- By Allyson Alekseyand Natalia Gurevich | Examiner staff writers |
- Aug 23, 2023 Updated 17 hrs ago (SFExaminer.com)
Opposing sides of San Francisco converged at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday morning for a hearing about one of the major flashpoints embroiling The City: how to best serve its unhoused population.
Oral arguments in the ongoing legal battle between The City and the Coalition on Homelessness were made Wednesday over illegal street sweeps of homeless encampments.
The coalition filed a lawsuit against The City in September, alleging that officials were conducting illegal street sweeps of homeless encampments without offering unhoused people adequate alternatives to shelter.
In December, Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu issued an injunction against The City, ordering officials to suspend certain sweeps of homeless encampments, offer adequate shelter and catalog unclaimed belongings.
In the months since, the coalition has accused The City of not abiding by the injunction, a claim that City Attorney David Chiu disputed earlier this summer.
The fight has put Mayor London Breed and several city supervisors at odds with the coalition and several advocacy groups. Prior to the hearing, the two groups gathered in front of the courthouse to rally for or against the lawsuit.
Karen Fleshman, who formerly ran for the San Francisco Board of Education, was rallying in support of the lawsuit to stop encampment sweeps. She pointed to a recent UCSF study that found the majority of those living on The City’s streets lost their housing in California.
“Rather than rely on just our anecdotal impressions of homelessness, I think it’s really important to look at a statistically reliable and valid study,” she said.
Fleshman said affordable housing is a major driver of homelessness, but more can be done to quell the number of encampments. “Right now, there are vacant supportive housing units for homeless people that are sitting empty because of bureaucratic delays in getting the people into them,” she said.
Tom Wolf, a San Francisco native who was formerly homeless, disagreed.
“Since the injunction has been put in place, encampments have become entrenched in different spots throughout The City,” he told The Examiner. “And once those encampments become entrenched, more bad things happen — overdose deaths are up, (so is) crime.”
Wolf said the causes of homelessness “could be argued all day” but the issue boils down to addiction.
“As someone formerly homeless, if you’re living in a tent, and you’re on drugs in San Francisco, you have lost your agency,” he said. “And at some point, it’s OK for the community to come in.”
Public figures advocating for both sides showed up in full force, as did residents of neighborhoods that experience high rates of homelessness, who hoped to provide their points of view before policymakers stepped up to the mic.
“It’s kind of unbelievable that we’re having to stage a counterprotest for people who want to have the power to throw away people’s belongings, keep them in a perpetual state of trauma and uncertainty,” said Brady, 30, a demonstrator who asked to go by his first name due to professional concerns.
“They’re protesting the homeless,” he said. “Wanting to make their lives harder.”
But those advocating to bring back the sweeps are dubious that the ongoing lawsuit will solve the City’s homelessness crisis.
“I’m down here when I should be somewhere else,” said Patrick D., who asked to be identified by his last initial out of privacy concerns. “I’m here because we own property, and the tenants in our area have been waking up to addicts in the street, shooting up, smoking meth, doing God knows what.”
Patrick wouldn’t give the exact location of his property but did share that it was in the Western Addition. In the last five years, he has dealt with vandalism, graffiti, broken windows, and fires due to unhoused people, he said.
“We’re tired of it,” he said. “San Francisco is no longer San Francisco.”
At its core, Wednesday’s hearing before a panel of three judges was about housing and available beds for those that need it, according to Zal Shroff, the interim legal director for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the firms representing the coalition.
“The City’s going to say until they’re blue in the face, ‘We do give shelter, we’ve given shelter to so many people,’” Shroff said. But there just isn’t enough on a daily basis, he said.
The City’s argument centered on the injunction and that the laws it prohibited, such as the forced movement of people sitting or sleeping outside and their belongings, were needed to keep the streets clear.
Mayor Breed said that the Coalition for Homelessness has held San Francisco “hostage for decades.”
“The City is being taken advantage of and we are tired of it,” she said ahead of the hearing. “The goal here is to make sure the court of appeals understands we want a reversal of this injunction. The fact that the courts have crippled our ability to do our jobs, to help people get into shelter, is criminal.”
Breed said The City is prepared to do “whatever it takes” to ensure a reversal through the city attorney.
“There has to be accountability,” she said. “Let’s not let one judge impact our ability to do what all San Franciscans want, (which are) clean streets and homeless people to be helped.”
The City also argued that the term “involuntary homeless” was unclear, while the coalition maintained that the term refers to someone experiencing homelessness without adequate access to housing or temporary shelter.
Wednesday’s hearing represented the beginning of a busy week. A hearing is slated for Thursday at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to discuss monitoring The City’s adherence to the injunction.
“It’s a question of operationalizing and making sure The City actually meets those commitments,” Shroff said. “There’s room after these hearings to work on that together.”
