Providing affordable housing for an estimated 6,500 homeless people has been San Francisco’s knottiest social policy problem since the first shelter opened here nearly 30 years ago.
Over the last decade the city has spent more than a billion dollars on housing, redevelopment projects and health services in an attempt to “solve” homelessness. Before he left office in January, Mayor Gavin Newsom told the San Francisco Chronicle that he had found housing for more than 12,000 people. But advocacy groups backed by state audits and independent research, dispute that claim. A recent poll by the Chamber of Commerce showed that nearly half of city residents believe homelessness has, in fact, worsened. Meanwhile, the biannual homeless census count continues to swell.
News reporting on the homeless community has been sporadic, superficial and sensationalized. The San Francisco Public Press will examine the underlying tensions between the policies that aim to assist San Francisco’s poorest and those that encourage economic expansion.
The Public Press reporters covering this beat will seek to build relationships of trust in a community that is changing and struggling to meet the basic needs of its people. They will add context to a complex problem of overlapping political, socioeconomic and human rights dimensions.
The reporters will investigate continuing plans to redevelop mid-Market Street, the lack of simple sanitation services such as bathrooms and running water, the proposed Tenderloin Museum and Newsom’s Care Not Cash program aimed at diverting people off the streets.
