UN expert on San Francisco homelessness: 'I couldn't help but be completely shocked'

Photo: Courtesy Leilani Farah Leilani Farha, the United Nations special rapporteur on adequate...

Leilani Farha said she "can't help but be completely shocked" by what she saw on a tour of San Francisco's homeless communities.

Farha, 49, is the United Nations special rapporteur on adequate housing. During an informal Bay Area visit, she spoke to about 50 people who live on the streets in S.F., Berkeley and Oakland.

"Every single person, whether it was in passing or in a long conversation, said they just want to be treated like a human being," said Farha, who is a lawyer by training and lives in Canada. "What does that say? That is bleak.

"If I could add, the other thing that just struck me ... but I'm sorry, California is a rich state, by any measures, the United States is a rich country, and to see these deplorable conditions that the government is allowing, by international human rights standards, it's unacceptable. I'm guided by human rights law."

Farha is in the process of visiting cities around the world to conduct research for a report on "informal settlements" that will be presented to the United Nations General Assembly in fall 2018. As a rapporteur, Farha is an expert working unpaid on behalf of the UN to monitor countries and their governments and policies.

She has already toured Manila, Jakarta and Mexico City, and ended a four-day visit to San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley on Monday before flying to Los Angeles on Tuesday. California is the only place she's touring in the United States and she said "I didn't want the report to just be about the slums in India."

In San Francisco, about 7,500 people are homeless according to the last count, but this number is elusive and some believe the number is between 10,000 and 12,000. The city spent $275 million on homelessness and supportive housing in the fiscal year that ended at the end of June—that's a $241 million jump from the year before. The city has budgeted $305 million for the 2017-18 fiscal year. Some of this money has gone to building more shelters. In the Civic Center and Dogpatch neighborhoods, two new Navigation Centers—one-stop shelters aimed at moving people into permanent housing —added 500 more beds.

Despite the money spent, the San Francisco Chronicle reports the waiting list for nighttime shelters and residents complaints to the city about tent encampments, needles and human feces have all increased.

"Reality on the streets hasn't improved," reporter Heather Knight wrote in the Chronicle story reporting on progress made from 2016 to 2017. "In many ways, homelessness in San Francisco is as bad as ever."

Farha is struck by the difference in the way governments view "informal settlements" in the United States versus countries like India global south.

"The struggle in the south is to legalize and regularize encampments," she said. "Here, the struggle is simply to be able to create an encampment. In the south, there's sort of a blind eye that has turned. Once an informal settlement is created, it's established. Whereas here, they can't create them."

In the Bay Area, Farha talked to many people who were temporarily living in an encampment before they were ordered to move by city officials during a "tent sweep."

"It's damaging because they always have to move," she says. "They're treated like nonentities. Sometimes they say (belongings are) put in storage, but more often they'll dump everyone's possessions into one Dumpster. It's horrible. It's not dignified. The people have nowhere to go. It's illogical. It's tragic."

Farha points out that one of the myths of homelessness is that drug users end up on the street, but she says in her experience people thrown into homelessness turn to drugs as a way to cope and assuage the pain.

"Most people on the streets are living with some sort of 'structural trauma,' meaning they have lost their job, can't afford housing, been evicted by a landlord," she said."The structural trauma causes deeply personal effects that can lead to living on the street that triggers drug use."

San Francisco homelessness by the numbers

The number of homeless people living in San Francisco has reached a record high. The number of homeless people living in San Francisco has reached a record high. Photo: Photo: Jason Henry, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Photo: Jason Henry, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 23 Caption Close Homelessness by the numbers gallery 1 / 23 Back to Gallery

Farha believes tent sweeps compound the trauma for people and she says a first step in the city fixing its issue around homelessness is putting a moratorium on removing people.

"I understand there may be some health issues around these encampments," she said. "The way to deal with health issues is to get them into shelters, but without the heavy-handedness that regulates those places and keeps people out."

Farha said giving everyone a bed in a shelter is the part of the homeless problem that's easier to solve, but addressing the structural causes of homelessness is a more difficult issue to tackle.

ALSO, San Francisco homelessness Q&A: Frequently asked questions, answers

"That's the harder part," she says. "Stagnating wages, escalating housing costs, investors swooping in and buying properties, the vacant home problem, homes owned by investors ... there have to be policies and laws in place to curb all of that stuff."

Learn more about homelessness in San Francisco: In June 2017 and June 2016, the San Francisco Chronicle partnered with dozens of media outlets to create the SF Homeless Project, an effort to organize intense, coordinated coverage of the homelessness crisis. Find those stories on SFGATE.