Future Directions for San Fracisco Homeless Policy

Future Directions for San Francisco’s Homeless Policy
by Darren Noy
(originally published in STREET SHEET)


In his inaugural address, Mayor Newsom called on San Franciscans to move beyond the contentious stalemate in homeless politics which has paralyzed them for years, and to work together to find common ground and practical solutions to homelessness. Newsom’s call struck a resonant chord with many across the political spectrum who believe that homelessness in San Francisco has been “overpoliticized,” and that a major stumbling block to resolving homelessness is the lack of a cohesive citywide homeless plan.

In the coming year, there is indeed an opportunity for those involved in homeless policy to develop productive working relationships and to collaboratively create an effective homeless plan. However, there is also a strong possibility that the city will continue to fracture in bitter dispute about issues such as: whether to use increased coercive measures; how to address the most visible homeless; the accountability of homeless service providers; cash benefits; and whether supportive housing is in itself enough to resolve homelessness.

If San Franciscans and Mayor Newsom want to find a way to work together, rather than to spiral into further conflict, they must begin by understanding both the points of commonality and difference around homelessness in the community. They must understand not only what specific policies people support, but more importantly how various sections of the community understand: what causes homelessness; how homelessness affects the city; and how San Francisco’s homeless system has been working. I have recently authored a report which presents such an analysis based on over five dozen extensive interviews with representatives from every major sector of San Francisco homeless politics. This report, Homelessness in San Francisco: Understanding a Common Vision that Will Build a Homeless Policy that Works, is available online at http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~dnoy

Perspectives on Homelessness in San Francisco


While San Francisco’s homeless policy arena is commonly portrayed as a fragmented and polarized mess where no one agrees with anyone and nothing ever gets done, the majority of organizations involved in San Francisco homeless policy actually broadly agree about the causes of and solutions to homelessness. In particular, organizations on the center and on the left of the policy arena — including service providers, homeless advocates, and the government agencies directly involved in providing homeless services —understand homelessness from a systemic perspective. That is, they focus on the role of economic and housing systems in causing homelessness, and, on society’s failure to provide adequate health care, substance abuse treatment, and other social benefits. Organizations on the center and left are more likely than the right to discuss the situation of homelessness families, as well as, to point to the role of race, schools, foster care, and childcare in causing homelessness. These organizations broadly agree on the ineffectiveness of social control or punitive measures in resolving homelessness; and they believe that San Francisco homeless programs are generally doing good work, but are underfunded.

In stark contrast, organizations on the right of the policy field — including business groups, public safety and cleanliness organizations, and moderate-conservative neighborhood associations — often focus on individual deficiencies, such as substance abuse and choosing to be homeless, as the main cause of homelessness. Many on the right believe that systemic causes do not play an important role in causing homelessness. The most prevalent understanding about homelessness on the right is the belief that homeless people are responsible for falling quality of life, declining business for merchants, and adverse effects on the tourist industry. Because many on the right believe that homelessness stems primarily from individual factors/individual deficiencies and because the right believes that homeless people harm the community, the right advocates increasing social control of homeless people, coercing homeless people into services or institutions, and stricter enforcement of quality of life laws. Finally, organizations on the right often see the city’s homeless system as a hopelessly inefficient bureaucracy that wastes millions of taxpayer dollars. Some even believe that service providers actively try to maintain homelessness in order to sustain their organization’s revenues.

The stark cleavage between the center-left view of homelessness versus the right view is complicated by the fact that the right has twice the political influence of the left. So while the center generally agrees with the left about how to understand homelessness, the center is also dependent on the greater power and resources of the right. The center’s dependence on the resources of the right is especially pronounced because many in the center feel that the fundamental obstacle to resolving homelessness is a lack of sufficient funds. The center is caught in between the power and resources of the right on one hand, and, on the other hand, agreements of perspective with the left.

As a result, the center — and indeed, the whole policy field — is torn apart, fractured and fragmented. The latent unity and common beliefs of the center-left — which could form the basis of a cohesive homeless plan — are thus overshadowed by a sense of polarization and division in the community. In turn, the city bureaucracy is left without a coherent approach to homelessness and with fragmented and murky policymaking forums. In fact, the city bureaucracy has the least coherent viewpoints on homelessness of all the sectors of San Francisco’s homeless policy field; and city agencies are more concerned with the detrimental effects of “overpolticization” of homelessness and incohesion of homeless policy than any other sector.

Amidst this fragmentation, one program model that is growing in popularity across the political spectrum is supportive housing. Supportive housing combines the provision of affordable housing with on-site support services by placing caseworkers and other support staff in housing developments. The idea that supportive housing is the answer to homelessness is most prevalent amongst organizations in the center of the policy arena. The supportive housing model can be seen as an attempt by these organizations to broker an ideological compromise between factions which push systemic focused understandings of homelessness, and those organizations which push individual and social control focused understandings of homelessness. Because supportive housing involves an increase in housing units, it resonates with the systemic view of the center-left. At the same time supportive housing places homeless people within a setting where they can be overseen and managed by caseworkers, and it therefore resonates with the right’s view of the need for increased social control.

But the supportive housing model is not without contention. Critics on the left point out that resolving homelessness is not only about finding a place to put those who already are on the streets, but also about assuring the security of those low income people who are one step away from being homeless. Supportive housing may be the best answer for those who are currently on the street and who have serious personal challenges, but unless broader systemic insufficiencies are resolved, more people will continue to end up on the street — even as those who are currently homeless are transitioned into supportive housing units. Water may be scooped out of the hull of the sinking boat, but the leak will not be plugged. Some on the left also claim that not everyone needs on-site support services, and to put those who do not need these services into supportive housing essentially institutionalizes them. Critics on the right point out that San Francisco’s homeless system is already so unaccountable and wasteful that before adding another layer to it, such as additional supportive housing, serious cuts and measures of accountability must take place.

Building a Policy that Works


If San Francisco is to develop a cohesive homeless plan, it must begin by strengthening the sense of commonality amongst those organizations in the center and left which generally agree with each other, but which have been deeply alienated from each other. These organizations include city departments, foundations, small and large service providers, homeless advocates, community activists, housing developers, and homeless research organizations. Since these center and left organizations share such similar conceptions of homelessness, and since their conceptions starkly contrast with those of the right, they should make their initial primary focus strengthening their own alliances. If Mayor Newsom is serious about solving homelessness and finding common ground, he will begin by encouraging these organizations to come together to find points of commonality.

Bridgemaking across the entire community will be most effective only after the center and the left have strengthened their own alliance, worked out their commonalties and differences, and are thus able to sit down and confer with the right from a solid and cohesive position. As an analogy, consider a group of business people interested in developing a joint enterprise. They would probably begin by first building trust and mutual understanding amongst themselves, and developing a coherent business plan together amongst themselves. Only then would they take that plan to investors or potential shareholders. In much the same way, center-left organizations - which are the ones most involved on a day-to-day level implementing homeless policy and interacting with homeless people — ought to begin by focusing on developing trust, mutual understanding, and a coherent approach to homelessness amongst themselves.

The type of plan that center-left organizations would consent upon would probably be one that increases affordable housing, employment opportunities, access to health and treatment services, and supportive housing. In addition to addressing visible homelessness by increasing access to services and housing, this plan would probably also include provisions for the less visible homeless families, women, and youth, as well as, for people who are one step away from homelessness and for immigrants. Center-left organizations would probably also develop a plan that would obligate the city to resolve long waiting lists for substance abuse treatment and housing before increasing social control or criminal measures targeting homeless people. Finally, a center-left plan would probably integrally involve homeless people and service providers in the development of city homeless policy.

The challenge that such a center-left plan would provide Mayor Newsom would be to hold his supporters on the right at bay as the plan is being devised, while also ensuring that the plan addresses the right’s most important concerns, including the cost-effectiveness and accountability of homeless services, visible homelessness, and the lack of strong leadership around homeless policy. A center-left plan could indeed address the main concerns of the right. To begin with, just the very act of developing a cohesive homeless plan with commonly agreed upon goals and implementation measures is an important first step to addressing the right’s concerns about accountability and the lack of strong leadership. Creating such a plan is also the first step to providing real solutions to the problem of visible homelessness by increasing community support for homeless people, including access to housing, good jobs, health care, treatment, and safety net benefits. Such a plan would also address concerns about the cost of addressing homelessness. There is growing consensus across the political arena that providing services and housing is less expensive than emergency responses to homelessness, such as hospitalization or jail.

One possible sticking point to a center-left plan, however, is the belief that some powerful players on the right have that San Francisco is a “homeless magnet.” The “homeless magnet theory” posits that out-of-town homeless people are attracted to the city’s generous services. From this perspective, increasing services and affordable housing would only make homelessness worse. The magnet theory, however, is also deeply contested, and many people in San Francisco claim that there is no magnet from homeless services. Perhaps, the best solution to this debate would be for those who believe the magnet theory to push for increases in state and federal funding of homeless programs. If there is a magnet, then the best way to stop it is not to guard the borders of the city from homeless people or to reduce services in San Francisco, but to ensure that other communities throughout the region and country have a high level of resources, attention, and commitment to resolving homelessness. Then there would be no need for homeless people to look elsewhere for assistance.

The idea that more federal and state funding of homeless services is needed is one of the few ideas that can be found in every faction of the city’s homeless policy arena. Moreover, many San Franciscans believe that homelessness is so large an issue, it is simply beyond the scope of the city to solve. If this belief is correct, and homelessness truly is not tractable on a local level, that might explain why homeless policy debates in the city so often move away from question about how to ideally solve homelessness towards questions about how to control the harms caused by visible homelessness. It might also explain why San Francisco’s homeless policy arena has become so fragmented and contentious. As many dedicated and intelligent people working within San Francisco find that they lack the resources and power necessary to resolve homelessness on a local level, they turn on each other and descend into a spiral of accusation.

Whether San Francisco can or cannot entirely resolve homelessness on its own, the sentiment across the community is that it could be doing a better job than it is now. The first and most important step to devising a cohesive homeless policy in San Francisco is to strengthen the relationships, trust, and sense of commonality amongst the city’s agencies and non-profit organizations directly working to address homelessness. Short of a stronger center-left alliance and a center-left homeless plan, the city will most likely continue to fracture in a spiral of bitter and unresolvable conflict.

Developing a plan based on a common center-left systemic understanding of homelessness may not please everyone and will not end all conflict. Developing a center-left alliance based on a systemic perspective will not be easy as the resources and the influence the right wields is large. The real test in the coming months, of whether such an alliance can form, will be the degree to which organizations in the center are willing to reach out to the left despite the resource and political pressures the center feels to move to the right. The center’s ability to form a stronger alliance with the left may in part depend on the degree to which Mayor Newsom is willing to encourage them to do so, as well as politically cover for them as they do.

While such a scenario may seem like political absurdity, it may be the best hope for San Francisco’s homeless; and as Newsom himself has implied many times, the real question is not politics, the real question is about the men, women, children, and families who are homeless in San Francisco.

For a more in depth discussion of this issue, see the report, Homelessness in San Francisco: Understanding a Common Vision that Will Build a Homeless Policy that Works, online at
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~dnoy