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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_San_Francisco

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeless_Bill_of_Rights#California

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Coalition_for_the_Homeless

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_housing

Street Sheet

Emergence in the late 70's and early 80's
The prevalence of homelessness emerged both in San Francisco and the United States in general in the late 70's and early 80's. Jennifer Wolch identifies some of these factors to include the loss of jobs from deindustrialization, a rapid rise in housing prices, and the elimination of social welfare programs. The economic shift from production oriented jobs in factories towards the service industry resulted in a loss of wages as factory jobs were more lucrative. This decrease in wages was compounded by the fact housing prices continued to rise, with average real estate value in the Bay Area increasing by 100% between 1984 and 1990. As these economic changes were occurring, social events also impacted the city's homeless population. The deinstitutionalization movement of the 70's had succeeded, and saw the mass transfer of mental health patients to community based clinics. This transfer was not smooth, as many previously institutionalized patients found themselves back in society with less support than they were accustomed to and few possessed the professional skills or resources needed to successfully transition. The failure of deinstitutionalization is often attributed to the cuts to mental health services made at the same time, with mental health budgets decreasing by a third between 1978 and 1982. As a result, the homeless population has had a disproportionate rate of mental health needs ever since the 80's.

Feinstein Years (1978-1988)
Dianne Feinstein, was the first mayor of San Francisco that had to address the homeless issue. Her administration operated under the belief that the growing homeless problem was a temporary issue that was an effect of a recent recession. The response to the problem was to open temporary shelters that would provide a sandwich and a bed for a night with the hope that those served could find permanent housing soon. This program proved to be underfunded and unprepared for the demand of residents and the homeless population continued to grow.

Art Agnos Administration (1988-1992)
Feinstein's successor, Art Agnos, took a more involved approach to address the homeless problem as part of a broader progressive mayoral campaign. Agnos' view of homelessness was that it was the result of structural inequalities and could only be resolved by intervention from state welfare programs. Under his direction, two multi-service buildings that provided mental health counseling and substance abuse support in addition to housing were opened to benefit the homeless community.

Camp Agnos
Despite Agnos' official support for the homeless, his administration was not without some controversy. A group of young anarcho-activists, Food Not Bombs, began to distribute free vegetarian meals to homeless individuals in parks around the Haight, which was opposed by a group representing developers and business interests. Tensions between activists, who argued they were just providing aid to the residents the city didn 't support, and the city eventually escalated in the city arresting activists and confiscating their supplies. Clashes between the city and activists continued off and on over the course of the following year, until confrontations over the usage of Civic Center Park escalated to the occupation of the park by a mix of activists and members from the homeless community estimated to number between 300 and 350 in all and eventually became known as "Camp Agnos". Complaints from the protesters included the city's inaction to address the growing home, lack of affordable housing options, and the ineffectiveness of existing shelters. One homeless protester said of the services provided, ''A shelter is like being in prison. There's no freedom of movement'' and complained of the inability of being able to use shelters with her husband, opting instead to sleep on the streets so they could be together. Under pressure from the Board of Supervisors and the negative publicity, Agnos reluctantly ordered police to ticket and arrest those who remained in Camp Agnos.

Jordan Crackdown (1992-1996)
Former police chief Frank Jordan won the 1992 mayoral race on a platform of bringing public order back to the city and promised to return public space back to its residents from the homeless and youth activists. Jordan sought to crackdown on the disorderly and troublesome activists who he thought were dealt with too leniently by the former administration. Jordan's four years saw 700 arrests and citations given to the Food Not Bombs activists, prompting Amnesty International to respond:"'Amnesty International is concerned that the Food Not Bombs activists may have been targeted on account of their beliefs and effectively prohibited from exercising their right to freedom of expression, assembly, and the right to impart information. If this were found to be the case, the City of San Francisco would be in breach of international law and Amnesty International would adopt those imprisoned as 'Prisoners of Conscience' and work for their unconditional release.'"

Matrix Program
Jordan's homeless policy extended beyond confronting Food Not Bombs members and their homeless allies. Jordan introduced the Matrix Program, which expanded the role police had in tackling homelessness by increasing the amount of citations given to homeless individuals for city misdemeanors, with 6,000 citations issued in the first six months of the program's initiation. Matrix teams of city police usually accompanied with social service workers to systematically sweep the city block by block to engage members of the homeless community and dismantle homeless encampments. The initial reception from city residents was mostly positive with 75% of calls to the Mayor's office praising the crackdown as a needed step to clean the city up.

Critics of Matrix accused the program of using resources on punitive enforcement of quality of life laws that generally only effect the homeless community, like sleeping in public and loitering, instead of promoting services to aid the homeless. Mass citations to the homeless, critics argued, was counter-productive since those in extreme poverty lacked the funds to pay the fines. Judges would respond to unpaid fines by issuing arrest warrants, resulting in the incarceration of homeless individuals when the same resources used to jail the inmates could instead go towards expanding shelter services. Additional critiques lobbied at the program centered around the use of police as social service workers. Matrix police were authorized to give psychological field tests to determine if a homeless person was acting erratically and were the deciding force on whether or not to bring the individual to the hospital for mental services. In 1994, homeless rights advocates succeeded in convincing the board of supervisors to pass a resolution opposing the Matrix Program, with Jordan's response being to double down by expanding the program's sweeps to Golden Gate Park. Though the Matrix program persisted, public opinion shifted against it for being too harsh and Jordan failed to secure a second term.

Willie Brown (1996-2004)
Willie Brown, San Francisco's first African-American mayor, won a run-off against Frank Jordan with a campaign promise to end the Matrix Program. Upon assuming office, Brown suspended the Matrix Program and ordered a judge to revoke all citations and warrants stemming from the program. Despite this action to end Matrix, citations issued to the homeless community for quality of life violations, a highly criticized aspect of Matrix, increased. The last year of Matrix saw 11,000 of these kind of citations, which rose to 16,000 in Brown's first year and soared to 23,000 by 1999.

The militarized clearance of the homeless encampments within Golden Gate Park, which had an estimated population of 1,000 throughout the park, featured the deployment of police helicopters equipped with infra-red cameras, demonstrated Brown's commitment to his promise: ""You tell me where the camp is, and in 24 hours it won't be there". These citations were less publicized than Jordan's Matrix program and considered to be routine policing instead of any homeless oriented policy, allowing Brown to avoid some of the negative publicity that plagued his predecessor. Not all of Brown's positions were detrimental to the homeless community as he successfully mobilized support to secure a $100 million government bond to expand affordable housing and his support for universal healthcare was a central tenet to his platform, though its implementation was never manifested.

Riding a robust economy and operating under a patronage system that benefited his allies and restricted political opponents, Brown was able to secure a second term despite policies that alienated his liberal base, including his harsher than expected treatment of the city's homeless.

Gavin Newsom (2004-2010)
Gavin Newsom, a previous member of the city's board of supervisors, succeeded Brown after running as a Democratic centrist to become San Francisco's youngest mayor in the past century. Given the ineffective steps taken to address homelessness over the past two decades, Newsom sought to implement wholesale change on how the city interacted with its homeless community as he thought programs needed more resources and oversight. With Newsom's support, the city passed two measures, propositions M and N, to change homeless policy. Proposition M expanded quality of life laws to include the prohibition of "aggressive" panhandling and panhandling near ATMs, parking lots, or buses. Though this was another quality of life law and included citations, priorities were made to funnel offenders to substance-abuse or mental health treatment as much as possible.

Care Not Cash (Prop N)
A cornerstone of Newsom's homeless legislation was actually passed with his support while he was still on the board of supervisors in 2002. Proposition N, better known as Care Not Cash, was passed by the city with 60% approval with the goal to overhaul the city's welfare system by cutting General Assistance payments to eligible adults from $395 a month (one of the highest rates in California) to $57 a month and to use the savings to expand care services for the city's homeless residents. Newsom claimed that using resources for services would prove to be more effective at supporting homeless residents instead of handouts, arguing that cash handouts encouraged homeless individuals to flock to the city from neighboring counties, along with increased usage of emergency medical services and crime rates on the weekends the cash was dispersed. His claim that handouts cause crime rates to spike and increased hospitalization has been disputed by some academic studies conducted in San Francisco which have found an inverse relationship between recipients of monetary subsidies and risky behaviors such as substance usage. Care Not Cash resulted in approximately 1,200 homeless individuals finding shelter via the usage of Single Room Occupancy (SRO) units in hotels throughout the city, however those that did not receive housing found life on the streets even more difficult due to the sharp funding cuts. Critics of the program accuse it of having exclusive standards to participate in, thereby excluding large segments of the homeless population, as well as using substandard SRO housing units, which often lack private bathrooms and food prep areas, as permanent housing.

Other Programs
Other measures introduced included Homeward Bound and Operation Outreach, as well as the introduction of new sit-lie ordinances. Homeward Bound was a program to pay for bus tickets to send homeless individuals out of the city so long as they could prove they had a place to be received at their destination. This was met with resistance from critics like the Coalition for Homelessness who accused the program of not solving anything and was just dumping the problem off to other counties. Mayor Newsom argued that "the vast majority of people that are out on the sidewalks are not from San Francisco originally" and would be better served by being returned to supportive family members, although findings from San Francisco's 2007 homeless census found that 69% of the homeless population prior to becoming homeless.

Operation Outreach was instituted in 2004 and, echoing some of the philosophies behind the Matrix program of the Jordan era, utilized police officers to enforce quality of life laws. This program differed from the Matrix program in that it involved a diverse amount of agencies with the purpose of connecting the homeless community with services as the primary goal, with the quality of life citations a secondary result. The effectiveness of the outreach aspect of the program is disputable, as the Coalition found that only 24 of 204 individuals surveyed received a referral to a program or service in their last encounter with the police.

In his last year, Newsom expanded the quality of life laws within the city by successfully passing Proposition L in a public vote, which banned city residents from sitting or lying on sidewalks between the hours of 7 a.m. and 11 p.m.

Quality of life laws
San Francisco’s policies enacted towards homeless individuals have been criticized by homeless rights advocates and was listed as the eleventh least desirable city in the U.S to be homeless. There are 23 city infractions that are known as “quality of life” crimes because they criminalize actions that would be legal on private property, thereby disproportionately affecting homeless individuals. Examples include the prohibition of sleeping in public, overnight parking restrictions, and anti-loitering ordinances. The city enforces these laws by issuing an average of over 3,000 citations a year. The price of enforcing quality of life crimes for San Francisco was $20.6 million in 2015. These citations typically involve fines that can be difficult for impoverished homeless residents to pay, leading to only 7% of fines paid in 2000. Unpaid fines can often result in arrests and criminal records, which makes it more difficult to gain employment and encourages avoidance of future contact with social services due to fear of punishment. Quality of life crimes have become so prevalent that the San Francisco Police Department launched Operation Outreach in 2004 to specialize in homeless related crime. The program’s intended purpose is to collaborate with other city agencies like the Department of Public Health and the Department of Public Works connect members of the homeless community with social services and resources.

Reception
When juxtaposed with other street newspapers, Daniele Torck recognized Street Sheets as being the only one to "give a wide platform to homeless person's protests and criticisms". Distribution of the paper as a means of empowering the homeless is not embraced by everyone. Critics claim that the language used in the paper overly relies on pathos appeals and the act of vending forces vendors to conform to the public conception of homelessness to move papers are critiques from those who believe street papers reinforce stereotypes of homelessness.

Coalition on Homelessness
The Coalition on Homelessness is a homeless advocacy and social justice organization that focuses on creating long-term solutions to homelessness, poverty, and housing issues in San Francisco, California. The Coalition was founded in 1987 by a collaboration of San Francisco service providers, homeless people, and activists.

The best recognized project of the Coalition on Homelessness is San Francisco's homeless newspaper, the Street Sheet, but its work has resulted in many changes to the City's policies with regard to homeless people (such as the Shelter Grievance Policy, which gives homeless shelter residents legal recourse when ejected from shelters), and in the creation of new services in San Francisco (such as the Community Housing Partnership), which provides long-term affordable housing for formerly homeless individuals). The Coalition is also active in producing reports on the struggles homeless people face, researching the impact of city ordinances, traumatic experiences from shelters, as well as annual reports on the status of the homeless community.

The Coalition operates on a bottom-up grassroots organizing model. It participates in Federal policy advocacy through the Western Regional Advocacy Project, of which it is a founding member.