Here's the deal: San Francisco has been patting itself on the back for reducing tent encampments citywide. And sure, the numbers look better in some neighborhoods. But if you live in SoMa, you know exactly where those tents went — right onto your block.

While the rest of the city celebrates cleaner sidewalks, SoMa is absorbing the displacement like a sponge that nobody bothered to wring out. Residents there are describing their neighborhood as a "containment zone for the city's problems," and honestly, it's hard to argue with that framing.

Let's be clear about two things simultaneously, because nuance still matters:

First, people experiencing homelessness who say they have nowhere to go are, in many cases, telling the truth. San Francisco's shelter system is a bureaucratic labyrinth, and the city's housing pipeline moves at the speed of a MUNI bus stuck behind a double-parked delivery truck. Decades of mismanaged spending — billions of dollars with shockingly little accountability — have produced a system that fails the very people it claims to serve.

Second, SoMa residents have every right to demand better. Paying some of the highest rents and property taxes in America while watching your neighborhood become the default dumping ground for failed policy isn't a social contract — it's a shakedown. Small businesses in the area are suffering. Families are leaving. The tax base that funds these very programs is eroding in real time.

The fundamental problem isn't compassion versus cruelty. It's that City Hall keeps shuffling people around like chess pieces instead of building a system with actual outcomes. We've spent over $1 billion annually on homelessness services. Where are the audits? Where are the results? Where is the accountability for programs that consume enormous budgets while encampments simply migrate from one zip code to another?

SoMa deserves better. So do the people living in those tents. The only entity that deserves nothing here is the bureaucracy that keeps failing both groups while asking for more money.