S.F. touts successes in shifting homeless off the streets. However the actuality is difficult

When Tracey Mixon walks through the Filet with her 11-year-old daughter, she often shouts a warning as she winds past tents and people shoot up on the sidewalk: “There’s a child coming!”

She calls this her “Mama Bear” instincts, which have hardened in the neighborhood over the past two years. Last year, she said, there were so many tents and drug dealers in front of her home that she is often cautious about going outside.

“This is the worst I’ve ever seen,” she said.

Despite the hundreds of millions of local, state, and federal dollars spent on homelessness programs over the past year, Mixon – and many others in the neighborhood – believe the fillet evolved during the pandemic.

At the same time, city officials say they have made great strides: thousands who would otherwise sleep on the streets are now seeking shelter in hotels or sanctioned campsites, where they can get three meals a day, services and 24/7 security. Hundreds more were moved to permanent support shelters.

Between April 2020 and April 2021, data released by the mayor’s office showed that the number of tents on the sidewalks fell by 65% ​​from 1,108 tents to 383. This is the lowest point in two years. In the tents counted on the streets, the 262 in the tent villages are not included.

Meanwhile, a history analysis of reports to police related to homelessness and camps – defined as six or more linked tents – declined 69% during the pandemic, while 311 calls related to camps decreased 74% over the same period.

While city officials say these numbers are encouraging, the emergency programs that helped get people off the sidewalks will soon wear off as the city slowly emerges from the pandemic and federal funding eventually runs out.

Mayor London Breed and other officials are optimistic they will keep people from falling back onto the streets. But many who live and work in the Tenderloin fear that there simply isn’t enough housing and resources to save the neighborhood from further despair.

“COVID has forced the city to look deeply into the issues and I hope it gets better,” said Mixon, who is also an advocate for the Coalition on Homelessness. “But I don’t see a lot of differences.”

In the early, chaotic days of the pandemic, when shelters suddenly had to be closed and capacity reduced, the number of tents in the tenderloin exploded by almost 300%. This prompted UC Hastings and a group of residents and businesses to sue the city over an alleged public health hazard.

Two days after the lawsuit was filed, Breed revealed a massive plan to improve conditions in the long-troubled neighborhood. The aim was to clear people from the sidewalks and offer them places in the newly available hotel rooms and tented villages.

Jeff Kositsky, who as director of the Healthy Streets Operations Center leads efforts to remove people from the city’s sidewalks, said those efforts directly resulted in “safer and clearer conditions on the streets.”

On Friday, around 2,000 people lived in the city in the hotels and 273 people in the tented villages.

However, many of these resources that Kositsky and his team have relied on are temporary.

According to an internal document from The Chronicle, the city plans to gradually close hotels between fall and mid-2022. At least one tent village will be closed until June 30th, while an emergency shelter in Moscone West – which now has 86 guests – will be closed until June 30th. In the meantime, the city’s shelters are still partially at full capacity, and it is not clear when they will close and fully reopen.

Officials promised at least three housing options to everyone who moved into the hotels before November. While 374 hotel residents have moved into permanent housing to date, many have turned down offers for reasons involving tiny units and placements in shabby single-occupancy hotels.

At the same time, Breed is working on the largest expansion of permanent supportive accommodation in 20 years. However, Joe Wilson, director of the Tenderloin Shelter Hospitality House, says the demand for housing is still far outweighing supply.

He fears that the city is completely unprepared for the flood of people who will soon run out of space. The majority of the city’s 8,000+ homeless also have mental health and substance use issues, and the city lacks sufficient resources to provide them with adequate support.

“There are more people who need more services and resources and (they) have less access and fewer options to connect to those options and resources,” said Wilson.

Sara Shortt, public order director for Community Housing Partnership, said the hotels have been a boon to some people’s physical and mental health. It would be a tragedy, she said, if they took to the streets again.

“If the city doesn’t think carefully about how to turn these temporary measures into permanent solutions, a number of people could take many steps back,” she said.

Ultimately, Shortt wants both more accessible, affordable housing and the city to stop homeless people – especially those that involve the police.

Carmen Barsody, co-founder of Faithful Fools, a nonprofit in Tenderloin on Hyde Street, said if officials cleared tents they would not address the poverty that causes homelessness, which means that it will not solve the problem.

And in the past few weeks she has noticed that the tents on her block have returned “in full force”.

On a final afternoon in the Tenderloin, a few blocks were completely free of tents and people lying on the streets. But other areas – like near Jones Street and Golden Gate Avenue – were full.

About 15 tents lined the entire block as people spread among piles of bicycles, shopping carts, and clothes. A group of people lingered on the sidewalk around Turk and Hyde Streets while some injected needles.

“Does anyone have fentanyl?” a woman asked loudly as she approached the crowd.

Such scenes frustrate Mixon, the resident of Tenderloin. She didn’t want to move to the neighborhood, but after living in temporary shelters for several years, she took the first shelter she could get.

Now she’s working hard to move out at some point.

“It’s sad things are like that,” she said. “But it is what it is.”

Trisha Thadani is a contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle. David Deloso is a Chronicle news developer. Email: tthadani@sfchronicle.com, david.deloso@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TrishaThadani, @DavidMDeloso