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Homelessness dipped in San Francisco throughout pandemic

Even after a tumultuous pandemic that sent many households into crisis, the number of persons experiencing homelessness in San Francisco dropped to 7,754 in 2022 from 8,305 in 2019, a 3.5% decline, according to data released Monday from the city’s biennial count.

While the Point-in-Time Count of San Francisco’s homeless is considered by many to be an undercount, the survey’s findings hint that new policies, such as the Proposition C tax for homelessness services and other housing programs that San Francisco utilized during the pandemic, may have alleviated an even worse homelessness crisis.

The total decrease includes a 15% drop in unsheltered homelessness, meaning individuals who are sleeping outside in tents or on sidewalks rather than in a shelter or another form of temporary housing. An estimated 4,400 unsheltered individuals are estimated to be living in San Francisco currently, compared with 5,180 recorded in the 2019 survey.

There was simultaneously an 18% increase in the number of individuals living in shelters and transitional housing, according to the survey.

“The fact that we were able to make this progress during the course of a global pandemic shows that when The City and our nonprofit partners work together, we can make a difference,” said Mayor London Breed. “But this is only a first step. We will keep focused on implementing our Homelessness Recovery Plan to add more housing and shelter, and getting our street response teams out to connect people on the streets to services.”

Officials credit the results to an increase in both permanent and temporary housing options such as the Shelter-in-Place hotel program, which provided hotel rooms to homeless individuals and families starting in November 2020.

The program had activated up to 25 hotels at its peak and has been working to exit residents into other permanent and transitional housing options as the pandemic has eased. Ten hotel sites with 918 people remain operating, according to a public dashboard on the program.

In 2020, Breed also launched the Homelessness Recovery Plan, which has involved bringing on nearly 1,500 new permanent supportive and transitional housing options to The City’s inventory, and about 1,000 are slated to open in July.

“Our investments in shelter and housing are resulting in improvements in the lives of people experiencing homelessness and conditions on our streets,” said San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing Executive Director Shireen McSpadden. “The Point-in-Time Count’s critical data will inform our programs and our mission to make homelessness rare, brief and one-time.”

Others also point to policies such as the eviction moratorium and rent relief programs as crucial homelessness prevention tools during the pandemic and beyond.

“With the pandemic, we had real concerns that people would be evicted and fall into homelessness. With the eviction moratoriums and resources put into homelessness prevention and prop. C dollars, we were prepared to ward off an increase,” said Emily Cohen, deputy director for communications and legislative affairs at the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. Proposition C is a measure passed by San Francisco voters in 2018 that taxes large technology companies to fund homelessness services.

“What we’re seeing and what I was hoping to see is Prop. C’s dollars are starting to work,” said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, which advocated for Proposition C. “There have been hundreds of people housed and homeless prevention dollars are starting to roll out, and more people are getting behavioral health treatment. We’re starting to see the promise of Prop. C.”

This year’s Point-in-Time survey was conducted on Feb. 23. It is an imperfect yet critical measure required by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development for cities to receive funding for homelessness services. The most recent prior count occurred in 2019; the 2021 count was delayed a year due to COVID-19.

The survey records those who are living in homeless shelters and transitional housing on the night of the count, as well as a visual count of unsheltered homeless individuals sleeping outdoors in tents, vehicles and other places. The preliminary data will be followed by a more in-depth report this summer with qualitative and demographic data based on interviews.

Most stakeholders agree the methodology for the Point-in-Time Count leaves room for error and subjective judgment based on what may or may not look like homelessness. But it remains one of the few and primary reporting mechanisms The City has for understanding its homeless population.

Due to the count’s imperfections, it’s hard to fully decrease credit in homelessness to any particular initiative. There were fewer surveyors this year in San Francisco than in the past, and some people were almost certainly missed in the count.

Just across the bridge in Alameda County, the same Point-in-Time Count found the population of homeless people increased by 22% in the last three years. The vast majority of the 9,747 individuals counted were unsheltered, living on the street, in tents or in vehicles.

Alameda County’s results reflect what many advocates for homeless resources warned could be a result of the pandemic, which led many to experience layoffs, illness and other challenges that fuel housing insecurity and homelessness.

“(Alameda) county doesn’t have the same tax base we have or an initiative that tapped into large corporations in the way we did. Prop. C taxes corporate income over $50 million, and we’re able to turn that around and address the effects of severe poverty,” Friedenbach said.

Other several neighboring counties also saw significant decreases in homelessness, signaling a mixed outcome overall across the Bay Area in terms of responding to and preventing homelessness.

“Bay Area governments and nonprofits played deep defense on homelessness during the pandemic and we have more or less held the line — but now we need to go on offense and end the suffering on our streets,” said Tomiquia Moss, CEO of All Home, a regional homeless advocacy organization. “Programs like Roomkey and Homekey, as well as eviction moratoria and emergency rental assistance programs, have changed what is possible.”

The San Francisco survey found an 11% decrease in adults who are chronically homeless, meaning they experience homelessness for more than one year or fall in and out of homelessness. There was also a 6% decrease in unaccompanied youth.

San Francisco’s results challenge the idea that visible street homelessness has gotten worse over the pandemic.

“A large percentage of people experiencing homelessness are not seen every day. They are in shelters, going about their work and daily lives, and we pass by them every day,” said Cohen. “But the folks who stand out and cause concern on the street are displaying symptoms of behavioral health crises. That is a fraction of the population, but they are incredibly visible and the scenes can be upsetting on the street.”

sjohnson@sfexaminer.com

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