SF News SF Homeless Woman Known for Menacing Mothers and Small Children Has Agreed to Conservatorship We learned last week that Kim Andrews, a woman who became notorious for harassing and threatening women and their children on San Francisco streets and in parks over the course of five years, had been charged and detained.
SF News SF’s ‘Bus the Homeless Out of Town’ Strategy Now Catching On With Other California Cities A few other California cities are duplicating San Francisco’s tactic to merely hand the homeless a one-way bus ticket out of town, not because it's proven to be a particularly effective strategy, but more because it's just cheap and easy.
SF News Santa Clara High Student Dies by Suicide After Classmates Bullied Him for Being Homeless 14-year-old Jose Zamora’s short tenure at Santa Clara High School came to a tragic end last week, as the freshman took his own life after weeks of taunting for living at a homeless shelter and being raised by a single father.
SF News Nearly Three Years After It Opened, Bayview RV Triage Site Finally Gets Decent Electricity The Bayview RV triage site that opened in January 2022 has been dubbed the “most expensive homeless response” ever because of PG&E and Urban Alchemy costs. The problem was that PG&E never delivered that electricity, but they finally got it up and running this week.
SF Politics With November’s Prop 36, California Voters Could Effectively Undo the Infamous Prop 47 Property Crime Law California's 2014 law known as Prop 47 is often blamed for unleashing crime, homelessness, and the fentanyl crisis, and voters will have a chance to toughen up its under-$950 misdemeanor theft threshold with the new state measure Prop 36.
SF News Mayor Breed Touts 60% Drop in Tents on Streets, Mandelmans’s District 8 Supposedly Has Just One Tent Some very encouraging new statistics 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.
SF News SFMTA Votes to Tow RVs Parked Overnight on Streets If Campers Refuse Offers of Shelter 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.
SF Politics Sheng Thao Issues Executive Order to Ramp Up Oakland Encampment Sweeps 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.
SF Politics Even In Liberal Berkeley, Aggressive Encampment Sweeps Set to Begin A ruling by the Supreme Court allowing cities to crack down on illegal camping without necessarily providing shelter to the unhoused has even brought Berkeley's city council around to approving more unfettered encampment sweeps.
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 SF Steps Up Homeless Encampment Sweeps This Week — Will Homeless Just Ping-Pong to Other Blocks? San Francisco's ever-shifting strategy to address the crisis of homelessness shifts again this week to an aggressive effort to clear encampments off of streets and push individuals to accept shelter and/or substance abuse treatment.
SF News Newsom Orders State Agencies to Clear Homeless Encampments En Masse in Wake of Supreme Court Ruling Governor Gavin Newsom just issued an executive order that would represent the largest homeless encampment sweep effort in the nation since the Supreme Court handed down their decision that cities can ban sleeping outdoors.
SF Politics Ninth Circuit Clears Way For San Francisco to Resume Encampment Sweeps Although the removal of homeless encampments had not completely stopped in San Francisco, a panel of federal appellate judges just ordered an injunction to be lifted that clears a legal hurdle to the city's efforts to clear illegal encampments.
SF Politics Supreme Court Ruling Could Have Broad Implications for Homeless Encampment Sweeps In California The Supreme Court has, predictably, ruled in favor of the city of Grants Pass, Oregon, weighing in for the first time on the issue of homelessness and how cities and states may legally enforce laws around public camping.
SF News Unsheltered Homeless Population In SF Nearly Unchanged Since 2022, Overall Number Rises 7% Despite spending many millions of dollars to address the issue of homelessness in San Francisco, the city got some disappointing news Thursday with the release of the latest (preliminary) point-in-time census count of the homeless.
SF News Number of Homeless In Berkeley Drops 45% In Promising Sign; Oakland's Number Still On the Rise, Though The number of unsheltered homeless people in Berkeley dropped by nearly half in the two years between the biennial point-in-time homeless censuses in 2022 and 2024, according to a preliminary report.
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 Mayor Breed Touts New Numbers Saying SF Tents and Encampments at a Five-Year Low London Breed’s office is making a big to-do over the latest city numbers that indicate tent encampments are at a five-year low, and while these numbers vary wildly over time, it does look like the trend line is going in a positive direction.
SF Politics Supreme Court Sounds Inclined to Allow Cities to Clear Homeless Encampments, Enforce Camping Laws Somewhat predictably, the conservative-majority Supreme Court signaled during oral arguments Monday that it will rule in favor of the Oregon town whose law penalizing public camping was struck down by the Ninth Circuit.
SF News Tenderloin Residents and Businesses Pushing Back Against Proposed Turk Street Homeless Shelter A proposal to turn three vacant storefronts at Turk and Hyde streets into a homeless services center has some Tenderloin residents and businesses fuming, and saying that the Tenderloin is bearing the burden of too many of these facilities.
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 State Audit Blasts California for Spending $24 Billion on Homelessness, But Not Tracking Whether Much of It Works A new report from the California State Auditor finds the state has spent $24 billion on homelessness since 2018, only to see things get worse, and dings the state for not keeping track of whether much of this money is even accomplishing anything.
SF News Chesa Boudin, Other Bay Area Lawyers Implore Supreme Court to Protect Civil Rights of Homeless Former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, now a professor at UC Berkeley School of Law, joined with a group of Bay Area lawyers in an amicus brief filed Tuesday in the Oregon case about penalizing homeless camping that the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on later this month.
