SAN FRANCISCO — Andrew Douglass shoved his clothes and belongings into plastic trash bags as five police officers surrounded his encampment — a drab gray tent overflowing along a bustling sidewalk in the gritty Tenderloin neighborhood, where homeless people lie sprawled on public sidewalks, sometimes in drug overdoses. This story also ran on . It can be .
is a newsroom partnership between KFF Health News and Civic News Company that produces reporting on public health and the systems of prevention that communities rely on to stay healthy. Officers gave him a choice: Go to a shelter or get arrested and cited for sleeping outside. Douglass was trying to figure out what to do as he dismantled his tent.
If he accepted temporary shelter, he’d risk missing an important appointment with his street medicine case manager, who was due to meet him at his tent in the morning to help him secure a low-income housing unit with wraparound services — and he worried about losing his medications, ID, and other vital documents again in another homeless sweep. Douglass, who didn’t have a working cellphone, knew if he moved from where he’d slept for months, his case manager might not be able to find him. “I’m so close to getting housing.
I need to be here tomorrow morning so I can try and get inside,” he said, trying to reason with officers as he was handcuffed and arrested for illegal lodging. California, of the U.S.
homelessness crisis, is cracking down on people living outside .