SF Encampment Crackdown Gets Tents, But Not People, Off the Streets, Neighbors Say

More than two weeks into San Francisco’s aggressive crackdown on homeless encampments, business owners and neighbors say they’re seeing a decrease in tents — but not people.

“There’s a noticeable difference,” said Christian Martin, executive director of SoMa West Community Benefit District. Encampments are smaller and get cleared more quickly, he said, but as the sweeps diffuse camps, their residents have dispersed across the neighborhood.

People appear to be shuffling from place to place as they struggle to find shelter. Martin called it “the kicking of the ant hill effect.”

“It looks a lot cleaner and less visible,” he said of the tents and people who inhabit them. But at the same time, he said, the people remain, “just not the tent around them.”

Members of the SoMa neighborhood group still see that as an improvement over large camps, Martin said, noting that “what really harms the business atmosphere is the large tent encampments.” Without tents, business owners can more easily ask people to move, he said. “Once there’s a tent, there’s that veil of privacy.”

Not all business owners are pleased with the city’s more aggressive tack, which Mayor London Breed promised after a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling granting cities expanded authority to police encampments.

“This is really counterproductive to addressing homelessness and helping those individuals off the street,” said Christin Evans, who owns the Booksmith and the Alembic in the Haight District and acts as vice chair of the Homeless Oversight Commission.

“I personally have talked to individuals that have said they’ve lost heart medication, that they’ve lost their housing paperwork, that they’ve lost their identification card, debit card,” she said. “These are really big setbacks to people that are really trying to struggle to meet their basic needs.”

In the Tenderloin, Rev. Paul Trudeau praised the city’s Health Streets Operation Center (HSOC) teams for consistently tamping down an encampment next to his nonprofit, City Hope, clearing it twice a week for months.

But when the city clears the camp, which is most troublesome for him, the residents move across the street, becoming the barbershop owner’s problem. “There’s this constant dance,” he said.

More troubling for him, he said, is that it’s becoming increasingly hard to keep up with the overwhelming number of people who show up for the free breakfast at City Hope, which also runs a sober living facility. Since the ramp-up in HSOC team activity, lines have been stretching down the block.

“You get this tidal wave of humanity coming from the ebb and flow of encampments,” he said.

As unhoused people increasingly migrate within the neighborhood, he speculates they’re noticing the cafe, maybe for the first time. The volume is hard to manage, as are the incidents that he said come with these new customers: A man bashed Trudeau in the head with a rod, splitting it open, after the reverend announced the cafe wouldn’t be able to feed everyone in line; people are overdosing while waiting for food, passing out and vomiting in the cafe.

“I’ve been working for nine years trying to build up community, and when you have an influx come in it’s hard to take care of those who’ve called this place their living room,” Trudeau said.

Last week, as city workers cleared a small encampment under Interstate 101 near Cesar Chavez and Vermont streets, Gabe Brower stopped to thank them as he was riding by on his bike.

A year ago, Brower said, he had his bike stolen from his front porch, and a few days later, as he was passing by the camp on his way to work, he saw one of its residents working on it. He was able to get it back, but said it frustrates him that there was no accountability.

“His encampment was cleared, but then he came back, he posted up, and he’s doing the same thing,” Brower said. “It really sucks for people like me who rely on our bikes to get to work, so I’m really happy to see it being taken care of.”

While the city crew finished dismantling the camp, its former resident, 52-year-old Salomon Bello Molino, stood a few hundred feet away with his dog and two carts full of remaining possessions. He denied stealing bikes but said he works on them. Asked whether he would set up another camp nearby, he said, “With a decent job I can stop bothering people here, I can leave. But right now, I have nothing. I can’t lie.”