Michael Shellenberger - Why Progressives Ruin Cities
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Fieldstead and Company hosted Michael Shellenberger to discuss the ideas posited in his bestselling book, San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities.
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Schellenberger argues that homelessness in California is fundamentally a crisis of untreated mental illness and drug addiction requiring mandatory intervention, not a housing shortage, and that progressive 'woke' ideology has replaced actual compassion with enabling policies that harm the very people it claims to help.
- San Francisco spends 10x the national average per homeless person with worse outcomes, proving housing-first policies fail without mandatory treatment and case management
- European cities (Amsterdam, Lisbon, Vienna, Zurich) successfully reduced street homelessness by mandating intervention, treatment, and recovery with contingency management—not housing alone
- Victimhood ideology creates unconscious Munchausen's by proxy dynamics where advocates resist solutions to preserve their identity as caretakers of victims
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European cities (Amsterdam, Lisbon, Vienna, Zurich) that banned public camping and open-air drug dealing, while providing methadone or Suboxone replacement therapy and mandatory treatment, successfully reduced chronic street homelessness across different political ideologies—conservative tough-love advocates and liberal harm-reduction supporters both converged on this model.
“in Amsterdam did I say Amsterdam yeah yeah so then there's one missing Amsterdam Frankfurt Lisbon Vienna Zurich...basically the same in every country which is that there is a political argument between what we might call liberals and conservatives you might say between harm reduction and tough love people and they all finally decide that they're not going to allow people to Camp outside and use drugs publicly and have open-air drug dealing in their neighborhoods”
Boston handles open drug scenes more effectively than San Francisco despite similar progressive governance, with media coverage framing them as drug problems rather than housing problems and with political acceptance of restrictions, suggesting that California has adopted an outlier ideological position not shared even by other progressive cities
“when you go to Boston and my sister and her husband are very Progressive residents of Boston she actually works in care for the indigenous and her husband's a doctor they don't have they they had a little open drug scene in a place called mass and Cass if you know Boston and when you would read the coverage about it it was already the media coverage was different they talked about it as an open-air drug scene they were much more open about it and they were much more comfortable imposing restrictions”
Contingency management—where individuals earn privileges (like private shelter rooms) by passing drug tests, and lose those privileges upon relapse (but retain shelter access)—is an evidence-based addiction treatment approach supported by research from Birmingham, Alabama and accepted even by harm-reduction advocates like the Drug Policy Alliance.
“they took crack addicts in the 1980s they said everybody needs to come off the street you need to be in shelter and what one thing that a lot of people really want when they come off the streets they want their own private room imagine how you would want your own private room imagine having to share a big space with somebody there's no privacy so the first thing most people want so what they did in Birmingham is they said you can have your own private room in this shelter but you have to pass a drug test”
The term 'left libertarianism' accurately describes the ideological framework where victimhood ideology combines with a radical skepticism of state authority and enforcement, resulting in simultaneous opposition to both government enforcement of drug laws and government enforcement of street conduct standards
“if you had to kind of give this another word for victim ideology or wokeism... one of the characters in my book whose names I blank but he always says it's left libertarianism”
California must mandate treatment for people arrested for crimes (public camping, drug use, defecation) due to mental illness or addiction, treating it as an opportunity for intervention rather than incarceration; cities can refer to treatment centers instead of jail.
“we should be what western Europe is doing is what we should want...what about personal freedom what about the uh what about our rights to consume substances...my view is if you want to use hard drugs in the privacy of your own home...that's not going to trigger law enforcement...once they're on the street once they're breaking laws against public camping once their breaking laws about public defecation public drug use drug dealing sex work those are all opportunities for intervention”
The ACLU won a case in the Ninth Circuit (Boise, Idaho) preventing cities from mandating that homeless people use Christian-run shelters, claiming it violated freedom of religion, which caused subsequent shelters to remove religious content and identity to operate, preventing faith-based organizations from serving homeless populations.
“the ACLU had brought a case in Boise Idaho of a homeless man who was run by Christian and there was either a picture of Jesus a Bible verse something in the place and he objected was that his First Amendment freedom of religion was violated...they won the case...no City entity whatever and mandate someone to go to a shelter run by Christians”
Peter Turchin's concept of 'overproduction of elites'—too many educated people with nothing to do—helps explain the censorship industrial complex: surplus educated people become parasites or seek to censor others for lack of productive outlets.
“there's this wonderful concept that I've come to more and more so simple called the overproduction of Elites by a guy named Peter turchin uh you don't have to read the book like you'll get it right away like there's too many educated people that there's nothing for us to do is kind of the idea”
San Francisco and other California cities have a structural incentive problem: nonprofit service organizations apply for grants and receive them but no entity has assigned responsibility for individual outcomes, creating a system where funding flows but accountability is absent
“we have a lot of non-profits that keep applying for Grants and getting grants but nobody's it's nobody's job to take care of the people and really be assigned to them”
People addicted to fentanyl who have been revived with Narcan multiple times (6, 12, 18, 24+ times) immediately return to smoking more fentanyl after revival because withdrawal symptoms are so severe that continued use feels preferable to sobriety.
“we're having people overdose on Fentanyl 6 12 18 24 times when you watch people get narcans so we can revive them with this narcanic is up the nose it it immediately wakes them up they go right back onto the street and the first thing they do is smoke more fentanyl because they feel so terrible being off of it”
After World War II, the United States saw gradual increases in tolerance for public drunkenness and street homelessness, but the major turning point was reducing psychiatric hospital populations by 90-95% without providing community infrastructure, leading directly to street homelessness crisis.
“after World War II you basically see greater tolerance everywhere in the United States for public drunkenness and then of course the big moment...we reduced the population of our psychiatric hospitals by about 90 to 95 percent...they just they just took buses and put people on the street”
Cost comparison shows that providing group home treatment with case management and relapse accommodation is cheaper than the current California system of repeated EMT/Narcan interventions, fire truck dispatches, and re-arrests without recovery, making the recovery approach economically superior
“it's much much cheaper to get somebody into that group home even accounting for the number of times they'll relapse than it is to continue to send out EMTs to revive them with Narcan every time they OD fire trucks guys whole fire trucks are sent out to revive one addict”
The Department of Homeland Security proposed a 'disinformation governance board' in 2022, which was rejected by both left and right after public criticism; however, similar censorship operations continue through other agencies (CISA, NSF) without formal governance board structure.
“it was very organized it's often through Department of Homeland Security you may know that last year around now the Department of Homeland Security proposed a disinformation governance board which was rightly attacked by by both left and right to be fair and they dropped it within a few weeks because we don't regulate speech in the United States you know we have a First Amendment”
The censorship apparatus responds to a conjunction of factors: organic woke activism (hall monitor personalities), inorganic state apparatus (reaction to Trump, Brexit, NATO/Ukraine), with CIA, NATO, DHS, FBI involved in increasing censorship of anti-war views about Ukraine.
“there's some of that but then there's also an inorganic part it's clearly coming from you know reaction to Trump in particular 2016 and brexit CIA NATO DHS FBI they felt like these Trump populist Republicans that it was it threatened NATO and the ability to particularly engage in war in Ukraine so we've seen now increasing censorship of speech on Ukraine Facebook is openly censoring anti-war views”
Media attention and policy change in California now follows a novel pattern where alternative media (Murdoch outlets, Substack, Twitter) have been sufficient to move politicians, reversing the traditional sequence where mainstream media coverage drove policy change
“we've actually been excluded from the mainstream news media sort of ghettoized into the Murdoch media which is Fox and The Daily Mail and we've been happy in New York Post and happy to be those fine sub stack and Twitter and that's actually been enough to move the politicians the politicians have actually moved first and then it's come back to the media”
Schellenberger discovered a 'censorship industrial complex' funded by the US government (DHS, NSF) that works with non-governmental organizations to censor constitutionally protected speech on Facebook and Twitter, revealed through the Twitter Files after Elon Musk's acquisition.
“we have uncovered since December a significant not just operation but apparatus funded by the US government working with supposedly non-governmental organizations many funded by the government to engage in widespread censorship of of constitutionally protected speech on Facebook and Twitter we would not have known about this if Elon Musk had not bought Twitter”
Sexual assault rates for women living on the street approach 100%, with nearly every long-term homeless woman reporting repeated victimization; men also report frequent sexual assault, indicating street environments are sites of systematic sexual violence.
“the levels I the the levels of sexual assault in particular for women living on the street approach a hundred percent I have yet to meet a woman who has lived on the street long periods of time who has not told me that she has been repeatedly victimized with sexual assault I've been told by men that they have been repeatedly affected by sexual assault”
Schellenberger's aunt with schizophrenia had a good outcome living in a group home (6-9 people, case worker on site, common kitchen and dining) rather than being left on the street, which would have been disastrous; group homes, not individual apartments, are appropriate care for serious mental illness.
“she had a very good outcomes she never lived on the street she lived in a group home you know with with I think six to nine other people case worker on site a common kitchen common dining area she smoked cigarettes and drank coffee all day long it's a great outcome for somebody with very serious schizophrenia”
Open drug scenes are urban areas where open-air drug dealing occurs and the addicts who purchase drugs are so addicted that they use immediately upon purchase and end up camping permanently in that location, creating visible street encampments
“open drug scenes are open-air drug dealing areas open-air drug markets but the addicts who buy from there are so addicted that as soon as they bought their heroin they would use it right there and they would end up camping there and living there so that's what an open drug scene is”
Fentanyl is 50 to 100 times stronger than heroin, and street users are now smoking mixtures of both fentanyl and methamphetamine together—the meth to stay awake to enjoy the high, while heroin has largely disappeared from California streets due to cost and potency differences.
“the concentration of course fentanyls 50 to 100 times stronger than heroin so but they didn't have to deal with that but nonetheless they provide a kind of a case study”
The term 'homelessness' functions as propaganda because it linguistically frames the problem as purely housing-related, obscuring the actual root causes of street addiction and untreated mental illness that require mandatory intervention and treatment.
“this word homelessness is really a propaganda word it's a word and when I say propaganda what I mean is that language is so powerful that when that when you say that word your brain is instantly in a way of thinking that this is a housing problem fundamentally”
Renee Diresta, who heads Facebook's censorship program and was once a PR officer for NATO, is a central figure in the censorship apparatus; Schellenberger called her a 'snob' on Joe Rogan's show to provoke her into revealing herself, which successfully caused her to attempt to get the show removed from Spotify.
“the head of Facebook's censorship program is a former PR officer for NATO the person that I always had my eye on very early is a person named Renee diresta...I called her a snob and lo and behold that was enough and so she tried to get this she tried to get Joe to take the show down from Spotify”
The censorship apparatus operates across the Five Eyes countries (US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) through intelligence-sharing agreements: since CIA can't directly censor Americans, it uses British or other Five Eyes intelligence agencies to do so, then reciprocates.
“it's happening in in other English speaking all the English-speaking countries what we used to call the five eyes countries because these are countries where the game is that if if CIA wants to spy on Michael schellenberger they can't do it here so they would get like the British or the Israelis or or the Canadians to do it and then we do it for them”
Harvard research tracking sheltered vs. unsheltered homeless populations found that unsheltered homeless are three times more likely to die than those in shelters, contradicting claims that street living is safe or that housing conditions don't matter.
“there's now been we have a Harvard did a study of tracking what we call sheltered homeless homeless who are in shelters and unsheltered homeless which are the folks on the street in the tents the folks the unsheltered homeless are three times more likely to die than the people inside”
San Francisco spends about 10 times more per homeless person than the national average, yet homelessness has worsened, demonstrating that increased spending without addressing root causes of mental illness and addiction does not solve the problem.
“San Francisco spends about 10 times more per homeless person than the national average so if there's a correlation between the money and homelessness it's a positive correlation not a inverse correlation”
'Overdetermined' (the idea that something has so many contributing causes that it is over-explained) is the appropriate frame for understanding why San Francisco hasn't adopted intervention-treatment-recovery models, since multiple factors—voter attitudes, judges, city councils, state legislators, institutions, money, and power—all resist change, but fundamentally an ideology of victimhood drives the resistance.
“the word over determined over determined is it's a bit of jargon but it's a very helpful word which is that something has so many causes that explain it that you've actually you've over explained it so many different things voter attitudes judges laws city councils state legislators it goes on and on but what come what comes down to it I think is fundamentally an ideology”
The key missing component in California's homeless services system is consistent case management: a caseworker assigned to each person from police intervention through psychiatric hospital to group homes, providing continuity of care and coordinating family, judges, psychiatrists, and recovery programs as one integrated team.
“you need a caseworker for a person that's really there for them and you have a continuity of care somebody comes into the shelter or they go into psychiatric hospital and they get a individualized or a personalized plan for recovery and they get everybody involved in that the caseworker if there's some law that's been broken the judge is involved they get parents and family members involved they might get a psychiatrist on that team”
Woke morality evolved from a selective over-prioritization of one value—'care'—among the multiple human moral values identified by psychologist Jonathan Haidt (freedom, care, orderliness, propriety, authority, loyalty), and woke care is asymmetric: given to victims but withheld from those categorized as oppressors.
“the morality of woke is um evolves out of a over prioritization on one value in particular which is uh the value of care or of reducing harm...there's sort of Freedom care...there's there's other value orderliness uh propriety Authority loyalty that are older Traditional Values that basically over time for progressives on the political left has been overtaken by the single value of care but it's important to point out that it's not even quite right this is my amendment to Jonathan's work in San Francisco I point out that the woke conception of care it's not equal for everybody it's care for the victims and not caring about the people you've defined as oppressors”
The romantic ideal of street homelessness (hobos, riding the rails, anarchist IWW movement in early San Francisco) has been absorbed into modern street culture, making street life seem like 'Pleasure Island' (from Pinocchio) to young addicts—a trap disguised as freedom.
“there's the I mentioned the riding the rails or sleeping rough and there you can see it in those really great hobo songs from the 20s...the city becomes kind of a playground...that's Pleasure Island for Corey”
No civilized country allows its schizophrenic population to use methamphetamine and fentanyl and live under bridges; California's tolerance of this condition is a marker that the state has abdicated its obligation to care for vulnerable citizens, suggesting it fails the basic test of civilization.
“there is no civilized country in the world that allows their schizophrenic population to use methamphetamine and Fentanyl and live under a bridge it's just not allowed and I mean it when I say there's no civilized country that allows that we allow it because we're not a civilized country”
Street addiction and chronic homelessness populations differ dramatically in difficulty: people homeless for only days/weeks respond well to housing and services, while people homeless 2+ decades with untreated schizophrenia and methamphetamine addiction are the hardest to serve and most likely to be rejected by non-profit service providers.
“I would say the hardest people are people that the non-profits are the least likely to want to work with the guy with schizophrenia and a methamphetamine habit living under the bridge”
A 13-year-old orphan girl in San Francisco was being sexually trafficked by MS-13 gang members, police departments reported lack of staffing to remove her from exploitation, and only after Schellenberger contacted city officials at a higher level was she retrieved; civilized societies do not allow 13-year-old orphans to be sex-trafficked.
“the detective said yeah we're trying to get this 13 year old girl off the streets...we then go back after after a couple of weeks...we found her and we called the San Francisco Police Department...they said we just don't have the staff we don't have the people to do it so we can't do it so they lost her and she was being uh pimped out by this extremely violent Salvadoran gang”
A specific incident in San Francisco involved a woman with schizophrenia or severe bipolar disorder whose legs rotted because she refused treatment; hospital staff amputated her legs and discharged her back onto the streets, demonstrating the harm caused by refusal to mandate psychiatric care.
“we had a woman with clearly with serious either schizophrenia or severe bipolar it's impossible to ever diagnose on the street were her legs rotted because they refused to take her in and they brought her to the hospital and her legs were amputated and they put her back on the street this is in San Francisco 2023”
Victimhood ideology (also called wokism) divides the world into victims and oppressors, and once someone is categorized as a victim, everything should be given to them and nothing required—so any mandate or requirement is perceived as re-victimization, making intervention impossible.
“the core idea is that you can divide people in the world into victims and oppressors and when you've done that that's all they are they can't escape that you're just a victim or you're an oppressor and that's it and to victims everything should be given and nothing required so once you're in the victim category you see you maintain the victim status”
In the 1960s, philosopher Michel Foucault promoted the idea that mental illness is a 'myth' constructed by society, an ideology still held by organizations like the ACLU, which has used this to oppose involuntary psychiatric treatment and enable street homelessness through non-intervention.
“the idea that mental illness is a as a myth really comes out of that period of the 60s it is still held by ACLU it took some work to prove that in San Francisco but and it's been kind of filtered through victim ideology”
Apocalyptic environmentalism's three core narrative themes—I'm a bad person (guilt), the world is a bad place (despair), the future is dark (hopelessness)—are identical to depression's core cognitive distortions and function psychologically as religion rather than science.
“there's three storylines by the way are the three storylines of apocalyptic environmentalism that was one of the insights of our of the book I did breakthrough in 2007 was that environment apocalyptic environmentalism is in the nature of the stories it tells depressing”
Schellenberger came from the radical left (went to Nicaragua in 1988 to support the Sandinista revolution, admired Che Guevara and Nelson Mandela) but observed an ideological shift: from narratives of victim-led revolution (overcoming oppression) to permanent victim status with no path to agency or power.
“I grew up in the 1980s I I come from the radical left I went to Nicaragua in 1988 to help the Socialist sand and Easter Revolution My Heroes were gasped out of the side of the room holy cow um My Heroes were Che Guevara Nelson Mandela...there was a change a change that went from uh...there was some sense in which victims could overthrow the government and become powerful that's a a socialist revolutionary story...it just suggests something happened that's different from that that evolved from a a story of overcoming”
Wokism functions as a religion (not metaphorically but functionally) providing meaning, ritual, and moral hierarchy to secular progressives who abandoned traditional faith; it serves psychological functions of religion while lacking self-awareness of that role.
“when I look at the rise of what we call wookism or victimhood ideology it is serving the role of a religion for its strongest adherence so we wrote an essay called why wokeism is a religion...it is serving the role of a religion for its strongest adherence...my last two books were basically arguing that apocalyptic environmentalism and wookism are both dominant secular religions”
A politically progressive psychiatrist from the San Francisco VA noted that homeless advocates actively resisted getting people off the street, seemingly to demonstrate that capitalism is barbaric; this reflects the underlying political motivation, not conscious conspiracy.
“there's a psychiat a former San Francisco VA psychiatrist who read San Francisco and he wrote me this long email and he was like there was always a sense when we were trying to get people off the street and there was these so-called homeless Advocates demanding that they be left on the streets there was always uh the sense he said that they were saying F you to the system that this proved that capitalism is barbaric by having these people on the streets the people were being used but again I think I'm not suggesting that they ever had a meeting where they said we're going to leave people on the street”
If the problem of non-solved homelessness/drug crisis persists at this scale, somebody must be profiting from it or it provides psychological benefit (identity as caregiver); the existence of a problem at this magnitude suggests systematic under-solving is economically or psychologically rational for some stakeholders.
“whenever I see a problem that isn't getting solved and it's of this magnitude somebody's profiting from not solving it and how can I be a caring person if I don't have victims to care for I mean it almost seems like they're manufacturing the supply”
Monkhaus Syndrome by Proxy (a parent poisoning or harming a child to attract medical care and demonstrate care for the victim) is an analogy for woke progressive ideology, where advocates unconsciously maintain or create victims to sustain their identity as caretakers and moral agents.
“I come right up to the edge I said San Francisco and I sort of say it's almost monkhausen's syndrome by proxy monkhouse and syndrome by proxy is the mother who's poisoning her child in order to to attract the attention and the medical care and be able to care for the child and there's a narcissism in it too Kathy Bates and misery I remember I'm this very special caretaker”
Schellenberger's book 'San Francisco: How Progressives Ruined Cities' answers the question 'why would progressives ruin cities given that their stated highest value is care for victims?' through analyzing ideology, power, and unconscious psychological structures.
“San Francisco is not a book about San Francisco per se it's a book about the subtitle the subtitle is this question that I became obsessed with which is why progressives ruin cities why would you do this it contradicts your own your own highest value that you say you care about more than any others which is caring for victims they're not caring for victims”
Progressive victimhood ideology has created a rigid racial hierarchy (BIPOC > People of Color > non-minorities) where Asian-Americans are being reclassified downward, demonstrating that woke hierarchies are consciously constructed and continuously refined.
“we went from just a few years ago we would say people of color to refer to all non-white people to a new category called bypoc just to make clear that there was a hierarchy within people of color and the idea was that the people at the highest in the hierarchy we could objectively say had been more oppressed and so Asians are really just not really people of color anymore according to the woke hierarchy”
Republicans have failed to prosecute the homelessness issue effectively against Democrats despite Democratic control of California because voters don't trust Republicans care about vulnerable people; Republicans need to propose robust care solutions (like calcite) to win trust.
“why have Republicans not been able to prosecute this argument given that this is entirely on the watch of Democrats there's no I mean we can't blame Republicans for any of this because Republicans have no power in California...I think it's because the voters don't trust that Republicans care...I think Republicans that I talk to do care a lot about stopping all of this suffering but I don't think Republicans have really put forward a robust proposal to care”
Schellenberger will not focus on blaming ideological opponents (Democrats, progressives) as permanently malicious but rather as unconsciously trapped in ideological frameworks; everyone wakes up believing they are doing good, so understanding opponents' motivations requires empathy rather than demonization.
“I think it's important to know that everybody gets up in the morning thinking that they're trying that they're doing good in the world it's just that's everybody and it's important to keep that in mind about our opponents as well because I think that you start thinking your opponents wake up in the morning anything I'm going to do ill in the world then you're just misunderstanding who you're dealing with”
The key insight from talking to Renee (a Dutch drug policy expert) was that homelessness requires 'carrots and sticks'—incentives and consequences throughout the entire journey, not just carrots (handouts), and that San Francisco provides only carrots without sticks.
“he just said you know he goes it's you have to have what do I say carrots and sticks that's you have to have carrots and sticks you're just carrots in the Bay Area it's just carrots carrots carrots and that little piece of wisdom has basically run through the entire story”
California policy allows people to refuse treatment and remain on streets with subsidies (food, blankets), while the contingency management model provides nothing without behavioral requirements, creating opposite incentive structures—California rewards street living while European models incentivize treatment.
“we say to the extent to which we'll give them something we'll give them Free Housing but no conditions we call that housing first there's no conditions to the housing even though we know that having the conditions is what actually help people in Birmingham through contingency management”
A pregnant woman gave birth on a sidewalk in San Francisco; another woman delivered a stillborn child in an outhouse near an open-air drug scene, demonstrating that street conditions expose even pregnant women and newborns to hazard rather than protecting them.
“a pregnant woman just gave birth on the sidewalk in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago and another woman didn't know she was pregnant but then had a stillborn birth in one of the outhouses near the open-air drug scene”
A homeless man with a broken hip was discovered lying in filth and waste near steam vents at San Francisco City Hall, was advised by a city worker that he needed shelter, was still on the streets one week later despite the intervention attempt, demonstrating the failure to enforce basic housing standards.
“we discovered that three men had put police barricades to take up a part of the street...they were surrounded by filth and waste including excrements and needles...one of the men said I can't have a broken hip...he had been treated for the hospital be so addicted he had to get out of the hospital so he could use Fentanyl...we were like uh he's got a broken hip...he drives me one week later he was still on the streets”
A recent CNN documentary about San Francisco homelessness clearly attributed the crisis to drugs and policy failures (not housing costs) and featured an activist mother whose son is bipolar and self-medicating, where the CNN anchor stated activist demands for non-intervention policies are driving the crisis.
“the propaganda around homelessness is such that the typical media story about homelessness will show somebody that's homeless they will hide the fact that they're suffering from a serious addiction or mental illness or both it will hide that from the readers they will suggest it has something to do with the high cost of rent and nothing to do with the low-cost and widespread availability and effective decriminalization of the drugs that was totally different in the CNN documentary it was clearly about the drugs and they even got to the point in that really dark hard in the middle of the documentary where they uh they're interviewing another one of the moms whose son is on this is bipolar self-medicating on heart very hard drugs clean meth and the CNN anchor says what you're saying is that this is really happening because the activists the ones who say they're out saving the homeless are demanding these policies and she said yes that's what it is”
Most people living on streets need 1-2 years in group homes with recovery and rehab (like the Village of Hope model) plus job placement and family reconnection; only 10-20% require long-term psychiatric wards; this is basic nursing and psychiatric care, not complex.
“I would say we're somewhere between 10 and maybe 20 percent of the people on the streets need to be there long term most people just need a group home your 25 year old you got hooked on a heroin and meth or fentanyl you need to go and do a group group you need to do some rehab and recovery for one to two years”
Jennifer Friedenbach, director of San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness, makes ~$40K/year (modest compensation) but controls the city homelessness budget and exercises significant power; she is a central antagonist to Schellenberger's reforms, demonstrating that power and identity (not wealth) are the primary incentives.
“a person named Jennifer friedenbach who's the head of the San Francisco Coalition on homelessness I think she makes like forty thousand dollars a year so there's a there's a homeless industrial complex for sure but she's definitely not in it for the money”
In California, half of all fires in Los Angeles and San Francisco are homeless encampment fires, many deliberately set (arson) as revenge crimes among residents over trivial personal conflicts, indicating that street encampments are chaotic environments incapable of supporting human dignity or safety.
“half of all fires in Los Angeles in San Francisco are homeless encampment fires...they're mostly Revenge Fighters oh she was sleeping with my you know my girlfriend was sleeping with some other guy”
California Care Court, recently passed, is a step toward mandatory treatment but may not succeed due to implementation challenges and political opposition; there is no confidence it will be enforced even with the Governor now calling for National Guard and Highway Patrol.
“the governor this is a governor who said he was going to solve homelessness in 10 years...he did come up with something called care courts yes do we need new ways to compel and mandate treatment on people absolutely...he's also now called for bringing in the National Guard...is it going to happen no he's not going to make it happen I don't think”
Media coverage of homelessness issues has shifted since Schellenberger's work: initially ghettoized to Fox News, his message has now filtered back into mainstream/liberal media (CNN, NYT), which now present the issue as a drug and mental illness crisis rather than just a housing shortage.
“we were ghettoized onto Fox News effectively from early 2020...the liberal media now seem to feel comfortable talking about this as a drug and mental illness problem...CNN said they were going to do a documentary...and it's it's it's really great”
A coalition Schellenberger works with ('North America Recovers') brings together previously opposing groups: residents fed up with open drug scenes, parents of homeless addicts, recovering addicts, and evidence-based psychiatric care providers, united by the goal of intervention-treatment-recovery.
“our Coalition is very unique in that we've brought together different people that have often been on the opposite side of this issue so we bring together residents who are fed up with the open drug scene...parents of the homeless addicts...recovering addicts...some of the more evidence-based folks involved in drug treatment”
Public opinion polls show 70-80% of Californians support the intervention-treatment-recovery policy agenda, including in San Francisco where 75% support mandated treatment, providing strong electoral support for politicians who adopt these positions.
“a large majority do support these policies somewhere between 70 to 80 percent support the policy agenda that I I'm describing and that's across multiple polls San Francisco 75 percent want to see mandated treatment”
Victor Frankl's finding that watching two minutes of his videos on meaning-making improves mood immediately suggests cognitive behavioral therapy's power: negative stories (I'm a bad person, the world is bad, the future is dark) shape emotions, and counter-narration reshapes them.
“I could watch two minutes of a Victor Frankl video and immediately feel happier it was the craziest thing it was uh we call it there's we give it this name cognitive behavioral therapy where you talk back to your negative stories of which there's basically just three I'm a bad person the world's a bad place future is dark”
The First Amendment should be understood as an inalienable right (something humans possess by virtue of being human) rather than merely instrumental for democracy and capitalism, and this right includes the ability to express controversial social and political ideals.
“there's always been a debate around you know is the first amendment and Free Speech sort of a sacred right we call an inalienable right or a natural right is it something that we just have because you're a human being or is it sort of instrumental...I'm on team inalienable rights personally”
Victor Frankl taught that everyone needs a goal or purpose, and during his personal crisis around the time Apocalypse Never was published, Schellenberger recognized he needed to undertake a major writing project to give his life purpose and direction during disruption (COVID pandemic).
“the other thing he said which was uh something I needed at the time which was that everybody needs to have a goal you know we say purpose but you need to have something you're trying to do and some of us needed more than others and I really needed that”
Financial Times published a cover story titled 'San Francisco's Doom Loop' featuring post-apocalyptic AI-generated or heavily edited photos of buildings overgrown with nature; Schellenberger views this as sentimental romanticization of decline compared to Daily Mail's more direct documentation of street conditions.
“the cover of the Financial Times magazine today is called San Francisco's Doom Loop so and it's got this picture of the um what's that building called when they it's uh it's it's near the TransAmerica business there anyway there's but they they kind of they've created these images of the buildings in San Francisco it looks like a post-apocalyptic scene where it's all been taken over by Nature and you know they're beautiful fake these are beautiful photos but I actually was like I I it was sort of struck me because Financial Times of course is the newspaper of of snobs in in Britain it struck me a little bit that they were trying to kind of sugarcoat the issue a little bit for folks um I prefer the Daily Mail which is a tawdry tabloid because they actually show the photos of what people of what's happening to people on the street in all of the horror”
Schellenberger ran for California Governor (for 3 months) partly to use the campaign platform to elevate the homelessness and drug policy issues, despite the campaign being primarily a book promotion vehicle.
“I ran for governor why not yeah I mean I had a book to promote uh totally selfish we had a great time it was a wonderful experience partly because it was only three months that we had to do it but that helped to elevate the issues and get some attention on it”
Schellenberger has criticized Elon Musk on supply chain issues (Congo to China conflicts) and remains a leftist in economic analysis, but credits Musk with enabling Twitter Files investigation through platform transparency; gratitude and critique coexist.
“I should say I've actually criticized Elon Musk I'm the only person of the Twitter files journalist that criticized Elon Musk repeatedly made for a little awkward meeting him in person um but I'd criticized him because his Supply chains are a nightmare in terms of from Congo to China and whatnot but um really we owe Elon Musk a great debt of gratitude for allowing us to reveal”
The Amsterdam Mayor (after Schellenberger's advocacy) has visited Amsterdam and met with his Dutch contacts (Renee), suggesting that advocacy for alternative models is influencing San Francisco leadership toward European approaches.
“the mayor of San Francisco now has been to Amsterdam and and she met with my my friends so we'll see”
Schellenberger was not originally ghettoized to Murdoch (Fox, Daily Mail) media by choice, but is 'happy to be there'—he prefers the Daily Mail's explicit imagery of street conditions to the Financial Times' romanticism, and credits Murdoch with honest reporting.
“we've actually been excluded from the mainstream news media sort of ghettoized into the Murdoch media which is Fox and The Daily Mail and we've been happy in New York Post...I prefer the Daily Mail which is a tawdry tabloid because they actually show the photos of what people of what's happening to people on the street”