What did he do to help himself? Unfortunately, its damn near impossible to help people who won't take the first couple steps themselves. I'm all for helping people who are taking some kind of initiative but being stymied by bureaucratic indifference, harsh economic reality, or some other circumstance. Unfortunately, it seems like most of the advocates for the poor and homeless in SF expect tech companies to fix everything by paying even higher taxes and eliminating shuttles without expecting the "victims" to take any initiative themselves.
Considering his strange outfit, it's entirely possible that he's mentally ill (or, alternatively, he doesn't like people taking pictures of him). The article doesn't give any real context.
This applies even all but the most extreme cases of the mentally ill. Outside of involuntarily confining someone and throwing away the key, if someone with limited mental illness or addiction doesn't want to get better and take the first baby steps on their own to doing so (even just stepping foot in a clinic for example) then no amount of resources will help.
What did he do to help himself? Unfortunately, its damn near impossible to help people who won't take the first couple steps themselves. I'm all for helping people who are taking some kind of initiative but being stymied by bureaucratic indifference, harsh economic reality, or some other circumstance. Unfortunately, it seems like most of the advocates for the poor and homeless in SF expect tech companies to fix everything by paying even higher taxes and eliminating shuttles without expecting the "victims" to take any initiative themselves.