by David Sjostedt : sfstandard – excerpt
Volunteers and nonprofit workers fanned out across San Francisco on Tuesday night to count the number of homeless people on the streets, as the city does every other year. But hardly anyone, even Mayor London Breed, thinks they got an accurate number.
“How are we supposed to tell whether or not they’re really unhoused?” Breed told The Standard after she spent several hours trawling the Tenderloin with the nonprofit Code Tenderloin as part of the Point-in-Time Count. “You’ve got a lot of folks out here who are unfortunately suffering from mental illness and addiction, and that’s a big difference from being homeless.”
The one-night count, conducted by every major city across the country, is required by the federal government to determine how much homelessness funding to allocate. Two years ago, 4,397 people were counted as living on the streets of San Francisco.
Funding—and political futures—are on the line. A significant jump in the number of people counted could mean more money for San Francisco’s shelter and housing efforts, but also political baggage for Breed and other incumbents facing re-election in November…(more)
As we suspected, the numbers are questionable and they spend way too much time counting designing programs and not enough time helping people who need help. People are not numbers. We like the one person at a time and first come first served approach that some neighborhoods have been able to use fairly effectively.