There is a persistent, agreed upon fiction that San Francisco can house its homeless by itself.
To address this delusion, an honest reckoning is needed. For years all our mayors and staff have competently and diligently addressed this as their top priority, yet we remain exactly where we were over 20 years ago when Mayor Willie Brown committed truth by saying that it was an intractable problem. He could not solve it. We had about 7,000 homeless then, and we still do.