A new affordable housing complex with on-site support services for families transitioning from homelessness opened Wednesday in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood.

The City Gardens complex at 333 12th St. adds 200 units to the city's inventory of permanent supportive housing. This is housing that includes long-term rental assistance and supportive services ranging from education and job training to health care. The new complex will increase the number of such residential units for families in the city by more than 20 percent.

The building and its services will be funded with $100 million from the city's Our City, Our Home Fund, a tax on businesses that generate gross receipts of more than $50 million. It was approved by voters as Proposition C in 2018.

City Gardens apartment complex at 333 12th St. in San Francisco.

City of San Francisco

The project was supported by an additional $56.7 million from the state's Homekey program, which funds a variety of permanent housing options as part of addressing a housing crisis declared in 2019. The city funded with Homekey funds.

“The City's investments in shelter, housing and prevention across our system make a difference for people and our neighborhoods every day, and we will continue to work to bring stability and hope to those most in need,” said San Francisco Mayor, London Breed, in a statement statement.

San Francisco Administrator Matt Dorsey said the project will provide families exiting homelessness a place to call home.

“The opening of City Gardens provides safe housing for San Francisco families at a time when it is desperately needed. It’s more than just a building, it’s a sign of our commitment to helping our most vulnerable neighbors,” Dorsey said.

On-site social services, including case management and mental health counseling, are provided by the nonprofit organization Abode Services. Other building amenities include common areas, resident lounges on each floor, a rooftop terrace, offices and a bicycle repair shop.

“City Gardens is a wonderful family project that we are happy to be a part of,” said Louis Chicoine, CEO of Abode Services. “We are grateful to have been commissioned by the City and County of San Francisco to operate such a beautiful and meaningful building where many San Franciscans live today.”

Under Proposition C, the city imposed a tax on annual gross receipts of businesses over $50 million to fund supportive housing and other solutions to the city's homelessness crisis. Legal challenges delayed the implementation of funds for city projects until the 2020-21 fiscal year.

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8. Amenities

Current challenge: Eighty of the city violations in SROs between 2016 and 2021 cited a lack of basic services including closed bathrooms and faulty heaters. Many additional problems were undoubtedly not reported to city inspectors.

Tenants frequently complain of not having a private bathroom and having to rely on shared bathrooms that are often filthy or out of order.

Recommended: Housing units should include private bathrooms.
Studios should include a kitchenette with a sink, a microwave and/or convection oven, a two-burner cooktop and a refrigerator. Units for families should include a full cooktop, oven and microwave.

Units should use efficient electric pumps that heat, cool and provide filtered air to each dwelling. The cost is about $5,000 per unit, according to HomeRise.

Bedrooms should have a bed with a mattress, a nightstand, a dresser, a table and chairs. Metal bed frames are more durable and less vulnerable to pests.

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Bay Area studio David Baker Architects has completed 145 units of social housing using modular construction and a weathering steel facade in San Francisco, California.

The 63,000-square foot (5,850 meter) project – called Tahanan, the Tagalog word for “coming home” – was completed in November 2021 through a financing prototype that aimed to accelerate the timeline and reduce the cost of permanent supportive housing.

Modules make up the social housing in San Francisco

“This is a particularly meaningful project for our team, because it provides homes to formerly unhoused people, along with the services they need to thrive,” said David Baker Architects (DBA) principal Daniel Simons.

The six-storey project stacks 87 two-unit boxes – fabricated by Factory OS in nearby Vallejo – atop a concrete podium that contains a flexible community room, in-house social services, and tenant retail space.

The six-storey project stacks 87 two-unit boxes

David Baker Architects designed the modules with an angled end that creates a sawtooth facade along the project’s western edge, orienting the 290-square foot (27-square meter) apartments toward downtown San Francisco, rather than the adjacent judicial complex.

The compact units contain only the necessities — a bedroom, kitchenette and bathroom — and rely on the support services and amenities of the building and surrounding neighborhood to fill out the rest of the residents’ living spaces.

Only the necessities are included in the compact units

“The site is in the SOMA Pilipinas Cultural District, established to preserve the cultural diversity of the area by highlighting the culture and contributions of the Filipino American community,” the studio said.

Simons noted the team’s interaction with the local community group SOMA Pilipinas group “had a direct and strong influence on the patterns, textures and colors of the project, especially the exterior and the public spaces.”

The raked is clad in weathering steel

The raked facade was clad in copper-coloured weathering steel and silver aluminum panels perforated to resemble a rice terrace. Additionally, the ground floor concrete was cast using traditional banig mats to create a handwoven texture.

Balancing security with transparency through layered glazed spaces, the ground floor opens to a rainbow mural-lined courtyard designed by Fletcher Studio.

David Baker Architects added a rainbow mural-lined courtyard to the ground floor

“This interplay facilitates social connection and offers visual links across the varied spaces, including a peek into the life of the building from the street,” the studio said.

The design utilizes best practices that both the studio and the developer, Mercy Housing, have found through years of supportive housing design to help residents feel safe and welcome.

The design works to help residents feel safe

“Tahanan integrates those best practices into a beautiful space where residents feel comfortable,” said Mercy Housing’s real estate director Barbara Gualco.

“The fully-equipped apartment homes, calm and private case management offices, and spacious communal areas provide an excellent foundation for residents to build towards their personal goals.”

Tahanan intends to tackle San Francisco’s homelessness crisis

The project’s goal – to provide people with secure housing as quickly as possible to combat California’s homelessness crisis – was expedited through the use of philanthropic funding from Tipping Point Community and the San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund.

The use of modular construction reduced the project’s timeline from the average five to seven years to three. The prefabricated modules were installed on site in just 10 days.

Scalloped facade fronts Parisian social housing block by Jean-Christophe Quinton

“Another gratifying aspect of the project was being able to meet aggressive goals of reduced cost per unit along with an accelerated schedule to occupancy,” said DBA modular lead Jonas Weber.

“These goals often work against one another, and the development, design and construction teams were collectively committed to defying conventional wisdom.”

The use of modular construction reduces the project’s timeline

The studio recently released a monograph that outlines its methodology for creating social housing.

The studio, with offices in San Francisco, Oakland, and Birmingham maintains that affordable housing should be indistinguishable from market-rate housing and has constructed a number of social projects like a convex, tile-clad micro-unit development in nearby Hayes Valley.

The photography is by Bruce Damonte.

Project credits:

Developers: Mercy Housing California, Tipping Point
Financial partners: San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund
Architect: David Baker Architects
Custom Furnishings: DBA_Workshop, Pacassa Studio
Custom rainscreen: BOK Modern
General contractor: Cahill Contractors
Modular fabricator: Factory_OS
Landscape architect: Fletcher Studios
Structural engineer: DCI Engineers
MEP engineers: FARD Engineers
civil engineer: Luke + Associates

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SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (BCN) – San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston introduced a resolution Tuesday calling on the state to turn the parking lot at a California Department of Motor Vehicles field office in the city into a 100 percent affordable housing site. “It’s a massive, state-owned property, with a mostly-unused parking lot,” Preston said.

San Carlos family finds owl in chimney

“If we’re serious about hitting our affordable housing goals, developing the DMV site for large-scale, permanently affordable housing is a no-brainer.” If passed, the resolution would urge state officials to request the DMV to turn their 98,061-square-foot parking lot at 1377 Fell St. into housing units.

Preston said the surface-level lot is one of the few potential sites for large-scale affordable housing in the heart of the city that would not require demolishing existing housing. Since it is owned by the state, it would be considerably cheaper to begin construction as the city would not have to buy the land.

The resolution was also introduced in light of the Board of Supervisors hearing an update on the draft 2022 Housing Element, quotas set by the state for local governments to boost affordable housing developments. In order to receive state funding, San Francisco must produce 82,069 new housing units by 2031, 57 percent of which must be accessible to low- and middle-income residents.

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“We welcome the ambitious affordable housing targets set in the Housing Element,” said Preston. “But the state needs to do more than just demand streamlining market rate production to get there.

We need partnership from the state to maximize every opportunity for affordable housing, and the DMV site is the perfect starting point.” Preston’s office also said the land could be a key spot to the city’s goal of preserving geographic equity while building affordable housing, given its easy access to other parts of the city with plenty of public transportation lines nearby.

Ballots found dumped on Highway 17 in San Jose

A private developer Build Inc. previously was awarded the DMV lot in 2008 to develop affordable housing, but the plans eventually fell through as they were “unable to make the project work,” according to Preston’s resolution.

Copyright © 2022 Bay City News, Inc.

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After much back and forth on the subject, and despite acknowledging it may not be financially feasible any time soon, the South San Francisco City Council indicated it is now ready to place a question on November’s ballot that could allow the city to own and operate public housing.

The measure, spearheaded by Councilmember James Coleman, would permit the city to build or buy low-income housing with public dollars, something that requires voter approval as a result of Article 34 of the state Constitution.

Coleman’s argued the move could not only allow the city to bypass the 1950 amendment that’s been widely criticized as racist, but allow the city to more efficiently provide below-market-rate apartments. The prevailing method in the state is for jurisdictions to subsidize nonprofit developers to carry out the task.

During previous meetings, however, his colleagues have been less enthusiastic, both pointing to untenable cost projections and lost funding for schools that would not receive property tax revenue from city-owned developments.

But while those concerns were largely maintained this week, the council appeared swayed by impassioned input from residents, many of whom pointed to the state law’s beleaguered legacy.

“If we want to move forward with progressive, inclusive and equitable [policies] … it starts with changing laws that were just unjust, that were not supposed to be,” Councilmember Eddie Flores said. “These numbers, right now, don’t pan out, I’m fully aware of that, but we’re not building right now.”

The ballot question will request permission to add the equivalent of 1% of the city’s housing stock, roughly 225 units, annually over the course of the next eight years. The numbers would roll over and not expire, meaning the city could build all 1,800 units at any point in the future.

However, Councilmember Mark Addiego said the housing may not be built within the current council’s tenure, the measure, more importantly, would gauge public interest and allow the city to be ready to build if state funding became available.

“Even if it’s not right for today, things change,” he said.

A city study found that in current conditions, a 150-unit apartment building, with rents set at $1,713 to $2,375 depending on bedrooms (considered affordable for “very-low income” residents, per the state) would cost the city roughly $84.8 million to construct and operate. That cost could be reduced to $47.1 million with the use of low-income housing tax credits — federal and state assistance for which the city would need to compete.

The council also looked at the potential of a mixed-income project, with half the apartments affordable and the others set at market rates. That project wouldn’t qualify for the state assistance, and would still cost the city $53.8 million, according to the report. The market-rate units would also cost $463,000 in lost property taxes, $320,000 from school district earmarks (The below-market rate units would similarly not pay taxes, though, it was noted that would be the case even if provided by a private developer) .

“The taxes that would not be going to the school district, those are the things that scare me,” said Vice Mayor Buenaflor Nicolas, who also conceded her support after recognizing the “racial tone.”

At the time of its passing, Article 34 was backed heavily by the real estate industry, with proponents arguing taxpayers should have a say on low-income housing projects, as they were publicly funded. But ads at the time also played heavily into fears of neighborhood integration and socialism. The law also came on the heels of a 1949 federal law that outlawed segregation in public housing.

Constitutional amendments require two-thirds voter approval, a threshold not met during at least three attempts to change the rule, most recently in 1993. While there have been efforts more recently, it’s unclear when repeating the rule could again land on the state ballot.

A bill that would create a state authority for public housing, however, made its way to the Senate, where it fell one vote short of passage out of the Governance and Finance Committee. Assembly Bill 2053, authored by South Bay Assemblymember Alex Lee, would not repeal Article 34, but would support public housing construction. It will likely be reintroduced.

“There has been an unprecedented amount of movement in the state Legislature to pass pro-social housing bills,” Coleman said. “If South San Francisco passes Article 34, guess what, we’re first in line to access that funding.”

The council will ultimately vote on whether to place the question on the ballot during a future meeting, ahead of an Aug. 12 deadline for items to make it to the Nov. 8 election.

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A long-awaited Safeway, biotech campus and housing development in South San Francisco is poised to move forward, following a resolution by the City Council this week to override an airport committee decision that found the site was too loud for housing.

The project, slated to include 184 apartments, the grocery store and other retail, plus three six-story life science buildings, is the latest proposal for a long vacant 14-acre parcel at 180 El Camino Real.

The site was previously occupied by a Safeway that shuttered in 2014 ahead of anticipated redevelopment. The city had approved a project that was to include 284 new homes and 220,000 square feet of retail, which the previous owner was unable to move forward.

The latest plans were brought by SteelWave in 2021, a Foster City developer that has since purchased the site. The envisioned new Safeway would be 64,000 square feet — a flagship facility open 24 hours a day complete with a pharmacy, a representative from the grocer told planning commissioners last year.

The latest plans for the development at 180 El Camino Real in South San Francisco were brought by SteelWave

Another 10,000 square feet for other shops would also be included, and the apartments would be located in a seven-story building at the northeast corner of the lot, with parking provided in a separate garage.

The proposal, however, hit a potential snag earlier this month when the Airport Land Use Committee, with the City/County Association of Governments for the county, determined the location receives too much noise from airplanes to be suitable for housing.

The City Council this week unanimously agreed to override the decision, pointing to other benefits the location offers, including its proximity to the San Bruno BART station, which is less than a half mile away, and the grocery store on site increasing walkability.

“We’re really developing a new neighborhood that really will interface greatly with public transit,” said Councilmember Mark Addiego.

He also pointed to a 338-unit housing development approved in 2020 for 410 Noor Ave., a location adjacent to the Safeway project closer to the airport. The City Council at the time similarly overrode the airport committee’s decision.

“It’s not my favorite committee, let’s put it that way,” said Mayor Mark Nagales. “In terms of the projects we keep bringing in front of them, it’s pretty much a very strict definition, and if it doesn’t pass their definition it’s an automatic no vote.”

In 2021, a Foster City developer that has since purchased the site. The City Council this week unanimously agreed to override a decision by the Airport Land Use Committee, determining the location receives too much noise from airplanes to be suitable for housing, pointing to other benefits the location offers.

If the project were across the street from Huntington Avenue, it would be cleared per the committee’s criteria, said Billy Gross, the city’s principal planner. He said the site is reportedly subject to 70 decibels, and the developer’s intent is to reduce residential interior noise to 45 decibels or less.

The Shops at Tanforan is also roughly a half a mile away, closer to the San Francisco International Airport. It is planned for redevelopment into a biotech space and 1,000 units or more of housing. Closer still are existing neighborhoods of single-family homes.

City Attorney Sky Woodruff said the council’s override would not open the city to potential litigation.

The council’s action informs both the airport commission and Caltrans Division of Aeronautics of its intent. A formal vote on the matter will take place sometime in September, said Gross. The Planning Commission is also set to review the project next month.

corey@smdailyjournal.com

(650) 344-5200, ext. 105

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In San Francisco, two competing ballot measures, Propositions D and E, are promising to cut through red tape and get affordable housing built more quickly. They sound similar on the surface, but they have some key differences.

Proposition D

Proposition D comes from Mayor London Breed, and most of its funding comes from tech executives. The mayor says it could cut the time to build housing developments from six years to six months, for projects in which a significant portion of the units are marked as affordable, and the workers building them are all making a living wage. Prop D also raises the income threshold for some of those units, so more people can qualify to live in affordable housing.

Opponents of Prop D say they worry it’s not picky enough: that it could end up fast-tracking a lot of small studios for middle income, young, single people, in buildings that also have luxury condos.

Proposition E

Proposition E was written by the Board of Supervisors, and it would fast-track some housing developments, but only the ones that meet very stringent requirements.

Compared to Prop D, a higher percentage of units would have to be affordable to qualify for fast-tracking under Prop E, and a certain number of those units would need to be 2- and 3-bedroom floor plans suitable for larger families. The workers who build the housing would have to be in a union. Prop E would keep a low income threshold, so not as many middle income renters would qualify.

Prop E’s opponents say they worry the rules are too strict — and because projects under Prop E can still be held up for environmental review, they worry it leaves too much red tape, so the housing the city needs wouldn’t actually get built.

Who’s backing them?

So far, Prop D has raised more than $2 million, with endorsements including the Chronicle, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, the Chinese American Democratic Club and State Senator Scott Wiener.

Prop E has raised more than $700,000, with endorsements from the San Francisco Democratic Party, a number of labor unions, the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club, and Assemblymember Phil Ting.

Why are they competing?

San Francisco has a state mandate to build tens of thousands of new affordable housing units within the next decade. With that deadline looming, the supporters of these two measures have been locked in a fierce battle for months. Because they’re so similar, a court has ruled that only one of these propositions can win. If both get more than 50% of the vote, whichever one gets the most votes will become law.

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In California overall, prices dropped year-over-year, as sales collapsed, supply more than doubled. No dear, this isn’t just a seasonal dip.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

San Francisco and Silicon Valley are now in the solid leadership role of the housing bust playing out in California with sales collapsing and prices heading south from the peak in April at an astonishing pace.

Just about everything that could come together came together. After a two-year outflux of workers due to working from anywhere, there came the collapse of the startup and crypto scenes, starting in 2021 and continuing unabated, leading to the early entries into my pantheon of Imploded Stocks. In early 2022 came the spike in mortgage rates. In mid-2022 came the downturn in employment at Big Tech. By that time, the Fed had been hiking its policy rates relentlessly, and Quantitative Tightening had kicked off. This was punctuated over the past two months by the chaotic dismantling of the workforce at Twitter and its ecosystem.

Local budgets have fallen into deep deficits – although most are still flush with cash from the pandemic funds received from the federal government and the state.

Vacant office space that is on the market for lease and sublease continues to balloon, while landlords have started to file for huge reductions in assessment values ​​to lower their property taxes, which is going to cut revenues further.

This comes garnished by stories in the New York Times that Twitter stopped paying rent on its leased office spaces, and that it was instructed not to pay vendors. At least one of those unpaid vendors – a Silicon Valley company whose software Twitter had licensed – filed a lawsuit last week in the San Francisco Superior Court for nonpayment. It stated, “shortly after Musk’s purchase of Twitter closed, Twitter refused to pay the outstanding quarterly invoice, which was due on November 30, 2022, and Twitter disclaimed any obligation to pay any future invoices…”

These are all signs that the housing market is going to get a lot messier. Prices have plunged the most in San Francisco, followed by the Silicon Valley counties of San Mateo and Santa Clara.

In San Francisco.

The median price of single-family houses sold in November in San Francisco plunged by 11.4% from October to $1.50 million, and by 27% from the peak in April, according to the California Association of Realtors. A nasty-looking chart:

Condo prices plunged by 4.3% from the prior month to $1.15 million, and by 9.5% year-over-year. Since the peak in April, the median condo price is down by 15.5%. Condo sales in November have collapsed by 49%.

Seasonally, the lowest months are December and January. So that’s still to come.

But who is going to buy in the spring selling season? Prices normally rise as demand picks up in the spring; but who will be the exuberant tech workers that will want to overpay for a house by borrowing against the collapsed value of their stock options? Those lucky ones that still have jobs and stock options?

The housing markets in San Francisco and Silicon Valley are tied to the boom-and-bust cycles of the startup scene – now combined with the crypto scene and cryptos – and they’re tied to the stocks of startups and big tech and social media companies in the area, to the jobs that have to be done locally, and to the value of the stock options. All of them are puking.

Year-over-year, the median price of single-family houses in San Francisco plunged by 21%, the sixth month in a row of year-over-year declines. It was the biggest year-over-year plunge since the peak of Housing Bust 1:

Silicon Valley, San Mateo County.

The median price of single-family houses in San Mateo County, which forms the northern part of Silicon Valley, plunged by 6.2% from October to $1.78 million, and by 26% from the peak in April.

Year-over-year, the median house price plunged by 20%.

Silicon Valley, Santa Clara County.

Santa Clara County, which forms the southern part of Silicon Valley and includes the Bay Area’s largest city, San Jose, is lagging behind but is moving right along. The median price of single-family houses dropped by 1.5% in November from October to $1.60 million, and by 19% from the peak in April:

Year-over-year, the median house price dropped by 5.5%, the first significant year-over-year decline in this cycle. Prices had already undergone significant year-over-year declines in 2018 and 2019, and were on a downward path until the trillions in money-printing, the surge in the stock market, and the interest rate repression began to boost prices again.

Currently, Santa Clara County lags San Francisco and San Mateo by a few months, it seems.

In all of California.

Sales of single-family houses in California collapsed by 47.7% in November, compared to a year ago, the biggest decline since 1980, according to the California Association of Realtors. Condo sales collapsed by 46%.

Unsold inventory more than doubled year-over-year to a supply of 3.3 months, and days on the market also more than doubled – before sellers pulled the unsold homes off the market again.

For all of California, the median price of single-family houses plunged another 3.0% in November from October, which pushed the price down year-over-year (-0.6%). The median condo price fell 2.1% in November from October, which whittled down the year-over-year gain to just 2.7%.

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Reyna De La Cruz had looked at 15 apartments, at least.

About half of the landlords rejected her. The other half never responded at all.

De La Cruz and three of her kids were living in a camper parked on a corner in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood. They’d been there since De La Cruz was laid off from her job at Wingstop in 2020. But their little family needed a real home. De La Cruz kept a wish list: enough bedrooms and bathrooms for her and her kids, a kitchen big enough to cook in regularly and, if she was lucky, a yard.

In May, the San Francisco Housing Authority had issued De La Cruz an emergency housing voucher. These vouchers, part of a $1.1-billion Biden administration effort to rapidly house Americans during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, are supposed to be a golden ticket: a promise that the federal government will pay most of a recipient’s rent for years.

Reyna De La Cruz speaks to a Catholic Charities outreach worker from the doorway of the camper where she lives with her three children in San Francisco.

(Paul Kuroda/For The Times)

But four months after receiving the voucher, De La Cruz and her family were still homeless. The hurdles to finding a home felt insurmountable: she spoke Spanish, not English; few units were available, and if they were, they were too expensive; and landlords didn’t want to accept a voucher, or house someone who was homeless.

Similar problems plague other cities’ efforts to use the new vouchers.

A year and a half after they were handed out, just 56% of the new vouchers have been used across the country. In California, which has one of the worst housing crises in the nation, less than 50% of emergency housing vouchers are in use. And in San Francisco — one of the most expensive housing markets in the country — just 44% of the 906 vouchers the city received have actually housed people.

As The Times has previously reported, other expensive cities, including San Diego, have excelled in placing people into homes with the vouchers.

Despite the efforts of its local housing agency and city government, though, San Francisco has fallen behind. Voucher recipients like De La Cruz find themselves lost in the rental market maze, clutching their golden ticket to a home, but with little guidance on how to reach the prize.

“I sometimes don’t want to keep on going. I want to just give up,” De La Cruz said. “If I had somebody sitting next to me, guiding me, coming with me to the units, calling the managers and landlords” — maybe then, she could put her voucher to use and secure a home for her family.

Efrain Sandoval, a program manager with Catholic Charities SF, visits Reyna De La Cruz at the camper where she lives with her three children in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood. He helped her apply for an emergency housing voucher in March.

(Paul Kuroda/For The Times)

To find a home, De La Cruz and other San Franciscans with emergency housing vouchers must navigate not only the city’s tight rental market, but also the thicket of organizations the city has enlisted to help them.

De La Cruz, a soft-spoken 37-year-old who immigrated from Guatemala in 2014, had been living homeless in Bayview for just over a year when Efrain Sandoval, a program manager for Catholic Charities SF, knocked on her door in December 2021.

De La Cruz was struggling. Her hair was often thrown into a low bun, and although her smile was warm, her eyes betrayed stress. The tank that holds the family’s water supply needed to be refilled every three days. The camper was too small to cook properly. Her kids, two in their teens and one in his early twenties, were angry about their situation, and threatened to run off. No one had enough space.

Three months later, Sandoval, the same Catholic Charities SF program manager, showed up at De La Cruz’s door again. His organization, he explained, was among a handful of community-based nonprofits that the city relied on to refer people into the voucher program. The group’s office was just a short walk away.

Sandoval unfolded a table and chair — a makeshift office — on the curb outside De La Cruz’s camper, and walked her through the 29-page voucher application, finishing it that same day.

Cynthia Scott of Catholic Charities, left, visits Tammie Haley, who lives in her van with her husband, to help guide her through the application process for the emergency housing voucher program in San Francisco.

(Paul Kuroda/For The Times)

In May, the San Francisco Housing Authority approved De La Cruz for a voucher. But the agency couldn’t reach her; De La Cruz was behind on her phone bills.

Instead, Sandoval saw De La Cruz’s name on the housing agency’s list of people slated to receive a voucher. He tried calling and texting De La Cruz. Later that day, he walked over to her camper, discovered her phone was out of service, relayed the good news and told her the next steps.

She eagerly attended a briefing at the housing authority and received a packet of information on the process: how much her voucher was worth, a notice that the voucher would expire in 120 days, a checklist for what to look for in a new home, a delineation of her rights, and a list of resources.

The packet also included a new point of contact — a housing navigator at Providence Foundation, another local nonprofit, who would help her find a home. In San Francisco, the organizations that help voucher recipients find homes are separate from the nonprofits that refer people into the program. Catholic Charities SF fulfilled its role in signing De La Cruz up for a voucher, and now Providence Foundation would help her with the housing search.

Hundreds of miles to the south, San Diego uses a different system. About half of the service providers that support that city’s emergency voucher program not only help clients apply for vouchers, but also assist them in their housing search. The San Diego Housing Commission also hired five full-time specialists to help out with housing searches that referring agencies can’t handle. San Diego’s voucher recipients typically deal with fewer entities and are less likely to fall through the cracks.

In San Francisco, De La Cruz was not so lucky. Within weeks of receiving her voucher, she realized she would be on her own in her search for a home. Her point of contact at Providence didn’t speak Spanish, and no one at the agency came knocking on her door or knew exactly where her camper was parked, she said. (The Times called Providence’s number multiple times to ask about De La Cruz’s case; no one answered. A voicemail message was not returned.) She found that calling the other resources listed in her briefing packet was fruitless. Usually, no one picked up. When someone did, she ran into a language barrier.

With more than $4,000 a month in federal funds to help her pay for housing, and her name in the files of at least four city and nonprofit groups, De La Cruz was still left alone to navigate the housing search. So she limited it. She considered only the listings that she could pull up on her phone on Zillow. She mainly toured apartments around Bayview, near where she was parked. And she only talked to landlords who spoke Spanish.

Often, before she could even apply for a unit, landlords would tell De La Cruz that they didn’t work with people who had housing vouchers. (It’s illegal to discriminate against voucher holders, but landlords remain reluctant to accept them.)

If a landlord was willing to accept a voucher, she’d find out that the unit cost more than her voucher would cover.

Voucher recipients typically pay 30% of their income toward rent, and the voucher covers the rest. Most cities use a single number, called a fair market rent rate, to determine the maximum amount a housing voucher is worth. For a three-bedroom voucher in San Francisco, that number is $4,111. Emergency housing vouchers can be used at 120% of the fair market rate, which means De La Cruz’s three-bedroom voucher can be applied to a unit with a rent of up to $4,933 per month. On Apartment List, the average monthly rent for a three-bedroom in San Francisco tops $5,000.

Efrain Sandoval and Cynthia Scott, right, of Catholic Charities visit the encampment of a homeless person they are trying to help find housing for in San Francisco.

(Paul Kuroda/For The Times)

A more nuanced approach might offer advantages. Some jurisdictions across the U.S., including San Diego, use small-area fair market rents, which are calculated by ZIP Code within a city. This means that the amount a voucher can cover varies by neighborhood. In more expensive neighborhoods, vouchers are worth more.

Most of the jurisdictions the federal government has required to use this system — including San Diego — have housed voucher recipients at rates above the national average. Housing agencies elsewhere are allowed to opt in, but many expensive cities, including San Francisco, have not.

Even if De La Cruz managed to find a landlord willing to work with vouchers and a unit within her price range, she faced a third hurdle. Rental applications generally request potential tenants to list a current address, and De La Cruz did not have one, tipping landlords off that she was currently homeless. After that, she’d often just never hear back.

“I don’t want to lie on applications, either,” De La Cruz said. “I feel trapped.”

Her struggle to secure a home dragged on for months.

Molly Bodkin holds her 10-month-old son Elijah next to the school bus where their family lives.

(Paul Kuroda/For The Times)

A plant hanging from a rearview mirror adds a domestic touch to a school bus that serves as living quarters for a homeless San Francisco family.

(Paul Kuroda/For The Times)

In San Francisco right now, about 200 people have the new vouchers in hand, are ready to be housed and are still homeless. Nationally, that number is around 30,000 people.

Just steps from De La Cruz’s camper, a family lives on a school bus parked against the curb. Molly Bodkin has had an emergency housing voucher since June, which she hoped could finally house her, her partner, and their two children. But her attempts at securing housing were fruitless — poor credit meant rejection after rejection from landlords. After years of homelessness, the housing search and application process felt too daunting, and, like De La Cruz, she also felt like giving up.

Even success stories came with struggle. South of Bayview, a family of four with an emergency voucher moved into a home in San Francisco’s Visitacion Valley in September. The Torres family secured housing after months of denials — also pinned on bad credit — and little guidance through the program from housing support services, said Doria Torres. The family’s saving grace came from a property manager who was touched by their story. Torres was grateful, but nearly gave up on the process as well.

The San Francisco Housing Authority and the city’s Department of Homelessness and Housing point to the city’s tough rental market as a reason for the city’s low voucher utilization numbers: Rent is high, vacancies are low and receiving 906 vouchers at once and efficiently distributing them is a monumental task, they said. Given these hurdles, the city remains proud of its progress with the vouchers, officials said, particularly as local government agencies and nonprofits operated with fewer staff due to the pandemic.

The city’s service providers “are very committed and understand the importance of maintaining communication and engagement with our individuals and families. … Sometimes we lose touch with folks if their phone number changes. That happens pretty often. Our partners are really aware of that possibility, and they gather information about where folks hang out and where they’re staying,” said Alan Guttirez, manager of housing subsidy programs with the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. “Sometimes there’s just barriers to staying in touch.”

Previously homeless Shayla Anderson and boyfriend Eddie Ordenez kiss before heading to their new home, which Catholic Charities helped them find.

(Paul Kuroda/For The Times)

One morning in August, Sandoval, the Catholic Charities SF program manager who had knocked on De La Cruz’s door the previous winter, noticed that she was still living out of her camper.

De La Cruz told him about her struggles to secure housing even with the voucher. Sandoval said he reached out to contacts at the city on her behalf, and pushed them to reassign De La Cruz to a Spanish-speaking housing navigator in the neighborhood.

Jessica Lopez, De La Cruz’s new housing navigator — also with Catholic Charities — pulled much of the weight of the housing search. She called landlords to verify if they’d be willing to work with a voucher (and reminded them it’s illegal to refuse), explained that costs like the rental deposit would be covered, told the family’s story and assisted De La Cruz with applications.

By a sunny Wednesday in mid-September, Lopez had submitted paperwork for a unit in Bayview. The landlord just needed to decrease the rent by about $80 a month to fit within De La Cruz’s voucher limits. To persuade the landlord to accept the application, the city offered a $1,000 incentive, Lopez said.

On Oct. 15, De La Cruz and her kids finally moved into a new home. It was freshly painted blue, trimmed in off-white, with stairs leading to the entrance, four blocks away from where her camper used to be parked.

It even had a yard.

The post Why San Francisco lags on housing its homeless inhabitants appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

To residents of San Francisco’s Sixth District, the deplorable conditions of single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels are no longer a great shock. In the Tenderloin, Civic Center, and South of Market neighborhoods, where most of the approximately 70 SROs are located, these city-run buildings have been terrible for as long as most can remember. And they’re getting worse.

The horrors of SROs were put on display to the public in a recent San Francisco Chronicle feature. The story tells of people living in buildings with collapsing ceilings, toxic mold, vermin, noxious odors, constant noise, broken appliances, and unchecked violence. It also notes that at least 166 people fatally overdosed in these hotels in 2020 and 2021. This official number, however, is suspicious for being so low. San Francisco’s medical examiner reported at least 1,300 overdose deaths citywide in the last two years, most commonly for illicit fentanyl combined with other drugs.

How can the places that the city has deemed appropriate for the economically distressed be so bad? It’s not because of a lack of funds. San Francisco has an eye-popping $1.1 billion homeless budget, much of it spent on such supportive housing.

We can lay part of the blame for the conditions on tenants who make life miserable for others—breaking into nearby apartments, threatening innocent people, or consuming drugs in common areas. But if tenants have demonstrated that they are incapable of being good neighbors, then the officials who placed them there are culpable.

“There needs to be a better vetting process,” says 25-year-old Darren Mark Stallcup, who until recently lived in an SRO. “The city was moving everyone in; people who were sketchy, violent. They were fentanyl addicts, just out of jail, or in gangs. People were breaking my door down. I would wake up having to throw punches.”

According to Stallcup, long-time tenants, many of them seniors, bear the brunt of the mayhem. “Most are Asian immigrants, and the noise scares the elders,” he says. “They would barricade themselves in. I never got a firearm, but I was thinking about it.”

In fact, many of the people placed in city-run housing are considered “high-need tenants.” Neither SROs nor supportive-housing units are the correct settings for them (or the other tenants who suffer from their proximity). They need professional assistance but don’t receive any because the city hasn’t invested in it.

This is Housing First policy in action. The idea behind it is as simple as it is misguided: put people who were living outside or who are at risk of becoming homeless inside four walls. Then, voila, you’ve solved the problem of homelessness. It’s not true, of course. More people arrive in San Francisco every day, most seeking the city’s cheap narcotics and easygoing attitude toward usage. They end up on the street until they can score subsidized housing.

Stuffing thousands of people who should be recovering in hospitals, mental health facilities, and drug treatment centers into free or low-cost apartments has been disastrous. The places in which they are housed are ruined; people get hurt, and some die. Neighborhoods fall into disorder.

The dilapidated state of SROs is only a symptom of the disease. Housing isn’t a cure. Unless cities address the underlying problem of untreated mental illness and addiction, every building set aside for the homeless under the Housing First approach will deteriorate, and the people desperately needing help won’t get it.

A long-term SRO resident who wishes to remain anonymous notes the lack of oversight and accountability. “The Departments of Homelessness and Supportive Housing and Public Health are in violation of housing rights and human rights,” she says. “Supportive housing? There is no support. DPH could give a rat’s ass about health. If you’re a woman, your life will be a living hell. No one cares. High functioning people regress. Some want to stay sober, but they can’t. Eventually they pick up a pipe again because almost everyone around them is using.”

The city’s solution: more of the same, but waste even more money. Instead of addressing the rotting SRO buildings, the administration is on a real-estate buying spree. With an influx of funding from Proposition C—a measure that taxed the city’s most profitable businesses with the intention of fixing homelessness—it is purchasing pristine new buildings in which to house needy people.

The apartments that Mayor London Breed has been proudly showing off, with gleaming kitchens, sparkling bathrooms, and clean bedrooms, are all destined for ruin. Soon these units will be in the same uninhabitable state as all the others. This is exactly what happened when the city gave people shelter-in-place rooms in the Mark Hopkins and similar luxury hotels during the height of the pandemic. The destruction was almost immediate. Fixtures were ripped from bathrooms, blood and feces stained the rugs, mattresses were set on fire, and people died of overdoses, often alone.

The push to add permanent supportive-housing units in districts with few, if any, such structures will only worsen matters. Assurances that these units are for homeless families and will include mental-health services are unfounded. As for the communities, they will suffer the same fate as those in District 6. Drug dealers will arrive to serve the new residents. Criminal activity will intensify. Building occupants with addiction issues will buy what they want, take the substances to their rooms, and use. Some will overdose and die. Meantime, the people who don’t use drugs or who are trying to stay sober will be in a dangerous environment. Abstinence is not valued. Harm-reduction activists make sure residents always have access to free needles, pipes, and foil, but never promote free recovery assistance such as Narcotics Anonymous.

Giving permanent residences to people who have not demonstrated that they can handle such responsibility is wrong, says Stallcup, who finds it painful to recollect his time at an SRO. “They were shooting up in the shared bathroom,” he says. “They basically destroyed everything. I’ll never forget the smell. They need treatment, rehabilitation, support, facilities designed for those things. We shouldn’t give out properties like this. It’s crazy. There has to be a bridge.”

Housing First has hurt, not helped, those who are in dire situations. Redoubling efforts in pursuit of this policy guarantees that the sick will get sicker, and the city’s light will continue to dim. Rather than railroad deeply troubled people into poorly managed apartments or blighted SROs, San Francisco should use its enormous budget to fund the integrated addiction treatment and psychiatric care it sorely lacks.

Erica Sandberg is a consumer finance reporter based in San Francisco. As a community advocate, she focuses on homelessness and public order.

Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

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The post San Francisco’s “Housing First” Nightmare appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.