San Francisco's continued homeless sweeps making things worse, advocate says
It's been just about a month since San Francisco began aggressively sweeping homeless encampments across the city.
Jennifer Friedenbach, the executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, said from her vantage point, the sweeps aren't helping anything.
"It's really just moving people across the street and back, across the street and back, and not being successful in putting large numbers of people into shelter and housing. And that's really what you want, you want to get people off the streets," said Friedenbach.
KPIX met Friedenbach at the intersection of Leavenworth and Turk in the Tenderloin. It's a place she said since the city started the sweeps, city officials and police are at the block at least once a week to kick people out.
"Every four days. So, this corner of this block right here, and there never has been a lot of encampments there. There was maybe a tent or two, but they come here every four days and push everyone out," said Friedenbach.
City officials including the mayor have said the sweeps are meant to maintain health and safety on city streets.
Officials conducting the sweeps do offer services to those living in the tents, but the city has said repeatedly that a majority deny those services, giving the city no choice but to kick them out or even arrest them if they refuse to leave.
Friedenbach has long been an advocate for the unhoused, so it's no surprise she's against this policy. She claims the sweeps are not just not working they're actually making the issue of homelessness worse.
"It just is going to mean that they're going to get fines and fees that they can't pay. It's going to mean that they're going to get cited for things that they have no other choice but to be out here, and so it's just not a way to get, there's never been a ticket that has lead somebody off the streets," said Friedenbach.
She said what she wants to see is a concerted effort to convert some of the vacant downtown buildings into housing for the homeless.
It's a policy she believes will actually help both clean up the streets and get people back on their feet.
"A tent is a piece of fabric, who's inside that tent is a human being," said Friedenbach.