San Francisco has unprecedented amounts of capital to convert hotels and other buildings into housing and shelter for the homeless, and the city wants to spend it.
But the current row over one of those hotels, a former “zen-meets-boutique” spot in Japantown, shows how money can’t buy everything — like neighborhood acceptance.
Even as Japantown residents and merchants have convinced their own supervisor as well as city homeless officials to pump the brakes on the fast-track purchase, two other former hotels within about a mile have quietly joined the city’s housing stock, and will bring young people and families off the streets.
The Frisc has learned that the Artmar Hotel on Ellis Street in the Tenderloin, which used to be a budget traveler hotel, has just opened as a permanent home for up to 60 older teens and young adults, and the Oasis Hotel on Franklin Street will operate as a transitional home for up to 59 families as they wait for longer-term housing solutions.
Department of Homelessless and Supportive Housing (HSH) executive director Shireen McSpadden, who took the reins this spring, mentioned the two hotels during a recent public meeting.
An HSH spokeswoman confirmed that the Artmar has just opened under the management of nonprofit service provider Five Keys. The Oasis has served as emergency family housing since April 2020, and will continue to be run by the Providence Foundation.
The purchase price of the properties was not immediately available.
As with all permanent supportive housing (the city currently controls about 8,000 units), formerly homeless tenants at the Artmar will pay 30 percent of their wages in rent and receive counseling and other support.
The Oasis, a few blocks north of Civic Center and Hayes Valley, was one of the first hotels to shelter the homeless in the early days of the pandemic. Private funds raised by District 5 Sup. Dean Preston and others helped move a few dozen families there, at a time when the supervisors and homelessness advocates were pressing Mayor London Breed to lease hotels suddenly left empty, all while COVID threatened to spread quickly in crowded homeless shelters.
‘Like a castle’
Families and youth make up much smaller percentages of the SF homeless population than single adults, but they are crucial to support because they can be more motivated to break the homelessness cycle. “Young people have that first-time ownership pride,” says Del Seymour, founder of the Code Tenderloin service organization and co-chair of an advisory board that provides oversight of the city’s programs and spending. “You go visit them after moving in, and their place looks like a castle.”
In the last official count in 2019, 82 percent of homeless youth and young adults were literally out on the streets — that is, not living in cars or temporarily in shelters — compared with 70 percent of homeless adults.
The Artmar is important because the city also just opened a transitional shelter, called a Navigation Center, for youth and young adults on lower Polk Street. The Artmar now offers a potential “exit” for them — as in a permanent and nearby roof over their heads once they are ready.
This pairing of hyperlocal resources is key, says Mary Howe of the Homeless Youth Alliance, because people moving out of homelessness often prefer to stay in their neighborhoods. She would like to see the pairing replicated in other neighborhoods, particularly in District 5. Howe’s group ran the city-sanctioned Haight-Ashbury tent site for a year.
No local exits
District 5, which includes the Haight-Ashbury, Western Addition, and Japantown, has the city’s fourth-highest unhoused population based on 2019 data, but hasn’t seen any permanent housing options, and its supervisor has been under pressure to address this.
Sup. Preston, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, touted his aggressive homeless advocacy during the pandemic when he ran for re-election in 2020. Yet he sided with Japantown residents and merchants who spoke out against the Kimpton Buchanan Hotel’s purchase, which the city had put on the fast track to capture state grants with a narrow application window. It didn’t take long for City Hall to put the proposal on the back burner.
This angered many of his DSA supporters, and the local chapter called out Preston last week “to stand up for the unhoused working class, to stand up for socialist values,” and push for the purchase of the hotel and other properties in his district.
Hours later, Preston issued a four-page public letter to HSH’s McSpadden, reiterating his work to open the Oasis in early 2020 and noting that he supports the purchase of two other district sites, one on Turk Street and one on Sutter Street. The Japantown hotel seems attractive “on paper,” he wrote, but has “unique and significant impacts raised by community members.”
Preston’s office did not return The Frisc’s request for comment.
Share the load
Sup. Matt Haney, whose District 6 is home to the largest homeless population and the most services in the city, has tried legislation to spur other districts to share the load for shelters and permanent housing, to no avail.
But there is movement. While the Japantown hotel has run in to opposition, three other sites announced at the same time are, for now, less controversial, including one in the Outer Mission, which is in Sup. Asha Safaí’s district. When asked about the Japantown decision, Safaí told the SF Chronicle: “Every neighborhood needs to do their fair share.”
Even if SF loses its chance at the Japantown hotel and its 131 units, the Artmar, Oasis, and three other planned purchases announced last month should give more than 350 people permanent or transitional homes in coming months. Other properties are in the pipeline too. The reality in San Francisco is that not all proposals will make it through, but with thousands of people on the streets, opportunities lost take on extra weight.
With the pandemic dragging on and suppressing travel, more hotel owners may be eager to cash out. Like with many affordable housing projects, though, the situation in Japantown shows how timing is of the essence for these developments. To supplement its own coffers, San Francisco is competing with other Bay Area cities for an immediate $200 million slice in funding from the state’s multibillion-dollar Project Homekey program, and applications are due starting at the end of September.
“You got cities all vying for this money,” says Code Tenderloin’s Seymour, “and you got to report what you’re doing with this money by a certain time or else it’s going to another city.”