S.F. spending on homeless exceeds many departments' budgets

As the weather warms up, homeless camps like this one under the Fifth Street on-ramp are popping up under city freeways. As the weather warms up, homeless camps like this one under the Fifth Street on-ramp are popping up under city freeways. Photo: Andrew Ross/The Chronicle Photo: Andrew Ross/The Chronicle Image 1 of / 19 Caption Close S.F. spending on homeless exceeds many departments' budgets 1 / 19 Back to Gallery

With spring in the air and the homeless tents once again popping up under San Francisco's freeways, it's worth noting that the city is spending about $458,000 per day to house and help homeless people.

That's about $34 a day per homeless person, whether they are on the streets, in a shelter or in supportive housing.

The annual $167 million price tag is $20 million more than the operations budget for the Children, Youth and Family Services department, $6.3 million more than for Public Works and $3.8 million more than for Recreation and Park.

Nearly half of the homeless money, $81.5 million, goes for rent subsidies and programs to assist the 6,355 people living in "permanent supportive housing" - long the cornerstone of the city's program for helping the down and out.

The idea is to get people off the streets and into a stable environment where they can improve their lives," and eventually move out, said Human Services Agency head Trent Rhorer.

The problem is that, between the housing market and the type of people in the program, as often as not they don't move on. As a result, the housing fills up, and the street homeless population has stayed pretty much steady at about 7,000 for the past 10 years.

City officials concede there appears to be little visible progress. But without the effort, they say, it would be a lot worse.

"Relative to other cities like New York and Los Angeles, you could say we are doing well, but we need to do better," said Supervisor Mark Farrell, who is holding hearings to review the city's homeless programs.

Meanwhile, a Board of Supervisors committee recently voted to increase the homeless outreach program funding by $6 million.

Speaking out: The real reason A's owner Lew Wolff has offered to sign a 10-year lease at the Coliseum is pressure from Major League Baseball.

At least that's the take of Burlingame attorney Joe Cotchett, who is suing the league because it won't let the team move to San Jose.

"The league is starting to panic over what the court will do," says Cotchett. "The bottom line here is that Lew Wolff is being handcuffed by the league and can't even speak out about the case."

As Cotchett sees it, MLB is worried about the suit's challenge to its longtime antitrust exemption - and not just because the league has a monopoly under that exemption to decide where a team plays. A decision in favor of San Jose would also impact the league's control of everything from stadium beer sales to uniforms. Even if Wolff signs a long-term agreement with Oakland, says Cotchett, he'll still insist on an escape clause to allow the team to buy its way out early - or just as soon as a new San Jose stadium is built.

Parking payback: Supervisor John Avalos wasn't happy with Mayor Ed Lee's push to end paid metered parking on Sundays - so he pushed back the other day when Muni came in with a new bus ad contract that was up for approval.

Avalos basically told Muni at a supervisors' committee meeting that if it could live without the $9 million that Sunday parking brings in, then it could live without the $5 million ad deal. Especially one that doubles the number of buses with wrap-around ads - which Avalos says are "polluting" the streets.

The item has been tabled.

Re-tweet: South Bay Congressman Mike Honda set off the buzz storm with his tweet about celebrating the annual Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C.

"Happy to celebrate the beautiful cherry blossoms, & over 100 years of Japanese-American friendship," Honda tweeted.

"Except for that little contretemps between 1941-45, right?" Alo Konsen tweeted back, along with photos of the Bataan Death March and the A-bomb going off at Hiroshima.

"Or if you are referring to Americans w Japanese ancestry there was that whole internment episode... Seriously a weird comment," added Aaron Worthing.

Doubly weird, considering that as a child, Honda himself spent time in an internment camp.

By midday, Honda re-tweeted: "To clarify my previous tweet, the Cherry Blossoms in D.C were received over 100 years ago."

"When working with only 140 characters, we didn't word it as well as we meant to," said Honda spokesman Ken Scudder.