A generation ago, attendees at the local leather BDSM festival came upon fliers advertising an orgy at an address in the city’s posh northeast. This seemed like a nifty way to spend some time, and a group of men did, indeed, venture north to San Francisco’s District 2.
They were about to experience a fair bit of sadism and masochism, but not the sort anyone was hoping for. That’s because when they arrived at the advertised site of the orgy, it turned out they were dropping in, uninvited and most certainly unwanted, at the home of Gavin Newsom.
This incident, confirmed by four of Newsom’s former close colleagues and contemporaries, was apparently a mean-spirited prank hatched by critics of the then-Marina supervisor’s signature Care Not Cash initiative, which cut off money sent directly to the city’s homeless, and instead provided it to nonprofits offering services and housing.
The BDSM crowd was embarrassed. Newsom was cordial and professional. But, a close colleague recalls, the act of being doxxed and manipulated left him “seething. There was a suppressed rage.”
That’s why Newsom’s former colleagues were so taken aback at our governor’s recent musings in the Chronicle, in which he casually bandied about the notion of erecting a billboard with the phone number of a judge who had issued an injunction against Caltrans clearing a homeless encampment — and urging angry members of the public to dial up and vent their spleens. (Of note, an appeals panel subsequently allowed the encampment to be cleared, citing safety concerns).
Separate and apart from the normalization of even center-left Democrats demonizing mainstream judges and mounting reductive pressure campaigns to intimidate them, California’s governor, specifically, ought to know what it’s like to have malevolent folks direct people to his doorstep. “Does he know better? Sure,” recalls a former Newsom associate. “He, himself, has been subject to the pressure of mob rule and personalizing.”
But the meta-goal here, a goal shared on the local level by Newsom’s successor, Mayor London Breed, is to deflect blame for horrific street conditions and voters’ growing rancor onto someone else. Leaders shunting the people’s anger onto others is an elemental political tactic; it probably harks back to electing the chieftain of Cave 76.
This is certainly not new ground for Breed, the six-year incumbent in San Francisco’s strong-mayor system, who has blamed the Board of Supervisors, the since-ousted liberal DA, renegade city commissioners and a litany of others for preventing her from governing well or properly. But it did feel like a troublesome new Rubicon had been crossed last month when Breed and other government officials saw fit to stand outside a courthouse and fulminate at a building, and add a new source of blame for all that ails San Francisco: A federal judge.
At issue is the Dec. 23, 2022, preliminary injunction imposed by U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu, which limits San Francisco’s ability to arrest or use the threat of arrest against homeless people to clear encampments off city streets.
As described by Breed and others, the injunction has kneecapped the city, handcuffed our cops and city workers and given homeless people carte blanche to do whatever, whenever, wherever. She bemoaned that the city should be made to follow an order issued by a judge “who doesn’t even live here,” but also vowed to fight this case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is populated by nine judges who don’t even live here.
At this point, it’s probably worth examining what the injunction actually does, and does not do. One ancillary measure it’s certainly accomplished: Expose San Francisco. To the disgrace of all.
This preliminary injunction, again, was imposed on Dec. 23 of last year. Meaning that if the injunction is lifted (not likely) or altered (possible), the best-case scenario for the mayor and others offering blood-and-thunder oratory outside the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last month would be for the city to return to the status quo of Dec. 22, 2022.
That status quo was not so great. San Francisco’s problems with homelessness and overt misery predate December by just a little bit. So, it was disturbing to watch our mayor talk like Travis Bickle, but it will be more disturbing for the rubes who believed her. Removing or limiting this injunction will not allow the city to roust encampments with great vengeance and furious anger. City workers will still be bound by city policies that require encampment dwellers to be given notice and offered a viable housing or shelter space before being moved along.
All of this stems from a suit filed last year by a group of homeless people and the Coalition on Homelessness, claiming the city routinely contravened its own policies — and the law — by dismantling encampments when there was no available shelter space, and additionally confiscated or destroyed homeless people’s possessions.
Ryu’s injunction notes, in fact, that San Francisco’s policies pass constitutional muster. She held, however, that its practices do not.
So, if that injunction is lifted or altered and the city begins to roust people willy-nilly — which, notably, the plaintiffs claimed was already routinely happening — then that matter will come up again at the forthcoming trial. Yes, a trial: Remember, this is a preliminary injunction, and a day in court is slated for next year.
In the run-up to that court battle, does the injunction give homeless people carte blanche to do whatever, wherever, whenever? Actually, no. It specifically does not allow cops to cite or threaten street-dwellers with four sections of the penal code and two sections of the police code regarding, among other matters, public lodging or sitting upon the sidewalk.
But it does allow authorities to move or dismantle encampments, based on three other sections of the penal and health codes, including “willfully and maliciously obstruct[ing] the free movement of any person on any street, sidewalk, or other public place or on or in any place open to the public” and “Any accumulation of filth, garbage, decayed or spoiled food, unsanitary debris or waste material, or decaying animal or vegetable matter.”
So, there appears to be a divergence between what the city is doing under the injunction and what it could do. Could police still intervene in problematic situations? Well, this police bulletin says they sure can.
And could San Francisco homeless outreach workers come down on bad-faith individuals taking advantage of this city’s good graces? They could. But, instead, we’re told city workers treat every homeless person they encounter as if that person is “involuntarily homeless.” Even if that person is someone they know they’ve placed in a navigation center, a cabin, even in permanent supportive housing.
If this was what the injunction mandated the city to do, that’d be a travesty. But it isn’t.
When asked where the major divergences lie between the plaintiffs and the city, City Attorney David Chiu cites several key points. One of the stickiest ones, Chiu said, is the definition of who is really “involuntarily homeless” — leading to scenarios like the above, in which people who have already been housed are still allowed to camp on the streets. Another is around the potential duration of the injunction, which could remain in place until San Francisco has enough housing or shelter beds to accommodate every last homeless person.
This was a matter of no small frustration to John Do, a senior ACLU attorney representing the plaintiffs. Because, he says, there is no disagreement here.
If someone has access to a shelter bed, housing or hotel room, “the injunction does not cover them,” says Do. The plaintiffs, in agreement with the city, state that the injunction does not apply to anyone who “has a specific offer of realistically available shelter but chooses not to use it.”
Do also says the city doesn’t need to have 8,000 beds ready for 8,000 homeless people (or however many there may be) before it can begin citing homeless people or coercing them to move under threat of law.
“There is not a bright line rule that San Francisco has to have enough shelter beds for everyone in San Francisco before it can enforce some of these laws,” Do says. “What San Francisco does need to do is provide a realistically available shelter opportunity.”
What does that mean? It means that if you freed up a handful of beds and approached an encampment with a good-faith offer of shelter, then street-sleepers’ refusal of that offer means they are no longer protected by the injunction. The city says it’s not enforcing the laws against people who refuse such offers. But it could, injunction or no. The city is saying its hands are tied, but the plaintiffs are saying they’re not.
“There is not a right to be anywhere you want for an indefinite period of time,” affirms Do. “The law is clear on that, and we are not advocating for that.” Rather, the plaintiffs simply don’t want some criminal charges used or threatened against street-sleepers who haven’t received a viable offer of shelter.
In her injunction, Ryu cites the landmark 2019 Ninth Circuit case Martin v. Boise, which found that “so long as there is a greater number of homeless individuals in [a jurisdiction] than the number of available beds [in shelters], the jurisdiction cannot prosecute homeless individuals for involuntarily sitting, lying, and sleeping in public.”
But there is a footnote on that passage, and it utterly changes its meaning. It reads: “Naturally, our holding does not cover individuals who do have access to adequate temporary shelter, whether because they have the means to pay for it or because it is realistically available to them for free, but who choose not to use it.”
Ryu specifically cites this footnote in the injunction. The ongoing confusion over this is, itself, confusing.
You might be surprised to learn that the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing has placed some 1,200 people indoors so far in calendar 2023, despite the injunction. And, city workers insist, these are not just make-good offers of a slab of foam on the floor of a basketball gym. These, workers here say, are open-ended stays in higher-grade facilities. “I’m a human. I have to look at myself in the mirror,” one worker tells me. He could not live with himself if he talked someone off the street only for that person to be placed in a “ticking time bomb” situation of an extremely temporary shelter where you can’t bring in your possessions, pets or life partner.
But could such a minimal offer be legal? Yes it could. And the ACLU’s Do says we’re a long ways away from negotiating (or litigating) what constitutes a good-faith offer of shelter. A policy that relies upon the humanity and decency of an individual city worker is no policy at all. And when I asked people on the city side whether there are any written policies regarding this, I was told there are not.
Someone might want to think about writing that down. And, while we’re at it, building many, many more such shelters.
The facts on the ground leading to Ryu’s preliminary injunction are a disgrace for San Francisco, as is the behavior of its politicians whipping up a bloodlust against the judiciary, disproportionately blaming an injunction from late 2022 for this city’s generations-in-the-making homelessness and housing situation and making statements about the restrictions placed on this city that are — at best — dubious. Tech barons attempting to initiate a boycott of one of the plaintiffs’ law firms is also a loathsome development.
But there is plenty more opprobrium to go around. The Coalition on Homelessness has long advocated for the construction of massive amounts of supportive housing, rather than shelter, but that does not seem to be the direction its litigation would logically push the city.
While the injunction is not saying San Francisco requires a 1:1 ratio of homeless people to shelter beds, it’s beyond clear that the city has far too many of the former, and far too few of the latter. City homeless outreach workers say a good rule of thumb to determine San Francisco’s shelter needs is to count New York City’s shelter beds and divide that number by 10. That would come out to about 6,000 beds, about twice what we’ve got.
Those shelter beds need to be built or bought. Housing is great — nothing cures homelessness like housing — but the situation on the streets is deadly and untenable and has to remedied yesterday. The Controller’s office confirms there is about $650 million in Prop. C money in the bank. While much of it is already tied to specific projects, some of it is not.
Make no mistake, San Francisco cannot solve America’s homeless problem. But the city can, and should, rapidly expand its shelter bed count so it can actually provide realistically available shelter opportunities without playing shell games.
To do otherwise is to elevate sadism and masochism to city policy. And, as a certain former mayor could tell you, nobody benefits from that.
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Update, Sept. 5: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in a one-page decision today denied the city’s motion to modify the preliminary injunction.
“Because the parties agree that a person is not involuntarily homeless if they have declined a specific offer of available shelter or otherwise have access to such shelter or the means to obtain it … the City’s motion to modify the preliminary injunction is DENIED WITHOUT PREJUDICE,” reads the decision.
“We are pleased that the Ninth Circuit agreed with the City that the preliminary injunction does not apply to those who refuse shelter or those who have a shelter bed and choose to maintain a tent on the street,” said Jen Kwart, a spokesperson for the City Attorney. “This action holds Plaintiffs to their statements in court on what it means to be ‘involuntarily homeless.'”
The plaintiffs, however, denied there was ever a dispute about who the injunction applied to and who it did not. Additionally, ACLU attorney John Do earlier described the so-called controversy over the definition of “involuntarily homeless” as “manufactured.” The definition, he told Mission Local, is “in the case law” and not up for debate.
“The Ninth Circuit’s ruling makes clear what the law always has been: San Francisco cannot punish people who lack access to specific and realistically available shelter,” said Zal Shroff, the acting legal director of the Lawyers’ Committee For Civil Rights-San Francisco, on Tuesday evening. “The injunction is in place because San Francisco failed that test by citing, fining, and arresting unhoused people who did not have a clear means to access shelter more than 3,000 times over the last several years.”
I attended the Ninth Circuit hearing Aug 23. It was obvious to all who sat thru the proceedings that the narrative sold outside by Breed was utterly wrong. The panel of judges and the plaintiffs’ counsel made clear that David Chiu’s interpretation of the injunction was either a historically stupid legal interpretation, or else a nakedly cynical lie to confuse the public and feign a strategic impotence on behalf of her administration.
Weird strategy.
Regardless, San Francisco needs new leaders.
Fantastic article! Thank you for effectively and clearly explaining this complicated situation, made even more-so by the misdirection from our hapless mayor. We need leaders competent enough to provide actual solutions, not finger pointing.
I’m a liberal, but at this point I’ve lost sympathy for most of the homeless and the non-profits advocating for them. This isn’t just an issue of housing and I know there is a percentage of people who simply can’t afford housing forcing homelessness. But SF’s homeless has a large number of addicts who are openly dealing and using drugs in public places and walking around like zombies and they aren’t interested in going to a shelter or housing where they will need to not use and they aren’t interested in treatment. The problem is intractable until we crack down on this behavior. We need to bring back mental health hospitals for those who need medical care, reinstate vagrancy laws for people who are repeat drug users and refuse services and crack down on drug dealers with sentences that don’t allow them to come out in a matter of weeks and resume selling. Enough is enough. I have compassion for people who are genuinely in a tough spot and are willing/able to get into a shelter so they can seek work and get into permanent housing, but those aren’t the people causing the majority of the problems making SF unlivable. Enough is enough already.
Excellent article. Thanx, Joe.
That there are $650m in Prop C funds is the problem.
As the only adult in the room, Peskin, noted, San Francisco’s problem is not a shortage of resources.
What we’re seeing here are the public confessions by deflection of an incompetent corrupt strong mayor who would never willingly forfeit the political and patronage gold mine that persistent homelessness affords.
This has been going on since 2020.
Ever since those bastards at Howard Jarvis held up the money from Prop C, I started having hope we’d get it allocated properly.
Instead she’s just using it as her political piggy bank.
‘Americas Homeless Problem’
This shows just how much of a bubble the author of this piece lives in.. and maybe how much of a bubble a lot of California lives in.
California accounts for maybe 12 to 14% of the total United States population. California accounts for over 33% of the nation’s homeless population.
This isn’t America’s problem this is California’s problem. The vast vast majority of the rest of the nation? They don’t have this problem.
Perhaps California’s need to get out of their bubbles a little bit. And understand that no the rest of the country isn’t like them.. and that if folks in San Francisco, one of the worst culprits in California, feel embarrassed perhaps it’s themselves they should look in the mirror too and blame.
Left-wing politics has not been a success. The rest of us are taking note.
That a large proportion of this country’s people without homes live in arguably the most expensive place to live in the country goes completely ignored in your rant. You seem to think unfettered capitalism will solve everything. But since the 1980’s, the US has been steadily moving right and increasing the power of wealth and corporations; Yet homelessness and poverty are increasing. So, you say, we just need more of the medicine to cure it. Maybe homelessness is a direct result of the *requirement* of scarcity in order for the market economy to function. I’d agree with one thing you said: It should not be called “America’s Homeless Problem” – it should be called “Capitalism’s Homeless Problem.”
It’s absurd to suggest that a homelessness problem in a left-wing city condemns the whole concept of left-wing politics to failure.
“The rest of [you]” have plenty of your own problems, so maybe you should go look in on those.
Sadly, the exclusive custodians of SF’s progressive politics, the city funded nonprofits, have stood down and allowed the right wing to craft and disseminate that
narrative without any political resistance.
The media wing of the progressive class Redmond, Cook and “PeoplePowerMedia” offer up no narrative of their own, so the right wing rampage. Were the progs told that if they fight back, their nonprofit funding woud lbe cut?
Come back to the $650 Million in unspent Prop C funds. $650 Million. Sitting in the bank. (Earning 1% interest, BTW). Basically, the Mayor is refusing to do anything about homelessness — except having her incompetent police chief roust them. (When, by the way, in the middle of a chronic crime problem, do we start talkin about firing the police chief ?)
You are actually full of shit. In Mission/Soma, sidewalk-blocking camps are usually not removed. Judging by activities at homeless encampments-the strewn needles, narcan packs, dealing activity, chop shops, all night noise, and screaming–the encamped are predominantly substance abusing, lawless, creators of nuisances, or insane. The disgraces are that such conditions are allowed or mandated to continue unabated and that SF’s monocultural “press” promotes the agenda of the Homeless Coalition.
Let me enlighten you since you haven’t been following along.
The “Healthy Streets Operations Center” consists of multiple government departments that do the work you’re talking about.
Joe proved that the injunction doesn’t stop them from cleaning and clearing, which has been clear from the start.
The Coalition doesn’t control how HSOC operates, it’s not even a part of city government, and honestly, you should be blaming the mayor for not whipping her agencies under the HSOC umbrella to fix it.
That’s HER purview, and “the buck stops with her”.
If homeless cant vote because they have no address and dont pay taxes because they dont have jobs than how is it possible they influence the political process? Blows my mind. All of this blows my mind. City spends money and homelessness increases And people have the nerve to call the situation ‘complex’.
I have a simple solution. Pull the funding and say no. No you cant camp here. No you cant steal from us. No you cant buy sell or use drugs here. You owe me 600 million dollars.
Homeless people can vote. There is a California case, Collier v. Menzel, 221 CalRptr. 110 (Ct. App. 1985) that holds that homeless people can identify a place like a street corner or a public park as their “residence” for voting purposes in California. It would be interesting to find out how many people in California are registered to vote here without a fixed residence.
Wow. I did’t realize citizenship in our great city was based on how much one pays in taxes or whether or not one has a job. Did you read that in the city charter? Lots of big words in there. Your feckless comments miss on so many levels why do I bother? But what the heck. First, you don’t lose the right to vote or citizenship if your homeless in California. You simply use your previous address until you find residency with a new one. Second, regarding joblessness and taxes are you saying that all those SF citizens who lost jobs during the pandemic relinquished citizenship and the basic rights and human dignity, including participation in the political process that comes with it? Given your “reasoning” (which barely conceals the hate for the poor from which it originates) that would seem to follow. That of course is simply nonsense. It’s not even imaginative nonsense. Third, a majority of those that are homeless in California in general and San Francisco in particular do have jobs, pay taxes and even vote. Finally, that you assume because someone is poor they are thieves and deal drugs says everything about your failings not theirs. If I want to buy drugs I don’t go to homeless encampments I go to some rave, or a bar in the Castro or your friendly neighborhood pub in the Marina. Theres nothing civil about uniformed elitist comments by someone who assume themselves uniquely entitled to SF citizenship while others not. Blowing ones mind assumes there’s a mind to be blown. Sorry Mission Local, I couldn’t help myself.
I’m not sure the logic of being unemployed and,.. choosing one of the highest cost of cities to ‘live’ in. Head scratcher.
Separately, there might be an absence of basic supervisory, managerial and leadership skills regarding civic problem solving.
The City&County is on the hook for millions in damages that hotels suffered when the street scene was relocated to hotels during the pandemic. This shows that it is an error to assume that our sidewalk dwellers could generally be moved to shelter or housing and the problems go away with it. Everybody knows this is not a housing issue first and foremost. It is drugs, and this needs to be acknowledged every step of the way. Curiously missing though in this piece though. Why?
That said, the COH is free to roll assisted housing themselves, using funds that they provide. If their ideas were such monumentally stellar revelations, and if they had standing in actually executing them, they’d be able to find donations to get this going and present a sustainable showcase of their own. Take a few blocks of hardline addicts, house them as the COH envisions, watch what happens. Oh yeah, remember the hotels.
Of course it IS a housing problem first. Yes, some of these folks need intensive case management & other services to do well in housing: but, as any social worker can tell you-living on the street does not make any other problem more soluble.
It’s an ideological problem, that you personify. The quixotic idea, that every single vagrant should be entitled to hundreds of thousands of dollars in real estate and services is as insane as it is unsustainable. Furthermore you ignore the fact that most of these marginal people will never recover a healthy self sustained life, no matter how many billions of public funds are invested in this ill-formed idea ( sure a few can can recover for publicity purposes, but that vast majority will not). San Francisco has done everything to encourage vagrants, instead of discouraging them and the now toxic street conditions are the inevitable result.
‘Vagrants”? What a blast from the past. Are you sure they’re not hobos? So what’s the solution? We could give the bus tickets out of town (like Frank Jordan in the 90s) or put them all in jail for one of over 100 “quality of life crimes” like Newsom. Or supply them with enough opioids so they can od and die on the street (which would provide an ongoing backdrop to doom loop tours run by the Planning Commission) After all, they are all just druggie junkie addicts who have brought shame, crime and a general level of insanity to our great city. There are winners and losers in this world, and these people are losers. If they can’t go out, get a college degree, a decent job, buy a home like normal human beings, then let’s just get rid of them so we can address important issues like the valuation of Twitter and Meta and how many more satellites Elon Musk can launch to to keep an eye on global vagrants who are pulling all humanity down. Don’t blame the judge, Blame the person who’s living like a king on our streets with our taxpayer money.
Well it’s easier to b**** about the problem and actually do something about it besides it’s a poor People’s problem if you have plenty of money in a ridge you can afford the drugs in this that and the other and there’s no problem right
Which is more quixotic?
The simple fact that everyone needs a home near jobs, and that we refuse to build enough homes and deal with real estate like a commodity leading to ever more scarcity….
Or a futile blame game that’s been done for so long that allows people to continually wander the streets?
And if not our streets, our jails? Then the streets again?
“Ideologically” all you want, but it’s not hard to see which option is better, managing their problems or having them wander the streets.
How and why is she the highest paid mayor America? Most corrupt city hall ever? Maybe not. Mosy stupid and undeserving of good govt constituents? Ya probably.
Hi Joe,
This is an excellent article, and I agree that the city is too hesitant to enforce the exceptions to encampment clearing allowed as you describe (blocking the sidewalk or road, excessive trash). It would be helpful to explore why that is – is it incompetence, fear of lawsuits, or something else?
Thanks.
There’s something wrong with the basic concept that the city should contort itself to care for junkies who come from elsewhere to smoke fentanyl and shoplift.
The Judge probably lives in a gated community. I’m sure wherever she lives she’s not dealing with tent dwellers in her neighborhood.
Why should we have to tolerate druggies and their filth?
Because the City didn’t follow its own policy.
The Coalition had 970 pages of evidence, the City couldn’t manage a 25 page rebuttal or a valid defense, managing only 17 pages.
Even a judge interpreting the law living in the Tenderloin would make the same ruling, it makes no difference.
San Francisco is such a beautiful city. My heart breaks to see the ugliness that is now such a large part of the city. On my last visit I made a point of checking out the homeless situation. I was disgusted at the garbage and human waste on city sidewalks. City sidewalks and parks are not appropriate living spaces. I urge officials to use every legal means to clean up the city.
So you came to San Francisco to “check out the homeless”? Seriously?
I just took a week off work and spent the time in San Francisco and had a great time.
I was on every side of the city one day or another. Did I see any one in a tent? Yes. Did I see any crap on the streets? No, neither did I see syringes. But did I spend my time in the Tenderloin or in SOMA? Hell no. Downtown? Well, I did walk through on my way to North Beach. EVERY city has rough parts, seems to me we have more un-housed, but the neighborhoods that I would not walk alone at night are the same today as in 1990.
Remember Breed’s illegal DPW “sweeps” right before her press conf photo ops?
“Move 2 blocks that direction so you’re off camera.” Literally. You get the leadership you deserve by virtue of ALLOWING this sort of thing.
London Breed has always been an incompetent liar throwing bombs and slogans alike to distract from her utter personal failures. This should surprise exactly nobody.
Send that charlatan back to the Willie Brown vault of graft, matriculate her in Scott Weiner’s well-greased footprints up to higher giveaway-failures at the State level, whatever, just get her out of SF. She is a liar crying Wolf and we’ve had enough.
WHERE IS THE BREED RECALL?
Whatever people want of Donna Ryu, she’s doing her job and apolitically so.
It’s an unpopular forced hand when the city’s leadership is so woefully unaccountable as to literally pretend that holding them to existing law and own written policies is somehow unfair or unexpected. Chiu is showing himself (again) as the dishonest go-between power broker who will always kneel to the slimy Bevan Dufties if he thinks there’s political advancement in it for himself. Imagine if he spent his time enforcing the law and the legal policies available to SF rather than LYING about a court’s plain-to-be-read rulings instead? Do they just think we’re all too stupid to notice?
San Francisco is (was) a great city, so why did you elect such a mediocre mayor? That’s the root of the problem. She can’t think outside the box, can’t convene great minds, can’t solve anything. She’s incompetent. Now she’s scapegoating a judge. Meanwhile, businesses continue to leave.
As a native San Franciscan I am embarrassed to call this City my home. How did we let it get so out of hand? As a society when did we make it acceptable for people to park campers and RV’s on our city streets, or sleep in a tent on our sidewalks? Most of us treat our pets better than all this people living on our streets. At this point it doesn’t matter “whose fault” it is, let’s do something about it. Quit pointing the finger “over there” and throwing money on the problem. Obviously it’s getting worse and worse. Sleeping in public, doing drugs out in the open, using the restroom anywhere, has got to stop. This City has turned into a campground with no toilets or garbage facilities. Enough is enough. Social workers should help place ppl. If they don’t want to be helped or placed in housing provided, then need to move along and find other resources. I am so done with this problem.
Moved along?
What is your answer to this problem, specifically?
I think many feel they don’t care, just get them out of here and I don’t blame them.
Well, it seemed when there were folks ‘homeless sweeps’ a lot of the general outcry was “They have a right to be there” and now the ban on homeless sweeps has made us a disgrace?
Nah, the fact the former had traction must a disgrace.
I would say that the disgrace here is the conditions of our sidewalks. Mission Local has it backwards. I also have an issue with the derogatory term “sweeps.” SF sends many different trained people out to help the people on the streets to move so that they clean them and prod them respectfully into accepting shelter. Sweeps’ was coined by the CoH as a way to demonize these efforts.
Breed was happy doing nothing about homelessness until she realized we are not going to vote for her again unless she gets serious about homelessness. If we keep voting for useless democrats and they do nothing, people will turn to right-of-the-center candidates to fix the city’s problems. And that will be catastrophic.
Thank you for the article. Sf is such a beautiful city and it really is heartbreaking to have so many homeless . There must be a solution out there. I wish I had a solution. The drug use, is a compounding problem for those who are so down and out an altered reality is the only option as true reality is too difficult. With all the vacancies going on in the commercial sector couldn’t the city buy a high rise or two and transform it in to a half way housing complete with mental health services and drug rehabilitation educational I believe there is a solution. Covid has been a wake up call to those who do not want to work in person. I think the real estate sector is right for the opportunity to turn a negative into a positive. I don’t think it will be easy, but it’s definitely doable. Help those individuals and give them dignity. I bet with the proper funding and resources we can help a person or couple or family at a time find a better path. I think San Francisco has an opportunity to shine if it wants to and to work in conjunction with the state. It can come back and be the city everyone wants it to be.. complete with thriving tourism and high property values .. there are so many pieces to the puzzle .. we need serious people to tackle the problems and not just be talking heads or litigants. I’d vote for it . But I don’t live in SF .. I live next door.
Thanks for the article/analysis. I read the complaint & injunction. Plaintiffs seem to have shifted their position and now publicly acknowledge there’s an exception to the magistrate’s order that the “preliminary injunction shall remain in effect as long as there are more homeless individuals in San Francisco than there are shelter beds available.” The order itself is what causes the confusion on what is permitted.
Almost impossible to quantify the amount of incredulous disgust generated by all “this.” Worse, it continues to be allowed: jackal$ and hyena$ tearing at the decomposing carcass of a city still somehow able to deposit bucks into their fanged, foetid, slavering jaws.
This is lack of leadership.
Mismanagement in leadership. If your mayor, City Council, State Rep, Governor are not doing their jobs, vote them out. No second chances. Results are judgements. Vote for what they do, not what they say. Vote them out.
I can’t get out of my head fact that a new generation of people have called San Francisco home, in so doing raising the rents by as much as 100% or more all over the city, and that this isn’t just a “clean up” of the people that saw the dark end of that shift. Homeless was all the rage during Newsom’s campaign decades ago, homeless have always been here. It was about the time that all these neighborhoods got heavily gentrified with even the “Trenderloin” commanding $3k/month rents in renovated apartments that people started to say “its gotten worse than it ever has”.
You can still go around the city and find lots and lots of low income people at the end of their ropes, still housed, maybe working two jobs, a step away from homelessness. Try gentrifying their neighborhoods and see what happens. Because …… get this …. San Francisco is a city.
It is the epitome of irony in this lawsuit is that it now demands more shelters to be built. Jennifer Freidenbach, the head of Coalition on the Homeless, advocated over the years that homeless funds not be put into shelters and instead be funneled into permanent supportive housing. The reasoning was that shelters would divert much needed fund from permanent supportive housing. Kelly Cutler at CoH once stated that she did not want to see San Francisco Homeless policy “New Yorkified.” New York has a Right to Shelter law, unlike San Francisco who has put most their funds into Permanent Supportive housing. There are very few people in NYC living on the street. The result of CoH long standing Housing First policy is that we have 57% of the homeless living on our streets. I think everyone on both sides of this law suit now agrees that we need more shelter space & that Housing First, though needed, must be balanced with immediate relief to street homelessness. That leaves the issue of volunteer street homelessness. Having had encampments surround my home for eight years and gotten familiar with most of the people in these encampments, I can emphatically say, many are there because they have created lives on the streets and prefer to stay there. Statistics back me up. A study showed 40% of people on the street want to stay there. San Francisco, through years of bad policy to the tune of billions of dollars, has created a street culture that will not be easy to dislodge. In 2024, I urge you to vote for people with the courage to buck SF’s failed policy on homelessness. The health, safety, and viability of our city is at stake.
interesting how only one comment notes that the fundamental problem we have is that our homes have become vehicles for investment that encourages scarcity and invites speculation (REITs).
is it not ironic that we have a glut of business properties (so many we feel compelled to penalize owners) while housing properties continue to be scarce and rising in value.
and her ‘zonor is unable to find the political will to bring more housing while sharing beds (hah!) with the developers.
p.s. the world is still reeling from the effects of the pandemic (wars,coups,disease,state terrorism, etc.) despite all the desire to move on by the wealthy white elitists.
To legally fix the homeless problem is simple. Do not feed them. They may have a right to sleep on the sidewalks and poop in public but there is nothing like an empty stomach to give an out of work person the urge to migrate where there are jobs or free food.
The problem is that “the homeless” are composed of two types of people: the truly needy and the worthless bums. We refuse to acknowledge that, so we TALK as if they’re all needy, but we BEHAVE as if they’re all bums.
Do you know how we could and always could have handled most homeless blight within 30 days that even has the approval of all of the homeless people that I have talked to?
Simple. Provide a $2000 shed with solar phone charging power, bed platform, desk and chair, and locks for each homeless person. Place the sheds in empty lots, parking spaces, public lands. We could paint unicorns and rainbows of the sheds. The homeless can store their property and not carry it around. They could have pets and human companions. They would be subject to health and noise ordinances, but no more rules and regulations than normal housing. Destroying a shed could lead to a felony long term home in prison. Although this is inadequate housing for one of the wealthiest regions in the world, this would be a way, way less expensive alternative than what is spent now and provide a healthier environment for the homeless and remove lots of blight and all within 30 days. Repeat, done within 30 days. But, who wants to quickly solve a 40 year problem?
Seeing it firsthand and actually talking to some of them, same people chanting “save our streets” and proclaiming the injunction is dysfunction are ironically the very same that won’t support housing and treatments for people? Only thing missing was pitchforks. It should not be lost that a large white SUV was circling the the courthouse on August 23, with huge Trump Banners flying. Sweeps don’t “work”. They never did. This is a national crisis, not unique to SF.
The hypocrisy deepens if you look at the signs they brought.
There was one about the “homelessness industrial complex” when that protester was right behind the mayor.
SHE IS THE “homelessness industrial complex”.
I always laugh when some idiots think Coalition on Homelessness is some city entity.
Perhaps you should stop laughing. Homeless Coalition is basically in bed with the SF Homeless agencies. In good opaque governance fashion, HSOC needn’t and doesn’t retain records of contacts between agencies and Homeless Coalition.
Sir or madam, you saying COH “in bed” with the agencies is even more laughable.
Let me clarify the facts since you don’t seem to get the gist of your “homelessness agencies”.
First, COH deals with homelessness, saying they’re in bed with agencies is as good as saying water is wet.
Their entire purpose is advocacy, and that requires collaboration. No shit.
Second, said “homelessness agencies” like the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing is getting SUED and LOSING by said COH as part of being HSOC since the beginning of this whole debacle.
Tell me, why should I not laugh even harder that you honestly think, that HSH is OH SO HAPPY that their supposedly “friendly” group is suing them?
When those city agencies are swayed infinitely more by the mayor who funds them, against COH which only gives input?
Boden and then Friedenbach have had the CoH portfolio for 25+ years now. Under their advocacy watch, circumstances have deteriorated markedly as billions have been laundered through the nonprofits.
The following ballot measures penalized homelessness and boosted the careers of conservative Democrats over progressives:
Aggressive Panhandling.
ATM Panhandling
Care Not Cash
Sit/Lie
Encampments
There does not seem to be any learning and adapting going on within the self reaffirming advocate cliques, who are convinced that the correctness of their position obviates any need for political shrewdness.
It is not supporting a right wing crackdown to ask “where is the accountability for these private advocacy agencies” that get paid to advocate and fail? It is not just homelessness, the unaccountable outsourced advocacy model has failed progressive San Francisco and homeless people spectacularly.
Their failure has contributed in large measure to the collapse of progressive politics and the rise of the alt-right in SF politics. The clock is always ticking.
San Francisco does not have a homelessness or drug problem. What it has is predatory real estate opportunist problems. With the help of lax or incompetent local government officials, the city has invited dystopian vagrancy and street drugs. The purpose to run down the values of businesses and home properties. This, so their real estate donors can swoop in and buy on the cheap. Only after then, the police will clean out the streets so the city can recover with the new owners. This strategy started 50 years ago when they gutted Detroit. Only, the citizens burnt half of it down before speculators could cash in. This explains everything.