SF Homeless Czar Touts Streamlined Approach, Urges Patience
By Kevin Fagan
San Francisco Chronicle
August 30, 2016
One tent encampment cleared, 77 more to go — not to mention building an entire department devoted to moving thousands of homeless people off the streets.
San Francisco’s new homeless czar, Jeff Kositsky, spent an hour talking with The Chronicle’s editorial board Monday, and despite his street outreach teamdismantling the biggest encampment in the city that morning, he wasn’t doing much crowing.
The task of combining the efforts of at least five city departments into the newDepartment of Homelessness and Supportive Housing is going to take years, he warned. Clearing one camp — the first operation for his freshly created Encampment Resolution Team, is just one of many, many steps ahead.
Kositsky wants to make sure the people of the city understand that the mere creation of the department, which he took charge of officially on Aug. 15, is not going to change the city’s most vexing problem overnight.