President Xi makes our homeless disappear

They were a small part of the city’s 70,000-plus homeless population, and they’ll be able to easily find other underpasses and sidewalks.

That happy ending might not happen for thousands of homeless citizens who suddenly disappeared from downtown San Francisco during the last two weeks.

They were living happily in their sidewalk homesteads until China’s Xi Jinping and other leaders came to town for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

The summit has been in the international news this week for several reasons, most of them embarrassing to the United States.

The good news was President Biden met face-to-face with Xi for four hours of serious talk without needing a nap.

The bad news was later, to the horror of the State Department, Biden referred to Xi in a speech as a “dictator,” which was probably the most truthful gaffe Biden has made in years.

The other big news from San Francisco was the mystery of the missing homeless people.

Seemingly overnight, many of the city’s permanent sidewalk population disappeared. So did their drug zones, tents, sleeping bags, junk piles, used needles and feces.

City crews power-hosed sidewalks, erased graffiti, painted murals and colorful crosswalk markings, installed planter boxes with wildflowers and erected fences around the Moscone Center where the summit was being held.

Presto, San Francisco suddenly looked clean, safe and civilized again. It looked like a place tourists from Iowa and dictators from China would feel comfortable visiting.

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