'The Rhetoric Is Amplified': SF Homeless Sweeps a Focal Point of Mayor's Race

Facing a tough reelection this November, San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s “tough-love” approach to homelessness in the city has become increasingly vitriolic — an approach some critics say could put actual lives at risk.

Last month, Breed vowed to begin “aggressively” removing people experiencing homelessness from encampments beginning in August. She told reporters, “We are going to make them so uncomfortable on the streets of San Francisco that they have to take our offer” of shelter or housing. She continued, “We will be using law enforcement to cite, and those citations can get progressive and can lead to a misdemeanor.”

The intensified rhetoric comes as voter polling frequently shows homelessness is a top issue for San Franciscans and as the incumbent seeks to overcome challengers’ accusations that she hasn’t done enough to clean the city’s streets.

It follows Gov. Gavin Newsom’s order last month, directing state agencies to clear encampments from state properties, along with a majority-conservative U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in June, which gave cities greater leeway to fine or jail people for camping on sidewalks and in parks — even if no alternative shelter is available.

Last week, Breed appeared to deliver on her promises: A flurry of media reports detailed encampment sweeps taking place throughout the city despite a shortage of available shelter. At last count, there were more than 4,300 people sleeping in tents or cars on San Francisco’s streets on any given night, and only around 3,600 shelter beds, of which more than 90% were already occupied. On Monday, there were 170 people on the city’s online reservation system for shelter.

What Breed’s Opponents Are Saying

Not all Democrats are falling in line with the gloves-off approach. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, for example, criticized the governor’s encampment order, and the county’s Board of Supervisors recently passed a motion to prevent jail time for simply living in an encampment.

In San Francisco, mayoral candidates to Breed’s left and right jumped at the opportunity to critique the recent blitz.

“Let’s be clear: Nothing prohibited the city from clearing encampments pre-Grants Pass,” Mark Farrell, a former supervisor and interim mayor who is running to unseat Breed, posted to social media last week, referring to the recent Supreme Court ruling. “Mayor Breed used ongoing litigation as an excuse.”

Farrell is campaigning on promises to sweep all of the city’s major encampments if elected and has positioned himself as the most conservative among a largely moderate slate of candidates.

Nonprofit founder and Levi Strauss heir Daniel Lurie echoed the criticism, calling it a “lack of action” and pointing out that the city does not have enough shelter beds or supportive housing to move people.

“Pushing encampments from one block to another didn’t work when Mark Farrell tried it, and it’s not going to work under this mayor,” Lurie said in a statement.

Breed’s progressive opponent, Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, said Breed is promoting harsh policies that often fail to efficiently and compassionately move people into long-term housing after an encampment is removed.

“Policies to address homelessness must be humane, lawful and effective — not implemented just because someone’s job is on the line…What is happening now is a quick and performative election-year gimmick,” Peskin said in a statement. “Mayor Breed and former Mayor Farrell are advocating for failed policies from the past that simply sweep our homeless problem from one neighborhood to another without any long-term solutions.”

Tough Love

Advocates for people experiencing homelessness say that although Breed’s rhetoric has ramped up, her actual policies have not changed as dramatically.

“Her narratives have shifted as she has seen political opportunity,” said Christin Evans, a small business owner in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood and vice chair of the city’s Homelessness Oversight Commission. “I think in this particular political moment, the rhetoric is amplified.”

Evans pointed to the mayor’s recent order that city workers conducting sweeps first offer homeless people a bus ticket out of the city — a tool the city has had available and used since 2005.

“She is amplifying these things to make it sound like she is doing something when it’s really theater,” Evans said. “She has been capable and able to address these issues all along, and she hasn’t done that.”

Back in 2018, when running for mayor, Breed promoted a tough-love approach in her plans to address homelessness. “There is nothing compassionate or safe about relegating people, particularly those suffering from mental health or addiction issues, to sleep on our streets,” she said at the time.

Breed was also careful to contextualize homelessness as the result of larger structural inequalities.

“Homelessness often seems like a uniquely, or at least, acutely San Francisco problem. But it isn’t,” she wrote in a Medium post during her campaign. “The federal government has been cutting supportive housing and homelessness funding for decades and leaving cities holding the bag. West Coast cities, with high costs of living and scarce housing, are particularly susceptible to homelessness.”

In December 2022, a U.S. judge barred San Francisco from enforcing sit-lie laws without first offering an alternative shelter as part of an ongoing lawsuit against the city for not following its own homelessness response policies. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Grants Pass overturned that ruling, giving the city more freedom to clear encampments even if shelters are full. The lower court, however, kept the city bound to its own requirement to “bag and tag” personal items during sweeps so people could later recover them.

“There has always been some level of (homeless) criminalization that’s taken place in San Francisco, but it’s been more behind the scenes,” said Jennifer Friedenbach, who leads the Coalition on Homelessness. “Fast-forward to today, and this administration is calling for arrests of unhoused people as if that is a potential solution to homelessness. That’s what’s changed significantly.”

In Breed’s six years as mayor, San Francisco’s temporary shelter supply has increased by more than 60%, according to the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, thousands of new permanent supportive housing units have come online, and the city has invested millions of dollars into affordable housing.

Breed’s administration helped 2,400 people move into San Francisco’s temporary shelter last year and more than 15,000 people off the street during her overall tenure, according to the mayor’s office. And, while the city’s overall homeless population has increased in recent years, the number of people in San Francisco sleeping in tents, cars and RVs has decreased by 16% since 2019, according to data from the federal Point-in-Time count.

Even with those efforts, a drop-off of pandemic-era rent and eviction relief, persistent economic inequality, and the ongoing shortage of both emergency and permanent affordable housing have all enabled a steady flow of people falling into homelessness.

“The numbers don’t show that kind of impact because, sadly, we’re dealing with the influx of people from everywhere,” Breed said.

A Dangerous Precedent

Caught in the middle of the political winds are people actually living on the street.

“It’s really fueling some very mean-spirited policies and acts of vigilantism and attacks on homeless people,” Supervisor Dean Preston said.

Preston joined other government officials and unhoused San Francisco residents at a recent rally outside Hotel Whitcomb, where attendees decried Breed’s recent actions. Advocates are calling on the city to acquire the hotel and use it to house people who are experiencing homelessness.

Several speakers highlighted the fact that people living on the street are more likely to die of overdose, end up in the hospital, and experience other traumatic setbacks when they are forcefully displaced.

“Unfortunately, we have seen in an election year over and over again, going back decades in this city, that ramped-up rhetoric and talk of criminalizing homeless people is viewed by some as a ticket to electoral success in this city,” Preston said. “And it’s disgusting.”

Breed did not confirm when reporters asked last week whether jail time is on the table for people who defy sit-lie laws. Legal advocates, however, say that is already happening.

“Unhoused folks are being criminalized purely for being poor. And we have lots of clients coming to us who have been arrested and have faced harassment from police,” said Angela Chan, attorney and advocate at the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office.

Advocates at the rally said they would like to see the city further expand rental and eviction relief, housing subsidies like Section 8 vouchers, and continue to invest in both shelter and permanent housing for extremely low-income people. Chan and others also urged the city to rapidly fill the city’s hundreds of empty permanent supportive housing units.

“The irony of people who are denied housing but are offered jail on a daily basis is really concerning,” Chan said. “I think every San Franciscan should really take stock of this moment and push our city to use our resources much more wisely and much more humanely.”