Vol. I, No. 59 · San Francisco — Wednesday, November 4, 2026 · Price: payable on burnout
BY GWEN OKAFOR, HOUSING
In April 2020, the city’s quarterly street count found 63 tents on a single block of Hyde Street, between McAllister Street and Fulton Plaza in Civic Center. This May, it found 40 in all of San Francisco.
The tents are nearly gone. The number of people without shelter fell far less. On the morning of January 29, the city’s count of homeless people, taken every two years, found 3,400 sleeping outside or in vehicles. That is a third fewer than in 2019 and, by the city’s account, the fewest since 2011. Fewer than 100 of them were in tents, the mayor’s office says. The tent was long the easiest way to see street homelessness here. It now marks under 3 percent of it. This year’s count of people was also taken a new way, from 5 to 10:30 a.m. instead of at night, and one advocate warned it would come in low.
The quarterly count’s public record begins in April 2019, with 210 tents. A year later, in the first spring of the pandemic, there were 897. The Tenderloin held 201 of them, not counting the Hyde Street block, which the file places in Civic Center. That June, after UC Hastings and Tenderloin merchants sued, the city agreed to clear 300 of the neighborhood’s tents by July 20 and then try for none (cont’d from No. 34, September 7). This May the Tenderloin held three. The citywide count fell in steps: 434 tents in July 2023, 182 by April 2024, and 130 that October, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that cities may enforce camping bans on public property. It went from 114 to 74 between January and March 2025, and to 40 this May.
The two counts measure different things. The quarterly one counts objects: tents, shacks, and vehicles that look lived in. The January count is of people without shelter, wherever they sleep: on pavement, in a tent, or in a car, van, or RV.
In January 2024 the city counted 4,354 people without shelter, nearly 650 of them in tents by the mayor’s office’s count. This January it counted 3,400, with fewer than 100 in tents. More than half of the drop was people in tents. Outside a tent, the number went from about 3,700 to at least 3,300, a fall of about 11 percent at most. That group includes people living in vehicles, which the city’s figures do not separate out. The street count’s lived-in vehicles fell by half over the same stretch, 621 in February 2024 to 315 this May, so part of that fall may have come in vehicles, not on the pavement. Meanwhile 4,573 people slept in shelters, 15 percent more than in 2024, for 7,973 homeless people in all, 4 percent fewer.
Vehicles make up most of what the street count still sees: 315 of the 430 things it logged in May, or 73 percent, against 60 percent in 2019. Shacks and other structures were 75 more; with tents, they fell 70 percent since 2019, from 384 to 115. Eight neighborhoods, from Lake Merced to Hunters Point, held 199 of the 259 RVs and trailers.
Mayor Daniel Lurie announced the count by saying “the number of people in tents is down 85%.” Jennifer Friedenbach of the Coalition on Homelessness told ABC7 the tent count “is pretty meaningless. Because that is just a piece of fabric that is not a human.”
The tent figures are firm on the size of the drop. The count is visual, taken about every three months for seven years by the city’s street-operations center with police and outreach teams, and none since May is in the file. The people count is softer this year. City staff and outreach workers took it, with no volunteers. The city moved it to the morning “for improved safety and visibility.” Taken at face value, it still says the tent fell far faster than the number of people without shelter. By the next street count, that July, the 63 tents on Hyde Street were gone, and nothing has been logged there since.
Heat pumps nearly caught furnaces in San Francisco permits; in 2019 furnaces led 13 to 1
From January through August, 678 permits named a heat pump for heating and 795 a furnace. Today the Bay Area’s air district weighs giving gas water heaters another year.
BY MAXINE DOLAN, CITY DESK
On August 10, the San Francisco Zoo took out two permits. One was to “replace (e) gas furnaces with (n) electric heat pumps.” In the trade’s shorthand, (e) means existing and (n) means new. The other swapped a gas water heater for a heat-pump water heater.
The zoo is part of a citywide turn. In the first eight months of this year, the city’s plumbing permits, which also cover heating, named a heat pump for heating 678 times and a furnace 795 times. In the same months of 2019 it was 83 to 1,124. The counts are of permits, not installations: one job can file more than one, and work done without a permit is missing.
A heat pump heats with electricity, usually by drawing warmth from the outside air, and runs in reverse as an air conditioner. A furnace burns gas. In 2023 the Bay Area’s air district set a standard of zero nitrogen oxides, a smog-forming gas, for new furnaces sold from 2029 and home water heaters from 2027. On heat, the city is moving ahead of the rule. On hot water it is not.
The heat-pump count leaves out permits that name a water heater; heat-pump water heaters, like the zoo’s second permit, come below. It ran between 43 and 83 in those months each year from 2013 to 2019, then rose every year, to 678. Some of the climb is the law: since June 1, 2021, new buildings must be all-electric, and since July 1, 2026, so must some major renovations. Furnace permits had jumped to 995 in those months of 2025, from 824, so part of this year’s closing is furnaces falling back.
Some permits name both, so the desk read this year’s 92 one by one. In 66, a furnace comes out and a heat pump goes in: “swap gas furnace for ducted heat pump, 2 ton,” on Hickory Street. The other 26 keep or add a furnace. Counted that way, furnaces still lead, 729 to 655. Another 149 permits name a mini-split or ductless system without saying “heat pump.” A mini-split can be a heat pump or an air conditioner, and these permits do not say which, so they are left out. If every one were a heat pump, heat pumps would lead.
Heat-pump water heaters jumped to 276 permits in the first eight months of 2024, 22 percent of all water-heater permits, then fell to 110 in 2025 and 109 this year, fewer than one in ten. Today the air district’s board considers pushing its home water-heater rule back a year, to January 1, 2028, with exemptions for qualifying low-income owners and homes short on electrical capacity or space. The rule applies only when a water heater is replaced.
The file thins after August, so the count stops there. The rule that comes first covers the appliance the city has been slowest to switch.
PREDICT SF · PRESEASON · ROUND 2 OF 6
Settled, round 1: Police dispatches, Election Day. The line said 1,828, the crowd 1,768, the city 1,701. 1 of 1 players beat the line. Closest: TheFrisconian, 1,768. See every call.
How high will the San Francisco buoy's wave-height reading peak between 9 p.m. Wednesday and 9 p.m. Thursday?
The line: 7.0. It usually misses by about 1.4 feet. Locks 9 p.m. tonight. Settles Friday.
Tap the number closest to your call. The game opens in your browser with it filled in: nudge it and tap Lock it. This email signs you in, so there is nothing to type. Change your call until 9 p.m.
Preseason leaders: 1. TheFrisconian (Haight Ashbury) 61. The board.
SOURCES & RECEIPTS
1. DataSF w9ip-yrij, quarterly street count, April 2019 to May 2026; block placed with OpenStreetMap. 2. Dept. of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, 2026 count: sf.gov; June 1 board deck. 3. Mayor’s office, May 12, 2026. 4. Point-in-time reports, 2019 and 2024. 5. Grants Pass v. Johnson, June 28, 2024; UC Hastings v. San Francisco, settled June 12, 2020 (No. 34 receipts). 6. ABC7, January 29 and May 14, 2026. Queried November 4, 2026; queries in receipts.json.
7. Department of Building Inspection plumbing permits, DataSF a6aw-rudh, permits PM20260810769 and PP20260810768. 8. Desk counts of permit descriptions, January through August of each year. 9. Bay Area Air Quality Management District, Rules 9-4 and 9-6, page updated November 3, 2026. 10. sf.gov, “All-electric buildings in San Francisco.” Queried November 4, 2026; queries in receipts.json.
The Frisconian · Published from forty-nine square miles surrounded by reality · thefrisconian.com · @deaconsanti