The situation out on the streets in San Francisco has been alarming (to say the least) for long enough now that it's almost become a footnote in the wreckage that the Biden administration has left in its wake, particularly when combined with the pro-crime, anti-police impulses of Gavin Newsom's governorship. By this point, you've all seen the stories and we've covered them here often. Homeless encampments clog up the streets while addicts overdose on the public sidewalks. Petty crimes combined with some that are far more serious have plagued formerly prime real estate. But now there are signs of a rapid transformation taking place. San Francisco Mayor London Breed, taking advantage of a recent Supreme Court ruling regarding ordinances forbidding public camping, has been cracking down on the encampments and clearing them out. But what could have brought on this sudden change of heart after the problem had been festering for years? Could it have something to do with the upcoming elections? (Associated Press)

Sidewalks once teeming with tents, tarps and people passed out next to heaps of trash have largely disappeared from great swathes of San Francisco, a city widely known for its visible homeless population.

The number of people sleeping outdoors dropped to under 3,000 in January, the lowest the city has recorded in a decade, according to a federal count.

And that figure has likely dropped even lower since Mayor London Breed — a Democrat in a difficult reelection fight this November — started ramping up enforcement of anti-camping laws in August following a U.S. Supreme Court decision.

The first thing to point out about these latest figures is that they clearly show that the homelessness problem in the City by the Bay has not magically gone away. Far from it, in fact. The same federal study that generated the figures linked above showed that homelessness in the San Francisco area actually rose by 7% in January of this year. The difference is that the homeless people and migrants have simply been moved elsewhere to areas where they won't be seen by so many tourists.

But why now? It turns out that people have grown fed up with the swarming homeless population and London Breed is currently in the fight of her political life. Due to a recent change in the city's election calendar, Breed will be running for another term in the general election this year, rather than an off-year election when turnout would normally be lower. She's drawn multiple challengers, including Mark Farrell who served as interim mayor for six months in 2018. The polls are not looking promising for Breed so she obviously felt that something drastic might be required to save her from an unceremonious exit from office.

Local business owners have been chiming in with the media, praising the cleaner sidewalks and lower crime rates in the business district. But that still leaves one uncomfortable question hanging in the air. If homelessness hasn't gone down but the streets of the business district are far less crowded with bodies, where did all of the homeless people and migrants go? San Francisco has recorded a 50% increase in the number of shelter beds and permanent supportive housing units available for the homeless over the past six years. That certainly might explain part of it, but many of those receiving such aid don't want to stay in the homeless housing they are provided. They wind up back out on the streets anyway.

One factor seems to be the far more aggressive stance being taken by the San Francisco Police Department. Over the previous three years leading up to August of 2024, the PD issued a grand total of 60 citations for illegal public camping. In the past two months, they issued more than 150. This sort of seismic shift in enforcement doesn't happen randomly or in a vacuum. Orders had to have come from the top to spur that sort of aggressive shift in policy. And it clearly wasn't done to bring shoppers back to the downtown district or lower crime rates. It was done to boost London Breed's poll numbers. This leaves us with another obvious question hanging over the city. If London Breed manages to squeak through and win another term on November 5th, will these cleanup efforts continue or will San Francisco return to business as usual for the next four years? Call me a pessimist if you wish, but I'm not hopeful that the effort could be sustained even if the political will existed to do so. The only long-term solution would be to begin mass deportations of all of the illegal migrants and to build vast amounts of new, permanent housing for homeless citizens. As far as I can tell, neither the resources nor the political will to do either exist.