Five months into San Francisco's ban on oversized vehicles — the policy largely aimed at clearing RV encampments from city streets — the numbers are in, and they tell a complicated story.

On one hand: 82 people have been connected to housing. That's real. That's 82 human beings with a roof, a door that locks, and a shot at stability. Credit where it's due.

On the other hand: an unknown but clearly significant number of former RV dwellers didn't get housed. They got displaced. Many are now living on the sidewalk — which, for those keeping score at home, is arguably a worse outcome for everyone involved. The person sleeping on concrete is worse off than the person who had a vehicle with walls. The neighborhood dealing with a new tent is arguably no better off than the one that had a parked RV.

This is the fundamental tension with enforcement-first homelessness policy. It can work — but only when the off-ramp infrastructure is actually there. Eighty-two placements suggest the city had some resources lined up. But the people now on the street suggest it didn't have nearly enough.

The fiscally responsible question isn't whether the city should tolerate indefinite RV encampments — it shouldn't. Streets need to function as streets. But the responsible question is: did we spend money on towing, enforcement, and cleanup only to redistribute the problem rather than solve it? Because shuffling people from an RV to a sidewalk isn't governance. It's theater.

If you're going to ban something, have a plan for what comes next. Not a plan for 30% of the affected population. A plan for all of it. Otherwise you're just burning resources to move a crisis from one block to the next — and calling it progress.

San Francisco has a long, expensive history of doing exactly that. Eighty-two people housed is worth celebrating. But the city owes us an honest accounting of what happened to everyone else.