Homelessness surges in San Francisco while tech's richest grow richer
San Francisco saw a 17% increase in its homeless population since its last homeless count, with numbers rising to levels that haven’t been recorded on these streets in 17 years.
The increase comes amid an IPO boom in a tech industry that has the city’s rich growing richer, the wealth disparities starker and the cost of living more unaffordable than ever.
“The cost of housing hasn’t gone down, so why does anyone expect that the amount of people experiencing homelessness would go down?” said Kelley Cutler, the human rights organizer for the Coalition on Homelessness.
The city released a preliminary summary of its one-night street count on Thursday, tallying the number of homeless people at 8,011. The uptick, according to the mayor’s office, came primarily from people living in their cars, who totaled 68% of those counted.
San Francisco conducts its homeless count every two years, as is required by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. The number is believed to be a low estimate, as federal guidelines for homelessness are broader than the city’s definitions, and the city will release a more accurate count in July. In 2017, the count at this time was 6,858 while the later tally came out to 7,499.
This year’s count showed a 14% drop in veteran homelessness and a 10% drop in youth homelessness.
“The initial results of this count show we have more to do to provide more shelter, more exits from homelessness, and to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place,” the San Francisco mayor, London Breed, said in a statement. “The results around our work focusing on youth and veteran homelessness are evidence that when we target our investments, we can make a difference for those living on our streets. As I have been saying for years, we desperately need to build more housing, especially badly needed affordable housing and supportive housing, because we know that high housing costs contribute to an increase in homelessness.
“We know that homelessness is not just an issue in San Francisco, as other counties in the Bay Area and across the state are experiencing similar circumstances, and we all need to work together on regional and statewide solutions to address this crisis.”
In November, the city passed a measure that will implement an average 0.5% gross receipts tax for companies with revenues over $50m. The measure was hotly contested within the tech industry, with tech billionaires publicly clashing over the industry’s role in creating the economic disparities driving the homeless crisis.
Proposition C is expected to raise an estimated $250m-$300m in additional revenue for homeless services, but is currently tied up in the courts.
The city has promised to increase the number of shelter beds by 1,000, but one proposed homeless shelter, approved by authorities in the city’s waterfront neighborhood, will also be tied up in legal disputes by the neighborhood residents who raised more than $101,000in a crowdfunding campaign to pay for an attorney to fight the construction of the Navigation Center.