by Shakema Straker
The following is an excerpt from “We Belong Here,” a newly released report from the Coalition on Homelessness. The full report can be found on cohsf.org.
San Francisco’s parks belong to everyone. That is not just an aspiration, it is the explicit mission of the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department (SFRPD): “to provide enriching recreational activities, maintain beautiful parks and open spaces, and preserve the environment for the well-being of the diverse community.” For people experiencing homelessness, however, that promise takes on a different meaning.
Parks are not amenities for unhoused San Franciscans; they are necessities. They provide shade, water,restrooms, and space to rest. For many, they are the closest thing to a home base in a city that offers few alternatives. Given the scale of San Francisco’s housing crisis, many unhoused residents rely on parks not only for recreation, but for survival. And yet they are routinely excluded from the very spaces this mission promises to protect for all.
This report, published by the Coalition on Homelessness San Francisco (COHSF), examines how that exclusion happens. While no single park policy explicitly targets poverty, the evidence shows that certain SFRPD practices create barriers that deny vulnerable San Franciscans access to basic needs and, in doing so, undermine both the dignity of unhoused residents and the department’s own commitment to community well-being.
To understand the scope of these barriers, this report draws on a survey of 86 people experiencing homelessness who use San Francisco parks. The survey sought to answer a focused question: how do people experiencing homelessness describe their interactions with park rangers and in-field staff? In doing so, it provides insight into how unhoused residents navigate public park spaces and how rangers and in-field staff engage with this community. This report centers the perspectives of those most directly affected by park policies. It reviews the literature on homelessness and San Francisco parks, analyzes the primary research findings, and offers concrete policy recommendations for the SFRPD.
This report does not claim that SFRPD bears responsibility for solving homelessness. It recognizes that SFRPD has both the power and the opportunity to ensure that its policies and practices reflect the dignity and well-being of every San Franciscan who walks through the park gates. Park rangers and in-field staff are on the front lines of these interactions every day. They are essential partners in building toward something better, and this report is written with that in mind.
Despite the central role parks play in the lives of unhoused San Franciscans, research examining that relationship from their perspective remains limited. Studies have documented how housed residents feel about unhoused park users. They have captured the thoughts and opinions of agency staff. However,what has been largely missing is the voice of the people most directly affected by park policy.
Despite the central role parks play in the lives of unhoused San Franciscans, research examining that relationship from their perspective remains limited. Studies have documented how housed residents feel about unhoused park users. They have captured the thoughts and opinions of agency staff. However,what has been largely missing is the voice of the people most directly affected by park policy.
Park agencies, including SFRPD, have largely operated within a narrow frame, focusing on enforcement and quality control. This frame is out of alignment with a public that has grown more supportive of agency actions that assist unhoused visitors. San Francisco has no shortage of homelessness data: point-in-time counts, shelter utilization rates, service records. But none of it captures what it feels like to interact with a park ranger when you have nowhere else to go. This report aims to fill that gap. This survey of 86 people experiencing homelessness who use San Francisco parks, centers those voices directly.
“They don’t come up to folks having a picnic. Why choose me?…We’re just looked at as nuisances and that’s not the case by any means.” – T.G.
“Park staff and rangers have the opportunity to do more good than negative. Instead of telling people to leave, they can provide where to go — or the name of a center. Instead,they say, ‘You can’t be here, you have to move.’ They are always moving us to a crack or crevice to not be seen” -A.W.
San Francisco has already shown that public-facing city departments can build something better, and the clearest model sits just a few blocks from many of the parks this report examines. The San Francisco Public Library faced a version of the same challenge SFRPD faces today: how to serve an increasingly visible unhoused population in shared public spaces, with front-line staff who were not trained or equipped for that reality. Rather than defaulting to exclusion, the San Francisco Public Library partnered with the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing to hire the city’s first library-based social worker in 2009. That partnership has since grown into a broader program that includes Health and Safety Associates, people with lived experience of homelessness who are now paid library staff, who provide peer
support and connect unhoused patrons to services. By fiscal year 2022, outreach contacts with patrons from vulnerable communities reached 8,850. Negative incidents declined. Staff satisfaction increased. The library did not abandon its core function. Instead, it expanded its capacity to fulfill it. This is what a trauma-informed, person-centered approach looks like in practice inside a San Francisco city department. Institutional knowledge already exists in our city.
The context in which SFRPD operates has also shifted. In June 2024, the Supreme Court ruled in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson that anti-camping ordinances do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. Cities now have broader legal authority to enforce public space laws against unhoused people. That has increased pressure on departments like SFRPD and on the front-line staff who carry out enforcement. A Harvard Law Review analysis of the decision notes that enforcement itself causes harm, and that legal exposure around discriminatory or disproportionate enforcement remains. SF Park Rangers and in-field staff are navigating that landscape every day. This report does not ignore that pressure. It does not ask SFRPD to ignore it either. It asks what good practice looks like within it.
