"...The Berkeley City Council voted to hire monitors to report inappropriate street behavior to police and social-service groups."

"Berserkely" is "coming to their senses?" Nah. They have just reached a point where one person's right to live as he/she wants has begun to infringe upon another's right to do the same. It's really that simple, quite frankly. I've spent plenty of time in Berkeley. Hung around in the Haight, know the place has its share of folks into alternative lifestyles that would blow the minds of most folks here if a couple of psychedelic buses filled with them pulled up and began unloading at Library park downtown. There is tolerance there that is hard to imagine against the backdrop of Nashville's conservative nature. But even the tolerant won't tolerate stepping in feces on the sidewalks or having screaming drunks in their faces demanding a dollar for very long. And while many of them may very well be engaged in illegal behavior revolving around drug use, most of them will be quick to tell you that the use of drugs is "mostly" a victimless crime and certainly far less obnoxious than unwittingly sitting in a pile of vomit on a public bus seat. Therefore, their behavior doesn't fall under the same category as other illegal activities and as such, don't interfere with another person's right to live their life the way they want to. Great rationalization, but effective, nonetheless. Most of the Homeless are often acutely aware of the impact their more unruly brothers and sisters are engaged in because it brings such heat and ill will towards all of them. But you can't expect them to police their own ranks, since we've already essentially ostracized them from mainstream society. We can't expect them to turn on the only group that accepts them with open arms into their ranks and rat off the only friends they have left. Conversely, we cannot take steps or initiate measures that are so harsh as to further alienate an already alienated population. How in the hell will we ever get them to trust mainstream society enough to integrate into it if it appears that every time mainstream society decides to do something for them it turns out to be punitive in nature? Tough issues, damned hard situations and no easy answers. Meanwhile, people continue to suffer at every level as a direct result of the problems related to homelessness. . .

Editorial

Another city coping with indigent homeless

Berkeley, Calif., once hailed as the "Athens of the West" for the bright, shining university and Nobel-laden faculty gracing its panoramic hills, in more recent decades came to be known, simply, as "Berserkeley."

It was an appellation the city courted with its left-coast politics and air of unlimited tolerance. But even the most open of cities has to set boundaries and Berkeley at long last signaled last week that it was coming to its senses.

As reported by the Los Angeles Times, the Berkeley City Council voted to hire monitors to report inappropriate street behavior to police and social-service groups. This in turn will help the police enforce an ordinance against camping in public places, including lying on commercial streets during the day.

Many American cities, including Seattle, have grappled with aberrant conduct in their public spaces, but, as in education, politics and cultural mores, Berkeley seems to have lapped the field to an extreme.

In a city that represents only 7 percent of Alameda County's total population, 40 percent of the county's chronically homeless were, by one study, living in Berkeley, according to the L.A. Times.

In addition to issues of public urination and aggressive panhandling, one merchant told of having to ask homeless people, who were coming in to lounge on his design store's furniture, to leave. Store owners and residents helped block plans for a new public plaza for fear the homeless would take it over.

Berkeley being Berkeley, the clampdown on "bad behavior" — by the homeless, addicts, disorderly students or anyone else — was not without doubt or with equanimity.

Councilwoman Dona Spring called it "amoral" — a heightening of police powers, with no immediate alternative to the streets for the homeless to sleep.

A 25-cent parking meter hike will go toward a $1 million effort to provide more housing, public toilets and also programs for homeless young people.

If Berkeley can show the way in dealing humanely, progressively and realistically with problems of homelessness, more power to it. Perhaps the city will then seem less "Berserkeley" and more that long-ago "Athens of the West," an incubator for innovation and discovery.