OPINION: Hopefully, the hot rhetoric regarding San Francisco’s “criminalization” of homelessness will recede as City leaders and agencies implement reforms following a recent court order.
Forty years ago, The Supreme Court affirmed that the Constitution does not permit “punishing a person for his poverty.”
An underappreciated part of Ryu’s order states that San Francisco’s policies toward the homeless were not in question. Both the judge and the plaintiffs, the Coalition on Homelessness, agreed that The City’s written procedures for clearing, or “resolving,” street encampments and SFPD’s guidance to its officers are constitutional. City policies are not the problem, but rather its failure to uphold those policies in practice.
The plaintiffs, however, presented evidence of a disturbing pattern of failures to comply with those policies: advance warnings not given; personal property callously discarded; access to shelter limited, ambiguous, or conditional; and enforcement actions taken by Department of Public Works or SFPD against homeless individuals even when offers of housing had not been made.
But the bracing reality of life on the streets for San Francisco’s most vulnerable residents does not mean the City’s attitude is one of pitilessness or contempt. The City’s Homeless Outreach Team offers services, support and information to homeless individuals on a 24/7 basis, reporting more than 38,000 such outreach encounters over the past 12 months. Following new investments, City shelters now include regular visits by nurse clinicians providing residents with improved access to medical attention.
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