There’s been a lot of chatter this week about homelessness and whether it can be fixed. Mother Jones’ current cover story, for example, examines Utah’s “shockingly simple, surprisingly cost-effective solution,” which — spoiler alert — basically involves building permanent homes where unsheltered people can live no strings attached. It’s a program to which California, where 22 percent of the country’s homeless live, has paid close if frustrated attention.
That’s because homelessness has long been one of the Golden State’s most intractable problems. In San Francisco and Los Angeles, words like “crisis” and “epidemic” often describe the vast number of people living on the street. And since local municipalities rather than the state determine how to best manage this population, legislation and enforcement are haphazard. A new report from the Policy Advocacy Clinic at UC Berkeley indicates that San Francisco — and all of California — is making the problem worse.
San Francisco’s 10-year plan to end chronic homelessness expired last year, and while the city’s homeless population didn’t increase significantly during that decade, it didn’t decrease either. The plan called for construction of 3,000 supportive housing units, of which 2,800 were built — not bad, but still not nearly enough. More than 6,000 people remain homeless in San Francisco (that’s a conservative estimate), and as the new report makes clear, the city has cracked down on them.
Here are some numbers from the report:
The data draws on studies from the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, the FBI, the California Department of Justice, and case studies conducted in San Francisco (while the report offers a snapshot of homelessness statewide, the data above reflects only SF).
The report finds that if current trends continue, cities in California will collectively enact 11 new anti-homeless laws each year. The majority will prohibit loitering, standing, sitting, sleeping, or panhandling in public places, many of which are daily activities necessary for survival. In San Francisco, 87 percent of citations between 2007 and 2013 were issued under municipal rather than state codes.
There's also a correlation between economic conditions and enforcement of anti-homeless laws: “Over the last 20 years, vagrancy arrests peaked after economic recessions and increases in the California unemployment rate.” Perhaps most revealing, enforcement of laws around public intoxication has decreased over the past several years while enforcement of anti-homeless laws has increased. In other words, people are punished simply because they’re homeless. Charts from the report dig deeper into citation and enforcement trends:
The report doesn’t mince words when it comes to assessing the effectiveness of anti-homeless laws: “'Quality-of-life' laws are a modern-day example of local efforts to expel, punish, and otherwise discourage the presence of people deemed undesirable—in this case, homeless people. ‘Quality-of-life’ is a misnomer, because there is no evidence that such laws improve the quality of life for anyone, and certainly not for homeless people.”
Michael Nevin, a lieutenant in the SFPD’s Operations Bureau who works on outreach with the homeless community, says in the report that municipal codes are enacted at the behest (or whim) of heavyweights in City Hall. Speaking to the Examinerlast year, Jennifer Friedenbach, head of the nonprofit Coalition on Homelessness, put it more succinctly: “Homeless people are used as scapegoats by politicians on a frequent basis.”
Being a scapegoat also means getting ticketed for sitting or sleeping in public places, although it's unclear what reasonable alternative exists for most people on the street. The report finds that homeless people aren’t likely to appear in court to resolve or protest fines, which could lead to a bench warrant or even arrest at the discretion of the officer. Even if officers spend only 10 minutes writing a citation, over the course of a year that adds up to potentially hundreds of hours diverted from more urgent issues on the street.
The report concludes on a downbeat note: “The … misalignment of financial impacts between different levels of government creates little incentive for cities to pursue alternatives to criminalizing homelessness.” Let's hope San Francisco's next 10-year plan is the exception.
Top photo courtesy of ThinkStock. Charts courtesy UC Berkeley.
Got a tip for The Bold Italic? Email tips@thebolditalic.com.