Rudy Batka never learned to read or write. With a lingering infection in his hip, he can hardly walk either. He’s homeless and rarely travels far from San Francisco’s troubled Sixth Street corridor, where he buys his drugs.
Roughly 2,800 miles away in Hernando County, Florida, his mother, Mildred Batka, hasn’t heard from him in more than a year. In her backyard, she keeps a trailer with a bed inside — just in case he returns home one day.
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“Is he eating?” Mildred asked The Standard by phone. “I always thought the worst, that I would have to go to California to pick up his ashes. … I can’t imagine how he’s living.”
Rudy is just one of potentially thousands of people who have moved to San Francisco without housing, in what the city says is a growing phenomenon.
The mild climate, multitude of social services, and culture of acceptance have long made San Francisco a destination for those on the margins of society. But the most recent Point in Time count, a controversial method for measuring the homeless population, shows that the trend of unhoused people moving to the city has accelerated in the past two years.
Of 952 homeless people surveyed, 20% said they were previously housed in another Bay Area county, 10% were from another California county, and 11% were from out of state. Meanwhile, the share of people who became homeless while living in the city has dropped to 59% from 71% in 2022.
Mayor Daniel Lurie has made the issue a linchpin of his administration, promising to crack down on “drug tourism” since the early days of his campaign.
Kunal Modi, Lurie’s homelessness chief, highlighted the data in an X post Jan. 29, before starting work in the mayor’s office. He vowed to expand the city’s homeless relocation programs and push other counties to build more shelter and housing.
“Our residents are generous,” Modi wrote. “But it’s not sustainable for SF to be the services hub for the region.”
Click here to read the full article in the San Francisco Standard
The last line is clear and applies to the State and the Nation.
It is not sustainable, and the TAX BURDEN is so great even the wealthy are fed up.
So what will Slick and the Dem’s do?????
More of the same that has crashed nations and cultures throughout the history of mankind.