London Breed: No more excuses, no more apologies. SF won’t tolerate encampments any longer

[NCK9]

Opinion | London Breed: No more excuses. SF will no longer tolerate encampments

Defending her “aggressive” crackdown on encampments, the mayor argues that homeless people have only one choice left: accept help or get out.

sfstandard.com

This month, via a collaboration of multiple city departments, my administration began stepping up efforts to get the last homeless tents and encampments off our streets. We have already cut the number of tents in half since July of last year. Now, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, we have more tools to help people out of tents and indoors.
And I am using them.
Our homeless encampment teams have been going out for years, bringing thousands of people from the street into shelter. I have ridden along with these teams, seen the work they do and the challenges they face. I’ve seen them connect people with family back home. But I’ve also seen them told “no,” again and again, by people who return to the same spot, again and again.
The truth is there is a small subset of people in our city — often living in tents, often suffering from compounding issues of drug addiction and/or mental illness — who are much more difficult to help.
Take the site behind the DMV on Fell Street, near the Panhandle, for example. When I went out with encampment teams two weeks ago, our city workers had already been there over 15 times this year, offering people shelter and cleaning the area. But a small group of individuals kept returning to the area and setting up encampments.
What is the city to do in this situation?
Some want us to do nothing, to let people remain in tents until they make the personal decision to come in out of the cold. Advocates for these people have even filed lawsuits trying to force us to do nothing. These are some of the same advocates who hand out tents and tried to block our reforms to state conservatorship laws for those with severe mental illness.

But we cannot, and I will not, just let people remain in tents.

 

[Rock]

It's a tough issue and one that a lot of cities/towns are dealing with. My hometown, Lawrence, very similar to Chapel Hill in my opinion, has had a real homeless crisis since Covid hit. Here is a sampling of headlines in the last couple months:








In fact, Mass St. (being our version of Franklin St.) had a group of business owners sue the city because they believed the city wasn't doing enough (being too liberal) and that shops were tired of homeless/transients yelling at customers, threatening them, soiling themself in front of stores, etc.



There is no easy solution but as probably one of the more progressive people on this forum, it's clear that being the liberal utopia our town leaders think we are is being taken advantage of by people who are literally being bussed in from surrounding towns to use our services. We've just reached a breaking point unfortunately.

 

[Centerpiece]

“…being taken advantage of by people who are literally being bussed in from surrounding towns to use our services.”

Yes, it’s happening. If there is a progressive-type city in the midst, offering loads of services to the marginalized and unsheltered folk, the word gets around among both the unsheltered, AND also the authorities of surrounding municipalities. If one city has: large and well run soup kitchens, “Good Samaritan Clinics” offering healthcare services, Tiny Pantry’s in Church parking lots, Salvation Army-type stores giving away clothing to the needy, etc. etc. - then other towns and cities with homeless will literally round them up and simply bus them to the progressive, “homeless friendly” city and drop them off in the WalMart parking lot… or wherever.

 

[mpaer]

I had a girlfriend in Madison Wis who worked in the county Social services dept , She claimed towns throughout Wis would buy "bums" one way bus tickets to Madison

 

[altmin]

I had a girlfriend in Madison Wis who worked in the county Social services dept , She claimed towns throughout Wis would buy "bums" one way bus tickets to Madison

Hawaii has long claimed that states do that with plane tickets.

 

[gtyellowjacket]

It really is a massive problem. Have any countries figured it out?

 

[donbosco]

I had a girlfriend in Madison Wis who worked in the county Social services dept , She claimed towns throughout Wis would buy "bums" one way bus tickets to Madison

If I had a nickel for every time someone in Chapel Hill asked me for $5 so they could “get to Durham”…

Off topic - carry on.

 

[NCK9]

According to Wikipedia San Diego, San Francisco, Honolulu, Portland, Atlanta, New York, and Seattle are among cities who have programs to bus homeless elsewhere. These bussing programs are under the auspice of getting someone back home to family/friends - but that isn’t always the case.

List of homeless relocation programs in the United States - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[haroldminer]

It really is a massive problem. Have any countries figured it out?

Other countries didn’t close mental health hospitals and let people starve

 

[gtyellowjacket]

Other countries didn’t close mental health hospitals and let people starve

Is that right? I still see plenty of homeless people in Europe.

Edit: looking at the data, the US has less homeless per capita than a lot of peer countries, sometimes much less. Canada has 3 times the per capita homeless. France, Sweden and Germany are over 2 times. No idea how they handle the mentally ill but I would guess their resources are better than ours

List of sovereign states by homeless population - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[haroldminer]

“After the deinstitutionalization movement began in California in the 1960s, many state mental health hospitals closed, forcing many folks who needed a lot of care onto the streets.

Without those facilities, many mentally ill people ended up in jails and prisons which are not set up to provide safe, compassionate care for brain illnesses. But in 1981, when President Reagan deinstitutionalized the mentally ill and emptied the psychiatric hospitals into so-called “community” clinics, the problem got worse.”

 

[NCK9]

Interesting read on the deinstitutionalizion movement (from reddit)

 

[NCK9]

https://www.koin.com/news/homeless/san-francisco-has-relocated-10-people-facing-homelessness-to-oregon-heres-why/

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – As cities across the United States are seeing a homeless crisis, the mayor of San Francisco has issued a new directive to help relocate some people experiencing homelessness, with Oregon being among the top destinations.

On Aug. 1, San Francisco Mayor London Breed issued an executive directive that orders city employees to offer people facing homelessness relocation assistance before offering homeless services such as housing and shelter within the city of San Francsico, as first reported by The San Francisco Standard.

San Francisco’s relocation program isn’t new, but the directive prioritizes relocation “to reunite more people with family outside of San Francisco,” amid an increase of people from out-of-state, Mayor Breed explained.
.....
The city has been offering relocation services since 2005, when it offered bus tickets to help people facing homelessness or drug use disorders relocate to friends and family in other areas under the Journey Home program.

 

[genevabuck]

Homelessness has always been a problem. Historically, many have had mental illnesses. Now, it seems that the problem has exploded due to opiates, heroin, fentanyl, meth, etc. These drugs are so powerful that these users basically become nonfunctional. It’s becoming a problem even in isolated small towns in West Virginia. This new homeless issue is a much different problem than in the past.

 

[haroldminer]

Homelessness has always been a problem. Historically, many have had mental illnesses. Now, it seems that the problem has exploded due to opiates, heroin, fentanyl, meth, etc. These drugs are so powerful that these users basically become nonfunctional. It’s becoming a problem even in isolated small towns in West Virginia. This new homeless issue is a much different problem than in the past.

I’ve seen many people stuck bent over due to fentanyl.

 

[TarSpiel]

I appreciate the point emphasized in the article that a lot of homeless simply refuse to be housed. A lot of times in these discussions, people are like "Why won't anyone do more for them?!?!", but it turns out that there's only so much you can do.

It's also true that you can't just let them smoke meth on somebody's front porch. Some kind of large institution is probably the best way to go, with beds, food, medicine and safety. Maybe more of them would accept housing if an institution or jail was their only other option.

 

[HeelingAg]

Homelessness has always been a problem. Historically, many have had mental illnesses. Now, it seems that the problem has exploded due to opiates, heroin, fentanyl, meth, etc. These drugs are so powerful that these users basically become nonfunctional. It’s becoming a problem even in isolated small towns in West Virginia. This new homeless issue is a much different problem than in the past.

In my, let's say, second-order experience, fent is terribly destructive to the individual and the collateral societal impact is very real. Meth, on the other hand, is terribly destructive to the individual and greatly increases the real-time threat to the community. The ability of meth to draw out the most dangerous human impulses continues to shock me, despite seeing it over and over and over ...

 

[Peppers49]

It's a tough issue and one that a lot of cities/towns are dealing with. My hometown, Lawrence, very similar to Chapel Hill in my opinion, has had a real homeless crisis since Covid hit. Here is a sampling of headlines in the last couple months:








In fact, Mass St. (being our version of Franklin St.) had a group of business owners sue the city because they believed the city wasn't doing enough (being too liberal) and that shops were tired of homeless/transients yelling at customers, threatening them, soiling themself in front of stores, etc.



There is no easy solution but as probably one of the more progressive people on this forum, it's clear that being the liberal utopia our town leaders think we are is being taken advantage of by people who are literally being bussed in from surrounding towns to use our services. We've just reached a breaking point unfortunately.

I live in Austin and it’s been a hot button problem here for a while. It was getting really bad in the late 2010s; a bunch of parks/green spaces, highway underpasses, and entire blocks in and around downtown were overrun with tent encampments. Probably not quite as bad as say Portland or SF, but it was getting close. The city passed an ordinance in 2020 that banned camping in public spaces and that did a pretty good job of cleaning up those aforementioned areas. I’ve noticed that the enforcement of that ordinance has started to lose steam in the last year or two, but the situation is a lot better than it was pre-2020.

It’s tough. I really do feel for people struggling with addiction issues, etc. and I understand that solving homelessness is a bigger systemic issue that an individual city will never be able to solve on its own. Like you say though, even the most liberal cities have a breaking point and don’t want their streets and green spaces totally overrun with strung out tent cities.

 

[HeelingAg]

I live in Austin and it’s been a hot button problem here for a while. It was getting really bad in the late 2010s; a bunch of parks/green spaces, highway underpasses, and entire blocks in and around downtown were overrun with tent encampments. Probably not quite as bad as say Portland or SF, but it was getting close. The city passed an ordinance in 2020 that banned camping in public spaces and that did a pretty good job of cleaning up those aforementioned areas. I’ve noticed that the enforcement of that ordinance has started to lose steam in the last year or two, but the situation is a lot better than it was pre-2020.

It’s tough. I really do feel for people struggling with addiction issues, etc. and I understand that solving homelessness is a bigger systemic issue that an individual city will never be able to solve on its own. Like you say though, even the most liberal cities have a breaking point and don’t want their streets and green spaces totally overrun with strung out tent cities.

Portland, while still having numerous pockets of encampments, has dramatically swung the other direction, in recent months. The long debated and inactive camping ban on city property, near highways, near schools, on sidewalks, has gone into effect. Many underpasses that long served as skid rows have been cleared and the city either parks vehicles, or fills the area with boulders.

Covid shuttered so much of the city that the mean resident didn't necessarily expect to walk around downtown, regularly go out to eat, belly up to a bar, or lounge in parks. I hypothesize that said resident also experienced elevated empathy and sympathy for the gross struggles in society. That's when the encampments went nuts, and pressure on the government to do something lagged. As "normal activity" has indeed become normal again, mean resident is going to the bar, cafe, park, shop, etc. and becomes worn down by the moral fatigue and genuine sense of danger when encountering the numerous hazards associated with encampments. Hell, Oregon came very close the electing a right-wing governor, largely on the back of homelessness policy and enforcement.

 

[NCK9]