A year ago, I wrote a column titled, “Time for Mayor Lurie to remove Jennifer Friedenbach from the conversation.” For over a decade, I have been a vocal critic of her lobbying group, The Coalition on Homelessness (COH), and in particular, CEO Friedenbach, arguing she should be removed from the conversation about homelessness in San Francisco. First, Friedenbach pushes a false narrative that housing will solve the problem. It’s not a lack of housing; it’s the drugs. Like other harm reduction proponents, Friedenbach believes in “Housing First,” which means illicit drug use cannot be banned even in taxpayer-funded “permanent supportive housing.” In our series “Housing first, morgue second,” the Voice worked with Gina McDonald, cofounder of Mothers Against Drug Addiction & Deaths, to dig deep into the data, and what we found proves that Friedenbach’s decades-long soliloquy is a ruse: in the past five years, 4,090 people died of accidental drug overdoses in San Francisco and nearly 25 percent occurred inside “permanent supportive housing” units.
In 2018, Friedenbach and COH drafted a plan to raise $300 million a year for “homeless services” by increasing gross receipts taxes 0.5 percent on San Francisco businesses making more than $50 million annually. Known as Proposition C, the measure received unexpected financial and personal support from Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce, who not only funded the campaign but also used his platform to promote it; it passed. The Board of Supervisors then appointed Friedenbach to a seat on the “Our City Our Home” oversight committee (OCOH), which controlled the money from Proposition C. From 2021 through 2024 fiscal years, the city appropriated a total of $1.1 billion to the OCOH Fund and spent $821.7 million.
In the 2024 fiscal year, the city expended $316.8 million in OCOH Funds across all service areas, an increase of $21.1 million from the 2023 fiscal year. According to their website, this net increase was “largely driven by growth in the Permanent Housing Operations service area ($22.9 million increase) and Mental Health Operations service area ($11.7 million increase).”
So, what did San Francisco get for the $822 million? In their executive summary (which is as obtuse as the rest of their annual report), OCOH says it has funded programs that have added and sustained around 5,300 total units of capacity since the fund’s inception in the 2021 fiscal year, with a net 807 units added in the 2024 fiscal year. You read that right — 807 net units.
Then there are Friedenbach’s legal wranglings. In September 2022, she and COH helped seven homeless individuals file a lawsuit alleging San Francisco violated their rights by “punishing residents who have nowhere to go” when removing tents and belongings from public spaces, with the goal of forcing the city to spend billions more on “affordable housing and other resources.”
U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu later agreed, granting an emergency order based on “evidence” presented by COH that the city regularly violated its own policies when clearing people from encampments without offering adequate access to shelter, which, in California, was illegal. One of the reasons former mayor London Breed lost her job is she couldn’t get rid of the tents.
How many were in jail for “camping”? Zero. For misdemeanor drug charges? One person, or 0.08 percent.
While it came too late for Breed’s career, the Supreme Court took up the case and ruled in June 2024 that cities could enforce anti-camping laws again because homelessness was not a protected “status.” The city agreed to pay $2.8 million in blood money labeled as “fees to attorneys representing the Coalition on Homelessness,” as well as separate payments of $11,000 to two formerly homeless people, to settle the contentious lawsuit. The settlement does not require the city to make any major changes to how it conducts encampment sweeps or confiscates belongings.
Five months later, Daniel Lurie beat Breed to become San Francisco’s 46th mayor based in large part on his promise to end homelessness. While he has a long way to go to meet that goal, his administration made a very smart move — they cut Friedenbach out of the homelessness conversation. Not only that, but she no longer oversees the Proposition C money she lobbied so hard for. It’s a win-win at City Hall. So why, then, does the mainstream media continue using Friedenbach as a “homelessness expert”? Is it apathy? Lack of research? A mutual ideology? Whatever the reasons, every time homelessness is in the news, there’s Luz Peña on ABC 7 with her microphone in Friedenbach’s face — same for reporters at KPIX-CBS Bay Area, KTVU-FOX2 News, NBC Bay Area, and KRON4 News. And it’s not only television reporters.
Heather Knight’s Friedenbach fan club
When a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle, Heather Knight interviewed Friedenbach not only as an “expert” but also for profiles that made her out to be a homelessness heroine. Now at the San Francisco bureau of the New York Times, Knight continues the Friedenbach Fan Club, turning to her for citations that are not only misleading but downright lies. While Friedenbach has lied throughout her career, Knight must take part of the blame not only for showcasing those lies, but also for her lazy reporting.
In a May 12, 2026, column, Knight quoted Mayor Lurie saying the number of people living in tents had “dropped 85 percent since 2024.” Knight, like me, seemed skeptical of that number — the tents are gone because Lurie has benefited from the lawsuit ending and paving the way for their removal. Also, anyone walking in the city’s roughest areas knows the tents may be gone, but the people are still there. In fact, drug tourism is as rampant as it was while Breed was mayor; it’s simply not as visible. So far, Knight and I agreed, but then she turned to her friend Friedenbach for the counterpoint. The jail system had become a “revolving door for homeless people accused of misdemeanors such as illegal camping and possessing drug paraphernalia,” Friedenbach asserted. And Knight printed her words verbatim. The problem is it’s a lie — one that Knight could have disproven with five minutes of research on the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department website. There she could have found the “Incarcerated Person Profile” listed on page 9 of their annual report. As of May 2024, there were 1,220 people in jail. How many were in jail for “camping”? Zero. For misdemeanor drug charges? One person, or 0.08 percent. The top charge was murder/attempted murder, and felonies make up 96 percent of the jail’s population. Misdemeanor drug possession accounts for less than 1 percent. That means no one is in jail for possession of drug paraphernalia (which, by the way, the city willingly hands out).
While this snapshot is a year old and the 2025 annual report wasn’t yet available, I took a few extra minutes to speak with someone in the Sheriff’s Department, who said the stats remain steady. Not only that, but an April 30 decision from the California Supreme Court found bail for accused criminals “must be set in an amount reasonably attainable for the defendant.” Only those accused of violent crimes may be held in jail pending trial, and the bar for “violent” is exceedingly high — think capital murder or assault causing bodily harm. Even repeat felons won’t be held for charges ranging from domestic violence and gun crimes to drug dealing and burglaries. According to the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, after the April 30 ruling, San Francisco defense attorneys cited the decision in requesting the release of more than 90 offenders.
Which brings me back to Knight and Friedenbach. As a seasoned journalist, Knight should have done her homework, but more important, she and other reporters shouldn’t be giving Friedenbach and her lies airtime. There’s only one thing I can give Friedenbach credit for — the drug crisis gripping San Francisco after City Hall listened to her advice for 30 years.
