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60% of Homeless Vagrants in San Francisco Refusing Shelter
‘So many people refuse shelter space because the shelters in San Francisco are quite bad’
By Evan Symon, December 14, 2023 6:59 pm
According to new data released by San Francisco Mayor London Breed and street outreach teams from the San Francisco Department of Public Health and the San Francisco Homeless Outreach Team (SFHOT), 60% of all homeless people who were offered shelter last month refused help, pointing to continued larger problems with the shelter system in the city.
For years, the number of homeless in San Francisco has gone steadily up. While figures tend to fluctuate because of the complexities of the cities and counties of the Bay Area, homelessness in general has gone up significantly since the late 2000’s, with the Great Recession, tech boom, rise in housing costs, major changes to policing in the city, major job losses, and COVID-19 all being considered major factors in the rise. In 2023, San Francisco has, on an average night, 3,400 homeless in shelter beds, with another 4,400 on the street.
With so many still on the street, outreach services routinely ask homeless people on the street in the city if they want shelter space. Earlier this year, over 50% of homeless people refused shelter space, with 54% of people refusing such space during the summer. However, in a tweet by Mayor London Breed this week, those figures have shot up dramatically in the last three months. According to the Mayor and street outreach teams, 60% of homeless people refused shelter in September, 65% in October, and 60% in November.
“Street Outreach Update: In November, encampment workers encountered 350 people during planned operations, offering services and shelter to all: • 117 accepted shelter • 20 were already housed 213 times – 60% of the time – people refused to accept help and move indoors,” tweeted Breed on X.
Street Outreach Update: In November, encampment workers encountered 350 people during planned operations, offering services and shelter to all:
• 117 accepted shelter
• 20 were already housed
213 times – 60% of the time – people refused to accept help and move indoors. (1/6)🧵 pic.twitter.com/FYRQ0lzark— London Breed (@LondonBreed) December 11, 2023
“This is why enforcing our laws is important,” added the Mayor. “Our laws are for the health and safety of everyone. There are public safety challenges around encampments. There are threats of fire. We lead with compassion, but when we have resources — and we do — we need people to accept help. Our outreach workers will keep offering shelter, and with the addition of 300 more beds we’ve just opened, we have even more help to offer. We are continuing to help people exit homelessness with financial assistance, relocation support, and housing options.
“We have to get more people to accept help because more and more the challenges on our streets are about the deadly drugs ruining people’s lives and hurting our neighborhoods.”
However, homeless researchers and advocates told the Globe on Thursday that the issue isn’t the open shelter spaces, but rather the quality and other factors surrounding them.
“So many people refuse shelter space because the shelters in San Francisco are quite bad,” said Gina Cortez, a Bay Area-based homeless services researcher, to the Globe on Thursday. “We get a bunch of horror stories. Sometimes they’re reported, like how once they are given a bed, the city tends to not follow up much, so city services don’t reach them and pretty much all of the problems of the streets are brought to the shelters. They also aren’t as transitionary as they say, so people who want to leave the shelter system have a hard time doing so. Many are also in bad areas or not near public transit, or in areas away from the places where these people have jobs, so it can be a real hassle coming and going.
“That, in addition to having no privacy at all, you can see why most homeless people only seek out the shelters if it is really cold out. You have a better chance of getting out of homelessness while living in a car or tent. Even traditional obstacles, like not having an address for employer forms, can easily be worked around from the street level. You can’t work around, say, a bad shelter location at a shelter.
“The fact that so many people would chance it out overnight on the streets of San Francisco over shelter space is extremely worrying. But, based on the evidence, it totally makes sense too. But San Francisco has to do better. They need to make indoor shelters more appealing than, say, living it out in a tent on the streets. They can create ways for more privacy, link up with better transport options, extend hours in which people can return from jobs. Patrol more for drug usage in shelters. There are so many little fixes they can do yet don’t. That’s why 60% of homeless people aren’t using these shelters, along with other reasons I haven’t even gotten to yet. There’s that many problems.”
December data on outreach is expected to come out next month.
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September 29, 2022
This is the point that I’ve been making all along: A LOT OF THE HOMELESS DON’T WANNA LIVE BY THE RULES. That’s why the only solution to this is they either get shelter or they get bused into Slab City where they can inject heroin and fentanyl all they want and not be a danger to decent, hard-working citizens who struggle daily to have roofs over their heads.
This is another prime example of the ineptitude of most Democratic big city politicians. They are administrators, paper pushers and lack the real problem solving ability to deal with homelessness.All they do is continually recite the hopelessness of the situation and then blabber about their untenable solutions.
Well the recent UCSF study if you ignore the deliberately misleading media coverage / press releases and read the report shows that 65% of street people are addicts and 25% are mentally ill. Neither will want to stay in homeless shelters.
In defense of the street people the homeless shelters are horrible. As one guy staying in a shelter told me – they treat us like we are animals, I’m no longer a man. He was a middle aged black guy who had been side swiped by far a few days ago and need to get back to SF Gen ER. So made sure he did.
Based on what I have seen and heard over the decades if I had to choose between sleeping on the streets in SF, a homeless shelter, or the worst hotel in the Tenderloin I’d take my chances on the street before I would go near one of the homeless shelters. With a terrible hotel being first choice. The only people homeless shelters work for are the 10% or so who are vagrants / drifters just passing though. A few nights in a shelter before moving on. These people are never ever a problem and often have interesting stories to tell. Always worth the price of buying them a meal.
At least in SF before the “housing reformers” got their way in the 1960’s and 1970’s there were between 50K and 60k beds for casual accommodation in the City. In SRO’s, cheap motels, flop houses, lodging houses etc. Mostly in Tenderloin, SOMA, Western Addition etc. The “reformers” had most of the shutdown because it was “low quality residential accommodation” . And the property redevelopers and city urban planners were glad to help knocking them down and build places like the Moscone Center. Which the first phases alone removed 4K short term accommodation beds from those few blocks.
So by the 1980’s most of the residential accommodation for those who were on the very bottom of the economic heap was gone. Accommodation which had been there since the 1850’s in some form or other. And thats when the “homeless problem” started. In the 1970’s and 1980’s.
Thats why since the 1980’s the street people population has stayed around the 6K to 9K range. Because “social reformers” removed the places these people used to live in while in the City. Only the winos tend to be local. Everyone else is an out of towner. Just passing through. Until they move on or are moved on.
SF has never had a “homeless problem”. It has an accommodation problem caused by the removal of one whole segment of low cost accommodation by “activists”. Build 20K+ more SRO’s and change the zoning laws so the cheap hotels / flop houses can operate again and no more “homeless problem”. Not going to happen because the Homeless Industry is worth about $1B a year and several thousand people directly or indirectly make a very good living from the scam. The top people in the NGO’s pay themselves very good salaries. Usually good six figures.
Turns out those on the street also hate the Homeless Industry people as well. The people on the street see little of the $85K per person per year spent on “homelessness” in the City. Plus they really hate the sanctimonious patronizing attitude of the Do Gooders. As does pretty much everyone else know actually knows what goes on on the street.
Thanks for your detailed comments. I agree completely that the Homeless Industrial Complex is a monumental scam. These grifter organizations benefit from ever-increasing homelessness and their fellow politician cronies are more than happy to throw money at the Complex so the politicians can pretend to be doing something about the problem. I’m not sure I agree with you about your “accommodation” assessment. I believe the main cause is drugs and addiction, Yes, there have always been people living on the edge. Roger Miller’s song “King of the road” perfectly captured these people. But this is something different. No level of accommodation would change the fact that the sole motivation for the severely addicted is their next fix.
If 25% of the SF homeless have mental problems and 65% are addicts drinking, and shooting up fentanyl, meth and tranq, the shelters aren’t really the problem, even if they are considered “bad.” What’s the solution? Upgrade the shelters? Nope. With SF setting new records for overdose deaths, we need tough love. Shut down open air drug dealing and use on the streets by arresting and prosecuting drug dealers. This alone will force the homeless to move. Enforce the actual laws on the books and remove the homeless once they have declined shelter while offering mental and substance abuse help for the small percentage who accept help. Compassion alone and bottomless empathy does not work.
What? I gotta be clean and sober and not use when I go in there? No drugs or booze? Hell-no! Nope, I’ll stay here where I can do what I want and get city money for it. Ain’t nobody gonna tell me how to live.
@Rod
Most of the current wave of street junkies in SF are strung out in public because Prop 57 removed mandatory drug rehab as a condition of probation. The numbers went up about 5x+ in the year after Prop 57 passed. And once rehab was made non conditional rehab rates immedately fell about 80%.
People OD’ing and dying. I really dont give a damn. It took a lot of very deliberate stupidity to end up on the street twitching and convulsing with a fatal hit. Those seriously in rehab and who have kicked the habit. Will always make time for them. Especially the “self medicating” people who always had a rough life. One way or another.
Most of the supply on the street is not only due to the complete collapse of border security but the very deliberate dismantling of the very successful anti-gang programmes put in place in the 1990’s. People like Gascon are directly working for the nacros.
It was Gascon who shutdown the gang units and all legal supervision of known gangs members when SF DA. Most of the high profile shootings of innocent civilians in the Bay Area the last few years was by gang members who had been under closes surveillance by anti-gang units in SF, Oakland etc until they were all dismantled. The Democratic Party has a very long history of involvement with organized crime in some way. Many decades ago it was mostly mafia. Like Nancy Pelosi’s father, the mayor of Baltimore. Now its the narcos and the various black gangs who work with nacros as distributers / enforcers.
Any city DA who was either a public defender or defended many gang members before getting elected is almost always working with or for the gangs. DA who were public prosecutors are usually ok’ish. So Pamela Price the Alameda DA is doing what she did during her private practice, working for the gangs. Contra Costa, San Mateo, San Jose etc the DA’s are all either prosecutors or judges. Chesa Boudin was just an incompetent “human rights lawyer” with no actual working knowledge of CA criminal law elected with Soros money. A lot of Soros money.
Politicians working for the gangs and narcos. Well in SF we have the Dean Preston stupid rich kid idiots making life very easy for the gangs but my money is on Shamann Walton having some very interesting friends and business associates. Just like he did growing up in Vallejo.
As for the mentally ill. As long as Disability Rights California gets $50M a year from the state to keep the mentally ill on the streets and untreated, like they have since the 1980’s by blocks all reforms through lawsuits, not a lot will change there. Another great Jerry Brown legacy. The DRC.
Tfourier, thanks for your additional insights. It’s astonishing to me that the people of San Francisco continue to tolerate and enable such insanity. It’s embarrassing to admit I was born there. That was a long time ago.
90% or more of homeless people don’t want homes and will never keep up basic care for the homes. What they want are drugs!! If Democrats cared even the slightest about people, which they don’t, they would help them get the care they need to get back on their feet and improve their lives. Hard to believe there are so many democrats actively destroying people’s lives just to get more money and power. Disgusting!!!
@ Fed Up
I watched SF politics going from kinda crazy in the 1970’s and 1980’s to totally insane as the 1960’s “Progressives” hijacked the traditional SF big city party machine in the 1980’s and make the the city election cycle total toxic for any moderate / sane candidates by the 1990’s.
The move to district elections rather that city wide in the name of “democracy” made it very easy for a just few hundred very well organized people spread over 5 or 6 districts to totally control City Hall. Plus the very long history of municipal corruption in SF when the Democrats are in power makes it very convenient for those who are stealing $ billions p.a to have the ultra-left political circus to hide the endemic corruption.
Its a basic rule of big city politics that the more City Hall is full of left wings people who show little interest in municipal government but are only interested in social engineering or national/ international politics the more you can guarantee that a large percent of the city budget is being stolen. In SF its been the Willie Brown crew since the 1990’s who’ve been doing the stealing. The only reason you are seeing any prosecutions of SF City corruption now is because Willies crew lost control of the Mayors office after Newsom left and Breed outmaneuvered them and Diane Feinstein’s lost control over who was appointed as the local Fed DA. The Trump appointed Fed DA has been doing all the prosecuting of SF City Hall corruption. And they have only scratched the surface.
So the political circus has just been cover for many billions being stolen from the City over the last few decades. Many many billions. Standard party machine tactics.
As for why people put up with it. Most dont. They move. Sooner or later. Or else live in the two / thirds of the City that is not crazy and nasty. Like the whole west half of the City. In the fog.
No sane person will run for the Board of Supes. And its been like that for decades. Unless you have seen the SF “political activists” up close you really dont understand how dangerous and crazy they are. For a sane moderate person to run for election there would need to be a at least three of four like minded people also running. A single induvial is easily blocked and neutralized if elected. They would need very deep pockets. Would have to have lawyered up before hand. And would need serious personal security. And be willing to pay off the right people to buy the protection of the criminal justice system for the inevitable attacks and assaults from the “activists” crazies.
Because thats how politics works in SF. And has worked since the 1970’s. Back to the way it worked from the 1890’s to 1910’s. The last time the Democratic Party machine controlled the City. Little different from the Rueff / Schmitz era.
Not quite Chicago. Where “problem people” are “disappeared”. But very far from the sedate (and safe) municipal politics of San Rafael, San Ramon or Los Gatos politics.
Tfourier, and here’s another fundamental problem that prevents positive change:
“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
Winston Churchill
This is a lack of leadership. Certainly most would agree. I have emailed AND spoken to city leaders in a neighbor city to use land that is open to move ALL homeless away from population and build service buildings to include showers, drug abatement, police, garbage and most importantly a way to return to society. The problem has nothing to do with cost of housing. (A common lie by uncaring people). We know it’s a drug use issue. Drug dogs could help keep users away from dealers. Note: the move would be to either force a move there in a tent city, or be taken to jail.
There is NO homeless crisis. These mentally ill vagrants want freedom (anarchy) to what ever they want whenever they want. Camps have rules which they completely reject.