Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
I loved Vancouver, especially the street kids burning trash to stay warm in the rain....
Like there are no homeless people in San Francisco...what a paradise your living in
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Fewer homeless people on streets of San Francisco
28% drop since fall of '02, but other counties report higher numbers
Kevin studmuffinan, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
San Francisco's homeless population plummeted by more than a quarter in the past two years, the city reported Monday, a dramatic change Mayor Gavin Newsom says is a credit to his policies of
cutting cash assistance to street people and aggressively moving them into housing with counseling services San Francisco's new figures are based on a , "
one-night homeless count taken between 8 p.m. Jan. 26 and about 8 a.m. the next morning. It showed the city now has 6,248 homeless people living on the streets or in jails, shelters, rehabilitation centers or other emergency facilities -- a 28 percent decline compared to 8,640 in October 2002, the last time such a count was conducted.
"There are still a lot of homeless people out there, and I'm still seeing some of the same people I've seen for the past 10 years," Newsom said at a news conference to announce the numbers. "But it's time to start focusing on the good things that are happening."
The new figures were met with disbelief from homeless advocates who say they don't square with reality on the streets. And they come at a time when most other counties in the Bay Area expect to report an increase in their homeless populations, leading to speculation that perhaps some homeless people are being driven out of the city by its welfare-slashing Care Not Cash program.
"It's an outrageous undercount, politically motivated," said Jennifer Friedenbach of the San Francisco advocacy group the Coalition on Homelessness. "We've been looking at encampments and visit 15 different sites a week, and the numbers may have dropped a little, but we have not seen as dramatic a drop.
