The camps are managed by Urban Alchemy, the San Francisco-based nonprofit that has rapidly grown into a multimillion-dollar street services enterprise and embodies an elastic philosophy of shelter.
Aggressive marketing aligned with rising public discontent over homelessness made for a winning strategy. By 2021 it reported $51 million in revenue primarily from contracts for street outreach and shelter operations in San Francisco; Austin, Texas; Portland, Ore.; and Los Angeles.
This company is the worst kind of shady rent a cop type that flourished under the Trump administration and continues under Joe “Nothing will fundamentally change” Biden. They are grifters and bullies and take in millions to prey on homeless people to make rich people feel safe or whatever. They work as private security, skirting regulations about that by calling their staff “ambassadors” and just generally operate like a street gang. Urban Alchemy is a curse on the West Coast and they want to take their business model of public private partnerships between them and corrupt local government officials like Ted Wheeler in Portland or Mitch O’Farrell in LA.