Prop. Q to clear camps starts to show impact
Remember those quaint days in 2016 when San Franciscans were actually worried about local ballot measures? Yeah, me neither.
It seems like eons ago that the city was hemming and hawing about Supervisor Mark Farrell’s Proposition Q on the November ballot. If only that were our most pressing political problem now! The measure was intended to give city officials the authority to clear homeless tent encampments if they gave camp dwellers a 24-hour warning and an offer of a shelter bed.
Largely dismissed as symbolic, it nevertheless passed muster with 52 percent of voters who were clearly eager for anything — anything! — to reduce the sprawling, dangerous camps that have taken up entire sidewalks in many neighborhoods around San Francisco.
Prop. Q — now referred to as Section 169 after its place in the police code — wasn’t used at all for the
first half of this year, seeming to confirm it wasn’t worth much.
But it turns out, it is useful in some circumstances. The city’s homeless outreach team has issued 172 notices under Section 169 since June 29.
“These early results are exactly what we hoped for,” Farrell said.
The notices were all handed out near the city’s fourth Navigation Center — a homeless shelter with case managers and relaxed rules — on South Van Ness Avenue. The center opened in June with 120 beds, which meant there was plenty of space for campers nearby.
Scott Walton, outreach manager at the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, said his teams made up to three offers of a shelter bed per person — and only issued the official notice if the answer was “No” each time. That meant the teams then had authority to show up 24 hours later, sometimes with police and public works crews, to force the issue.
None of the notices actually resulted in the forced removal of tents; 159 recipients of the notices agreed to move into shelter, and the rest packed up their belongings and left the camps on their own.
“The HOT team moved through the area and encouraged people to come in for at least a respite stay at the Navigation Center,” said Walton. “If they chose not to come in, we explained to them we were working on creating an area and maintaining an area with no tents.”
Walton said Section 169 is “only one of our many tools” to deal with encampments and pointed out that it was an unusual circumstance because there aren’t usually 120 brandnew shelter beds ready for people.
“You couldn’t blanket the city with these notices unless you had the full number of placements ready for the next day and the physical ability to get everybody in,” he said.
Jeff Kositsky, the head of the homeless department, never took an official position during last fall’s campaign, but he always made it clear he wasn’t wild about Prop. Q. Now he’s come around — a little. He said that outreach teams have found it useful, but that it will never be the department’s “go-to tool.” He said traditional outreach and street counseling are usually more effective.
“It’s more of a last resort in many ways,” he said.
He said these types of initiatives are “making changes at the margins,” but that hopefully all of the city’s tools for moving homeless people inside can add up to real change.
Speaking of real change, Farrell dropped plenty of it to get Prop. Q passed. The rumored mayoral contender for 2019 — who seems to want to make homelessness a signature issue — raised more than $733,000 to ensure the measure’s passage.
If you divide that by the 172 notices it’s resulted in so far, that’s a whopping $4,261.62 apiece. Enough to rent a onebedroom apartment for a month — even in this city.
San Francisco is famous for its protests. But you’ve got to hand it to Ken Maley for putting a unique spin on his oneman protest the other day.
Maley, a media consultant living on Telegraph Hill, is sick of the tourist buses that park illegally near the North Beach Library, taking up numerous parking spaces and never paying the meters. The drivers just sit there while tourists shop, gaze at the twisty bit of Lombard Street and relieve themselves in the library’s bathrooms.
Earlier this month, Maley reached his breaking point. He spotted a bus driver in an empty bus, smoking a cigarette and reading. He told the driver to move. The driver, you’ll be shocked to learn, didn’t readily comply.
“He just got really belligerent,” Maley recalled. “He gave me a few expletives.”
Maley then dialed the nonemergency police number and planted himself in the street, right in front of the bus, to wait for the police to respond. The driver got out of the bus, demanding that Maley move. Maley wouldn’t budge. That’s when the driver spotted a police officer across the street and went over to tell him what was going on.
The police officer came over, words were exchanged, and the officer eventually cited both the driver and Maley. Maley’s citation comes with a $196 fee for “pedestrian in the roadway.”
“He said, ‘I understand your motive, but I don’t advise it,’ ” Maley recalled. “I said, ‘Thank you very much. I look forward to seeing you in court because you’re so hot!’ ”
Bet you didn’t see that coming. Maley then went on at length about the police officer’s good looks, but I’m not a romance novelist so suffice it to say some of the adjectives used were beefy and lovely.
Maley is due in court on Tuesday. Often, if the officer fails to appear, the citation is dismissed. Maley, however, is very much hoping the officer shows up.