by DCG
The streets of San Francisco…
That’s what spending over $300 MILLION taxpayer dollars annually get you…
From SF Gate: Despite creating hundreds of new shelter beds and spending more than $300 million annually on homelessness, San Francisco has seen the number of homeless people in the city rise by 17% since 2017 — with a whopping amount of that increase coming from people living in vehicles.
A preliminary summary of January’s one-night street count released Thursday pegged the new number of homeless people in the city at 8,011, but that number is sure to be lower than the more complete count to be released in July. That’s because it was calculated using federal guidelines, which don’t account for as many types of homelessness as those the city uses.
Still, the federal data give an early glimpse of what city officials will be finding out in more detail later, and the glimpse is bracing.
The number of people living in cars, RVs and other vehicles has risen by 45% since the last one-night count was taken two years ago. That much has been anecdotally evident for months, particularly in industrial Bayview neighborhoods, where vehicle colonies have sprouted in ever-increasing numbers over the past year.
Overall, the new count indicates at least 1,153 more homeless people are in the streets compared with two years ago, when the federal tally set the total number at 6,858.
Read the whole story here.
DCG