Proposed Tenant-Organizing Protections Could Shift Balance of Power in SF

Featured in the San Francisco Public Press:

 

Credit: Noah Arroyo/San Francisco Public Press

The Veritas Tenants Association has been trying for more than a year to get Veritas, often called San Francisco’s largest landlord, to negotiate a rent-relief package for tenants who faced COVID-19 financial hardships. Debbie Nunez, left, and other association members assembled outside the company’s headquarters in October to draw attention to the impasse, which pending local legislation could resolve.

Renters throughout San Francisco could gain power to lessen COVID-19 financial hardships and improve conditions in their buildings with political-organizing tools that have a history of success in subsidized housing.

In coming weeks, city supervisors will weigh legislation that would make it easier for tenants to form associations, similar to labor unions, that could compel landlords to hear them out on a range of issues, including the aesthetics of new construction and other matters affecting the bottom line for owners.

The proposal, authored by Supervisor Aaron Peskin, is inspired by protections that tenants in federally assisted housing secured 20 years ago — and might be the first legislation in the nation requiring private landlords to sit down and bargain.

The San Francisco Apartment Association, a property-owners group with thousands of members, opposes the legislation.

This is “all about power,” said Brad Hirn, a tenant organizer with the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco, one of about a dozen tenant and labor groups that collaborated with Peskin and his staff as they crafted the legislation. “Power comes from organized people. And the legislation creates a tangible reason to organize,” Hirn said.

A lone tenant may have limited ability to persuade a bad or neglectful landlord to take requests seriously, and might back down in response to scare tactics like eviction threats. A group of tenants could be harder to frighten or ignore.

A response to landlords who stymie organizing efforts

Peskin’s legislation would explicitly protect San Francisco renters’ efforts to form tenant associations, which would be officially recognized for a building if the residents of at least half the units signed on. Upon the association’s request, landlords would have to meet at least once every three months and confer “in good faith” about tenants’ concerns. The legislation gives examples of good-faith interactions, such as “responding to reasonable requests for information” and “negotiating and putting agreements into writing.”

The requirement to meet and confer is “groundbreaking,” said Fred Sherburn-Zimmer, executive director of the Housing Rights Committee. “We have asked tenant groups around the country. If there is a law that requires this, we have never heard of it.”

If the law were in place and landlords did not follow the rules requiring meetings, the city’s Rent Board could penalize them by forcing a drop in rents. Landlords would not be punished for refusing an association’s demands.

The legislation’s real strength would be in enabling and possibly normalizing tenant organizing, Sherburn-Zimmer said. An organized group might more effectively employ strategies — such as drawing press attention, protesting publicly or even withholding rent — to compel a landlord to make concessions.

Tenants can already politically organize, but sometimes landlords try to stop them, Sherburn-Zimmer said. She recalled an instance when long-time San Francisco tenants asked for her help brainstorming a response to impending rent hikes, which would force some to move out.

“We tried to have a meeting in the lobby, and the landlord sent someone to disrupt it, then tried to physically throw me out,” Sherburn-Zimmer said. The group relocated to a cafe, where they settled on a request.

“They were like, ‘you bought this building, we know you can raise the rent as much as you want. Can we at least negotiate the amount of time we get before the rent increase?’” she said, adding that they requested reimbursements for relocation costs. The mayor’s office interceded, and in the end, the landlord gave tenants some of what they wanted.

“It was imperfect, but it was a sign that this could be helpful in all kinds of situations,” Sherburn-Zimmer said, referring to collective bargaining with government oversight.

Veritas, generally called San Francisco’s largest landlord, has also tried to reduce interactions between tenants and the Housing Rights Committee, Hirn said, which has hurt organizing efforts.

In early 2020, 76 Veritas buildings were up for sale. Hirn began visiting them, knocking on doors to educate tenants about their rights and what to expect in the months to come. The Veritas Tenants Association was knocking too, welcoming tenants to join and sign a petition stating a desire to bargain with the company over the terms of the sale. Veritas then sent tenants a memo asserting that state law limited visitors to speaking only with the residents who invited them. The company warned that, in response to violators, it would call the police “to protect the security of the building and residents.” It made good on that threat.

But that’s just one interpretation of state law. By another, a visiting tenant organizer should be able to speak with anyone in the building, said Brian Brophy, a tenant attorney at the law firm Tobener Ravenscroft LLP.

“Because a court has not interpreted that specific question,” Brophy said in an email, “and because there are landlords/property management companies challenging knocking on doors, there is potential legal risk” to the tenant organizer.

If passed, Peskin’s legislation would clarify that visiting organizers could talk to anyone in the building.

Veritas declined to comment for this story. However, spokesman Ron Heckmann asserted that the company does not own or act as landlord for its buildings. Rather, it “manages apartment assets on behalf of owners and investors,” he said.

The company has not divulged its full portfolio of properties, which are rent-controlled and legally owned by various limited-liability companies and similar entities. Separately, Veritas created the company GreenTree, which manages conditions and tenant concerns in the buildings.

A boon for the Veritas Tenants Association

Peskin’s proposal is in large part a response to the experiences of the Veritas Tenants Association, which has over 1,200 members who live in more than 100 Veritas properties in San Francisco, as well as in buildings in other cities, Hirn said. The association, which was involved in discussions over crafting the legislation, has tried for more than a year to get the company to negotiate on multiple demands that would address tenants’ financial hardships during the pandemic.

In an attempt to draw Veritas to the bargaining table, more than 50 of the association’s member households have committed through November to withhold their applications to the state to cover their rent debt — a combined $5.7 million that would go to Veritas — a move that makes them vulnerable to eviction.

They will soon vote on whether to continue their “debt strike” through December, Hirn said. Any delay in applying with the state could reduce their odds of getting rent assistance, as the programs have already received more requests than currently allocated funds can satisfy. 

The association wants to negotiate a rent-relief package with the company for all members who need help.

For tenants who took on debt to cover rent during the pandemic, the association wants temporary rent reductions to help people pay off their credit cards, payday loans or debts to family or friends, since rent-relief programs will not help with this secondary debt, often called “shadow debt.” Members also want the company to never apply the rent increases for 2020 and 2021 that it has so far delayed — that includes the annual increases that the Rent Board allows, to follow regional inflation, and “passthroughs” that reimburse the landlord for construction costs and other expenses.

If Peskin’s legislation passes, it could give Veritas’ tenants, and those of other landlords, the tools to pull them to the bargaining table.

“I think it makes sense, it’s reasonable, it’s overdue,” said Debbie Nunez, a member of the Veritas Tenants Association. “I anticipate some pushback form Veritas. That’s just part and parcel with what they do.”

Associations could be useful in less contentious settings too, said Lee Hepner, legislative aide to Peskin and lead staffer on the tenant-association proposal.

“I’d like to think this is a tool for building community among a group of tenants,” Hepner said.

A tenant association could weigh in on safety considerations, use of common areas, laundry-room restrictions and, most importantly, construction schedules. Hepner said his office has repeatedly heard complaints from constituents that working from home was difficult because “in the middle of the workday, water and electricity would shut off without any warning.” Peskin passed emergency legislation early in the pandemic to prohibit certain utility and water shut-offs.

Associations might also distill the varied concerns of the entire group into talking points, similar to the way neighborhood organizations represent residents’ concerns in conversations with Peskin’s office, Hepner said.

“At the risk of sounding naive or like I’m gaslighting landlords, this could make their jobs easier,” Hepner said.

‘A solution in search of a problem’

Not everyone is excited about the proposal.

Requests like those from the Veritas Tenants Association are best decided between the landlord and specific tenants, rather than with an entire building’s occupants, said Charley Goss, government and community affairs manager for the San Francisco Apartment Association.

That would be especially true if the landlord were helping tenants with shadow debt, Goss said, which might be owed to institutions or to personal contacts without documentation.

“It’s hard to sort of verify the need in an objective way. There has to be a sort of needs demonstration, which by definition is particular to the circumstances of that one individual,” Goss said. “You’re basically looking at a set of factors: medical, child-care expenses, rent rates, even their history as a tenant.”

He was also skeptical that tenants would collectively be able to agree on their requests of the landlord, especially regarding construction issues.

“One person wants the wall patched, but the other one wants to work in peace,” Goss said. If major construction were on the table, then “maybe the tenant in Unit 1 is having a kid next month, and they’d like it pushed off for a year if possible.”

But Goss’ main criticism was that the legislation seemed unnecessary.

“We’re having this conversation like all tenants are underserved, unprotected, low-income and being snubbed by their landlords. If you take a step back, I don’t think that anyone thinks that’s the case,” he said. In response to tenant hardships last year, between 21% and 54% of landlords reported granting rent reductions each month, according to surveys by the Apartment Association.

The Apartment Association is in contact with Peskin’s office to try to “improve the legislation and make it more workable and productive,” Goss said.

Andrew Zacks, a real estate attorney in San Francisco, called the legislation “a solution in search of a problem.” In an email, he said it “implicates the landlord’s 1st amendment rights” to the extent it punishes their refusal to engage in negotiations.

Real estate attorney Daniel Bornstein said he’s concerned that landlords will get treated unfairly when tenants appeal to the Rent Board, which will have to weigh in on new aspects of the tenant-landlord relationship.

“It’s one thing to make an assessment of whether there was heat in the building,” Bornstein said. “It’s another to make an assessment of whether there were good-faith meetings. That’s fraught with a lot of what might be circumstantial, and not very apparent.”

“What is ‘good faith?’” he said, and questioned whether a landlord would be violating the law by merely walking out of a conversation that became unruly.

Peskin has vetted the legislation with the City Attorney’s Office. And Hepner said Rent Board leadership has assured him that they could handle this new extended oversight role.

As for the assertion that the legislation is unnecessary, Hepner said, “I don’t think anybody can say with a straight face that there aren’t tenants that have been aggrieved and wouldn’t benefit from a seat at the table when communicating with landlords.”

The Board of Supervisors’ Rules Committee will review the legislation before the end of the year, Hepner said. Peskin is on the committee, and one of its two other members, Supervisor Connie Chan, has co-sponsored the legislation, making its progression to the full board all but certain.

‘Right to organize’ in public housing paved the way

The legislation is heavily inspired by similar protections created in 2000 for housing that is privately owned and subsidized by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and in which about 1.3 million households live nationwide.

Those rules, collectively called the right to organize, were “a sea change” for tenants, said Michael Kane, executive director of the National Alliance of HUD Tenants, which fought for the protections.

Kane started organizing in the 1970s and encountered many tactics from landlords who neglected and sometimes preyed upon their tenants.

“Owners demanding sexual favors of women, vulnerable women, in order to get an apartment. Very common,” Kane recalled. When tenants tried to politically organize, he said, owners threatened them with eviction, or offered bribes to a tenant leader to induce them to step down and destabilize their group. He said they also sent spies to tenant meetings to undermine them and gather information.

Tenants gaining the right to organize shifted the balance of power. It explicitly protected efforts to meet and form groups for collectively dealing with owners and landlords. Professional organizers and tenant advocates were also protected if they came onsite to talk to people and distribute flyers.

“I heard stories of people getting harassed, and they would take the regulations to the property manager, who would back off,” Kane said.

It was a success story for tenants in most cases, though Kane called it “insufficient” because of a lack of enforcement by HUD.

After reviewing Peskin’s legislation, Kane said it would be “very exciting to have a right to organize in private housing generally, beyond HUD subsidized housing.”

He said that, if the law were passed, tenants of landlords with multiple properties might gain bargaining leverage by uniting across buildings.

“That could be very powerful. And everybody will see that. So tenants will have a very strong incentive to join, and nowadays with social media it would be possible to do that,” Kane said. “It will be a blossoming of tenant organizing across the city.”

Former Haight Street McDonald’s lot stirs homeless debate

Featured in the San Francisco Examiner:

Rarely has an unused parking lot raised such rancor.

Once the site of a notoriously seedy McDonald’s — known more for its violence and drug deals than its hamburgers and fries — 730 Stanyan has sat chain linked and vacant since The City purchased the lot for $15.5 million in 2018 and razed the building.

The site is slated to become an eight-story apartment complex with the bulk of the 150 units reserved for affordable housing. Chinatown Development Center and Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, two local nonprofits, are partnering on the development that’s slated to begin construction in summer 2023, according to the latest estimates.

Since then, a slew of proposals for how to use the space until then have come and gone: a multi-purpose recreational complex including youth soccer fields and food trucks; a temporary safe sleeping site enacted during the pandemic; a drop-in site for young people experiencing homelessness.

These interim proposals have sparked vitriol between neighborhoods and harsh debate among local officials who have been unable to agree on a path forward, even if only for the years before ground breaks on the housing development.

So there it still stands, an empty parking lot across from Golden Gate Park and at the doorstep of one of San Francisco’s most storied corridors, Haight-Ashbury.

“It seems like a real waste of real estate,” said Joe Creitz, a member of the Cole Valley Haight Allies.

The debate over each individual project proposal ties back to one issue that’s simple, in theory. Should The City provide homelessness services directly to people where they live, even in a largely residential neighborhood like the Haight, or silo those services in other areas. It’s an issue that’s roiled San Francisco residents and officials alike for years.

“I don’t think anyone, in the absolute, opposes homelessness services,” said a representative of Safe Healthy Haight, a neighborhood group that was formed during the pandemic in large part to mobilize against safe sleeping site. “What they oppose is the ancillary effects that then bleed out into the community that The City hasn’t been able to control.”

Designated squares set up for a safe camping site for the homeless at the former McDonald’s by Golden Gate Park in May 2020. (Kevin N. Hume/S.F. Examiner)

Haight-Ashbury

Any conversation about homelessness in the Haight has to start with the Summer of Love.

As thousands of wanderers, counter-cultural rebels and vagabonds flocked to the neighborhood, it became known as a landing pad for anyone and everyone. Some of that legacy lives on.

“People seeking their tribe come from all over to the Haight-Ashbury seeking connection with like-minded folks,” said Christin Evans, a merchant in the neighborhood and homelessness advocate.

Some arrive and never leave, making the streets of Haight their home. Others are transient, sticking around for a few days or weeks before packing up again. Many flee dangerous situations at home.

People living on the streets in the Haight are more likely to be teenagers and young adults compared to other parts of The City. There are also large numbers of LGBTQ individuals, too.

“This neighborhood has always been a magnet for a certain kind of transient population,” Crietz said.

Skeptics less enamored with the Summer of Love’s relevance to the present day say the neighborhood’s homeless population has changed notably since that time and The City’s approach must change accordingly.

“What used to be weed and shrooms turned into meth and fentanyl and then turned into more violence,” said the Safe Healthy Haight spokesperson, who spoke to The Examiner on the condition of anonymity. There were three shootings on Haight Street in recent weeks, and “When it comes to gun violence, I think that’s where we’re drawing the line.”

Inaction

These fault lines between people who have a vision of the Haight that includes homelessness services and one that excludes them are replicated throughout The City.

The same can be said for the predictable outcome in the face of such conflict— inaction.

Rather than strike a compromise or make a decisive call on how the land should be used, The City has let the property sit vacant for much of the last four years.

It’s not that alternatives haven’t been suggested.

City Hall rejected a community-based proposal for a multi-purpose recreational space with miniature soccer fields for low-income youth, food trucks, a community garden and neighborhood programming in 2019.

So 730 Stanyan sat empty until May 2020 when it was converted into a safe sleeping site, a place where people without houses could socially distance in their tents and access basic necessities such as showers, bathrooms and personal safety within the confines of the fenced-off parking lot.

“My pragmatic lens is that as a business owner and a resident, I’d like to see actual solutions to ending their homelessness rather than just additional policing to remove them from my block,” Evans said.

The safe sleeping site at 730 Stanyan St. in the Haight on Tuesday, May 4, 2021. (Kevin N. Hume/S.F. Examiner)

Lack of funding

Solutions to effectively moving off the streets and into housing have been hard to come by everywhere — but especially at the McDonald’s-turned-pavement eyesore.

City Hall has scrapped ideas for interim use for 730 Stanyan from both sides of the debate.

Officials rejected the soccer fields-plus-food trucks idea which it had solicited through an extensive request for proposal process. They cited lack of funding, despite the plan’s architect’s assurances that it was self-sustainable.

Just last month, plans to replace the temporary safe sleeping site, which closed June 30, with a drop-in site for young people experiencing homelessness were struck down at the last minute by the agency tasked with providing homelessness services.

Again, inadequate funding was to blame, according to officials. That explanation has been met with some skepticism, especially considering the freeing-up of funds from Proposition C, a ballot measure passed by voters in 2018 to tax corporations and use the dollars to combat homelessness.

“Some might see $1 billion as a call to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks,” Mayor London Breed said to the Board of Supervisors on Nov. 9. “I see it as a call to double down on accountability and ensure we don’t spend money on programs that don’t deliver and we don’t spend more than we budget to spend.”

But what does it mean to deliver?

Safe sleeping site

The temporary safe sleeping site could be one place to start finding answers.

Cretiz served a home-cooked dinner to residents of the site every other week and recalls how “profoundly powerful” it was for people to have a safe place to sleep and store belongings.

“There used to be this pervasive sense that the solution to homelessness was to make it so unpleasant that they wouldn’t want to do it,” he said. “It turns out that if you give them food, water and a place to sleep, they’ll start looking for a place to call home.”

Supervisor Dean Preston, whose district includes the property, called it the most successful of the three sleeping sites in San Francisco. The city agency tasked with homelessness services called it a success in providing “COVID compliant spaces” and connecting people with support.

However, actually moving people out of homelessness proved more difficult.

Of the 73 people who stayed at the Stanyon site, just 24 ended up in housing afterwards. Another 29 went to an emergency shelter.

So, does that mean it delivered? And for whom? Certainly not for those opposed to the project. They said they noticed a significant uptick in trash, drug use and threats of violence, though, to date, that’s been difficult to quantify outside of anecdotal social media reports and photos.

“We have eyes. We lived it. We’ve been living it,” said the representative for Safe Healthy Haight.

What they can all agree on is that The City’s current approach isn’t working, and they’re looking to city government to clarify on that elusive question of what it means to deliver across San Francisco.

“I look at the way The City has dealt with homelessness over the years, and it seems to be this continuous process of moving people around,” Creitz said. “That’s dealing with the problem of optics, not as a problem of economics and housing.”

For now, as is often the case in San Francisco, the immediate path forward is to wait — until a hearing scheduled for Nov. 18 on why the drop-in center plans was scrapped; until priorities for the $1.1 billion in homelessness spending are more clear; and until an old McDonald’s lot turns into housing.

US food banks struggle to feed hungry amid surging prices

Featured in the Associated Press

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — U.S. food banks already dealing with increased demand from families sidelined by the pandemic now face a new challenge — surging food prices and supply chain issues walloping the nation.

The higher costs and limited availability mean some families may get smaller servings or substitutions for staples such as peanut butter, which costs nearly double what it did a year ago. As holidays approach, some food banks worry they won’t have enough stuffing and cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

“What happens when food prices go up is food insecurity for those who are experiencing it just gets worse,” said Katie Fitzgerald, chief operating officer of Feeding America, a nonprofit organization that coordinates the efforts of more than 200 food banks across the country.

Food banks that expanded to meet unprecedented demand brought on by the pandemic won’t be able to absorb forever food costs that are two to three times what they used to be, she said.

Supply chain disruptions, lower inventory and labor shortages have all contributed to increased costs for charities on which tens of millions of people in the U.S. rely on for nutrition. Donated food is more expensive to move because transportation costs are up, and bottlenecks at factories and ports make it difficult to get goods of all kinds.

If a food bank has to swap out for smaller sizes of canned tuna or make substitutions in order to stretch their dollars, Fitzgerald said, it’s like adding “insult to injury” to a family reeling from uncertainty.

In the prohibitively expensive San Francisco Bay Area, the Alameda County Community Food Bank in Oakland is spending an extra $60,000 a month on food. Combined with increased demand, it is now shelling out $1 million a month to distribute 4.5 million pounds (2 million kilograms) of food, said Michael Altfest, the Oakland food bank’s director of community engagement.

Pre-pandemic, it was spending a quarter of the money for 2.5 million pounds (1.2 million kilograms) of food.

The cost of canned green beans and peaches is up nearly 9% for them, Altfest said; canned tuna and frozen tilapia up more than 6%; and a case of 5-pound frozen chickens for holiday tables is up 13%. The price for dry oatmeal has climbed 17%. 

On Wednesdays, hundreds of people line up outside a church in east Oakland for its weekly food giveaway. Shiloh Mercy House feeds about 300 families on those days, far less than the 1,100 families it was nourishing at the height of the pandemic, said Jason Bautista, the charity’s event manager. But he’s still seeing new people every week. 

“And a lot of people are just saying they can’t afford food,” he said. “I mean they have the money to buy certain things, but it’s just not stretching.”

Families can also use a community market Shiloh opened in May. Refrigerators contain cartons of milk and eggs while sacks of hamburger buns and crusty baguettes sit on shelves.

Oakland resident Sonia Lujan-Perez, 45, picked up chicken, celery, onions bread and and potatoes — enough to supplement a Thanksgiving meal for herself, 3-year-old daughter and 18-year-old son. The state of California pays her to care for daughter Melanie, who has special needs, but it’s not enough with monthly rent at $2,200 and the cost of milk, citrus, spinach and chicken so high.

“That is wonderful for me because I will save a lot of money,” she said, adding that the holiday season is rough with Christmas toys for the children.

Many people also rely on other government aid, including the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Kate Waters, a spokeswoman for the USDA, which administers the SNAP program, said there were no immediate plans for an emergency boost in SNAP benefits to compensate for the rising food costs. But she said that previous moves by the Biden administration such as the permanent increase in SNAP benefits earlier this year and a fresh wave of funding for food banks should help ease the burden. In addition, Waters said the fact that schools are open and offering free lunches and, in some cases, free breakfast, should also help.

Bryan Nichols, vice president of sales for Transnational Foods Inc., which delivers to more than 100 food banks associated with Feeding America, said canned foods from Asia— such as fruit cocktail, pears and mandarin oranges— have been stuck overseas because of a lack of shipping container space.

Issues in supply seem to be improving and prices stabilizing, but he expects costs to stay high after so many people got out of the shipping business during the pandemic. “An average container coming from Asia prior to COVID would cost about $4,000. Today, that same container is about $18,000,” he said.

At the Care and Share Food Bank for Southern Colorado in Colorado Springs, CEO Lynne Telford says the cost for a truckload of peanut butter —40,000 pounds (18,100 kilograms)_has soared 80% from June 2019 to $51,000 in August. Mac and cheese is up 19% from a year ago and the wholesale cost of ground beef has increased 5% in three months. They’re spending more money to buy food to make up for waning donations and there’s less to choose from.

The upcoming holidays worry her. For one thing, the donation cost to buy a frozen turkey has increased from $10 to $15 per bird.

“The other thing is that we’re not getting enough holiday food, like stuffing and cranberry sauce. So we’re having to supplement with other kinds of food, which you know, makes us sad,” said Telford, whose food bank fed more than 200,000 people last year, distributing 25 million pounds (11.3 million kilograms) of food.

Alameda County Community Food Bank says it is set for Thanksgiving, with cases of canned cranberry and boxes of mashed potatoes among items stacked in its expanded warehouse. Food resourcing director Wilken Louie ordered eight truckloads of frozen 5-pound chickens —which translates into more than 60,000 birds— to give away free, as well as half-turkeys available at cost.

For that, Martha Hasal is grateful.

“It’s going to be an expensive Thanksgiving, turkey is not going to cost like the way it was,” said Hasal as she loaded up on on cauliflower and onions on behalf of the Bay Area American Indian Council. “And they’re not giving out turkey. So thank God they’re giving out the chicken.”

 

A volunteer packs onions in the warehouse of the Alameda County Community Food Bank in Oakland, Calif., on Nov. 5, 2021. U.S. food banks dealing with increased demand from families sidelined by the pandemic now face a new challenge – surging food prices and supply chain issues. As holidays approach, some food banks worry they won't have enough turkeys, stuffing and cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Residents picking up free groceries in Oakland said they're grateful for the extra help as the price of dairy, meat and fuel has shot up. (AP Photo/Terry Chea)

 

 

 

 

SF Extends Program to Keep Hotels Open for Unhoused Residents

Featured in KQED:

San Francisco plans to extend through September 2022 a shelter-in-place program that provides hotel rooms for unhoused people, city officials announced Thursday.

The decision comes a month after advocates for people experiencing homelessness protested in front of City Hall, calling for a continuation of the program that has now served over 3,700 residents since it began in April 2020.

San Francisco's Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing began phasing out the program — part of Project Roomkey, a statewide homelessness relief initiative — in June, when COVID-19 infection rates in San Francisco were declining.  Since then, the city has closed six of 25 hotel sites.

The city had planned to incrementally phase out the remaining locations through next June, saying it lacked the funds to continue operating them beyond then.

The announcement of the three-month extension follows the Federal Emergency Management Agency's authorization of an additional $46 million for the program, with the city putting up an extra $21 million.

In addition to wellness checks and health screenings, the hotel program provides a variety of services, including harm reduction counseling, nursing support, meals, security, laundry and assistance securing public benefits and planning for next steps.

Dominique Griffin, who helped organize last month's protest, participated in a related shelter-in-place program after losing her job early on in the pandemic. She and her two children were able to stay for free for a year at the Oasis Inn near City Hall.

“If it wasn't for that hotel, I'd be out on the streets in a tent as well, with my children,” she said.

Griffin and her family have since moved into a subsidized two-bedroom apartment in the East Bay city of Pittsburg, which was arranged for her by a San Francisco housing case manager.

City officials say they're focusing on providing stable housing to the roughly 1,400 current hotel residents in the program. To meet that goal, they say they will need to move about 35 to 40 people a week into permanent housing over the next year.

Since the program’s inception last year, 729 participants have been rehoused, according to the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, which oversees it.

“It takes significant city and nonprofit staffing to move people from the hotels into housing,” said Emily Cohen, a spokesperson for the department. “It's not a quick process. And so we really need to have the capacity and the workers to do this process. Any delays will just result in a tremendous crisis at the end of the program.”

Cohen said the program's extension buys the city more time to move as many people as possible into stable housing.

“The most stabilizing thing we can do if someone is not yet linked with that right unit for them and has accepted that placement is to keep them in a SIP hotel where they can continue to engage with their housing navigators,” she said.

A protestor holds a sign as part of a demonstration outside San Francisco City Hall on Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2021. Protestors asked the city to stop closing shelter-in-place hotels and accept more people experiencing homelessness into empty rooms. (Kate Wolffe/KQED)