After the Coalition on Homelessness held a rally and silent march for the end of democracy, the Board of Supes finally passed a budget that raises fees on people who aren’t rich, attacks the unhoused population, and allows the billionaires to escape any sacrifice at all.
The vote on the budget, as with last week, was 10-1, with only Sup. Jackie Fielder in dissent. The vote to allow the mayor to redirect affordable housing money to shelter was 8-3, with only Sups. Shamann Walton, Cheyanne Chen and Fielder in dissent. The vote to force people living in RVs out onto the streets was 9-2, with only Fielder and Walton in dissent.
This is, of course, no surprise: The first vote last week set the scene. But it cements the position that Mayor Lurie has taken, and this board, by a typical 9-2 or 8-3 majority, has accepted:
A city with more than 50 billionaires, that is among the richest cities that have ever existed in human history, has to radically cut services, raise money from fees on working people, and force the victims of all that wealth to live in even greater misery.
The Standard had a good piece today that addressed the lie that removing tent encampments makes the streets safer. A lot of people are still unhoused—and women are terrified and are increasingly surviving sexual assault.
Women living on San Francisco’s streets say they’re experiencing a spike in sexual violence as city leaders wage a crackdown on encampments. For the past year, cleaning crews, cops, and outreach workers have fanned out across the city to dismantle and dispose of tents, quickly improving street conditions but often leaving homeless people to sleep on the sidewalk or in parks, as outreach workers say shelters are constantly at or near capacity.
“I’ve been raped more times than I’ve had consensual sex in the last year,” said a homeless woman named Rebecca. “I’ve been outside in the cold and had some guy offer me shelter, and the next thing I know, I wake up, and he’s raping me.”
Rebecca said she was arrested this year for having a tent but has no way to pay the fine.
“I’m fucking homeless. I don’t have money like that,” she said. “Now I’ve got to go sell my body to pay the fucking citation?”
This is what “resolving” encampments means.
This is what criminalizing poverty means.
This is what the city’s current budget and policies mean.
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From the Coalition:
“The vote to overturn the supermajority requirement to move funding in Prop C not only represents a broken promise to voters, but it puts child and youth housing in serious peril,” said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness. “Historically, the supermajority vote has protected against attempts to cut essential homeless family funds. All in all this is a gut punch to poor families, immigrant communities, and working class San Franciscans.”
“It’s really hard to give stability to my children,” said Maria Guerra. “We’re living in a car, sometimes on the street. I’m suffering emotionally, and my family as well. I’m asking for the city to restore and protect the money for prop C, because we need real housing for families, for everyone.”
That same day, the Board also approved a blanket two-hour RV parking limit across San Francisco—a move that will forcibly displace hundreds of people who rely on their vehicles for survival. The Mayor’s RV ban comes at a time when immigrant communities are already under threat from escalating criminalization and federal deportation efforts. In a city of over 280,000 immigrants, the ban undermines San Francisco’s status as a sanctuary city and pushes immigrant families out of their only form of housing and onto the streets, where they face increased exposure to law enforcement and potential ICE encounters. Rather than offering protection, city leaders chose to compound the dangers and harms experienced by the very people they claim to protect.
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Everything was civil at the Board of Supes. Fielder and Walton and Chen cast their no votes. President Rafael Mandelman announced that the budget had finally passed.
Meanwhile, I got a press release from the Mayor’s Office that reads:
Mayor Daniel Lurie and the Board of Supervisors today secured a $5 million grant from the California Energy Commission to install new electric vehicle charging infrastructure. The grant, along with a $2.8 million match from the city, will fund the installation of 403 new electric vehicle charging ports at city-owned facilities and enable fueling an additional 800 light-duty electric vehicles, equivalent to roughly 40% of the city’s non-public safety light-duty fleet. With the approval of the legislation, the City Administrator’s Office will begin designing plans, purchasing the chargers, and installing them.
Electric cars, other than Teslas, are a good thing. Charging stations are a good thing. Nothing wrong with this—except that on a day when the city passed a brutal budget that will cause horrible suffering, this is the priority: Places for people who can afford nice cars to charge them more easily.
While people who are living in RVs are going to be thrown out on the streets, because the Mayor’s Office can’t find a place for them to park. Apparently, there are no $5 million grants for that.
I know that RVs aren’t a permanent solution to homelessness, and some neighborhoods complain about trash and dangerous conditions. I live in Bernal Heights, and for years, a few RVs were parked beside the hill, on a street where nobody else parks, in front of nobody’s house or business. If there was a place to park an RV where it would impact nobody, this was it. I walked (and at times ran, in my slow old-man way) my dog by them every day, and never had a problem. They were families doing the best they could; there was no garbage on the streets. No violence, no danger.
At one point, when I was jogging up the hill, two cops came by in a car and pulled over. They asked if I lived in the neighborhood. I told them I did. They asked if I was having any problems with the people in the RVs (as if they were preparing some sort of complaint).
I told them I was fine with the residents; they weren’t doing anything wrong. The street was clean; they took care of the place. “Okay,” the cop said. “But if you have any problems, you call us right away.”
I didn’t. But someone did. They are all gone now. I hope they are not living on the streets, in danger for their health and lives, but I suspect they are.
