By Magaly Muñoz

San Francisco has ramped up its response to the homelessness crisis in the city, but frontline workers who see the issue daily are butting heads on how severe the problem really is.

Randy Shaw, co-founder of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic in San Francisco, told the Post that the media and local activists are not accurately portraying how the city’s homeless people are treated.

Shaw’s nonprofit provides legal and supportive services for low-income Tenderloin residents struggling with housing. The district has one of the worst issues with homeless encampments in the city.

He said advocates are not honest about the number of people refusing shelter everyday and that the bigger problem with homelessness is drug related. He claimed the reason people are refusing shelter is because they are not allowed to use drugs in those facilities and would rather stay on the streets.

Shaw said he doesn’t understand why people come to San Francisco in the first place if they know they can’t afford it and instead stick around to pitch tents and live on the sidewalk.

“If you don’t feel comfortable in a shelter and you don’t have any money, what are you doing here? Why did you come to San Francisco?” Shaw said.

In July, the city offered 469 individuals shelter and services but 355 people declined help, according to SF’s Healthy Streets data. 114 people accepted and were referred to residential placements.

Between January to July, the Healthy Streets team, a coordinated response department for homelessness, engaged with 2,961 people living on the streets, but less than a third of those engagements resulted in placements or referrals.

Anecdotal reporting across the region suggests that many refuse shelter because facilities take away self-autonomy to go and come as you please, restricts possessions and visitors, and sometimes can be more dangerous and hostile than living on the streets.

Shaw also disagrees that criminalizing homeless people by arresting or fining them is somehow worse than allowing crime rates to rise or letting residents feel unsafe in their neighborhoods.

But advocates on the other side of the argument strongly disagree with this viewpoint and how the city is handling the crisis.

“It’s not okay to talk about an entire class of people who are too poor to afford to rent, and then superimpose these kinds of criminal activities on them,” Jennifer Friedenbach said.

Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, said very few people who enter homelessness are on drugs but they may fall into addiction once they are living on the streets.

One-third of people who are homeless have problems with alcohol and/or drugs, according to the American Addictions Center. The Center cites accessibility, self-medication, and prior issues with mental health as factors for substance abuse in homeless people.

Friedenbach told the Post that the most effective way to help people is to offer substance abuse and trauma treatment so that those struggling can begin healing and address the negative consequences drugs have had on their lives.

She emphasized the need for more transitional or permanent supportive housing and criticized the boost in encampment sweeps in the city.

“We’re talking about arresting people for lodging, which is basically sleeping, which is something that every human being needs to do. In order to address that issue people need a safe and decent place to call home,” Friedenbach said.

Mayor London Breed has recently signed an executive order that directs city workers to offer transportation tickets to homeless people before offering shelter and services. The order is meant to remove people who are not originally San Francisco residents and help them return to their family or friends so that remaining resources can go to city natives.

According to data from the Point In Time count, 40% of homeless people surveyed responded that they either came to San Francisco from another California county or out of state and 37% of those who had been previously housed said they had been living in the city for less than a year when they became homeless.

While it remains to be seen if bussing people out of the city will reduce the homelessness population, Friedenbach said much of the conversations surrounding homelessness are being used for political gain.

“This is a way to create a political wedge and demonize the [homeless] population and shift blame from the policymakers’ shoulders onto the backs of homeless people themselves.”

Magaly Muñoz

A graduate of Sacramento State University, Magaly Muñoz’s journalism experience includes working for the State Hornet, the university’s student-run newspaper and conducting research and producing projects for “All Things Considered” at National Public Radio. She also was a community reporter for El Timpano, serving Latino and Mayan communities, and contributed to the Sacramento Observer, the area’s African American newspaper.

Muñoz is one of 40 early career journalists who are part of the California Local News Fellowship program, a state-funded initiative designed to strengthen local news reporting in California, with a focus on underserved communities.

The fellowship program places journalism fellows throughout the state in two-year, full-time reporting positions.

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