Housed San Francisco residents and people who work with homeless San Franciscans alike got a surprise Monday when city officials released a long-awaited street count of the homeless population that showed a slight drop of 3.5 percent from the previous tally.
The new count, conducted during a one-night census on Feb. 23, was widely expected to be higher than 2019’s count of 8,035, given the economic and social disruption of the pandemic.
Instead, the tally of 7,754 showed San Francisco to be the only Bay Area county with a decrease in its unhoused population. Mayor London Breed was quick to tout her administration’s policies, led by a push to create more permanent housing for formerly homeless people, as a main reason for the surprising decline.
Addressing reporters in the lobby of the Panoramic — a 160-unit South of Market building that just opened for previously homeless residents — Breed noted that SF marshaled millions of dollars from state and federal sources to reduce homelessness.
“We used the pandemic as an opportunity to take all this funding and bring more housing online,” she said, and her office touted that over a two-year span through July 2022, the city will have opened 2,500 more units of permanent supportive housing. (Moving people quickly into that housing has been a chronic problem, however.)
The city’s count also noted that among the new total are 4,397 unsheltered people — that is, living on the streets or in vehicles — which represents a 15 percent decrease from those not in shelter in the 2019 count. That corresponds with another change documented in Monday’s data — 18 percent more people are living in shelters and transitional housing than in the previous count.
The pace of new housing for the formerly homeless has indeed picked up during the pandemic. Despite a few high-profile fights, like the one that prevented a Japantown hotel from turning into housing, properties such as the Diva, the Granada, and the Oasis have been converted into housing. The city has also moved dozens of people into transitional situations like new Navigation Center shelters and a tiny home village on Gough Street.
With that progress, however, comes problems. The city has awarded no-bid contracts to firms running sites and shelters, as well as larger single-room-occupancy hotels, but troubling incidents and terrible conditions for some residents have prompted SF supervisors to revive oversight efforts.
The point-in-time count, as it’s known, is mandatory for counties that wish to receive federal funds for housing and services. It’s supposed to happen every two years, but COVID canceled the 2021 count. To get back on the biennial schedule, SF will do another one next winter, marking the first time there will be year-over-year data.
SF’s last tally was 2019, and even with more than 600 volunteers on the job, the 8,035 total was widely considered an undercount. This year’s census was the first done without volunteers, the thinking being that advocates, service providers, and city workers from the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) and other agencies would be better able to locate unhoused residents.
So is San Francisco’s decrease for real? It might be cognitive dissonance when some neighborhoods like the Tenderloin, the site of the mayor’s recent emergency order, still have sidewalks crowded with tents or people living in squalor. And there’s no doubt it’s somewhat of an estimate — HSH deputy director of planning and strategy Cynthia Nagendra acknowledged it was “not perfect science” when The Frisc went out on the count with her in February.
But many cities including SF have worked to improve the process with technology like phone apps, noted Tomiquia Moss, executive director of All Home, a nonprofit that supports municipal agencies on issues related to homelessness. “It’s the only way right now to get a sense of what the need really is,” said Moss.
A more complete report is due in July with demographic factors including race, ethnicity, age, and gender. The data will be the basis for policy and budgetary decisions. For example, the 2019 count showed a significant bump in people living in vehicles, which spurred the city to test out a secure site designed for that population. Its success led to a new vehicle site at Candlestick Point, and, if promises are to be believed, one should be coming to the city’s west side.
A little irony
In the preliminary data, the nine-county Bay Area region saw a 9 percent increase in its unhoused population. Contra Costa had the highest jump, 35 percent over the last three years.
All Home’s Moss said San Francisco’s relative success illustrates the importance of not just getting people into housing, but also preventing them from losing their homes. By giving people financial assistance to help with back rent or to pay a deposit, Breed said the city was able to keep 1,800 people in their homes. At the same time, the city’s ability to purchase old hotels and other buildings has been a quick way to bulk up the city’s supportive housing portfolio.
There was some measure of irony as the mayor touted the lower count Monday. A new business tax, passed by voters in 2018, is funneling more than $300 million a year into homeless services and housing. Breed campaigned against the tax measure, Proposition C, but ended up on the losing side.
“We’re beginning to see what Prop C has made possible,” said Mary Kate Bacalao, director of external affairs and policy for Compass Family Services, which provides services for the families who are living in 40 of the Panoramic’s 160 units.
(Correction: This story has been changed to clarify Compass’s role at the Panoramic.)
Bacalao attributed the 18 percent increase in people in shelters and transitional housing to Prop C funding, which was tied up in court until mid-2020. “This was the outreach and shelter money from Prop C,” she added.
Those funds, combined with bond funding and COVID-era state and federal money such as California’s Project Homekey, have pushed the city’s homelessness budget past $1 billion in the current two-year cycle. It remains to be seen whether some of those sources eventually fade, although California’s new record surplus will embolden state plans to keep pushing.
Brett Andrews, CEO of PRC, which runs two transitional shelters in SF that specialize in mental health care, called the lower count “encouraging,” especially because the local Prop C funding was clearly “having a positive impact in our community.”