This is the third of our “43 Questions” series, in which we ask the four candidates for District 9 supervisor a question a week until November 8, 2016. This week we asked our candidates to weigh in on homelessness.
From Supervisor Scott Weiner’s remarks that homeless encampments “need to go away” to Mayor Ed Lee’s plans to move the homeless from downtown to make room for the Super Bowl — something that, despite official accounts to the contrary, seems to be happening — homelessness was a hot-topic this week.
Since the Mission District is often ground zero for homeless issues, with its sprawling encampments and frustrated residents, we wanted to know how our next supervisor — whoever it is — would approach the problem.
Question #3
All agree that building more permanent housing for the homeless is essential. Besides this, what would you do to address homelessness in the short-term, and what is your position on dismantling homeless encampments, particularly in the Mission?
Iswari España, Training Officer with the San Francisco Human Services Agency
To deal with the issue, I propose new legislation to revise existing policies. We should ease restrictive guidelines to facilitate goal-oriented services, by taking into consideration feedback from direct service providers. We should be sensitive to their barriers of employment, and mental health while we provide services to change their existing situation. I would support the creation of short-term to permanent employment. People need viable employment opportunities to survive. Camp abatement is not a solution because the housing system is not seamless with the community. We must create temporary to long term housing considering and respecting displaced people’s properties.
Edwin Lindo, Vice-President of External Affairs at the Latino Democratic Club
We have 7,600 homeless in SF. The bay area region must step up to address the need collectively, because it’s a regional issue.
We must support innovative approaches like the Navigation Center on 16th and Mission — we must also look at other cities for effective initiatives. Utah has provided housing to their homeless population, and saving a lot of money.
Tent encampments are the result of no housing, strict shelter policies, and some scared to even sleep in shelters. Seattle has taken a novel approach to support residents of encampments — creating temporary living areas while helping residents find transitional housing.
Hillary Ronen, Chief of Staff for Supervisor David Campos
Real solutions to homelessness have been ignored by Mayoral administrations for decades. Dismantling the encampments under the freeways without providing alternative shelter only pushes homeless people into our doorways and sidewalks of our neighborhood — forcing our residents to deal with a problem that should be the City’s responsibility. Every night shelter beds go empty in San Francisco because of bureaucratic red tape and misguided policies. Permanent navigation centers, micro-housing shelters, and increased mental health services have worked in other cities and will work here if all of City Hall acts together to make them a priority.
Joshua Arce, civil rights attorney and Community Liaison for Laborers Local 261
Tonight, 3,000 San Francisco children have no bed and thousands more of our brothers and sisters don’t have a roof over their heads.
Last night I co-sponsored a unanimous SF Democratic Party resolution authored by Rebecca Prozan and the Coalition on Homelessness urging the City to implement the Coalition’s groundbreaking 5-year plan on family homelessness. As Supervisor I’ll work to implement this plan.
It adds affordable housing and rapid re-housing subsidies and would move homeless families into vacant housing authority units, among other important steps.
Homelessness is yet another tragic consequence of our housing crisis. We must take immediate action.
We hope our weekly column will also remind people to vote. San Francisco turnouts are notoriously low, and if you have recently moved or have not yet registered to vote, here is the page you will need to update your registration or to register for the first time.
If you have your own questions to ask the candidates, please send them to info@missionlocal.com with the subject line “One Question.”