San Francisco Houses Homeless In Hotels, Buys Them Booze, Drugs

The NYPost has more:

One recent morning a disheveled, visibly disturbed man ran frantically around the lobby of San Francisco’s Mark Hopkins hotel, the historic and elegant property located at the crest of tony Nob Hill. As one of that city’s designated Front-Line Worker Housing (FLWH) hotels, it’s reserved for health-care and public-safety employees working on COVID-19-related matters. But San Francisco is surreptitiously placing homeless people in luxury hotels by designating them as emergency front-line workers, a term that the broader community understands to mean doctors, nurses and similar professionals.

“Do I look scary to you?” the man demanded. “They’re trying to evict me because I wanted more towels but I’m homeless! They called the cops on me.” He dashed out the door and around the grand circular entrance, where two police officers attempted to resolve the situation. Soon a cab pulled up and an inebriated couple emerged, holding full plastic trash bags. They fought, screaming at each other until the woman entered the lobby and her partner lit a meth pipe in the garage area. More “front-line workers.”

If neighborhood residents were more aware of the influx of these new guests, who frequently suffer from drug addiction and severe mental illness as well as having criminal backgrounds, they might object. Consequently, the city has evoked emergency-disaster law to keep the information private. Officials refuse to notify the public about what is happening in their community and are blocking the press by withholding the list of hotels and preventing reporters from entering the properties. The Department of Emergency Management has attempted to spin the secrecy by claiming, “Disclosure of the names of hotels where people are being sheltered could jeopardize the privacy and safety of the vulnerable people whom the City has placed there if the public and the press become aware of the circumstances of their placement and could increase the risk that they will be subject to discrimination or harassment on the basis of their health status or status as an unsheltered person.”

The public does have a right to know, however, and obfuscation is ultimately futile. Security guards standing outside hotel entrances, where they had never been before, are clear indicators that something is amiss. An uptick in crime, drug activity and vagrancy around the hotels is another clue. Properties that have become de facto homeless shelters range from low-end haunts such as the Motel 6 to mid-range and boutique hotels. High-end hotels that house the homeless-turned-frontline-workers include the InterContinental San Francisco — and the Mark Hopkins.

The InterContinental Mark Hopkins is now a homeless shelter.Alamy
The Department of Public Health manages the controversial free alcohol, cigarette and cannabis program for homeless people placed in the hotels. It originally claimed that money for the service came from private donations, which are not allowed by law. After multiple requests to provide the names of the donors, the DPH conceded that “No such record currently exists.” A public-records investigation into the matter has revealed that, as of June 16, DPH approved $3,795.98 to buy the homeless guests vodka and beer (cigarettes have been scrapped). The funding came from the public treasury, after all.

Meanwhile, chaos is erupting inside and around the hotels. City and hotel workers are required to sign nondisclosure agreements and are forbidden from discussing what they’re seeing. Per the Mayor’s Declaration of Emergency, speaking out can result in a fine of up to $1,000, imprisonment with a maximum sentence of one year, or both."

That's right San Francisco parents....you're kids are being shut out of school while your city spends money on vodka and cigarettes for homeless people staying in free hotels. 

Unfortunately, that's not even the worst of it.

From our friends at Fox News:

Thousands of homeless people have been housed in several of San Francisco’s empty hotels in an effort to slow the spread of coronavirus.

However, City Journal contributor Erica Sandberg told "Tucker Carlson Tonight" Wednesday the policy has been an "absolute disaster"

"It's solving exactly nothing and as a matter of fact, it's making all the problems worse," said Sandberg, who described the scene inside the hotels as "about as bad as you can imagine, only exponentially worse."

"You are talking drug-fueled parties, overdoses, deaths, people are being assaulted. You have sexual assaults going on, it is pandemonium," she said. "It is extremely bad and it needs to stop."

City officials reportedly secured close to 5,000 rooms at several city hotels that signed up to house homeless and other members of at-risk populations who need to quarantine or socially distance themselves.

Controversy ensued after a report alleged that the city was providing alcohol, marijuana, and methadone to homeless addicts residing in the hotels.

"The people who are assigned as disaster workers, these people have been librarians," Sandberg told host Brian Kilmeade. "They are just paper pushers, administrators who are reassigned to these hotels and what they are telling me is beyond the pale.

"They are not just horrified, they are traumatized by what they see. You have mattresses that have feces on them, blood, hospital bands on the floor. What people are seeing is so horrible that they walk out and they say, 'I don't want to go back in there.'"

Instead of promoting health San Francisco is enabling the addictions and deaths of their city's homeless.