by Jordan Wasilewski
In May, Mission Local broke the story that 835 Turk St., a new permanent supportive housing complex that I vocally supported in early 2022 will have to undergo extensive repairs which will require tenants to (supposedly) temporarily move out. The article, which has been the only to cover this story so far, focused heavily on how tenants rightfully distrust the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) to ensure a just transition and a right of return once the building’s rehab is completed.
According to Mission Local, the city was well aware of much-needed upgrades, and yet, officials never alerted tenants beforehand. Tenants only learned about it from a relocation consultant from Five Keys at a community meeting this spring.
In fact, this month, I reached out to Christin Evans of the Homelessness Oversight Commission, which didn’t even know about this (despite the fact that the body is supposed to keep HSH honest and transparent
This presents some troubling dynamics.
1. 835 Turk is located west of Van Ness Avenue in the Cathedral Hill neighborhood. It’s common knowledge that one of the reasons permanent supportive housing is facing criticism is because of its concentration in the Tenderloin neighborhood. One tenant highlighted in the article said that they didn’t want to go back to the Tenderloin after living there for many years.
2. Tenants were given the choice of either being moved into the Granada Hotel, which the Department of Building Inspection cited for vermin and lack of heat, or even be forced into shelter, which could retraumatize formerly unhoused tenants, and lead to more of the decompensation that recovery grifters use as an excuse to undermine PSH.
3. The absence of an HSH protocol for when housing goes offline requires an outside relocation consultant to be hired at taxpayers’ expense.
4. Also, HSH apparently lacks a protocol for notifying the oversight commission when things like these happen.
5. There have been a lot of attacks on permanent supportive housing/Housing First lately from trolls on X/Twitter, and there have been a lot of calls to only do recovery based housing for new acquisitions. Could this be a way to force tenants into recovery housing?
6. With the passage of the unconscionable amendment to the “Our City Our Home” legislation that would allocate more funds from housing to shelter, this creates great risks that there will not be housing available.
Because I do not live at 835 Turk, I don’t want to be too prescriptive about how to solve the building’s problems. I want tenants to take the lead on solutions and to be made whole. But I do know that us tenants do not want to be needlessly displaced, and if we are, even if it is an emergency, there should be a consistent process that ensures continuity of housing.
To this end, I propose that HSH create a protocol for what happens when housing goes offline, whether for an emergency or otherwise, that honors tenant autonomy, does not force them into congregate shelter for a long period of time, and leads to comparable or better housing. This policy needs to be written in consultation with tenants and needs to be publicly available. Furthermore, the Homelessness Oversight Commission must be notified when a permanent supportive housing site is about to go offline or (in case of emergency) has gone offline, so this can be handled in a public process.
It is time for transparency and honesty.
