In San Francisco, Tons of of Houses for Unhoused Folks Sit Vacant

“I can’t be there anymore,” she said when interviewed in December. “Your body goes through a lot being homeless. I’ve had pneumonia for two months now, from black mold on my tent. My tent is literally killing me.”

While the city said it is taking steps to mitigate delays, months of living in a wet tent site took its toll on residents. In text messages sent late one night, Ladybird described the chaos that had ensued as one of her neighbors had a mental breakdown. “This situation is getting worse by the day, it’s more twisted than anything I’ve seen in my decade out here,” she said. “I would be better off on the streets.”

The situation felt hopeless. “This site hasn’t placed anybody,” Ladybird said. “Anybody who’s getting out of there is doing it on their own. There’s no social worker. It’s just a dead end.”

Paperwork bottlenecks stand the process of moving people indoors

While the policies of the last two years left people like Ladybird living outdoors, those living in shelter-in-place hotels haven’t always fared better, with some of them waiting more than a year to be connected to a home.

Marquita Stroud is one of those. She said that she has been homeless for 15 years, but that about a month before the COVID-19 outbreak began in earnest, she was approved for permanent supportive housing. “God was on my side!” she said when interviewed in december.

In April 2020, she was relocated to the Hotel Whitcomb, a historic tourist hotel repurposed to allow people experiencing homelessness to quarantine safely. Stroud was one of 500 homeless people the city moved from large, warehouse-style shelters into 25 hotels around town.

Stroud is an optimist, high-energy and cheerful, who wears her hair tied up neatly in a scarf. “It’s wet!” she exclaimed on a rainy morning, as she confidently strode down Market Street with an umbrella in one hand, pushing a cart containing her small, fluffy dog, blue, with the other. She headed straight to a corner of the public library, a place she knows well.

Under COVID-19-era rules, Stroud isn’t allowed visitors where she lives, so she meets people at their apartments, outside or in public places. The prohibition on guests didn’t bother stroud too much when she first moved in. But she felt isolated and, as the months dragged on, no one contacted her about moving into her own place. Stroud watched her friends and neighbors — many of whom arrived in the hotel the same day she did — move into permanent housing. Her turn never came.

In large part, that’s because the homelessness department’s process for reviewing and selecting unhoused people for referral is slow. And in the period when Stroud was waiting, things were markedly worse. In October 2020, 32% of vacant units had no pending referrals for a resident. In January, that ratio had more than doubled, to 66% of available units, according to the city’s own data. The department did not respond to questions about why this might be.

Gary ran eight buildings through DISH. In February 2021, before he stepped down, he said the problem wasn’t new, but it was getting worse.

“Somewhere there is a bottleneck where the city is not sending us the housing application — that is, the documented representation of that person that we can process,” he said. “We report the vacancy to the city, and those vacancies languish for weeks to months without a referral of a real live human being who can be housed.”

At least part of the problem is a shortage of case managers, who are the crucial link between vacant units and the hundreds of people approved for housing. There is frequent turnover in the high-stress positions, and non-profit struggles to fill new job openings.

Stroud said she has been assigned six case managers in two years. To figure out who is assigned to her, she regularly checks a piece of paper taped to a wall in her hotel, which lists the name of the case manager assigned to each floor. She describes calling her case manager repeatedly to set up an appointment and not getting through.

“They pretty much don’t go knocking on your door,” Stroud said. “You got to ask for them. If I see one in the hallway — like if I see a worker talking to a client in the hallway — I always ask, ‘Are you a counselor? Are you my counselor?’ Because they don’t tell you.”

Nearly two years after being approved for a housing unit, Stroud is still at the Hotel Whitcomb. Although she dreams of going back to school, publishing her journals and giving back to the homeless community, her reality is much different. She’s had items stolen from her room, and the building has fallen into disrepair. “When we first got to this hotel, it was so cute,” she said. “Now they got the bedbugs, the roaches, the mice. Every other day, the pipes are brassing up.”

Recently she met a woman who had recently moved into the Whitcomb, but was already on her way out: She’d been assigned a housing unit.

“I was asking her, what did she do to get her housing that quick? And she said her counselor just came knocking on her door like, ‘You ready to go?’” Stroud said, clearly frustrated. “I haven’t talked to anyone about housing,” she said this month, as she approaches her two-year anniversary at the hotel. “I’m still here just waiting.”

As for Ladybird, she was approved for housing in November, but three months later, she is still without a home. In January, she left the tent encampment for a short-term residential hotel, but it comes with a time limit. “After 28 days, we get put out.”

Are you currently homeless in San Francisco, and trying to get housing? Do you have experience with the city’s housing process? Email the author at nuala@sfpublicpress.org.