Breed Ordered Homeless Sweeps Without Warning New Evidence Shows

From a declaration by Keki Marshall, former director of outreach and temporary shelter at the Department of Homelessness:

Mayor Breed sent to staff to remove unhoused people from sight. She would order us to displace unhoused people by a certain date and time just because they were in the vicinity of her planned schedule for the day. Mayor Breed ordered us to carry out sweeps because she did not want to be seen near unhoused people while she was at lunch, at the gym, at fundraisers, or at meetings on public business.

The clear mandate from the Mayor was that the unhoused should not be visible in public, even if they had nowhere else to go. HSOC would race to respond, putting other planned and organized sweeps on hold. We would hold a special HSOC meeting to redirect resources to the areas Mayor Breed had identified for that day. In other words, rather than allocate services by need, political theater would dictate the services.

A declaration by Andrinna Malone, who spent 18 years working at DPW:

Throughout my entire career at DPW—and especially in recent years—I personally witnessed many incidents where DPW conducted sweeps without posting a written notice in advance of a homelessness sweep….

Although DPW employees are required to bag and tag items that they take from unhoused individuals, this rule is rarely followed. I have seen many instances where DPW personnel made no effort at all to bag and tag property and would take unhoused people’s belongings straight to the dump.

Among those belongings were essentially medications, wheelchairs, and crutches.

Mayor Breed personally ordered homeless sweeps, new evidence shows