ZOHREEN SHAH, TENZIN SHAKYA, BRIANA STEWART and ALLIE WEINTRAUB
Thu, September 28, 2023
Homelessness continues to grow in San Francisco
In parts of San Francisco, unhoused Americans like Anthony, a former restaurant worker, regularly move street to street as city officials come in to clean up their encampments.
Anthony, who asked not to use his last name due to privacy concerns, says he has been living in a tent on the street for three years. Before the pandemic, he says he did mostly chef work, but he began to struggle to afford housing once restaurants temporarily closed.
“Once you get behind, you just can’t get up,” Anthony told ABC News.
Anthony is one of over 170,000 unhoused Californians struggling to find a permanent home, according to the California Budget and Policy Center. That’s nearly a third of the nation’s rising homeless population of 582,462 people, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
For people like Nelly Sorto, a mom of two young children who works full time cleaning homes, it’s all but impossible to break into the city’s rental market.
The city’s minimum wage is $18.07 an hour, but the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is roughly $3,000 a month, according to the city of San Francisco and online rental platform Zumper.com.
Sorto told San Francisco-based affiliate KGO-TV that she lived in an RV with her children for over a year before recently obtaining rental assistance from the city and moving into an apartment.
Experts point to several reasons for the rising homeless population in San Francisco, including the high cost of living related to the tech boom, the economic downturn during the pandemic and mental health issues experienced by many individuals.
“California has systemic issues in terms of its housing affordability, where it is a very popular place to live that has driven up rents and the rents are a direct cause of homelessness,” Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, told ABC News. “So, what we need to do in California is really have a massive investment to offset that difference between incomes and rent.”
MORE: Homeless populations vulnerable amid poor air quality and smoke: Advocates
Friedenbach calls the homelessness crisis a “manufactured issue” created by a “lack of investment.”
Meanwhile, many across the state say they’re frustrated with the growing encampments in their cities.
Jeanne Vasquez, a Hollywood resident, spoke to ABC Los Angeles in July about the encampment in her area, saying, “There’s needles on the ground, also there’s a lot of broken glass. You’re getting catcalled…You're getting people that have mental illness. You're seeing profanity. Sometimes you see people naked."
President Joe Biden announced over the summer an extra $3 billion in investment focusing on veterans and including rental assistance, legal help and job search support.
On the campaign trail, GOP presidential hopefuls, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump, have pointed to the homeless crisis in blue states to slam Democratic leadership.
In one campaign ad, Trump promises to “ban urban camping" if elected.
“Violators of these bans will be arrested but they will be given option to accept treatment and services if they’re willing to be rehabilitated. Many of them don’t want them,” Trump says in the ad.
Friedenbach says such a policy would essentially criminalize the homeless and she believes the federal government needs to spend more time listening.
“Very rarely are candidates centering unhoused people's needs in when they develop platforms before they're making statements,” Friedenbach said.
To address the crisis, Friedenbach said the federal government should invest in housing vouchers like Section 8, along with short, medium and long-term housing subsidies so people can stay in their homes if they were to face a catastrophic health issue or job loss. Friedenbach also calls for investment in behavioral health and reforming substance use and mental health treatment systems to work better for people.
MORE: As incidents of violent crime by the homeless grab headlines, activists urge caution and solutions
In a statement, a spokesperson for the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management told ABC News, “San Francisco outreach teams do an exceptional job of placing people who are interested in going inside into shelter or housing. Unfortunately, most people either decline to engage, decline offers of shelter, or have shelter already and we cannot compel to come inside.”
Anthony has been offered a place to stay that would get him off the streets, but there are still thousands of people on the streets looking for a place to call home.
There are at least 350 unhoused individuals who are still on the waitlist for housing as of Sept. 27, according to San Francisco's Department of Homeless and Supporting Housing waitlist.
This story is part of the ABC News politics series, “Ground Game,” examining issues that matter most to American voters ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
California gave Sacramento $25M for homeless at American River Parkway. Why hasn’t it spent it?
Theresa Clift
Wed, September 27, 2023
Renée C. Byer/rbyer@sacbee.comMore
Sacramento County for six months has been sitting on a $25 million check from the state of California to shelter unhoused people living on the American River Parkway.
Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, who co-sponsored the bill to get the county the money, sent a letter to Board of Supervisors Chairman Rich Desmond July 5 to nudge them to spend it.
“We fought diligently for these funds in the state budget, and I hope to see them utilized or a new plan for how they’ll be spent in the near future,” McCarty wrote in the letter. “I would appreciate any information you could share regarding this project.”
The funds were supposed to cover the start up costs to shelter roughly a whopping 620 people per year in tiny homes, the letter states.
“This, combined with designated camping areas, would allow the county to serve more individuals and transform the county’s ability to get people connected to shelter and services while restoring and protecting the parkway,” the letter states.
The county received the $25 million in April. It’s been working since then to find a site, Desmond said Tuesday.
“We are working hard to find a site that is close to the parkway but doesn’t overly concentrate homeless shelter and housing in a single neighborhood,” Desmond said in a message to The Sacramento Bee. “In the meantime, we continue expanding our shelter and (affordable) housing as well as residential and outpatient resources for unsheltered with behavioral health needs. I am confident we will find a location that will provide a safe and supportive alternative for people camping on the Parkway.”
Desmond said he hopes the county can identify a site by the end of the year.
“I continue to push staff to do so,” he said.
Search for Safe Ground land
The county found a piece of land that was available and spent months negotiating to buy it to build and operate a Safe Ground. But earlier this month the owner of the land entered into a contract to sell it to another bidder, county spokeswoman Janna Haynes said. The county declined to disclose the address. The county next plans to publish a Request for Qualifications, asking for private entities who want to help the county find sites.
Appropriate sites would be near the Parkway, including downtown, because people are more likely to accept shelter in places near where they are camping, Haynes said. That’s a strategy McCarty agrees with, he said.
For that reason he understands the delay.
“Yes it’s taking too long, but it always takes too long,” said McCarty, a former councilman who’s running for mayor of Sacramento next year. “I think policy makers at all levels want swifter action. This is one I want to get right. I’d rather find an appropriate location. Pointing fingers at local governments isn’t the answer. We are all in this together and need to work cooperatively ... this is not easy. It took a long time to get to this problem and it’s gonna take a lot of work to get out of it.”
Ultimately wherever the county finds to open a shelter will require Board of Supervisors approval, Haynes said.
Although the money is unspent the county has 10 outreach navigators who work daily to try to get people into services, and when available, into shelter, Haynes said. The county recently opened 100 tiny homes in south Sacramento, and is opening another 75 there later this year. It’s also working to open a large shelter and parking lot for 250 people in North Highlands.
In addition, Sacramento is set to get 350 tiny homes from the state this fall, announced in March at Cal Expo fairgrounds with much fanfare, but it has not yet received them.
Even after those efforts, there will still be thousands unhoused in Sacramento. There are an estimated 9,300 homeless people living in the county, including hundreds along the parkway. The city and county have about 2,300 shelter beds.
