Newsom’s New Statewide Encampment Taskforce Ramps Up Operations in San Francisco

As Caltrans workers cleared the last remnants of an encampment from beneath a San Francisco overpass on Tuesday, Candice Dixon wondered if she would soon be asked to leave.

There, workers were for the latest operation of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s new task force, which brings together California’s departments of transportation, law enforcement, health and housing, among others, to remove homeless encampments across California.

The State Action for Facilitation on Encampments — or, SAFE — Task Force had just finished clearing the area where Cesar Chavez Street meets Highway 101, marking the seventh such operation along the freeway in the city since the start of the month.

“They’re going to come tell us to move,” the 44-year-old predicted.

She and another friend have, for the past three months, been living in an alcove on the opposite side of the freeway. Fenced in between Cesar Chavez Street, an onramp and a pedestrian crossing, the area is difficult to reach, which had been part of the appeal.

Now, as she considered how long she would be able to stay, she weighed her options. “Everywhere you go, or you put up a tent somewhere, you’ve got to be mindful that you know they’re going to come,” Dixon said. “It’s just finding somewhere to stay, that’s the hard part.”

Dixon had grown accustomed to moving. Under former mayor London Breed, and then Breed’s successor, Daniel Lurie, the city has been cracking down on encampments over the past year, threatening arrest to those who refuse offers of shelter.

In May, Newsom urged cities to make it illegal for people to camp outside for more than three nights in a row. And last summer, he directed state agencies to clear encampments on state land. The new task force, announced in August, marked his latest effort to reduce unsheltered homelessness by clearing encampments and directing people into services.

On Tuesday, California Secretary of Transportation Toks Omishakin described it as an “all of government” approach.

“We’re taking the comprehensive steps that we need to take, not just clearing encampments,” he said, but rather, “a wraparound approach to addressing this issue that is likely one of the biggest challenges in front of the state.”

Since July 2021, Caltrans has removed more than 18,000 encampments along the state rights-of-way, filling nearly 12,000 garbage trucks with unhoused people’s discarded belongings. But Omishakin said the SAFE Taskforce would take a new approach.

Rather than being primarily led by Caltrans and the California Highway Patrol, Omishakin said leaders from the state’s department of health and housing were also at the table. “All the key agencies are at the table every single day,” he said.

The task force will focus first on the state’s 10 largest cities, Omishakin said. Already, the state had secured agreements to allow workers onto city property with San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego and was working on another with San José.

It’s part of a larger effort to address homelessness across California that Omishakin said is beginning to pay dividends. At last count, more than 187,000 people were homeless on a given night in California, according to federal data, but the rate of growth has been slowing.

The number of people sleeping outside was nearly unchanged from 2023 to 2024, Omishakin noted, compared to a nearly 7% increase nationwide.

The operation underway Tuesday sought to address the needs of 18 people, said Jay Wierenga, a spokesperson for the state’s Business, Consumer Services, and Housing Agency. Of those, 12 agreed to speak with task force staff, he said; five were already in shelter, seven were offered shelter, and one accepted.

But Wierenga said outreach would continue: “We don’t just stop. This is a continuing effort every day — not only with the state departments — but also the city and the counties that we are working with very closely.”

Before they leave, Omishakin said workers will also install large boulders to make it harder for people to reenter the site. The goal, he said, is to ensure that they aren’t “playing that game of whack-a-mole.”

“We clear it, and they come right back,” Omishakin explained. “That’s why this strategy that we’re deploying now is even more important than ever.”

Dixon has been offered services before — and accepted them. The shelters didn’t always work out well for her, though, she said.

“They steal your stuff. They just do you wrong in there, you know?” she said. “They don’t give us the proper care that we need.”

Still, after being homeless for 18 years and faced with the prospect of moving yet again, Dixon said she’s willing to give shelters another shot. If she’s told to leave, she might ask for help.

“I was never raised like this to be homeless,” she said. “I always had a house to go to. So, it was kind of like adapting to this life, but I’ve been adapting to it for a while now.”

Maybe outreach workers would help her with the paperwork she needs to complete to get on the list for housing, she said.

Dixon thought about what that might look like. “My own place with my bathroom and shower, where I don’t have to worry about people stealing my stuff,” she said. “That would definitely be good.”