by Jordan Wasilewski
When I served on the SRO Task Force as a tenant representative for two years, I was charged with the duty of meeting SRO tenants where they are at and making their lives better. However, I have come to realize over the last few years that the City needs to move on from housing formerly homeless people in ramshackle SROs, and many would agree with me. However, in mid-April, the City announced plans to “decommission” several permanent supportive housing sites. Closing these sites down could either serve as an opportunity to level up our permanent supportive housing (PSH), or it could displace tenants.
Decommissioning hotels is a years-long process, and thanks to pushback from several PSH providers, the timeline will now be less aggressive and more thoughtful. The City will announce which PSH sites slated for closure sometime this summer, but this may be delayed. Still, many permanent supportive housing tenants face uncertainty. To the credit of Daniel Lurie’s administration, it will focus on buildings in capital disrepair and legacy buildings dating from before the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing’s (HSH) establishment in 2016. These are often squalid and spartan hotels without private bathrooms, refrigerators or kitchenettes, and yet, the City has continued to fund them and misguidedly expects them to be cost-efficient.
It’s worth noting that there are no laws governing the shutting down of permanent supportive housing, no regulations on what replacement housing entails, and, more importantly to some, no laws on a tenant’s right to remain. As far as I know, my building’s not at risk of closure, but if it were, I could end up in some squalid SRO on Sixth Street without a private bathroom , microwave or refrigerator. There also is the issue of master leasing: no leased building should be shut down without a replacement that meets or exceeds the standards of the previous building.
The homelessness budget hearing at the Board of Supervisors Budget & Appropriations Committee called by District 11 Supervisor Chyanne Chen was supposed to speak to this matter on April 29, but HSH’s presentation did not significantly address the issue. However, three PSH tenants, myself included, showed up to give public comment. While describing SROs as “far from ideal,” one commenter talked about how being placed in an SRO helped them stabilize after losing their employment and housing, and how they got a full-time job they love and wanted to eventually move on out of the SRO. While their story is admirable, and they should be prioritized for a scattered-site voucher, there are still people who might not be successful in SROs.
The other speaker was a Jefferson Hotel resident whose sign read “Save Our SROs.” Awkward, considering that the Jefferson has been featured in the San Francisco Chronicle’s “Broken Homes” expose in 2022. While I agree that people’s lives should not be destabilized, I think a better campaign slogan could be “No Displacement Without Real Replacement” —something that reconciles our desire not to be forced out with our need for habitable housing.
The “Broken Homes” expose also shined a spotlight on the now-shuttered Baldwin Hotel, which is a case study of how less can cost more. The Baldwin was a 191-unit hotel that was master leased by the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which was “authorized to receive $3,300 to $3,600 per month in rent payments and taxpayer dollars for each unit last year—about $1,000 more than the average rent of a studio apartment in San Francisco.” The rooms were small with no bathrooms, with conditions so awful that the Tenderloin Housing Clinic wanted out of the contract despite the high rent payments. Many of the tenants were moved into the Garland Hotel, which is equipped with private bathrooms and kitchenettes. At May 2024’s meeting of the Homelessness Oversight Commission, commissioner Christin Evans praised the Garland contract for its cost-effectiveness. Housing people in SROs over studio apartments may seem more cost-efficient on the surface, but the capital needs will eat any savings, along with negative budget impacts in terms of public safety and health that cannot be easily quantified.
As PSH tenants, our success is truly the City’s success; to thrive and be successful, we need to have high-quality housing that is also cost efficient. So, what is the solution?
Many minds will come together to create policies, procedures, and criteria around closing down outdated housing. From a tenant’s perspective, we need certain guardrails, including:
– ensuring that tenants have a right to remain after a site is no longer PSH. This could be useful if, for example, a high-quality permanent supportive housing site loses its contract and is flipped to tourist or private use. However, there are many sites where no tenant wants to live and would leave if there was an out.
– focusing on shutting down sites where rooms are small and private bathrooms nonexistent. Such sites have the highest capital needs, eviction rates and likelihood of tenants decompensating.
– creating a scattered site subsidy for each unit taken offline. To contain costs and get landlord buy-in, it might be prudent for subsidies to be reserved for people who meet certain conditions: employed tenants, tenants already in recovery program or unemployed people who need a subsidy but can still manage on-site caseworker visits. While not every tenant would fall into that bucket, creating opportunities for such tenants in other core or housing-ladder sites to allow them to move onto similar or even better housing.
– requiring each unit to have a bathroom and prioritizing units with existing kitchenettes or capacity for them when acquiring site-based housing. The City could also pursue modular housing, similar to the Hilda Solis Care First Village in Los Angeles, where shipping containers have been repurposed into apartments with private bathrooms and kitchenettes.
-urging the City to buy higher quality PSH that is currently master leased to prevent displacement and reduce long-term costs. At the May 6, Budget and Finance Committee meeting, the Budget & Legislative Analyst report for the contract extension of the Abigail and Garland hotels highlighted the long-term cost savings of the City purchase of these buildings, but noted insufficient funds in the capital plan. Perhaps the next housing bond should have a special focus on these buildings.
Of course, I am spitballing here, and I am open to modifying my thinking. Over the last few weeks when this issue was raised, I have thought about long-term goals for the City’s permanent supportive housing stock. In 10 years, I would like to see every permanent supportive housing unit have a private bathroom, a refrigerator, and some type of cooking appliance. Additionally, I’d love for the City to work towards a goal of 50% of all permanent supportive housing being scattered sites, along with half of the fixed-site PSH to be apartments, modular or otherwise. Maybe this is a pipe dream, but what I do know is that it is neither cost effective or humane to keep these mini-Baldwins in the permanent supportive housing portfolio.
Jordan Wasilewski (she/they) is a long-term permanent supportive housing and SRO tenant advocate, former commissioner, and affordability activist. You may follow her at @sfpshsro on Instagram
