SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco Mayor London Breed has launched a new crackdown on rough sleepers in a campaign to clear the sidewalks of homeless encampments that have come to define the city.
His four rivals in the November election, all Democrats, say he has failed to handle the crisis effectively, though the city counted just 300 tents and other temporary structures last month, half the number it had a year earlier.
But his opponents do not agree on a strategy.
“You can really change San Francisco’s reputation from being a place where people today think they can come to our city, pitch a tent and stay as long as they want, to being a city where, if that’s the lifestyle they choose, they look elsewhere,” said Mark Farrell, perhaps the most conservative of the contenders.
It’s a similar story in other major US cities electing mayors this year.
Most are in the West, where a long-running homelessness crisis was fueled by high housing costs and deepened during the coronavirus pandemic that upended the nation four years ago. Thousands of people are without a place to live, and for many homeless residents this has become a quality-of-life concern that has become a top political issue.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat and former mayor of San Francisco, threatened last week to withdraw state funding from cities and counties that don’t do more to move people out of encampments and into shelters.
A 2023 count showed there were 653,000 homeless people at any given time nationwide, an increase of 63,000 from a decade earlier. The problem has become much more visible: 257,000 people were living on the streets or in other unfit places for habitation, 61,000 more than in 2013.
Most mayors and candidates in big cities, almost all Democrats, agree that more affordable housing and additional services for the homeless are needed. At the heart of the debate, as in San Francisco, is whether it is acceptable to force people off the streets.
In two of the largest cities in the western United States, challengers are emphasizing the homelessness crisis in their races against incumbents who won comfortably four years ago.
Larry Turner, a police officer trying to unseat San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, says the incumbent is putting too much emphasis on temporary housing, including a plan to convert a warehouse into a 1,000-bed shelter. Gloria’s campaign says he is working on both short-term and permanent housing.
In Phoenix, Matt Evans argues that incumbent Kate Gallego has not done enough to enforce laws and remove encampments. Gallego opposes what she calls the criminalization of homelessness and has added hundreds of shelter beds.
Elections could change the issue. And the situation on the streets, of course, can change depending on who is elected.
“Mayors can make a huge difference,” said Ann Oliva, executive director of the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
But he criticises the idea of arresting or fining people who have nowhere to live.
“Criminalisation cannot be the main way of persecuting the homeless and at the same time reduce the numbers,” Oliva stressed.
Some new mayors have managed to reduce the number of homeless without imposing sanctions, he added.
In Los Angeles, the city with the largest homeless population in the United States, Karen Bass took office in December 2022 and immediately signed an emergency order making it easier to contract with hotels to provide shelter. According to the January homeless count, the city’s homeless total fell by 2%, the first decline after years of increases. Bass has more than two years before she seeks reelection.
In Mike Johnston’s first six months as Denver mayor last year, the city moved 1,000 people into hotels, a community of cabin-like structures and other transitional housing.
Other new mayors, like Philadelphia’s Cherelle Parker, have embraced the tough approach that many of the candidates are calling for and that the Supreme Court validated with a ruling in June allowing authorities to ban rough sleeping.
A dozen candidates are vying for the post in open mayoral elections in November in Portland, Oregon, the center of a metropolitan area where a January 2023 count found nearly 4,000 people living in homelessness.
City Councilman Rene Gonzalez urged Multnomah County, where Portland is located, to stop distributing tents and tarps to homeless people.
Gonzalez pushed for a stricter city ordinance last year, but joined a unanimous council decision in May to allow authorities to fine or even jail homeless people who refuse an offer of shelter.
In San Francisco, Breed’s office issued a memo in July warning that homeless people who continue to refuse offers of shelter and services will face increasing penalties, including arrest, if they continue camping in public.
Breed also ordered that homeless people not from San Francisco be offered bus or train tickets to return home before being provided shelter or services, adding in a statement that “we cannot solve everyone’s individual housing and behavioral health needs.”
One of Breed’s rivals, San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin, opposes encampment raids. Another opponent, Supervisor Ahsha Safaí, says raids are cruel unless there is enough shelter available.
Candidate Daniel Lurie, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune who runs a nonprofit that funds tiny temporary homes, has pledged to build 1,500 shelter beds in his first six months in office so people forced out of camps have somewhere to go.
“There’s just been no plan for the last three years under this administration,” Lurie said.
The Breed administration has added thousands of temporary and more permanent shelter beds, but there is still a significant shortage.
“His opponents are not offering locations where they will build shelters, how they will do so and how they plan to pay for their plans,” said Joe Arellano, a spokesman for Breed’s campaign.
Michael Johnson, who is homeless in San Francisco, the city where he grew up, was recently preparing to move. This, ahead of a long-awaited removal of tents to avoid what he said happened in an earlier raid when police and city street cleaners gave him 10 seconds to take down his tent and belongings. He didn’t and lost everything.
Homeless people often reject offers of shelter if it means giving up their belongings or pets, being separated from loved ones or sleeping in places surrounded by strangers, including some who may be violent.
Johnson, 41, does not like living as a homeless person. But he says no one has offered him proper accommodation and wherever he goes, he is always turned away by the authorities.
“It’s a merry-go-round,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if I stay where I am or find a new one. In the end they will be here,” he said.
