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Politics
San Francisco

SF sued over homeless camp sweeps

Civil rights groups demand city spend billions on affordable housing

(Photo Illustration by The Real Deal with Getty Images)
(Photo Illustration by The Real Deal with Getty Images)

A civil rights group and homeless residents have sued San Francisco to demand it stop clearing away homeless encampments and using quality-of-life laws to target homeless people.

The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, representing the Coalition on Homelessness and local residents, alleges the city violated state and federal laws, its own policies and the rights of homeless people, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The lawsuit says the city “punishes residents who have nowhere to go,” and seizes and destroys their belongings when clearing away encampments.

It also argues the city’s approach is ineffective and expensive, having spent more than $20 million in 2015 enforcing quality-of-life ordinances against homeless people.

Its goal is to push the city to spend billions on affordable housing and fix its homeless crisis.

“This is the accumulation of years of witnessing, documenting and responding to fundamentally abusive human rights violations that unhoused people have had to experience at the very worst time in their lives,” Jenny Friedenbach, head of the Coalition on Homelessness, told the Chronicle.

The lawsuit comes after years of clashes between the city and homeless activists who argue the city aims to sweep people from the streets despite lacking places to house them.

It’s also a pushback to lawsuits by private citizens demanding sweeps, as well as efforts by cities across the country to ban street camping.

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San Francisco officials said they couldn’t comment on the lawsuit and would respond in court.

Officials estimate 20,000 people will be homeless in the city this year despite 13,299 supportive housing units and 3,571 shelter spots.

City leaders say encampments are unsafe and inhumane, and San Francisco residents and businesses have demanded leaders deal with tents and open-air drug use on the streets.

It would take $4.8 billion to build the thousands of housing units San Francisco says it needs, according to the complaint, which said the city brings in millions through voter-approved tax Proposition C, but has only spent a fraction on homeless services.

In an essay just published in the San Francisco Business Times, Presidio Bay Ventures founder K. Cyrus Sanandaji said the city’s social contract is broken – and took issue with San Francisco’s inability to rein in crime and homelessness.

“San Francisco is at a tipping point, where public safety, the cleanliness of our streets and the overall quality of life have become the paramount concerns,” Sanandaji said. “Like many, I am worried about its future.”

— Dana Bartholomew

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HomelessnessLawsuitSan Francisco