San Francisco’s Homeless Crisis
City Journal Audio
Manhattan Institute
4.8 • 615 Ratings
🗓️ 9 October 2019
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Heather Mac Donald joins Seth Barron to discuss homelessness on the streets of San Francisco and the city’s wrongheaded attempts to solve the problem.
"San Francisco has conducted a real-life experiment in what happens when a society stops enforcing bourgeois norms of behavior," writes Mac Donald in City Journal. For nearly three decades, the Bay Area has been a magnet for the homeless. Now the situation is growing dire, as residents and visitors experience near-daily contact with mentally disturbed persons.
Mac Donald's essay, "San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless," appears in City Journal's Autumn 2019 issue; an adapted version was published in the Wall Street Journal.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the 10 Block's podcast. This is Paul Beston, managing editor of City Journal. |
| 0:05.8 | Coming up on the show today, Heather McDonald talks with Seth Barron about her latest essay |
| 0:10.6 | for the magazine titled San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless. It's a tour to force of reporting |
| 0:16.9 | from Heather's time in the Bay Area this past summer, and we're thrilled to have her on the |
| 0:21.1 | podcast to discuss it. The story was recently adapted in the Wall Street Journal, and we'll link to that |
| 0:26.9 | and to the full-length City Journal essay in the show description. San Francisco Hostage to the Homeless |
| 0:33.4 | is the first story released online from our new autumn issue, which will be available soon. |
| 0:38.9 | That's it for me. |
| 0:40.3 | Conversation between Heather McDonald and Seth Barron begins after the music. |
| 1:01.2 | Music Welcome back to 10 Blocks, the podcast of City Journal. |
| 1:05.1 | This is your host for today, Seth Barron, Associate Editor of City Journal. |
| 1:10.0 | I'm joined today by Heather McDonald, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City |
| 1:11.3 | Journal. Heather writes widely on crime, disorder, and free speech. Her most recent book is |
| 1:17.8 | The Diversity Delusion. She's here today to discuss her latest article in the fall issue of |
| 1:23.5 | City Journal, San Francisco, hostage to homelessness. |
| 1:30.5 | Heather, thanks for joining us on 10 blocks. |
| 1:31.8 | Well, thanks for having me on Seth. |
| 1:32.7 | It's great to be here. |
| 1:37.8 | So you went to San Francisco and did some pretty intensive on-the-ground reporting. |
| 1:39.1 | What did you see there? |
| 1:41.7 | I saw squalor. |
| 1:43.0 | I saw chaos. |
... |
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