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.
Image: Joe Kuklura, SFist
