why not mandate the building of additional, new hospitals and clinics commensurate with the subsequent, rapidly increasing population?

Does this come full circle back to the issue of health care as a human right rather than a privilege?