CITY SEEKS REVERSAL OF BAN ON CLEARING HOMELESS

Tensions flared Wednesday as lawyers for San Francisco argued in appellate court that the city can no longer maintain safe, clean streets while trying to get homeless people indoors after a federal judge banned the city from clearing tent encampments until there are more shelter beds than homeless individuals.

San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu said people are refusing offers of shelter more frequently because of the injunction and that it would cost at least $1.5 billion to house every person who is currently homeless. The order has drawn furious responses from city leaders, including Mayor London Breed, who joined more than 200 people outside the federal courthouse Wednesday to urge the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to vacate the order.

“We are compassionate, we are supportive, we continue to help people, but this is not the way,” she said. “‘Anything goes in San Francisco’ is not the way.”

But attorneys for homeless residents who sued the city argued before the panel that the district court judge was correct to order the city to stop forcing homeless people to move their belongings and tents until there are thousands more shelter beds available. They intend to ask the same judge at a hearing today to enforce the injunction.

“There are 3,000 shelter beds in the city for 7,000 or more unhoused people who are sleeping outside every night because they have no choice in the matter,” said Zal Shroff, interim legal director at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, at Wednesday’s rally.

San Francisco officials say their encampment operations allow outreach workers to connect homeless people to services while cleaning areas soiled with trash, used needles and spoiled food. Breed and others also say it is inhumane to allow unhygienic encampments to fester.

Advocates for homeless people say the encampment operations merely serve to harass homeless people as there are few services and appropriate shelter beds available. They say it is cruel and counterproductive to criminalize people for not having a place to live with affordable housing so scarce.