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A chilly evening counting San Francisco’s homeless

At about 6:40 pm on a recent cold February evening, about 20 or so workers, bundled in hoodies under black and neon vests, and I gathered at the Urban Alchemy offices on Market Street. After pizza and refreshments, we shuffled into a meeting room to get our assignment for the night: part of the effort to count San Francisco’s homeless population.

I rode along for the Point-in-Time Count, a biannual survey that provides a snapshot of The City’s homeless population. The results are crucial because, though widely considered an undercount, they directly translate to federal funding for homelessness services.

This year’s point-in-time count is especially important, experts and advocates say, because the number of people experiencing homelessness is believed to have increased during pandemic-related lockdowns, layoffs and illness.

“I want this to be the most accurate count The City has ever done. We want to make it so these people can get help,” said one worker with Urban Alchemy, a nonprofit that contracts with The City on a number of services ranging from overseeing safe sleeping sites for homeless residents to street outreach. Staff from Urban Alchemy, who hires people who have experienced homelessness or incarceration, received a grant for participating in the extra shift.

In the Urban Alchemy offices, our group was briefed on what to look for and how to record findings in a digital app.

Around 7:45 pm, recorders took off on foot and by bus and car. With maps and apps in hand, my team piled into a truck and headed to our assigned destination, Bayview-Hunter’s Point.

Brian Van Der Court, who works at Urban Alchemy, was driving while Kevin Lee, an Urban Alchemy director who works at the safe sleeping village at 33 Gough St., oriented the map and recorded our team’s findings in the app.

At 8:03 pm we arrived at the edge of our designated zone — one of 160 assigned spaces covering the entire city that nearly 200 individuals would scour over the night, street by street.

The neighborhood we were assigned is vast and the night was particularly chilly in the low 40s. Fortunately, most of our counting took place in the car. Unlike in dense neighborhoods such as the Tenderloin, homelessness is more sprawling and in some ways less visible in The City’s southeast corner.

In the Bayview, we were told to look for signs of life attached to cars, motorhomes, or the occasional tent-dwelling tucked between abandoned cars or dimly lit warehouses.

The Point-in-Time Count relies on estimations. It’s an imperfect process that almost certainly overlooks some individuals. We were not going to find people who were sleeping on friends’ couches or other unknown shared spaces to get through the cold snap, for example.

We kept our distance and avoided conversation to respect each person’s privacy as the evening got late. But that also meant our guesses — based on the physical appearances of people, tents or vehicles — were prone to error.

Still, it’s the best estimate anyone has of the scale of the largest issue facing The City.

Necessary numbers

The most recent tally in San Francisco occurred in 2019 when there was a recorded 8,035 people experiencing homelessness — the highest number since 2013. That figure led to $44.5 million in federal funding for San Francisco’s homeless services in 2019, the second-highest allocation in California behind Los Angeles.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development requires cities to count their homeless populations every two years to qualify for federal aid. But this year’s count came a year late. The 2021 count was canceled due to COVID-19, and it was further delayed from its original date in January to Feb. 23 to wait out the surging omicron variant.

In previous years, the Point-in-Time Count relied on up to 600 volunteers from across The City to spend one night canvassing every street in The City and gather information on people who live on the street or in a motor vehicle.

The count includes people living in transitional and temporary housing as well as shelters, such as the emergency cold weather shelter that opened at Gene Friend SoMa Rec Center for a recent cold night. It also aims to take the tally of those taking respite on public transit.

This year, San Francisco took a different approach by working with fewer individual volunteers and relying more on community-based organizations that work with The City, such as Urban Alchemy. Other organizations involved included Downtown Streets Team, Code Tenderloin, SF Homeless Outreach Team, Five Keys, Bay Area Legal Aid and Department of Veterans Affairs.

Part of the idea was to cut down on the number of people involved to be mindful of COVID-19, according to a spokesperson for the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. It also was intended to send groups familiar with local homeless communities into neighborhoods they already know.

How the strategy shift, and a significantly smaller number of volunteers, will impact the count will be hard to tell. Results are slated to be made available this summer after the data are processed and after follow-up interviews take place.

About a month after the single-night count, a survey contractor will do a follow-up assessment asking people who are homeless for more detailed information about their situations.

The 2019 survey found 37% of respondents were chronically homeless, 19% were veterans and 18% were unaccompanied youth. Nearly a third identify as LGBTQ+ and almost half are between ages 41 to 60, signaling an aging homeless population in San Francisco.

According to the 2019 Point-in-Time Count, about 70% of people counted became homeless in San Francisco.

Countless challenges

Back in the Bayview, Lee strategized as we pulled up to India Basin. “We’re going to start with the outskirts,” he said.

Lee knows the area well. He and Van der Court previously worked the overnight shift at a port-o-potty station set up by The City for homeless people in the area.

“Slow down, what that a tent?” our navigator chimed in as we drove down Cargo Way near Islais Creek.

“I think it’s trash,” Van der Court answered. We took a U-turn for a closer look. I rolled down my window and smelled the cement factory that towered above us.

A bike leaning on the tarp structure signaled it could be someone’s home. It was unclear how many people might be inside, and we were told not to disturb anyone living on the street. Lee marked one dwelling in the app.

We kept driving up and down every street, cul-de-sac and backroad lining empty warehouses and new housing developments.

In scanning sidewalks, we looked for signs of habitation such as music playing near tents, power cords or foggy windows on cars. We counted all of the motorhomes, even if we didn’t know who or how many people were inside.

Van der Court, who lives in the Bayview, has seen the area change and conditions ebb and flow.

“I grew up here all my life,” he said. “It’s cleaned up a lot more, but it’s still dangerous out here.”

Lee provided his own expertise.

“I never see anyone who is homeless in this area,” he said as we drove through one of the newest housing developments in the area. He went on to share stories about the graveyard shift at the bathroom station.

“It’s hard out here man. Just to see it every day is hard,” said Lee, who regularly has to de-escalate fights and fits of outrage on the job. “You’re not only a practitioner, you’re a doctor and a therapist.”

Lee still manages to carry hope and patience with him. “If you listen to someone long enough, their anger will go down from a 10, to a 9, 8, 7 and so on,” he said. “They might even thank you later on in the day.”

Near the end of the night, we slowed down as we approached a line of motor homes on Palou Avenue. We counted five RVs, plus a car without plates and with covered windows. As we continued driving, we spotted a dark shrubby area where the road ends.

“Do you think anyone’s back there?” I asked.

Van der Court pointed the car headlights toward the darkness. An old basketball court, an abandoned couch and some trash came into view. But there were no clear signs that anyone was there. The group agreed to keep driving.

Later, we spotted a woman walking alone. She wasn’t wearing shoes and wandering in the street. A ‘yes,’ everyone agreed, and Lee marked a note in the app. She was one of only a few individuals we saw outside and exposed to the frigid temperature that evening.

Around 9:26 pm, we got to the end of the last street on our map and Lee eventually directed us back to Market Street, where we called it a night.

sjohnson@sfexaminer.com

Mike Anders, chief system engineer for Urban Alchemy, gives out maps to people before they go out for the Point-in-Time Count. (Craig Lee/The Examiner)

Volunteers spot a tent on Carroll Avenue during the Point-in-Time Count in the Bayview District.  (Craig Lee/The Examiner)

Volunteers spot a tent on Carroll Avenue during the Point-in-Time Count in the Bayview District. (Craig Lee/The Examiner)

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