California’s escalating homeless crisis took a turn for the worse this week, with local reporters finding San Francisco’s transient population living in makeshift tree houses across the Bay Area.

“The occupants of five to six ramshackle tree houses built in a private industrial park near Stevenson Boulevard and I-880 in Fremont are facing eviction,” reports CBS San Francisco.

“Crews equipped with chainsaws and handsaws have begun clearing out the structures and cutting off limbs in order to make it harder to reoccupy and easier to spot the homeless who are taking refuge in the trees. They are about halfway through the long line of more than 60 eucalyptus trees,” adds the local news channel.

“I think it’s a good idea actually, I think it’s actually something that people would benefit from if we had the right knowledge of trees,” said one homeless man.

“There’s a lot of us women who work here late … so I’m worried that I could be in danger,” added a female worker employed in the industrial park.

San Francisco’s residents continued to flee the region’s escalating homeless crisis this week; with new statistics showing the local transient population increasing by 17% since 2017 as officials pledge more than $300 million annually to regain control.

“Despite creating hundreds of new shelter beds and spending more than $300 million annually on homelessness, San Francisco has seen the number of homeless people in the city rise by 17% since 2017 — with a whopping amount of that increase coming from people living in vehicles,” reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

“The number of people living in cars, RVs and other vehicles has risen by 45% since the last one-night count was taken two years ago. That much has been anecdotally evident for months, particularly in industrial Bayview neighborhoods, where vehicle colonies have sprouted in ever-increasing numbers over the past year,” adds the newspaper.

Homelessness soars in three San Francisco Bay Area counties where affordable housing is hard to find and divisions about how to solve the crisis abound. https://t.co/bNc3rZkjQW — AP West Region (@APWestRegion) May 17, 2019

Los Angeles continued its own ongoing struggle with rampant homelessness and crumbling infrastructure, with residents complaining of “rotting trash piles” that are attacking rats and posing a major risk to the health of residents and tourists.