SAN FRANCISCO >> The homeless men who huddled in tents on a wide sidewalk near Golden Gate Park in San Francisco knew that city crews were coming to clear them out. But they did not budge.

They dozed. They bantered. One strummed a guitar. Fifteen times this year, the city has cleared the sidewalks near the local Department of Motor Vehicles office — and 15 times, the homeless campers have quickly returned.

But attempt No. 16 would be different, Mayor London Breed vowed. No longer would San Francisco allow homeless people to stay on the sidewalks if there was another place to sleep. The individuals camping around the DMV branch had collectively turned down 89 offers of shelter this year, according to the mayor’s office, and Breed had had enough.

“We need some tough love on the streets of our city,” Breed said at a reelection campaign rally held four days before the Monday clear-out.

San Francisco has long had a reputation as a liberal bastion, a city that had hoped to solve its problems more through compassion than crackdowns. But with voters frustrated by homeless encampments, open drug use and a downtown that has lost some of its verve, Breed has taken a tougher approach as she fights for her political life in a hotly contested mayoral race.

Empowered by a recent Supreme Court decision and encouraged by Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, Breed, a Democrat, has vowed to aggressively clear encampments this month and has told police officers that they can cite homeless campers for illegal lodging if they refuse shelter, with jail time on the table.

The Police Department, whose chief reports to Breed, told officers in a memo Wednesday that they can now cite people for violations that include sitting, lying or camping on sidewalks; obstructing people’s ability to walk in public spaces; and creating a public nuisance through conduct that is “offensive to the senses.”

On Thursday, Breed directed city officials to offer bus tickets to homeless people before providing them a shelter bed or other services. It was the starkest sign yet that San Francisco had changed its tack — and stood in contrast to Los Angeles, where leaders criticized Newsom for issuing an executive order last week encouraging them to sweep homeless encampments.

“San Francisco will always lead with compassion, but we cannot allow our compassion to be taken advantage of,” Breed said in her busing order. “We will not be a city with a reputation for being able to solve the housing and behavioral health needs of people across our country.”

On Monday afternoon, the mayor made a personal visit to the sidewalk alongside the DMV, a few days after homeless campers had been warned their tents would be cleared through notices that were stapled to nearby trees.

Breed was joined by about 30 city workers, including her aides and security detail, public health officials and eight police officers. Their numbers dwarfed the four homeless people who were staying put on the sidewalk.

Joel Beiswanger, 49, sat amid a pile of his belongings as the police officers stood nearby and watched him. Wearing a bright orange sweatshirt and pajama pants emblazoned with Santa Claus, he said he found shelters too stressful and had nowhere else to go. He said he has been homeless on and off since he was 14.

Beiswanger took issue with Breed’s statement last week that she wanted to make it “uncomfortable” for people to live on the street.

“Where are the bathrooms at? Showers? Where is there comfort?” he asked. “Every week, someone comes through and takes everything you own, no questions asked. I guess it’s how you get your votes.

Emmanuel Siple, 48, woke up from a nap in a tent nearby. He said a drug and alcohol problem and divorce had led him to live on the streets, and he resented being “micromanaged” by city workers. The threat of jail won’t convince him to stay in a shelter, which already feels like jail, he said.

Breed did not engage with the homeless men, observing them from across an intersection. She said she did not want to be recorded by a group of activists for homeless rights who had shown up to monitor the clearing and take videos of the workers.

For years, San Francisco has struggled to deal with encampments crowding sidewalks, and authorities have said that some tents have been used as cover to sell and consume drugs — particularly fentanyl, which has contributed to a spike in deadly overdoses. The city lacks enough affordable housing, drug treatment programs and hospital beds to address the misery, and voters are steamed.

The mayor told reporters last week that she was “excited” about the Supreme Court, dominated by Republican appointees, upholding the ban in Grants Pass, Oregon, on homeless people sleeping outside. For several years, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees nine Western states including California, had blocked laws that made it illegal to camp when no shelter was available.

Newsom’s recent order directed state officials to begin dismantling thousands of homeless encampments and urged local leaders to follow suit. Breed praised the enforcement approach, noting that her teams repeatedly offer shelter beds, but are turned down two-thirds of the time.

But advocates for homeless people called it cruel, saying it would do little to solve the underlying factors that lead to homelessness. City and county leaders in Los Angeles have criticized the Supreme Court and Newsom and vowed to solve homelessness in their own way, primarily by finding motel space and services for people before clearing them from the streets.

In San Francisco, however, a police officer this week told one homeless person that tents were being swept in the city because Breed and Newsom had declared “no more on the streets, no more encampments,” The San Francisco Standard reported.

Some of Breed’s challengers have criticized her approach. Aaron Peskin, president of the Board of Supervisors and the most liberal candidate in the mayoral race, said that he said he would add 2,000 shelter beds, fight evictions and boost the number of rent-controlled apartments.

“What is happening now is a quick and performative election-year gimmick,” he said.

At the DMV, activists had their own way of countering the sweep overseen by Breed. They parked a U-Haul van nearby and offered to store the men’s belongings in it until the city crews left. Breed, standing across the street, said they were only enabling homelessness and doing nothing to actually help.

Jeff Klein, 31, bought turkey and Swiss sandwiches for the men. Another activist gave them Oreo cookies. Klein said the city should have been spending its money on food and housing instead of paying for the workers involved in the clearing, most of whom did not engage with the homeless men or clean the camp.

“We have our values completely backward,” Klein said.

Lt. Wayman Young of the San Francisco Police has worked on the camp-clearing team for five years. He said that people living in tents in neighborhoods away from downtown are often disabled people, older citizens or teenage runaways — all of whom desperately need help.

Downtown is another story, he said, fueled mostly by the open-air drug trade. The team has found guns, knives, machetes and axes in the tents, as well as giant containers of urine and feces, rats, mold and drugs. Young said police search the records of anyone who gets aggressive with them, and he estimated that roughly 1 in 4 have come back with warrants for crimes that ranged from car break-ins to sexual assault.

He said the new policy allowing citations will make it easier to keep sidewalks clear.

“We want them to go to shelter, and if they don’t, we have to enforce the law,” Young said. He added that those cited will be released on-site and that it would be up to the district attorney to decide whether to charge them. Those with warrants will be taken to jail immediately.

In the first few days of the latest effort, city employees had 235 conversations with homeless people and removed 81 tents. Twenty-four people accepted a shelter bed, while the rest declined or did not respond. Police reported that they have made nine arrests, eight for outstanding warrants and one for illegal lodging, who was cited and released on-site.

Among the arrested was Beiswanger, outside of the DMV, who had outstanding warrants for falsely identifying himself to the police and possessing methamphetamines. They took him to jail, and he has been released. He could not be reached for comment after leaving the camp.

The other homeless men by the DMV loaded their belongings into the U-Haul van and wandered away. That, for the time being, was enough to avoid citations.

About an hour after the city crews left, the men retrieved their belongings and carried them through Golden Gate Park to a different corner.

There, they erected a new encampment.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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