Golden Gate Park - Chronic Homeless Encampments

Chronic Homeless Encampments

Since the 1980s, the city of San Francisco has grappled with what to do about large encampments of chronically-homeless people living in Golden Gate Park, which have been criticized as unsanitary, unsafe and "demoralizing" for park users and workers. The camps have been described by journalists as full of garbage, broken glass, hypodermic needles and human excrement, and the people in them are described as chronically homeless, many suffering from serious addictions, and often behaving aggressively with police and park gardeners. There have been occasional incidents of violence and vandalism related to the homeless in the park, including the 2010 park beating to death of a homeless man and an attack on park visitors by dogs owned by a park resident, also in 2010.

Starting in 1988 under then-mayor Art Agnos, and continuing under the direction of subsequent mayors including Frank Jordan, Willie Brown and Gavin Newsom, San Francisco police have conducted intermittent sweeps of the park aimed at eliminating the camps. Tactics have included information campaigns designed to inform homeless residents about city services available to help them, waking sleeping homeless people and making them leave the park, issuing citations for infractions and misdemeanors such as camping, trespassing or public intoxication, that carry penalties of $75 to $100, and the seizure and removal from the park of homeless people's possessions.

The crackdowns have been criticized by anti-poverty activists and civil liberties groups, who say they attack only the symptoms of homelessness while ignoring its root causes, and criminalize the poor for their poverty while ignoring their property rights and constitutional rights. In 2006, the American Civil Liberties Union brought a lawsuit against the city government on behalf of 10 homeless people, alleging property violations by the city during sweeps in Golden Gate Park the year before.