The unfortunate tech bro insurgency in San Francisco continues with a guy named Justin Keller, who has lived in the Bay Area for all of three years (that means we can still return him, right?) and recently felt entitled enough to write the mayor and police chief about his distaste for the homeless. Cool, cool.
In an open letter to Mayor Ed Lee and police chief Greg Suhr— as if those men don’t already know about the homeless situation in a city where they’ve no doubt resided for longer than 36 months—Keller wrote the following fuckshit, excerpted at the Guardian:
I am writing today, to voice my concern and outrage over the increasing homeless and drug problem that the city is faced with. I’ve been living in SF for over three years, and without a doubt it is the worst it has ever been. Every day, on my way to, and from work, I see people sprawled across the sidewalk, tent cities, human feces, and the faces of addiction. The city is becoming a shanty town … Worst of all, it is unsafe.
Poor, poor Keller, founder of some server-centric startup called Commando.io which I hope I never come in contact with, was miffed because he ran into a few drunken and mentally unsound homeless people while his parents were visiting from that place he should go back to. Fine, but his entitlement makes native Northern Californians like myself want to catapult him onto Alcatraz and hope the ghosts get him.
I know people are frustrated about gentrification happening in the city, but the reality is, we live in a free market society. The wealthy working people have earned their right to live in the city. They went out, got an education, work hard, and earned it. I shouldn’t have to worry about being accosted. I shouldn’t have to see the pain, struggle, and despair of homeless people to and from my way to work every day.
Then he suggested city officials push “all of the homeless and riff raff” out of sight, as they did around the SuperBowl festivities.
Naturally, Keller’s been shouted down on Twitter, where he apologized for using the word “riff raff” and called it “insensitive and counterproductive.” Counterproductive is right: yes, there is a homeless problem in San Francisco, but there always has been, really. The fix won’t be found in a lack of compassion, and certainly not in some open letter from some fool who’s just wants to live as if no one’s ever needed help while offering zero plausible solutions and almost certainly being one of the jerks I shake my head at when I come home.
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Image via Twitter and Shutterstock.