Thread by @cherring_soc

There's been lots of critiques of @TheAtlantic article on SF as a failed city due to progressive governance w/ relation to crime and DA recall. It's also an inaccurate, narrow, and misleading take on the city's homelessness and policies addressing it. 🧵 theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

Reading this article one would think that SF has (1) experienced a significant increase in homelessness (2) is an exceptional magnet for houseless migrants seeking drugs and services (3) stopped policing and criminalizing homelessness. . . 2/

(4) that homeless spending is mainly aimed at making people comfy as they die on the streets (5) that advocates obstruct treatment (6) and tougher conservatorship laws, enforcement, and incarceration is the solution. All are false or grossly misleading according to research 3/

First, unlike nearly every other west coast county, SF's homeless population has remained relatively stable over the past decade despite the city's overall growth, and decreased 13% since 2019. Only about 500 more experiencing homelessness on any given day in 2022 vs. 2013. 4/

Consider SF's moderate growth in homeless population as compared to other large west coast counties. Hardly a local failure of an especially liberal/progressive polity. 5/

Not only does the author conveniently ignore all this data, she publishes blatantly wrong numbers writing "8,000 people remain on the street." The city's last point in time count found 4,397 were unsheltered. 6/ hsh.sfgov.org/get-involved/2…

Why does San Francisco have such different results? One reason is continual investment in Supportive Housing, w/ more units per capita than any other US City. Yet the author skims over this investment (and in shelter) to suggest that $ mainly keeps people on the streets 7/

The author similarly glosses over the investments in shelter (SF also has one of the highest rates of sheltered homelessness in the West Coast) tagging it on as a mere footnote to the city's street response units. 8/

Two things to note in the excerpt above. One is the cringeworthy rhetoric that permeates the piece describing the life-saving work of first responders as "generally making life more pleasant for people on the street." 9/

And another blatant error any fact-checker would have flagged - the "Compassionate Alternative Response Team" does not even exist, except as a plan, which I helped author, but the Mayor fails to support. cartsf.org/our-plan 10/

Second, the article spotlights migration to SF for services and lax drug policies. Some do, but SF's policies don't make it a special magnet or outlier. Similar to other west coast cities 70% of SF's homeless lived in the city when they became unhoused, 84% from the Bay 11/

Third, the article makes it seem as if San Francisco stopped policing or criminalizing homelessness. However, up until the pandemic, police dispatches on homeless related calls increased by 78% since 2011, even as unsheltered adult homelessness increased only 1%. 12/

311 requests for clearing encampments also skyrocketed. Under Mayor Breed the # of full-time SFPD officers addressing homelessness increased from 23 to 51, mainly assigned to escorting street cleaning crews on 311. I analyze these changes @ASR_Journal 13/: tinyurl.com/2p8ck3z5

What changed was not growing or migrating homeless, but rather increased complaints and visibility, driven esp. by what the author calls "immigrants who came to code," new development, gentrification, and whiter/wealthier commuters with diff perceptions of police and disorder 14/

Incarceration dropped, but the jail still holds more unhoused people than the largest shelter and punishments on the streets: dispossession of property, searches, move-along orders, and citations all persist or increased amidst shelter expansion 15/ tinyurl.com/32ynwm3f

This mass criminalization has devastating impacts. I witnessed this first-hand sleeping out 57 nights embedded in these camps and hundreds of other days with people on the streets, courts, and with social workers. I also rode-along with the SFPD homeless unit multiple times. 16/

Citations and move-alongs result in warrants, massive debts, revoked licenses, lost medicine, benefits, preventing people from accessing jobs, housing, social services and extending homelessness. Furthermore, they impact the majority of unhoused 17/ tinyurl.com/5a8drajf

Yes, during the early pandemic sweeps halted. This was not the DA's doing, but CDC guidelines promoted by the Department of Public Health. These guidelines remain in place, but the city ignores them and is back to policing, despite scarce shelter 16/ tinyurl.com/2s36h3zv

Fourth is the sole depiction of homeless activists in the 8,000+ word article, is an anonymous second-hand story from years ago, where an activist prevents a person from taking an ambulance after being treated for their wounds. The author then notes he died a month later 17/

After spending years studying/working with a range of activists and social workers in the city, I found the vast majority of outreach is the opposite: assisting in access to shelter, housing, health and social services, navigating the system, and advocating for benefits. 18/

Second, rather than people being resistant to shelter, services, or aid it is far more frequently the system that is resistant to them. Which it may have been in this case. It may have been rational and healthier not to have taken that ambulance. . 19/

In my research I found people avoid ambulance and hospitalization precisely because of criminalization: street cleaners and police will take their property while they are gone. The hospital provides no storage and EMTs refuse to move belongings 20/ : tinyurl.com/2p8ck3z5

Seeking medical care later or recovering alone may have been relatively better than being discharged after an hour to find your clothing, tent, sleeping bag and other gear to shield against the elements and sickness, or treasured belonging gone 21/

Despite its claims of "progressive" policy failure (many were actually initiated/supported by liberals, libertarians, and republicans) the article concludes with no proactive policy proposals. Sadly this seems to be part of the genre, see @equalityAlec 22/ equalityalec.substack.com/p/the-role-of-…

Whatever the author hopes this piece will do, we cannot re-try punitive policies pushed by liberals that decades of research have proven to fail. Here are alternative proposals from research with SF unhoused individuals, practitioners, and faculty 23/23: tinyurl.com/y4vyjcc8