The decision to move homeless czar Jeff Kositsky over to the mayor’s office, where he’ll command San Francisco’s failing effort to reduce tent camps, underscores how halting the city’s progress has been on bringing down its homeless population. It also shows how any backsliding could blow up on Mayor London Breed, who has made cleaning up the streets her top priority.

Not too long ago, things looked like they were improving. In November 2018, Breed announced a 34% percent reduction in tent camps, saying, “Our approach is working.”

And in July 2019, Breed said: “All of the camps along Division Street, under the freeways and in the Mission. They are all gone.”

By year’s end, however, there was a startling reversal, with the number of tents on city streets and sidewalks growing by a third to 649, according to a report from the city’s Healthy Streets Operations Center. And the large encampments — those with four tents or more — that Breed claimed had all but vanished had grown back to 15, an increase of 13 from January 2019.

The highest number of tents — 282 — was in the Tenderloin, Civic Center and SoMa.

The number of people living in cars and RVs also rose last year, by 25 percent, to 814 citywide. The highest concentration of live-in vehicles — 363 — was in Dogpatch and Bayview-Hunters Point.

But perhaps the most disturbing statistic in the Healthy Streets Operations Center report was that 9 out of 10 of the 650 homeless people who were placed into shelter beds by the Healthy Streets program last year showed little interest in remaining sheltered and were back on the streets within days.

“For a while it was working, but now it is clearly broken and falling apart,” Supervisor Aaron Peskin said of the highly touted multi-departmental effort to clean up the streets.

And now the problem has spread far outside of the downtown and industrial areas, where it’s long been a problem.

“There are definitely more people now living in vehicles and sleeping in storefront doors and bus shelters at night,” said Supervisor Gordon Mar, who represents the Sunset District.

Supervisor Ahsha Safaí, who faces a tough re-election this fall, said that the city’s handling of the homeless problem “is absolutely” an issue in his district, but that the efforts to set up a residential RV park next to Balboa Park BART Station have given the area hope.

“I can’t speak for the whole city, but in my district people are cautiously optimistic now that we have opened the first lot for RVs,” Safai said.

As for what went wrong last year:

“We were seeing tremendous success in the Mission when we had teams concentrating on particular encampments, but when the city started chasing 311 complaint calls all across the city, it all fell apart,” Supervisor Hillary Ronen said.

“We spread ourselves too thin,” Kositsky said.

Whatever the case, voters are seeing the changes on the streets as well. And they don’t like it.

A recent annual Chamber of Commerce-Dignity Health CityBeat Poll found that 89% of city residents said homelessness and street behavior have gotten worse in the past few years. A whopping 72% said the problem has gotten “much worse.”

“It was widespread all across the city,” said pollster Ruth Bernstein of EMC Research, which conducted the poll.

The poll of 512 likely voters was conducted between Jan. 15 and 20 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.28 percentage points.

“Everyone knows it is getting worse,” said Chamber of Commerce Public Policy Director Jay Cheng. “Any elected official who improves the conditions on the street is going to be see as a hero.”

Conversely, if the homeless situation gets worse, Breed will likely pay the price.

“The mayor isn’t on the November ballot, but issues and candidates that she supports will on the ballot.” Peskin said. “So it will be interesting to see what happens in the coming months.”

So with voter angst on the rise and results cratering, the decision was made to have Kositsky — the first head of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Services — move over to the mayor’s office and work directly with Breed’s staff.

“His job is to make sure the strategies we are using are actually working,” mayoral spokesman Jeff Cretan said.

One thing is clear: Kositsky isn’t doing it for the money. He will be taking a $28,328 cut in his current salary of $227,358.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Phil Matier appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KGO-TV morning and evening news and can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call 415-777-8815, or email pmatier@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @philmatier