• In case you missed it, iconic Bay Area journalist Doug McConnell died on Tuesday at age 80. McConnell was a longtime host on KPIX before launching the epic Bay Area Backroads, which ran from 1993 to 2009. [KPIX, Chronicle]

• A Gilroy man is in custody under suspicion of burglarizing 114 vehicles over the course of two days at four different apartment complex parking garages in San Jose. [SFGate]
• SF’s Homeless Outreach Team organized a memorial at St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church in the Mission Thursday honoring the more than 100 homeless people who died in San Francisco last year. [Mission Local]
• Thousands of fans paid tribute to the late Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead at a public memorial at San Francisco's Civic Center Saturday. [KGO]

• Actress Sharon Stone, who lived in SF’s Sea Cliff neighborhood while married to the Chronicle’s Phil Bronstein from 1998 to 2005, publicly scolded some oblivious young actors seated at her table on their lack of etiquette while giving her acceptance speech at an awards ceremony recently. [KRON4]

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

Governor Gavin Newsom is once again ramping up the rhetoric to try to get California cities to be more aggressive around clearing street encampments, but this time says he’ll be handing cities money for more shelter and services.

Last summer’s Grants Pass v. Johnson Supreme Court decision gave cities permission to prosecute people for camping on the street, even if that city could not provide the individual with a shelter bed. California Governor Gavin Newsom pounced right away in demanding more aggressive encampment clearing, and told cities he’d yank some of their funding if they didn’t start busting up more encampments. Here in San Francisco, we learned last month that 750 people had been arrested for street camping since the Supreme Court decision came down.    

That’s not enough for Newsom. The Chronicle reports that on Monday, Newsom urged cities to ban encampments outright, providing a “model ordinance,” or the template of a law that they could implement and enforce. Though this time, he’s supposedly backing up the tough talk with $3.3 billion in funding from last year’s Prop 1 mental health bond which could ostensibly be used for more shelter and services.  

“There’s nothing compassionate about letting people die on the streets,” Newsom said in a  Monday press release. “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.”

The full text of the “model ordinance,” essentially a plug-and-play law that cities or counties can adopt, does contain the empathetic language that "No person should face criminal punishment for sleeping outside when they have nowhere else to go." But it also adds the law-and-order perspective that “Encampments pose a serious public safety risk, often causing fires and exposing encampment residents to increased risk of sexual violence and criminal activity, to property damage and break-ins, and unsanitary conditions affecting both residents and neighbors.”

NBC Bay Area adds that Newsom's announcement contains three “key provisions” (that is, recommended laws) regarding enforcement: a ban on camping in one location, a ban on blocking sidewalks, and a requirement that cities make “every reasonable effort” to offer someone housing before clearing their encampment.  

These are just suggestions, and cities or counties are not required to follow them.

But could there be a punishment for not following Gavin’s recommended three-point plan? Possibly.

KTVU points out that Newsom’s announcement is "coupled with the release of $3.3 billion in voter-approved Proposition 1 funding.” It’s not yet clear whether that money will come with the strings attached of a requirement to follow Newsom’s proposed guidelines. And it’s not even yet clear how a dime of that $3.3 million will be spent, though Newsom apparently has a press conference to elaborate on this scheduled for 1 pm Monday afternoon.

Related: Newsom Says He’ll Yank Counties’ Funding If They Don’t Clear Homeless Encampments Aggressively Enough [SFist]

Image: BERKELEY, CA - AUGUST 09: California Governor Gavin Newsom works with Caltrans in removing debris at a long-standing homeless encampment along Highway 80 on August 9, 2021 in Berkeley, California. Newsom highlighted comprehensive plans for cleaner and safer streets, investments in mental health services while outreach workers continue to offer homeless individuals options into safer, more stable shelter and housing. (Photo by John G. Mabanglo-Pool/Getty Images)

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• San Joaquin police seized 16,500 fentanyl pills and 72 pounds of methamphetamine last week after a month-long investigation in collaboration with Stockton and Tracy police departments. [NBC Bay Area]

Image: Oasis, SoMa; Leanne Maxwell/SFist

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)

The new and supposedly more aggressive sweeps of homeless encampments are turning into a familiar game of whack-a-mole, as new tents are reportedly popping right back up in areas where city workers have cleared encampments.  

San Francisco Mayor London Breed promised widespread homeless encampment sweeps in the wake of a June Supreme Court decision that gave cities more powers to aggressively clear out those encampments. And by all accounts, those encampment sweeps have definitely been happening over the last week.

But a new KPIX report looks into the aftermath of those encampment sweeps, and found that tents are just popping right back up in problematic areas where the encampments had been cleared.

"This (tent) definitely wasn't here this morning. This gentleman just moved in right now," Ramsey Armstrong, an employee who works on the Mission District’s Treat Avenue, pointed out to KPIX. "As soon as the cops go, they'll be back the next day."

That KPIX report explored Treat Avenue, where encampments had been cleared five days earlier, only to see them return with new tents a few days later. The report also examined the encampment-dotted areas of Folsom Street between 18th and 19th streets, and Willow Street in the Tenderloin, and found the same situation of new encampments popping up after the city had previously cleared the tents from there.

"They definitely have been ramping up the consistency of it and the time frames," unsheltered Tenderloin resident Anthony Schliecher told KPIX, describing the sweeps. "Not everyone wants help, not everyone does. It's sad. Some people just aren't ready.”

That said, Schliecher is among those unhoused people who turned down an offer of shelter. That KPIX reporter spoke to a couple of unsheltered people, who said they refused shelter offers because they felt the city’s offered arrangements feel like being incarcerated, or said they wanted their own apartments, and the shelter offered to them would make them have to live with strangers.

Related: Mayor Breed Doubles Down on Just Shipping the Homeless Out of Town, as Encampment Sweeps Ratchet Up [SFist]

Image: Joe Kuklura, SFist

SF Mayor London Breed’s new tactic to reduce homelessness won’t be seen as particularly compassionate, as her latest executive order demands encampment sweeps where people are first offered a bus ticket out of town before they’re offered shelter.

Buoyed by a June Supreme Court decision that gives cities more aggressive powers to clear homeless encampments, San Francisco Mayor London Breed promised a hardcore encampment clearing campaign would begin in August. It actually started a little before August, and with it came tougher rhetoric from Breed that unhoused people would be subject to “criminal penalties,” as she announced to that population, “we want to make things less comfortable for you."

Now the Chronicle reports that Breed issued a new executive order Thursday for city workers to offer unhoused people a bus ticket out of town before offering them shelter within the city. The bus tickets out of town are an offering that has existed for years as the Homeward Bound project, now called Journey Home. But what’s new is that people are being offered the “please leave” deal before they are offered shelter or assistance.

“San Francisco will always lead with compassion, but we cannot allow our compassion to be taken advantage of,” Breed said in the executive order, per the Chronicle. “This directive will ensure that relocation services will be the first response to our homelessness and substance use crises, allowing individuals the choice to reunite with support networks before accessing other City services or facing the consequences of refusing care.”

It’s not just homeless outreach teams that will be offering tickets to leave as their first order of business when dealing with street campers, but also first responders like police, firefighters, and paramedics. And as seen in the above tweet from the Chronicle's Maggie Angst, the latest tactics sure do appear to meet the description of “criminalizing homelessness.”

"This is not compassion.  This is not love," Glide CEO and president Dr. Gina Fromer told KTVU. "We see the pain that people are going through when their encampments are moved. They have to lose their connections to organizations and resources.”

But Breed cites (preliminary) numbers from this year’s point-in-time homeless census count, which she says concluded that 40% of SF’s unhoused people are from another city or state. That percentage is up from 28% of them being from another city or state in 2019.

Moreover, Breed says the count showed 37% of unhoused people in SF had only been here for a year or less, hence her “ship ‘em back to where they came from” stance.

While the ramped-up encampment sweeps are directly enabled by that recent Supreme Court decision, Breed is facing centrist-moderate challengers in he reelection bid, and their harsh tone on the homelessness issue seems to be driving Breed to toughen up her talk.

But it may end up being mostly talk, as it remains to be seen whether many people will take the offer to leave town — which, again, has been on the table for a number of years. A pre-pandemic Chronicle analysis from 2019 found that only about 100-200 people a year took the one-way ticket out of town deal, whereas SF currently has an estimated 8,000 or so people living on the streets.

Related: SF Steps Up Homeless Encampment Sweeps This Week — Will Homeless Just Ping-Pong to Other Blocks? [SFist]

Image: @LondonBreed via Twitter

After his $6.4 billion mental health bond measure just barely squeaked by with voters in March, Governor Newsom will begin disbursing half of it on July 1, and has combative words to the effect that counties better jump on it fast.

Governor Gavin Newsom’s $6.4 billion mental health bond measure just barely passed by a razor-thin 50.2%-49.8% margin in March. That passage avoided a political embarrassment for Newsom, but the mental health bond is really more of a homelessness reduction effort, and the state’s homelessness problem remains a political embarrassment for Newsom. As NBC Bay Area points out, nearly a third of the nation’s homeless population is living here in California.

That detail comes from NBC Bay Area’s report that Newsom will start releasing that bond money earlier than scheduled, and the process will start July 1. That station notes that $3.3 billion will go up for grabs for counties to use to add more treatment facilities and shelters. But Newsom was strangely combative in what would have seemed like a good-guy announcement Tuesday in Redwood City, almost preemptively blaming counties for not doing enough with the money (that is not even available to them yet!)    

“You’re either part of the problem or you’re not. Period,” Newsom said at a Tuesday press event at Cordilleras Mental Health Center according to CalMatters, directing his remarks at counties. “Let’s move out of the way. Let’s do the right thing. And let’s have the sense of urgency that people in the state of California demand.”

“It’s time to do your job. It’s time to get things done,” he added, per NBC Bay Area. “You asked for these reforms, we’ve provided them. Now it’s time to deliver.”

That outlet adds that the measure hopes to add 4,350 housing units, and requires counties to spend two-thirds of the money they get on housing for people with mental illness or substance abuse disorders. But are 4,350 housing units really going to make a notable difference in a state with more than 180,000 people experiencing homelessness?

The bond payment is funded by a tax on millionaires, so that’s always going to be somewhat controversial (among millionaires, at least). And disability advocates complain that Newsom’s shelters would lock people up involuntarily, the same argument made against Newsom’s expanded conservatorship programs and CARE Courts. Oh, and it’s $6 billion in spending when the state is running what is currently a $26.7 billion deficit.

Regardless, applications for the first pot of $3.3 billion will open to counties on July 1.

Related: Gavin Newsom on a Blitz Pushing Prop 1, a Statewide $6.4B Mental Health Bond [SFist]

Image: SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA - FEBRUARY 01: California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a press conference on February 01, 2023 in Sacramento, California. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, state Attorney General Rob Bonta, state Senator Anthony Portantino (D-Burbank) and other state leaders announced SB2 - a new gun safety legislation that would establish stricter standards for Concealed Carry Weapon (CCW) permits to carry a firearm in public. The bill designates "sensitive areas," like bars, amusement parks and child daycare centers where guns would not be allowed. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The on-again, off-again effort to open 60 tiny homes for the homeless is complete, though a large fence surrounds the entrance of the new facility called “Mission Cabins” in apparent hopes that passersby won’t notice it.

Back in 2016, developers had hoped to turn the former Walgreens at 16th Street BART Plaza into a giant luxury condo project that critics nicknamed the “Monster in the Mission.” But that whole deal fell through before the pandemic, and the City of San Francisco bought the property in order to turn it into a 100% affordable housing project.

Yet that won’t even break ground for a couple years. So in the interim, a proposal to turn the property into a temporary tiny home facility for homeless housing generated neighborhood opposition, but was eventually approved.

Now Mission Local reports that the facility called “Mission Cabins” opened to residents today. Though likely because of that neighborhood opposition, the Mission Street entrance is barricaded by black gates and not at all visible from the street. The project is being operated by the SF Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH), with onsite services provided by the adult education nonprofit Five Keys Schools and Programs.

The tiny-home site occupies the former Walgreens parking lot, and those staying in the cabins will not be entering and exiting from that parking lot's old entrance on the alley, Capp Street, because of the proximity of Marshall Elementary School — parents from which had raised opposition to this being a shelter site.

“The new Mission Cabins will provide a critical new space in our work to bring people off the streets and into a safe, stable environment,” Mayor London Breed said in a Monday release (even though she’s in China). “We want people indoors, where it’s safe and where they can get on the path to a more secure, long-term housed environment. That’s who we end homelessness for people who need help and it’s how we prevent long-term encampments in our neighborhoods.”

But Mission Local got a tour of the facility last week, and has pictures of the units’ interiors, exteriors, and outdoor common spaces. According to that outlet, there are 60 tiny house units, though the facility can house up to 68 because some of the units are doubles for couples. The single-occupant units are 65 square feet.

The units do not have individual restrooms, though there are shared restrooms and showers on-site. The tiny homes don’t come with kitchens either, but residents will have two meals delivered each day.

There are some fairly strict rules. Residents have to check in and out every time they come and go. And if a resident is gone for longer than 48 hours, they’ll be considered to have abandoned the place and their unit will be given to someone else.

That said, residents are allowed to have pets, and are also provided with storage units on-site to keep any possessions that don’t fit in the room — making this similar to Navigation Center sites the city has previously erected.

Only five people are being admitted each day, but the first residents were scheduled to be admitted Monday. Mission Local spoke to one tenant who was scheduled to move in today, who has been living on the street near 16th and Mission. “I’m going in the morning on Monday,” that resident Antoine Waite told the site. “I want to get established starting from there.”

Related: Tiny House Village for the Homeless Opens at the Foot of Gough Street [SFist]

Image: SF Public Works

While it only applies to unincorporated areas of the county, a new law just passed by the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors will make it a misdemeanor to refuse shelter if you’re homeless.

San Mateo County has nowhere near the degree of homelessness of San Francisco and Oakland, and the county even declared an (unfulfilled) goal of eliminating homelessness in 2022. According to that year’s Homeless Point-In-Time Count, there were 1,800 unhoused people in the county (they did their 2024 count last week, though the results are not yet available). And the county’s recent $33 million purchase of a La Quinta Inn as a Project Homekey shelter for the homeless just survived a legal challenge.  

Unlike San Francisco, San Mateo County actually has enough beds to provide shelter to those without. Of course, not everyone takes that offer. But Bay Area News Group reports that the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors just passed a law making it illegal for unhoused people to refuse shelter.  

Such people would not immediately be jailed, and the charge is only a misdemeanor. “There is a lot of outreach first, and a lot of work will be done by homeless outreach teams first,” San Mateo County Attorney John Nibbelin told the News Group. “You’d have a lot of contact before we reach a point where we’d have to invoke the ordinance.”

And it’s more of a “two strikes” law. That is, a person would not be charged unless they have declined shelter twice, and been issued two written warnings. San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe said the goal is “not to incarcerate,” and that rather than charging people, his office would send them into what he calls a “misdemeanor diversion program.”

While this seems like a significant law, the reality is that it hardly applies to anyone. The law only affects the unincorporated parts of San Mateo County (this map shows where those areas are). And the Bay Area News Group estimates that there are only about 100 unsheltered individuals in the unincorporated areas of San Mateo County, or about 5% of the county’s overall homeless population. The rest are in cities like San Mateo itself, and subject to those cities' ordinances.

The new law will take effect at the end of February.

Related: SamTrans Being Blamed For Dumping SFO's Homeless On Embarcadero [SFist]

Image: @sanmateoco via Twitter

In a surprising turn of events, Garrett Doty, the 25-year-old unhoused man accused of brutally attacking former San Francisco fire commissioner Donald Carmignani with a metal pipe back in the spring, has been found not guilty on all charges.

The widely-reported incident, which occurred on April 5 near Magnolia and Laguna streets in San Francisco's Marina District, left Carmignani with a fractured skull, broken jaw, and multiple lacerations to his face and head, not to mention added flames to fire of SF’s “doom loop” narrative. But shortly after the news broke, more details emerged about the case: Carmignani had an alleged history of aggressive behavior toward unhoused individuals.

Those allegations apparently came out in court: Doty alleged that the former fire commissioner had, on multiple occasions, used bear spray to target homeless people in the area, per KTVU. Carmignani’s lawyer reportedly denied this on his behalf, but he failed to appear to testify and defend himself in the case, as we previously reported. As the Chronicle reported,  his lawyers did not want him to testify on the stand. He had even reportedly invoked the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination during a prior preliminary hearing when questioned about the sprayings.

Doty faced charges of assault with a deadly weapon, battery with serious bodily injury, and assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury, per the Chronicle. Despite the severity of Carmignani's injuries, the jury reportedly ruled in favor of Doty, accepting his claim of self-defense.

The defense reportedly argued that Carmignani's aggressive behavior and refusal to testify undermined the credibility of the prosecution's case. Reportedly, a crucial piece of evidence was a surveillance video showing Carmignani approaching Doty first. A witness also reported hearing Carmignani threaten to stab and kill Doty, because he was near Carmignani’s parents’ home.

In another twist, Carmignani's ex-mother-in-law reportedly testified under subpoena in May 2023, supporting Doty's claim that the former fire commissioner had used bear spray on unhoused individuals multiple times.

But still, some SF residents had supported what they called Carmignani's "vigilante" justice at the time. Others called out the aggression against the homeless population. But now that the case is over, will it still be a right-wing talking point?

Feature image via Unsplash/Carson Masterson.

An 18-year-old program that offers free bus tickets out of town for unsheltered people to reunite with family is not so well used anymore, but mayoral hopeful Supervisor Ahsha Safai wants to bolster and expand the Homeward Bound initiative.

Back in 2005, then-mayor Gavin Newsom started an initiative called Homeward Bound, which basically offered unhoused people a one-way bus ticket out of town to reunite with friends or family elsewhere (or as or one shelter resident described it to the Examiner in 2016, the “Get your ass out of here” program). Whatever the merits of the idea, no one was ever forced to take the ticket out of town, and nearly 1,000 people a year took the city up on this offer at the program’s peak.

But that dipped down to about 200 or so people per year using Homeward Bound during the pandemic. And it didn't help that Homeward Bound was abruptly ended earlier this year, but then hastily restarted, which obviously created some confusion.

But at this week’s SF Board of Supervisors meeting District 11 Supervisor and mayoral candidate Ahsha Safai introduced his proposal to widely expand the Homeward Bound program. While the program currently only offers the tickets out of town to those currently unhoused, Safai’s proposal would make the offer available to anyone in the city’s shelter bed or supportive housing system.

“I want to return Homeward Bound to a stand-alone program, make it clear who is in charge, and expand access to more people — including those residents in our permanent supportive housing — so they can reunite with their families,” Safaí told the Chronicle.

It is more than just a bus ticket. There’s also a per diem meal stipend for travel days, and a case worker who follows up with the individual three times over three months.

Safai simply made the announcement at Tuesday’s board meeting; there is no written proposed legislation yet. But Mayor London Breed’s office sees this as more of an effort to promote Safai’s mayoral campaign.

“We can’t comment on the specifics as to what it entails, but we would encourage Supervisor Safaí to work in collaboration towards productive solutions with any relevant departments on this matter,” Breed’s office said in a statement to the Chronicle. “Unfortunately, as we’ve seen with his proposed legislation to require tax increases to pay for police staffing, he doesn’t always do that.”

And despite whatever stereotypes may exist, most unsheltered people did not “come here to be homeless.” The above graphic from the most recent “homeless census” (a.k.a. The 2022 Point in Time Count) shows that most people lived in SF when they fell into homelessness in SF. But sure, if you expand eligibility, it is likely that more people will use the program.

Thus far, we haven’t seen the brass tacks of how Safai proposes to expand the program. And at the moment, this may just be political marketing for Safai's mayoral campaign.

Related: Does Giving Bus Tickets Out Of Town Really Help The Homeless? The Chronicle Crunches The Numbers [SFist]

Image: Dallas, Tx, USA - April 9, 2016: Greyhound buses at the terminal in Dallas downtown. (Getty Images)

Governor Gavin Newsom says he’s handing $300 million to cities and state organizations to clear homeless encampments, but insists it’s not just for clearing encampments, but for providing shelter too.

It is probably going to dog Governor Gavin Newsom, perhaps for the rest of his term and into whatever he plans to do next, that homelessness in California has gone up under his administration. And while Newsom has done some nice things with grants, he’s often quick to blame cities or the courts for not being tough enough with encampment sweeps.  

His latest announcement is sort of a hybrid of the ‘good cop-bad cop’ approach of more funding along with more crackdowns. KTVU reports that on Monday, Newsom announced he’s putting another $300 million into Encampment Resolution Grants, which by the name is obviously money intended to clear encampments. But Newsom says cities have to show how they're actually going to house these people to get the grant funding.

"I think we can all agree that we need to do more to clean up encampments," Newsom said Monday. "We weren't just cleaning up encampments — out of sight, out of mind — and displacing people, removing people, but that we're trying to resolve the underlying issues in the first place and actually support people in getting them back on their feet to self-sufficiency."

Of course Newsom is getting blowback from advocates for the homeless population that he’s focusing more on encampment sweeps than permanent solutions. But what is described in the above tweet that Newsom “could house 10.5k people for an entire year in modest, one bedroom apartments in San Francisco” is not going to happen. Other cities have homelessness issues too, and these grants will go out statewide.

And as Sacramento’s KCRA explains, cities applying for these grants have to meet certain conditions to get the grant money. Cities have to provide maps of the encampments they will clear, how many affected people they will then house, and how they will house them.  

"We're not just writing a blank check and hoping things get better,” Newsom said Monday. “They actually have specific numeric goals, minimum expectations and standards that must be met."

Though as an NBC Bay Area report points out, half of the money is going to Caltrans, a state transportation agency that definitely engages in clearing encampments on state land, but is not in the business of housing people. So that’s going to fuel the argument that the focus here is more on clearing encampments than getting people shelter, particularly coming on the heels of the APEC encampment sweeps, and an ongoing lawsuit questioning the legality of encampment sweeps.

Regardless, NBC Bay Area adds that cities will have until June 2024 to apply for the grant money.

Related: Newsom Temporarily Cuts Off Homeless Funding to SF and Other Cities Pending Better Local Plans [SFist]

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

San Francisco has not one but 11 homeless outreach teams to provide services for people living on the streets, and a new city audit finds they don’t communicate with one another and often have poor oversight of their contracts and responsibilities.

You may have heard of San Francisco having a “homeless outreach team,” sometimes referred to by their acronym of a “HOT team,” with their recognizable branded black jackets or green shirts.  But it turns out San Francisco actually has 11 homeless outreach teams, with names like Post Overdose Engagement Team (POET) or Street Crisis Response Team (SCRT).

And according to a new 136-page audit from the SF the Budget and Legislative Analyst, there is little coordination between the 11 teams, these teams use a range of incompatible data collection systems, and their contract oversight is lacking. That’s why, according to Mission Local, Supervisor Dean Preston is calling for hearings on homeless outreach team oversight to address these flaws.

Preston did not sound angry with the teams’ performances when he called for the hearings at Tuesday’s SF Board of Supervisors meeting. “There no doubt that these teams have saved countless lives, connected people to services they desperately needed, and help deescalate situations that could have otherwise become tragic,” Preston said Tuesday. “I am grateful to all of these workers and departments that are undertaking this difficult and essential work.”

“But there’s no sugarcoating it, the audit found some areas that will require serious improvement,” he added. “The Department of Public Health failed to adequately monitor its contracts, and one street team operated without a contract for over a year.”

According to the SF Standard, that street team is the Harm Reduction Therapy Center. They apparently do have a contract with the DPH now. The DPH says it “was actively working” with them to devise a new contract during the period when it was lapsed.

In fairness, the city did rapidly expand these street teams at the start of the pandemic. But the reach of the audit dates back to 2018.

These calls for City Hall hearings do often result in legislation. The hearing will probably be at some Board of Supervisors committee hearing, though it has not yet been scheduled.

Related: SF's Department of Homelessness May Finally Get an Oversight Commission [SFist]

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

Mayor Breed came out with a new $600 million plan to reduce “unsheltered homelessness by 50%” in five years, but the key word there is “unsheltered,” because the details of the plan reveal it would only reduce overall homelessness by 15% over that period.

In fairness, San Francisco Mayor London Breed does deserve some credit on the homelessness issue. Last year’s homeless point-in-time count (commonly called “homeless census") showed a 3.5% drop compared to the previous count, so that alone gives Breed arguably a much better track record on the issue than her last few predecessors. But also in fairness, much of that drop can be attributed to projects funded by state and federal Homekey money, which Governor Newsom says he’ll continue to fund on a state level, but the federal funding is unlikely to ever be as generous as it was during the height of the pandemic.

That may be why Breed is opening a new front in  the battle against San Francisco’s persistent homelessness problem, as Bay City News reports that Breed announced a $600 million proposal to reduce homelessness Friday, with a goal of “reducing unsheltered homelessness by 50%” over the next five years.

“To continue to make progress addressing homelessness in San Francisco, we need to take bold actions that require the partnership of City leaders, the public, nonprofits, the private sectors, and collaborations at all levels of government,” Breed said in a  press release. “This plan sets forth strategies that build on what works and strengthens partnerships and accountability to ensure our efforts are making a real difference and that investments are making an impact.”  

The full plan called “Home by the Bay” is presented in a 90-page PDF that is available online. And there's a pretty important language distinction in how the plan says it will reduce “unsheltered homelessness” by 50%, which is not the same thing as the overall homeless population. Because the details of the plan admit that it would actually only reduce “the total number of people experiencing homelessness by 15%.” See what she did there?  

Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who was probably never going to like this plan anyway because it’s not his Shelter-for-all proposal, sounded unimpressed in his remarks to Bay City News. He criticizes the plan, authored by Breed and the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH), because he says it will "over-invest in permanent supportive housing and under-invest in shelter." And Mandelman may have a point there, because adding shelter beds is a quicker and easier fix, whereas permanent supportive housing takes a lot more time to develop.

And anyone who’s lived in San Francisco long-term knows that these multi-year plans pretty much never pan out. (Remind me again how well Vision Zero is iterating on its goal to “eliminate all traffic-related deaths by 2024.”) And the vulnerability that stands out here is the $600 million price tag, which is on top of the $650 million a year the city already spends on homelessness. We are back in deficit times, with Breed ordering every city department to cut its budget 5% this year and 8% next year. So there seems some likelihood that Breed’s own Home by the Bay plan would be trimmed by the budget cuts she herself has ordered.

Related: City Attorney Blasts Judge’s Ruling Banning Homeless Encampment Sweeps, Says It ‘Defies Logic’ [Joe]

Image: Sanfranman59 via Wikimedia Commons

After a federal judge banned the clearing of tents and encampments in SF, City Attorney David Chiu is kindly asking the judge to “clarify” her decision, while also telling her the decision “defies logic.”  

A late September lawsuit brought by the Coalition on Homelessness, the ACLU, and a small handful of unsheltered locals sued the city of San Francisco to end the clearing of tents and encampments. And on the night before Christmas Eve, the plaintiffs in that lawsuit got their wish, temporarily, at least.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu ruled, in a Friday night, December 23 decision, that SF could not clear tents or encampments until it had enough shelter beds to provide a place for every single unhoused person. And as seen below, there were plenty of frustrated cries from city officials to appeal that ruling.  

City Attorney David Chiu has not appealed the decision, not yet at least. But the Chronicle reports that he’s asked Judge Ryu to “clarify” that ruling, and by “clarify” it seems he wants the ruling limited. Plus, in his Tuesday legal filing, Chiu had some choice words for that December 23 decision.

“It defies logic to require that San Francisco have shelter for all persons experiencing homelessness before San Francisco may enforce these laws against any one person, even after that individual has refused adequate shelter. It would take years and an additional $1.45 billion to build the required shelter beds and provide homeless services,” Chiu said in his Tuesday filing.

Chiu’s point, and it may be a good one, is that Judge Ryu’s ruling conflicts with a ruling in a 2020 lawsuit from UC Hastings mandating that "enforcement measures" be enacted for unsheltered people who refuse relocation alternatives. Chiu’s office is essentially arguing that if people have refused a bed, the city shouldn’t have to provide them one.

Chiu hopes to split hairs with Judge Ryu’s definition of “involuntarily homeless” people, likely in hopes of making the ruling apply to fewer people.

Relatedly, as the SF Standard reports, Public Works employees and SFPD officers attempted an "encampment resolution" on Erie Street ahead of the heaviest rains on Wednesday. They did this, reportedly, because they had 10 extra shelter beds to offer as of this morning, but the encampment dwellers all denied these services and chose to weather the storm in their tents — in at least one case it was because a couple did not want to be separated. Reps from the City Attorney's Office were reportedly on site observing the action.

“Without clarification, the court’s order puts San Francisco in an impossible situation, practically and legally,” City Attorney David Chiu wrote in a statement to the Examiner. “I am concerned that this order, if interpreted broadly, will lead to more people suffering on our City streets.”

Naturally, attorneys for the ACLU and Coalition on Homelessness are pushing back. “The shelter system is closed,” attorney Hadley Rood, of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights that’s representing those plaintiffs, told the Chronicle. “There are 1,000 people on a wait list that has not been opened since early in the pandemic. The city is not offering shelters to the vast majority of people who need them.”

The ACLU and Coalition on Homelessness had hoped to end encampment sweeps, and for now, the gambit has worked. But the next hearing on the matter is scheduled for Thursday, January 12, and Judge Ryu could technically hand Chiu the so-called clarification he wants any time before then.

Related: Federal Judge Temporarily Halts All SF Homeless Sweeps Amid Major Lawsuit Against City [SFist]

Image: Google Street View