San Francisco Gives Dogs to Panhandlers

Almost everyone in this comment section read this article and nothing more and has decided to side with peta..why? Because you read an article written by peta, it's more than a little bit bias. After looking into both sides I think its a great idea. The dogs are fostered by people who are no longer living on the streets. Let me repeat that, they are not living on the streets. In many ways they are better cared for than some dogs in the suburbs because these people understand what it's like to be homeless and have empathy for the dog, while many dogs in suburbs do not get the proper attention they need simply because their family gets busy with school and work and other things. And it's not problem dogs places with problem people, They screen through people and match them with the dog they think will fit best. It's just like in prison where there are programs for inmates to train dogs and sometimes horses, only the well behaved inmates who they think will actually succeed in the program are selected. Peta is simply using statistics that say a lot of homeless people struggle with mental illness or addiction to jump to the conclusion that the dogs will be living with mentally ill drug addicts who won't take care of them, which is simply an incorrect assumption. http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/49047515#49047515 As you can see in this video, the people take classes to learn not only how to care for their dog, but also themselves. It's a win win honestly.

Read the article, folks. Those who are matched will not be living on the streets, and will be supported in this enterprise. As someone who has recovered from a serious mental illness, I think this is a great idea. Caring for an animal was a big part of my recovery (in my case, my relationship with my lovely cat Oreo). People *do* recover and I think there is enough discrimination against people recovering from addictions and mental illness out there.

San Francisco Supervisor Bevan Dufty has never lived in a substandard supportive housing building as a poor low-wage earner, neither as a disfranchised individual with others who are members of the burgeoning sub-culture of self-harming persons who are entitled to Housing First preferences. Two sub-classes of this sub-culture are drunks and drug addicts. These alone are devastating quality of life impaired classes with which to share communal housing. Imagine walking into a community toilet and twice weekly stepping into another's urine, or the new Venetian blind, that is continually ripped from the window that provides privacy and light filtering when the sun is bright outside, or the waste receptacle that is continually stolen or thrown out the toilet window, or the broken crack pipe shard in the track of the shower window or on the very soiled tiled floor that the non-profit B-corporation janitor has no time to maintain, the pot, crack, meth and tobacco smokes that penetrate walls, floors and ceilings and that come into the window usually at about 4:00 a.m. while you try to sleep but it awakens you, or the blood on the floors and walls of either the toilet or the shower, the filth and grease that those who share the community kitchen refuse to clean for others who use this during or after they finish, or to awaken to your door that comes crashing in at 5:45 a.m. while you sleep before a man standing just outside threatens you with future physical harm, ad infinitum. Enter “dog.” If humans are too out-of-it to do things pertinent to human “activities of daily living” do sane non-self-destructive Americans, San Franciscans, individuals imagine that self-destructive humans will care for dogs? To protect others from being bitten by the dog? In the inadequate confines of a supportive housing slum? My answer is this, dogs need freedom to run in wide open spaces and should not be leashed. If you cannot care for yourself and get-along civilly with others who share the communal housing; or if you do not own or rent more than an acre of land where a dog can frolic, then you should not consider having a dog. There are always the more shocking events such as the Diane Whipple mauling in a San Francisco apartment building a few years ago by two Presa Canario dogs. She lived in far better housing than supportive housing. She's dead.

PETA is correct. why would we give people with a track record of not being capable of caring for themselves another living being to care for? Have the officials who think this is a good idea ever cared for a dog? It's a huge responsibility - for years. Time, money, attention, consistency, routine, stability - none of which most formerly homeless people have.