San Francisco is not the worst-governed city in the United States, but that’s not for lack of trying.
The city became infamous a few years ago for the charming problem of mass public defecation. But, given San Francisco’s problems with regulating toilets and building toilets, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised.
The city also has a quirky habit of spending enormous sums of money to subsidize homelessness.
Local politicians also believe that bums in the city should get high at taxpayer expense.
I’m not joking. Here are some excerpts from a 2024 report in the New York Post.
A program that offers free booze to the homeless alcoholics that roam San Francisco caught flak this week when a tech CEO questioned the logic of feeding the addictions of the city’s street dwellers. Adam Nathan, founder and CEO of the small business AI marketing tool Blaze
and the chair of the Salvation Army San Francisco Metro Advisory Board, posted a thread on X slamming the program after watching a string of unhoused drunks line up for their shots, stating it “just doesn’t feel right.” …the four-year-old “managed alcohol program” actually costs the city $5 million a year, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The program as described by the Chronicle sees nurses dispense “controlled doses” of vodka and beer to street people at specific times of the day.
From a big-picture perspective, $5 million is chump change, particularly when compared to billions and billions of dollars of fraud in redistribution programs such as food stamps, welfare, and Medicaid.
But it is nonetheless baffling that politicians in San Francisco at some point made a conscious decision to give away free booze.
I’ll close with two observations.
First, San Francisco actually elected a semi-rational mayor who took office in early 2025, so I wonder whether he has continued this specific boondoggle. Hopefully he will watch what Mamdani does and then do the opposite.
Two, local governments should have leeway to squander money in strange ways, so long as they are using their own money and not mooching from state and/or federal taxpayers. Three cheers for real federalism.
International Liberty 