San Francisco sees a 41% drop in homeless tents as city and feds crackdown on homeless after years of crime and destitution on downtown streets
San Francisco’s recent homelessness crisis appears to be subsiding according to new figures from the city’s woke mayor, London Breed, showing numbers reaching their lowest level in five years.
The city calculates its homelessness figures every three months and at the end of the last count in April it recorded a 41 per cent drop compared to July 2023.
There were 360 ââtents and structures counted in April, compared to 610 last summer and 385 during the February count.
It is the lowest figure the city has recorded since it started keeping the data in 2018.
Breed says the reduction is due to a number of factors, not least police enforcement of anti-camping laws when homeless people have reasonable access to shelter.
San Francisco has cleared several known homeless encampments
Where there used to be tents, the sidewalks are bright and spotless. Locations where homeless people once gathered have now been cleared
The city calculates the city’s homeless figures every three months, and at the end of the last count in April, a 41 percent drop was recorded from July 2023.
San Francisco’s recent homeless crisis appears to be subsiding according to new figures from the city’s woke mayor, London Breed.
London also praised the increased availability of new shelter beds and a renewed push to fill vacant homes as the reasons for the drop in numbers.
âOur encampment teams and outreach workers are working tirelessly to get out and help shelter people and clear encampments,â Mayor Breed said. âWe continue to use all the resources we have and work to add more, but there is still much more to do.
âWe will be relentless in our efforts to help people find safer, supportive services and make our neighborhoods cleaner and healthier for everyone. I want to thank our outreach workers across our agencies for their commitment to helping people.
‘This is not easy work, but it does make a difference. We continue to use all the resources we have and work to add more, but there is still much more to do,â Breed said in a statement.
Early morning, a homeless man and woman quickly retrieve their belongings as Urban Alchemy crews begin a daily cleaning of the streets in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood
City workers clean the streets and remove tents and belongings from homeless people
The area outside the United States Federal Building in San Francisco was considered the largest of all the open-air drug markets in the city
Hangouts along Mission Street and Market are also gone, along with a shameless open drug market that had been outside the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building for more than a year.
Federal rules have now cleared the city’s ability to forcibly move homeless encampments, with the rules allowing tents to be forcibly torn down by police if people are given “reasonable” access to shelter.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals clarified in September 2023 that those who refuse shelter are not âinvoluntarily homeless,â leaving them unprotected under the order. A three-judge panel largely upheld the order in January.
Since the beginning of the year, the city has cleared 242 encampments, during which outreach workers have made contact with 1,530 homeless people.
After a change in the rules, the city saw a decrease in the number of people visibly living on the streets.
However, not everyone is convinced of the figures. It notes that a reduction in the number of tents “does not necessarily mean a reduction in homelessness.”
âThere is still a large unmet need with long waiting lists for shelter and housing,â said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, which sued the city over its encampments. The standard.
âTouting a reduction in the number of tents as a result of the sweeps is mere political theater.â
City data shows shelter offers were accepted 30 percent of the time and rejected 60 percent of the time.
As of Monday evening, 155 people remain on the waiting list for individual shelter beds, while another 372 families are on a separate waiting list for family shelter beds.
Police may enforce anti-camping laws if homeless people have reasonable access to shelter
A San Francisco Police Department officer asks two people sitting on the sidewalk to move
Officers are now taking a more active role in moving homeless people into shelters
A San Francisco Police Department vehicle drives through a homeless camp being cleared in San Francisco
Scenes of homeless drug addicts stumbling on sidewalks and fears of violence and petty crime have become a national political issue, with Donald Trump making it part of his campaign platform.
In a video op homelessness released by his campaignTrump said âhard-working, law-abiding citizensâ were sidelined and had to âsuffer at the whims of some deeply sick people.â
He promised to âban urban campingâ and create âtent citiesâ on âcheap landâ for the homeless, which will be staffed with doctors and social workers to help people address systemic problems.
Yet homeless people and their advocates say the cleanup and relocation policy is cruel and a waste of taxpayer dollars.
The answer, they say, is more affordable housing, not a crackdown on tent cities.
San Francisco is reeling from rising crime, downtown emptying and residents moving to safer, cheaper areas
Breed is facing a re-election bid and is currently in trouble, according to recent polls. She has overseen an ongoing decline in San Francisco’s economy and the prevalence of homelessness and overdoses on the streets.
âAs someone who grew up in San Francisco, Macy’s has always meant a lot to the people of this city. It’s where families came to shop during the holidays,â Breed said earlier this year.
In San Francisco’s crime-ridden downtown, many shops and restaurants have closed since the drastic downfall, despite Breed trying to hype the statistics by claiming a drop in violations by 2023.
In October 2023, it was reported that seven Starbucks stores planned to close as the city continues to struggle with crime, drug use and homelessness.
In late August 2023, a video was released showing the recently closed flagship Nordstrom store in San Francisco, nearly barren after nearly three decades in business.