Proyecto Dignidad is so far only a proposal for how to conduct tent encampment sweeps in San Francisco’s Mission District.
So you think you’ve got an illegal camping problem or two in your North American City? Mission District — a hundred or so of San Francisco’s oldest city blocks — has literally dozens of homeless tent encampments.
The Latino Task Force and its Street Needs Committee are looking for a more compassionate process of imposing city health and safety bylaws on the people who are homeless who inhabit these illegal1 encampments.
As the continent has slowly recovered from (or adapted to) the COVID crisis, 2022 has spawned a continental storm of harsh attacks to erase tent encampments. ‘Crushing’ the problem has frequently involved paramilitary approaches to law and order, with little (no?) regard during such operations for the human rights of the people who are losing their homes.
Unseemly brutality has also been the order of the day, including tacit approval of wholesale theft and destruction of homeless property. Here’s a recent example from San Diego, where city workers were photographed crushing bicycles owned by the homeless in garbage-compacting trucks. Read more in CBS8: More videos surface of destruction of bicycles during San Diego homeless encampment See also this CBC story from Vancouver, B.C. where the city has failed to protect the possessions of residents during street sweeps: City of Vancouver apologizes for harm caused during daily street sweeps in the Downtown Eastside
So what does Proyecto Dignidad see that needs to be done differently? The proposal is based on a successful ten-year old experiment that involved a tent encampment that was ordered closed following a fire.
According to Francisco Herrera, a member of the Street Needs Committee of the Latino Task Force, the people in encampments feel they are treated only as an eyesore. The Latino Task Force proposes to treat them as neighbours. Far from attacking each encampment in a sudden ambush, they want a full week to meet and engage with camp inhabitants in order to better understand their needs.
What happens next? What will it cost? How is officialdom treating the proposal so far?
Read more about the Proyecto Dignidad proposal at Mission Local: Advocates float Proyecto Dignidad to fix Mission’s homelessness
Footnotes
- Aren’t all tent encampments illegal? Not so. There have been some pioneering efforts, particularly in Sacramento, California recently to resolve some of encampment health and safety issues by creating city-run encampments. Try: Sacramento County Climbs Aboard ‘Official Tent City’ Bandwagon
