The State : S.F. Finances Homeless

A dozen people who were ejected from a San Francisco shantytown a year ago have been given free meals, hotel rooms and spending money, courtesy of the city, the San Francisco Examiner reported. The people tossed out of a condemned South-of-Market settlement last Jan. 28 have received special favors that far exceed assistance usually afforded the city’s homeless, the paper said. Nearly 3,000 people are provided with temporary emergency shelter for up to two weeks under San Francisco’s $6-million homeless program. But the South-of-Market group has fared much better, getting shelter that has cost the city more than $65,000 for the year, along with a card good for three meals a day at a church’s city-financed food program and--until recently--$5 pocket money each month. “There is no question they have received special treatment,” a welfare department official said. “I’m sure it wasn’t expected to go on this long.”