California's homeless crisis worsens

Local govts spend millions annually, but housing costs remain an obstacle

During her 10-minute walk from her home to the subway station, Sophia Zhang, a resident of San Francisco, said she saw homeless people lying on the street every day. Occasionally, she saw some injecting themselves with a needle or shouting at passersby.

San Franciscans have found themselves increasingly frustrated by the swelling population living on the street. Pictures of homeless camps and human feces on the street can be sent to SF311 Mobile, an app for reporting quality-of-life issues.

Although the city has cracked down on homeless encampments since Mayor London Breed was elected in July 2018, Zhang said the situation hasn't improved significantly.

Breed, in her budget proposal unveiled last month, increased spending on homeless and mental health services, street cleanliness and affordable housing.

The city has recently voted to implement a mental health conservatorship law, which will expand the city's ability to treat people suffering from mental illness and alcohol abuse.

Despite those efforts and the millions of dollars that San Francisco spends to care for homeless people every year, the city and county of San Francisco now count more than 8,000 homeless people, up 17 percent from 2017, according to the biennial homeless count conducted on one January night this year.

Nearby Alameda and Santa Clara counties counted more than 8,000 and 9,700 homeless, respectively, during the overnight tally, an increase of 43 percent and 31 percent over two years ago.

Most California cities also found increases in the numbers of those with mental or physical impairments who had been homeless for more than a year.

Officials and activists alike blame the high cost of living and housing shortages for making the problem worse.

On Tuesday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that the Mountain View-based company will build up to 20,000 homes at all income levels in the Bay Area over the next 10 years.

"First, over the next 10 years, we'll repurpose at least $750 million of Google's land, most of which is currently zoned for office or commercial space, as residential housing," Pichai wrote in a company blog post.

He also said Google would start a $250 million investment fund to provide incentives to developers to build at least 5,000 affordable housing units in a decade.

"We have the largest unsheltered population on the West Coast, fewer proportionally number of shelter beds, and a massive number of people trying to get shelter－that's what creates the problem," said Jennifer Friedenback, executive director the of San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness, in a recent interview with the Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization Invisible People.

She said "skyrocketing" rents are "outrageous" and "prohibitive", leaving more people displaced from housing and making it harder to get off the streets.

Her organization led a campaign for a homeless tax proposition in San Francisco, which would raise about $300 million annually and was approved by voters in November. But it has since become subject to litigation.