Trump’s plan for DC homeless is giving San Francisco deja vu

For years, visitors to San Francisco have been struck by the number of rough sleepers and tent encampments on sidewalks.

But one year into a more aggressive crackdown, many streets look very different. Now President Donald Trump – who has mocked the city for its problems – is taking a page out of San Francisco’s playbook.

Starting last week, federal agents have been clearing out homeless encampments in the nation’s capital, making Washington DC the latest city to levy penalties on people for sleeping rough.

The move to criminalise homeless camping began last summer, following a landmark US Supreme Court ruling that found it was constitutional to issue citations to homeless people and arrest them, even in the absence of shelter.

Soon, cities and counties across the country were issuing citations.

In California, Governor Gavin Newsom – a frequent Trump foil and former San Francisco mayor – quickly made clearing encampments a priority, paving the way for San Francisco’s dramatic transformation.

Yet while local businesses and some residents say this has helped remove a blight on what’s considered one of the country’s most beautiful cities, others question how effective it has really been in solving the issue.

Homelessness, and specifically tent encampments, had become an increasingly polarising issue in many cities across the country during the pandemic – but especially in San Francisco.

Struggles with mental health and addiction have long landed people on the city’s streets. So, too, has an acute shortage of housing in one of the nation’s most expensive markets.

In the 2010s, the juxtaposition of tech wealth and visible poverty grew increasingly stark. An app called “SnapCrap” in 2018 – allowing people to photograph feces on streets and sidewalks – gained wide publicity. Its founder, a recent arrival from Vermont, said he’d been shocked by the volume of human waste on the city’s sidewalks.

The pandemic only made matters worse, both because of economic challenges and because some people experiencing homelessness became afraid to live in shelters, where Covid was rampant.

Between October 2019 and April 2020, the number of tents increased almost three-fold, from 419 to 1108, according to data from San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management.

In order to combat the issue, efforts to offer housing opportunities – long a lynchpin of San Francisco’s approach to addressing homelessness – accelerated.

“We were able to get a lot of people inside very quickly,” said Vivian Wan, of Abode, which provides services in San Francisco and seven other counties in Northern California.

But, Ms Wan notes, there was also backlash, with some residents complaining about supportive housing being built in their neighbourhoods.

The city’s problems became a cruel punchline, with right-wing television channels routinely running segments on residents fleeing the area because of safety concerns.

By the summer of 2024, after the Supreme Court’s ruling, then-Mayor London Breed, who was embroiled in a competitive race for re-election, said something had to be done.

She announced she was launching a “very aggressive” removal of tents across San Francisco, and threatened to potentially inflict criminal penalties.

Since then, the number of arrests or citations issued by the city for illegal lodging has skyrocketed, to more than a thousand – far more than in previous years.

While this policy has been embraced by many, some advocates for people living on the streets see it as punitive.

“Criminalising somebody because they literally have no place to live, no money to pay for a place to live – it’s just cycling them in and out of a neighbourhood,” said Chione Flegal, executive director of Housing California, an advocacy group aimed at ending homelessness and creating affordable housing. “It’s not actually doing anything to solve their challenges.”

While Ms Breed ultimately lost her bid for reelection, her successor, Daniel Lurie, continued with the policy.

As arrests have risen, the number of tents has fallen, according to data taken by the city, which conducts a tally every three months.

In June, San Francisco counted 165 tents and similar structures within its city limits, down from 319 in July 2024. That figure, taken as arrests ramped up, is considerably down from a half decade earlier.

Although the decline began before the latest policy changes, this get-tough approach has been cited as one of the reasons for the city’s success.

But other measures paint a more complicated picture. The number of people experiencing homelessness has continued to rise, with at least 8,300 people experiencing homelessness in January 2024, a 7% increase from 2022. Other estimates place the figure at more than double that.

Proponents of Mayor Lurie’s homeless policy insist the strategy is two-fold – deter people from living outside, while getting them into shelters or supportive housing.

San Francisco has also allocated a staggering sum – $846 million – to address the ongoing homelessness crisis in the most recent fiscal year (2024-2025).

Lurie has vowed to add 1,500 new shelter and treatment beds in the city.

The city has also made some concessions, such as last month, when officials agreed to allow homeless families to stay in shelters for longer.

“When you think about what’s going on our streets, it’s not just homelessness. It’s a mental health and drug crisis on our streets,” Mayor Lurie told the BBC in an interview.

“We can’t just stand up a shelter bed and hope people get better. We have to stand up the right kinds of beds – they have to be treatment beds, recovery beds, short term and long-term housing that’s going to get people the help that they need,” Mayor Lurie said.

So far, his approach to homelessness has been embraced by many residents, who are feeling more optimistic about the city’s trajectory, according to recent polling.

“I want everybody to know that we’re reclaiming our streets. They’re public spaces for everybody. And we need to get people the help that they need,” he added.

Those who work closely with the homeless population in San Francisco say the city has done many things well.

These include the addition of a stabilisation centre for people in crisis and reorganising street teams that can help people with mental needs, according to Dr Margot Kushel, director of the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at UC San Francisco.

But there is still worry that what San Francisco – and now DC – are doing with arrests and encampment sweeps is merely moving the problem out of sight.

“Removing someone’s tent and belongings is distressing and destabilizing for people,” said Dr Kushel. “There’s never going to be a shortcut here.”