San Francisco Sweeps Homeless Camps Following Court Rulings

Two homeless people have just set up tents for the night at Folsom Street and 13th Street close to Highway 101 in San Francisco on Aug. 8, 2024. Lear Zhou/The Epoch Times

SAN FRANCISCO—Homeless people in San Francisco are adapting to the city’s new encampment sweeping policy, which was enacted after a recent Ninth Circuit ruling paved the way for the city to clear out homeless camps.

Previously, the city had to offer shelter to the homeless individuals every time it swept out a camp. After the new ruling, it can clear a recently swept area without shelter offers.

San Francisco has thus performed a citywide homeless encampment sweeping in the last few weeks, targeting the largest encampment areas.

An Epoch Times reporter visited the corner of Mission Street and Van Ness Avenue on the evening of Aug. 8 and found no tents in the neighborhood, which used to be a major encampment site near downtown. Some of the homeless people from that area are now scattered into smaller encampments, with tools like bicycles that give them the mobility to set up tents for the night.

That same evening, on Folsom Street on the block between 17th Street and 18th Street, which was also a large encampment site, the reporter found only five tents left. One unhoused person with a bicycle mentioned to the reporter that the others had probably moved to another spot.

If that spot is in San Francisco, they are still risking being swept out by the city. San Francisco will continue to address homeless encampments, the mayor’s office told The Epoch Times on Aug. 8 via email.

“Enforcement against camping on San Francisco’s streets will consist of progressive penalties,” Mayor London Breed stated in a memo.

The penalties start with a warning and could escalate to citations or even arrest in some cases.

“Our work still centers around helping every person living on our streets find their way indoors to shelter and services or to a better opportunity with friends or family if that resource is available to them,” the mayor’s office stated.

The Public Defender’s Office declined to comment when The Epoch Times asked if it had seen a surge of requests for help due to the encampment sweeping.

Lawsuit Against San Francisco

A case called Coalition on Homelessness v. City and County of San Francisco was filed in September 2022, challenging San Francisco’s encampment sweeps on the grounds that they violate the Eighth Amendment regarding cruel and unusual punishment.

In December 2022, the District Court issued a preliminary injunction preventing San Francisco from sweeping homeless encampments without offering shelter to the homeless individuals.

The Ninth Circuit ruled in September 2023 that the city could clear homeless encampments if the homeless people living there refused an offer of shelter, according to a May press release from the mayor’s office. With that clarification, San Francisco was able to reduce the number of homeless tents and structures from 609 in July 2023 to 360 in April 2024, and after that there were only nine encampments left that had five or more tents or structures.

In June this year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a different court case that enforcement of laws against public camping does not count as cruel and unusual punishment. On July 8, the Ninth Circuit revised the injunction against San Francisco, allowing the city to enforce its public camping laws.

Eric Smith at the corner of Haight Street in San Francisco. Lear Zhou/The Epoch Times

Homelessness in San Francisco

The mayor’s memo stated that police officers will look for small homeless camps and will work with Public Works staff to address them and prevent them from becoming larger encampments.

Breed stated in an executive order issued Aug. 1: “We will not be a city with a reputation for being able to solve the housing and behavioral health needs of people across our country.”

The executive order requested that all city workers first offer relocation services to homeless persons, enabling those from outside San Francisco to return to their hometowns, before offering other services such as shelter.

According to the executive order, 40 percent of unsheltered people in San Francisco did not live there before they arrived.

San Francisco had a homeless population of 8,323 as of Jan. 30, among whom 4,354 were unsheltered, according to the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH).

The San Francisco Police Department’s (SFPD) Healthy Streets Operations Center (HSOC), the main entity implementing the encampment sweepings, was launched in January 2018 before Breed assumed office in July 2018. The purpose of HSOC is “to coordinate the City’s response both to homeless encampments and to behaviors that impact quality of life,” according to a report from the Controller’s Office.

The task force combines city staff from SFPD, Public Works, the Department of Public Health, HSH, and the Department of Emergency Management.

In HSOC’s first year, it reduced the number of tents citywide from 568 in July 2018 to 341 in January 2019, and it reduced the number of encampments with 5 or more tents or structures from 17 to 5 in the same time span, the Controller’s Office reported.

However, HSH reported that in January 2020 the number of large encampments was 19. In February 2020, HSH counted 1,545 tents and structures.

Large encampments, defined as those with more than five tents or structures, have higher levels of substance abuse and infectious disease and can increase public health and safety concerns in and around them, according to an HSOC presentation in 2018.

Homeless individuals are also at constant risk of having their belongings stolen.

Eric Smith, who lives in the Haight-Ashbury District and has been homeless since the COVID-19 pandemic began, told The Epoch Times that he has been robbed multiple times but often finds his possessions lying on the street, including items that used to belong to his mother or grandmother.

To Smith, homelessness was like being “a refugee in my own country.”