Advocates Call for End to War on Homeless People at San Francisco City Hall
On the same day that Mayor Daniel Lurie’s office announced “record-low number of tent encampments and large vehicles on San Francisco streets,” advocates for homeless people gathered on the steps of City Hall to demand more services and an end to criminalization.
Three organizations, including the Coalition on Homelessness (COH), which publishes Street Sheet, hosted the rally on June 9 to protest what they call a futile and cruel response to homelessness.
Adding to the usual signs and banners, other visual elements stood out at the action. A pair of figures held together a makeshift jail while a man dressed as Batman stood with the crowd and later handed out water bottles to the unhoused people at the action. But most striking was the layout of foldable wagons as a reminder of unsheltered San Franciscans’ continual displacement from city streets. Organizers gave them away to homeless folk after the rally.
Despite the mayor’s announcement of fewer tents and other structures on the streets, along with an almost one-third drop in the number of RVs, COH noted that sweeps have increased in frequency since the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2024 on Grants Pass v. Johnson, which empowered cities to arrest unhoused people for sleeping outside without providing available shelter. Arrests and citations spiked during the last months of London Breed’s mayoralty and continued into Lurie’s.
“Sweeps have changed under Daniel Lurie,” COH human rights organizer Lukas Illa said. “Sweeps have become every single day, every single moment.”
Sweeps also make it difficult for unsheltered people to keep their possessions or manage medical conditions, Kema Straker, another COH organizer, said. She described incidents at sweeps where City workers deprived a man of his hepatitis C medication and seized a woman’s clothing on a rainy day.
“These stories are evidence,” Straker said. “Evidence of a city that had options—real options, proven solutions—and chose removal instead. It chose punishment instead. It chose to make the problem invisible instead of actually solving it.”
“That is not a service,” Straker added. “That is criminalization.
Apple Cronk addressed the City’s reduction of noncongregate shelter, permanent supportive housing and harm reduction services since they were rehoused after spending eight years homeless. They sued the City in 2002 over its property confiscation practices in sweeps. COH joined Cronk and others in the lawsuit, which they settled last year. They noted that when City workers evicted them from public areas, staff only gave them 10 minutes to gather their things and clear out. City policy recommends workers to allow 30 minutes to pack up, plus extra time for people with disabilities.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re disabled, elderly, pregnant, mentally ill, injured, sick, sleep deprived, traumatized or running on pure survival instinct after months or years outside,” Cronk said. “You have 10 minutes until everything is reduced to debris and thrown in the back of a fucking trash truck. This is violence. This is inhumane.”
After the event, the Batman of San Jose, who has attracted public attention for criticizing city councils in Oakland and San Jose on the removal of unhoused residents from public space, posted a video on Instagram.
“What I’m seeing in San Francisco is a lot like what I’ve seen in San Jose, what I’ve seen in Oakland, what we’re seeing around the country is the treatment of unhoused people is barbaric,” he said. “People are being treated unjustly and we need to fight back. People are being killed by these sweeps.”
TJ Johnston is the editor-in-chief of Street Sheet, which is published by the Coalition on Homelessness, a San Francisco based homeless advocacy organization. He has contributed to several Bay Area publications.
