San Francisco's aggressive push to get more unhoused people off city streets
San Francisco — One day in May, Reily was the latest unhoused person in San Francisco to be caught up in the city's year-long aggressive enforcement tactics.
Involved in the arrest was San Francisco police Sgt. Dennis Hoang, the department's homeless unit supervisor.
"I asked Reily how many times they've been cited for illegal lodging, and they said...four times," Hoang told CBS News. "We're at a point where we are no longer tolerating chronic illegal behavior."
In mid-2024, San Francisco began more targeted sweeps of homeless encampments across the city in an effort to address its homeless crisis.
"These public sidewalks are for the public," Hoang said. "And, unfortunately, it's not a place for people to store their personal belongings."
Between June of 2024 and June of this year, nearly 1,000 people have been arrested or cited for illegal camping in San Francisco, according to city data, but few are ever charged.
"I'm going to get kicked out of the shelter," Reily told CBS News. "I'm going to come back on the street. I'm going to get cited again, it's a broken system."
Unhoused people who spoke to CBS News said some of the shelters do not fit their needs for a variety of reasons, such as dormitory-style housing that requires having roommates, no storage for personal possessions and no pets allowed.
Arrests are a last resort, conducted only if the person repeatedly ignores citations and refuses the city's multiple offers of shelter and services.
The city's efforts seem to have paid off with visible results. Nearly half of the 8,000 homeless that live in San Francisco are sheltered, per city data, up 35% from 2019.
In San Francisco's Mission District, police and city workers are faced with tense and emotional challenges. Jeff, who didn't want to share his last name, was upset by his arrest. He said he sleeps outdoors by "choice."
"I'm getting their help already," said Jeff when asked by CBS News why he refused assistance and resources from the city. "Where does that lead me?"
Democratic San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, who took office in January, was elected by voters frustrated by the city's large homeless encampments and its soaring crime rates.
Despite the crackdown on homeless encampments, Lurie contends that it is "absolutely not" the city's view that it is a crime to be either poor or homeless in San Francisco.
"Our focus is getting people off the street and into shelter and into mental health and drug treatment beds," Lurie told CBS News.
"We lead with services," Lurie said. "We lead with our values, which is taking care of people."
He believes his tough-on-crime policies and focus on rehabilitation have created safer public spaces.
"We're getting a lot of business leaders engaged and involved in the city in a way that they haven't been for a long time," Lurie said. "And there's this feeling of hope and optimism."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNN
8 minutes ago
- CNN
How a Supreme Court decision backing the NRA is thwarting Trump's retribution campaign
As Harvard University, elite law firms and perceived political enemies of President Donald Trump fight back against his efforts to use government power to punish them, they're winning thanks in part to the National Rifle Association. Last May, the Supreme Court unanimously sided with the gun rights group in a First Amendment case concerning a New York official's alleged efforts to pressure insurance companies in the state to sever ties with the group following the deadly 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida. A government official, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the nine, 'cannot … use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression.' A year later, the court's decision in National Rifle Association of America v. Vullo has been cited repeatedly by federal judges in rulings striking down a series of executive orders that targeted law firms. Lawyers representing Harvard, faculty at Columbia University and others are also leaning on the decision in cases challenging Trump's attacks on them. 'Going into court with a decision that is freshly minted, that clearly reflects the unanimous views of the currently sitting Supreme Court justices, is a very powerful tool,' said Eugene Volokh, a conservative First Amendment expert who represented the NRA in the 2024 case. For free speech advocates, the application of the NRA decision in cases pushing back against Trump's retribution campaign is a welcome sign that lower courts are applying key First Amendment principles equally, particularly in politically fraught disputes. In the NRA case, the group claimed that Maria Vullo, the former superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services, had threatened enforcement actions against the insurance firms if they failed to comply with her demands to help with the campaign against gun groups. The NRA's claims centered around a meeting Vullo had with an insurance market in 2018 in which the group says she offered to not prosecute other violations as long as the company helped with her campaign. 'The great hope of a principled application of the First Amendment is that it protects everybody,' said Alex Abdo, the litigation director of the Knight First Amendment Institute. 'Some people have criticized free speech advocates as being naive for hoping that'll be the case, but hopefully that's what we're seeing now,' he added. 'We're seeing courts apply that principle where the politics are very different than the NRA case.' The impact of Vullo can be seen most clearly in the cases challenging Trump's attempts to use executive power to exact revenge on law firms that have employed his perceived political enemies or represented clients who have challenged his initiatives. A central pillar of Trump's retribution crusade has been to pressure firms to bend to his political will, including through issuing executive orders targeting four major law firms: Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, WilmerHale and Susman Godfrey. Among other things, the orders denied the firms' attorneys access to federal buildings, retaliated against their clients with government contracts and suspended security clearances for lawyers at the firms. (Other firms were hit with similar executive orders but they haven't taken Trump to court over them.) The organizations individually sued the administration over the orders and the three judges overseeing the Perkins Coie, WilmerHale and Jenner & Block suits have all issued rulings permanently blocking enforcement of the edicts. (The Susman case is still pending.) Across more than 200-pages of writing, the judges – all sitting at the federal trial-level court in Washington, DC – cited Vullo 30 times to conclude that the orders were unconstitutional because they sought to punish the firms over their legal work. The judges all lifted Sotomayor's line about using 'the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression,' while also seizing on other language in her opinion to buttress their own decisions. Two of them – US district judges Beryl Howell, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, and Richard Leon, who was named to the bench by former President George W. Bush – incorporated Sotomayor's statement that government discrimination based on a speaker's viewpoint 'is uniquely harmful to a free and democratic society.' The third judge, John Bates, said Vullo and an earlier Supreme Court case dealing with impermissible government coercion 'govern – and defeat' the administration's arguments in defense of a section of the Jenner & Block order that sought to end all contractual relationships that might have allowed taxpayer dollars to flow to the firm. 'Executive Order 14246 does precisely what the Supreme Court said just last year is forbidden: it engages in 'coercion against a third party to achieve the suppression of disfavored speech,'' wrote Bates, who was also appointed by Bush, in his May 23 ruling. For its part, the Justice Department has tried to draw a distinction between what the executive orders called for and the conduct rejected by the high court in Vullo. They told the three judges in written arguments that the orders at issue did not carry the 'force of the powers exhibited in Vullo' by the New York official. Will Creeley, the legal director at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, said the rulings underscore how 'Vullo has proved its utility almost immediately.' 'It is extremely useful to remind judges and government actors alike that just last year, the court warned against the kind of shakedowns and turns of the screw that we're now seeing from the administration,' he said. Justice Department lawyers have not yet appealed any of the three rulings issued last month. CNN has reached out to the department for comment. In separate cases brought in the DC courthouse and elsewhere, Trump's foes have leaned on Vullo as they've pressed judges to intervene in high-stakes disputes with the president. Among them is Mark Zaid, a prominent national security lawyer who has drawn Trump's ire for his representation of whistleblowers. Earlier this year, Trump yanked Zaid's security clearance, a decision, the attorney said in a lawsuit, that undermines his ability to 'zealously advocate on (his clients') behalf in the national security arena.' In court papers, Zaid's attorneys argued that the president's decision was a 'retaliatory directive,' invoking language from the Vullo decision to argue that the move violated his First Amendment rights. ''Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors,'' they wrote, quoting from the 2024 ruling. 'And yet that is exactly what Defendants do here.' Timothy Zick, a constitutional law professor at William & Mary Law School, said the executive orders targeting private entities or individuals 'have relied heavily on pressure, intimidation, and the threat of adverse action to punish or suppress speakers' views and discourage others from engaging with regulated targets.' 'The unanimous holding in Vullo is tailor-made for litigants seeking to push back against the administration's coercive strategy,' Zick added. That notion was not lost on lawyers representing Harvard and faculty at Columbia University in several cases challenging Trump's attacks on the elite schools, including one brought by Harvard challenging Trump's efforts to ban the school from hosting international students. A federal judge has so far halted those efforts. In a separate case brought by Harvard over the administration's decision to freeze billions of dollars in federal funding for the nation's oldest university, the school's attorneys on Monday told a judge that Trump's decision to target it because of 'alleged antisemitism and ideological bias at Harvard' clearly ran afoul of the high court's decision last year. 'Although any governmental retaliation based on protected speech is an affront to the First Amendment, the retaliation here was especially unconstitutional because it was based on Harvard's 'particular views' – the balance of speech on its campus and its refusal to accede to the Government's unlawful demands,' the attorneys wrote.
Bloomberg
14 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
We Now Know the Meaning of 'Religious Enough'
Back in 1959, the chief administrative officer of the United Presbyterian Church warned that churches wielded too much 'economic power' due to their tax-exempt status. Unless religious groups were taxed like everyone else, the nation might soon face 'revolutionary expropriations of church property.' Well, the revolution hasn't yet come for the churches. But regulatory creep has nevertheless nibbled at the margins of religious freedom, with states finding one activity or another to deem not truly religious and therefore subject to tax.
Fox News
14 minutes ago
- Fox News
17 illegal migrants discovered crammed in RV, sedan in sweltering Arizona heat
A man has been arrested and charged with human smuggling after 17 illegal migrants were found crammed inside an RV and a nearby sedan in the sweltering Arizona heat Wednesday. The majority of the illegal migrants, who are all from Mexico, were found packed inside the cramped RV which was parked on a property in Nogales as temperatures inside soared under the summer sun, according to Sean L. McGoffin, chief patrol agent of Border Patrol's Tucson Sector. Those inside the RV, including a minor, had limited space and ventilation with no access to running water, McGoffin said. The rest of the migrants were wedged into a small sedan that was discovered during a vehicle stop. "This rescue likely prevented a tragedy," McGoffin said. "With summer temperatures already climbing, packing people into trailers and vehicles without proper ventilation or water is a recipe for disaster. Human lives should never be treated as cargo." All the migrants are now safe, in custody and will be processed accordingly, McCoffin said. The rescued individuals are being processed for expedited removal in accordance with U.S. immigration law. The man who was arrested is a U.S. citizen and initially attempted to flee the scene on foot but was apprehended by agents shortly after. Investigators are working to determine whether others were involved. The operation was carried out by Nogales Border Patrol, Nogales Police and Homeland Security Investigations. "No recreation happening in this vehicle, instead it was used by smugglers forcing people to hide out in inhumane conditions in sweltering heat," McGoffin said. "Although no one was injured, the situation shows the danger illegal aliens face in the hands of smugglers."
