As the pandemic surge overwhelming the nation also threatens San Francisco, city supervisors are pushing back hard against plans to move homeless people out of the hotel rooms where they’ve been sheltering for months.
Those exit plans, reported by The Frisc in August, call for the more than 2,300 occupants to move from hotel rooms into permanent housing by next June, with the first group of 500 to exit on December 21.
But a phalanx of supervisors, who have repeatedly crossed swords with Mayor London Breed and her team over the hotels, say they have no faith that the temporary residents won’t be tipped back out on the street, because there aren’t enough units available to house them.
“We have a fundamental disagreement around the math,” Supervisor Matt Haney said on a conference call Thursday. To keep people off the streets, the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, or HSH, has to “make sure [they’ve] secured the placements. We’re not confident the placements add up.”
The supervisors said they will introduce legislation on December 1 to keep the hotel rooms occupied. As people move into permanent housing and rooms become vacant, the supervisors want other unhoused folks to move in. (San Francisco had more than 8,000 unhoused people based on a one-night count in January 2019. There have been no official tallies since then.)
On Thursday’s call, doctors who have been treating the hotel residents sang the praises of keeping a roof over people’s heads. “One beautiful thing about the shelter-in-place hotels is that people are coming into care who were disengaged from medical care for years,” said Yakira Teitel, a family medicine doctor who has treated people in the hotels.
Getting people into permanent housing, with access to health care and other services, is widely acknowledged as the best way to stanch homelessness. But in San Francisco, thanks to decades of opposition to new housing in many neighborhoods, there isn’t enough, and especially not for people on the economic margins.
Sticks and carrots
The hotel fight began when the city shut down in March. The mayor’s team was cautious in leasing hotel rooms, spurring the supervisors to unanimously pass legislation demanding the immediate lease of 8,000 rooms. Breed brushed them off, opting instead for a mix of about 2,400 rooms; a handful of sanctioned tent sites to prevent neighborhood sidewalks from being crowded with encampments; dozens of RVs; and a slow reopening of traditional shelters.
When asked what would happen if the mayor ignored the supervisors’ demands again, Haney offered both sticks and carrots. “We pass laws, and they should be followed and enforced,” he said, calling it “unacceptable when there’s even a question whether they’ll be followed. This is something we can legislate on, and we intend to do that.”
In the next breath, however, the District 6 supervisor added that he and his colleagues would work with the mayor and HSH to make sure everyone receives “adequate placement.”
Supervisors also slammed the Breed administration for worrying about costs. The city controller recently projected that with federal and state reimbursements, the city will be on the hook for $10.5 million — about 5 percent of the hotel program this year. Alyssa Sawlel, a spokeswoman for the controller, cautioned that the final projection is subject to change, in large part because it depends upon the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “Most fundamentally, these numbers all assume FEMA reimbursements remain in place,” Sawlel said.
To date, the city has only received $13.6 million in FEMA reimbursements for all its COVID-related expenses — hotels included. The agency is currently reviewing more claims, according to Sawlel. (The controller is slated to give the Board of Supervisors an update on December 1.)
The supervisors remained confident; there’s optimism that the incoming Biden administration will be generous. “We have the resources,” Supervisor Shamann Walton said Thursday morning.
Heat in December
HSH is showing signs of flexibility. The department and the city’s COVID command center want to extend the life of the city’s tent site in the Haight-Ashbury. A community meeting is scheduled Monday. (Expect plenty of blowback. Neighbors opposed to the site, which opened in June, were assuaged by promises that the site would close at the end of this month.)
The HSH goal is to move 500 people from hotels into housing by December 21, with the rest of the occupants moving by next June. In an early November response to four supervisors who were pressing for more details, HSH director Abigail Stewart-Kahn and Department of Emergency Management director Mary Ellen Carroll said that 560 units are or would be available “in the next several months.” One week later, an administration press statement about the relocation effort notably did not guarantee a smooth transition to housing: “This work has begun, and it will be challenging due to the unique impacts and continued evolution of COVID-19.”
Stewart-Kahn told the SF Chronicle in September that some folks could be moved back to traditional shelters, which have reopened with tighter COVID strictures, or tent sites. But her November response to the supervisors backtracked: “It is important to note that returning COVID-vulnerable hotel guests to congregate shelter or [tent sites] is not part of the plan.”
This week, the limits of the current strategy were evident around the Haight tent site. City workers have occasionally cleared sidewalk encampments from the neighborhood, but tents persist. On Thursday, several more encampments were cleared just outside the site’s perimeter.
Dozens of community health and service organizations have signed a letter backing the supervisors’ effort to block the end of the hotel program. “As we’re hearing about the surge, it’s even more aggressive than the one in the summer,” said Laura Valdéz, executive director of Dolores Street Community Services. “Many residents are fragile, elderly, and with chronic illnesses. This is absolutely not the time to put people out in the street.”
Kristi Coale contributed to this report.
Alex Lash is the editor in chief of The Frisc.
