The number of people sleeping outdoors dropped to under 3,000 in January, the lowest the city has recorded in a decade, according to a federal count.
And that figure has likely dropped even lower since Mayor London Breed — a Democrat in a difficult reelection fight this November — started ramping up enforcement of anti-camping laws in August following a U.S. Supreme Court decision.
Homelessness in no way has gone away, and in fact grew 7%, to 8,300 in January, according to the same federal count.
But the problem is now notably out of the public eye, raising the question of where people have gone and whether the change marks a turning point in a crisis long associated with San Francisco.
This is so sick. Instead of doing something about the rising homelessness problem, they just shoo them away so rich people don’t have to see them anymore. Making life even harder for those who already have it rough.
Way to kick the one laying on the ground.
In a podcast docu-series, a woman qualified for free housing and was afraid to take it. She had mobility issues and someone in her unhoused community fetched her prescriptions. She was afraid of not being able to get medication. Now imagine how that feels losing your support system and still sleeping outside.
There’s a popular idea that homeless people don’t want homes.
I’m sure that’s true in isolated cases, but I don’t know if it’s generally true.
Yeah I think that normally boils down to a choice of having condescending assholes run your life and force you to jump through endless difficult hoops while massively restricting your life where they take away everything that helps (including pets, relationships, etc) then when people don’t want to put up with that the system washes its hands and says ‘see, they want to he homeless!’
It’s like someone telling you that if you don’t eat the chips they’ve pissed on you don’t ever want to eat again.
Sure there are people and groups that do want to live in a van or moving between worksites, friends and camps but generally they’re not often counted as homeless because they have a postal address (family, friends, or work) through which they’re registered - my brother would technically fall into this as he lives undocumented and illegally in a caravan behind his workplace but is legally registered at our parents, if he didn’t have somewhere to register his bank account, etc then he’d be classed as homeless though that’s verry different to being a ‘rough sleeper’
But yeah if the question asked was ‘do you want a safe and comfortable place to sleep where you’re allowed to live your own life’ then you’ll get a different response to ‘would you like to go to a kind of prison but it’s less safe, more annoying, and we’re taking your dog away, your gf or friends can’t come over, etc etc etc…’
SF has been trying to solve the problem your way for 20 years and it’s only gotten worse.
Incredibly incorrect. SF has done less than nothing to solve the problem for 20 years, and is shocked when doing nothing did nothing.
I guess you’ve never lived in or even bothered to research SF at all. That’s the only possible way you could make such a wildly, ridiculously wrong statement. San Francisco has spent a BILLION DOLLARS on homelessness. Billion.
Per year, for the last several years.
What a ridiculous lie. “Done nothing”. Christ, a single Google search would prove you wrong. That’s a “the sky is yellow” level of absurd lie. It’s insulting.
Spending money while not doing Anything any research group has ever recommended is the same as doing nothing. They’ve spent a billion on 1930s era “solutions” that make conservative liberals feel like theyve accomplished things while doing literally not one thing to actually solve the causes of homelessness. If they spent a million on new city owned no rent housing, that would be more than the entirety of all their other projects combined.
…they would get laughed out of the room? That barely buys a single condo in an existing building in SF.
If they did literally nothing else, and ignored all the people who overdose and die of exposure and end up sick etc etc…just did absolutely nothing and saved their budget for 10 years, MAYBE they could approach a partnership to THINK about breaking ground on a single building. Which would take 20 years to build.
Building new homes is just such an expensive approach that it’s not worth considering in SF.
That’s possibly the dumbest take.
Oh yeah? Why?
I’ll take a crack.
It doesn’t take 20 years to build a building, even a large housing project. If you’re including the planning, financing, management, and value engineering stuff - yeah it takes longer than the actual physical building, but no where near 20 years in total. Unless someone who would say as much is being disingenuos and including all time from concept to completion, combined among all individuals involved.
Also, in previous comments you said they spent a billion a year. Then, in a follow-up comment you said “if they save their money for 10 years”. So I’m wondering if you imagine building a housing project costs 10 billion?
Sounds like if the they are actually garnering a billion a year, building housing should be totally workable.
Eh. Using public well used spaces as your own personal living space is selfish and disrespectful of everyone else. You got a tent, go out and live in the woods.
There is no reason to be in the city if you’re homeless other than access to drugs.
Aren’t you a peach. I hope your username stands for Dick-karma and I hope that karma of being a dick comes back to you tenfold.
And access to literally everything else, which is why most people live in cities. Drugs are also very common in rural areas because young people have nothing better to do and there’s lots of open space to manufacture them.
I’m certainly not a fan of people pitching tents on sidewalks, but let’s at least stick to legitimate arguments.
I hope you never become homeless.
Or maybe I hope you do, just enough so that you can understand what those people are going through.
Tell that to every person parking their car in public. It’s an insane waste of space and massive subsidy to the already privileged. We give free/cheap rent to cars EVERYWHERE but far far less for actual humans.
If we ban cars, we would probably double the amount of land available housing. Not to mention the benefits in terms of imperialism, pollution, violence, equity, wastefulness, etc.
“The only thing in a city is drugs”
Or doctors. Or jobs. Or grocery stores.
You’d be surprised how many homeless or car bound are employed.
Unless you are homeless and unemployed. Which is a thing. Especially in cities with ridiculously high rent like SF.
You can’t really think that all the homeless people in cities are drug addicts.
I pity you. People like you don’t deserve pity but I pity you regardless.
How DARE people not respect others’ right to live in hell without resources of any kind!
Leaving them to play fortnite in ditches isn’t better than actually trying to do anything, you just think it is because then they aren’t your responsibility.
Do you have any idea how many homeless die daily in those encampments? No clean water, no medical care, violence.
And while 90-95% are just trying to survive, the last 5-10% are often violent, and brutalize the others.
If you want to designate zones and have some form of law enforcement around to deal with the bad ones, great, but your argument is to put them in a big pot, with some truly violent ones, and just pretend everything is OK.
Where is your pity? Oh, it’s not your problem, you’re blessing them with their freedom to suffer out of your sight.
Despite your wacky description of how you imagine being unhoused…
I’m pretty sure people want to stay where they’re living rather than being violently attacked, evicted, and disappeared.
They want to stay in their dirty ditch rather than: https://kdow.biz/news/national/more-shelter-beds-and-a-crackdown-on-tents-mean-fewer-homeless-encampments-in-sa/c5dad968b8fafaab83b51433a204c9ea
I’m glad you know they would rather stay in filth than actually have a clean, private space.
You’re not from California, I’m fairly sure you’re not American either.
I am a Californian, and am not able to read your linked source because there is no option out of their cookie settings.
Also those shelters have been closing during the middle of the day “because of high heat” for the last month here in San Diego. They also aren’t what I would consider to be remotely “clean.”
Housing first is the way to go, we have 50 years of various studies that prove this. Shelters pretty much only help the people that own them.
Hopefully you support a ban on private vehicles then? Special big trucks and SUVs.