SF Seizing More Wheelchairs, Tents from Homeless People

San Francisco city workers have confiscated unhoused people’s property more often in recent years, including mobility devices such as wheelchairs, an analysis of public records by the Public Press shows.

Property confiscation and encampment clearings increased over the last four years, hitting their highest count in 2024. The Public Press examined logs of a process known as “bagging and tagging,” in which city workers confiscate items not considered trash and store them at a Department of Public Works facility to await retrieval. Though the rate of property seizures increased in 2024, the rate at which unhoused people reclaimed their property dropped. In 90.5% of cases from January 2021 through mid-October 2024, nobody claimed the seized belongings in the required time frame, allowing the city to discard them.

Logs of bagged and tagged items since 2021 reveal the nature of some of the critical items confiscated: back braces, IDs, bank cards, paperwork, medication, medical equipment and even an oxygen tank. The entries for these items indicate none were reclaimed.

Public Works and the police department did not respond to interview and comment requests.

In San Francisco, Public Works is one of several agencies responsible for encampment clearings, also known as “sweeps.” If homeless people cannot move their property during a sweep and it is not deemed hazardous or trash, Public Works employees are supposed to bag and tag it. This process can occur also when police cite or arrest unhoused people for illegal lodging, with Public Works employees collecting their belongings as evidence. In most cases, people have 90 days to retrieve their property before it is disposed of. It is unclear if property taken as evidence may be reclaimed, and neither Public Works nor police spokespeople responded to requests for clarification.

Homeless-rights advocates attributed the rise in these confiscations to increasingly aggressive crackdowns on encampments in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision last June, Grants Pass v. Johnson, that allows cities to cite and arrest unhoused people for sleeping in public even when no shelter is offered or available. They said San Francisco has established new arrest and citation practices in line with the decision, which are likely contributing to property seizures.

“Post-Grants Pass, there’s this huge uptick in police activity going after homeless people,” said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness. She noted that “re-encampment prevention” policies established by then-Mayor London Breed in early August allowed city employees to return to recently cleared areas and arrest or cite people without offering shelter.

“A lot of the property taken is taken in those interactions,” Friedenbach said.

The Public Works and police departments did not respond to a request for comment on the Public Press’s findings.

Advocates said the uptick in bag and tags could also be due to increased pressure on the city to follow local encampment clearing policies following a lawsuit that the Coalition on Homelessness brought against the city in September 2022, which alleged city workers were illegally discarding unsoiled items. In previous years, they suggested, more property might have been seized by the city but immediately thrown out, which would not show up in bag and tag records.

‘Disturbing’ Findings

While the number of items bagged and tagged has increased each year between 2021 and 2024, the numbers of retrievals in 2023 and 2024 were nearly identical, with fewer than 80 items reclaimed both years. The number of items claimed in 2024 could still increase, as some property is still eligible to be claimed.

2024 saw a drastic increase in the seizure of mobility devices like wheelchairs, walkers and canes: 43 recorded instances in 2024 compared to 23 for the previous three years combined. The vast majority of these devices were never retrieved.

Friedenbach called these figures “very disturbing.”

These seizures could be a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, said Itzel Romero, a housing organizer with Senior and Disability Action, though Romero underscored they are not a lawyer.

Wheelchairs are expensive to replace and their loss can lead to more severe health issues, Romero said. They noted also that the number of unhoused seniors and people with disabilities is growing.

“The response should be, ‘How can we prevent this from happening to more people, and how can we help the people who are currently experiencing it?’ I don’t think that taking away their mobility device helps the situation in any kind of way,” Romero said.

Survival gear like tents and other essentials like phones and computers also were confiscated more often in 2024. These losses are “devastating” to people, Friedenbach said, noting that technology is often needed to sign up for shelter and other benefits, or to learn about housing offers from the city.

Reclaiming seized property is difficult, advocates and unhoused people say. The facility where property is stored is far away, and difficult to find and access via public transit. Operating hours are limited and sometimes people experience long on-site wait times. They might also travel to the storage facility only to find out their belongings could not be located — a reality reflected in some log entries.

“It’s just crazy-making,” Friedenbach said.

“I don’t know of anybody who really ever got anything back,” John Dunlop, an unhoused man, said during an encampment clearing in December.

Advocates have not observed major changes between the Breed administration’s and newly-inaugurated Mayor Daniel Lurie’s encampment-clearing tactics five weeks into his tenure.

Lurie’s press office did not respond to questions about how his policies differ from Breed’s, or about confiscating and discarding items like wheelchairs or phones.

The full contents of most of what is taken by the city is unknown; logs typically list how many bags were taken and what color they were but only occasionally list what is inside. They also list loose items such as tents or bikes. Small items of extreme import, like medicines and identification, are rarely listed in entries. But service providers say these have been increasingly confiscated in recent months.