San Francisco’s Homeless Crisis

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.