Where did San Francisco’s homeless people go during APEC? Not very far

Less than a block from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit that’s brought thousands of diplomats and world leaders to San Francisco, a young man in the throes of drug addiction lay crumpled into a ball as a city worker with broom and dustpan calmly swept the downtown plaza near Fifth and Mission streets.

Down a nearby alley, a half-dozen people huddled around a light post and passed butane lighters, some slowly nodding off after inhaling milky white puffs from glass pipes.

Around the corner, just across from a heavily guarded entrance to the summit, a man in a dark hoodie slept on the sidewalk, resting his head on a bright orange backpack as foreign emissaries in neatly pressed suits strode past.

If you’ve followed much of the news coverage leading up to APEC, you might be led to believe that San Francisco had, at least temporarily, rid its downtown of scenes like this in hopes of putting its best face forward to the world and flipping the unrelenting “doom loop” narrative surrounding its post-pandemic challenges.

But while the city did move homeless people out of the designated summit security zone, many didn’t go very far.

“People were just forced to go to the alleys,” said Javier Bremond, human rights organizer with the San Francisco advocacy group Coalition on Homelessness. “And a lot of people are under the freeway.”

To be sure, city officials did clear out many tent encampments, scrub major streets and promise to open some new emergency shelter beds. And at places where open-air drug use is typically common, such as the Powell BART Station and United Nations Plaza near City Hall, things have been noticeably quiet in recent days.

“They’ve definitely been moving people around from the areas that were going to be inhabited by the fancy people,” said homeless resident Zach Wiseman, 28, sitting hunched over a suitcase beside a bus stop across the street from the APEC entrance at Mission Street. “Dress up for the show, and once it’s over, go back to whatever.”

Still, instances of human suffering were difficult to avoid during the conference.

On Thursday, a delegate from Thailand waiting to enter a summit checkpoint said he had heard about San Francisco’s struggles with homelessness but was still shocked to see how many people were languishing on the street.

“I didn’t believe it at the time until I witnessed it myself,” he said, declining to give his name while representing his country in an official capacity. “It’s sad to see, especially since I lived here before. It was a romantic city.”

San Francisco officials did not immediately respond to questions about the city’s homelessness response during APEC.

Bremond, the advocate with the Coalition on Homelessness, noted city efforts to move homeless people away from big events are nothing new, pointing to encampment clearings in 2016 when San Francisco helped host the Super Bowl, an event that still put a national spotlight on the local crisis.

Late last year, the coalition won an injunction against the city restricting its ability to clear many camps for months. But a federal court in September clarified the order, allowing officials to disband encampments as long as they first offer homeless residents a shelter bed.

An estimated 7,750 homeless people sleep outdoors or in shelters on any given night, according to the latest count last year.

Bremond said he was disappointed APEC organizers and federal officials didn’t do more to help add shelter options during the summit, such as temporary motel rooms for displaced homeless people.

“How many billions were at that conference?” Bremond asked. “It would be like dropping a quarter on the ground for them.”