A personal New Year’s resolution could include working out more or making healthier decisions. But ask Bay Area residents what they’re hoping the public’s resolution should be for 2019 and the answer is plain: to address San Francisco’s homelessness crisis.

The perennial problem has grown worse as rents across the Bay Area continue to skyrocket, prompting many to move out or to find refuge couch surfing, living in their cars or creating homeless encampments along city streets and freeway underpasses. Local politicians must address the persistent problem with affordable housing and adequate services for people on the streets, residents said.

“I hope they solve the homeless problem in an equitable and decent way,” said Susan Bryan, who has lived in San Francisco for over 50 years.

Bryan said she believes the problem started in the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan slashed federal funding for subsidized housing.

“All of a sudden, people were appearing on the streets,” she said. “They were out of their housing.”

There hasn’t been a strong policy at the city, state or federal level to address those growing pains, some said. With the election of Mayor London Breed in 2018, who said that addressing symptoms of homelessness was a priority of her office, Bryan and others are hopeful that something will change.

“We need to find somewhere for them to be,” said Donell Dominique, a facilities coordinator for travel website Hotwire.

Leaning up against a parking meter in the Financial District, Dominique smoked what he hoped to be his last cigarette ever — his New Year’s resolution was to quit smoking, 19 years after he quit alcohol and drug use. But his big-picture New Year’s resolution was to see the city address the homelessness problem he sees every day when he commutes in from Vallejo.

One possible solution, Dominique said, was to turn unused buildings downtown into shelters, just as Berkeley recently did with its old City Hall.

Creating affordable housing, rather than market-rate and business developments, would also be a potential solution. Rather than repeatedly clearing away encampments, said Berkeley resident Sarah Paxson, local politicians should address root causes.

“People in the Bay Area are complacent, so it becomes something we care less about,” she said.

The first step would be to build below-market-rate housing to lower prices around the region, Paxson said.

The needle is starting to move at the city level, some said. Breed recently requested that the Board of Supervisors spend the city’s $181 million windfall on homelessness and housing initiatives, and announced that the city has reduced tent camps in the area by 34 percent. In October, Breed said she wanted to set a goal of adding 1,000 beds in transitional housing and navigation centers by the summer of 2019.

Whether that momentum continues into the new year could have serious implications for the city’s future.

“We’re not richer because we have billionaires,” Bryan said. “We are richer when people have hope for the future.”

Gwendolyn Wu is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: gwendolyn.wu@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @gwendolynawu