SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — In a controversial push to get San Francisco’s unhoused population out of town, Mayor London Breed has put out an executive order to buy bus tickets for the homeless population as the city’s shelters near full.
This comes as Mayor Breed says they are seeing progress in housing many long-time San Franciscans, but this directive addresses the growing portion of people coming in from out of town.
The mayor’s move also comes as the city ramps up efforts to sweep encampments following a recent Supreme Court ruling making way for cities to force people off the streets. Now this is an attempt to send more people back home.
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All city departments working with homeless people have been ordered to offer relocation assistance before providing any other services, including housing and shelter.
The goal is to reunite people with family and support in the communities they came from.
“I support as long as we verify people will actually have a place,” said Del Seymour, the founder of Code Tenderloin, a nonprofit working with people on the streets for decades.
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Seymour says the city’s relocation efforts often fall short.
“A lot of people will get on the phone and say ‘yeah send them back,’ but by the time they get there we’re not really sure they have a place,” Seymour said.
Part of the reason for this directive stems from San Francisco’s 2024 Point-in-Time (PIT) Count, which the city says found that it is experiencing an increase in people who experience homelessness coming to the city from elsewhere compared to previous counts.
“A lot of people come out here thinking San Francisco is going to be this wonderful state for them to live and thrive and they’re actually leaving home because they think they’re going to find something here,” said Donna Hilliard, the executive director of Code Tenderloin.
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Hilliard says offering people a way home is key.
“They need to be able to go back home, so offering them that chance to reunite with their family and that support system is everything.”
Others warn the Journey Home program only goes so far in solving the homelessness crisis.
“This is by no means a panacea,” said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness. “It does serve a small population of people who do have communities outside of SF that they can reconnect with and be houses, but any attempts to expand it in the past have been unsuccessful because there’s just not that many people who can benefit from the program.”
The Mayor’s Office says the plan is to track the numbers to monitor whether the program’s working, but exactly how they’ll do that is still unclear.
Mayor Breed’s full statement here:
“San Francisco continues to be committed to investing in effective programs that offer services to help reconnect people living on our streets with their homes as part of our ongoing efforts to address homelessness here in our city. While we will always lead with compassion and we have made significant expansions in housing and shelter, we cannot solve everyone’s individual housing and behavioral health needs. We’ve made significant progress in housing many long-time San Franciscans who became homeless, but we are seeing an increase in people in our data who are coming from elsewhere. Today’s order will ensure that all our city departments are leveraging our relocation programs to address this growing trend.”
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