San Francisco plans to purchase 4 properties to accommodate homeless folks throughout the town
San Francisco is pursuing purchases of four properties across the city by the end of the year to create homes with support services for the homeless.
The city looked at dozens of potential locations and selected a motel in the Outer Mission, a residential building for student dormitories in SoMa, a one-bedroom hotel in the Mission, and a tourist hotel in Japantown. Nonprofits will operate the websites and provide services such as a case manager who deals with tenant issues and links to drug use or mental health treatment.
The properties will add 368 residential units, part of the overall goal of building up to 1,000 units with local funding of $ 400 million and a corresponding government grant due to be available in September. The exact altitude of the land is not yet known. The purchases are part of the mayor’s goal to buy or lease 1,500 units by the end of 2022.
The need is great: at the last census in 2019 there were 8,000 homeless in San Francisco, and proponents suspect the number may have increased during the pandemic. More than 10,000 people in San Francisco live in around 8,000 residential units that are either owned or leased on a permanent basis by the city.
Last year the city temporarily moved thousands of people to hotels and purchased two hotels with hundreds of units for new permanent housing for $ 74 million using a combination of local funding and funds from the state Homekey program. Governor Gavin Newsom has pledged $ 7 billion for the nationwide program over a two-year period.
Mission Inn: 5630 Mission St. in the Outer Mission, 52 units, all with en-suite bathrooms, some kitchenettes in the units
Eula Hotel: 3055-61 16th St. in the Mission, a recently renovated 25 room single room hotel, all with private bathrooms
The panorama: 1321 Mission St. in SoMa, apartment building with 160 units, private bathroom and kitchenette, 120 studios and 40 three bedrooms. Built for college dormitories in 2015 and currently houses 50 to 75 former or recently homeless people
Hotel Kimpton Buchanan: 1800 Sutter St. in Japantown, 131 en-suite rooms, currently used as accommodation in a hotel that housed the homeless during the pandemic
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Buying older buildings meant the city inherited problems – and some existing dissatisfied tenants – but elected officials and advocates largely praised the purchases as a much faster and cheaper way to accommodate the homeless than building new ones. An existing property to buy and refurbish cost around $ 323,000 per unit last year, compared to an estimated $ 800,000 for a new unit with affordable housing.
Proponents have pushed the city to buy more by using an inflow of cash from the voter-approved business tax increase for Proposition C.
The city is also reducing its temporary hotel program and is looking for permanent places for people, to which the new acquisitions – one of which is already running as a temporary hotel – could contribute.
The city will carry out a public campaign for the four locations under consideration at the end of August. Officials will then ask the board of directors to approve the purchases and negotiate the final sale with the owners, pending price with the city councilor.
The city hopes to purchase 52 units at the Mission Inn Motel on Mission Street south of Geneva Avenue and 25 units at the Eula Hotel, an SRO located 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 long-term supportive housing is concentrated in Tenderloin and SoMa, but two of the properties are in districts with little homeless housing: Outer Mission and Japantown. Supervisor Ahsha Safaí, who represents the district where the Mission Inn is located, has supported the purchase of more hotels, and each neighborhood is doing “its fair share” to accommodate the homeless. Still, the plan could cause controversy in a quieter, residential area.
“These are once-in-a-lifetime opportunities,” Safaí said. “For all those who oppose it, I would say that you cannot complain about the people on the street and do nothing to ensure that they have an apartment.”
Some residents already support. Steven Currier has lived in the Outer Mission, currently seven blocks from Mission Inn, for 28 years, and argued that people are “not just in District 6 (where the tenderloin is)” but all over town.
“Why not buy the hotel and move these homeless people, who are in and of themselves a pandemic, to permanent accommodation?” He said. “We are honored to be able to help these people.”
This is 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 the homeless could live in their vehicles and receive services such as health care and links to permanent housing.
Currier said the six month public relations process leading up to the opening of the parking lot was “very volatile, very vulgar” at times. As co-chair of the Safe Parking Program’s community working group, he saw it as a success, resulting in relief for those in need and fewer complaints about road conditions. The property was closed so that affordable housing could be created on the property.
Currier hopes a motel that is being converted into homeless shelters will be better accepted.
For the owner of the Mission Inn, Amit Motawala, the opportunity to sell was attractive as the pandemic dragged on. The motel used to serve contractors who wanted to avoid night trips to the Central Valley during the week and international tourists who needed affordable accommodation.
As occupancy dropped dramatically, Motawala found another way to fill spaces last year through local nonprofit Swords to Plowshares, who provided emergency shelter to formerly homeless veterans before they settled in a permanent location. About half of the rooms are still available to veterans, he said.
Selling to fill the rooms with more needy people seemed like a natural solution.
“We saw this opportunity and think it is the right step,” said Motawala.
Mallory Moench is the author of the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: mallory.moench@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @mallorymoench
