SF Mayor Says ‘Very Aggressive’ Encampment Sweeps Will Start in August

San Francisco Mayor London Breed plans to aggressively pursue clearing more encampments starting next month, now that a Supreme Court ruling has made it easier for cities to remove tents and punish people for sleeping on sidewalks.

Breed announced the August crackdown during a mayoral debate on Thursday hosted by the union representing San Francisco firefighters — one of the city’s most coveted union endorsements, given the group’s influence in public safety circles and among the everyday people they serve.

“Effective August, we are going to be very aggressive and assertive in moving encampments, which may even include criminal penalties,” Breed told a room full of first responders pressing her and four other leading mayoral candidates about their homelessness plans. “Thank goodness for the change in the Supreme Court decision.”

The June decision allows cities to enforce laws preventing people from sleeping outside, a major win for the mayoral hopefuls looking to assuage voters that they can take a firm stance in cleaning up the streets if they take office.

While the ruling opens a legal path for law enforcement to conduct sweeps, advocates say the city woefully lacks shelter and affordable housing options for people to turn to after city workers ask them to move along. As of Thursday, there were 698 applications on the city’s temporary shelter waitlist.

Breed’s announcement came after criticism from opponent Mark Farrell, a former supervisor and interim mayor, who said her administration is not acting swiftly enough to remove encampments after the Supreme Court ruling.

Breed said her office is working with the city attorney and department heads to ensure city workers are trained in federal and local laws around removing encampments, including the city’s “bag-and-tag” policy requiring workers to label personal belongings at unattended encampments so people living there can pick up their items, rather than disposing them.

In 2022, the Coalition on Homelessness sued the city for failing to adhere to those policies and for not offering people alternative places to sleep before evicting them from encampments or sidewalks. A federal magistrate judge that year issued an order blocking the city from arresting people who refused to move when no other shelter options were available; however, the city was able to continue to clear encampments and did. Although that order was overturned following the Supreme Court ruling, the city must still adhere to its own bag-and-tag policies.

“What we don’t want to do is violate the law,” Breed said, adding that it can cost the city up to $20,000 “when we don’t get it right.”

The firefighter’s union endorsed Breed in 2018 when she first ran for mayor. But on Thursday, it was Farrell who attracted loud applause for ideas like redirecting funding from city-contracted nonprofits to the Fire Departments, as well as tough-on-crime policing.

“Whether it’s voluntarily or involuntarily, let’s get people off the streets,” Farrell said.

He touted clearing the city’s largest encampments while interim mayor, a position he held for about six months in 2018. But federal homelessness data show the overall number of people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco increased by 1,177 between 2017 and 2019, or nearly 17%.

Nonprofit founder and Levi Strauss heir Daniel Lurie said he would focus on increasing accountability from departments tasked with responding to homelessness and, like Farrell, audit city nonprofits — a process already in the works.

“There are a lot of people on this stage saying I’m going to audit all of the nonprofits on Day 1. But why haven’t they done that?” Lurie said of his opponents — all current or former elected officials he has criticized as “insiders.” “We are not holding groups accountable. I will, I promise you that.”

Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, the race’s leading progressive candidate, slammed claims that solving homelessness would be a simple task for any mayor.

“Anyone on this stage who tells you they can solve this in six months is BS-ing you,” he said. Unlike Breed and Farrell, who support criminal consequences for people sleeping outside and refusing shelter, Peskin told the group he believes “you do not criminalize unless you have someplace to offer shelter.”

Supervisor Ahsha Safaí told the crowd that, as mayor, he would open up a “satellite office” in the Tenderloin, a neighborhood that has long struggled with sidewalk encampments.

“We have to expand more shelter,” he said, adding that he wants to also expand the city’s Homeward Bound program, which funds bus tickets to send people experiencing homelessness out of the city to return to family, friends or other support networks.

Attendees at Thursday’s debate also asked the candidates for their thoughts on a proposal by Supervisors Peskin and Safaí, which will be voted on next week, to boost firefighters’ retirement benefits and lower the retirement age for younger firefighters from 58 to 55.

Adam Wood, secretary of the firefighter’s union, said the measure aims to address high cancer rates in the department by limiting exposure as firefighters age and their risk increases.

“We have had over 200 cancer diagnoses among active and retired firefighters [in SFFD] in the last six years, and that’s among about 1,500 people,” Wood told KQED. “The cancer rate we are experiencing is especially concerning for firefighters once they reach the age of 50 and over.”

The union’s mayoral endorsement for this election cycle will be announced Aug. 8.