SF mayor vows that clearing homeless tents from the Mission just a start

Krystle Erickson packs up her belongings along 13th Street as crews clear the streets of encampments in San Francisco. Krystle Erickson packs up her belongings along 13th Street as crews clear the streets of encampments in San Francisco. Photo: Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close SF mayor vows that clearing homeless tents from the Mission just a start 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

An army of cleaners, counselors and police descended upon the Mission District at dawn Wednesday — and by lunchtime, they had rendered the gentrifying district entirely free of homeless tent camps for the first time in recent memory.

And with that, San Francisco’s mayor had fired the first shot in what he said will be unending salvos of enforcement efforts in the coming weeks to try to rid city streets of tent encampments.

The clearance was actually the culmination of an intensive street counseling and police patrol operation that began in July, with the aim of emptying the Mission of what were then 287 tents by this summer.

That effort had trimmed the number of tents to 40 about a month ago, but so many had begun filtering back that Mayor Mark Farrell ordered Wednesday’s operation.

Earlier this week more than 100 tents — along with needles, trash and desperate campers — dotted the Mission’s sidewalks, but as city workers spread word of the coming push, about half of the homeless people had left on their own before Wednesday morning.

“This is just the beginning,” Farrell said. “Tents should not be part of the permanent landscape in San Francisco. If, at the end of the day, a person resists everything we offer them in counseling, housing and other services, they shouldn’t be allowed to keep tents on the sidewalk.

“Maybe it takes a mayor not running for office to do it, but we need to clean up our streets throughout the city. We haven’t been pushing hard enough. We will now.”

Making this push, he said, is just part of what he characterized as a “sprint to the finish” of his short term as mayor, before someone wins June’s special election to fill out the late Mayor Ed Lee’s term. It is not, he insisted, part of positioning for a full-term run for mayor in 2019 — which he has repeatedly said he will not do.

Homeless advocates called the operation a nasty sweep, forcing destitute people to pack everything and flee to a new camping spot. Ramping up sweeps in other districts will be cruel, they said.

“People actually want help, they want to get into a Navigation Center (full-service homeless shelter), but there aren’t enough Nav Center beds and there isn’t enough housing,” said Kelley Cutler, a Coalition on Homelessness organizer who monitored Wednesday’s operation. “The mayor is putting not just the people in tents at risk by doing these sweeps, but the city workers at risk, too, because he’s pushing people to the brink.”

She said proof of her point came a few hours into the morning when a homeless woman apparently stabbed her boyfriend after they were forced to move their tent from 13th Street. The woman was apprehended nearby, the victim was taken to a hospital, and as Cutler watched the ambulance pull away, she said, “See, this is what you get when the tensions come up like this.”

Farrell, told of the stabbing shortly afterward, took the opposite tack.

“Please,” he said. “This is exactly why we need to take tents down. It’s not healthy for anyone to live that way. Stabbings, arson, rape, all other sorts of crime — you are more vulnerable when you’re living outside.”

Photo: Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle A row of tents and shelters are seen along 13th street before being...

He added, “‘Sweep’ is a bad word,” and he characterized Wednesday’s effort as a ramp-up of counseling outreach combined with enforcement of existing laws that prohibit tents from blocking sidewalks.

The head of city homelessness programs — who has consistently preferred steady street counseling as a tool over dismantling camps en masse — agreed with that assessment.

Jeff Kositsky, director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, said his Homeless Outreach Teams ushered two-thirds of everyone who had been camping in the Mission over the past 10 months into shelters or onto buses for rides home to family or relatives. For Wednesday’s operation, his department opened 50 temporary shelter beds and about a dozen more in Navigation Centers — but only a few took them.

“We always lead with our services, and we are doing consistent and loving outreach, but at some point we need to let people know that what they’re doing by keeping tent camps on the sidewalk is not legal, safe or healthy,” he said.

For the tent people, Wednesday was simply the end game for what they knew had been coming.

Fifty-year-old Fernando Veloso just moved a few blocks away.

“I love this lifetime cleaning company they have here,” he cracked as he shoved his heaped cart of tents, clothes and tools away from his spot on 13th near Bryant Street. Behind him, street cleaners were hosing down the newly empty sidewalk with cleaning agents.

“This is just what happens around here,” Veloso said. “They move us. They clean. We just set up somewhere new. Then it happens all over again.”

But Wednesday for Angel Brown, 28, was salvation day. She sat with her bags on the sidewalk alongside a Homeless Outreach Team crew, her boyfriend packing up their tent a few blocks away on 16th and Bryant streets, and her eyes teared up.

“I just want to get off the streets. I’m so tired of it,” she said. “We’re supposed to be family out here, but people are fighting all the time. I get beat up. Every time I get clothes, someone steals them.”

She’s pregnant with her sixth child, she said. Getting inside and kicking methamphetamine is now her biggest priority.

“I went into the Nav Center more than a year ago, but I didn’t stay more than a day or so,” Brown said. “I was just out of it then. Sometimes it takes a little push to change. Maybe that time is now.”

Kositsky heard her mention pregnancy and walked over. “Have you talked to a doctor?” he asked. Brown shook her head no. Kositsky got on the phone and summoned one.

“Angel, these guys are in your corner,” Kositsky’s deputy, Randy Quezada, told her while his boss made the call. “Don’t give up on them, and they won’t give up on you.”

Brown hung her head. “Yeah, I’m going to try this time,” she whispered.

Kevin Fagan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kfagan@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @KevinChron