San Francisco is a city of extremes. Gleaming tech towers and multi-million-dollar condos share streets with tents, makeshift shelters, and open-air drug use. This contradiction is most vividly seen in the Tenderloin District—where wealth and desperation meet face-to-face.
Today, more than 8,300 people in San Francisco are homeless. Nearly half live unsheltered, in cars, tents, or on the streets. The crisis isn’t new—but its roots run far deeper than many realize.
To truly understand how San Francisco got here, we have to travel back nearly a century.
The Legacy of Redlining: How the System Was Built to Fail
In the 1930s, the federal government’s Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) created “residential security maps” to help banks determine where to issue mortgages. Entire neighborhoods—like Chinatown and the Fillmore District—were marked in red, deemed hazardous simply because they were home to marginalized communities.
This practice, known as redlining, choked off investment in these areas. Loans dried up. Property values plummeted. Buildings were abandoned, and neighborhoods decayed. The impact was devastating, setting the stage for poverty, unemployment, and eventually, homelessness.
The Fallout of Deinstitutionalization
By the 1950s, psychiatric hospitals began closing across the country, thanks in part to new psychiatric medications and a push for humane, community-based care. But in San Francisco, the transition was a disaster. The state cut funding for mental health services without building replacement infrastructure.
Thousands of people with serious mental illnesses were released into communities with no support systems. Many ended up on the streets, untreated and alone. The result: a sharp increase in visible homelessness through the 1970s and beyond.
The 1989 Earthquake: Disaster Accelerates Crisis
On October 17, 1989, a 6.9-magnitude earthquake rattled San Francisco. It destroyed 16,000 housing units, especially in working-class areas like South of Market. With nowhere to go and limited affordable housing, many residents were forced onto the streets.
Landlords took advantage—demolishing rather than repairing homes—and rents soared. The earthquake didn’t create the crisis, but it supercharged it.
The Tech Boom and the Wealth Gap
The 1990s and early 2000s brought tech giants like Yahoo, Google, Apple, and Facebook to the Bay Area. With them came jobs—and skyrocketing housing costs. From 2012 to 2017, San Francisco added 400,000 jobs but built only 60,000 housing units.
This imbalance sent rents soaring. A two-bedroom apartment in the Mission District that cost $1,900 in 2011 jumped to $3,500 in just one year—and now averages $5,000.
While the city’s median household income rose to $136,000 by 2022, 10.5% of residents still live below the poverty line, and housing remains wildly unaffordable.
Zoning Laws: A Hidden Driver
Behind all this is zoning.
70% of residential land in San Francisco is zoned for single-family homes or duplexes, making apartment buildings nearly impossible to build in many neighborhoods. That’s by design. For decades, city planners protected wealthy districts like Pacific Heights while packing lower-income housing into areas like the Mission and SoMa.
Attempts to change this have met fierce resistance. In 2021, Supervisor Rafael Mandelman proposed reforms to allow denser housing near transit and discourage luxury home expansions. But Not-In-My-Backyard (NIMBY) groups pushed back hard, and the proposals stalled.
The Shelter Shortage and the Climate Factor
Unlike New York, San Francisco has no “right to shelter” law. NYC guarantees a bed to anyone who needs one. San Francisco doesn’t. As a result, only 36% of its homeless population—around 2,400 people—have access to shelter beds, while New York shelters over 90% of its homeless population.
The city spends heavily—$672 million a year on homelessness—but shelters remain underfunded. A major reason? Much of the budget goes toward permanent supportive housing, not emergency beds.
Decades of Failed Policies: A Pattern of Missteps
San Francisco’s approach to homelessness has been reactive for decades. From the 1980s to today, each administration has tried—and failed—to solve the crisis:
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Dianne Feinstein relied on temporary shelters and even converted transit buses into makeshift housing.
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Art Agnos created “Camp Agnos,” a sanctioned encampment that ended under public pressure.
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Frank Jordan’s Matrix Program criminalized homelessness through mass citations for loitering and sleeping in public.
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Willie Brown used militarized police sweeps with helicopters and infrared cameras in Golden Gate Park.
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Gavin Newsom’s Care Not Cash slashed welfare in favor of housing, but often in substandard units.
Modern Programs: Room Keys, Tiny Cabins, and Navigation Centers
Some recent innovations show promise—but also expose the scale of the challenge.
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Project Roomkey placed people in hotel rooms during COVID, but the program isn’t scalable long-term.
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Tiny Cabin Villages, like the 2024 Mission District project, offer dignified, semi-private shelters—but cost over $113,000 per cabin.
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Navigation Centers allow people to stay with their belongings, pets, and partners. These low-barrier shelters boast a 72% exit-to-housing rate, but their reach is limited.
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Street to Home attempts to bypass red tape by moving people directly into vacant housing. The problem? Over 1,000 units sit empty due to bureaucratic gridlock.
Sweeps and the Courtroom: Legality Meets Reality
San Francisco’s encampment sweeps have reignited legal and ethical debates.
After a 2020 federal court case (Johnson v. Grants Pass), cities were restricted from punishing people for sleeping outside if no shelter was available. But in June 2024, the Supreme Court overturned parts of that ruling, giving cities more freedom to conduct sweeps.
San Francisco resumed sweeps and adopted “bag and tag” protocols to store belongings. But despite spending $100 million on sweeps, homelessness rose by 7% between 2022 and 2024. Even more striking, chronic homelessness surged by 11%, despite programs helping over 7,500 people in that time.
Why? For every person housed, three more fall into homelessness.
San Francisco’s Geography and Visibility
Unlike other cities, San Francisco has few places for encampments to hide. No sprawling freeway underpasses or vast city outskirts. The city is compact, and the problem is visible.
In District 6—the heart of the Tenderloin—you’ll find tech workers walking past tents to reach headquarters of companies like Uber and X. It’s this collision of prosperity and poverty that makes San Francisco’s homelessness crisis uniquely jarring.
FAQ: San Francisco Homelessness
Q: Why is homelessness so visible in San Francisco?
Because of the city’s compact layout, lack of shelter infrastructure, and zoning laws that push encampments into central neighborhoods.
Q: Doesn’t San Francisco spend more than most cities on homelessness?
Yes. But much of the funding goes to permanent housing and not emergency shelters, which limits its short-term impact.
Q: What role does housing policy play?
A massive one. Zoning laws restrict where multi-family units can be built. Combined with high construction costs and NIMBY opposition, this limits housing supply.
Q: How does the weather factor in?
San Francisco’s mild climate makes outdoor living more survivable year-round, which partly explains its lower shelter capacity compared to cold-weather cities like NYC.
Q: Are the city’s policies working?
Not really. While some programs show promise (like Navigation Centers), the scale of homelessness far outpaces current efforts.
The Big Picture: Hiding Homelessness vs. Solving It
For years, San Francisco has been stuck in a cycle: clearing encampments, launching new programs, and still watching the crisis grow. The city isn’t solving homelessness—it’s redistributing it.
Homelessness in San Francisco isn’t just a housing issue or a mental health issue—it’s the cumulative result of decades of policy failure, economic inequality, and social neglect. The challenge is massive, but so is the opportunity to finally get it right.
It’s time to ask: Are we trying to solve homelessness—or just move it out of sight?
