San Francisco Rent Relief Tracker

Please note that if you can pay rent, pay it. If you can pay even 25% of your rent, pay it. Hoarding your cash from landlords, when over 50% of landlords generate income solely by renting, is unethical. Landlords cannot afford to keep a roof over their head while tenants have received huge cash bail outs from the government, unemployment and stimulus checks. We volunteer at the Food Bank and many times we've seen bags of groceries (that we bagged) jammed behind supermarket cashier stands i.e. people that are employed with access to free or heavily discounted food are draining the Food Bank's resources from people who have NO money. Be sensible and don't be greedy. Pay your fair share and regain your moral compass. 

Featured in the San Francisco Public Press:

UPDATE 8/23/21 3:15 p.m. This is the latest installment in a series tracking financial assistance to San Franciscans with rent debt. We’ll aim to publish updated figures each week.

With just under six weeks to go before the moratorium on COVID-19-related evictions expires, requests for rent assistance have climbed to nearly $120 million in San Francisco.

A total of 10,552 households had requested $117.9 million in rent and utility assistance as of last week, about five months after the government opened financial aid programs to cover housing costs that residents incurred during the pandemic, according to data from state and local officials. Roughly one in five applicants had either been approved or received money. The programs have about $152 million in funding, some of which is for administrative costs.

Rent debt in San Francisco stood between $147 million and $355 million in June, according to estimates by the city’s Budget and Legislative Analyst’s Office, which reports to the Board of Supervisors. The figures are based on unemployment rates that peaked in April 2020, rendering as many as 33,200 renters jobless, and did not return to pre-pandemic levels during the period studied.

The state and local governments are running parallel rent-relief programs. City residents should apply through the state’s program if they owe money for rent or other housing bills that were due from April 2020 through the end of March 2021; they should apply through the city’s program for debts in later months.

The statewide eviction moratorium, protecting tenants who could not pay rent due to COVID-19 hardships, was originally scheduled to end Jan. 31, but lawmakers have extended it twice. Following its new end date, Sept. 30, San Francisco tenants will be vulnerable to eviction if they have not paid at least 25% of the rents due in the preceding 12 months, as well as October’s rent. Tenants who can prove that they are eligible and have applied for financial assistance, but are awaiting a decision from the government, will continue to be protected through the end of March 2022 at latest.

 

 

San Francisco plans to buy four properties to house homeless people across the city

Featured in the San Francisco Chronicle:

San Francisco is pursuing purchasing four properties, scattered across the city, by the end of the year to turn into housing with supportive services for homeless people.

The city reviewed dozens of potential sites and settled on a motel in the Outer Mission, an apartment building intended for student housing in SoMa, a single-room occupancy hotel in the Mission and a tourist hotel in Japantown. Nonprofits will run the sites and provide services such as a case manager to deal with tenant issues and connections to treatment for substance use or mental health.

The properties will add 368 housing units, part of a total goal of creating up to 1,000 units using $400 million in local funding and a matching state grant that should become available in September. The exact amount from the state is not yet known. The purchases are part of the mayor’s goal to buy or lease 1,500 units before the end of 2022.

The need is dire: There were 8,000 homeless people in San Francisco at the last count in 2019, and advocates suspect the number rose during the pandemic. San Francisco has more than 10,000 people living in around 8,000 units of city-owned or leased permanent supportive housing.

Last year, the city moved thousands of people temporarily into hotels and bought two hotels with hundreds of units for new permanent housing for $74 million, using a combination of local funding and money from state program Homekey. Gov. Gavin Newsom has pledged $7 billion over two years for the program statewide. 

Buying older buildings meant the city inherited problems — and some existing discontented tenants — but elected officials and advocates largely praised the purchases as a much faster and cheaper way to house homeless people than building new. Purchasing and rehabbing an existing property last year cost around $323,000 per unit, compared to an estimated $800,000 for a new unit of affordable housing.

Advocates have pushed the city to buy more using an influx of money from the voter-approved business tax hike Proposition C.

The city is also winding down its temporary hotel program and looking for permanent places for people, which the new purchases — one of which is already running as a temporary hotel — could help provide.

For the four sites under consideration, the city will conduct community outreach at the end of August. Officials will then ask the Board of Supervisors to approve the purchases and negotiate the final sale with owners, with the city mum on price until then.

The city hopes to scoop up 52 units at the Mission Inn motel on Mission Street south of Geneva Avenue and 25 units at the Eula Hotel, an SRO near 16th and Mission streets. The Panoramic, 160 units — a mix of studios and three bedrooms — in SoMa and the Kimpton Buchanan Hotel, 131 rooms in Japantown, are also in the mix.

 

Much of the city’s permanent supportive housing is concentrated in the Tenderloin and SoMa, but two of the properties are in districts with little homeless housing: the Outer Mission and Japantown. Supervisor Ahsha Safaí, who represents the district where the Mission Inn is located, has supported buying more hotels and every neighborhood doing “its fair share” to house homeless people. Still, the plan could create controversy in a quieter residential community.

“These are once-in-a-lifetime opportunities,” Safaí said. “For anyone who would be resistant to it, I would say you can’t complain about people living on the streets and not do something about ensuring they have housing.”

Some residents are already supportive. Steven Currier has lived in the Outer Mission for 28 years, currently seven blocks from the Mission Inn, and argued that people are “not only down and out in District 6 (where the Tenderloin is located),” but all over the city.

“Why not buy the hotel and transition these people who are homeless, which is a pandemic in itself, to put them in permanent housing?” he said. “It’s an honor for us to be able to help these people.”

It’s not the first time homeless programs have been set up in the district. Following complaints about trailers and vans parked on the streets, the city worked to open a space near Balboa Park where homeless individuals could live in their vehicles and receive services such as health care and connections to permanent housing.

Currier said the six-month community outreach process before the parking site opened was at times “very volatile, very vulgar.” As co-chair of the safe parking program’s community working group, he judged it a success, leading to help for those in need and fewer complaints about street conditions. The site closed so that affordable housing could be developed on the property.

Currier said he hopes a motel converted into homeless housing would be better received.

For Mission Inn owner Amit Motawala, the opportunity to sell was appealing as the pandemic dragged on. The motel formerly served contractors who wanted to avoid a weeknight commute back to the Central Valley and international tourists who needed an affordable place to stay.

As occupancy dropped dramatically, Motawala found another way to fill rooms last year through local nonprofit Swords to Plowshares, which provided emergency housing to formerly homeless veterans before they settled into a permanent place. Around half the rooms are still available for veterans, he said.

Selling to fill the rooms with more people in need seemed a natural fit.

“We saw this opportunity and we think it is the right move,” Motawala said.

Homeless Set To Stay In Hotels After Govt Bail Out

Just coming on the heels of SF's leaders that were starting to evict the homeless from hotels, this new update is featured in USA Today:

Federal government extends coverage of 100% of states' emergency COVID-19 costs

WASHINGTON – As the coronavirus fills hospitals, the Biden administration will fully reimburse states for some COVID-19 emergency response costs through the end of the year, USA TODAY learned.

Administration officials will announce the extension during their weekly call with governors, according to a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The covered services include emergency medical care, vaccination operations and housing at-risk populations such as the homeless.

“We're going to continue to take a look at conditions, as we go forward, and make decisions like this one, based on their needs,” Charlie Anderson, the economic and budget policy director for the administration’s COVID-19 response team. “There are a lot of folks on the frontlines doing everything they can, including state governments … And it is critical to continue to be a strong partner in those efforts given what they're dealing with.”

President Joe Biden’s original order, which he issued on his second day in office, directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pay for 100% of eligible costs through September. States usually cover 25% of emergency services.

Biden will also extend his directive that the federal government pay the full cost for mobilizing National Guard personnel who are supporting COVID-19 response efforts.

Biden criticized the Trump administration for making states pay a share of the cost. Soon after the November election, Biden promised to change that.

The extension, however, is a reflection that the pandemic is not under control. Cases are on the rise in most states, a surge driven by the highly contagious delta variant. The surge is particularly strong in Southern states with low vaccination rates.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced last week that the state was bringing in 2,500 nurses from across the U.S. to help staff overwhelmed hospitals. Before that announcement, the state had encouraged local governments and providers to use funds from a $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan package to address staffing needs.

The plan included the funding that is making possible the extension of full reimbursement for emergency services. 

Newsom pushed for funding extension

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is among the governors who urged the administration to continue to cover the costs, which is critical to the state’s ability to continue a program that has provided shelter to more than 42,000 homeless people during the pandemic.

Begun in March 2020, “Project Roomkey” has provided hotel rooms and meals to the homeless. That has both prevented the spread of COVID-19 among a population with health vulnerabilities as well eased the pressure on hospitals, according to the state.

Article continues... 

 

Problem for Tenants & Problem for Landlords

Please read this article by the LA Times and rationally weigh up the logic:

We've been recently promoting resources for people facing illegal evictions. This article and our comment is only referencing illegal evictions: Irrelevant of whether you like landlords or appreciate the landlord featured in the article, when you signed a lease you honored an agreement and you paid rent. During the pandemic when California came to a crashing halt, it was understandable if you couldn't afford rent. But currently, with excessive unemployment offered alongside millions of jobs being listed, either way you're receiving income or have the means to...so there is no reason why you cannot pay even a portion of your monthly lease. Do not claim that you can't afford rent and food because there are thousands of Food Banks in our state - free food is in abundance. So be responsible, ethical and honor your lease agreement. Do the decent thing and retain your legal commitments. It's about morals here. 

Article: Landlord sues L.A. for $100 million, saying anti-eviction law caused ‘astronomical’ losses

One of the region’s most prolific apartment builders has sued the city of Los Angeles over its COVID-19 eviction moratorium, saying his companies have experienced “astronomical” financial losses and are legally entitled to compensation from the city.

GHP Management Corp., which is owned by real estate developer Geoffrey Palmer, said in its lawsuit that 12 buildings that it manages have experienced more than $20 million in lost rental income as a result of the measure. GHP, which filed the lawsuit along with several other Palmer companies, expects that number to triple by the time the provisions of the moratorium have expired.

The city enacted its temporary eviction limits in March 2020, just as COVID-19 was triggering the shutdown of businesses and throwing people out of work, barring building owners from forcing out tenants who could show their inability to pay was caused by the pandemic.

Palmer’s companies allege that the moratorium — first put in place by Mayor Eric Garcetti as an emergency order, then approved as an ordinance by the City Council — violated the “takings clause” established in the 5th Amendment, which says private property shall not be taken for public use without “just compensation.”

Palmer’s companies said they are entitled to compensation of more than $100 million.

“While the eviction moratorium ostensibly protects tenants who are unable to pay rent due to circumstances related to the COVID-19 pandemic, it arbitrarily shifts the financial burden onto property owners, many of whom were already suffering financial hardship as a result of the pandemic and have no equivalent remedy at law,” said the lawsuit, which was filed last week.

GHP Management, a property management company, is a subsidiary of G.H. Palmer Associates, which owns more than 15,000 apartments in Southern California, according to the company’s website. G.H. Palmer Associates is owned in turn by Palmer, a businessman known for developing beige apartment blocks in and around downtown Los Angeles with Mediterranean features and Italian names — Medici, Lorenzo, Piero.

Asked about the filing, City Atty. Mike Feuer defended the city’s handling of the moratorium, saying his office wrote a “sound and lawful ordinance” that has kept tenants from becoming homeless during the pandemic.

“We defeated a previous attack on these crucial protections and will vigorously defend the ordinance again,” Feuer said in a statement.

Palmer’s filing comes less than two months after Gov. Gavin Newsom extended the state’s own eviction moratorium until Sept. 30, offering to cover 100% of the back rent and utilities owed by many low-income residents whose finances were hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Under the program, both renters and landlords may seek relief. Landlords seeking aid must provide verification from their tenants that their income is low enough to qualify for financial aid, according to the state’s website.

In February, the city’s Housing and Community Investment Department reported that it distributed more than $98 million in subsidies to renters whose households were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Of that total, 56% was paid to landlords and the other 44% went directly to tenants.

Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal, who is a member of the Los Angeles Tenants Union, said the state’s relief program shows that Palmer will “receive every dollar that he is owed.” Still, Rosenthal said she does not believe he is entitled to that money.

“I am not at all convinced that his right to profit by means of passive income should take precedence over the very lives of tenants in Los Angeles whose incomes were severed by the pandemic and by public health orders that directed them to isolate and quarantine,” she said.

Rosenthal and other organizers for renters’ rights have argued that the city’s law was not a true moratorium, since it did not prohibit building owners from filing eviction cases in court. In many cases, she said, tenants simply moved out of fear instead of fighting those cases, or lost in court after failing to make a defense.

Palmer is a major donor to the Republican Party and a player in local, state and national politics. So far this year, he has put at least $200,000 into the recall committee targeting Newsom and at least $110,000 into the effort to recall Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascon, according to state records.

Palmer hosted a fundraiser for President Trump in 2019 and, a year later, was identified by The Times as one of Trump’s top donors in California.

Larry Gross, executive director of the Coalition for Economic Survival, said Palmer’s lawsuit, if successful, would “wreak havoc” on the city, siphoning away money from basic city services and throwing into question efforts to keep both COVID-19 and homelessness under control.

“This is both an economic and a health issue to ensure that people can maintain the roofs over their heads right now,” said Gross, whose group advocates for tenants’ rights.

Attorneys for GHP and Palmer’s other companies did not respond to an inquiry from The Times. In their filing, those lawyers said the eviction moratorium had led to more than $2.7 million in rent losses at Palmer’s Medici project, a 627-unit apartment in downtown Los Angeles; nearly $2.8 million at the Da Vinci, a 526-unit complex along the 101/110 Freeway interchange; and nearly $3.9 million at Summit at Warner Center, a 760-unit apartment property in Woodland Hills.

Because of the city’s restrictions, lenders have refused to finance or refinance the loans on the properties managed by GHP, causing additional economic harm, the plaintiffs said in their lawsuit. In addition, building owners have been required to pay for electricity and other utilities in units where they are not receiving rental income, the filing said. 

Palmer’s companies contend that they will have little success in recouping their losses from their tenants after the one-year grace period that follows the end of the city’s COVID-19 emergency.

“The city orchestrated a regulatory regime designed to provide a compulsory and de facto rent forgiveness to be foisted on landlords throughout the city,” the lawsuit states.

A Garcetti spokesman did not immediately have a comment on the case.

Palmer has tangled with the city in court before. More than a decade ago, he persuaded a Superior Court judge to overturn the city’s “inclusionary housing” rules, which required that developers near downtown offer a specified percentage of affordable housing as part of their residential projects.

Palmer’s legal victory halted the city’s momentum in trying to build affordable housing in the area, said Gross, the tenants’ rights advocate.

“His hands are not clean in regards to the housing crisis we are now facing,” Gross said.

 

The Orsini, left, is one of several buildings that have incurred financial losses as a result of an eviction moratorium, according to a new lawsuit filed against the city of Los Angeles. 

(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

 

In SF, Send a Text, Learn How to Avoid Eviction

Featured in San Francisco Public Press:

San Francisco residents can now learn how to avoid eviction by sending a text message to a special phone number.

That service is part of an outreach campaign launched Friday by the San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition, a group of tenant-rights organizations. The goal: to teach people their rights and help them apply for rent assistance during the two months left before a statewide moratorium on evictions for unpaid rents expires. The coalition will also use the text messages to find out where people in need are concentrated in the city, which could help them better target future outreach.

“The urgency now is how do we get a lot of households that are still not in the rent-relief programs to be in them?” said Aitran Doan, manager of the outreach campaign. “We know there is a huge gap.”

An estimated 26,700 households are behind on rent in San Francisco, according to research and advocacy group PolicyLink. But only about a third ­— ­8,800 households — have applied for rent assistance, according to government figures.

People can begin receiving information about rent relief and the eviction moratorium by texting “Rent” to 888-732-3215.

A user who enters their ZIP code will also receive the name and phone number of their nearest tenant-rights group, which can provide more personalized help. That might include instructions on how to apply for financial assistance.

“It is casting a broad net across the city,” Doan said. “If there are places that need additional support, we will know that very soon.”

The platform could also be a tool for reminding participants about relevant deadlines or conducting polls. It is available in English, with plans to soon add Spanish, Chinese, Filipino and Arabic, Doan said.

The coalition is coordinating with the San Francisco Unified School District and local labor groups to disseminate information as widely as possible.

State and local governments are running parallel rent-relief programs. San Francisco tenants should apply through the state’s program if they owe money for rent or utilities that were due from April 2020 through March 2021; they should apply through the city’s program for debts in later months.

By Oct. 1, tenants must pay 25% of the total rent they owed during the 12 preceding months or they can be evicted. They can also be evicted for rent due that month.

After the moratorium’s end, tenants will still be protected from eviction for nonpayment until April 1, 2022, if they have applied for rent or utility assistance and are awaiting a decision — though that protection would disappear if the programs run out of money.

This additional protection is a major reason why the coalition is trying to expand the number of applicants, Doan said.

“We really don’t want to see massive evictions, or people leaving prematurely before an eviction notice is even given,” she said.

 

San Francisco residents who text “Rent” to 1-888-732-3215 will receive information about the statewide eviction moratorium, as well as referrals to groups that help people request financial aid to repay rent and utility debt.

Tenants facing eviction cliff want lawyers: Here’s what San Francisco is doing about it

Featured in the San Francisco Examiner:

Back in 2018, San Francisco voters passed the country’s first ballot measure requiring the universal right to counsel for tenants facing eviction.

But the approved measure, known as Proposition F, didn’t immediately live up to its full promise, covering two-thirds of eligible tenants. About half of them received limited representation. Those shortcomings are about to change.

The City’s recently agreed-upon budget, expected to pass in the coming weeks, would add an additional $6 million to the program, bringing its total budget to $17 million to better meet demand.

The boost in funding makes San Francisco home to one of the most robust tenant counsel offerings in the country, and certainly in California. It also comes as the state’s eviction moratorium is set to end Oct. 1.

“The fact that San Francisco has reached full funding is a very significant achievement,” said John Pollock, coordinator of the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel, which tracks efforts around eviction representation. “There’s a massive imbalance of power…the system only functions for the side that has counsel.”

If you are charged with a crime, it’s understood that there will be a public defender provided if you are unable to afford a private attorney. If you face a civil matter like eviction, however, counsel is generally not guaranteed. Tenant and homelessness advocates say that needs to change in order to stabilize renters, preventing displacement and homelessness.

The California Apartment Association, which represents landlord interests statewide, disagrees. It called Assembly Bill 1487, which would establish a statewide legal services trust fund for tenants facing eviction, a “problematic bill” that would provide more funding for attorneys to delay legitimate eviction cases and cost landlords more in legal bills.

“With the existing funding, unethical tenant attorneys are funded to make false claims about property owners who are simply trying to regain possession of their properties from tenants who have failed to pay rent or who have created problems for other tenants at the property,” CAA wrote in a letter to legislators. “These firms that receive funding automatically and consistently utilize the same discovery and jury demands.”

San Francisco’s program, led by the Eviction Defense Collaborative agency, has been quite effective in warding off evictions. With representation from the tenant-right to counsel program, 67 percent of closed cases in 2019 resulted in the tenant remaining in their homes — 80 percent of whom were Black clients, according to the latest data from the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development.

Renters who received services through the right-to-counsel program in 2019 were 94 percent low or moderate income tenants, 28 percent white, 23 percent Latino, 22 percent Black and 21 percent Asian and Pacific Islander.

Even if evictions aren’t avoided, Pollock said attorneys can negotiate the terms of departure that allows for more time to vacate as well as preventing a record of eviction following the renter around, making it hard to secure new housing. Eviction records can also ripple through matters of child custody and employment.

“It was clearly working and one of the best investments we could make in keeping people housed and avoiding homelessness,” said Supervisor Dean Preston, who co-authored Prop. F and has pushed for increased funding of the program. “We all know there’s going to be a huge increase in the number of eviction cases so it’s really good timing that the right to counsel funding is there.”

However, the estimated number of tenants in need of the service was assessed pre-pandemic. Most court and eviction proceedings were on pause last year and California later enacted a statewide eviction moratorium, which was recently extended once again to the end of September.

EDC is in the process of assessing needs from partner agencies like Asian Law Caucus to determine how funding will be doled out, giving everyone enough time to hire skilled attorneys. Last summer, the program anticipated cuts in the face of a tighter budget under the pandemic and some attorneys had to be laid off before a budget increase came through.

“It’s indispensable that we have access to this knowledge ahead of time,” said Ora Prochovnick, director of litigation and policy at EDC. “Tsunami, cliff or a flood, whatever, it is, there’s going to be a lot of people in jeopardy of losing their housing. We know that when people are represented they have a much greater likelihood of maintaining their housing.”

Updated estimates of need will be determined after the state’s eviction moratorium is lifted, said MOHCD spokesperson Max Barnes. A federal eviction moratorium is scheduled to expire on July 31. California is expected to extend its statewide moratorium until Sept. 30.

 

Assemblymember David Chiu, who as a San Francisco supervisor brought forward a tenant right to counsel pilot in 2012, has contemplated proposing a statewide program but said it is a “long-term conversation.”

In the meantime, legislatures continue to add funding for renters and homeowners in need of assistance to remain in their homes. AB 1487 was folded into the latest budget to bring $120 million over the next three years, Chiu said.

“It just never felt fair that you didn’t have a level playing field between the parties in eviction proceedings,” Chiu said. “Every day people should have access to lawyers, particularly when they’re about to be denied basic necessities like shelter. It has been critical that this funding and work is being done.”

 

 

Is Pamela Logical or Entitled? S.F. has $1.1 billion to spend on homelessness

 

Featured in the San Francisco Chronicle, please read the article below and note the red highlighted part. Do you think Pamela should be grateful for what she's being offered or is this reply common practice amongst the homeless, especially when a key fits the door of a studio also?

The pressure is on to make a difference...

For Pamela Tisdale, the amount of money that San Francisco plans to invest in homelessness — more than $1.1 billion over the next two years — is irrelevant as long as she lives in a small, temporary hotel room that has “rats galore.”

“I just want my own housing,” said Tisdale, who lives in a city-leased hotel that local officials plan to close next year. “I’m just fed up.”

As the 62-year-old struggles to a find a permanent and affordable place to live, San Francisco has never been so flush with cash to help people like her. The city’s spending on homelessness has increased dramatically over the past five years — but never like this.

That’s because the city has a combination of onetime federal and local funds to pour into homeless services. The pot also includes about $800 million from Proposition C, a controversial 2018 business tax that is finally free to use after years of being tied up in a lawsuit.

Now, advocates and city leaders say, San Francisco is in an unprecedented position to make a tangible difference on the city’s streets.

But the historic investment is also presenting the city with a tenuous question: If this doesn’t make a difference for the city’s homeless, then what will?

San Francisco has thrown significantly more money at the crisis over the past few years, but the issue has only grown. From 2016 to 2019, homelessness spending in each two-year budget swelled 83%, from about $200 million to $360 million. At the same time, the number of homeless people grew from about 6,000 to more than 8,000, a 33% increase.

Prop. C expands that spending significantly. The measure — which taxes the gross receipts on large corporations — collects about $250 million to $300 million for homeless services each budget cycle. The money in the upcoming budget, which will be finalized in August, is unusually large because it includes an extra $500 million from the past two years that was tied up in court for years due to a lawsuit over the tax.

After months of haggling over the details, the Our City, Our Home committee, which oversees the funds, reached a deal with the mayor and board last month on how to dole out the money. Among their planned investments: funding for at least 825 units of new housing, 650 rental subsidies, over 1,000 new shelter beds, about 200 tents in sanctioned sites and several new street outreach teams.

Shanell Williams, chair of the committee, said the spending plan was carefully crafted over several months with the input of more than 800 people, primarily those who are homeless or formerly homeless. She said the money will “make a huge difference.”

“We feel a lot of pressure to make some change,” she said. “San Francisco voters are very serious about this investment being spent the way it was intended.”

The deluge of money comes at a critical time for San Francisco, as the pandemic has pushed more people toward poverty and also exacerbated other maladies like mental health issues and drug addiction. While the officials don’t yet know how many more people have become homeless over the past year, it’s widely expected that the population has grown.

Now, city officials — including Mayor London Breed, who strongly opposed Prop. C in 2018 — are relying on the money to make progress on San Francisco’s most pressing crisis.

Relief, though, likely won’t come overnight, as scaling up a system that has long been understaffed and overwhelmed could take months, or even years.

Shireen McSpadden, the new director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, said the department has “major gaps” when it comes to contract management, fiscal oversight, and basic processes and procedures.

“We need to build the plane and continue to fly it,” said McSpadden, who joined the department in May. “That’s the pressure we’re under with this.”

For people like Tisdale, that relief can’t come soon enough.

Within the next year, she’ll have to move out of her hotel room when emergency federal funding runs out for the program. She said she was offered a studio apartment a few months ago, but it was so small that she had to “stand sideways in the kitchen.”

She’s holding out for a one-bedroom, where she can finally live comfortably after nearly 10 years of cycling between the streets, shelters, her mother’s couch and a dilapidated permanent supportive housing unit in the Tenderloin.

“I want to go somewhere that I’d be stable,” she said. “I just want to put a key in my door.”

        Pamela Tisdale stands outside a hotel where she lives in San Francisco. The hotel has been temporarily leased by the city for homeless people during the pandemic. Tisdale said she has to deal with rats on a daily basis, and also had to recently vacate her room     when a pipe burst. The city is preparing to spend an unprecedented $1.1 billion to help people like Tisdale find better housing.

 

When it comes to finding permanent housing, Tisdale could eventually benefit from Prop. C, as at least 50% of the new funds must go toward housing resources, like rental vouchers or acquiring new units. A core tenet of the ballot measure is that it must be used for creating new programs that focus on getting people off the streets, rather than bolstering existing ones.

But if Breed had her way in 2018, San Francisco would not have this money to spend from Prop. C at all. She didn’t support the measure, saying the city was already spending a tremendous amount of money on homelessness — about $300 million a year — “with no discernible improvement in conditions.”

It was a contentious campaign. The measure divided city leaders and also pitted Breed, the city’s Chamber of Commerce and some tech companies — including Twitter — against the city’s homeless advocates, nonprofits and even Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, the city’s largest employer.

Nearly three years later after Prop. C passed with 61% of the vote, perhaps no one stands to benefit more politically from the measure than Breed. Under her watch, the city will be able to fund thousands of new units of housing and several new outreach teams, and create hundreds of new mental health and drug treatment beds.

“With all this money we have to invest in homelessness, there is no way that we shouldn’t be able to be more effective,” Breed said in a recent interview.

While she is glad the city now has the extra cash — “I don’t leave money on the table” — she echoed her sentiments of 2018. In particular, she said she’s worried about the impact of all the city’s taxes on the retail industry, as well as the accountability for how the money is spent.

She also said that, without a similar investment in surrounding counties, San Francisco could attract more unsheltered people to the city. That concern is not substantiated by the city’s most recently available data, which showed that 70% of the city’s homeless in 2019 were last housed in San Francisco.

“We could use the money, and it’s great,” she said. “But, at the same time, what are the trade-offs?”

City officials are working on creating a public database to track metrics, such as how many people have been placed into housing and how many new units have been built or acquired.

Along with Prop. C, the upcoming $1 billion-plus budget also includes tens of millions of dollars in one-time funding from federal emergency assistance due to the pandemic, local bond money and the city’s general fund. The city is also expecting a chunk of money from the state, which has yet to be finalized.

Matthew Doherty, the former director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, said San Francisco’s funding for homelessness is “close to unprecedented” for a city.

“It is the kind of investment that can really make a difference,” said Doherty, who now works as a consultant. “And the fact that it is an ongoing and predictable source of revenue for upcoming years, so they can plan for other investments, is not something that many communities have.”

Joe Wilson, the director of Hospitality House, a shelter in the Tenderloin, called Prop. C a “once in a generation” investment.

Yet, he still remains skeptical it will be enough.

“Is it going to solve the problem? No,” he said. “The structural conditions still exist that perpetuate homelessness and poverty in America.”

And until we address that, he said, “more will always be needed.”