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Here’s Why SF Homeless Advocates Are Glad Lurie Ditched Push for 1,500 Shelter Beds

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“He’s getting constituent pressure. The visible homelessness signs have clearly been a priority of his,” she said. But of the RV ban, she added, “It’s not as much about actually reducing homelessness, unfortunately.”

The strategy probably won’t significantly decrease the number of unhoused San Franciscans, Evans said, but it could increase the strain on shelters and housing resources. Many people living in vehicles also won’t likely be willing to accept the housing offered.

“That is not really a rational choice for somebody to make to switch out of a vehicle where they have privacy, a private bathroom, and move into a congregate shelter where they’re in a very crowded situation,” Evans said.

“If we don’t have those resources, I don’t know that that should be our priority,” she said.

Both she and Friedenbach also worry about the mayor’s request for the Board of Supervisors to weaken its legislative check on Proposition C spending, which is mostly aimed at homeless family housing.

San Francisco Homeless Outreach Team members look for vehicles and RVs serving as shelters during a point-in-time homeless population count in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood in San Francisco on Jan. 30, 2024. Teams spread out through San Francisco to count sheltered and unsheltered people experiencing homelessness on a single night. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)

The measure, which instituted an additional tax on businesses and people who make more than $50 million a year, pblocked in 2018, creating the Our City, Our Home Fund to help pay for access to permanent housing, with large portions of the revenue funding family and youth housing.

Lurie’s original budget proposal this spring would have used unspent money and interest earned on the Our City, Our Home Fund to fund additional adult shelter beds, but he faced pushback from homelessness advocates who said the focus on young people was important.

“Children, when they experience homelessness, are more likely to become homeless themselves later in life if they experience that homelessness longer than six months,” Evans said.

After negotiations, the revised budget retains much of the family homelessness support, but Lurie has still asked supervisors to remove a requirement that a supermajority of the board approve changes in how he allocates leftover Our City, Our Home funding in future years.

“For the past three years, mayors keep proposing moving money … three years ago, it was $60 million from family and youth housing. This year, $88.5 million being taken away primarily from family youth housing and moving it over primarily to single adult shelter,” Friedenbach said ahead of a rally opposing the policy change, which was scheduled for a vote on Tuesday.

“Families have doubled in San Francisco in homelessness, and this is where we’re failing and we need the most resources,” she said.

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