After three months of cautiously moving San Francisco’s homeless residents into hotel rooms left empty by the COVID-19 pandemic, city officials have admitted they need help.
The Frisc has learned that the city’s homelessness and health departments have put out a call to nonprofit organizations that typically run shelters and other services to operate some 30 hotels that the city has leased but has not yet filled.
With little fanfare, the city posted online applications for the jobs on June 4.
“It’s a more intentional engagement of nonprofit providers who have significant expertise the city can draw from,” said Joe Wilson, executive director of Hospitality House, which runs a shelter and other programs in the Tenderloin.
The call to move the city’s thousands of unhoused people into private rooms began as soon as San Francisco began to shelter in place in March, amid fears that COVID-19 could spread quickly through crowded overnight shelters and makeshift sidewalk camps.
The city showed the ability to move fast in April after more than 100 residents and staffers at the city’s largest shelter tested positive for the virus. Nearly everyone in shelters without proper social distancing were moved into hotels. But the shelter closures have diverted scores more unhoused San Franciscans, swelling the ranks of camps on city sidewalks.
Days after the shelter outbreak was disclosed, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to give Mayor London Breed until April 26 to bring 7,000 homeless off the streets and into hotels, regardless of health status. She has flouted their order.
As of June 12, the city has leased 2,253 rooms, with about 1,600 occupied by homeless people, according to city data. It has also set up 120 recreational vehicles and has about 450 spots in congregate shelters for people recovering from COVID-19.
By the latest count, conducted in early 2019, there were 8,000 homeless people in San Francisco. The total could be much higher.
The pace has infuriated many advocates for the homeless and prompted the Board of Supervisors’ rebuke. Deteriorating conditions in the Tenderloin also triggered a lawsuit from the University of California’s Hastings School of Law. It was settled last week.
City officials have offered several reasons for their caution, including financial responsibility and staffing difficulties. (They did not respond to requests for comment.)
Those reasons have not appeased advocates and critics. During a May 27 online meeting convened by several supervisors, Father Richard Smith, an Episcopal vicar in the Mission and advocate for immigrants and the homeless, vented his anger: “Is it a lack of moral will? Administrative incompetence? What has the city missed? Why has so little been done?”
In nearly the same breath, Smith praised a few nonprofits, such as Wilson’s Hospitality House, that have taken matters into their own hands to negotiate months-long leases for rooms at three hotels, paid for with private donations. About 175 people, a mix of families and single adults, are in these units now.
It hasn’t been nearly enough to ease the pressure on the streets, however. “It’s just a Band-Aid, really,” said Martha Ryan, executive director and founder of the Homeless Prenatal Program, another nonprofit that is funding a hotel.
The city’s settlement last week with Hastings to move 300 people from Tenderloin streets into hotels and sanctioned tent sites won’t be enough, either.
Nonprofit officials who have already moved people into hotels with their own money and staff acknowledge it’s complicated. Their experience could hold clues to how they, if they answer the city’s call for help, might make it work.
America’s Best Value
As SF began sheltering in place on March 16, Mary Kate Bacalao realized the city wasn’t going to help put clients like hers into hotel rooms. Bacalao is director of external affairs and policy for Compass Family Services, which runs an emergency shelter in the Tenderloin for homeless families.
To qualify for federal reimbursement, they could only move people who met at least one of several criteria: 65 and older, an underlying health condition, COVID-19 positive, or recent contact with someone with the virus.
“This left out a lot of people, [including] numerous families living out of vehicles,” said Bacalao.
Ryan had similar misgivings: “The city was not prioritizing families with children.”
So Homeless Prenatal and Compass joined forces with another nonprofit, Hamilton Family Services. The group signed a deal on April 15 to rent America’s Best Value Inn & Suites in SoMA for three months to house 30 families.
The organizations paid for the lease with private emergency grants, which they realized was possible after seeing two other efforts — hotels procured by nonprofits Hospitality House and Providence Foundation, which received help from their district supervisors — go the same route. (For the Providence-led effort, Supervisor Dean Preston said he donated $10,000 of his own money.)
Once the lease was signed, the real work began. Housing people who are sheltering in place requires certain amenities to make “in place” possible. Ryan ticked off a list of items to purchase, including small refrigerators, rice cookers, and microwaves.
The organizations had phone conversations with the residents to discuss the hotel’s expectations and rules. The families could not have visitors, and they had to stay in the rooms when at the hotel. Ryan said some families thought that if they moved they would lose their place in line for housing subsidies or eligibility. It took time to allay their concerns.
Lost keys
The process was slow. To maintain social distancing, only two families at a time could arrive and meet with the nonprofit and hotel staff for orientation. They were only able to move three to five families into the hotel each day, taking more than a week to get 30 families settled.
Once settled, there were still issues. Adults going to work left their children behind; neither the nonprofit nor the hotel workers could provide child care. Families were also coming and going too freely. The nonprofits adjusted rules to anticipate small details, like lost room keys. “We had to tell them that if you lose a key more than a few times, you’ll need to pay for it,” Bacalao said.
Ryan hinted of larger problems too — “you need a presence to prevent things from erupting” — but declined to elaborate.
Bhanu Patel, who manages the Best Value Inn with her husband Hasmukh, told The Frisc that things have gone smoothly. She was also thankful because the hotel was about to go out of business when the partners approached with their offer.
The partners have spent nearly $250,000 on rooms, meals, and other services. ‘It costs a lot of money, and the city is not going to pay us for it,’ Martha Ryan said.
“Compass, the Homeless Prenatal Program, and Hamilton have worked so hard to bring in three hot meals a day to the families,” Patel said. “We’ve had a good experience with them and the families, and we are grateful they chose us.”
The nonprofit staff have been on site daily, in rotating shifts. There are check-ins on mental health and medical issues, and a lot of communication with the hotel staff. As in more normal times, each family also has had a case manager to help with housing and job searches.
On the whole, Bacalao said it’s been positive: “We’ve kept a high occupancy rate, and people have loved being indoors.”
However, the partners won’t renew the lease at the Best Value Inn when it ends in mid-July. They have already spent nearly $250,000 on rooms, meals, and other services. “It costs a lot of money, and the city is not going to pay us for it,” Ryan commented.
The focus will be to help them move into other housing situations. Some will qualify for city hotel rooms under the stricter criteria. One family, for example, has a senior member, and others have pregnant mothers or children less than a year old. As a last resort, the partners will pay to keep families with nowhere else to go at the hotel.
To apply or not
San Francisco is facing what could be a $1.7 billion deficit for its next two-year budget. Money is on everyone’s mind. Although officials have cited “fiscal prudence” as one reason to move slowly on the hotel front, the city has paid for hundreds of unoccupied rooms, in part because it was reserving them for frontline workers who might need to quarantine. (There have also been dozens of rented RVs that sat idle for weeks.)
All the nonprofit-run hotel rooms have been 100 percent occupied. If they manage hotels on a much larger scale, will they run into the same snags city officials have cited?
On April 25, in an explanation why she would defy the supervisors’ order on hotel rooms, Mayor Breed wrote that staffing was a big issue, with the city reassigning librarians, park workers, and others to the hotels. “Operating these sites is a monumental feat,” she wrote.
Some advocates have pushed back against the city’s assertion that people in hotels would require heavy staffing. But sites would surely benefit from veteran homelessness workers taking over those roles. Ryan acknowledged how much effort it takes. She and her partners have had to curtail some of their regular duties to make the hotel work, which is a main reason Homeless Prenatal will not be applying to help run a city-funded hotel.
Compass Family Services has applied, according to Bacalao, and would like to co-manage a hotel site or conduct teletherapy sessions with people sheltering in place. So far, The Frisc is aware of two other nonprofits that are applying: Hospitality House and Dolores Street Community Services.
Applications to work with the city are due June 16 but the documents say the process could roll on beyond that date.
Will partnering with nonprofits allow the city to scale up its operations and move faster on the hotels? Hospitality House’s Wilson isn’t sure: “We won’t know until we try it, but we have to try, and try different things all at the same time.”
Kristi Coale (@unazurda) is a San Francisco-based freelance writer and radio producer for various outlets, including KALW’s Crosscurrents and the National Radio Project’s Making Contact.