California Governor Gavin Newsom's recent homelessness cleanup in San Francisco has sparked a new conspiracy theory suggesting that the city's homeless population went missing entirely.
A video claiming that people in San Francisco were mysteriously disappearing ahead of last week's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit was posted to X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday. In the clip, the user shares another video of a man questioning why there's no footage of the city clean up before describing how people in the comments of the other video claimed their families also went missing that same night.
"Evidently, people were driving around, and they were getting asked to get into white vans and these people are never seen from again," the user claims without offering any evidence of the allegations. "We've all been distracted by all this other stuff going on all over the world, and right in our own backyard here, this is going on."
As of Tuesday, the clip has received over a million views. The video, which was originally posted on TikTok, has another 630,400 views.
Local San Francisco outlets had reported that the city was beautified ahead of the APEC summit, where leaders from the 21-member group gathered to discuss trade and economic growth across the Pacific region. The annual summit, which hasn't been held in the United States in over a decade, was also host to a highly anticipated meeting between President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
"I know folks are saying, 'Oh they're just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming to town.' That's true, because it's true," California Governor Gavin Newsom said earlier this month. "But it's also true for months and months and months before APEC, we've been having different conversations and we've raised the bar of expectation between the city, the county, and the state and our federal partners."
The Los Angeles Times reported that homeless organizations had heard of encampment sweeps as preparation for the international conference. Days before the summit, the San Francisco Standard also reported a slight uptick in shelter occupation as well as a "noticeable reduction in the number of tents and drug activity along Van Ness Avenue, United Nations Plaza and the area around the Speaker Nancy Pelosi Federal Building, which has long been the epicenter of the city's drug crisis."
Homelessness has long been an issue in San Francisco, where 7,754 people experienced homelessness in 2022. It is home to the 9th largest homeless population in the U.S., according to data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The largest homeless population in the U.S. resides in Los Angeles, followed by New York City and Seattle.
"They want to clean up the city's image and use this conference as a way to draw back tourism," Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition for Homelessness, told the Los Angeles Times. "These efforts never work because folks don't have disappearing power. People are out there because there's not enough housing. There's not enough shelter."
Actor James Woods, a conservative who has a history of promoting conspiracy theories, shared the viral clip on Monday, writing, "So, the San Francisco homeless completely disappeared IN ONE NIGHT in preparation for Newsom's bend-the-knee grovel to Commie Dictator Xi. What happened to them? Where are they now?"
Newsweek reached out to Newsom via email for comment.
Some users in the comments cast doubt over the conspiracy, claiming to know where the homeless population was moved or that they were never pushed out.
"I live and work near downtown SF," one person wrote on TikTok. "They just pushed all the homeless away from the areas where the conference was. Lot more homeless on 9th street."
"I was just in SF yesterday and there were homeless everywhere. Even at midnight they were all out roaming the streets, lots of them," another said.
"Anyone in the comments even from the bay? No one disappeared," a third added.
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Katherine Fung is a Newsweek reporter based in New York City. Her focus is reporting on U.S. and world politics. ... Read more
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