Meet Victoria Solomon, who has two homes: a city-subsidized single-room occupancy (SRO) in the Tenderloin, and a tent a few miles away on Castro Street. San Francisco provided her with the SRO because she was homeless, but Solomon returned to her old haunt, Castro Street, set up her tent, and resumed her lifestyle—while holding on to the SRO.
Her presence doesn’t set well with the neighborhood, according to ABC News. A reporter asked her why she’s still tenting on the streets if she has a subsidized home across town. Solomon replied, “What does it matter if I come out here, like it really doesn't matter. I don't understand why my personal life, why I'm doing - and I wish - can you stop recording?”
Let me answer Ms. Solomon. Like, it really does matter, ma’am. It’s illegal. It trashes up the neighborhood. It’s no longer your “personal life” when you squat on public property. You want a “personal life”? Live it inside your SRO. If you want to live in San Francisco, obey the rules—like everyone else.
Another homeless person—not Ms. Solomon—explained the allure of living on the street even though he’d been provided with subsidized housing. “Yeah, this is my family, these are my friends,” he said. “I don't have any family out here. I come from Oregon and these are who I was on the streets with, you know.”
Yeah, it’s nice to have friends, sir. But that doesn’t mean you can pitch a tent and live on the street. If you like your homeless friends so much, you can visit them anytime you want. But you can’t live on the street.
We don’t know how many homeless people who are provided with subsidized housing continue to dwell on the streets, because the city doesn’t provide that information. There are about 30,000 people living in SROs in San Francisco. SRO residents who are at the 20% of median income level pay between $249 and $337 a month. The city also provides them with a monthly utility stipend.
Victoria’s story and that of the other homeless man underscore the issue of how to deal with homeless people who refuse city-offered shelter, or who otherwise abuse that privilege. Last November, a typical month, 60% of the estimated 7,700 homeless people in San Francisco who were offered shelter refused to accept it. (We don’t have comparable figures for Oakland because the city hasn’t provided them.) While Mayor London Breed remarked that “enforcing our laws [regarding tents] is important,” San Francisco, like other cities, currently has no policy to compel homeless people to get off the streets. That may change next month, when the U.S. Supreme Court rules on Grants Pass v. Johnson, but until then the situation remains where it’s been forever: in limbo.
Does a city have the right to enforce its laws when it comes to homeless people? Beyond that, if SCOTUS rules that cities do have that right, will cities exercise that right? Or will progressive cities like Oakland simply ignore SCOTUS (as well as their own citizens) and continue to allow the profligate spread of tents in parks, near schools, on city sidewalks, in shopping districts and alongside freeways?
Based on the historic performance of the Oakland City Council, it would seem that encampments are now a permanent feature of the landscape. The City Council, as currently constructed, will do nothing—not because they can’t, but because they don’t want to. Bas, Fife, Kaplan & Co. continue to insist that, like, it really doesn’t matter how many encampments litter Oakland because, like, well, it’s homeless peoples’ personal life and they’re free to live where they want. As for the rest of us, it’s our job to tell the City Council that, like, it really does matter. In fact, we insist on cleaning up this city, and if we have to recall Thao as a first step, that’s, like, exactly what we’ll do.
Steve Heimoff