The City already spends up to $24,000 per person a year with little to show for it.

San Francisco residents and visitors alike know from direct experience why homelessness outstrips terrorism as a hot-button issue in the city. Supervisor Chris Daly is pushing for a “homeless summit,” but those who attend should ponder some basic realities.

There are approximately 7,300 homeless people on the streets of San Francisco, more than the entire population of Placerville. The reason for such a high number should be obvious to anyone whose vision is not blurred by political correctness.

The city’s policy on the homeless can be best summed up as, “If you build it, they will come.” The city has, and they did. By its policies, San Francisco has created a market for homelessness, transforming the downtown area into a regional magnet for the homeless.

Unlike other places with a better climate and kinder topography, San Francisco offers a number of ways for the homeless to get cash from the government, not just voucher services. For the most part, there are no questions asked and little or nothing required of the recipient by way of information or work.

The result is that the majority of homeless in San Francisco are addicts and drunks, who use the cash to feed their habits. This has, in turn, created a market for the flourishing criminal element that is now taking over the streets of San Francisco.

On the other end of the spectrum is the small minority of the homeless that is made up of working families who’ve lost jobs or a place to live, or women with children fleeing abusive homes. These individuals tend to use the services available to transition out of homelessness rather quickly. The mentally ill are a more significant and much more demanding portion of the population, but they are still not the majority.

The minority is exploited by the majority and their advocates to justify more services to the wider population. The homeless are now the “indigent community,” a protected constituency with militant advocates who see their clients not as free moral agents capable of decisions but victims of capitalism, helpless without government aid. In this vision, the problems of the homeless have nothing to do with their own choices and failures but only with the moral lapses of others.

At the same time, it has become fashionable to defend homelessness as just another lifestyle choice, with a bill of rights that includes government funding, freedom from responsibility, and a license to practice obnoxious behavior, including the conversion of San Francisco into a vast latrine. Advocates want to have it both ways, and see the problem simply as one of money.

After Supervisor Gavin Newsom proposed reforms, which include basic restrictions on panhandling and sleeping in the street, Paul Boden of the Coalition on Homelessness told reporters that “criminalizing” homelessness hadn’t worked and that "Maybe the ideal thing would be to fund homelessness out of existence." But if spending could drive homelessness out of existence, it would have vanished long ago.

San Francisco now spends more than $100 million per year on homelessness, as much as $200 million by some counts. By official estimates, San Francisco is already spending from $14,000 to $24,000 per homeless person, per year. To argue that simply spending more, absent other reforms, will solve the problem requires considerable suspension of disbelief.

San Mateo County, by contrast, spends around $5,000 per person per year. But their programs, unlike those of San Francisco, require that recipients do something to ultimately get themselves off the streets. "They have a responsibility to participate or they don't get the assistance," said Maureen Borland, director of the San Mateo County Human Services Agency, in a recent interview.

Contrary to the prevailing San Francisco ethos that views any requirement of work or responsibility as harsh, this approach respects the personhood of the individual. He or she is not just a statistic, a member of a community helpless except for government largesse and advocacy rhetoric. Rather, given the opportunity, the person who has been part of the problem can, by their own efforts, be part of the solution.

In New York, under a court mandate to provide shelter, recipients must participate in goal-oriented activities. The ultimate goal is that they, at some point, cease to be homeless. Some shelter programs require residents to work and save money over a period as long as 18 months. It should come as no surprise that in a city many times larger than San Francisco, there are only about 3,000 homeless.

If a homeless summit does take place, a requirement for participation should be acceptance of the proposition that it is better that people become productive citizens rather than remain homeless dependents. But action would be preferable to more talk.

Fewer homeless on the streets of San Francisco will require the abandonment of the victim culture and rejection of the utopian notion that homelessness can be spent out of existence. Fewer homeless will require renewed emphasis on work and personal responsibility. Incentives must also be changed.

Requirements for getting general assistance and other cash benefits should be work-connected, encouraging self-sufficiency. The city should enforce measures against obnoxious and dangerous behavior that pose clear health and safety risks to San Francisco citizens, including some of the most vulnerable members of the homeless population themselves.

Nobody has the right to make miserable the lives of others, particularly those of us whose lifestyle choice includes work, creating jobs, paying taxes, and practicing civic responsibility.

Examiner columnist Sally Pipes is the President and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute, a California-based think tank. She can be reached via email at spipes@pacificresearch.org.