In May, San Francisco announced to many people’s surprise that it had fewer homeless residents in early 2022 than it did in 2019. This week, the city’s homelessness agency released a deeper dive into the numbers, drawn from a street survey during one frigid night in February, that showed some neighborhoods and communities, especially Latinos and the Mission district, fared worse than others.
Latinos are 16 percent of the city’s total. According to the report, Latinos now make up 30 percent of SF’s homeless population. That’s a 55 percent spike from the last count three years ago. District 9, which includes the Mission, saw its unsheltered population — people living on the streets and in vehicles — more than double.
District 9 Sup. Hillary Ronen acknowledged that with COVID, temporary closures of shelters boosted the count, but she also called the increase “unacceptable.”
“The count affirms what our communities have been experiencing throughout the pandemic,” she said. “Our district needs more resources than ever to address the emergency conditions for our unhoused residents.”
The report’s racial and ethnic breakdown also showed that Black San Franciscans, who make up 6 percent of the city, remain overrepresented in the homeless population — 35 percent. White people, about half the city’s general population, make up 42 percent of SF’s homeless. Asian people are more underrepresented: 7 percent of the homeless population, amd 37 percent of the city total.
The one-night count, which is required for counties receiving federal funding for housing, tallied 7,754 people, but the new report estimated that as many as 20,000 people seek homelessness-related services over a year’s time in the city. It also estimated that for every person or household that gets off the streets into a home, another four become homeless.
The details of the count, which is usually conducted every two years but was canceled in 2021 by the pandemic, also point to some improvements.
The city’s overall 3 percent drop from 2019 didn’t seem to square with the city’s pandemic experience, during which shelters closed, sidewalk encampments mushroomed, and a mounting street drug crisis put death and despair even more in the public eye. But emergency “shelter in place” hotels, leased by the city soon after the pandemic struck, brought some relief, with more than 2,500 people living in hotel rooms at the program’s peak.
City officials also said that new shelters and alternative sites, which had begun to reopen when the count was conducted, also helped lower homelessness across seven districts, most notably a 55 percent decrease in District 10, which includes the Bayview.
The new count was widely expected to be higher than 2019’s count of 8,035. Instead, SF was an outlier, the only Bay Area county to report a decrease. Mayor London Breed credited her administration’s policies, especially a push for more permanent housing, bolstered by hundreds of millions of dollars in emergency state and federal funding as well as 2018’s Prop C, a business tax passed by SF voters but opposed at the time by Breed.
“We used the pandemic as an opportunity to take all this funding and bring more housing online,” Breed said in May, and her office touted that over a two-year span through July 2022, the city opened 2,500 more units of permanent supportive housing.
‘Did it have to take a 55% increase for the urgency to occur? It’s a little late in the game, and we can’t play catch-up.’
— Ivan Corado-Vega of the Latino Task Force
It remains to be seen if the new details will spur policy and other action. In 2019, the count showed a big bump in people living in vehicles, which led to promises of two secure sites for that population.
Another factor in the Bayview were Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) outreach teams that encourage people to come in off the streets. Outreach with Spanish-speaking staff and with a focus on day laborers is now happening in the Mission, said HSH spokeswoman Emily Cohen. (The Frisc wrote in March about a Spanish-speaking day laborer who lives under the elevated 101 freeway.)
Adding personnel in the Mission hasn’t happened fast enough, said Ivan Corado-Vega, manager of the Latino Task Force, an umbrella organization that represents more than 40 community groups. “Did it have to take a 55 percent increase for the urgency to occur? It’s a little late in the game, and we can’t play catch-up,” Corado-Vega told the Frisc.
Corado-Vega said the pandemic’s economic downturn hit the Latino community hard, as restaurants and the hospitality industry closed or severely cut back staffing. In a 2021 El Tecolote survey, most respondents made much less in 2020 than 2019 and either spent down savings entirely or borrowed from “community banks,” pooled savings from families and friends.
This left many without enough money for rent, Corado-Vega noted, and in situations where eviction moratoriums didn’t apply, such as a person couch-surfing and squeezed out of a crowded apartment.
Outside to inside
Also highlighted in the new homelessness details is a big shift. The count of 4,397 unsheltered people — that is, living on the streets or in vehicles — was 15 percent lower than 2019. That roughly corresponds to an 18 percent increase in people living in shelters and transitional housing. In other words, a big chunk of SF’s homeless people — including those who have been homeless for years with some of the worst health conditions — at least got to move inside, thanks to the emergency SIP hotels.
(At its peak the program had 2,288 rooms across 25 hotels. As of June 30, spending on the hotels totaled $225 million, with the federal government covering 91 percent.)
One benefit was that the hotel program reduced hospital visits, freeing up capacity during COVID’s early days, and boosted health outcomes for the city’s most vulnerable residents, according to a UCSF study. But the program has been winding down, with lower federal reimbursement, and the funding could end at any time. The 635 people remaining are supposed to get roofs over their heads when the hotels close in late fall.
That makes it imperative to expand housing options, especially in neighborhoods that have been resistant to low-income housing, noted HSH’s Cohen: “There’s homelessness in every district, and there is a role for every district to play in dealing with the crisis.”
It remains to be seen if city officials can use the report to persuade reluctant neighborhoods to carry their share of homelesness services, including housing, which some officials like former supervisors Matt Haney and David Campos have tried to legislate in the past.
One area where this could be in play is on the city’s west side, where the city promises to open a safe parking site. District 4, which includes the Sunset, saw double the number of unsheltered homeless from 2019. District 4 Sup. Gordon Mar wasn’t surprised by the higher count, with people living in vehicles more prevalent along the Lower Great Highway and in the Outer Sunset.
Mar told The Frisc that he’s worked with residents and city departments to address the most serious problems, including clearing two blocks of vehicles that had become “untenable” last week. Some vehicle dwellers went to transitional housing and connected to services but some relocated to other streets, Mar said.
“This highlights the need for long-term, sustainable solutions, including the creation of a west side vehicle triage center,” said Mar. “I’m hopeful that Sunset residents will see how this center can be one important solution for the increase in people living in cars who were already in the neighborhood.”
The triage center referenced by Mar, who is running for reelection this November, was promised for the west side last year. In an October meeting, Mar said “we need [a site] urgently,” then told The Frisc that District 7 was a better fit, as it has a high concentration of RVs parked near San Francisco State University.
Officials used data from the previous count, in 2019, to identify the need to help people in vehicles. That need has only grown, but three years later, only one site has opened.
Kristi Coale is a staff writer at The Frisc.