70 Hotels Could House the Homeless - District Supervisors Need Pressure

Please contact your district supervisor to put the pressure on. This great article is featured in the San Francisco Public Press:

More than 70 hotel owners have indicated they are willing to sell their properties to San Francisco, and now is the perfect time to buy some of them, homelessness activists said Wednesday.

News broke this month that San Francisco would receive a full reimbursement for its shelter-in-place hotels from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, dating back to January 2020. Previously, FEMA funded 75% of the costs. The city has requested $84.4 million in reimbursements from FEMA for 2020, the controller’s office said in an email.

Applying FEMA reimbursements toward hotel purchases offers a relatively quick and simple way to expand San Francisco’s stock of permanent supportive housing, advocates say.

“We want to take advantage of this remarkable and rare opportunity,” Sara Shortt, director of public policy and community outreach at the Community Housing Partnership, which has 17 permanent supportive housing facilities in San Francisco, said at a press event. “This chance is not likely to come again.”  

Last year, the city put out a call for hotel owners to respond if they might be amenable to selling their properties. The move came after Gov. Gavin Newsom allocated $750 million to Project Homekey, which helps municipalities purchase hotels to convert into housing.

The city has not made public the list of 70 hotels, though there are several active listings online.

The Minna Hotel, on Minna and Sixth streets, was recently renovated. It has 72 rooms, and is listed for $13.5 million. A few blocks away, a modern 68-room hotel on Eddy Street is on the market for $23.8 million.

Last year the city used Project Homekey funds to purchase the Hotel Granada and the Diva Hotel, adding 362 new units to the city’s permanent supportive housing stock. Newsom recently announced that he would dedicate another $750 million to Project Homekey in 2021, and advocates are looking at other funding sources, too.

Advocates and providers have been applying pressure to the city to purchase more hotels for months. Last September, Randy Shaw, executive director of Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which operates many buildings containing permanent supportive housing, sent 10 hotel listings he’d found to the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.

“I’ve pleaded with the Department of Homelessness to secure the hotels while we have maximum bargaining leverage, to no avail,” he said, noting that pandemic-related drops in tourism have encouraged many owners to list their buildings.

But that was before the FEMA money was made available. An email from an unnamed spokesperson at the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing said Wednesday that “purchasing and converting hotel rooms is one creative way” to get people off the streets but did not comment on whether it planned to use the FEMA reimbursements to do so.

Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, expressed concern that the refund would not be earmarked for future projects around homelessness.

“We are deeply concerned that this money will simply be used to be sucked back into the city budget,” she said. “We feel very strongly that this is funding that is homeless dollars and was budgeted for unhoused people.”

SF To Shelter 500 More Homeless

Featured in SFist: 

After FEMA's announcement that approved shelter-in-place (SIP) hotels would be entirely reimbursed with federal funds, five SF supervisors have now introduced legislation to expand the City's SIP hotel program and house 500 more homeless San Franciscans.

This past December, it was announced that qualifying SIP hotel programs that grew out of the pandemic to house vulnerable populations would be retroactively reimbursed via federal funds — effectively ending the contention around fiscally supporting these programs with city reserves. (San Francisco’s hotel program, per SF Public Press, once cost the City about $18M a month, but with the introduction of new federal funding, that number is expected to drop to just $3M in total for this fiscal year.)

Currently, the SF's SIP hotel program includes some 1,850 hotel rooms for people experiencing homelessness during the pandemic; this comprises of homeless families, unhoused single youth and adults, and others deemed to be high-risk — including those with pre-existing health conditions or the elderly above 65 years old.

In an effort to continue offering temporary shelter for these affected cohorts, five members of the SF Board of Supervisors — supervisors Matt Haney, Dean Preston, Shamann Walton, Hillary Ronen, and Myrna Melgar — are calling to no only keep the current roster of SIP "Alternative Housing Units," which numbers 2,592 units of active "SIP Hotel/Trailer Units," but to continue backfilling 100% of the units that have since been vacated by clients exiting the program.

"With FEMA’s announcement that they will fully fund the shelter in place hotels, we have an unprecedented opportunity to protect hundreds more vulnerable homeless neighbors from COVID and help people on a path out of homelessness permanently," says District 6 Supervisor Matt Haney, who also chairs the City's Budget and Finance Committee, in a news release. "It would be irresponsible and dangerous to continue business as usual, with the federal government affirming how critical our Shelter In Place program is, and with thousands still stranded on our city’s sidewalks, alleys, and doorsteps."

The introduced legislation aims to quickly fill at least 100 hotel rooms that still sit empty, all while making at least 200 more rooms available by introducing new hotel partners into the program. Over the 60 days that the emergency ordinance will be “active,” the goal is to see a large increase in SIP hotel capacity that can accommodate over 500 homeless individuals.

“Everyone should have a safe place to shelter in place, period,” adds District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston - the City official who, himself, personally helped fund SF's first SIP hotel back in April. “Every day that an unhoused person stays in a hotel is a day they can catch their breath enough to troubleshoot their circumstances, apply for services and housing, reconnect with family, and figure out next steps. Housing people has no downside.”

As of publication, 1,929 people are occupying SIP Alternative Housing Units; the City's SIP hotel program has collectively served 9,564 individuals, to date.

 

 

 

 

Hotels For Homeless: Extension or Cash Out?

Please read this article in the San Francisco Public Press:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency will retroactively reimburse states 100% of the cost for shelter-in-place hotels, dating back to January 2020, the White House announced Tuesday.

The announcement comes less than two weeks after the Biden administration pledged to fully fund hotels used to shelter homeless people over 65 or with compromised health going forward. Previously, municipalities were responsible for 25% of the costs.

The reimbursement for FEMA-eligible services — which range from personal protective equipment to the sheltering of at-risk populations — is expected to cost the federal government between $3 billion and $5 billion.

It is expected to help San Francisco whittle away at its huge budget deficit and save the state hundreds of millions of dollars, along with possibly assisting statewide efforts to build more permanent housing. The added funding could also help San Francisco move more people off the streets and into safer facilities for the time period it covers.

“Central to the Biden-Harris Administration’s COVID-19 National Strategy is ensuring states, Tribes, territories, and jurisdictions have the resources they need to defeat the virus,” the White House said in a statement.

Tuesday’s announcement included mixed messages about what programs were eligible for reimbursements, but FEMA released a statement Wednesday clarifying that shelters where residents aren’t forced to share living and sleeping space, such as shelter-in-place hotels, are part of the refund package.

San Francisco has opened 28 shelter-in-place hotels since March 2020, bringing indoors more than 2,300 homeless people who are over 65 or at high risk of morbidity due to pre-existing conditions. Although the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing has not released a breakdown of its budget for the project, the city controller projected that the shelter-in-place hotels will cost a total of $179 million this fiscal year. The 75% of federal reimbursement funds, combined with money granted from the state, means that San Francisco would be responsible for about $3 million.

The department said it “welcomes the most recent FEMA funding news and looks forward to learning more details.” After the administration’s January announcement of 100% reimbursement going forward, the department said it began inviting more people into shelter-in-place hotels.

The funding will also save the state of California hundreds of millions of dollars it has used to subsidize the costs of non-congregate shelters.

“This is a win-win-win, for unhoused individuals, motel owners whose business was decimated by the pandemic, and communities across California,” California Controller Betty Yee said in an email Wednesday. “While full reimbursement for non-congregate housing is a positive step, there remains a critical need to build more permanent housing in California. Perhaps the additional revenue realized through the president’s action can be targeted at those efforts.”

The news of retroactive funding comes as San Francisco faces a major budget shortfall, with an expected $650 million deficit over the next two fiscal years.

In late 2020, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing began winding down the shelter-in-place-hotel project, citing cost as a major motivator. In the wake of news that the funding would be covered through September 2021, the department shifted gears, saying it would be amenable to opening new hotels if providers and hotel owners were willing to take them on. Since the funding expansion was announced, no information has been released about whether more hotels will be added to the program.

 

 

San Francisco's Future Sleeping Cabins For Homeless

From the San Francisco Examiner:

A new proposal to erect temporary sleeping cabins for the homeless on a parking lot in the Tenderloin could serve as a model for sites throughout San Francisco.

The idea of providing tiny homes or sleeping cabins for the unhoused is not a new one, but San Francisco has so far resisted it. In response to the pandemic, however, The City has provided safe sleeping sites, sanctioned locations where people are allowed to camp in tents.

One of those safe sleeping sites was established in May 2020 at 180 Jones St. in the Tenderloin, a city-owned property that was previously used as a parking lot.

The nonprofit Downtown Streets Team began in November 2020 to provide services to the site weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Now they are collaborating with RescueSF and DignityMoves on a proposal to turn the site into a pilot for sleeping cabins for the homeless.

The site will eventually become a permanent supportive housing development by the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, but construction isn’t slated to start until 2022.

“It would be an amazing time to pilot this in the meantime,” Romie Nottage, senior director of Downtown Streets Team for San Francisco, told the Local Homeless Coordinating Board Monday when unveiling the proposal to “gain support and feedback.”

“Current 180 Jones residents would be grandfathered into this pilot, allowing them to have the second part of their unhoused safe sleeping journey in a dignified, safe, warm place for them to get the services and support needed,” Nottage said.

The cabins, which would take one or two days to assemble, are small spaces with a bed, desk and chair, window, locking door, electricity and heat.

The proposal is for 22 cabins and two office cabins for onsite services as well as mobile facilities for bathrooms and showers. The site currently has portable toilets on the sidewalk.

Nottage said that the cost of the cabins would be privately funded, but did not disclose the amount. The San Francisco Examiner was unable to reach Nottage for comment before press time. It was not clear if they had yet submitted a formal proposal to The City for approval.

Mark Nagel, a Marina resident and co-founder of RescueSF, which he describes as a new citywide coalition of residents “advocating for compassion and effective solution to homelessness,” told the board that they hope to create “ a thoughtful pilot” that would collect important data that The City could use to decide whether to expand the effort throughout San Francisco.

“We believe that permanent housing is a solution for homelessness, but that waiting line for housing should not be on our streets,” Nagel said. “We think that’s unacceptable. So we are advocating to do a small pilot with these units that we think are a much better alternative to leaving people sleeping on the sidewalk there, on a parking lot.”

Nagel said that “it will take years to address the systemic causes of homelessness and the housing crisis, but we can stop street sleeping now and end it.”

This isn’t the first time a proposal like this was pushed for this site. The Examiner previously reported on efforts dating back to 2019 advanced by community advocate and former mayoral candidate Amy Farrah Weiss to create similar shelter for the homeless.

The City ultimately rejected her proposal and Mayor London Breed instead pitched opening The City’s first meth sobering center there, but those plans were scrapped due to the pandemic.

The pitch before the board Monday drew support from community advocates.

Brian Edwards, an organizer with the Coalition on Homelessness, said he hoped they succeeded with the pilot.

“It’s a shame that it took a global pandemic to get us to finally start experimenting with sanctioned encampments and tiny home villages in San Francisco,” Edwards said. “But I am glad it did.”

Donna Hilliard, executive director of Code Tenderloin, a job training nonprofit, said she has been working with those at the safe sleeping site and that “the biggest key to helping someone get back on their feet is giving them dignity. “

“Putting them into a place where they can actually sleep safely … is a way to set them up to succeed,” Hilliard said. “This model has been done in San Jose, in Oakland. Why are we not doing it here?”

Fernando Pujals, a spokesperson for the Tenderloin Community Benefit District, also backed the effort.

“We needed this like yesterday,” Pujals said. “We hope we can see this project come to fruition at 180 Jones, see it expand throughout the Tenderloin and other parts of San Francisco.”