Bold plan to fast-track housing for homeless
Lawmaker’s bill would let S.F. rewrite all the rules
Assemblyman Phil Ting says he wants to hammer down the regulatory delays that can turn constructing housing for homeless people into a slog through bureaucratic molasses, and he’s come up with an aggressive approach: a measure that would let San Francisco rewrite the rules to supply roofs quickly for the 7,000 people in the city with no long-term home.
Ting is sponsoring a bill that would let a city throw out all state and local building, health and other regulations for homeless housing or shelters, and make up ones that radically speed up construction. The bill is written for San Francisco but can be amended to add in any city that’s game, he said — and already Los Angeles and Oakland are interested.
The San Francisco Democrat stood on a sidewalk just off Market Street on Wednesday and said his bill, AB932, will get its first hearing in the Legislature next week. With him were leaders of San Francisco homeless programs who enthusiastically endorsed the measure and promised to rewrite regulations to slash as much red tape as possible while still keeping buildings safe.
“Anybody who visits this city can see we are in the middle of an emergency on homelessness,” Jeff Kositsky, director of the city Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, said at the gathering in front of the Civic Center Navigation Center shelter. “We can solve this problem, but we need to do this in the context of this being an emergency.
“This bill could help us with our ability to site shelters, to site Navigation Centers and to build permanent supportive housing,” Kositsky said.
Ting wrote the bill without specifying which regulations should be rewritten, saying that will be up to San Francisco to decide, and then for the state Department of Housing and Community Development to approve.
Nobody has ramshackle shacks in mind, he said — just a more streamlined process.
Ting’s bill would take effect Jan. 1 and stay in place for 10 years.
“This takes the shackles off, but it’s really up to the local advocates like Jeff (Kositsky) as to what they can all agree on,” Ting said.
Building housing for homeless people can take about five years in San Francisco. Shelters are quicker, but often not by much. Nobody was guessing how much Ting’s bill could speed up the timeline, but apparently any help is good.
“Just being able to pull building permits quicker would help,” said Christy Saxton, a manager at Community Housing Partnership, one of the biggest supportivehousing programs in the city.
“The negotiations that have to go on between city departments, after you win a building bid, can take two years and be like herding cats — why not speed that up?
“This bill has a lot of potential.”
As Ting spoke, Jarvis Ferguson, 55, was just down the block helping a friend clear her shopping cart off the sidewalk under the watchful gaze of city street cleaners. He’s been in the Navigation Center for several months, and before that had been mostly homeless since 1997. Ferguson is more than jaded when it comes to promises of help, but the words of hope coming out of the mouth of a politician he hadn’t seen before sounded good.
“Speeding things up? What a great idea,” Ferguson said. “Homeless people like me — we’re not going away. The only way you’re going to get off the street for good when you’ve been out here as long as me is with some real help, real housing. Just give us a chance, and we can get our lives back together again.”
Ting’s legislation is based loosely on a bill that Gov. Jerry Brown signed in January that allows San Jose to relax regulations for emergency shelters. Planners there hope to use the law to build shelters in all 10 City Council districts.
San Jose declared a state of emergency on homelessness in 2015, and, as with Ting’s bill, that declaration was required for the law to take effect. San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors passed its emergency declaration last spring, and Oakland and Los Angeles issued declarations in 2016 and 2015, respectively.
“It’s all about getting folks off the streets into safer conditions with showers, bathrooms, a temporary roof,” said Jennifer Loving, executive director of the nonprofit Destination: Home in Santa Clara County. “It’s a bridge to somewhere, part of the pipeline.
“Just like in San Francisco, what you really need is homes,” Loving said. “But in the time it takes to build supportive housing, you need temporary housing to alleviate the burden.”