SF Politics Newsom Says He’ll Yank Counties’ Funding If They Don’t Clear Homeless Encampments Aggressively Enough 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.
SF News Tents Return Right Away In Mission District, Tenderloin Areas Targeted By Encampment Sweeps 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.
SF Politics Mayor Breed Doubles Down on Just Shipping the Homeless Out of Town, as Encampment Sweeps Ratchet Up 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.
SF News Gavin Newsom Throwing Around That $6 Billion Mental Health Bond Money Early 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.
SF News Tiny Home Homeless Housing Facility Opens at 16th Street BART, Behind Big, Black Gates 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.
SF News San Mateo County Will Charge Unhoused People With a Crime If They Refuse Shelter 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.
SF News Homeless Man Accused of Attacking Ex-SF Fire Commissioner Acquitted of All Charges On Friday, an SF jury found Garrett Doty, the 25-year-old unhoused man accused of assaulting former SF fire commissioner Donald Carmignani with a metal pipe in April, not guilty, after his defense claimed self-defense.
SF News Supervisor Proposes Expanding ‘Homeward Bound’ Program That Buses Homeless Out of SF 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.
SF Politics Newsom Announces $300 Million In New Grants to Clear Homeless Encampments 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.
SF News City Audit Finds Poor Coordination, Lack of Oversight Among SF Homeless Outreach Teams 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.
SF News Breed Announces $600 Million Plan To Cut Unsheltered Homelessness In Half Within Five Years 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.
SF News City Attorney Blasts Judge’s Ruling Banning Homeless Encampment Sweeps, Says It ‘Defies Logic’ 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.”
SF News Federal Judge Temporarily Halts All SF Homeless Sweeps Amid Major Lawsuit Against City The ACLU and Coalition on Homelessness’s lawsuit against the city of San Francisco has brought an emergency order to temporarily halt all encampment sweeps in the city, and Mayor Breed and her allies are furious with the decision.
SF News Nonprofits Lay Out Plan To End Homelessness In California — For $8 Billion a Year An $8.1 billion investment every year for the next 12 years could end homelessness in California, according to a new analysis that says pandemic-era levels of spending sustained over more than a decade would house everyone who needs housing.
SF News Biden Administration Claims It Will Cut Homelessness By 25% In Two Years, Offers Little Detail On How An ambitious plan to reduce homelessness by 25% seems to lack the “plan” part in the Biden administration’s new effort to house people, as homelessness has ticked up nationally by 3.4% this year.
SF News Homeless Shelter Proposals Across California Taking Flak, Advocates Call for More ‘Gap Housing’ Like Tiny Houses Supervisor Rafael Mandelman’s “A Place for All” legislation is just one of many California proposals being criticized for rounding people up into shelters instead of setting people up for permanent housing.
SF News Report: An Estimated 20,000 San Franciscans Will Experience Homelessness In 2022 A new addendum to this year’s Homeless Point-In-Time Count paints a much starker picture than we’d realized, as it estimates that an astonishing 20,000 people in San Francisco will experience homelessness at some point this year.
SF News As Shelter-In-Place Hotel Program Winds Down, Residents and Managers Look Back on Whether it Actually Worked San Francisco's Shelter-in-Place Hotel program is roughly 75% finished, with the remaining 25% to expire in the weeks to come. Let’s check in on the statistics — and people — who can say whether it was effective.
SF News Mandelman’s Shelter-for-All Plan Passes Board Unanimously, Though Many Are Skeptical It Will Do Anything Supervisor Rafael Mandelman says his freshly passed “Place for All Program” is “maniacally focused” on ending homelessness in San Francisco, but the city has seen these slogan-driven plans have had little effect in the past.
SF News San Mateo County Convinced It Can Reach ‘Zero’ Homelessness in 2022 The Project Homekey bonanza has San Mateo County officials talking as if they will solve homelessness in their county in 2022, though their homeless population is a fraction of San Francisco’s.
SF News SF Finally Conducts Delayed Homeless Census, Rest of Bay Area to Finish Theirs Tonight How much has homelessness increased during the pandemic? We’ll have hard numbers soon, as Bay Area cities conduct their first official “homeless census” in three years.
SF News Bayview RV Lot for Homeless Opens, But Many Resist Moving in For Lack of Electricity Resources The new “vehicle triage center” opened Wednesday at Candlestick Point, but those who’ve been invited to stay are balking at the idea because propane tanks and generators are prohibited.
SF News SF Plans to Buy Four More Hotels to Shelter Homeless Population Four hotels and a total of 368 units will be opened as permanent housing for the unsheltered population, as that sweet Prop. C “homeless tax” money starts rolling in.
SF News SFPD Offers Reward to Find Man Who Killed a Mission District Homeless Couple In 2016 The San Francisco Police Department has released a suspect sketch and is offering a $75,000 reward for information to help solve a cold case from 2016 in which a homeless couple was shot and killed.
SF Politics Mayor Breed Takes to Medium to Swipe at Supervisors, Media Coverage of Homeless Hotel Program The mayor’s Medium post vaguely decries “what some people have been saying” and “a number of inaccurate statements” after the Board of Supervisors' unanimous vote to extend the shelter-in-place hotel program.
