Ahead of the upcoming budget deliberations, a well-connected citizens’ group is asking Mayor London Breed to rent more hotels to accommodate the homeless.
RescueSF, a nonprofit that works to find solutions to homelessness, told The Standard that it has identified several hotel owners who would like to rent out their properties cheaply, as the city’s struggling tourism industry is causing low occupancy rates.
Renting of enough hotel rooms to provide beds for 2,000 people would cost the city $800,000 Start-up costs and about $64 million in annual operating costs, the group proposes.
This alone could cut the number of vulnerable homeless people in the city in half in just two years, said Mark Nagel, executive director of RescueSF.
“We looked at the city’s plans and they just don’t have the urgency they need,” Nagel said. “The public needs to demand this stuff. It is a matter of life and death for the people on the street.”
The city currently has just over 3,000 shelters in its portfolio, while over 4,000 people sleep on the city’s streets each night.
RescueSF is looking at a former youth hostel turned homeless shelter on Lower Nob Hill as a prototype for its proposal.
A man bicycles past the Ansonia Hotel at 711 Post St. on February 1, 2022. | Camille Cohen/The Standard
Located at 711 Post St., this shelter operates 250 beds under a three-year, $18.7 million contract. Nagel sees 711 Post St. as an example of how people can be protected with a lower startup cost than other solutions.
The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing’s own five-year plan estimated that it would cost $87 million to maintain 1,075 additional shelters annually. That’s $81,000 per bed per year.
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The ministry has been reluctant to invest in shelters over housing, arguing that it is more expensive to pay 24-hour shelter staff and that deprioritizing housing production would ultimately leave more people homeless. Nagel and his colleagues at Rescue SF argue that the city overestimates the cost of lodging and that renting hotels can be an inexpensive way to get people indoors quickly.
Nagel declined to specify which hotels RescueSF identified because the owners had expressed concerns that publicly expressing an interest in renting to the city would jeopardize their value. But he said they are in downtown San Francisco’s “central hotel corridor.”
But if 711 Post is any indication, Rescue SF’s proposal will likely face opposition from the neighborhood where these shelters are planned.
Neighbors to the 711 Post property have complained that a plethora of poorly maintained hotels in the area have transformed their neighborhood from a tourist hub into a containment zone for the city’s homeless crisis.
Mayor London Breed tours a bedroom at 711 Post St. Animal Shelter in San Francisco. | Benjamin Fanjoy/ The Standard
Susan Walsh, a former public defender for Alameda County and spokesperson for the Lower Nob Hill Neighborhood Alliance, didn’t mince words as she described the impact of the 711 Post St. shelter and other nearby facilities in her community.
“They’re sending us through absolute hell,” Walsh said.
Walsh claimed that conditions around 711 Post St. have deteriorated since the facility reached full capacity in February, arguing that the city must stop trying to solve the homelessness crisis with short-term solutions. She described watching people mentally break down from the window of her apartment and said drug dealers now operate near her home.
An employee of the non-profit organization Urban Alchemy, which manages the site, is said to have shot and killed someone during their lunch break in November.
“You have to stop thinking of it as an emergency and then use it as an excuse to put band-aids on gashes,” Walsh said.
The city is also paying the price for quickly accommodating over 3,000 people in hotels during the pandemic. since Claims for damages totaling over US$40 million were made to repair the destroyed buildings.
However, many homeless advocates viewed this program as a success, noting that it has resulted in 1,842 people moving into permanent shelters and improved health outcomes for many clients.
Aaron Peskin, the chairman of the board, represents Lower Nob Hill. He acknowledged there have been “hiccups” at the 711 Post St. location, but said overall the property has been a success. The city needs to build new shelters across San Francisco to reduce the changes in a particular neighborhood, he added.
“You can treat this as an emergency and still be responsible about it,” Peskin said. “It’s not just about finding a facility and someone to run it; it’s also about providing additional resources to the community.”
Nagel said the pandemic hotel program should be taken as a lesson to provide customers with a fuller service, rather than a warning to avoid setting up accommodations at all.
“That doesn’t happen in a properly run shelter,” Nagel said. “It is in our interest to let the public know that there is another way.”
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to clarify that RescueSF is not a registered lobbying organization.
