NYT: SF Mayor Breed's new aggressive homelessness approach reveals encampment crimes, refusal to accept shelter offers
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The exceptional Heather Knight reports for the New York Times that as SF starts to roll out a more vigorous strategy for sweeping inhumane homeless encampments, they're finding complications: unhoused who refuse offers of shelter (up to 2/3ds, says Breed) and drug crimes.
Fifteen times this year, the city has cleared the sidewalks near the local Department of Motor Vehicles office — and 15 times, the homeless campers have quickly returned.But attempt No. 16 would be different, Mayor London Breed vowed.
No longer would San Francisco allow homeless people to stay on the sidewalks if there was another place to sleep. The individuals camping around the D.M.V. branch had collectively turned down 89 offers of shelter this year, according to the mayor’s office, and Ms. Breed had had enough.
San Francisco has long had a reputation as a liberal bastion, a city that had hoped to solve its problems more through compassion than crackdowns. But with voters frustrated by homeless encampments, open drug use and a downtown that has lost some of its verve, Ms. Breed has taken a tougher approach as she fights for her political life in a hotly contested mayoral race.
On Thursday, Ms. Breed directed city officials to offer bus tickets to homeless people before providing them a shelter bed or other services. It was the starkest sign yet that San Francisco had changed its tack — and stood in contrast to Los Angeles, where leaders criticized Mr. Newsom for issuing an executive order last week encouraging them to sweep homeless encampments.
The mayor told reporters last week that she was “excited” about the Supreme Court... upholding the ban in Grants Pass, Ore., on homeless people sleeping outside. For several years, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, had blocked laws that made it illegal to camp when no shelter was available. Governor Newsom’s recent order directed state officials to begin dismantling thousands of homeless encampments and urged local leaders to follow suit.
Ms. Breed praised the enforcement approach, noting that her teams repeatedly offer shelter beds, but are turned down two-thirds of the time.
Downtown is fueled mostly by the open-air drug trade. The team has found guns, knives, machetes and axes in the tents, as well as giant containers of urine and feces, rats, mold and drugs. Lt. Young said the police search the records of anyone who gets aggressive with them, and he estimated that roughly one in four have come back with warrants for crimes that ranged from car break-ins to sexual assault. He said the new policy allowing citations will make it easier to keep sidewalks clear. “We want them to go to shelter, and if they don’t, we have to enforce the law,” Lt. Young said.
He added that those cited will be released on site and that it would be up to the district attorney to decide whether to charge them. Those with warrants will be taken to jail immediately. In the first few days of the latest effort, city employees had 235 conversations with homeless people and removed 81 tents. Twenty-four people accepted a shelter bed, while the rest declined or did not respond. The police reported that they have made nine arrests, eight for outstanding warrants and one for illegal lodging, who was cited and released on site.
Read the whole thing (behind paywall) here.
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