how many times are you shooting up? on a good day, less times probably than on a bad day. reporter: back in san francisco, these images shot directly next to one of the most well known courthouses, the ninth circuit court of appeals. the city has so much wealth and yet we see so much poverty and suffering and death on our streets, because we have the means to be able to help people, but we don t have the political will. reporter: san francisco mayor london breed, elected last year, has made tackling homelessness her signature issue. she s added more than 400 beds, helped 1600 people exit homelessness and has cracked down on tent encampments. but residents, tourists and workers alike continue to see the problems daily. you re going to see it more because it s in areas where a
homeless population spiked 30% since 2017. we see so much foipoverty an suffering and death on our streets. we have the means to be able to help people but don t have the political will. reporter: the san francisco marp elected last year made tackling homelessness her signature issue. she s added more than 400 beds, helped 1,600 people exit homelessness and cracked down on tent encampments but resident, tourists and work woulders alike continue to see the problems daily. you see it more because it s in areas where a lot of people walk, a lot of people catch public transportation. you see it more, because it s in the center of the city. it s downtown. it s in union plaza, in mid-market. you see it a lot more because it s right in your face. reporter: indicative of the times she s had to install a
sidewalk sleeping. i know you re familiar with this story, what do you make of it? well, it shows you that even liberals in los angeles county are getting tired of the homeless problem, and they want something to be done about it, and what they re trying to do is find a middle way so that they don t enforce the laws everywhere, but they prohibit tent encampments next to schools, next to public parks and a few places like that. final time i have to challenge you on, this when you use the word liberal, if this is a progressive problem, give me the conservative solution. i don t care which ideological label it falls under, i just want to know that we can do better than this. yes, we can do better than this. part of this has to do with, i mean there are a lot of people on the streets who are mentally ill these days, there has to be some rein, institutionlization those who are roaming the streets and accosting people.
with no reliable way to get them all back, the city is spending $750,000 to hire people to pick up the needles. some 8,000 every month. tucker: it looks like a slum. bombay india doesn t look like that. so you think it would be affordable, but it s the opposite. average rent for an apartment in san francisco right now is about $4,000. the city works only for the extremely rich. the destitute, the billionaires and the vagrants. want to raise a family in the there s no place for them. city? good luck. san francisco now has more day care spaces for animals that it does for babies. it is literally a city without a future. it s people can t afford to reproduce. and san francisco isn t alone. the rest of california s single party cities are following suit. the homeless population in los angeles for example, is now bigger than any city in the entire state of vermont. it s filthy tent encampments are incubating diseases previously associated with war-torn countries. over time, squalor buil
jeb bush s former spokesman said that is absurd. here s how the washington post said, what homeless crisis? trump paints a dark picture of homelessness in cities. really? have you walked out the doors? your eyes are lying. the massive tent encampments destroying our greatest cities. it s not really a homeless problem. homeless numbers are down, they told us. trump s dark picture is just a right wing fever dream. he s senile, he s a hater. a few months ago, that very same newspaper, the washington post, had a different view. in march, they wrote that the significant growth in tent encampments nationwide is one of the most visible signs of the failure of widening inequality. they it is a tent capclean-ups