Homelessness up in Bay Area, down slightly in San Francisco | The Journal Record

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Homelessness elevated almost 9% within the San Francisco Bay Space during the last three years, regardless of a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of {dollars} spent to maintain folks off the streets throughout the coronavirus pandemic, preliminary numbers launched Monday present. San Francisco seemed to be the one vibrant spot, seeing homelessness decline barely.

Alameda County, which incorporates the town of Oakland, reported a 22% enhance on this 12 months’s point-in-time survey, whereas neighboring Contra Costa County noticed a 35% bounce in folks noticed dwelling in shelters, autos or outdoor. The most important county within the area, Santa Clara, reported a 3% enhance from 2019, together with an 11% enhance within the metropolis of San Jose.

San Francisco reported a 3.5% decline to just about 7,800 homeless residents, which housing advocates chalked up partially to a wealth tax authorized by voters in 2018.

In whole, seven of the Bay Space’s 9 counties reported counting greater than 35,000 folks experiencing homelessness in late February. The depend is required each different 12 months by the U.S. Division of Housing and City Improvement and helps decide funding. San Mateo and Solano counties didn’t report preliminary numbers Monday.

Housing advocates stated will increase throughout the area would have been worse with out sturdy and speedy intervention from the state and native authorities. California Gov. Gavin Newsom made cash obtainable at the beginning of the pandemic to deal with homeless residents in accommodations and eviction moratoriums helped maintain folks of their houses.

The San Francisco Bay Space “staved off a catastrophic enhance in homelessness” during the last three years, stated regional housing advocacy group All Dwelling in an announcement launched Monday. The 2021 depend was canceled because of the pandemic and this 12 months’s depend was carried out in late February.

“Bay Space governments and nonprofits performed deep protection on homelessness throughout the pandemic and we’ve got roughly held the road – however now we have to go on offense and finish the struggling on our streets” stated Tomiquia Moss, the nonprofit group’s founder and CEO.

San Francisco has usually served because the poster metropolis for homelessness given the excessive visibility of tent encampments. However preliminary figures present a 15% lower in people who find themselves dwelling unsheltered outdoor and an 11% decline in its chronically homeless single grownup inhabitants.

The Feb. 23 depend in San Francisco discovered 7,754 folks dwelling in shelters, autos or outdoor, down from 8,035 in 2019 however nonetheless greater than the almost 6,900 reported in 2017. Mayor London Breed credited the numbers to a rise in shelter beds and transitional housing by her administration.

Jennifer Friedenbach, government director of the town’s Coalition on Homelessness, known as the information welcome and thrilling, and credited cash offered by Prop. C, a tax on San Francisco’s wealthiest firms authorized by voters in 2018 for the good thing about homeless residents. The measure, opposed by Breed, divided the town’s tech elite.

“As soon as we begin making an actual dent in continual homelessness, we’ll begin going into the extraordinarily low-income inhabitants and folks with out behavioral well being points,” stated Friedenbach. “I believe we’ve bought much more nice issues to return.”

Officers concerned with the depend in Alameda County stated at a information convention Monday that a lot of the general enhance was pushed by an almost 40% rise in folks dwelling in autos, together with vehicles and RVs, and a 53% enhance in folks enrolled in shelter applications.

Additionally they stated that its 22% enhance over three years was a slower fee than the 20% annual will increase it had been seeing.

“We think about this to be an enormous success and a direct reflection of the extra assets that had been infused into our system,” stated Chelsea Andrews, government director of EveryOne Dwelling, which helped conduct the depend.