The San Francisco Bay Area comprises nine northern California counties and contains five of the ten most expensive counties in the United States. Strong economic growth has created hundreds of thousands of new jobs, but coupled with severe restrictions on building new housing units, it has resulted in a statewide housing shortage which has driven rents to extremely high levels. The Sacramento Bee notes that large cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles both attribute their recent increases in homeless people to the housing shortage, with the result that homelessness in California overall has increased by 15% from 2015 to 2017. In September 2019, the Council of Economic Advisers released a report in which they stated that deregulation of the housing markets would reduce homelessness in some of the most constrained markets by estimates of 54% in San Francisco, 40 percent in Los Angeles, and 38 percent in San Diego, because rents would fall by 55 percent, 41 percent, and 39 percent respectively. In San Francisco, a minimum wage worker would have to work approximately 4.7 full-time jobs to be able to spend less than 30% of their income on renting a two-bedroom apartment.
San Francisco has had several thousand homeless people, despite extensive efforts by the city government to address the issue. San Francisco's dense, compact development pattern, its comparative lack of vacant land (i.e., beneath freeways, alongside creeks), and its high volumes of pedestrians tend to limit homeless encampments to the city's sidewalks and are thus more readily visible to the general public. This dramatically larger prevalence of visible homelessness in the city, relative to other large US cities, is widely noted by visitors and residents. As of 2018, this had begun to impact the city's largest industry, tourism (a $9 billion industry), as one large doctors' group has decided to move their annual convention elsewhere after members' concerns about threatening behavior, mental illness, and assault on one of their board members.
The number of people in poverty in the San Francisco Bay Area grew from 573,333 (8.6%) in 2000 to 668,876 (9.7%) in 2006–2010. While poverty rates vary greatly across the SF Bay area, in 2015, the Silicon Valley Institute for Regional Studies published that the poverty rate was 11.3%, having a slight downward trend from 12%; however, it was still above the historical average rate of 9%.
Historical background Emergence in the late 1970s and early 1980s The prevalence of homelessness grew both in San Francisco and throughout the United States in the late 1970s and early '80s. Jennifer Wolch identifies some of these factors to include the loss of jobs from deindustrialization, a rapid rise in housing prices, and the elimination of social welfare programs.Wolch, Jennifer R., and M. J. Dear. Malign Neglect: Homelessness in an American City. Jossey-Bass, 1993. The Reagan Administration made large cutbacks on affordable and public housing programs, such as Section 8, leaving much of the task of providing public and supportive housing up to states and other local jurisdictions. The economic shift from production oriented jobs in factories towards the service industry resulted in a loss of wages as factory jobs were more lucrative. This wage decrease was compounded by the fact house prices continued to rise, with average real estate value in the Bay Area increasing by 100% between 1984 and 1990. As these economic changes were occurring, social events also impacted the city's homeless population. The deinstitutionalization movement of the 1970s had succeeded and saw the mass transfer of mental health patients to community-based clinics. This transfer was not smooth, as many previously institutionalized patients found themselves back in society with less support than they were accustomed to and few possessed the professional skills or resources needed to successfully transition.Dear, Michael J. Landscapes of Despair: from Deinstitutionalization to Homelessness. Princeton Univ Press, 2016. The failure of deinstitutionalization is often attributed to the cuts to mental health services made at the same time, with mental health budgets decreasing by a third between 1978 and 1982. As a result, the homeless population has had a disproportionate rate of mental health needs met ever since the '80s.
Feinstein years (1978–1988) Dianne Feinstein was the first mayor of San Francisco forced to address the homeless issue. Her administration operated under the belief that the growing homeless problem was temporary and a side effect of the recent recession. The response to the problem was to open temporary shelters that provided a sandwich and a bed for a night, hoping that those served could find permanent housing soon.Green, Mathew. "TIMELINE: The Frustrating Political History of Homelessness in San Francisco." KQED, 23 Mar. 2018, www.kqed.org/lowdown/22644. This program proved to be underfunded and unprepared for the demand, as the homeless population continued to grow.
Agnos administration (1988–1992) Feinstein's successor, Art Agnos, took a more involved approach to addressing the homeless problem as part of a broader progressive mayoral campaign. Agnos' view of homelessness was that it was the result of structural inequalities and could only be resolved by intervention from state welfare programs. Under his direction, two multi-service buildings that provided mental health counseling and substance abuse support in addition to housing were opened to benefit the homeless community.Ward, Brant, et al. "Homelessness Looks the Same as It Did 20 Years Ago." San Francisco Chronicle, projects.sfchronicle.com/sf-homeless/overview/.
Camp Agnos
Despite Agnos' official support for homeless people, his administration was not without some controversy. A group of young anarcho-activists, Food Not Bombs, began to distribute free vegetarian meals to homeless people in parks around the Haight, which was opposed by a group representing developers and business interests. Tensions between activists—who argued they were just providing aid to the residents whom the city refused to support—and the city eventually escalated, with the city arresting activists and confiscating their supplies. Clashes between the city and activists continued off and on over the following year until confrontations over the usage of Civic Center Plaza escalated to the occupation of the park by a mix of activists and members from the homeless community estimated to number between 300 and 350 in all and eventually became known as "Camp Agnos". Complaints from the protesters included the city's inaction to address the growing homelessness, lack of affordable housing options, and the ineffectiveness of existing shelters. One homeless protester said of the services provided, "A shelter is like being in prison. There's no freedom of movement" and complained of the inability of being able to use shelters with her husband, opting instead to sleep on the streets so they could be together. Under pressure from the Board of Supervisors and the negative publicity, Agnos ordered police to ticket and arrest those who remained in Camp Agnos.
Jordan crackdown (1992–1996) Former police chief Frank Jordan won the 1992 mayoral race on a platform of bringing public order back to the city and promised to return public space back to its residents from homeless people and youth activists. Jordan sought to crack down on the disorderly and troublesome activists who he thought were dealt with too leniently by the former administration. Jordan's four years saw 700 arrests and citations given to the Food Not Bombs activists.
Matrix program Jordan's homeless policy extended beyond confronting Food Not Bombs members and their homeless allies. Jordan introduced the Matrix Program, which expanded the police's role in tackling homelessness by increasing the number of citations given to homeless people for city misdemeanors, with 6,000 citations issued in the first six months of the program's initiation. Matrix teams of city police usually accompanied by social service workers to systematically sweep the city block by block to engage homeless people and dismantle homeless encampments. The initial reception from city residents was mostly positive with 75% of calls to the Mayor's office praising the crackdown as a needed step to clean the city up.Heather MacDonald, San Francisco's Matrix Program for the Homeless, 14 Crim. Just. Ethics 2 (1995)
Critics of Matrix accused the program of using resources on punitive enforcement of quality of life laws that generally only affect the homeless community, like sleeping in public and loitering, instead of promoting services to aid homeless people. Mass citations to homeless people, critics argued, were counter-productive since those in extreme poverty lacked the funds to pay the fines. Judges would respond to unpaid fines by issuing arrest warrants, resulting in the incarceration of homeless people when the same resources used to jail the inmates could instead go towards expanding shelter services.McIntyre, Jennifer, and Alissa Rikker. FROM BEYOND SHELTER TO BEHIND BARS. 1993 www.cjcj.org/uploads/cjcj/documents/from_beyond_shelter_to_behind_bars.pdf. Additional critiques lobbied at the program centered around the use of police as social service workers. Matrix police were authorized to give psychological field tests to determine if a homeless person was acting erratically and were the deciding force on whether or not to bring them to the hospital for mental services. In 1994, homeless rights advocates succeeded in convincing the board of supervisors to pass a resolution opposing the Matrix Program, with Jordan's response being to double down by expanding the program's sweeps to Golden Gate Park. Though the Matrix program persisted, public opinion shifted against it for being too harsh and Jordan failed to secure a second term.
Willie Brown (1996–2004) Willie Brown, San Francisco's first African-American mayor, won a run-off against Frank Jordan with a campaign promise to end the Matrix Program. Upon assuming office, Brown suspended the Matrix Program and ordered a judge to revoke all citations and warrants stemming from the program.Maya Nordberg, Jails Not Homes: Quality of Life on the Street of San Francisco, 13 Hastings Women's L.J. 261 (2002) Despite this action to end Matrix, citations issued to the homeless community for quality of life violations, a highly criticized aspect of Matrix, increased. The last year of Matrix saw 11,000 such citations, which rose to 16,000 in Brown's first year and soared to 23,000 by 1999.
The militarized clearance of homeless people's encampments within Golden Gate Park, which had an estimated population of 1,000 throughout the park and featured the deployment of police helicopters equipped with infra-red cameras, demonstrated Brown's commitment to his promise: "You tell me where the camp is, and in 24 hours it won't be there".Claiborne, William. "SAN FRANCISCO'S HOMELESS EXPECTED COMPASSION, BUT GOT A CRACKDOWN." The Washington Post, WP Company, 28 Nov. 1997, www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1997/11/28/san-franciscos-homeless-expected-compassion-but-got-a-crackdown/0111d2fc-a70b-4fb7-9029-67ca2cbfb485/ These citations were less publicized than Jordan's Matrix program and considered to be routine policing instead of any homeless oriented policy, allowing Brown to avoid some of the negative publicity that plagued his predecessor. Not all of Brown's positions were detrimental to the homeless community as he successfully mobilized support to secure a $100 million government bond (equivalent to $ million in ) to expand affordable housing and his support for universal healthcare was a central tenet to his platform, though its implementation was never manifested.Davis, John. Perspectives in Black Politics and Black Leadership. University Press of America, 2007.