San Francisco’s newest strategy to tackle homeless crisis: using 311 app to report encampments

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — In San Francisco, changes to the city’s 311 app are making it easier to report unhoused people on the streets, one of the top priorities for the Lurie administration.

The city’s 311 app and call center is where people report issues like overflowing trash, graffiti and sidewalk cleanups. But as the homeless crisis intensifies, now the city is also adding two categories: to report an encampment or a person in distress. Officials are hoping this will help the city’s response strategies.

There are over 8,000 homeless people in San Francisco. Many sleep on sidewalks or makeshift encampments. Residents, like Michael Aguirre, see this crisis up close when he steps outside.

“The more benefits that we can get for the homeless right now, it’s the better. Anything from information to aid, housing — anything like that is better than not having that at all,” Aguirre said.

The latest city strategy to tackle this crisis is changes to the city’s 311 app. We met with the city’s IT project manager to break it down.

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“It will give me my current location, and what I can do is drag the pin to the exact location of the issue of the concern. Then I press next, and then it will give me the option to select a particular nature of request. I can select if there is an encampment or an unhoused person not in an encampment,” said Bryan Wong, IT project manager for 311.

The city has been tracking the effectiveness of these two categories since June 18, when it launched. It has received over 10,000 requests.

Carmen Chu, San Francisco’s city administrator, says this has been key to help the deployment of specific city departments to help the homeless community.

“We are constantly trying to figure out how to do things better, and in this change, we’re creating more opportunity for people to provide some of their concerns in detail. What they are seeing on the streets, street conditions and homeless,” Chu said. “For all non-emergency instances, where they see someone who may need help on the street, now if you go to the 311 app, you’ll be able to go in and provide more detail and say ‘this might be an encampment’ or ‘maybe it’s just an individual who looks like they may need help on the streets.'”

The executive director of the San Francisco’s Coalition on Homelessness sees this as a way for residents to complain instead of help.

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“It’s all about whether we have the housing for folks, and our outreach teams already know where unhoused are. We really shouldn’t be creating a complaint-based system,” said Jennifer Friedenbach with the Coalition on Homelessness.

Some residents say the changes don’t go far enough.

“That doesn’t tell you if someone is having a mental health crisis, someone is behaving badly, threatening people. There are more categories that could be added that would better capture the nuances of what people are going through on the streets,” said Alex Ludlum, executive director of the Soma West Community Benefit District.

In case of emergencies, the city is still encouraging residents to call 911, including if someone needs urgent medical help on the streets or is displaying aggressive behaviors.