San Francisco’s renewed efforts to clear homeless camps began Monday and have been in the news all week.
Despite all the attention, the city continues to insist that the teams are not doing anything they have not done in recent years.
San Francisco’s Healthy Streets operation landed on the South of Market side streets. For one man, that meant having his RV towed. The city says it will pay for the recovery of the damage, and they found him a small house, but they said they would clear the street, no exceptions.
“They say they want to put us in the shelter, but a lot of us have mental health issues,” said Caleb, who was staying on Merlin Street. “I just came from Max. So it’s hard being in a dorm.”
It is therefore not surprising that many homeless people choose to live elsewhere.
“Probably the next block that just got cleaned up,” Caleb said when asked where he was going next. “Or just the next block that’s open that DPW hasn’t been to recently.”
One real change with city enforcement right now is that streets that have been cleared are getting a second, third, and even fourth look. Willow Street in the Tenderloin saw two large-scale operations on Wednesday. A smaller crew returned later in the week to follow up again, and at least one person started a conversation about sheltering in place.
“So the key is to continue to engage,” explained David Nakanishi of the city’s Healthy Streets Operation Center. “Keep an eye on who’s here, what they need. Try to engage them to get them services, behavioral health, shelter, and ultimately housing. So they don’t have to be on the streets anymore.”
But not everyone in these alleys has nowhere to go. Many are already sheltered, and in one case the team was trying to get someone back to their room before their permit expired—there are often rules about checking in. And that’s another part of the city’s goal, to break up activity around encampments, and that means keeping everyone moving.
“This isn’t just about cleaning up and getting rid of it,” Mayor London Breed said last week. “Because these are people and they have to go somewhere, but we’re going to make them so uncomfortable on the streets of San Francisco that they have to accept our offer. That’s really the goal of what we’re trying to accomplish.”
The new rhetoric hasn’t convinced Caleb of anything yet.
“To me, it’s like single room occupancy,” Caleb said. “I’ve seen it time and time again, they throw a guy or a couple into an SRO. It just depends on who they pick, you know?”
So what’s the biggest change with the new policy? What’s the biggest difference? The answer to that is probably all the attention that’s being paid to it. With that will undoubtedly come higher expectations, or at least some curiosity about what the results might look like.
