SAN FRANCISCO (KRON)—The November election is fast approaching.
On Thursday night, we took a closer look at Measure Q.
It is aimed at clearing out all homeless tent encampments in the city of San Francisco.
The measure has financial backing from bay area tech leaders…who say they want to clean up the streets.
Concern continues from the San Francisco community as more people make the city streets their home.
The city reported close to 7,000 homeless people last year.
So Supervisor Mark Farrell penned Measure Q which is on the November ballot targeting the removal of all tent encampments.
“These are some of the most dangerous living conditions we’re ever seen in the history of San Francisco,” Farrell said. “From rape to violence to fires to incredible amount of waste, we should not be encouraging people to live on sidewalks I believe it should be our policy to encourage shelter and housing for these individuals.”
Measure Q would require authorities to give a 24-hour notice and provide shelter information before forcing homeless people out of their tents.
It’s easy to promise a safe haven but Measure Q doesn’t address where money for that will come from, said Jennifer Friedenbach of the Coalition on Homelessness San Francisco.
“That’s a process this would make it a lot harder for that to happen it would actually exasperate homelessness because the only way this would work is hold shelter beds empty and give them to people in camps,” Friedenbach said.
Supervisor Mark Farrell said the proposition has been designed through budget processing not one that provides funding.
“Proposition Q is not a funding measure it’s a policy measure what we’ve done is through the budget process which I have chaired for years in side of city hall allocate a significant amount of more resources towards housing shelter and navigation centers,” Farrell said.
Friedenbach says existing shelters are at capacity with massive waiting lists where most often people are only housed for one day.
Her group protested the proposition at Harvey Milk Plaza Thursday night calling Measure Q a short sighted platform made to enhance Farrell’s political career.
“Getting people who are frustrated to just vote for anything,” Friedenbach said. “It’s basically a way for a politician to get their name known to get contributions from billionaires who want to take tents away from homeless.”
Farrell said those statements are simply not true.
“Couldn’t be further from the truth I’ve been working on homeless issues for the past four years this is just one measure I’ve put forward.”
Two other supervisors shared their opposition on Measure Q.
John Avalos said the city was doing well this spring uniting on a new department and direction on homelessness, but the authors of Proposition Q came along with an unnecessary and purely political measure that destroyed goodwill necessary to create real exits from homelessness.