The LA Times in an article on Saturday confirmed what we already suspected – officials do not have a plan as to where to put the people they clear from homeless encampments.
We suspected that was the case already – after all – why would Governor Newsom have to wait until after the Grants Pass ruling if they had the space and beds for the folks being cleared? Already under the Ninth Circuit ruling out of Boise, local officials had the authority to clear homeless encampments provided they have a place to shelter the folks being cleared.
The LA Times reported this weekend, “A week into what Mayor London Breed has called a “very aggressive” effort to clear homeless encampments across San Francisco, a key question looms: Where will the people living in those tents go?”
Mayor Breed has pledged (in an election year mind you) that San Francisco “would launch a more determined initiative to clear encampments.”
Reported the Times, the time had come, she said, to address “this issue differently than we have before.”
This all comes with a huge but…
Writes the Times, “But San Francisco, along with many other West Coast cities looking to crack down on encampments, still hasn’t figured out where people are supposed to go once their tents are dismantled…”
We keep hearing that the reason we needed the Grants Pass decision is all these people are refusing to be sheltered. Except for one problem – nothing prevented cities from doing this last year provided that they had enough shelter.
The problem in San Francisco and the Times reported: “The city’s shelters — with roughly 3,600 beds — are at 94% of capacity.”
“Unfortunately, San Francisco does not have enough shelter or housing for every person experiencing homelessness, but we do have some beds available each day to support the work of the outreach teams, and we continue to grow our system,” Emily Cohen, the department’s spokesperson, wrote in an email to the LA Times.
The Times also quoted spokesperson Jeff Cretan, who told them that the city doesn’t expect an influx of new people in the shelters.
The problem was, “After years of attempts to move people inside, those still living on the streets tend to be the most resistant to accepting offers of shelter, often because they’re struggling with mental illness and substance-use disorders.”
If that’s the case, aren’t we stuck in the same place we were? You aren’t clearing encampments, you are moving people around on a chessboard.
Part of the strategy seems to be moving people who are not from San Francisco out of the city.
The majority of the homeless are actually from San Francisco however, but “about 40% of people living on the streets said they were not from San Francisco.”
Mayor Breed issued “an executive directive requiring outreach workers to offer homeless people who aren’t from San Francisco free transportation out of town — to cities where they have family, friends or other connections. Cretan said the city would cover the cost of bus, plane or train fares.”
I infer from that, that they are basically trying to dump the homeless on other communities to handle. After all, if people had family or friends to shelter with, they probably wouldn’t be living on the streets to begin with.
“This directive will ensure that relocation services will be the first response to our homelessness and substance-use crises, allowing individuals the choice to reunite with support networks before accessing other city services or facing the consequences of refusing care,” Breed wrote in the directive.
Not surprisingly this hard-line approach has drawn a lot of criticism from homeless advocates – many of who agree that clearing tents will not address the underlying issues.
“The mayor really wants to make clear [that] you have to accept shelter. But, clearly, it’s not going to be everyone says yes,” Cretan said. “It’s not like you snap your fingers and everything changes overnight.”
The problem as I keep pointing out is that we actually know how to solve this problem – permanent supportive housing.
Had we had sufficient housing of this sort – we never would have needed the Grants Pass ruling. The problem is that it’s an election year and too many people want a quick fix to appease the voters rather than the long, slow, approach that will actually work.
