SAN FRANCISCO – A program in San Francisco has been stepped up to clean up homeless camps. City leaders have said that they are planning to do more to get rid of encampments. On Monday, crews started walking around the streets taking out camps.
The new push comes after Governor Gavin Newsom announced last week that he would clear city streets across the state of tents.
Geoffrey Frye says that the city’s most recent attempt will be hard for him. “You’re damn right,” Frye said. “I guess they want to make things safer for people or something.” I don’t know, I think it’s still a bother.
City crews say they try to interact with people who live in tents by offering mental health or drug and alcohol therapy, letting them know at least two days in advance when they are going to sweep, and offering to hold on to the person in the tent’s things.
The city’s Homeless Outreach Team has beds for people who are homeless that are available right away. “We give them what the chances are right now,” said José Torres from the Homeless Outreach Team in San Francisco. “You have the chance to be at this navigation center, this shelter, this hotel, or any other place that is open that day.” They might say, “Okay, I’ll take a navigation center,” and we’d say, “Okay, let’s go.”
It was Joel who didn’t want to give out his last name. He said he was told he could be arrested if he didn’t leave. He said he didn’t want a shelter bed and just wanted to be left alone.
“They take your stuff in there, and just lose everything and get kicked out,” he stated. “I’m not sure.” It took place for me. I’d rather be outside. But we’ll see what takes place.”
This new effort to clear encampments comes less than a week after Gov. Newsom asked state agencies to be stricter and asked cities to do the same. It was a month since the US Supreme Court cleared the way.
According to The Associated Press, California Governor Gavin Newsom has ordered that homeless camps be taken down.
The city’s mayor, London Breed, said that the plans have been made for weeks. She says that San Francisco can be kind and offer help, but it can also make it so hard for people to be homeless that they have to take the help that the city is giving. “We are doing everything we can to make it clear to people that we expect that you take us up on our offer for services and if you don’t, we want to make things less comfortable for you,” said Breed.
Shelters don’t work for everyone, and after sweeps, the most vulnerable people are in worse shape than they were before, say people who work with the homeless. “Giving short notice and then coming in and removing an encampment doesn’t change the fact that someone has nowhere to go, nowhere to live, and nowhere to come to,” said Jennifer Friedenbach from the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness.
The men we talked to today said they were going to move a few blocks away and might go back to the same place later if they can.
The city claims it can keep up this level of sweep for now. Officials are hoping that as more people accept the city’s offer of housing, there will be fewer camps to sweep.
On Sunday, the mayor of San Jose said that he understood why Gov. Gavin Newsom was upset about the large homeless camps, but that quick sweeps were not the right way to deal with them.