Appeals court validates San Francisco's homeless initiative

Appeals court validates San Francisco's homeless initiative

Friday, April 30, 2004
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(04-30) 16:48 PDT SAN FRANCISCO (AP) --

A state appeals court here validated San Francisco's "Care not Cash" homeless initiative Friday, reversing a lower court that voided the measure city voters approved in 2002.

Proposition N reduces the monthly cash allowances of some 3,300 homeless residents from about $400, the most generous in the state, to about $60. The estimated $13.2 million in savings is to be redirected to shelter beds and drug abuse and alcoholism treatment programs.

Last year, a San Francisco judge voided the measure, saying only the city's elected Board of Supervisors, not voters, had the authority to reduce payments to the homeless.

The San Francisco-based 1st District Court of Appeal said it was upholding the right of voters and exercising the court's "duty to jealously guard the prerogative of initiative."


more... http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/04/30/state1948EDT0194.DTL

but after Newsom showed his mettle over the Gay Marriage event, I trust him.

If this can work, he can make it work. I'll put it that way.

...sticking in the back of one set of liberal principles, while in the right hand he reaches out to help another set of liberal principles.

However, I guarantee you that if, say, they were a law that married people got a discount on home purchases, Newsom wouldn't be for gay marriage, because his true goal as mayor is to shift wealth to real estate developers.

He needs to put up a liberal smoke screen with the right hand, BECAUSE what he's doing with the left hand is so undemocratic.

Nonetheless, you gotta love the single-issue voters with their eyes not on the big picture prize.

Care Not Cash hits streets today
S.F. to start offering homeless people shelter instead of money

Kevin Fagan, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, May 3, 2004

snip...
The program is being phased in so slowly that, for most of the 2,500 homeless people getting welfare checks, there will be no change this week. Or even next month. But the change is genuine, and it marks the start of a new, although confusing, era for the city's homeless.It works like this:

Until today, homeless people on welfare have been getting monthly checks as big as $410 -- the highest in the state -- with the option of spending some or all of it on rental rooms for a few weeks a month.

snip...
Mayor Gavin Newsom, who wrote Care Not Cash and rode its popularity into the mayor's office last winter, understands this all may be confusing.

But just to reassure himself of his plan's potential, in the past four months he has quietly visited shelters, logged himself into the homeless fingerprinting system to see how it works and inspected residential hotels getting ready to take in Care Not Cash recipients.


more... http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/05/03/MNGAF6EM0B1.DTL

Looks like this is a hands on project for Mayor Newsom. I hope it works, looks like it might have potential for some.

community got the contracts to build those "hotels"?

Watch where the money is going.

I would rather have seen it go into the pockets of the people who need it than go into profit sharing of a bunch real estate developers.