A drop in the number of homeless individuals on the streets may be a regional trend as we see Alameda County is reporting a decline similar to one seen in San Francisco over the last two years.

Alameda County released its preliminary numbers from its point-in-time homeless census on Monday, and it's mostly good news all around. Oakland saw a very significant 20% in the number of people living on the streets since 2024, while the county as a whole recorded a 13% overall drop.

The latest numbers are for sure a relief for local officials, after 2024's point-in-time count saw a 9% rise in homelessness in Oakland, and a smaller 4% drop countywide.

San Francisco released its preliminary point-in-time count last week and recorded a 4% drop in homelessness in the same two-year span. And while San Francisco changed its methodology for the count this year, conducting the census in the early morning hours instead of at night, Oakland made this switch in 2024 and theirs is therefore a more apples-to-apples comparison.

Advocates and city officials say the numbers, particularly taken in the context of other cities in the region, reflect the positive results of local programs to prevent new homelessness and to convey people into stable housing.

"What’s consistent across these communities is they invested dollars into getting people back into housing,” says Alex Visotzky, senior California policy fellow with the National Alliance to End Homelessness, speaking to Bay Area News Group.

As the Chronicle notes, advocates are concerned that the positive trend in Oakland could be temporary, as the city continues to remove hundreds of beds and tiny-home cabins from its shelter system due to budget cuts.

Around 1,300 volunteers conducted Alameda County's federally mandated point-in-time count one morning in January, and this year found 8,201 individuals experiencing homelessness, down from 9,450 in 2024.

And while Oakland saw a significant drop this year, some of that may be due to people crossing city lines into other areas, like Berkeley, which saw a 4% uptick since 2024. (In 2024's count, Berkeley saw a significant, 45% decline in homelessness, while Oakland saw an uptick.)

But Jonathan Russell, director of the Alameda County Department of Housing and Homelessness, tells Bay Area News Group this is overall good news. "We see it as momentum, and we want to keep it going," Russell says.

The region as a whole has seen a mixed bag of trends when it comes to these counts. Sonoma County, which has been conducting annual point-in-time homeless counts for a number of years, recorded its lowest number of homeless in 18 years in its 2025 count, with a drop of over 20% from 2024, and its latest numbers for 2026 have not yet been released.

Meanwhile, Santa Clara County's last count in 2025 saw an 8% increase in homelessness. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, as Bay Area News Group notes, has been campaigning for governor on the claim that he decreased homelessness in his city, which is only partly true — the number of unsheltered homeless fell by 10% in San Jose proper, while it remained flat in the county as a whole.

While Oakland's drop in the homeless count seems dramatic this year at 20%, compared to 2022's count and without accounting for 2024's uptick, it marks only a 13% decline over 4 years.

As Russell, the county's homeless czar, tells the Chronicle, his department is now focused on growing and maintaining the county's shelter stock. "Our goal is not just to open new [shelters] and let others close, but to really sustain them. So a big part of our first investments going into this year is going to be enhancing and increasing shelter funding for current providers to make sure they can stay open," he says.

Related: New San Francisco Homeless Census Shows Slight Drop, But Methodology Also Changed

A new report from the San Francisco Mayor's Office finds some good news in a significant decrease in the number of people living in their vehicles in the city, but the number of tents and encampment structures has remained flat for the last nine months.

We won't have the results of this year's biennial point-in-time count of the local homeless population for another couple of months. But the SF Mayor's Office released its quarterly tally of homeless tents and structures on the city streets, and its count of vehicle dwellings.

The bad news is that the number of tents and structures, 155, is basically flat from last summer, though down almost 30% from the March 2025 count of 220, just after Mayor Daniel Lurie took office. The current count of 155 includes 61 tents and 94 structures, and in July of last year, the total count was 165.

Lurie nonetheless touted the drop in the number of tents, saying in a Xitter video "it's the third time we've hit record lows since taking office."

Lurie also celebrated a 20% drop in the number of RVs on city streets, saying its the "lowest [number] since we began counting." As ABC7 reports, there were 435 vehicles on the street in which people were living, including 259 large vehicles which were permitted.

47 households who had been living in RVs have been connected with more permanent housing options, Lurie says.

"We’re also reconnecting people with family and support systems through Journey Home, which helped 44 people return to loved ones in February — the highest monthly total since 2022," Lurie added.

"By using every tool available—from housing to treatment to reunification—we’re starting to turn things around. There’s still a lot of work ahead, and we’re going to keep building on this progress," the mayor said.

The real test of how the mayor's work and city programs have impacted the homelessness picture will come in April or May, when the biennial homeless census numbers are released. This year's count used a new methodology, conducting the count in the early morning instead of at night.

The last point-in-time homeless census in January 2024 found 8,328 individuals on SF streets, both unsheltered and sheltered, marking a 7% increase from two years earlier.

Berkeley residents are now going to have to learn about a deadly bacterial disease called leptospirosis, which has broken out at an encampment there and already killed two dogs, and it could also spread to and kill humans.

There has long been a persistent and potentially dangerous homeless encampment at Harrison and Eighth streets in Berkeley, one which occupies about three whole city blocks. But the level of potential danger there has just escalated to DEFCON One, as the Chronicle reports that encampment is now the site of an outbreak of a deadly disease called leptospirosis, a tropical disease that is not common in the US, which has killed two dogs at the encampment, and could potentially spread to and kill humans as well.

Leptospirosis (casually known as “lepto”) is a bacterial disease that the CDC says “can lead to kidney damage, meningitis (inflammation of the membrane around the brain and spinal cord), liver failure, trouble breathing, and even death.” The Chronicle says that two dogs at that encampment have been confirmed to have been killed by the disease, and their testing has confirmed it has spread among rats in the area — with rats being the disease's main transmission vector. Now that the disease is there, it could potentially spread to and kill a person or multiple people.

"The absence of confirmed human cases is reassuring but does not remove the risk of undiagnosed cases or future cases," Berkeley Public Health Officer Noemi Doohan said in a court filing and subsequent public health alert. "If a human case were confirmed, that would elevate the urgency of the recommended response to protect human life and other animal life in the city of Berkeley."

And so the City of Berkeley is recommending that all encampment residents clear the “red zone” shown in the map above, allowing public health officials to clean and disinfect the area. KTVU reports they’re also urging pet owners to vaccinate their dogs and cats for leptospirosis, noting that pets suffering from lepto can suffer from "excessive thirst, vomiting, shivering, and lethargy, and can progress to liver failure if untreated. Lepto can also be fatal to dogs."

KTVU also adds that for humans, leptospirosis can cause sudden fevers, headaches, severe calf or leg pain, kidney or liver failure, meningitis, liver failure, and possibly even death.

So people are being ordered to move out of the encampment, something Berkeley has been unable to get them to do for years. That is going to be hard enough, but then you have the issue that any infected RVs must also be fully destroyed. You try explaining to a homeless person living in an RV that they have to destroy their vehicle, for absolutely nothing in return.

Eighth and Harrison is already a particularly complicated encampment situation, where the residents currently have the legal upper hand to stay put. Berkeley has been trying to sweep this encampment for more than nine months, even before the deadly disease outbreak. But a federal judge ruled last June that they must halt all encampment sweeps at the site, in response to a lawsuit brought by the Berkeley Homeless Union.

That judge, US District Judge Edward Chen, just had an emergency hearing on the matter Tuesday, in response to the outbreak. Chen still kept the restraining order against forced clearing of the encampment in place. That is a legal win for the encampment residents.  

“The city has only exacerbated health and safety issues,” the Berkeley Homeless Union’s attorney Anthony Prince told the Chronicle. “The city itself has created this health crisis.”

You also have the very thorny issue of how to notify encampment residents that they must leave, even though the City of Berkeley cannot force them to leave. The Berkeley Scanner reports that “On Monday, UC Berkeley sent the city's health alert to residents of University Village on the Albany-Berkeley border on the north side of the creek.” Okay that’s great, but how many unhoused people received such notification?

The Berkeley Scanner also points out that these flyers have been posted around North Berkeley, which I suppose is helpful, but seems nowhere near urgent enough a strategy for the situation at hand.

Clearly the City of Berkeley is between a rock and a hard place, racing against deadly infectious disease, but with their hands tied at clearing the disease from the geographic area where it is most concentrated. It sure seems like putting people up in hotels might be a good accommodation, to give encampment residents some/any motivation to leave the area when they legally do not have to?

That may sound like an expensive solution. But if a non-homeless person with access to good lawyers were to die because this disease spread from an encampment, the City of Berkeley could be on the hook for a settlement of tens of millions of dollars. So a few dozen hotel rooms for a month might be the vastly more cost-effective option here.

Related: Omicron Outbreaks Hit Multiple Bay Area Homeless Shelters, Including Two In SF [SFist]

Image: Google Street View

The encampment-clearing focus returned to a spot that has been a repeated magnet for encampments Tuesday, with Caltrans and CHP personnel doing a sweep of those residing in and around the "hairball" where Cesar Chavez Street meets Potrero Avenue, Bayshore Boulevard, and multiple 101 on- and off-ramps.

As the Chronicle reports, the clearing of encampments under the "hairball" had been planned, and those residing there were given 72 hours notice as of Friday. The effort is part of Governor Gavin Newsom's earlier announced push to address encampments on state property — i.e. under freeway overpasses — and across all of California's major cities.

The paper noted that a few people could be seen lugging belongings and pushing shopping carts Tuesday, and they "appeared to be looking for new places to go as Caltrans workers began adding boulders and other deterrents to the former encampment sites that state officials said were key components of making sure the effort would last."

Newsom announced in May that he would be pushing cities to be more aggressive in the clearing of encampments — with his presidential aspirations no doubt a partial motivator for the effort. He even released text of a "model ordinance" that cities could adopt, with suggested ideas including an outright ban on "persistent" camping in one location, and a prohibition on any encampment that blocks a sidewalk or right-of-way.

Still, Newsom's office said at the time, no person should face criminal penalties for needing to sleep outdoors.

"There’s nothing compassionate about letting people die on the streets," Newsom said in a May statement, and he went on to refer to last year's decision by the Supreme Court allowing for such enforcement of anti-camping laws. "Local leaders asked for resources — we delivered the largest state investment in history. They asked for legal clarity — the courts delivered. Now, we’re giving them a model they can put to work immediately, with urgency and with humanity, to resolve encampments and connect people to shelter, housing, and care. The time for inaction is over. There are no more excuses."

Newsom launched what's called the State Action for Facilitation on Encampments (SAFE) Task Force, and the "hairball" cleanup was the first effort under that umbrella, as the Chronicle reports.

More sweeps, funded with state dollars, are set to come to Los Angeles, Oakland, San Jose, San Diego, Sacramento, Long Beach, Anaheim, Bakersfield, and Fresno in the coming months.

Mayor Daniel Lurie is fully on board, issuing a statement saying, "The first thing you see when you get to San Francisco should be representative of the clean streets we have across the city. Under my administration, city government will no longer tolerate the conditions we’re seeing on our on-ramps and off-ramps — and now we have the tools to fix it."

The only tools we don't have are enough shelter beds, but who's counting.

Previously: Newsom Calls on California Cities to Flat-Out Ban Homeless Encampments

We’ve all seen large homeless encampments beneath freeway overpasses in SoMa and the Mission, and Mayor Lurie just got the green light from Caltrans to start clearing encampments at eight major overpasses and entrance ramps.

It seems that for decades, there have always been pretty sizable homeless encampments around the Route 101 overpass at Cesar Chavez Street. Ditto for the South Van Ness and 13th Street overpass for Route 101, not far from Rainbow Grocery. And the City of San Francisco has not cleared those encampments, because the areas under overpasses, and alongside on-ramps and off-ramps, are technically the property of the California Department of Transportation, better known as Caltrans.

But KGO reports that SF Mayor Daniel Lurie has just struck a deal with Caltrans allowing the city to clear encampments under overpasses. The arrangement was reportedly signed on Wednesday, and per KGO, city workers started clearing areas on Thursday morning.

"The first thing and the last thing people see are our on-ramps and off-ramps and I want those spaces to reflect the beauty of San Francisco,” Lurie told KGO. “And now we are going to be able to do that.”

The agreement singles out eight so-called hot spots for encampments, and those 101 overpasses at Cesar Chavez Street and 13th Street in SoMa that we mentioned are among them. There are four other 101 overpass hot spots identified for clearing, as well as a couple around or under I-80. The locations are detailed at the 1:17 mark of the KGO video above.

"If we are going to resolve an encampment, we do the public notifications and then we will go in several days later with a multi-agency team,” Public Works director Carla Short said to KGO. She added that Public Works employees would be “leading with services first and offering shelter and help and ultimately cleaning the area.”

We’ve of course heard these statements about encampment clearings when London Breed was in office, and it is arguable whether those efforts made a serious dent. As Tenderloin Housing Clinic executive director Randy Shaw told KGO in the same segment, "Before we claim some major victory, let's say this is a good start, and then let's see each other in three months and see if a difference has been made."

And recall how it went with the clearing of encampments on Caltrans-owned land during the long saga of the Wood Street encampment in West Oakland, which took about five years and was drawn out by a great deal of courtroom drama.

Related: Newsom Orders State Agencies to Clear Homeless Encampments En Masse in Wake of Supreme Court Ruling [SFist]

Image: SAN FRANCISCO - JANUARY 25: Homeless people set up camp under a freeway overpass January 25, 2010 in San Francisco, California. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced ambitious plans during his recent State of the City address to reduce the city's overall homeless population by one third and the street population by one half before being termed out of office in two years. Over 6,500 homeless people live on the streets and in shelters in San Francisco. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

A mixed bag in a new legal ruling about a big and contentious Berkeley homeless encampment, as a judge says the encampment can be swept, but people with disabilities camping there are allowed to stay put and leave their stuff.

From the looks of this Google Street View image of a certain North Berkeley encampment captured in August 2024, the encampment was indeed quite sprawling, taking up a whole city block and definitely strewn with a substantial amount of trash. That specific encampment was named in a lawsuit from last September from nearby businesses demanding the city clear it, since Berkeley had the legal authority to do so from the then-recent Grants Pass v Johnson Supreme Court decision.

So Berkeley did get around to posting notices in January that they intended to clear the encampment, but the Berkeley Homeless Union brought a lawsuit, and got a restraining order preventing the sweep. That restraining order expired in late May, but the case’s US District Court Judge Edward Chen temporarily halted that sweep again last week.

Now that temporary halt has also expired, and Berkeleyside reports that Judge Chen’s new ruling this week was that the encampment could be cleared, but with the exception that people with disabilities could still stay.

Before you label this as Bizerkeley political correctness run amok, realize this ruling came from Judge Chen’s federal courtroom in San Francisco, where the case is being heard. And it’s not a permanent stay for those individuals with disabilities, just a two-month reprieve for those with qualifying disabilities.

Berkeleyside reports that there are 19 disabled camp residents, and Chen’s ruling says that the two-month delay is a reasonable accommodation for them under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

While the encampment was mostly cleared last week, Berkeleyside reported last Thursday that most of the booted campers simply moved their stuff right back and set up camp again. The encampment site has long been a source of complaints from businesses, nearby residents, and the City of Berkeley for its fires, drug use, trash, human waste, and alleged illegal activity.

For their part, the City of Berkeley admits they do not have available beds at their current ‘homeless hotels’ and shelters, and that they cannot currently offer other accommodations. But that Grants Pass Supreme Court ruling says that cities no longer need to offer shelter accommodations before clearing encampments.

Related: Even In Liberal Berkeley, Aggressive Encampment Sweeps Set to Begin [SFist]

Image: Google Street View

One person has been taken into custody after three people were shot, two of them fatally, at a long-running encampment near Highway 37 in Vallejo on Monday night.

A Monday night shooting at a homeless encampment in Vallejo left two people dead and another injured, according to NBC Bay Area. The names of the two people killed have not been released, but the third person was reportedly hospitalized and suffered life-threatening injuries.

NBC Bay Area adds that the shooting happened at about 5:30 pm Monday afternoon, and describes the location of the encampment as being “along Sacramento Street in Vallejo,” not far from Highway 37.

That station also adds that there was a heavy police presence on Sacramento Street throughout Monday evening. And a separate report from Open Vallejo notes that police spent “hours” looking for a certain armed suspect.

They apparently found that suspect, whom Open Vallejo says police were searching for “on an outstanding warrant.” That individual was taken into custody, according to the Vallejo Police Department.

That said, police have not confirmed whether that person was taken into custody because of this shooting, or for another reason.

Related: Dead Body Discovered While Clearing Large Homeless Encampment Near Oakland's Fruitvale [SFist]

Image via Google Maps

Several California mayors (including SF’s own) cheered a June Supreme Court decision that allowed cities to arrest or prosecute those camping on the street. But a new proposed California law could bring that practice to a complete halt.

It seems a distant memory now, but last summer, San Francisco was ratcheting up homeless encampment sweeps in the wake of the Supreme Court’s June Grants Pass v. Johnson decision that allowed cities to arrest or prosecute people camping on the streets, even if the city could not provide them with an alternative shelter bed. Then-mayor London Breed enthusiastically pursued the new crackdown powers, as did other California cities, and Governor Gavin Newsom was jawing at cities that they’d better start sweeping encampments en masse or else.  

These encampment-sweeping tactics are still being hotly debated in cities across California. But one SoCal state Senator is looking to push the pendulum back against that Supreme Court decision, here within the state at least. Southern California News Group reports that Los Angeles-area state Senator Sasha Renée Pérez has proposed a bill in the legislature to prevent cities and counties from prosecuting people camping on the street, whether that be arresting them or fining them.

The bill called SB-634 is still only a just-introduced proposal in its very early stages. And it would still allow any municipality to clear encampments however they choose, it just wouldn’t allow them to arrest people or issue any penalties for camping on the street.

“What we’re trying to get at here is [to] prevent people from getting fined or being put in jail for being homeless,” Pérez told the News Group. “If you cannot afford to live anywhere — if you can’t afford housing, a hotel — you still need to sleep.”

She adds that arrests and fines just make it harder for people to find stable housing, either because of the time spent incarcerated, the money diverted to the legal consequences, and the stain of an arrest on one’s record.

Mayor Breed’s summer and fall encampment sweep crusade was probably a lot more about her reelection campaign than it was about getting people into shelter. But then-candidate Daniel Lurie was all for the sweeps, and blamed Breed for not going at it earlier. “She should have built the shelter beds and cleared the sidewalks years ago,” he said in the wake of the Supreme Court decision. “Every day that the encampments remain on our sidewalks is another reminder of her failed leadership."

So is Lurie going to be against this bill? As for Oakland, well, there is no permanent mayor at the moment, and there won’t be until next week’s special mayoral election, so who knows how that next mayor will feel about encampment sweep enforcement.

There is an open question about whether this bill would run afoul of the Supreme Court's ruling — though that ruling primarily pertained to cities' ability to enforce anti-camping laws, and not to the idea of imposing fines or making arrests.

And because the bill doesn't stop cities from performing encampment sweeps and enforcing those anti-camping ordinances, it may not change the situation for homeless people — who by and large aren't being otherwise prosecuted over these ordinances in California — very much at all.

SB 634 is scheduled to have its first committee meeting on April 23.

Related: San Jose Mayor Suggests Arresting Homeless Who Refuse Shelter; Legal Case In Vallejo Highlights Growing Backlash [SFist]

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

A vacant East Oakland lot that’s become overrun with RVs and tents is now listed on Google Maps as “Homeless Encampment,” though this is clearly the work of some joker trying to embarrass Oakland City Hall.

In our coverage of homeless encampments, there is rarely much humor or reason to laugh. Yet here we have a case that is somewhat amusing, though perhaps with mean-spirited intentions. KRON4 reports on a homeless encampment in East Oakland near the Fruitvale district, which is now listed as a business called “Homeless Encampment,” and quickly drew a number of mocking reviews.

Here is a screenshot of the Google Maps listing in question, showing the East Oakland location at Alameda Avenue and East Eighth Street. We see real businesses highlighted (Bay Breeze Inn, Taqueria El Paisa), as well as the location “Homeless Encampment.”

And here is the same location via Google Maps Satellite view. But is this place really a “Homeless Encampment?” Well, take a look at the Google Maps Street view of this location, and judge for yourself.

KRON4 reports that the location had a phone number listed, a description that said it was “open 42 hours,” and a series of user reviews. As of press time for this post, those all appear to have been removed. But the place is still listed on Google Maps as a specific location called “Homeless Encampment.”

Though per KRON4, there were previously a number of reviews for this so-called “business.” One of them said “Such a fun place! You have to come, bring the whole family! God I love California.” Another said “Lovely place to live and raise your kids,” and a third read “Great location that shows the inclusion and diversity of culture in Oakland.”

The “owner” of the listing submitted a response. “We are glad you like our small loose nit [sic] community,” that response said. “We strive to provide a low cost, high crime area for you to live where you are free to dispose of trash, bio material, hypodermic needles, stolen cars, free from the prying eyes of law enforcement.”

So clearly this is just some trolling by someone with too much time on their hands, or possibly even a political dirty trick. When there was still a phone number associated with the listing, KRON4 looked up that phone number. And they report that “It was the number for interim Oakland Mayor Kevin Jenkins’ office."

Related: Oakland Moves to Clear Encampment at Toll Plaza Beach, Displacing About a Dozen [SFist]

Screenshot via Google Maps

Two Bay Area cities are going in different directions in battling encampments, as a Fairfax woman just won a delay on the clearing of her own encampment, while Fremont just passed a law that activists fear could illegalize handing cash or food to the homeless.

Many California cities are still struggling to interpret the new powers given to them by the Supreme Court’s summer Johnson v. Grants Pass decision that allows cities to ban public camping, even if the city cannot provide alternative shelter. Up in Marin County’s Fairfax, an unsheltered woman just won the right to keep her own encampment going while the courts sort out a lawsuit she filed herself. While in the East Bay city of Fremont, a new law just passed at the city council that makes it a crime to “aid or abet” homelessness, which some fear would make it a crime to give encampment residents cash, food, or even a bottle of water.

The Marin County encampment in Fairfax is at Peri Park, it’s seen in this Marin Independent Journal article as being decked with furniture and a mini-kitchen, and it reportedly has five or six people residents. Fairfax has a law saying people cannot be in the city’s parks at night without “sufficient police protection or adult supervision.” The encampment residents applied for a permit to be there at night, arguing that they are “adult supervision” since they are all adults.

The permit was denied, so encampment resident Shaylee Koontz sued the city in federal court as a form of appealing that decision. And the Bay Area News Group reports the court has granted her an injunction on the clearing of the camp until that lawsuit is resolved.

“In the meantime, in accordance with the Court’s direction, no enforcement of the anti-camping ordinance against the encampment near the [Contratti Park] ballfield will take place prior to the March 18 hearing,” the City of Fairfax said in an announcement. “The Town remains committed to addressing this matter with care, balancing legal obligations, community needs, and the well-being of all Fairfax residents.”

As noted, that hearing is scheduled March 18, and legal proceedings will continue who-knows-how long after that. But for now, that encampment stays intact.

Meanwhile, in Fremont, Cal Matters reported last week that the city council was voting on an ordinance that would make it a crime to participate in “causing, permitting, aiding, abetting or concealing” an encampment. Violators could get a $1,000 fine and six months in  jail, in what is believed to be the first such ordinance in the state. And some support groups worry that would criminalize giving people food, cash, or water.

Well, KTVU reports the measure passed 6-1 on Tuesday night. And it’s drawn national attention that this could criminalize the work of charities or outreach groups.

"You can give food, you can give water, a tent, you can help people. The only thing you can’t do is, you can’t build tree houses on creeks,” Fremont Mayor Raj Salwan explained to KTVU. "You can’t build large structures which can be a fire hazard. They’re not safe for the community, and they’re also not safe for our unhoused individuals."

That said, councilmembers weren’t so sure, and say they may revisit the language of the ordinance if they’re uncomfortable with its implementation.

Though as Sister Elaine Sanchez of Fremont’s Sisters of the Holy Family told Cal Matters, “I figure if I’m going to be arrested for something, it’s going to be for doing something that I feel is helping people in need.”

Related: Supreme Court Ruling Could Have Broad Implications for Homeless Encampment Sweeps In California [SFist]

Image: Homeless tents in the park. - stock photo (Getty Images)

Some very encouraging new statistics are out today saying the number of tents on San Francisco streets is at a six-year low, including there being only one tent counted in District 8, but this does not seem to have meaningfully lowered SF’s homeless population.

You would expect there to be fewer tents and encampments on San Francisco streets after Mayor Breed’s much-ballyhooed encampment sweeps, coming on the heels of the Supreme Court giving cities more authority to clear encampments. And you would expect Mayor Breed to say there are fewer tents, as she faces reelection in less than a month.  

But Breed has numbers to back this up. As KPIX reports, the latest quarterly tent count shows a six-year low in the number of tents on SF streets. There were 242 tents counted in the latest October 2 count, which the Examiner notes is a 60% drop in the number of tents compared to the July 2023 count.  

“Every day our City workers are out in San Francisco offering help, bringing people indoors, and cleaning up our neighborhoods and we are seeing the results,” Breed said in a self-congratulatory Thursday statement. “We are a compassionate City that leads with services, but we also will continue to enforce our laws when those offers are rejected. This latest count shows we are making progress, and we will not let up as we continue to move people into shelter and housing and improve the conditions of our neighborhoods.”

There is a little bit of statistical play happening here, in order to produce the largest percentage drop to tout to the press. Normally we compare quarterly counts to the same quarter of the previous year, but Breed is instead choosing to compare things to July 2023 to get that 60% drop number. Looking at every quarter’s count, the year-to-year drop would be a 53% drop compared to the November 2023 count (507 tents).

But still, the number of tents has indeed dropped every quarter since July 2023, so Breed’s got that going for her.  

The big question is whether more people are sheltered, and it doesn’t seem the recent sweeps are helping much in that department. Since the August 1 crackdown started, only 365 of the 3,000 “engagements” with unsheltered people have resulted in that person accepting a shelter offer.

"Right now we're seeing a political response to an election year," the SF Coalition on Homelessness’ River Beck told KPIX. "That's been taken out on a vulnerable community. People are still out there. Just because you're removing tents doesn't mean you're solving homelessness."

Breaking tents down by supervisorial district, the number that really jumps out here is Supervisor Rafael Mandelman’s District 8 reportedly having only one tent. But Mandelman says some encampments are populated with people who actually are sheltered, and are just in encampments to procure and do drugs.

"We also know that these encampments are actually a draw on people who may have placements, they may have shelter," Mandelman said to KPIX. "They may have housing and they are still coming back to use substances on the street. I think clearing encampments, making it clear that if you have a need for shelter or treatment, we will get that for you. But you cannot stay on our sidewalks and you cannot be engaged in illegal activities in our public spaces."

According to KPIX, “296 people have been cited or arrested” since the August 1 crackdown started. But the citations did not generally result in people being taken into custody, and most of those arrested were people who already had outstanding warrants.

Related: Breed Vows Major Encampment Crackdown Coming In August, Says There May Be ‘Criminal Penalties’ [SFist]

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

San Francisco's rules targeting people who live in parked RVs on the streets are about to tighten up, as the SF Municipal Transit Agency has approved a law to tow people’s RVs if they refuse an offer of shelter.

A July 2024 count found 361 large vehicles like RVs in SF being used as shelter, just plain parked on San Francisco streets. And these do cause serious problems in certain neighborhoods, such as fires, illegal dumping of trash and waste, hogging up available parking, and limiting the sight lines of drivers.    

So, in accordance with Mayor London Breed’s recent ramped-up encampment sweeps,  the Chronicle reports that the SF Municipal Transit Agency (SFMTA) board of directors voted 6-1 on Tuesday to tow RVs being parked overnight on San Francisco streets. The new rule will apply to RVs and large vehicles that are parked in standard car parking spots between midnight and 6 am.

According to a release from the Mayor's Office, “The approved law will make overnight parking by inhabited RVs a towable offense between midnight and 6 am, but only if an offer of shelter, housing, and/or services are rejected.” The new rules also make overnight RV camping illegal in all SF streets, which was previously not the case (though enforcement has been rather scant in zones where it was not legal).

“This approval by the SFMTA Board of Directors will help us to enforce our laws to ensure that our streets are safe, livable, and accessible to everyone,” Mayor Breed said in that press release. “Our outreach workers are going out every [day] to offer help to people and to engage with those living in vehicles and encampments. Our message is clear: accepting our help is not just an option, it is the option.”

According to the Chronicle, this new enforcement will start November 1. The Chron adds that the cost of these new rules will be “about $230,000 a year for sign installation, enforcement, tow subsidies and storage.”

SFMTA board members, who voted 6-1 in favor of the new law, insist that this will not be a huge mass crackdown. “I think implementing this would be quite infrequent, relatively speaking,” SFMTA chief of staff Viktoriya Wise said before Tuesday’s vote, according to the Examiner. “We think that maybe, on average, we can do perhaps one block a month.”

But homeless population advocates are calling this “an attempt to bully poor  families,” and the Examiner adds that a very contentious public comment session went for more than two hours.

“I’ve been moving my vehicle every other day just so I can avoid having problems,” one RV dweller who identified himself as Roger said during that public comment, per the Chronicle. “I get anxiety attacks when I’m around a lot of people … and the shelter that they’re offering is a navigation center, in which you have 100 people living in the same shelter.”

The best solution here would probably be more vehicle triage centers, providing bathrooms, showers, and potable water for residents. But those are expensive, and sometimes fail to deliver the promised utilities.

So SF’s solution for now is to start towing RVs. Again, this won’t start until November 1, so there won’t be any tangible results until after the November 5 mayoral election. Though Mayor Breed will probably be touting this as a personal accomplishment on her part before the November 5 mayoral election.  

Related: City Vows to Crack Down on Bernal Heights RV Encampment, Which Has Been Growing In Recent Months [SFist]

Image: Google Street View

Facing a recall election and a slew of scandals, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao is seizing on a recent Supreme Court decision to proclaim that the city will get a lot more aggressive in clearing homeless encampments.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed faces a tough reelection vote in six weeks, and has latched on to more homeless encampment sweeps in an attempt to bolster her reelection bid. Over on the other side of the Bay, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao faces an even tougher recall effort on that same November 5 Election Day. And she seems to be taking a page from Breed’s and other mayors' playbooks, as KRON4 reports that Thao also just declared an executive order to ramp up encampment sweeps, even though Oakland has nowhere near the shelter beds to accommodate those whose tents are confiscated.  

Thao made her announcement in the Monday morning Youtube video seen above. “Being unhoused is not a crime in Oakland, but it doesn’t give individuals the right to break other laws. We must protect our critical infrastructure, and do so by leading with compassion,” Thao said. “This is work we have already been doing, like clearing Wood Street, which was the largest encampment in Northern California. This work won’t be completed overnight. But as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision on Grant’s Pass, we are now able to do this more expeditiously.”

She refers to the Supreme Court’s June City of Grant’s Pass v Johnson decision, which said cities could clear homeless encampments, and even arrest street campers, regardless of whether a city had adequate shelter beds to accommodate those people.  

Oakland city workers and police were already clearing a large encampment at MLK Jr. Way and West Grand Avenue last week, and critics have been howling. Homeless population advocate Talya Husbands-Hankin of Love & Justice in the Streets argues this effort will steal property from the unhoused, and only just move them to different encampments.  

“Aligning with the values of a Trump-appointed Supreme Court is appalling and contrary to the values of justice and equity that Oaklanders want to uphold,” Husbands-Hankin told Oaklandside.

Per that website, Oakland has 5,400 unhoused people, but less than 2,000 shelter beds for them.

In related news, the Chronicle today covered the aggressive encampment-sweeping efforts, complete with threats of jail time, that are happening in the city of Fresno, where the mayor is the former chief of police, and where the approach is even more onerous.

And similar sweeps are occurring up and down the state following the Supreme Court's decision, however it remains to be seen whether these widespread efforts have any lasting impact on the number of unhoused people on the streets.

Related: Oakland Mayor Perpetuates Idea That Homeless Are Coming From Elsewhere, Wants to Charge Other Cities [SFist]

Image: Mayor Sheng Thao via Youtube

It was last August when an under-construction Hayes Valley building caught fire, with many speculating that people camped just outside the site caused the fire. Construction has gone nowhere since, and neighbors are alarmed that squatters appear to have moved in, and it could just burn again.

It was just about a year ago — the morning of August 1, 2023, actually — when a four-alarm fire consumed a building under construction at Oak Street and Octavia Boulevard, displacing eight people and damaging five adjacent buildings. Neighbors immediately told the press they’d been sounding the alarm for months that the sidewalk around the construction site had been rife with encampments and people starting their own campfires there, insisting the city and developer weren’t doing enough about this. But the Chronicle reported in April that investigators could not determine the cause of the fire, and maybe never would.  

Now a year later, it’s déjà vu all over again for those neighbors, as the developer appears to have flat-out abandoned the property. The Chronicle reports on a Tuesday director’s hearing at the Department of Building Inspection on apparent encampments at that 300 Octavia Boulevard building, which in that paper’s words, currently has “clothing, furniture and a make-shift lean-to [which] indicate that the abandoned property appears to continue to attract trespassers.”

“As of this morning the fence is still open and there is evidence of people living inside the property,” Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association David Robinson said at the DBI meeting, saying the property “remains abandoned and unsecured, providing opportunities for additional fires and safety concerns.”

Squatters appear to have moved into the ground level, which is a concrete podium on top of which all the wooden construction burned. The Chronicle reports that fencing around the property is easily permeated and clearly has been.

But the developer Greenview Planning, who bought the property in 2020 for $3.1 million, did not have a representative at Tuesday's meeting. They have apparently fielded numerous complaints from city inspectors and neighbors, though have given little response. The Chronicle actually called them on the phone, and a representative who answered simply said “We don’t do business in San Francisco.”

A search of the DBI website shows active complains against the owner, including a July 17 visit that “confirmed cut opening in chain link fence and graffiti,” and an August 5 update of “Over 15 days no action.”

The district’s supervisor Dean Preston said in a statement to the Chronicle that his office "shares the frustration  of the neighbors that the project remains stalled and that the site isn't secured and have urged departments to push the property owner to be a better neighbor."

Related: Hayes Valley Neighbors Raised Alarms About Encampment Fires Months Prior to Construction Site Blaze [SFist]

Image: @SFFDPIO via Twitter

Governor Gavin Newsom is ratcheting up the threat level toward California cities and counties on the homeless encampment front, now saying he’ll cut their funding if they aren’t more aggressive in clearing encampments.

The US Supreme Court handed down their decision in late June that cities and counties can aggressively clear homeless encampments even if those localities cannot provide shelter beds to the people whose encampments were being cleared. Not long after, Governor Gavin Newsom declared an executive order that state agencies like Caltrans and California State Parks can help clear encampments on the state’s dollar. But Newsom cannot legally force cities and counties to use the services of state agencies for these ramped-up encampment sweeps, he can only compel them to do so.

And now he’s trying to do so in the strongest terms possible, with more than just the photo op seen above, which KTLA says happened “under the 5 Freeway in Mission Hills,” and was done with the assistance of Caltrans crews. The Associated Press reports that Newsom is vowing to cut funding to cities and counties if they’re not sweeping encampments aggressively enough for his liking.

“I want to see results,” Newsom said at a press conference at that encampment-clearing appearance. “I don’t want to read about them. I don’t want to see the data. I want to see it.”

Politico notes that Newsom's ire is more directed at California counties than at cities. “I’ll be candid with you. This is more broadly an indictment of counties,” Newsom said at the press event, per Politico. “Counties need to do more.”

And Newsom seems to have a notable fight here with Los Angeles County in particular. The LA County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution that they would not arrest or jail unhoused people caught up in encampment sweeps, which Newsom seems to interpret as pushback against his efforts. (And notably, Newsom’s encampment-clearing photo op under I-5 was in Los Angeles County.)

But LA County supervisors are resolute. “We don’t want encampments on our sidewalks, but we cannot, nor are we legally allowed to make jails our de facto housing and shelter,” that county’s Board of Supervisors chair Lindsey P. Horvath said at a meeting last week, according to Politico, which described the Board as “united in their visible skepticism to the governor’s order.”

Closer here to home, San Francisco Mayor London Breed has very enthusiastically stepped up encampment sweeps in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision, and police have begun issuing citations in the process — though no one appears to have been jailed thus far.  Meanwhile, statewide, California currently has an estimated 180,000 people without shelter, which is one-third of the entire US homeless population.

Related: Newsom Orders State Agencies to Clear Homeless Encampments En Masse in Wake of Supreme Court Ruling [SFist]

Image: MARYSVILLE, CA - MAY 16: California Gov. Gavin Newsom (L), Wade Crowfoot, CNRA Secretary (R), and Chuck Bonham, CDFW Director (2-L) walk along the Lower Yuba River to the Daguerre Point Dam on May 16, 2023 in Marysville, California.  (Photo by John G. Mabanglo-Pool/Getty Images)