In the Bay Area one of the big unanswered questions concerning homelessness is: housing first, or treatment first? Housing-first adherents argue that the first thing to do with homeless people is to get them into permanent housing. This, they claim, is because a lack of housing is responsible for all of their other problems (drug addiction, mental illness, criminal behavior, etc.) and it makes no sense to treat symptoms without getting to their root cause—the absence of a place to live.

Just my personal opinion on the topic of “influencers,” whom Google describes as “individuals with large or highly engaged social media followings who hold considerable sway in specific industries such as beauty, fashion, fitness, travel, and food.”

After the slowest start of any Oakland mayor in memory, Lee just announced she will create “lasting solutions” that will ensure “everyone has a safe, clean place to call home.”

I’m neither surprised nor bothered to hear that Oakland has such a high eviction rate for non-payment of rent. The fact is, Oakland has a lot of people who think they don’t have to pay for stuff they want because it should be free. And in this, our crypto-communist government has encouraged them.

I don’t want to get into trouble here with deeply religious people, but there has to be a limit to how intrusive their evangelism can be in public. Yesterday, there was a lady with a very loud microphone preaching about Jesus and saving our souls and so on. She was standing on Broadway near City Center, and I swear you could hear her from 2 blocks away. She had a very unpleasant, grating voice made even worse by the distortion of the amplification. I was surprised the police didn’t stop her, even though there were several nearby.