Homeless people sheltering in San Francisco hotels got a reprieve earlier this month. Plans to start moving some of them out before the end of the year have been pushed back to March.
But the progressive-led Board of Supervisors, which has clashed with Mayor London Breed’s homelessness team over COVID strategy, voted on Tuesday to keep about 2,000 people in their rooms until they either have a permanent place to live — a difficult proposition to do quickly — or until the federal government stops reimbursing the city.
Authored by Supervisor Matt Haney (District 6), the emergency ordinance expires in 60 days, which means it won’t stretch to cover the new March move-out date unless the supervisors extend it. For now, its main practical effect is to require the city to fill 60% of vacated rooms, rented by the city, with new occupants and get more people off the streets as the coronavirus surge puts pressure on Bay Area and SF hospital capacity.
People occupying a room after November 15 would not be automatically eligible for permanent housing, according to the ordinance. About 320 hotel residents have already moved into permanent housing, according to city officials.
In a Medium post Wednesday, Breed defended the hotel program as “a massive logistical public health undertaking and achievement, and also an expensive one.” She flagged what she called “inaccurate statements” about costs, and also called her critics “irresponsible” for describing hotel move-outs as evictions.
It’s unclear if she’ll honor the ordinance. The supervisors unanimously voted in April to lease more than 8,000 hotel rooms for the homeless, which Breed ignored. Her administration, citing financial restraint and other complications, maxed out at 2,400 rooms, then announced this summer it would soon start moving people out of hotels and into permanent housing, congregate shelters, and sanctioned tent sites.
Since that announcement, though, Breed’s administration has changed its tune. The top homelessness official, Abigail Stewart-Kahn, told the SF Chronicle in September that some residents could move back to traditional shelters or tent sites, only to backtrack in an early November letter to several supervisors: “It is important to note that returning COVID-vulnerable hotel guests to congregate shelter or [tent sites] is not part of the plan.”
State funds will help buy and convert two private hotels into permanent housing for the formerly homeless. However, the housing shortage and high costs will complicate ambitions to fast-track thousands of units, which is now the Breed administration’s stated “homelessness recovery” goal.
On December 9, as the current COVID surge encroached, Stewart-Kahn said in a public meeting that the hotel program would be extended. Instead of a December 21 deadline, no one will start moving out until March, with subsequent exits staggered through October 2021.
Untying the financial knot
Leasing the hotel rooms, left empty by the evaporation of the city’s tourism and travel business, has been expensive, as the mayor noted. But in November, the city controller reported that promised state and federal reimbursements should leave San Francisco on the hook for only $10.5 million, or 5 percent, of the costs this year. (Those numbers were subject to change, the controller’s office said at the time.)
That uncertainty gets to the heart of the problem. Federal emergency money is pledged to the city, but the cash takes a while to flow, and the tap can be turned off with 30 days’ notice. Supervisors doubt that the incoming Biden administration would suddenly cut off funds, but no one wants the city left hanging. Citing that uncertainty, Supervisor Rafael Mandelman voted against the ordinance in a committee hearing last week. After amendments, he voted for it this week.
Breed has asked FEMA for more advanced notice. She wrote today that 75 percent of eligible costs of the hotel program are “anticipated to be reimbursed through FEMA,” and that the city has used $61 million from the federal stimulus CARES Act to cover most of the rest. “As of this writing there doesn’t appear to be new CARES funding coming soon,” she said, in reference to the stimulus package in negotiation that doesn’t seem to include direct aid to cities and states.
So even if the FEMA reimbursements keep coming, SF would spend $32.6 million more on the hotels than what’s currently budgeted, she added.
‘I appreciate the fact that when there’s money at the trough, everybody comes running.’
— Supervisor Sandra Lee Fewer
Supervisors on the city’s budget and finance committee discussed Wednesday how to close that gap for the hotels.
Money from 2018’s Proposition C, a business tax to fund homelessness services, was at the top of their list. This funding — $492 million collected so far — finally became available in September after being tied up in court for two years. “I appreciate the fact that when there’s money at the trough, everybody comes running,” said Supervisor Sandra Lee Fewer, the committee chair.
Snark aside, the committee ended up approving $49.3 million for the Homelessness and Supportive Housing Department, which says it will use it for the hotels and more, including housing subsidies for people, especially Black San Franciscans and families, who didn’t get into the emergency hotels. The money will also help move hotel residents into housing, but the committee says it will keep a close eye on HSH’s results.
All this desperation for dollars comes with a frustrating backdrop: The city’s $26 billion budget for the next two years has more than $1.4 billion allotted to homelessness services, but not all of it is guaranteed or immediately available.
Indeed, city officials say a cash crunch means they can’t expand the sanctioned “Safe Sleeping” tent site program, forcing them to keep a Haight-Ashbury tent site despite earlier promises to dismantle it at the end of November, as The Frisc reported earlier this month.
Never shy about spending money, city officials are leaning more than ever on more powerful friends in the state and nation’s capitals. Already with one eye on Washington as the presidential transition takes effect, San Franciscans have all the more reason to watch closely.
Alex Lash is editor in chief of The Frisc. Kristi Coale contributed to this report.