San Francisco, CA – Today Mayor London N. Breed announced that the City’s latest quarterly tent count dropped again, hitting its lowest level since before San Francisco started conducting counts in 2018.
The count conducted on October 2 found 242 tents and structures across the City – a 60% reduction from 609 counted in July 2023. These reductions come after outreach teams connected over 950 people from encampments to shelter since the start of 2024.
Key Stats from October Count
- Of 242 tents and structures counted, 130 were tents and 112 structures.
- In July 2023, this number was 434 tents and 175 structures.
- Only 5 encampments of 5 or more tents/structures citywide.
- In July 2023, there were 14 encampments of 5 or more.
- Reductions were spread across all 11 Supervisorial Districts with the largest overall decrease in District 6, and largest percentage decreases in Districts 2 and 8.
“Every day our City workers are out in San Francisco offering help, bringing people indoors, and cleaning up our neighborhoods and we are seeing the results,” said Mayor London Breed. “We are a compassionate City that leads with services, but we also will continue to enforce our laws when those offers are rejected. This latest count shows we are making progress, and we will not let up as we continue to move people into shelter and housing and improve the conditions of our neighborhoods.”
San Francisco conducts quarterly tent counts to track progress and gather data for future planned operations. It’s important to note that these numbers are fluid as encampment teams continue to conduct operations as areas can become re-encamped.
"I am proud of our coordinated operations to address encampments, which bring people indoors into shelter, housing, and other services every day," said San Francisco Department of Emergency Management (DEM) Executive Director Mary Ellen Carroll. "Under the coordination of DEM leadership, dedicated staff from the Departments of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, Public Health, Public Works, SFMTA, and the San Francisco Police Department work to connect people experiencing homelessness with services while ensuring public rights of way remain clean and safe. This work is essential to reducing the devastating health impacts of unsheltered homelessness in San Francisco, which continues to decline due to a balanced approach of services and enforcement."
The sustained reduction is a result of increased efforts to offer people shelter and housing and clean up encampments citywide. This work is led by the Healthy Streets Operations Center (HSOC), a multi-agency team that conducts daily encampment operations by leading with offers of shelter and services.
Since the Grants Pass decision went into effect at the beginning of August, San Francisco encampment teams and City workers have conducted daily operations offering shelter and services, while also enforcing laws when offers of shelter were rejected.
Since August 1, these outreach teams have conducted over 3,000 engagements with people in encampments. Of those:
- 365 offers of shelter accepted
- 46 were already housed/sheltered
- 296 were issued citations/arrested (80% of people are cited for illegal lodging and released on scene)
- 25 transferred to emergency medical services
The rest of the time individuals either refused direct offers of service or walked away before outreach workers could engage directly with them. As outreach teams return to certain areas repeatedly, they will engage with individuals multiple times, so 3,000 engagements do not represent 3,000 unique individuals.
Tent Count Drops Across All Supervisor Districts
The quarterly tent count is conducted on a single point in time, during a one-day count to capture a snapshot of activity across the City. The Supervisor District data linked here is based off of data collected on October 2 as part of the quarterly tent count’s snapshot.
Vehicular Count Also Drops
In addition to a decline in tents and structures, the number of people living in vehicles has also declined since last summer. At that time, over 1,000 vehicles were counted on San Francisco’s streets. This was driven in part by a rise in family homelessness, including migrant families. Since then, San Francisco has increased support to address family homelessness, investing in both more emergency shelter and rapid rehousing vouchers to help house families.
With these resources and other encampment resolution work, the number of vehicles counted has fallen from 1,058 in July 2023 to 458 in the October 2024 count.
An example of this work to bring people from vehicles indoors includes targeted efforts on Winston Avenue and Zoo Road. Through numerous outreach operations, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) helped 50 households move from vehicles on Winston Road and Zoo Road and into long-term housing, in addition to conducting outreach to RV dwellers across San Francisco.
Mayor Breed’s Homelessness Response
Since taking office in 2018, Mayor Breed has significantly expanded and improved San Francisco’s homelessness response system, leading to the number of people living on the streets to reach the lowest level in at least 10 years. Under her leadership, San Francisco has expanded shelter beds by over 70%, increased housing slots for formerly homeless individuals by over 50%, and added 400 behavioral health treatment beds.
In the last year, San Francisco has helped over 5,200 people exit homelessness, provided shelter to nearly 10,000 people, and over 8,200 people have accessed prevention support like rental assistance to keep them from falling into homelessness in the first place.
Additional data may be accessed at this link.
###