1. Repeal the criminal ordinances that ban life-sustaining activities for people experiencing homelessness.
- Repeal the criminal ordinances that discriminatorily target people experiencing homelessness. These criminal ordinances are purportedly implemented to improve the quality of life for citizens. However, these ordinances actually function to remove visibly poor people from public spaces. Consequently, the purpose of these laws has been criticized as being one of exclusion and marginalization. These criminalizing ordinances are bad policy and must be repealed because they serve no legitimate purpose and instead only exacerbate the cycle and problems of homelessness. Society has already rejected laws that discriminatorily target many of these same marginalized groups.
2. Increase “LOSP” Affordable Housing Subsidies Low-Income Operating Subsidy Program subsidies - (LOSPs) have been used in non-profit housing for a number of years to allow extremely low-income people to move into buildings with affordable rents. These subsidies are typically attached to newly constructed units. Currently, 199 such future units are allocated to all homeless people. We are calling for an additional 375 units to be allocated specifically to homeless families. ($6,484,594)
3. Changes in Shelter Access Needed to Eliminate Barriers
- Shelter reservations are to be no less than seven days at all city funded shelters.* 2. Shelter reservations are to be arranged by any of the following; a resource center, service provider or the shelter itself.* 3. All night emergency access to empty beds should be available. 4. The city must fund a central city 24-hour emergency drop-in center for homeless people in the next fiscal year. * (Funding is set to end June, 2007, and the current program will soon shut down) 5. Bus tokens should be given to each homeless person automatically when reservation for shelter bed is made. 6. Fix CHANGES bed reservation system to rectify data discrepancies and ensure an accurate empty bed inventory.* 7. Fully train staff on the CHANGES bed reservation system. Training should be frequent, regular and include performance testing.*
4. End the Constant Policing and Continual Displacement
- Prohibit the enforcement of laws that allow SFPD to remove a homeless person from their area when they are not obstructing pathways or breaking any other laws. This would greatly reduce the 192 hours of officer time dedicated to 911 calls about homeless people in public space every day (see conclusion for details). It would also allow officers to avoid issuing citations to those sitting, sleeping, and camping simply because they have nowhere else to go.
5. Aggressively Re-Invest In San Francisco’s Mental Health Services
- Supportive and affirming treatment for those homeless people struggling with acute mental health issues is necessary for recovery. San Francisco has drastically cut the funding for mental health services. Increase and expand capacity of outpatient and mental health treatment which will have a dramatic effects in decreasing the number of homeless people in SF County Jails for mental health and homelessness-related issues.
6. End Police Profiling
- 2014–2015 court documentation of racist and homophobic text messages as well as video documentation of police abusing a homeless person on a MUNI bus, are just two recent examples of what homeless people may face in their daily lives.138 Officers should be disciplined including termination, when they demonstrate patterns of discriminatory profiling