San Francisco opens Garland Lodge for supportive housing
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) — San Francisco announced it’s adding more permanent supportive housing as part of its homelessness recovery plan.
The city has opened the Garland Hotel, located at 505 O’Farrell Street, creating 80 new units of Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) for adults experiencing homelessness. Wednesday’s announcement builds on Mayor London Breed’s 2020 Homelessness Recovery Plan, which includes the largest one-time expansion of PSH in 20 years.
“Providing shelter is fundamental to our Homelessness Recovery Plan and critical for our plan to get people living on the street the services they need,” said Mayor Breed. “These 80 units will not only provide permanent housing for formerly homeless individuals, they will also bring us 80 units closer to addressing chronic homelessness. I want to thank all our partners on this project for their work to open these units to our most vulnerable communities.”
The city has provided funding to Tenderloin Housing Clinic (THC) to master lease and operate the previous SRO hotel, which will now provide long-term affordable housing with on-site social services to homeless individuals. Currently, there are 1,490 active PSH units and an additional 1,054 units of PSH in the city’s pipeline. The city said it’s on pace to reach 170% of Mayor Breed’s goal to acquire or lease 1,500 PSH units by the end of the Fiscal Year 2021-22.
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“This new PSH building is a great example of advancing Mayor Breed’s Homelessness Recovery Plan,” said Shireen McSpadden, Director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. “This beautiful building will add 80 new homes for people struggling to exit homelessness and reflect the mayor’s emphasis on housing with support.”
Additionally, the city has been awarded approximately $140 million in Project Homekey funding, Governor Newsom’s statewide initiative to rapidly expand housing for persons experiencing homelessness. That money has allowed the city to acquire the Diva Hotel, Granada Hotel, and the Eula Hotel, which combined, have added 527 Homekey-funded PSH units to the city’s pipeline.
Every night, the city provides shelter and housing to over 14,000 homeless and formerly homeless people, with more than 10,000 of these individuals residing in city-funded PSH units.
