Fact Check: Has San Francisco Received Zero Funding To Tackle Homelessness?

The homelessness crisis in San Francisco has drawn national attention with videos shared widely on social media of the city's rough sleepers crowding out its sidewalks and infrastructure.

These scenes of desperation and reports of criminality recently led some sections of social media to claim that nothing was being spent to tackle the issue, quoting the billions that have been committed to the conflict in Ukraine by comparison.

The Claim

A tweet by user @REVMAXXING, posted on June 16, 2023, included a video of what appeared to be rough sleepers in San Francisco, with the message: "This is San Francisco.

"$100 Billion for Ukraine, $0 to solve this Crisis.

"The United States government has abandoned its people."

@REVMAXXING also posted on June 15, 2023, with another video: "This is San Francisco, 100 billion for Ukraine, nothing for Americans."

The Facts

Newsweek recently investigated false claims about levels of spending in Ukraine, with critics of the conflict falsely claiming that the U.S. had spent $200 billion, more than double what experts say is the actual figure.

While the spending claim for Ukraine here is somewhat more in line with current estimates, the claim that nothing has been spent to tackle San Francisco's homeless crisis is demonstrably false.

According to the political think tank the Hoover Institution, San Francisco spent $2.8 billion on the homeless since 2016-2017, of which $1.1 billion was committed in 2021-2022.

A specific project to tackling homelessness, called the Our City, Our Home Fund, came to $848.4 million for fiscal year 2022-23, combining funding from the previous year with current year monies.

This pot was "dedicated to increasing permanent housing and services for people experiencing homelessness"

According to the city's Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH), the city adopted a $672 million budget for fiscal year 2022-23, with city Mayor London Breed proposing a $690 million spend on HSH in 2023-24, decreasing slightly to $660 million in 2024-2025.

The budget is currently under review, facing discussion and amendments among the city's other departments, with a public comment day scheduled for June, 26, 2023. The deadline for the proposals is July 31, 2023.

The state of California has also made the housing issue a key priority, spending $9.6 billion on tackling homelessness and expanding the supply of affordable housing between 2018 and 2021.

One might argue that the claims made on Twitter refer to levels of federal spending or grants given to San Francisco, but even if that were the case, the claims would still be inaccurate.

Of Breed's budget proposals for the next two years, 9.2 percent would be made up of federal spending. If this were realized the federal contributions would amount to around $124 million.

Furthermore, in March 2022, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development provided $51 million to the city to improve "supportive housing, [and] rapidly re-house people who fall into homelessness". So, even if the underlying argument in the tweet was that the federal government hadn't spent any money on San Francisco's homelessness, that would also be incorrect.

Of course, even such large amounts dwarf that which the federal government has committed to the war in Ukraine. However, defense spending in any year would almost always dwarf that of one city's homelessness strategy.

The comparison between the amount spent on Ukraine and the homeless has picked up traction recently, with former President Donald Trump decrying both the homelessness crisis and the war in Ukraine budget pool.

"For a small fraction of what we spend upon Ukraine, we could take care of every homeless veteran in America," Trump said in a video posted in April 2023.

Whatever one's view about domestic spending on homelessness versus that committed to the war in Ukraine, claiming that nothing has been spent on homelessness in San Francisco, either at a state or federal level, is simply incorrect.

The Ruling

False.

San Francisco has committed billions of dollars towards its homelessness department since 2016.

The claim that there has been no federal spending is also incorrrect, with tens of millions committed so far alongside new budget proposals suggesting that around $124 million would be granted from national monies over the next two years.

Even though the level of spending in Ukraine may dwarf that in San Francisco, the claim that zero has been spent on the Californian city's homelessness crisis is simply incorrect.

FACT CHECK BY Newsweek's Fact Check team