San Francisco has an unprecedented $1 billion earmarked to help and house people living on the streets, in cars, and in other unstable situations.
Until more houses get built — and that includes transitional options like one-room “tiny homes,” group shelters, vehicle camps, and even sanctioned tent sites — another fight will continue to play out on SF’s streets: How can we help people who are living, often in squalor, on the sidewalks?
It’s not a new fight. But the latest skirmish over the city’s clearance of sidewalk camps and the data used to justify these actions are important to highlight, because SF’s bigger homelessness budget, plus growing political will, are running into plenty of resistance. And the harder it is to build homes and shelters, the harder it is to get people off the streets.
For example, the city wants to buy and convert four hotels into permanent housing with health care and other services. At least two of the four face determined opposition. (The political will is not uniform; Sup. Dean Preston, who espouses progressive values in support of tenants and the unhoused, acquiesced to neighborhood pressure in Japantown and drew the ire of his fellow Democratic Socialists.)
“People will swear they’re not NIMBY, but it’s almost a natural thing,” says Del Seymour, co-chair of the Local Homelessness Coordinating Board, a committee that convenes monthly to oversee SF’s homelessness policies and grill officials. Seymour was formerly homeless in the Tenderloin himself and has empathy for all sides: “If you told me you were going to put a shelter across from my house — and I have a nice place now — I’d have to think about it.”
Not enough beds, not enough roofs
San Francisco officials say that they will only move unhoused people and their belongings from street camps (advocates call these moves “sweeps”) when there is shelter to offer them.
‘Permanent housing is the only solution to homelessness, but the waiting room can’t be on our streets.’ —Mark Nagel, RescueSF
Two months ago in front of Seymour’s committee, Department of Emergency Management director Mary Ellen Carroll said that over the 12 months ending June 2021, 70 percent of those offered shelter went to either city-sanctioned tent sites or “shelter-in-place” hotels, which the city began leasing after the pandemic struck. Another 27 percent went to group shelters. During this time, according to Carroll, the city reduced tents on sidewalks by 72 percent.
She painted a positive picture of these encounters, saying everyone is offered shelter. “I’ve personally seen people on the verge of death saved by HSOC teams,” Carroll said, using the acronym for the Healthy Streets Operations Center, which coordinates police, homeless outreach, mental health, and cleaning crews to converge on the camps.
Not everyone accepts. Of the more than 4,600 people the teams encountered, 45 percent accepted shelter, and 43 percent declined because of mental health, addiction, and other issues. (The other 12 percent were already in a form of shelter.)
It’s clear from the data that the acceptance rates were skewed toward the early days of the pandemic. There was much more enthusiasm to relocate into a shelter-in-place hotel, which offered a room and bathroom of one’s own. The added privacy and security were much more attractive than the alternatives.
But by the end of 2020, the city restricted the use of the hotels, concerned that the federal government wouldn’t fully reimburse their cost. That reduced the options available for the people being asked to leave encampments.
Joe Wilson, executive director of Hospitality House, points out how COVID has made a lot of people wary of congregate shelters like the one he runs. “In the middle of a pandemic, congregate shelter puts people at risk,” he says. “So it’s a rational decision to decline.”
Carlos Wadkins, an organizer with the Coalition on Homelessness, took issue with the city’s promise that it has enough beds or shelter spaces for everyone they approach. Wadkins says the coalition will release a report Thursday to document its findings, but he declined to share or cite data in advance.
After several attempts to reach city officials for comment on their data, The Frisc received a response from Department of Emergency Management spokesperson Francis Zamora, who wrote that “San Francisco clinicians, medics, and social workers conduct assessments prior to conducting encampment resolutions … While SIP [hotel] placements are no longer occurring the teams can still make placements to safe sleep sites, congregate shelter, Navigation Centers, and when appropriate, residential drug treatment centers and hospital beds.”
Despite the Biden administration’s pledge in August to fully fund COVID emergency expenses through the end of 2021, the city is sticking to its plan to move the hotel occupants into permanent housing, spurring protests from some advocates and officials. As of October 6, there were 1,446 rooms still occupied with 1,575 people.
The Board of Supervisors’ Budget and Finance Committee is holding a hearing on the hotels Wednesday.
(UPDATE 10/6: The committee delayed the hearing until October 20.)
From street to … where?
Short of a dramatic reversal and expansion of hotel use, there’s no short-term resolution to the fight over street campers.https://twitter.com/DeanPreston/status/1435469453307768832
SF can’t build permanent housing as fast as anyone wants, even with its larger budget and help from the state and federal governments. What’s more, a lot of people don’t want that housing at all, even if they say they do. Japantown residents and merchants successfully pressured Preston, their District 5 supervisor, and city homelessness officials to back off plans to convert a tourist hotel (which has been used as a shelter-in-place hotel) into permanent housing.
South of Market, where services and shelters for the unhoused already exist, neighbors are chafing at the prospect of the Panoramic Hotel at Mission and 9th Streets becoming permanent supportive housing for young people.
Yet when neighbors try to block new housing, or even temporary solutions like the sanctioned RV park in the Bayview, what are the consequences? Ad hoc encampments are a threat to health and safety for everyone, housed and unhoused, as sidewalks are left to accumulate human waste and garbage and attract, as Seymour says, “rats as big as dogs.”
The average life expectancy for an unhoused person is 25 years less than a housed person. As Margot Kushel, head of UCSF’s Homelessness and Housing Initiative said in an August 2019 podcast, “50 is the new 75.”
Count account
In 2019, the city’s biennial point-in-time count — a one-night snapshot across the city — tallied more than 8,000 homeless people. That was widely considered an undercount, and the total has likely risen during the pandemic.
Because of COVID, the federal government granted SF and other cities permission to cancel the 2021 count. However, it will return in January 2022 and rejoin the regular odd-year cycle in 2023, as The Frisc reported earlier this year.
Imperfect though it may be, the new count will be important. The city has begun to add more permanent housing, and is exploring new kinds of transitional housing, such as 70 “tiny home” cabins, first reported in The Frisc, that will replace a sanctioned tent site at 33 Gough Street. Each cabin will have electricity, heat, a bed, a desk, and a locking door. The Candlestick Point RV center, which some neighbors are protesting, would accommodate 150 vehicles.
The fact remains that the city needs to add housing and shelter everywhere, along with community outreach to help neighbors understand why the need is dire. “It’s hard and requires us to think collectively, clearly, and boldly,” says Wilson, noting that the unprecedented funding is an opportunity to move people off the streets.
Mark Nagel, who as co-founder of RescueSF is among those who pushed the city to approve the tiny home pilot on Gough, also says officials shouldn’t overlook short-term solutions like shelters in vacant warehouses and other unused spaces. “Permanent housing is the only solution to homelessness,” he adds, “but the waiting room can’t be on our streets.”
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. She reported this story as a USC AnnenbergCenter for Health Journalism 2020 Impact Fund Fellow.