Too many pit bulls: New York City shelters refuse intake, SF/SPCA lays off staff

Pit bulls bit the Achilles heel of collapsing New York City & San Francisco no-kill schemes

SAN FRANCISCO,  California––Pit bulls bit the Achilles heel of the San Francisco Adoption Pact,  putting the whole “no-kill nation” model on crutches,  but even as both the San Francisco SPCA and San Francisco Animal Care & Control stagger cold sober like a Mission Street drunk,  bleeding into the boots of their troubled relationship,  no one dares speak the words “pit bull.”

The same could be said of the New York City Animal Care Centers,  with pit bull intake estimated by observers at anywhere from 70% to 90% of dog intake.

On July 19,  2025,  for the first time in New York City animal sheltering history,  the New York City Animal Care Centers announced,  the city shelters “will have to turn away sheltering animals,”  having “reached full capacity at all of its sites.”

A pit bull named Rocky was last NYC open admission intake

“Although it will be suspending general intake,”  New York Daily News reporters Nicholas Williams and Thomas Tracy explained,  “Animal Care Centers will remain open for adoptions,  plus drop-off of animals who require emergency medical care or who pose a public safety risk and those being dropped off by government agencies.

“Animal Care Centers called its reaching maximum capacity a ‘crisis,’”  Williams and Tracy wrote,   “as it has surpassed 1,000 animals in its care and is out of space to take in anymore.”

The 1,000th animal received was a pit bull named Rocky,  said to be between 10 and 13 years old.

“People can’t afford to live in the city”

“The cause of one of every three pets being given over to Animal Care Centers this year is housing insecurity,”  Williams and Tracy reported,  “with their owners having to relocate to a smaller place and unable to take care of their pet or moving out of the city due to the high cost of living and being unable to take their pet with them,  according to Animal Care Centers studies.

“As the source put it,  the city’s animal shelter overload is partly being driven by the fact that “people are broke and can’t afford to live in the city,”  Williams and Tracy said.

The same conditions prevail in San Francisco.

San Francisco SPCA lays off 11% of staff

The San Francisco SPCA on July 16,  2025 announced the layoffs of 32 members of a 290-member staff,  including one veterinarian at a time when finding shelter vets tends to be harder than finding high donors.

San Francisco Animal Care & Control and some San Francisco SPCA staff and volunteers have meanwhile been howling for more than a decade that the San Francisco SPCA is not keeping up their end of the Adoption Pact,  obliging the city to euthanize dogs,  mostly pit bulls,  many with bite history.

The Adoption Pact was supposed to have been the crowning accomplishment in the San Francisco transition to no-kill animal control,  eventually emulated nationwide.

What is the Adoption Pact?

The decade-long transition began in 1984,  when the San Francisco SPCA,  having held the city animal control contract for 90 years,  announced that it would return the contract to the city in 1989,  to refocus on ramping up provision of low-cost and even free spay/neuter service,  to stop surplus puppy and kitten births.

From 1984 to 1989,  the San Francisco SPCA helped the city to build and staff a new Center for Animal Care & Control kitty-corner across the street.

The transition completed,  the San Francisco SPCA became the selective admission no-kill shelter it remains today.

Five years after that, in 1994,  the San Francisco SPCA and San Francisco Animal Care & Control signed the Adoption Pact,  under which the SF/SPCA agreed to accept any healthy and behaviorally sound dog or cat whose holding time had expired at the animal control shelter.

“External pressures building over last six months”

San Francisco SPCA chief executive Jennifer Scarlett told San Francisco Chronicle reporter Tara Duggan that the layoffs are the result of “a lot of external pressures that have been building,  particularly over the last six months.”

But Scarlett did not explain very explicitly just what those pressures were,  or where they came from.

“The SPCA received $46 million in revenue and had $119 million in reserves in the fiscal year ending in June 2024,  according to its most recent tax filing,”  Duggan wrote.

“Scarlett said it is financially stable,  but has a board-approved operating deficit,”  of just under $1.8 million for the year.

“An already turbulent time”

The deficit relative to income was not unusual for a humane society big enough and old enough to relatively often receive six-and-seven-figure bequests.

“It’s taking that into account and looking ahead.  If we have to grow our services, we can’t grow our deficit,”  Scarlett said.

Observed Duggan,  “The layoffs come at an already turbulent time for SPCA staff,  said Chelsea Capaccio,  who resigned as the hospital’s co-director in October 2024 over what she said was a personnel matter,  after working there for three years.  Her resignation followed that of several other managers at the organization last year,  Capaccio said.”

“Euthanizing more stray dogs:  here’s why”

Duggan had on June 20, 2025 published an article entitled,  “San Francisco is euthanizing more stray dogs.  Here’s why,”  about what she called “The SPCA’s strained relationship with the city-run S.F. Animal Care and Control.

“As a private shelter,  the SPCA can choose which animals it rescues,”  Duggan explained,  “and over the past decade it has increasingly brought in more dogs from Central Valley shelters,  where it says the need is greater,  and fewer from San Francisco’s.”

But even then,  Duggan,  Scarlett,  and San Francisco Animal Care & Control director Virginia Donohue mentioned pit bulls only in passing,  even though the pit bull glut dogging both shelters is obvious on their respective adoption pages at a passing glance.

Scarlett instead emphasized the longterm San Francisco SPCA “strategic focus lies on building a system of care in San Francisco,”  such as,  Duggan mentioned,  “by providing $3.5 million in free and low-cost veterinary care in San Francisco during the past fiscal year.”

Mandatory pit bull sterilization

Pit bulls were already the focal animal control issue in San Francisco,  as nationwide,  by 2006,  when then-Animal Care & Control director Rebecca Katz drafted an ordinance mandating that pit bulls must be sterilized if brought within the San Francisco city limits.

The ordinance reduced San Francisco shelter intakes of pit bulls by two-thirds in two years, and brought San Francisco the lowest volume of pit bull killing in shelters of any major U.S. city.

Under Katz, San Francisco Animal Care & Control also achieved a 37% increase in dog adoptions.

But pit bull advocates pushed Katz out in 2014.  The San Francisco SPCA then lobbied unsuccessfully to reclaim management of the San Francisco Animal Care & Control shelter,  which could have hushed up complaints about the SPCA not taking more pit bulls from the shelter.

(See Author of San Francisco ordinance requiring pit bull sterilization appears to be victim of militant advocates.)

Nationally emulated model

Meanwhile the apparent success of the Adoption Pact made San Francisco a nationally emulated model for efforts to reduce shelter killing nationwide.

New York City later in 1994 hired San Francisco Animal Care & Control founding director Carl Friedman to help set up the New York City Center for Animal Care & Control,  after the American SPCA copied the San Francisco SPCA by giving up the contract to manage the city pounds that it had held for 100 years.

The Duffield Family Foundation in 1998 renamed itself Maddie’s Fund and hired Richard Avanzino, who had headed the SF/SPCA since 1976,  as founding executive director.

(See No-kill pioneer Richard Avanzino to retire after dispensing $153 million in Maddie’s Fund grants.)

Brenda Barnette & Los Angeles

The initial focus of Maddie’s Fund was upon making grants to enable other cities to emulate San Francisco.

The low San Francisco shelter killing volume also boosted the career of Brenda Barnette,  who was director of fundraising at the SF/SPCA during the transition to no-kill.  Barnette headed the Los Angeles Department of Animal Regulation from 2010 to 2021,  retiring shortly after claiming to have made Los Angeles a no-kill city,  with a 90% “live release rate” that it has not sustained.

(See Los Angeles Animal Services chief Brenda Barnette to retire in May 2021.)

Nathan Winograd

Nathan Winograd,  who headed the San Francisco Department of Law & Advocacy during the introduction of the Adoption Pact,  went on to form the No Kill Advocacy Center,   in Oakland, California,  in 2004.

(See Nathan Winograd in perspective.)

Despite the popularity of the Adoption Pact,  Carl Friedman and his then-deputy director,  Ken White, objected from the beginning that the Adoption Pact had created the unrealistic expectation that the San Francisco Animal Care & Control would be able to save every dog or cat,  regardless of the severity of the conditions that caused the animals to be surrendered or impounded.

Ken White

White subsequently headed companion animal welfare programs for the Humane Society of the U.S.,  was president of the Arizona Humane Society,  and from 2002 to 2020 headed the Peninsula Humane Society in San Mateo,  just south of San Francisco.

White outspokenly pointed out for more than 20 years that San Francisco started out from an extremely advantageous position, with perhaps the lowest per capita rate of pet keeping, and therefore of shelter animal intake, of any major U.S. city.

White also emphasized that the San Francisco model for lowering shelter killing worked primarily by promoting spay/neuter to further reduce intake, not by promoting adoptions,  the focus of Maddie’s Fund and the No Kill Advocacy Center from inception,  and that the Adoption Pact produced only a brief surge in adoptions city-wide.

Pit bulls were problematic from the start

Indeed,  after the first few years of the Adoption Pact, adoptions in San Francisco leveled off and declined.  This in part reflected lower intakes of puppies and kittens,  and in part resulted from an ever greater proportion of animals either owner-surrendered to Animal Care & Control or impounded by animal control officers being pit bulls with behavioral issues.

The bylaw requiring pit bull sterilization staved off overcrowding resulting in more euthanasia for almost a decade,  but pit bulls were still brought into San Francisco,  while enforcement of the bylaw post-Rebecca Katz became practically invisible.

Even when the Adoption Pact was introduced,  recalled Susan Dyer Reynolds for Northside SF in September 2009,  “Nearly half the dogs coming into San were pit bulls and pit bull mixes, and Avanzino asked ACC’s then-director,  Carl Friedman, to exempt them from the pact.”

This was not done, but “currently, the SF/SPCA will only take two pits or pit mixes at a time,” Reynolds complained, “because they don’t move as quickly as the small dogs the SF/SPCA prefers.”

“Generations of surplus puppies”

“The problem is playing out across California,”  wrote Duggan,  but she specified only half of the problem.

“When veterinary clinics closed during the COVID-19 outbreak,”  Duggan acknowledged, “spay and neuter surgeries stopped,  creating generations of surplus puppies.  Huge numbers of people adopted pandemic pets,  but now demand for dogs,  especially large ones,”  often code for pit bulls,  “has plunged.

“San Francisco Animal Care & Control, in the Mission District,  is obligated to care for all stray,  lost and surrendered animals within city limits,”  Duggan explained.  “In the past,  it sent most of the dogs and cats it couldn’t adopt out to the private shelter down the street:  the San Francisco SPCA.

“Takes in kittens”

“The SPCA continues to take in the majority of the public shelter’s extra cats — especially kittens,  who are easier to adopt.  But over the past decade it has increasingly rescued more dogs from Central Valley shelters,  where it says the need is greater,  and fewer from San Francisco.

“Historically,  the SPCA has taken as many as 600 dogs from us,  which helped us save more dogs,”  said Virginia Donohue in an email to Duggan.

“Unfortunately,  for the last few years it has been fewer than 200 dogs,”  Donahue said.

Affirmed Duggan,  “The SPCA accepted 158 of the more than 2,800 dogs that came through the public shelter in 2024,  a drop from more than 600 dogs in 2013,  records obtained by the Chronicle show.”

PETA vs. Best Friends

Among all the individuals and organizations touting and emulating the San Francisco blueprint for achieving no-kill animal control since the introduction of the Adoption Pact,  the biggest,  noisiest,  and now also the wealthiest in receipt of donations and bequests is the Best Friends Animal Society,  headquartered in Kanab,  Utah,  with distant origins in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

“At face value,  the phrase ‘no-kill,’  loudly touted by Best Friends Animal Society,  sounds appealing:   who doesn’t want to save animals?” opened People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals senior vice president of cruelty investigations Daphna Nachminovitch on a July 17,  2025 Keep It Humane podcast.

“But “no-kill” policies, like those that Best Friends pushes,  don’t save animals,”  Nachminovitch objected.

“Shelters with ‘no-kill’ policies turn animals away,  often refusing to accept sick,  elderly,  or unsocialized dogs—or any cats at all—because taking them in would impact the facilities’ ‘save rates.’”

When no-kill becomes a problem

That is not a problem if the shelter is a privately funded facility like the San Francisco SPCA,  situated only a few hundred feet from an open admission facility like San Francisco Animal Care & Control,  which is mandated to accept all animals.

It is a problem when the animal care and control facility joins in a popularity contest with the privately funded shelter to be “no kill”;   adopts the 90% “live release rate” criteria for being “no-kill” espoused by the Best Friends Animal Society;  and begins turning animals away to achieve a 90% live release rate––an impossibility when anywhere from 30% to 90% of the dogs received are pit bulls with bite history and/or behavioral issues,  while pit bulls are the dogs of choice for under 5% of American households.

(See Pit bull pushers are nuts, free market economist Adam Smith would say)

“Best Friends misled the public for years”

Continued Nachminovitch,  “Best Friends Animal Society,  whose last reported annual revenue was $173 million,  misled the public for years.  It promised Americans a ‘no-kill’ nation by 2025,  an absurd claim not based on any semblance of reality.

“An opinion piece by Best Friend’s chief executive,”  Julie Castle,  “conceded that its position is that ‘keeping pets out of shelters should be a first-choice management protocol.’

“ To boost ‘save rates,’”  Nachminovitch objected, “Best Friends Animal Society pushes shelters to:

• Stop temperament testing and adopt out dogs with aggressive tendencies and even known bite histories;
• Refuse to accept animals from people trying to surrender them,  including dogs known to be dangerous;
• Leave animals—even kittens—to fend for themselves on the streets.”

Current practices are not what no-kill began as

None of the above practices,  incidentally,  were part of the original San Francisco no-kill model as outlined in the Adoption Pact,  nor were they promoted by the annual No Kill Directory,  which debuted in 1994,  and by the original No Kill Conference series,  held annually from 1995 to 2005.

Neither did either the No Kill Directory or the original No Kill Conference series ever define “no kill” as a 90% “live release rate,”  introduced as the yardstick for “no kill” by Maddie’s Fund and the Best Friends Animal Society as part of the “Asilomar Accords” in August 2004.

“Implicit to the no-kill philosophy,”  explained the No Kill Directory covers from 1995 on,  “is the reality of exceptional situations in which euthanasia is the most humane alternative available.

“Those exceptional situations include irrecoverable illness or injury,  dangerous behavior,  and/or the need to decapitate an animal who has bitten someone,  in order to perform rabies testing.  They do not include ‘unadoptable,  too young,  or too old,’   or lack of space.”

“Misguided & dangerous ‘no-kill’ policies”

Charged Nachminovitch,  “Shelters that have surrender fees,  waiting lists,  and other misguided and downright dangerous ‘no-kill’ policies are directly responsible for many instances of cruelty and abandonment.  When shelters make it difficult,  or impossible,  for people to do the right thing and bring in unwanted cats and dogs,  they put the animals in grave danger.”

Surrender fees,  waiting lists,  and the “other misguided and downright dangerous ‘no-kill’ policies” Nachminovitch decried were introduced by shelters trying to achieve a “90% live release rate” without regard to the condition,  history,  or behavior of the animals arriving at the shelter doors.

First requirement for no-kill is s/n

The first requirement of achieving authentic no-kill animal sheltering,  including animal control,  as the San Francisco SPCA realized back in 1984,  was spaying and neutering the most problematic components of shelter animal intake out of existence.

Back then,  the most problematic component was simply too many puppies and kittens.

By 2000,  most shelters in most of the U.S. seldom received unwanted litters of puppies and kittens born into homes.

Puppy intake had dwindled to pit bulls,  with collectively only about a quarter of the spay/neuter rate of other dogs,  a statistic which has not improved.

Cat intake had dwindled to feral cats who could not be handled.

Neuter/return programs have gradually diminished feral cat intake,  but the pit bull birth rate has yet to be effectively addressed anywhere,  by anyone.

Shelter pit bull promotions stimulate breeding

Instead,  pit bull popularization efforts led by the Best Friends Animal Society,  Maddie’s Fund,  and the American SPCA––and by the San Francisco SPCA,  off and on––have stimulated pit bull breeding,  rather than adoptions.

Acquiring a pit bull puppy,  after all,  appears more attractive to people who believe “it’s all in how you raise them” than acquiring a full-grown used dog already known to have problems.

A few national organizations,  notably the Summerlee Foundation,  of Dallas,  Texas,  and the Bissell Pet Foundation,  of Grand Rapids,  Michigan,  have recently announced new funding for spay/neuter work.

“Through its Fix the Future® program,  Bissell Pet Foundation has already completed over 97,000 surgeries this year—and is aiming for 190,000 by year’s end,”  spokesperson Lauren Stewart emailed to ANIMALS 24-7 on July 16,  2025.

“S/N,  while highly effective,  is chronically underfunded”

“Most people don’t realize how widespread and complicated the lack of affordable veterinary care has become,  and that spay/neuter,  while highly effective,  is chronically underfunded,”  Stewart said.

Which is exactly what ANIMALS 24-7 guest columnist Ruth Steinberger pointed out on January 6,  2025.

(See Fix the problem! by Ruth Steinberger, founder, SpayFIRST!)

“This campaign isn’t just raising awareness;  it’s mobilizing donors,  shelters,  and communities to take action and invest in real,  scalable solutions,”  Stewart added.

So much the better––especially if the action and investments are directed at pit bulls in particular,  the part of the problem hardly anyone dares to mention.

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