A never ending problem...

Along with sleeping bags and shopping carts, San Francisco city workers came up with an interesting collection of items when they cleaned out that homeless encampment underneath Interstate 280 the other day - bicycles.

And not just a few of them. "We pulled 20 to 25 out," said Rachel Gordon, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Works. That wasn't a first, Gordon said. The camp, which housed around 30 people, has been cleared regularly for months, only to have the homeless come right back each time. And each time city workers went through, there were bicycles - and bicycle parts.

How many turned out to be stolen is anyone's guess. Police tell us they were unaware Public Works even had them. "It's news to me," said Lt. William Roualdes, the Police Department's liaison on homeless issues. Bike theft is just one of the many possible petty crimes that officials say largely goes unreported when it comes to the encampments. Meth use and prostitution are also common.

And cleaning them out is no joy, either. On any day, the city clears about a half-dozen camps of various sizes. Each job requires six employees working four to five hours, Public Works says. More often than not, the campers soon return.

Of the 45 campers who were rousted from the I-280 camp during the first clean-out in August, only 14 accepted rooms provided by the city. This time out, 25 people went into rooms, said Bevan Dufty, Mayor Ed Lee's point person on homelessness issues.

Meanwhile, the camp land's owner, Caltrans, is putting up a $300,000 fence and posting an around-the-clock California Highway Patrol watch to try to keep the homeless - and their bicycles - from coming back.

Unfortunately the 'homeless' problem in San Francisco will not go away. It is a nice thought to provide services but most if not all the 'homeless' are drug addicts or alcoholics or both, and most are more than happy to stay on the streets, doing nothing, stealing and getting high. These people are never going to be reformed or come off the streets. It would mean they have to actually do something with their life.

The city just enables them to continue, if they city actually enforced the laws and cleaned them off the street, the city would be a much cleaner safer place. The really bad thing is that most people say to let them do what they want, but those people never actually go down and see those people. They would get mugged just like anyone else, their car broken into, bike stolen, smell the waste on the street, see the drunks fighting... But by all means you can't try to stop them and violate their right to be a drain on the cities resources.