Housing the Homeless Remains A Top Priority In Golden Gate Park Cleanup

-Trent Rhorer, Executive Director, Human Services Agency

You have probably seen recent media coverage regarding the City’s clean up effort in Golden Gate Park and how it is affecting our homeless population. Golden Gate Park is considered by many as one of the most beautiful parks in the country. In order to preserve the natural beauty of our beloved park, Mayor Newsom has called for an interdepartmental effort that encompasses both a plan to clean up the park, including the removal of encampments that have created significant health hazards (discarded needles, rodent infestation, feces, trash) and to provide greater outreach to our homeless residents who have in the past used the park as a place of refuge.

The San Francisco Human Services Agency (HSA) is committed to taking the necessary measures to ensure that our homeless residents are provided with essential city services, including adequate housing and shelter alternatives, as opposed to living in illegal encampments in Golden Gate Park. Recently HSA, along with Mayor Newsom and representatives from DPW, Recreation and Park Department, SFPD and the SFHOT (San Francisco Homelessness Outreach Team) toured Golden Gate Park to monitor the progress of the clean up effort and to make sure that any issues impacting our homeless individuals relating to housing and support services were also being addressed.

The primary objective of the City's efforts is to provide assistance to the homeless individuals who are living in the Park, to enable them to relocate out of the Park with the eventual and subsequent removal of the hazardous encampments. This strategy is a phased approach that focuses on identified sections of the Park sequentially over the next number of months.

We are now at the three-month point in our outreach to illegal campers in Golden Gate Park and subsequent clean up of encampment sites and this effort continues at a very successful pace. Our phased approach of Outreach / Services first, followed by encampment site clean-up has produced significant improvement in park appearance and access for all park users as well as sustained public support for this intensive effort.

As envisioned, this initial 90-day inter-departmental initiative of combined efforts began on September 19 with flyers being distributed throughout known GGP encampment sites giving notice of the city’s impending measure.

As this effort continues on a 7-day / week schedule and as outreach and clean-up progresses Park Section-by-Park Section through Golden Gate Park, Outreach Teams will continue to have a presence in the Park everyday offering services ahead of Clean-up Crews. Our homeless outreach has been successful, having moved 83 individuals out of the Park and into temporary housing. Another 30 individuals have been provided transportation to be reunited with their friends or family in Cities across the United States.

It is important to note that the majority of individuals residing in the Park are greatly in need of the City's assistance. Many are mentally ill, suffer from drug and alcohol addiction, are in poor physical health and need a safe place to reside. This is our primary concern.

Secondly, the concentration of homeless encampments in the Park has created a public health hazard that must be mitigated to protect both the homeless and those who visit the park. Similar to our efforts to assist concentrations of homeless in other areas of the City (Tenderloin, mid-Market, upper-market, Mission), change will not occur immediately. This effort will require a multiple departmental intervention over a period of months, in order to achieve positive and sustained outcomes where the homeless transition into services to improve their lives and the Park becomes a clean, safe environment that everyone can enjoy.

Along with Mayor Newsom’s “Housing First” approach- including supportive wrap-around social services, Project Homeless Connect, Homeward Bound Program, and SFHOT, our city is dedicated to eradicating urban homelessness, as we once knew it. San Francisco has gone from once being identified as having the most pervasive homeless problem in the country, to being a role model for the rest of the country in our commitment to ending chronic urban homelessness.

Comments

[Y Farrell]

Glad to see you are cleaning up the Park while also considering the needs of the people unfortunate enough to be sleeping there. I want to live in San Francisco too, but low-income though I am, I don't want to hang out in Golden Gate Park for housing!