When COVID hit San Francisco, officials and advocates feared the worst for unhoused people on the streets and in crowded shelters. The solution was to move them into suddenly empty hotels around town.
Once these “shelter in place” (SIP) hotels were up and running — 25 in all — officials promised that the new residents would get first dibs on permanent housing, which is the gold standard for getting people off the streets and stabilizing their lives.
Now that the SIP hotel program is winding down, with only 745 guests remaining, those promises have sometimes collided with a difficult reality.
More than 3,700 people have lived in SF’s SIP hotels. Of those who have left, the city has tracked the next destination (“exits”) for more than 2,600. As of the end of June, fewer than half of them, or 1,140, have moved into permanent housing, according to a legislative analyst report (see page 24).
One organization thinks it has a solution to speed up the pace. Hospitality House, a nonprofit based in the Tenderloin, ran one SIP hotel for 23 months. Of the 113 temporary residents there, Hospitality House sent 70 percent to permanent supportive housing, well above the city’s overall rate.
The group did it by moving one large group of people together, as well as smaller groups here and there, instead of just moving people one by one. “It wasn’t complicated,” Hospitality House executive director Joe Wilson told The Frisc.
Some of Wilson’s peers among local homelessness providers took notice. “No one else has done it the way they’ve done it,” said Sara Shortt, director of public policy and community organizing at HomeRise. “You hear other agencies and [the SF homelessness department] talk about how challenging it is to house people, but these guys figured it out.”
It’s a small sample size, but good ideas often start small.
Trust first
In July 2021, Hospitality House staff had a year left on their contract to run the Hotel 587 on the corner of Larkin and Eddy streets. They had to work fast to steer the hotel’s residents into permanent housing.
Kim Whatley was the case manager at the site, which had been a boutique hotel before the pandemic. Whatley had to do a ton of paperwork and sweat the small stuff, like making sure everyone had identification.
But she also focused on a bigger goal: trust.
Whatley was once in these people’s shoes. “My life was a mess,” she said, recalling how she couldn’t trust anyone — a mindset required to get by on the streets or in shelters.
Moving into a single room, even temporarily, would be an abrupt change for the people on her watch. “I had to build a rapport so they trusted me,” Whatley added. ”Once they trusted me, everything kind of flowed.”
Whatley was also firm, constantly reminding people to complete their paperwork. Some needed more nudging. “They’d say ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow,’ and I would tell them ‘Come on, let’s go get it.’”
Whatley and her 19 colleagues, including program manager Alicia Coleman, did a lot more than paperwork. They also escorted residents to counseling or treatment appointments, or to the DMV to get IDs.
“There were a lot of things we did that were outside of our work,” according to Coleman.
Forging relationships at a safe distance during COVID was challenging, but they provided books in an informal library and organized quarterly events to show off residents’ artwork and recognize other achievements.
The biggest effort was a community mural to which anyone could contribute as they passed through the hotel lobby, where art supplies and a large canvas were staged. The finished piece hung in the lobby. “That was the thing that really bonded us all together,” Coleman said.
Still, moving people into homes of their own was no cinch. Coleman explained it took a solid year of this level of engagement to ensure everyone had a place to go when the hotel closed.
Housing ambivalence is a thing
It’s hard to get San Francisco’s unhoused people into permanent homes because of one undeniable fact: There isn’t enough housing.
But it’s not the only obstacle, as Hospitality House staff found out. Some Hotel 587 residents turned down housing because they didn’t like what was offered. This is not unusual, according to Lauren Hall, the executive director of DISH, a nonprofit that runs nine permanent supportive housing sites in the city.
“Housing ambivalence is a thing,” Hall said. “It’s not like people want to be homeless. They want to be treated with dignity like the rest of us, but some need help understanding they have to sign a lease and pay rent because they stayed at the hotels for free.”
I had to build a rapport so they trusted me. Once they trusted me, everything kind of flowed.
Kim Whatley, Hospitality House
In other words, the trust that Whatley and colleagues cultivated at the Hotel 587 might not have been enough. But good timing intervened. Hotel 587 was slated to close in June 2022, and the city had just opened the Panoramic, on Mission and 9th streets, in May. A big block of rooms became available.
Wilson and staff approached SF’s Homelessness and Supportive Housing Department with the idea of moving a group of residents together. Wilson credited two HSH officials — John Patton, lead manager of the SIP hotel program, and Jocelyn Everroad, who helps rehouse people, in giving the proposal a try.
They declined to comment, but HSH spokesperson Deborah Bouck said that the agency is “always looking for creative solutions to do this work more effectively.”
Among the 21 people who were scheduled to move together was an 87-year-old woman who had lived on the streets for four decades, with “all the attendant problems or consequences that come from long-term homlessness,” Wilson said.
When she disappeared for several days, the city wanted to swap in another person. But Wilson told The Frisc that he refused to give up her spot. Eventually, the woman returned, and in June she walked into the Panoramic with her neighbors, carrying a potted plant for her new apartment.
People felt responsible for this woman,” Wilson added. ”They felt she earned the right to determine how she’d spend her last days.”
Now at the Panoramic, formerly a microunit apartment building, the 21 folks are a sort of experiment in building community as people move from a temporary home to supportive housing. Keeping a group together lowers the stress of moving, said Hall, whose organization is the housing provider for single adults at the Panoramic.
“Now you can tell a person that they already know and trust 20 of their neighbors, and that makes the transition smoother,” she noted.
Do it again
It’s unclear if the group move can be a model. First, of course, the city needs enough permanent supportive housing ready to accept new residents. HSH has opened 1,901 units in the past two years — a good start.
But neighborhood resistance to new homes for the formerly homeless is an obstacle. Japantown blocked the conversion of a hotel last year, and Sunset residents continue to fight a big housing project on Irving Street with 25 percent of its units reserved for the formerly homeless.
What’s more, hundreds of permanent supportive units sit waiting and empty (see page 10). In many cases, a person can get a green light from the city to enter supportive housing, through a process called coordinated entry, yet wait for months for the rest of the bureaucracy to catch up. If those folks are left in limbo without anyone checking in — the personal touch that Hospitality House provided — they could fall through the cracks.
The city has vowed to revise coordinated entry so that higher priority for housing goes to people with the “highest barriers and vulnerabilities,” said HSH spokesperson Bouck.
Meanwhile, Hall said she is trying the group-move approach at another DISH property, the Star Hotel in the Mission, where there have been nine vacancies for months. (A lack of an elevator makes it harder to find eligible residents.)
Dolores Street Community Services sent over nine residents of a SIP hotel for a tour, not unlike a group of young people checking out a college dorm, so they could imagine themselves in the building together. “Being together makes it less scary for people to say yes to this place,” Hall said.
Supportive housing means housing with services like health care, but the support can also come from neighbors. That added benefit might help people stay housed — another hurdle for people making the switch from the streets who aren’t used to visitation rules and strangers who are “all in your business, whether you want it or not,” Hall observed.
With the emergency residents moved out of the Hotel 587, Hospitality House is out of the hotel business, and Joe Wilson and staff are returning their focus to the Tenderloin shelter and services they run. But he’ll keep an eye on how the Panoramic group is faring — and who else might be trying what he tried.
“The goal isn’t to have Hospitality House doing more things,” Wilson said, “but for more organizations doing what Hospitality House does with more people and more places.”