San Francisco to place all homeless in hotels for eight months

Featured in the San Francisco Public Press:

A move by President Joe Biden Thursday is being hailed by advocates as an opportunity for San Francisco to place all its homeless residents in hotels for the next eight months.

One day after Biden was inaugurated, his administration announced that the federal government will fully reimburse local governments for the cost of housing people who are homeless and vulnerable to COVID-19 in settings where they have space and separation from others, such as hotel rooms. The order extends until Sept. 30, 2021.

“It’s a game changer,” said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness. “This is absolutely an unprecedented opportunity. There’s still today just as strong a reason that every San Franciscan has the opportunity to shelter in place as there was back in March.”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which reimburses local governments for emergency shelter programs for homeless people during the pandemic, has been covering 75% of the costs for San Francisco’s 28 shelter-in-place hotels, which house more than 2,000 people formerly living on the streets or in group shelters.

FEMA has limited this program to people who fit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines of being particularly vulnerable to the virus: those who are over 65 or who have certain medical conditions. Homeless activists note that this narrow definition of who’s eligible for help could be expanded.

“Next step: get FEMA HQ to implement broader definition for all regions,” said Diane Yentel, CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, in a comment on Twitter. She said some regional FEMA offices have reimbursed localities for a broader group of homeless people than those who fit the CDC’s definition. The coalition is promoting a plan that would include $44 billion for the national Housing Trust Fund, with the money earmarked to help people sheltering in hotels transition to permanent supportive housing.

San Francisco has frequently cited budget constraints for its decision to wind down shelter-in-place hotels. In addition, the city does not have enough permanent housing for residents of shelter-in-place hotels once the program ends, said Abigail Stewart-Kahn, director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.

Shelter-in-place hotels were meant to be “a temporary, emergency response” Stewart-Kahn told the Budget and Finance Committee in December. She noted that an expansion of the program, which the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved last month, “effectively uses shelter-in-place hotels as temporary shelter at three times the cost.” Without designating housing or rehousing resources, the program would ultimately bring in thousands of people without “being able to offer them any type of permanent exit,” she added.

Asked what the city would do with the additional federal funding, the department said, “We are working with the City to determine what this means for our SIP Hotels and need to understand more before responding.”

Program costs

The hotel program costs San Francisco about $18 million a month, but with federal funds and subsidies from the state, the city is expected to pay just $3 million this fiscal year, according to City Controller Ben Rosenfield. The additional funding from the Biden Administration could lower the city’s cost substantially.

As the city has not yet released a breakdown of its shelter-in-place hotel budget, it’s unclear how far the money saved by the new federal funding would stretch to shelter homeless people who do not fit into FEMA’s definition of vulnerability. Regardless, advocates note that the city has more than 30,000 hotel rooms at its disposal, many of which sit empty due to COVID-19-related travel restrictions.

“The vacancies are there, the economic need is there,” said Chris Herring, a sociologist and doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, whose research focuses on homelessness. “Economically, it’s hard to argue against any of this.”

As for concerns about not having places to transition people to, Friedenbach said some relief from the streets is better than none.

“The Department of Homelessness’ argument as I hear it, is that it’s better to keep people on the streets to suffer through the pandemic, than it is to put them in housing, with the result of them looking bad if they don’t have housing at the end,” she said. “The city’s image problems are less important than people’s lives. I think if we have the opportunity to move into housing now, we should do that.”

More help soon?

In addition, Herring expects the city to get more assistance soon. The Biden Administration released a memo on Inauguration Day saying it plans to develop a plan to “solve homelessness” within Biden’s first 100 days in office.

“I don’t know why we think that we’ll be stuck in an even worse situation in September,” Herring said. “This literally came out on day two.”

Those plans are already taking shape. The Biden Administration is urging Congress to pass a relief bill that would provide $5 billion for local governments to buy hotels and motels to house homeless people, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.

Gov. Gavin Newsom also just allocated an additional $750 million for Project Homekey, an acquisition program for shelter hotels. Last year, San Francisco used $29 million from Project Homekey to buy the Hotel Diva, which has 130 rooms for permanent supportive housing.

Supervisor Matt Haney tweeted Thursday night that in the wake of the federal funding expansion, he would introduce a law requiring the city to bring people into the hotels. “This absolutely is the moment to both protect people from COVID and make unprecedented massive strides towards ending street homelessness.”

The city has an opportunity to assess Haney’s emergency ordinance to expand the shelter-in-place hotels when it expires at the end of February. In the meantime, advocates are rolling up their sleeves for the fight.

“The immediate relief of hotels for so many has been well-documented so far,” Herring said. It’s immense. I’m hoping that the city will see this opportunity and take it.”

 

SF to Add Water Outlets in Neighborhoods With Large Homeless Populations

This is a very interesting article in the San Francisco Public Press. When we regularly volunteer, donors drop off shampoo, conditioner and soap for us to distribute to anyone we see living on the street. Obviously the ones living by Great Highway, right at the Pacific, have the easiest time in maintaining hygiene. They just cross the road, gallop down the beach and enjoy the largest bath in California. But for the ones that can't get access to water since gyms are closed (many pay membership just to use the showers), it's been a literally stinking mess for them. So please read this article and then delve into your suitcase, travel bags and closets to find any shampoo bottles or soaps you don't use. And then offer these to the homeless when you're out and about today. Here's the article to share:

San Francisco plans to expand access to drinking water for people living on the streets by adding permanent taps in three neighborhoods and leaving in place — for now — the temporary taps it installed after COVID-19 hit.

This month, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission plans to begin installing the permanent taps in the Tenderloin, Mission and Bayview-Hunters Point. They are slated to be mounted near most of the 10 temporary water pipes with multiple spouts the commission put in place last year. The spigots were installed to address concerns from homeless residents and advocates about dwindling water access as restaurants and public spaces began shutting down.

For  many homeless residents, water access represents a hurdle between them and a job, a home — even survival. The demand for fresh water has been so great since March that several organizations began buying bottled water for distribution to homeless people at a cost of thousands of dollars.

“When we think about it as water being a human right, especially in a city as wealthy as San Francisco, there’s an expectation that that would be a service provided by the city,” said Calder Lorenz, a program manager at St. Anthony’s, a Tenderloin homeless services group.

An essential resource

Before he had heard of the coronavirus, 59-year-old Eric Coler would lug six gallon jugs a mile and a half from his tent on Willow Street past City Hall and the San Francisco Chronicle’s clock tower to Yerba Buena Gardens. The park there had the closest public fountains he knew of where he could fill his bottles in peace.

Coler avoided the library on his route because staff there discouraged him from filling his bottles, he said. Gas stations were a similar story.

“They’ll try to run you out, they don’t care,” Coler said of gas station employees.

Each trek took more than an hour, and he often made two a day. The return trips were always hardest. Coler described his bulging backpack loaded with heavy jugs “digging in my back.” He often returned to find his tent ransacked, its contents stolen. Even his water wasn’t safe.

“You have to watch out, people will take it from you,” he said.

By the time the pandemic hit San Francisco, Coler had moved his tent closer to the gardens. But he still got robbed while on water runs; people still stole his jugs when he wasn’t looking. Leaving his tent was never safe.

It wasn’t until the city placed him in one of its emergency hotel rooms in November that Coler could turn on his own tap.

“Access to water isn’t something that people think about,” said Sam Dennison, co-director of the Tenderloin homelessness services agency, Faithful Fools. “Everybody needs to drink something every day. How do you wash your hands? Wash your body? Keep your wounds clean?”

Water access has become critical during the pandemic, prompting some to take desperate measures. Three informal surveys of homeless Tenderloin residents conducted by Faithful Fools in September, October and November found that half of respondents drank non-potable water from broken faucets or the city’s emergency hygiene stations, Dennison said.

A quarter of respondents said they stole their water from corner stores, and another quarter said they relied on service providers for drinking water. This limited water access prevents people from staying clean, which can be dehumanizing, Dennison said.

“I used to wear the same clothes every day, back to back,” Coler said of his time on the streets. “I went three to four weeks at a time without washing my clothes.”

Lack of water access presents practical hurdles, too.

“It’s a hidden barrier to people recovering from homelessness,” Dennison said. “When we think about things like, ‘Why don’t people just go out and get jobs?’ — they’re seeking out basic resources, food, shelter. You can’t show up to a job interview or look for housing without having bathed first.”

The cost of water

At the urging of homeless activists and service providers, the city created several programs to address diminished water access. In March, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing — and later, the Department of Public Works — began rolling out dozens of handwashing stations and toilets in neighborhoods with large homeless populations.

When they are usable, the stations give homeless residents a more dignified place than the street to use the restroom and wash themselves, but the water in the stations is unsafe to drink. To meet the need for potable water, soup kitchens that had previously provided tap water to unhoused people in their dining halls began buying it in bottles to hand out on the streets.

“We were spending about $360 to $400 per day” on bottled water, said Lorenz of St. Anthony’s. From March to August, the nonprofit spent about $70,000 on bottled water for homeless residents. St. Anthony’s relies on donations and does not receive city funding, Lorenz said.

Glide, another Tenderloin homeless services group, has spent more than $48,000 on bottled water since March, said George Gundry, director of Glide’s meals program, which is partially funded by the city.

The nonprofit also receives occasional water donations — including several pallets of Aquaman star Jason Momoa’s signature canned water that the actor donated — which helps with costs, Gundry said.

While the cost of water alone is manageable, the bottles are just one of many added expenses Glide has taken on so it can serve food safely during the pandemic. “It certainly is putting a financial strain on Glide,” Gundry said.

Homeless outreach and advocacy groups in the Bayview and Haight-Ashbury said they, too, have had to buy water for their homeless neighbors.

“It’s almost to a point where I’m telling them they need to start buying their own,” said Gwendolyn Westbrook, the executive director of the United Council of Human Services. The Bayview homeless resource center spends $300-$400 each week on bottled water, money it could put to work elsewhere, Westbrook said.

“We would be spending that money on food,” she said, adding that she is worried her organization will not be able to meet people’s growing food needs.

After homeless services groups urged the city to help, the utilities commission rolled out the first pipes with multiple spouts in the Tenderloin last May, including one in front of St. Anthony’s and another near Glide. There are four spouts in the neighborhood. Two more were later placed in the Mission, and four are in the India Basin/Bayview/Hunters Point area.

The commission plans to finish the first seven permanent stations by the end of the month in the Tenderloin and Mission. Five more will be installed in the Bayview area in February. The stations are part of a 2010 Public Utilities Commission program that built 165 of the stations across the city, most of them in schools and parks.

The fountains at Yerba Buena Gardens, where Coler used to fill his water jugs, are part of the program. There is already one station in the Tenderloin, at Boeddeker Park. Coler avoided the park because he had conflicts with unhoused people who lived nearby, he said.

The commission plans to eventually remove the temporary spigots after the fountains are installed, commission spokesperson Will Reisman said.

“We’re not going to immediately take the manifolds down,” he said. “We’re going to evaluate the situation.”

Only three new, permanent fountains are slated to ultimately replace the four pipes with multiple spouts in the Tenderloin, where service providers say need is greatest, but the commission is “committed to working with community members on future locations,” Reisman said.

Thanks to the nearby spouts, St. Anthony’s stopped buying bottled water in August, Lorenz said, suggesting makeshift spouts have made a dent in the neighborhood’s needs. He is hopeful the permanent fountains will provide dignity to those who use them. But Lorenz is hesitant to call the program a success.

“While it’s a start, I just don’t see it as enough,” Lorenz said. “Right now, in the Mid-Market and Tenderloin area, the need is very large. It looks a lot like where we started.”

Enjoying unlimited water

When the city placed Coler in his hotel room in November, one of his first priorities was to take advantage of the bathroom. “I spent at least 45 minutes in the shower,” he said. “I wasn’t used to it.”

Coler still marvels at having water access. He can wash his face, use the toilet and do his laundry whenever he wants.

“You can put clean clothes on when you wake up,” he said. “Man, how sweet that is.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Homeless May Receive $100m A Year For Support

Potentially good news, reported by the San Francisco Examiner:

Headline: Statewide business tax could bring new funds to combat homelessness

San Francisco could get more than $100 million a year for housing, rental assistance, shelter beds

Large corporations doing business in California would see their tax rates increase under a state bill announced Wednesday to generate $2.4 billion annually to address homelessness. It has already drawn big support from the mayors of Oakland and Los Angeles.

The tax hike would apply to businesses with more than $5 million in annual profits under Assembly Bill 71, called the “Bring California Home Act.”

The money would go to cities to spend on increasing affordable housing and rental assistance, shelter beds, permanent supportive housing and employment services.

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf called it “the most inspirational answer to this moral crisis of homelessness that I have seen during my entire career in public service.”

“AB-71 is the first proposal that is comprehensive enough and at scale to actually permanently end homelessness,” Schaaf said during a virtual press conference on the bill’s unveiling.

Meanwhile, San Francisco Mayor London Breed has yet to take a position.

“The mayor supports the idea of additional state support for cities to address homelessness and we’re in contact with our regional and state partners regarding the best approach to make those resources available,” Breed’s spokesperson Andy Lynch said in a statement to the San Francisco Examiner. “We’re currently in the process of reviewing this legislation.”

Assembly member David Chiu (D-San Francisco), one of the bill’s sponsors, said that AB-71 “is not just about money.”

“It is about a strategy. It is a roadmap and how we address homelessness in a meaningful way, which frankly is a new approach for our state to take,” Chiu said, adding that it includes performance metrics and efforts to address racial and gender equity among the unhoused population.

Cities like Oakland, Los Angeles and San Francisco have faced a growing challenge in addressing homelessness in the face of rising numbers of tent encampments and people living in RVs, but the problem could become exacerbated with the financial toll COVID-19 has taken. There were an estimated 151,000 homeless in California, according to the 2019 point-in-time count.

“Our state is facing an unprecedented homelessness crisis that is on the verge of becoming a full blown catastrophe due to the economic impacts of COVID-19,” said Assemblymember Luz Rivas (D-Arleta), also a sponsor of the bill. “It’s time that we change our approach and give California a fighting chance to reverse homelessness.”

Rivas added that “this legislation creates for the first time ever an ongoing state funding source for long term solutions for homelessness.”

The business sector blasted the proposed tax hike.

Jim Wunderman, president and CEO of the Bay Area Council, a business advocacy group, said raising taxes on business “is the last thing we should be doing in the middle of an economic crisis.”

“Ending homelessness is one of our top priorities, but all the spending in the world won’t make a difference if we don’t first fix the deep structural problems that have long plagued our response, including building more housing,” Wunderman said in a statement. “That’s where our focus should be.”

But Los Angeles Mayor Eric Michael Garcetti said homeless encampments near a business and people in the streets in need of mental health services have more of an adverse impact on the business sector than taxes or regulations.

“We don’t want to do something that would chase business out of California,” Garcetti said. “This is thoughtfully done so that we can see businesses thrive.”

The bill is expected to raise corporate tax rates on an estimated 2,285 companies, according to Christopher Martin, a policy director with Housing California, one of the bill’s supporters.

The tax rate would increase from 8.84% to 9.6%, the level it was at in 1980. Financial institutions would see their rates increase from 10.84% to 11.6%. The proposal also raises taxes on profits earned by corporations overseas, which were reduced by President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts.

Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of Coalition on Homelessness, told the Examiner that the measure “would allow California counties to make up for some of the neglect the federal government has sustained by failing to ensure our most destitute residents have a safe and decent place to call home.”

“We support taxing the rich to house the poor and this measure would do just that,” she said.

If the bill passes, it would prevent about 28,000 people in California from falling into homelessness every year, provide emergency shelter beds for 25,000 people, move 43,000 people into permanent housing and provide employment help to 50,000, according to Rivas.

Martin, the policy director with Housing California, estimated San Francisco could receive about $119 million a year as its share of the funding, which is based on the size of its homeless population.

Garcetti emphasized how it was important to have a steady stream of revenue from the state everyone can rely on each year to address homelessness.

He said having to “fight a budget battle” each year “makes this work close to impossible.”

The bill was referred to the Assembly’s Housing and Community Development Committee, which is chaired by Chiu. A vote is expected in March.

 

 

Cash Boost For Our Vision Event - Hello 2021!

A few months ago we applied for a grant from the Sierra Pacific Synod (our local 'branch' of the national ELCA). The grant criteria was open ended, gushing with flexibility and creative submission opportunities. So we focused on what was incredibly important to SF CARES: Our regular Vision Events where we offer free eye tests and free prescription glasses to anyone that literally walks in off the street. The first few dozen that sign up for our events (first Tuesday of every other month), by a first come first served set up, are usually lining down the street and patiently waiting for Saint Paulus's church doors to open. Hosting our events for many years at Saint Paulus has given us the freedom to create our Vision Events on zero budget and we're well known amongst our city, and by healthcare professionals that refer their patients.

On the day of each event, the program is simple: Line up, sign up, sit down, wait, receive an eye exam and within two weeks, we'll call you to come in and pick up your glasses.

The results fill our hearts with so much joy when people knock on the door, excited to collect their glasses. The awe that they can finally see once again, the adrenaline of not being reliant on others because of their poor vision is incredible and the thank yous are always in abundance. We also respond with 'Don't thank us, thank God.' And they do.

Knowing how critical our Vision Events are to our community, and after giving the gift of sight to thousands over the past few years, we wanted to expand our program so we hit the send button, submitting our application to the Sierra Pacific Synod.

Towards the end of last month, we received an email from the Synod that we'd be hearing shortly with a yay or nay to our application. Today, an outstandingly glowing email arrived that SF CARES would receive a healthy cash grant. This would go towards expanding our Vision Events to monthly occasions and serving even more people that can barely afford food, never mind the luxury of prescription glasses.

This is the first time Saint Paulus and SF CARES have applied for a Sierra Pacific Synod grant. To be the recipient of financial support is phenomenal because as we give hope to our locals, the Synod has injected even more hope back into our goal of paying forward to those that simply want to see...and deserve to.