Not All of San Francisco's Problems Are the Same

Conflating mental illness, substance abuse crime and homelessness and a tempting but damaging way to solve San Francisco's problems.

The national media, and too frequently local media and politicians, have portrayed San Francisco as being mired in a broad crisis of homelessness, substance abuse, mental illness and crime. These four conditions are often combined into a kind of Four Horsemen of the San Francisco Apocalypse, suggesting that neighborhoods like the Tenderloin and some are…