Several city leaders attended a public forum in San Francisco's Mission District on Wednesday to respond to a number of hot-button issues in the area, including crime, drugs, mental health, and homelessness.
"The problem is we don’t have enough shelter space," said San Francisco City Supervisor, Hillary Ronen, who represents the district. Ronen says she's asked the city for new temporary shelter beds to addressin the area, but that most of the city’s resources are being diverted to long-term housing in the Tenderloin. The city’s only immediate plan to address that issue in the district is adding 35 new beds at a shelter on South Van Ness Avenue.
Still, some members of the public in the audience, argued that neither plan fully addresses another pressing problem in the area: the issue of mental health and drug addiction among the area’s unhoused. Property crime, was also on the minds of those attending. Supervisor Ronen said that she is hoping that a new law, which she helped co-author, requiring street vendors to hold a city permit, will help curb fencing, the sale of stolen goods, in the area.