Five years ago, a federal court issued a crucial ruling. People experiencing homelessness, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said, can’t be punished for sleeping outside on public property if there are no adequate alternatives available.

The 2018 decision in Martin v. Boise did not create the homelessness crisis, which researchers attribute primarily to the lack of affordable housing. The number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness — meaning those sleeping on the streets, in parks, in abandoned buildings or train stations, or anywhere not meant for humans to live — was rising before the decision.

But as the number of unsheltered homeless people continued to grow over the past half-decade, the Martin decision has become a pivotal factor in shaping how cities respond to the very visible problem of tent encampments, particularly on the West Coast. While the case never gained huge name recognition, it undergirds the policy and politics of homelessness in 2023. So much of the fight about how to address homelessness today is, at this point, a fight about Martin.

The case dates back to 2009, when Robert Martin and a group of fellow homeless residents in Boise, Idaho, sued, arguing that police citations they received for breaking local camping bans violated their constitutional rights. In 2018, the Ninth Circuit agreed that prosecuting people for sleeping or camping on public property when they have no home or shelter to go to violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

“The government cannot criminalize indigent, homeless people for sleeping outdoors, on public property, on the false premise they had a choice in the matter,” the court declared.

States, cities, and counties urged the US Supreme Court to take up the case, arguing the Ninth Circuit had created “a de facto” right to live on sidewalks and in parks that would “cripple” local leaders’ ability to safely govern their communities. But in 2019, the court declined, baffling some experts, though others suspect it’s because there were no conflicting circuit decisions at the time. Since then, Martin has shaped cities’ response — or lack thereof — to the growing challenge of homeless tent encampments.

While the decision only formally applies in areas under the Ninth Circuit’s jurisdiction, the ruling has reverberated nationally, as local governments consider how to address unsheltered homelessness in ways that could avoid costly constitutional legal battles. There have already been dozens of court cases citing Martin, including in the Fourth Circuit in Virginia, and federal lower courts in Ohio, Missouri, Florida, Texas, New York, and Hawaii.

For now, though, Martin’s impact can be seen most clearly out West. Just before Christmas 2022, for example, a district judge cited Martin when she ruled that San Francisco can no longer enforce encampment sweeps — meaning clear out homeless individuals and their property from an outdoor area — since the city lacks enough shelter beds for those experiencing homelessness to move into. San Francisco appealed the decision, arguing it’s “unnecessarily broad and has put the City in an impossible situation.”

In Phoenix, Arizona, residents and business owners filed a lawsuit last summer against the city for allowing a downtown homeless encampment to grow with nearly 1,000 people, but a federal judge — echoing Martin — barred Phoenix in December from conducting sweeps if there are more homeless people than shelter beds available. A competing decision issued in March by a state judge ordered Phoenix officials to clean up the “public nuisance” at the encampment by July 10, arguing the city has “erroneously” applied Martin to date.

Desi Hurd, 62, uses her wheelchair in the Phoenix, Arizona, homeless encampment known as “The Zone.”

Caitlin O’Hara/Washington Post via Getty Images

In Portland, Oregon, meanwhile, officials have scrambled to revise their local camping ordinance to be a “daytime” camping ban from 8 am to 8 pm instead, in recognition that any total camping ban is likely illegal under Martin.

Supporters of a more “get tough” approach to encampments say the social and political costs of allowing tent cities to proliferate are too high, and that waiting for cities to build enough new housing before acting is untenable, both morally and politically. Some think officials are getting complacent in relying on Martin as an excuse to maintain the status quo.

Advocates for those experiencing homelessness say politicians are squandering an important opportunity by fighting for the right to conduct encampment sweeps — which can be both cruel and counterproductive to the larger goal of ending homelessness. Instead of looking for legal loopholes to Martin like daytime camping bans and sanctioned encampment sites, advocates say leaders should be investing more in solutions like affordable housing and shelter options that afford people more privacy.

“Our end goal is not to create a right for people to sleep on the streets. That’s the limited remedy we’ve been given under our Constitution,” said Eric Tars, the legal director for the National Homelessness Law Center. “They’re missing the point of Martin if they’re just trying to continue a criminalization approach in a more constitutional way.”

Cities are scrambling to comply with — and find loopholes in — Martin v. Boise

Unsheltered homelessness has risen sharply over the last seven years, and at a faster rate than homelessness overall. Unsheltered homeless people now account for 40 percent of all homeless people in the country, up from 31 percent in 2015.

Political pressure has mounted to respond to this growing problem of people sleeping in alleys, parks, and train stations. While it’s not clear this would be legal under Martin, a number of cities have turned to the idea of so-called sanctioned encampments, or legalized campsites. These are effectively designated areas where unhoused individuals can live outside, and some come with varying degrees of public services, like bathrooms, power outlets, medical care, and on-site case management.

In Portland, Oregon, lawmakers voted in November to create several large sanctioned campsites for homeless individuals, and ban the more than 700 other encampments spread across the city. Austin, Texas, has operated one sanctioned encampment of so-called “tiny homes” since 2019, on a seven-acre plot of asphalt near the airport. Denver, Colorado, is also moving to make its so-called “managed campsites” from the pandemic a permanent homelessness response tool.

The trade-off for legalized campsites, however, is that sleeping outside anywhere else in a city would then be illegal. This helps alleviate leaders’ political problem of having tents pitched all over a city, but activists worry it’s just a way to steer the sight of homelessness out of public view, and criminalize people who refuse to go. Some cities are considering sanctioned encampments with a six-month residency limit, even if there’s no permanent affordable housing option for those experiencing homelessness to go to after that point.

Some advocates have taken a firm stance against the idea; they see sanctioned encampments as a means to segregate and criminalize unhoused people and effectively kick the can down the road by not finding them permanent housing.

They’re not wrong that sanctioned encampments can require a great deal of money, staff time, and effort. In 2018, the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness warned that “creating these environments may make it look and feel like the community is taking action to end homelessness on the surface — but, by themselves, they have little impact on reducing homelessness.”

For these reasons, some cities — like Houston — have rejected the idea. “We can do better as a society. We shouldn’t tolerate it and say that’s okay,” Marc Eichenbaum, the special assistant to Houston’s mayor on homeless initiatives, told NPR.

But other cities with fewer available housing options say sanctioned encampments represent a decent interim solution, and maybe even better for unhoused residents compared to scattered campsites if cities can more effectively target social services to those corralled together.

Legalized campsites can also have a lower barrier to entry than many existing shelters, so supporters are framing them as a harm-reduction approach to homelessness. Groups like the National Homelessness Law Center, which used to firmly oppose sanctioned encampments, have recently softened their stance to say they should be considered on a case-by-case basis.

“The only time that we would see a role for that approach is if you had an exit plan,” said Tars, who pointed to some models in Seattle and Gainesville, Florida, that he thought were more positive. “Otherwise you are just creating a permanent shanty town.”

Meanwhile, Republican-governed states are exploring more punitive models. In at least half a dozen states, lawmakers have pushed sanctioned encampment bills based on templates from the Cicero Institute, an Austin-based conservative think tank. The bills propose to penalize cities that permit tent encampments, to put time limits on sanctioned encampment sites, and to divert funding from permanent supportive housing into things like mandatory drug treatment.

In 2022, Tennessee became the first state to pass a bill that would make camping on local public land a felony. Missouri’s version will allow the state’s attorney general to sue local governments that don’t enforce encampment bans. Activists say Cicero’s aggressive opposition to housing-first will lead invariably to more homeless people in jail.

Looming ultimately above all these various sanctioned encampment models is the Martin decision, which says a city-wide camping ban would be unconstitutional if the city lacks sufficient shelter options. Leaders recognize they probably can’t ban camping everywhere under Martin, but they want to see if they can ban it in most places instead. Yet whether any bans could exist if a city lacks enough shelter beds remains an open Eighth Amendment question.

Tars, of the National Homelessness Law Center, thinks the answer is no. “Martin is very clear when it’s talking about ‘adequate’ [housing] alternatives it’s talking about indoor shelter beds, and legalized encampments are not shelter beds,” he said, pointing to a 2021 federal court decision that found a sanctioned encampment site in Chico, California, was inadequate “shelter” under Martin. A federal judge described Chico’s encampment as “open space with what amounts to a large umbrella for some shade” that “affords no real cover or protection to anyone.”

Tars acknowledged, though, there’s a “legal gray area” in the Martin decision, as one footnote suggests cities could create some “time/manner/place” restrictions for camping.

Earlier this year, when a Maricopa County Superior Court judge ordered Phoenix officials to clear its notoriously large downtown encampment, he urged the city to consider “the creation of controlled, outdoor camping spaces on vacant City property” if there were not enough shelter beds to move people into.

As in Houston, Phoenix officials have rejected the sanctioned encampment approach to date, saying resources should be invested into housing solutions with air conditioning: Over 80 percent of Maricopa County’s 425 heat-related deaths in 2022 occurred outside. Local officials estimate unsheltered homeless people are at “200 to 300 times higher risk” of heat-related deaths than the rest of the population.

Still, even if Phoenix leaders embraced sanctioned encampments, it’s not clear the idea would hold up under Martin. Resolving some of these questions will realistically require the Supreme Court, but that’s unlikely to happen until there’s competing circuit court decisions to pressure it to take the issue up.

Homelessness policy is at a crossroads

There are court rulings, and then there’s enforcement of those rulings. Homeless advocates say it seems as though too many cities are failing to comply with rulings that bar unconstitutional sweeps.

For example, lawyers say little has changed in San Francisco since a federal judge ruled against sweeps six months ago, and that homeless residents continue to be displaced under the guise of street cleaning.

“What we’ve seen has been a really aggressive media campaign led by the city to suggest we are pro-open-air drug markets and anti-accessibility for sidewalks,” said Zal Shroff, an attorney with Lawyer’s Committee For Civil Rights representing the homeless plaintiffs.

“You’re allowed to clear genuine public safety hazards, but when you do that and throw their laptops and cellphones into dumpsters, that’s not a cleaning — that’s a seizure of someone’s belongings without due process,” he added. In late May, Shroff’s team filed a court motion, calling for increased monitoring.

Jen Kwart, a spokesperson for San Francisco’s city attorney, told Vox they’re “complying with the preliminary injunction while simultaneously expending hundreds of millions of dollars annually to provide shelter and services to unhoused people.”

In Phoenix, while the city is working to clear out its large homeless encampment by July 10, per the Maricopa County Superior Court, the ACLU has been arguing the city’s clearings have violated the rights of unhoused people.

“Even if you’re unsheltered, you have due process rights to your belongings under the Fourth and 14th Amendments,” said Benjamin Rundall, an attorney with ACLU of Arizona. “You can’t violate someone’s constitutional rights in order to vindicate someone’s private property rights.”

It’s not clear at all where the estimated 700 unhoused people living in the downtown Phoenix encampment are supposed to go. There are not enough available shelter beds in the city; the four largest ones were at 97 percent capacity as of April.

A spokesperson for Phoenix’s Mayor Kate Gallego did not return requests for comment, but an April city press release said they were exploring hotel options and expected 800 new shelter beds to come online before the end of 2024.

Some conservative legal advocates see the Maricopa County Superior Court ruling as offering a blueprint for other cities and states to clear out their tent encampments. “For too long, liberal leaders have used the Martin ruling as an excuse to allow rampant crime and homelessness to take over neighborhoods,” argued Austin Vanderheyden, a liaison at the Goldwater Institute, in the Orange County Register. “But no longer.”

“Our lawsuit was never about solving homelessness,” wrote Ilan Wurman, who represented the Phoenix business and property owners. “It was about solving the humanitarian crisis that these encampments create.”

Meanwhile, as pandemic eviction aid dries up, homeless advocates are bracing for more people to lose their housing in the coming months. Washington, DC, recently reported an 11.6 percent increase in homelessness from 2022. While the nation has been increasing its shelter bed capacity over the last few years, fewer people are choosing to stay in them. Many have decided sleeping outdoors is preferable to the rules and conditions of congregate shelters.

Figuring out where cities go next will be shaped in no small part by how leaders and courts land on interpreting Martin.

“It really feels like we’re at a tipping point,” said Tars. “Things could either get much better or much worse.”

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Bay Area // san francisco

May 23, 2022Updated: May 23, 2022 5:25 pm

Blurred view of fire truck driving in city. A tent fire spread to a nearby commercial building Sunday night in San Francisco’s Mission District, fire officials said.

PBNJ Productions/Getty Images

A tent fire spread to a nearby commercial building Sunday night in San Francisco’s Mission District, fire officials said.

The fire was reported on the 1400 block of 15th Street at about 10:32 pm and spread to a nearby building, causing moderate structure damage, said Fire Department Lt. Jonathan Baxter.

A homeless encampment suffered major damage, said Baxter.

Fire crews extinguished the blaze in about 45 minutes.

No injuries nor displacements were reported, officials said. The cause of the fire was under investigation.

Baxter said the number of individuals who were living at the encampment was unknown as people typically disperse before firefighters arrive on scene during fire incidents.

A series of encampment fires spreading to nearby buildings and other street conditions in the Mission District prompted Supervisor Hillary Ronen, who represents the neighborhood, to craft a plan that addresses a myriad of issues.

Concerned residents have also hosted trash cleanups in their neighborhoods in an effort to revitalize the mission and provide resources to vendors and unhoused people.

Jessica Flores (she/her) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jessica.flores@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jesssmflores

Jessica Flores is a reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle. Before joining The Chronicle in 2021, she worked for USA Today, NPR affiliate KPCC and Curbed LA. Originally from LA, she received her master’s degree in journalism from the University of Southern California and a bachelor’s degree from Mount Saint Mary’s University in Los Angeles.

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Officials hope the new community will provide a safer alternative to shelters, but it brings its own challenges.

Allison Artzer has been homeless for over three years, much of it on the streets of San Francisco. Ten months ago, while sitting on a curb with all her belongings, the 36-year-old was approached by a member of the San Francisco homeless outreach team and given them a tent in one of the city’s “safe sleeping villages” at 33 Gough Street offered. on Marktstrasse.

Artzer, who often had their belongings stolen on the streets or thrown away by police officers, said yes.

She found it was a big improvement over the street as it had a central place to store her belongings and a separate room for them. But the tent has some drawbacks. When it rains, her things get wet and some are destroyed no matter how many tarps she throws over them. At night the temperature can drop to almost 45 degrees and she has to snuggle under blankets to fight the cold. She shares a tent with her partner and because the tents are so thin they cannot have private conversations.

So she was excited when she heard that the city would replace her tent with a small hut with a lockable door, bed, desk, and space heater.

“My life has changed for the better in the last 10 months, I only have one place to call home even though it’s a tent,” she says. “Now I want to start looking for a job again and be a normal person again.”

San Francisco officials announced in September that they would build a tiny hometown on Gough Street, which is currently allowing tents to be assembled with on-site security. The 44 tents will be replaced by around 70 tiny homes, each with around 64 square meters, in two parking spaces that the city has rented.

The apartments are part of a pilot project that will run for 18 months. After that, the city’s lease for the Gough Street parking lot will expire. The project is coordinated by the city, but funded by DignityMoves – part of an umbrella organization that pools private capital for social issues – and a non-profit donor called Tipping Point. Urban Alchemy, another non-profit organization, is already providing social services to the tent community and will continue these services for the tiny homes. (Urban Alchemy also provides services to two other safe sleeping villages in San Francisco.)

The project is one of several announced earlier this year when the Mayor of San Francisco London Breed invested more than $ 1 billion in the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing over two years, an investment that includes an RV park .

Elizabeth Funk, CEO of Dignity Capital, which formed the group DignityMoves that will fund the property, says the city has spent relatively little on temporary housing until recently. The tents and Tiny Home model are designed to provide a more hospitable alternative to street homelessness, offering privacy and security not available in dormitories.

“We really believe that the fact that people have their own private space is going to be a game changer,” says Funk.

The sites are also designed to help people transition into a more stable mental state after the trauma of living on the street.

“I can tell you firsthand that everyone experiences trauma while they’re homeless,” said Andrea Urton, CEO of HomeFirst Services in Santa Clara County, who says she used to be homeless.

“You are in an elevated state of panic and crisis,” she says. “Your health deteriorates, your mental problem-solving abilities deteriorate over time.” Urton says that it takes three to six months in stable housing for people to clear their heads.

HomeFirst will be a consultant for the San Francisco Tiny Home Project and will bring their experience building San Jose’s first Tiny Home community. In addition to the lessons learned there, Urton said, it is critical that staff are available to help with a speedy relocation.

While Funk with Dignity Capital isn’t sure how long the stays will be, they’re modeling their approach to Life Moves, which is funded by Project Homekey, a nationwide program designed to convert unused spaces into apartments, a small house community in Mountain View has erected. Average stays on the Mountain View site range from 90 to 100 days. This site also has on-site psychiatric care, nurses, and social workers, which the Gough Street site does not.

The expectation of a quick relocation for the tiny San Francisco community may be related to the desires of their financiers. DignityMoves is a coalition of business owners across the Bay Area who wanted to solve the street homelessness problem. Funk admits that some business owners have “selfish reasons” to want to help, probably out of fear that street homelessness has reduced spending in commercial corridors.

Urton says if the San Francisco location is moving quickly, having staff available to handle housing issues is critical. “If the units aren’t linked to rapid relocation services, it will take a long time to relocate people permanently,” she says.

However, Lena Miller, who runs Urban Alchemy, says that expecting a quick relocation of residents to the Gough Street site may not be realistic because there aren’t enough permanent housing units to move people quickly. She also believes that many residents have basic issues, such as mental health and substance abuse, that need to be addressed.

Artzer says her attempts to find an apartment in the sleeping village on Gough Street have been unsuccessful. She was interviewed twice for accommodation but failed to qualify. She says the apartments offered are primarily for people with mental health problems or physical disabilities that she does not have. “My only problem is that I’m homeless,” she says. In the 10 months she was in the sleeping village, she said that only 6 people she knew were placed in permanent shelter.

Urban Alchemy has two “Care Coordinators” at Gough Street each day who connect residents to outside facilities when they need social workers, plus another 5-6 people who work throughout the day to resolve conflicts and on day-to-day tasks help. Miller says the nonprofit will likely hire another care coordinator once the tiny homes are built, as it will get more funding to deal with adding two dozen people to the population.

Officials in San Francisco claim the tiny home project will have a cheaper cost per person than maintaining 44 tents across the property. Most of the cost of the tent village is security and other staff costs, as the tents themselves cost a little over a hundred dollars each. The city reckons that by increasing the population density with tiny homes that are closer together than the tents, they can lower the cost per person while spending more money.

It is unclear whether this prediction will come true. HomeFirst’s Urton says one of the lessons learned from the San Jose project was that the cost was higher than expected.

“We budgeted a lot less for electricity than planned,” she says. “It’s a lot more expensive than we thought.” She also pointed out the need for licensed therapists, social workers and drug treatments in small shared apartments to help people transition into society.

But Urban Alchemy’s Miller says it’s unlikely either the city or private donors will want to cover those costs at the Gough Street site, even with the city’s $ 1.2 billion homeless budget.

“There’s probably more than can be done,” she says, “you need therapists, drug treatment, it’s extremely urgent.” While most people are homeless due to economic hardship or a lack of housing, the residents of the safe sleeping villages have San Francisco has an above-average number of people with addictions and mental illnesses, according to Miller.

“An extremely high percentage of the villagers have a double diagnosis,” she says. “If you add up the addiction services that people really need to recover and thrive, the price will be astronomical.”

For Artzer, who says that she has neither addiction nor mental illness and describes herself as healthy, a safe tent in the sleeping village is an immeasurable help. She became homeless for the first time three years ago while working as a waitress. When a number of housing situations went wrong, she lost her deposits and could not afford a new apartment. She ended up renting nightly hotels, but the distance from work resulted in her missing her shifts and eventually losing her job. She soon found herself on the streets with no income.

“It was so quick to be a normal person working inside being outside, it was scary,” she says. “You get used to it, I think.”

Roshan Abraham is Next City’s Housing Correspondent and a former Equitable Cities Fellow. He is based in Queens. Follow him on Twitter at @roshantone.

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Residents of a San Francisco condo building selling $ 1 million units say they live in fear after an adjacent alley became the city’s largest homeless camp.

The huge tent city – inhabited by a man throwing feces and a host of other unpleasant characters – is steps away from The Artani, an eight-story Van Ness Avenue complex where residents say they are terrified by a growing number of stray neighbors will .

Apartment resident Amber Lusko said the camp, aggravated by the COVID pandemic, has attracted rats, thieves and mentally unstable adults who are turning their neighborhood into a state of chaos.

“It’s pretty nerve-wracking throughout,” Lutsko told KPIX 5. “This just seems like a safe place for chop shops and drug trafficking.”

Complaints are being made as new data shows that San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin has charged people with theft less than 50 percent of the time during his tenure.

The footage from KPIX 5 shows an alley lined with tents near the residential complex

Garbage is strewn all over the street and tents dominate the landscape

The city reportedly searched the area, but the tents reappeared the next day

Some Artani units have sold for more than $ 1 million, KPIX 5 reported. Current offers for one-bedroom units run for 670,000.

The building is located near Willow Street, between Van Ness Avenue and Polk Street, home to San Francisco’s most concentrated homeless camp, the point of sale reported.

Another resident named Shannon said the police did little to contain the violence and shady behavior.

“I saw people fight physically and I was gone once and a man approached my car and yelled profanity and threatened me, which was really scary,” she told the broadcaster.

“There was a guy who passed out in front of our door all day with a needle hanging from his arm. And our children had to pass it by. ‘

The residents of Artani told the area about vagrants throwing feces, propping up the building’s garage with empty bottles, stealing parcels and much more.

The city reportedly conducted a search of Willow Street in early October, but the tents returned the next day.

In a statement to KPIX 5, the city’s emergency management department said it was working to improve the situation by providing resources and services to the homeless.

It said it had carried out “camp releases” for 24 days this year that helped place 161 people in safe sleeping quarters, hospitals, residential treatment programs and shelters.

An aerial view of a homeless camp near San Francisco City Hall shows the extent of the city’s homeless crisis

A homeless woman is pictured walking the streets of Tenderloin, San Francisco’s most densely populated homeless camp

“The resolution included the removal of 377 tents that were either empty or abandoned, or their owners accepted alternative accommodation,” the statement said.

Shops across San Francisco have reduced or closed their hours due to the rise in property thefts, and District Attorney Boudin has been cursed by local critics for “destroying the fabric of our city.”

A Safeway grocery store was the latest to suffer from rampant shoplifting, citing this as the reason for reducing its 24/7 service to just 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Boudin ran for his position on the promise that he would pursue a new approach to crime by not prosecuting lower-level crimes. To the chagrin of many locals, he keeps this promise by accusing only 46% of all cases of theft since taking office.

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who woke up, charged people with theft less than 50% of all cases during his tenure, new data shows

Overall, Boudin has charged people with crime in 48% of all reported cases, while Gascon has a 54% charge rate.

Boudin is likely to be recalled because a petition launched last March garnered more than 83,000 signatures, far more than the 51,000 it would take to start an election

By comparison, his predecessor George Gascon made such charges 62% of all cases in 2018 and 2019, according to city data analyzed by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Boudin is now likely to be recalled after just two years in office, as his critics launched a petition last March that garnered more than 83,000 signatures, far more than the 51,000 it would take to start an election.

Some who joined the recall came from his own administration when 50 lawyers have been fired or fired from his office since he took the reins in January 2020, accounting for about a third of the department’s prosecutors.

“Right from the start, he vowed not to prosecute any crimes against the quality of life. Quality of life is … the basis of a society, our city. If you don’t blame people for it, you are essentially destroying the fabric of our city, ”said Richie Greenberg, a former Republican candidate for mayoral and spokesman for the Committee in Support of the Recall of DA Chesa Boudin, the San Francisco Chronicle.

A 24/7 Safeway store in the Castro area of ​​San Francisco (pictured) has cut its hours to now 6am to 9pm after being targeted by “off-chart” shoplifting

Boudin has an even lower petty crime rate, only prosecuting 35% of all cases, compared to 58% for Gascon.

Boudin also convicted far fewer people for both crimes than Gascon, only thieves in 79% of thefts and 62% of petty thefts. Gascon has an 82% conviction rate for theft and a 77% conviction rate for petty theft.

Overall, Boudin has charged people with crime in 48% of all reported cases, while Gascon has a 54% charge rate.

For the week ending October 31, the overall crime rate in San Francisco rose 7.7 percent and thefts rose 12.5 percent.

The number of attacks rose eight percent, according to the San Francisco police.

According to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the homeless population in California rose 17 percent between 2017 and 2020.

There were more than 160,000 homeless people in the state in 2020, it said.

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Allison Artzer has been homeless for over three years, much of it on the streets of San Francisco. Ten months ago, while sitting on a curb with all her belongings, the 36-year-old was approached by a member of the San Francisco homeless outreach team and offered a tent in one of the city’s “safe sleeping villages” at 33 Gough Street. on Marktstrasse.

Artzer, who often had their belongings stolen on the streets or thrown away by police officers, said yes.

She found it was a big improvement over the street as it had a central location for her belongings and a dedicated room. But the tent has some drawbacks. When it rains, her things get wet and some are destroyed no matter how many tarps she throws over them. At night, the temperature can drop to nearly 45 degrees and she has to snuggle under blankets to fight the cold. She shares a tent with her partner and because the tents are so thin they cannot have private conversations.

So she was excited when she heard that the city would replace her tent with a small hut with a lockable door, bed, desk and space heater.

“My life has changed for the better in the last 10 months, I only have one place to call home even though it’s a tent,” she says. “Now I want to start again, having a job and being a normal person again.”

San Francisco officials announced in September that they would build a tiny hometown on Gough Street, which currently allows for a collection of tents with on-site security. The 44 tents will be replaced by around 70 tiny homes, each with around 64 square meters, in two parking spaces that the city has rented.

The homes are part of an 18-month pilot project that will expire the city’s lease in the Gough Street parking lot. The project is coordinated by the city, but funded by DignityMoves – part of an umbrella organization that pools private capital for social issues – and a non-profit donor called Tipping Point. Urban Alchemy, another non-profit organization, is already providing social services to the tent community and will continue these services for the tiny homes. (Urban Alchemy also provides services to two other safe sleeping villages in San Francisco.)

The project is one of several announced earlier this year when the Mayor of San Francisco London Breed invested more than $ 1 billion in the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing within two years, an investment that includes an RV park .

Elizabeth Funk, CEO of Dignity Capital, which formed the group DignityMoves that will fund the property, says the city has spent relatively little on temporary housing until recently. The tents and tiny home model are designed to provide a more hospitable alternative to street homelessness, offering privacy and security not available in dormitories.

“We really believe that it will be a decisive factor when people have their own private space,” says Funk.

The sites are also designed to help people transition into a more stable mental state after the trauma of living on the street.

“I can tell you firsthand that everyone experiences trauma while homeless,” said Andrea Urton, CEO of HomeFirst Services in Santa Clara County, who says she used to be homeless.

“You are in an increased state of panic and crisis,” she says. “Your health deteriorates, your mental problem-solving abilities deteriorate over time.” Urton says it takes three to six months in stable housing for people to clear their minds.

HomeFirst will be a consultant for the San Francisco Tiny Home Project and will bring their experience building San Jose’s first tiny home community. One of the lessons learned there, said Urton, is that it is of vital importance to have staff available to help with the rapid relocation.

While Funk with Dignity Capital isn’t sure how long the stays will be, they’re modeling their approach to Life Moves, which is a small house community in Mountain View with money from Project Homekey, a statewide program that aims to convert unused space into living space built up. Average stays on the Mountain View website are between 90 and 100 days. This location also has on-site psychiatric care, nurses and social workers, which the Gough Street location does not.

The expectation of a quick relocation for the tiny San Francisco community may be related to the desires of their financiers. DignityMoves is an association of business owners across the Bay Area who wanted to solve the street homelessness problem. Funk admits that some business owners have “selfish reasons” to want to help, probably out of fear that street homelessness has reduced spending in commercial corridors.

Urton says if the San Francisco location is moving quickly, having staff available to handle housing issues is critical. “Unless there are quick relocation services connected to the units, it will take a long time to relocate people permanently,” she says.

However, Lena Miller, who runs Urban Alchemy, says that expecting a quick relocation of residents to the Gough Street site may not be realistic because there aren’t enough permanent housing units to move people quickly. She also believes that many residents have basic issues, such as mental health and substance abuse, that need to be addressed.

Artzer says her attempts to find an apartment in the sleeping village on Gough Street have been unsuccessful. She was interviewed twice for accommodation but failed to qualify. She says the accommodations offered have been preferred for people with mental health problems or physical disabilities that she does not have. “My only problem is that I’m homeless,” she says. In the 10 months she was in the sleeping village, she says that only 6 people she knew were put into permanent shelter.

Urban Alchemy has two “Care Coordinators” at Gough Street each day who connect residents with outside agencies when they need social workers, plus another 5-6 people who work throughout the day to resolve conflicts and on day-to-day tasks help. Miller says the nonprofit will likely hire another care coordinator once the tiny homes are built, as it will get more funding to deal with adding two dozen people to the population.

Officials in San Francisco claim the tiny home project will have a cheaper per person cost than maintaining 44 tents on the property. Most of the cost of the tent village is security and other staff costs, as the tents themselves cost a little over a hundred dollars each. The city reckons that by increasing the population density in the square with tiny homes that are closer together than the tents, the cost per person can be reduced while they are spending more money.

It is unclear whether this prediction will come true. HomeFirst’s Urton says one of the lessons learned from the San Jose project was that the cost was higher than expected.

“We budgeted a lot less for electricity than planned,” she says. “It’s a lot more expensive than we thought.” She also pointed to the need for licensed therapists, social workers and drug treatments in small shared apartments to help people transition into society.

But Urban Alchemy’s Miller says it’s unlikely either the city or private donors will want to cover those costs at the Gough Street site, even with the city’s $ 1.2 billion homeless budget.

“There’s probably more than can be done,” she says, “you need therapists, drug treatment, that’s an extremely high need.” While most people are homeless due to economic hardship or lack of housing, the residents have the safer According to Miller, San Francisco sleep villages have an above-average number of people with addictions and mental illnesses.

“An extremely high percentage of the people who live in the village have a double diagnosis,” she says. “If you add up the addiction services that people really need to recover and thrive, the price will be astronomical.”

For Artzer, who says she has no addiction or mental illness and describes herself as healthy, a safe tent in the sleeping village is an immeasurable help. She became homeless for the first time three years ago while working as a waitress. When a number of housing situations went wrong, she lost her deposits and could not afford a new apartment. She ended up renting hotels nightly, but the distance from work resulted in her missing shifts and eventually losing her job. She soon found herself on the streets with no income.

“It was just so quick to work inside as a normal person, to be outside, it was scary,” she says. “You get used to it, I think.”

Roshan Abraham is Next City’s Housing Correspondent and a former Equitable Cities Fellow. He is based in Queens. Follow him on Twitter at @roshantone.

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SAN FRANCISCO – San Francisco is paying $ 16.1 million to feed and house people in tented villages as the city grapples with a growing homeless population. But the cost worries some lawmakers.

Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, six tent sites, known as “safe sleeping villages”, have been set up to protect people who might otherwise be sleeping on the sidewalks.

More than 300 people are currently accommodated in the 262 tents, some of which are free. The villages also offer access to bathrooms, meals, and 24-hour security, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Thursday.

Funding is only a fraction of the more than $ 300 million the city spends annually on homeless services, and the average nightly cost is less than what the city pays for a hotel accommodation program for the homeless, so the chronicle.

However, the federal government cannot reimburse the tenting program. Some lawmakers say the program is too expensive, especially when the city faces a projected budget deficit of $ 650 million over the next two years.

“It’s breathtaking and we need to understand why that is,” said supervisor Rafael Mandelman. “We have to find a way to get off the streets. But we need them to be cheaper. “

The program is funded from state and municipal funds and revenue from a 2018 business tax.

The city had to rush to create shelters as indoor spaces were closed to the homeless due to COVID-19 concerns, Abigail Stewart-Kahn, interim director of the homeless section, said at a budget committee hearing on Wednesday.

The city didn’t have time for a more thorough bidding process and also had to provide water and electricity connections for the sites that are on vacant lots, Stewart-Kahn said.

“I understand the motivation to create (safe) sleeping space during this COVID-19 crisis,” said supervisor Ahsha Safaí. “But we have to dive really deep to see if this is a sustainable model … with no federal reimbursement.”

Stewart-Kahn said her department is analyzing the program.

The post San Francisco paying $16.1 million for homeless tent camps | Bay Space appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – San Francisco is paying $ 16.1 million to feed and house people in tented villages as the city grapples with a growing homeless population – but the cost worries some lawmakers.

Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, six tent sites, known as “safe sleeping villages”, have been set up to protect people who might otherwise be sleeping on the sidewalks.

CONTINUE READING: Study: There was no mass exodus from California in 2020

More than 300 people are currently accommodated in the 262 tents, some of them are free. The villages also offer access to bathrooms, meals, and 24-hour security, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Thursday.

Funding is only a fraction of the more than $ 300 million the city spends annually on homeless services, and the average nightly cost is less than what the city pays for a hotel accommodation program, so the chronicle.

The federal government cannot reimburse the tenting program. Some lawmakers say the program is too expensive, especially when the city faces a projected budget deficit of $ 650 million over the next two years.

“It’s breathtaking and we need to understand why that is,” said supervisor Rafael Mandelman. “We have to find a way to get off the streets. But we need them to be cheaper. “

CONTINUE READING: Federal authorities raid Roseville’s former employee of the Sacramento Sheriff’s home

The program is funded from state and municipal funds and revenue from a 2018 business tax.

The city had to rush to create shelters as indoor spaces were closed to the homeless due to COVID-19 concerns, Abigail Stewart-Kahn, interim director of the homeless section, said at a budget committee hearing on Wednesday.

The city didn’t have time for a more thorough bidding process and also had to provide water and electricity connections for the sites that are on vacant lots, Stewart-Kahn said.

“I understand the motivation to create (safe) sleeping space during this COVID-19 crisis,” said supervisor Ahsha Safaí. “But we have to dive really deep to see if this is a sustainable model … with no federal reimbursement.”

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Stewart-Kahn said her department is analyzing the program.

The post San Francisco Paying $16.1M For Homeless Tent Camps – CBS Sacramento appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.