Nearly three years after a group of unhoused residents and San Francisco’s most prominent homeless rights organization sued the city over encampment sweeps and its seizure and destruction of belongings, the legal battle is finally coming to an end.
The city has agreed to pay the Coalition on Homelessness $2.8 million, including $22,000 that will go directly to two formerly unhoused people named in the suit.
The settlement, which still requires approval by the Board of Supervisors and a judge, would mark the end to a contentious lawsuit filed by the Coalition in September 2022. The suit alleged the city violated state and federal laws, as well as its own policies and the rights of homeless individuals, by clearing encampments without offering adequate shelter and by seizing and destroying belongings of homeless people…