Here's the thing: the city also fundamentally changed how it conducted the count, making any comparison to previous years essentially meaningless.
Historically, San Francisco's biennial count took place late at night. This year, the city sent outreach workers out early in the morning instead, citing better visibility and safety for canvassers. On top of that, counters shifted from visual surveys — essentially eyeballing whether someone looked homeless — to actually asking people about their housing status.
Think about that for a second. The old methodology counted people in the dark and guessed who was homeless based on appearances. The new one happens in daylight and involves direct conversations. As one SF resident put it, "The old system seems to be calculated to undercount." And yet, even with a methodology that should theoretically capture more people, the drop was only 4%.
Another local was less diplomatic: "Even juking the numbers he can't make it look good."
Look, we're not inherently opposed to a mayor taking credit for progress. That's politics. But you can't change the ruler and then brag about the measurement. A 4% decline under a completely different methodology tells us almost nothing about whether conditions have actually improved. It might even suggest things have gotten worse — if a more thorough count only found slightly fewer people, the previous numbers were probably undercounting all along.
San Francisco spends north of $600 million annually on homelessness services. Taxpayers funding that staggering tab deserve honest benchmarks, not apples-to-oranges comparisons dressed up as accomplishments. If the new counting method is genuinely better — and it does sound more rigorous — then great, use it going forward. But own the fact that you've reset the baseline. Don't pretend continuity exists where it doesn't.
Meanwhile, as one local bus commuter noted, "I still see tons on O'Farrell street when I'm inbound on the 38R." Sometimes the most reliable data point is just looking out the window.
