On Friday, September 19, 2025, Mayor Daniel Lurie signed a settlement that requires the City to follow its bag-and-tag policy and establish strong accountability and oversight measures. This marks a significant hard fought victory for all unhoused people across San Francisco. The lawsuit was brought by the Coalition on Homelessness, its members, plaintiffs, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area.
In 2022, the Coalition on Homelessness (COH) filed suit against the City over its practice of violating its own bag and tag policy and the Fourth Amendment by destroying unhoused people’s property during encampment sweeps. This decision was prompted by members of COH experiencing and witnessing human rights violations during City-sanctioned sweeps. When COH did outreach each week, unhoused people would bring this to their attention and sometimes COH staff and volunteers witnessed it themselves. It was a devastatingly common occurrence. It happened when it was pouring rain. It happened when the owner of the property was present. It happened when an unhoused person just lost a loved one. Unfortunately these practices by the City serve only to exacerbate and lengthen episodes of homelessness and waste resources. They are also known to increase morbidity rates among unhoused people.
Documenting the Problem
One time, COH director Jennifer Friedenbach came upon San Francisco Public Works throwing a homeless woman’s suitcase in the dumpster. The woman was in a friend’s tent staying dry from the rain. She begged the Public Works employee to give it back, but he refused and taunted her. She then told her story, how she lost her long-time home during the pandemic when her grandfather died from COVID-19, and she wasn’t officially on the lease. The landlord changed the locks, leaving her out in the cold. She had leukemia and talked about how the City threw away thousands of dollars worth of leukemia medications, which she still hadn’t been able to replace. She was able to get some new clothes and essentials, and now the City tossed them. The COH found that the City had unlawfully destroyed unhoused people’s survival gear, artwork, photos, cellphones and ashes of deceased family members, in clear violation of its policy to store belongings.
These issues were brought to the City consistently. They were documented in reports. They were addressed in person during sweeps. They were on social media. They were documented by video. They were brought up in meetings. Several protests and press conferences occurred decrying these practices – at City Hall, at the Public Works storage yard, at encampment areas. Nevertheless the City refused to follow its own policy.
In 2021, COH released a report on the activities of the Healthy Streets Operation Center (HSOC), the team principally responsible for responding to large encampments. This report analyzed data from the City, drawing from the Coalition’s own experience monitoring HSOC operations. Over a 37-day period from January to February 2021, the report found there were only two occasions when HSOC had enough shelter beds to offer a bed to everyone who arrived at the site needing one. On average, HSOC only had access to only 52% of the beds they would have required to provide for the need they faced. Contrary to the service-resistant narrative, when individuals were offered shelter, however, they overwhelmingly accepted that placement.
By cross-referencing HSOC’s service-connection data from the 37-day period described above, when accounting for the shelter beds that were available to HSOC during those same days, the report found that people who arrived in need of a bed accepted placements, when available, at quite high rates. Despite a 29% bed acceptance rate reported by HSOC, this deeper dive into the data found that 75% of all unhoused residents that were offered one of the limited beds available in fact accepted the offer. There often simply weren’t enough beds to offer each resident—let alone appropriate beds—resulting in many being displaced without an option, and misleading statistics about their desire for beds.
In addition, the Latino Task Force conducted a street needs assessment in 2022 that found disturbingly, nearly 60% of survey respondents said that they were displaced by the City at least one time in just the past four weeks. During this same brief period, nearly 20% of all respondents report being forced to move by the City five or more times. In addition, in administering the survey, they attempted to measure whether the City was following its own “bag and tag” policy with regard to the treatment of personal items and survival gear. Nearly a full three-quarters of respondents reported having property confiscated by the City without the appropriate practices of retaining and labeling it for a later return.
Background of Bag and Tag Policy
In 2016, COH worked with the Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights and ACLU Northern California in sending a demand letter to the City of San Francisco regarding this very same subject. These organizations then worked with the City Attorney and City officials to craft a “bag and tag” policy that the City then adopted. While the policy is not perfect, it does provide some basic protection assuming that the City were to follow it. This was in a bygone era when the City Attorney’s office was reasonable, believed in good government principles, had some level of respect and trust for the unhoused community and didn’t treat lawsuits like tennis matches designed to score political points. So a reasonable policy was developed.
The years went by, and there were moments when the City actually followed the policy, because it had a system set up to do so. But mostly it didn’t. Instead, it decided that “being tough on unhoused folks” could attract more political attention.
Time for a Lawsuit
After amassing a mountain of evidence, we were finally forced to file a lawsuit. The Coalition on Homelessness was the organization plaintiff and we had several unhoused plaintiffs as well. Plaintiff Sarah Cronk, who spent many years unhoused in San Francisco, said losing her belongings–including a tent, clothing and phones–derailed her attempts to find housing. “Sometimes workers arrived early in the morning and collected our things while we slept. Other times, they swept through with minimal warning, treating our belongings— and us—as disposable. During one particularly aggressive enforcement period, City workers took our tent, clothes, phones, cookware, food, and even our art supplies, all in a matter of weeks.”
The lawsuit, Coalition on Homelessness v. City and County of San Francisco, is considered a “practices” lawsuit. We did not have a monetary claim. The City already had a policy. Instead, it was about getting the City to follow its own “bag and tag” policy. But it was also about solving homelessness instead of wasting funding on exacerbating it.
“The City never should have forced us to file this lawsuit,” said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness.“They repeatedly violated their own policy, and despite years of us bringing it to their attention, they continued to trample on homeless people’s fundamental rights. Ultimately, we hope this settlement encourages the City to redirect its limited resources away from expensive and inhumane sweeps and instead invest more in extremely low-income housing and acquiring existing units.”
An Injunction is issued
Because of the mountain of evidence, and the City’s inability to counter any of it, Chief Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu issued an injunction a couple months after filing that forced the City to halt illegal activity that violated the constitutional rights of unhoused people. Still, the City continued its illegal activities anyway, which we would have to bring to court. The City Attorney tried to get the injunction tossed, appealing it to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. London Breed, who was mayor at the time, along with several City Supervisors, including Rafael Mandelman and Matt Dorsey, and anti-homeless internet trolls staged a MAGA-style protest outside the court. It was a truly embarrassingly low moment for City officials who supported overturning the injunction. Folks carried pictures of Friedenbach in an orange jumpsuit with handcuffs, calling for her to be locked up. The group engaged in anti-judge behavior as well, slamming Judge Ryu, who was doxed online. Many weirdos of the not-so-cool kind were there, including transphobe J. Conner who doctored a picture taken at the rally making it look like Friedenbach was holding a sign reading “Fire Friedenbach.” Others, such as online harasser Adam Mesnick, demanded a debate with Friedenbach and filmed the encounter. However, the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club, staged a counter protest and stood up for homeless people’s rights and real solutions to homelessness in a much more dignified display of solidarity.
Meanwhile, inside the courthouse, Judge Bridget S. Bade stated “the City was trying to make an issue where one doesn’t exist.” The City Attorney was trying to say that the City under the injunction was not legally able to clear encampments—even though they were doing them— unless there was enough shelter for everyone who is homeless in San Francisco. Even our side disagreed with that interpretation of the injunction. On a 2–1 decision, the appeals court sided with COH. Only the Republican-appointed judge agreed with the City Attorney.
The Journey
The original lawsuit included several constitutional claims including the Eighth Amendment, charging that the City’s policy of citing and arresting homeless people who have no choice but to be homeless is cruel and unusual punishment. This was aligned with a legal principle established in the 9th Circuit ruling in Martin v. City of Boise that municipalities must offer shelter first before citing and arresting. Donald Trump’s Supreme Court overturned that principle in another case a little over a year ago, Grants Pass v. Johnson.
In that case, the City of Grants Pass had only one shelter and people camping in City parks were getting arrested. Then-Mayor London Breed and City Attorney David Chiu submitted a deeply mean-spirited and shameful amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to decide against the unhoused person. Trump’s Supreme Court cited the City’s brief 30 times regarding homeless people’s rights, leaving an ugly blemish on Chiu’s legal legacy.
As a result, municipalities are no longer obligated to offer shelter before citing and arresting homeless people. However, they could choose to offer shelter first, as Los Angeles did, making for good government policy. But San Francisco quickly decided to remove the shelter offer requirement before citing and arresting homeless people, and then proceeded to engage in mass citations and arrests so much that the next mayor had to open a new jail. The number of citations and arrests for lodging in the year since Grants Pass was over 1,000, compared with 112 the year before the decision. As a result of Trump’s Supreme Court decision, also supported by Gov. Gavin Newsom, COH dropped the Eighth Amendment claim.
Other claims such as our Fourth Amendment claim that the City’s repeated seizure and destruction of unhoused people’s property amounts to unreasonable search and seizure, and our 14th Amendment claim that depriving homeless people of their property is unconstitutional because it is done without due process of law stayed intact until the end.
The Big, Bad, Mean SF City Attorney
The City Attorney, instead of trying to settle and just require that the City employees follow the policy, spent tons of resources on hiring investigators to dig up dirt on our witnesses in an attempt to discredit them, and filing multiple repetitive motions to dismiss. The City Attorney also attempted to villainize COH, making false statements such as us being against shelter when, in fact, we were responsible for an expansion of thousands of beds. The City made several moves instead of just following their own bag and tag policy: They included buying out our plaintiffs with cash offers, and tying up our lawyers with multiple motions that went nowhere.
The judicial branch of government has changed dramatically since Trump took office, especially with bad appointments and bad law. The ground has shifted and now there is a need to tread carefully in federal courts as to avoid more bad law results. Apparently, the City Attorney had no problem making legal moves that threatened to wipe out fundamental constitutional rights, affecting broad swaths of people in the U.S. Also, the office felt comfortable challenging the COH membership’s standing and potentially creating a legal standard that would abolish many groups’ ability to sue for social and environmental causes. Given the shift of power to monied interests at the local and at federal levels, this was terribly irresponsible.
The Settlement
Our trial date was scheduled for the summer of 2025. We had the evidence and the moral authority. We were winning, as well. Right before the scheduled trial, we finally reached a settlement that we feel will ensure the City’s compliance with its “bag and tag policy.” It will take a lot of work monitoring, but we will have the ability to do that. Under the terms of the settlement, including a five-year court order, San Francisco must give unhoused people an opportunity to reclaim their belongings before the City can destroy them. Also, the City also must give notice of planned sweeps to unhoused people and the COH, provide the COH with quarterly reports on property seizures and monthly access to the storage yard, train Public Works staff on proper procedures for handling personal property, and provide photo documentation of property at encampments slated for clearing. If San Francisco changes its “bag and tag” policy in the future, it must adhere to agreed upon standards to ensure that any future policy protects unhoused people’s constitutional rights. If 10 violations occur within 90 days, the City has to face the Magistrate Judge. Under the terms of the five-year court order, the Coalition on Homelessness remains committed to holding the City accountable to following its own policy and adhering to the terms of the settlement.
The settlement terms strictly allocate funds to cover legal fees, which will partially fund the monitoring of the City’s compliance with the court order. This case was never about financial gain— it was about protecting human rights and driving systemic change.
The timing of the settlement is auspicious. While the City has long used law enforcement and sweeps to decrease visible homelessness, these draconian methods have only been strengthened by the Grants Pass decision by the governor’s call to eradicate encampments, and lastly by the Trump administration’s anti-homeless rhetoric and policies. Newsom, Chiu and Breed all urged the Supreme Court to overturn Grants Pass—a lower court ruling that required municipalities to offer shelter before citing and arresting unhoused people. Most recently, Trump has threatened to deploy the National Guard to remove all homeless people from San Francisco’s streets, and our local policymakers have yet to address this call for violence and criminalization targeting vulnerable peoples. This settlement has ensured significant protections for homeless people’s property as they continue to face citations and arrests for lodging. The Coalition on Homelessness sued San Francisco three years ago to push back against this pattern of human rights violations against homeless people. The Coalition on Homelessness maintains its mission of uplifting the voices of unhoused people and in advocating for housing justice and permanent solutions to the homelessness crisis. We will keep fighting until every San Franciscan has a safe and dignified place to call home.
