ELECTION 2022
San Francisco voters will decide this November if the city agency responsible for homeless shelters, supportive housing, and a range of services needs more supervision and oversight.
Recent polls highlight homelessness as a top concern, and Proposition C promises more accountability for the department in charge. But the ballot measure is also a proxy for debates about other key SF issues: mayoral power, City Hall’s ability to solve problems, and huge sums of money.
To be clear, three committees already supply nonbinding oversight — more like advice — to different aspects of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH). But some officials, backed by critical audits and reports, have said for years this isn’t enough accountability for a department with a two-year, $1.2 billion budget, one of SF’s largest.
In 2019, then-Sup. Matt Haney, who now represents SF in the state legislature, tried to bring a formal HSH oversight commission to the voters. With Mayor London Breed in opposition, it failed to reach the ballot. The mayor, who currently has the HSH director report directly to her, still opposes the idea. But this time, amid investigations into the department’s explosion of no-bid contracts and festering conditions at some residences, the Board of Supervisors changed its tune.
One supervisor, Ahsha Safaí, peeled off from the mayor’s flank and authored the measure. “It just seemed that this was the right time, given all the information that we had out there, that we needed some additional oversight and accountability,” Safaí tells The Frisc.
In one example, Safaí’s skepticism surfaced at a February hearing about an $18.7 million no-bid contract for the nonprofit Urban Alchemy that had no experience running large buildings: “If things aren’t going well or are mismanaged,” he asked a top HSH official, “how does the department handle this?”
Prop C qualified for the ballot in July 2022, but Breed didn’t weigh in until two weeks ago: Again, she was a hard no. “Fundamentally, it is the mayor and the Board of Supervisors who are responsible for oversight of the departments,” mayoral spokesperson Jeff Cretan tells The Frisc. “They are the ones that are elected by the people to do the job.”
C is for so many committees
Proposition C is a charter amendment that would create a commission to oversee HSH. The new commission could have a say over policy, approve budgets, have sway over department heads, and conduct investigations. (Its power would be more limited around programs that are required if the city is to receive state and federal funding.) It would also require the city controller to audit HSH.
The new commission would not replace the existing advisory bodies, though. Instead, it would act as an umbrella for the three committees, appointing their members and ensuring that each one stays in its lane. The Our City Our Home Committee advises HSH how to spend the roughly $250 million flowing yearly from a business tax passed by voters in 2018. The Shelter Monitoring Committee tracks complaints about the city’s network of shelters. The Local Homeless Coordinating Board focuses on the roughly $60 million in federal housing funds SF receives annually to create streamlined, interagency responses to homelessness.
When Prop C was being written, Breed wanted the supervisors to consolidate the various layers into one, according to Cretan. “By adding a fourth body, we would only be adding another layer of bureaucracy” and slowing down the department’s decisions, he says.
‘We certainly want to make sure that any oversight bodies are independent and objective. I think we struck the right balance.’ — Sup. Ahsha Safaí, when asked about the balance of power on the commission after Mayor Breed’s secret resignation letters came to light.
Safaí disagrees. He says in an interview that coordination and efficiency will improve because the existing commissions will report to the new one.
Speed was also the reason Breed opposed the commission three years ago. “They were concerned about the ability to move quickly,” Safaí adds. “So we gave her the space.”
In the years since, the snapshot count of SF’s homeless has decreased by a few percentage points, from about 8,000 in 2019 to about 7,750 earlier this year; Breed credits her administration’s pandemic-era measures as a reason. (Not all city communities benefited equally.)
But HSH was created in 2016, and the homeless count remains up since then, including the chronic homeless — often the most visible and desperate people on the streets.
HSH is the only major agency without a formal oversight commission, and as The Frisc reported last year, its spending on outside contractors — more than 65, at last count — far outweighs what the average city department spends as a percentage of budget. “It makes no sense that the department responding to the city’s biggest challenge has the least oversight and accountability,” Haney tells The Frisc.
As HSH’s budget has grown, so has its use of contracts awarded without a formal bidding process. The share of no-bid contracts has ballooned from around 1 percent to over 40 percent of all contracts, totaling over $720 million since the beginning of 2019.
An August 2020 report from the city’s Budget and Legislative Analyst highlighted poor oversight of providers, rampant staff vacancies, and shoddy data collection. HSH officials promised to address the criticism, but a civil grand jury recently found that problems remained.
A delicate balance of power
Just as SF turned more attention to the upcoming election, news broke that Mayor Breed has asked dozens of her appointees to preemptively sign undated letters of resignation that have been kept on file. She promised to end the practice, which the city attorney called “inconsistent with the law,” warning it could threaten the independence of city commissions that have oversight duties. A supervisor committee will hold hearings on the letters next week.
Under Prop C, the supervisors would nominate three commission members, and Breed would nominate four. The supervisors also would have to approve her nominees. If the measure passes, the commission would start in spring of 2023, with members serving four-year terms.
Asked about the balance of power after the secret resignation letters came to light, Safaí tells The Frisc that “we certainly want to make sure that any oversight bodies are independent and objective. I think we struck the right balance.”
Each seat has specific criteria. At least two members must have experienced homeless themselves, and another two must have experience with advocacy or providing services. Other criteria include mental health service, work with homeless youth and families, and participation in small business or neighborhood associations.
One mayoral appointment must have background in budgeting, finance, and auditing, but that’s not quite enough for one advocate of stronger oversight. “The commission would be stronger if one of the seven positions was explicitly reserved for someone with experience in government administration and finance,” Mark Nagel, who cofounded RescueSF, an organization working to end homelessness in the city, writes to The Frisc in an email.
Nagel also worries the commission, with estimated salaries and expenses of $350,000 a year, according to the city controller, won’t have enough resources to conduct audits and investigations.
Despite those concerns, he supports the measure. “It is clear that [HSH] lacks sufficient oversight now,” Nagel says. “Prop C will address this need.”
In addition to Breed, Prop C is opposed by the SF Republican Party, which calls it another bureaucratic cog in “the homeless nonprofit complex.” The measure has the support of the entire Board of Supervisors, the San Francisco Democratic Party, and Assemblymember Haney. “Commissions aren’t bureaucracies,” Haney says. “They hold bureaucracies accountable. They ensure there are clear goals and strategies, and public input.”
In San Francisco, there’s always civic tension between moving quickly and moving wisely. Prop C’s fate will hinge on voters, including those who demand more progress on homelessness, trusting Prop C to thread the needle.
Daniel Lempres is a reporter based in the East Bay. He has contributed research and reporting to the New York Times, USA Today, KQED, the Humboldt Times-Standard, the Los Angeles Times, The Markup, California Magazine and the East Bay Express.